Sarah Motley Stone on the Courage to Try New Ideas

Life lessons come in unusual packages, especially for people willing to learn. And intellectual curiosity has been a trait of Sarah Motley Stone’s ever since she was a high-achieving voracious reader as a grade school student.  

One of her most enduring lessons came during her first two years of practicing law, on a day that appeared to be a challenging one when it started.  

“Somehow, I had the unenviable task of managing the edits that were coming in on this significant brief involving three of our senior litigation partners. They’d come to my desk with a stack of handwritten edits and Partner A would say do this, Partner B would say do that, and partner C would say do something different. I’d try to figure out how to balance them.”  

But two days later, she got more edits from Partner A, and they caught Sarah’s attention. She swore she had seen this wording before, but the partner already had rewritten this passage. So, she went back, looked through the previous drafts, and sure enough, the veteran attorney had changed his mind on how best to word the brief. He now wanted to go back to the original wording. 

A simple enough thing, but one that became a life lesson for Stone. If a litigator with decades of experience still grappled with how to write a brief, it was okay that she could, too. 

“It’s okay if I don’t feel perfect all the time. And it’s okay if I feel like I need to self-edit because there’s not a finite answer to a lot of what we do. It’s an art,” Sarah said.  

That story resonated with Sarah two decades later, when firm leadership approached her to become Womble’s Charlotte Office Managing Partner.   

She said, “I thought about the Managing Partners who came before me, and my initial reaction was ‘I’m not ready.’” But Sarah realized those predecessors weren’t infallible icons, either. Like her, they were dedicated, intelligent lawyers who learned from experience and through listening to others. 

“You get to a point in your career where you accept that you don’t have all the answers—and that’s okay,” she said. “You go find the answers.”  

Sarah has taken that “Let’s try and see what we learn” approach to leading Womble’s Charlotte office. In this role, she manages a team of nearly 120 attorneys and staff and represents the office with clients and the public.   

“As I’m talking to my colleagues about recruiting, expanding client relationships, and all those things, my approach is ‘Be a little audacious,’” she said.   

“It’s not comfortable, but let’s think big and just see what happens. Instead of going through all the iterations of what could go wrong, let’s instead look at it like, ‘Well, what if they say yes? What if this does work out?’ As a litigator, that’s not a place I usually live. So, it’s been good to pivot to that perspective a bit.”  

Sarah’s philosophy on balancing a challenging career with her personal life has evolved as both have changed. As is typical for her, that changing approach came after a great deal of thought.  

She said the term “work-life balance” implies harmony, and that isn’t always reality. Instead, she has learned to prioritize what matters on a given day—and those priorities change. One day could be focused on a trial, another could be spent on family, and a third devoted to community service efforts important to her. These include the Mecklenburg County Bar Association, where Sarah is finishing a one-year term as President.  

“You have to think about all the balls you're juggling and say, ‘Okay, that one’s the tennis ball today, so if it bounces it's fine.’ But tomorrow, that one might be the glass one, so I need to catch it,” she said.   

Sarah said one of the good things to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic is that people are more honest and forthcoming about what’s going on outside of work. So, if she can’t be at an event because she has a family obligation, she’s up front about it—and people understand, she said. 

“I hope that by talking about it, I signal to other moms and dads I work with that we all have to figure it out,” she said. “That’s part of being there for each other.” 

Sarah began her legal career at Womble, even spending time with the firm as a summer associate while in law school. After more than 20 years, she not only has moved into a leadership role, but a mentoring one, too. In that regard, she said women at the firm have provided her with so many valuable work and life lessons. 

“If there is one thing I have seen, it’s that women at this firm end up having this second renaissance in their career when their children go to college,” Sarah said. “I remember going to a litigation meeting more than 10 years ago and there were six of our women partners who at that point were all right around fifty or a little above. And I was like, ‘This is a powerhouse group of people.’ That’s in my future, I hope.” 

She’s also bullish on the future of Womble’s Charlotte office, and the Queen City in general.  

“This is a dynamic market. There is so much growth and change happening here in Charlotte,” Sarah said. “We have an amazing group of lawyers here who are connected and engaged, and I can’t wait to see what we all do together over the next 10, 15, 20 years.” 

This article is part of a series celebrating Womble Bond Dickinson’s 150^th anniversary and reflecting on the firm’s enduring legacy of service to the law, its clients, and the communities it serves.