From Big Law to Bigger Impact: Sarah Ashmore’s Path to Atticus

When Sarah Ashmore worked in corporate law, the career path ahead of her looked clear: long hours and complex spreadsheets. But after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, the demands of corporate law forced her to reconsider what she wanted from both her career and her life. Her chronic inflammatory condition made the demands and long hours of Big Law increasingly difficult. “It was really brutal trying to manage these expectations of learning a new job and having to work crazy hours, all while being sick.”

Wanting to shift toward more mission-driven work, Ashmore was encouraged by a former coworker to make the switch to public interest law and apply to Atticus. “I learned so much about being a lawyer—but I also learned that life is short. I don’t want to spend my time making rich people more money. I want to actually have an impact and directly help people.”

She was immediately drawn to Atticus’s mission to help people access disability benefits and found the intersection of law, business, and analytics in the legal department especially compelling. “It was like a unicorn job,” she says. “Atticus was the natural fit of, I get to wear a business hat, I get to still be a lawyer, and I understand the clients.” 

That understanding was deeply personal: Ashmore had gone through the process of applying for short-term disability benefits herself and took a four-month hiatus from her high-powered law firm to manage her health. This experience put her firmly in the shoes of Atticus clients—hard-working people forced to stop working due to a medical condition or injury. “I’m so fortunate that I had the money and the space to take short-term disability…some people don’t get that,” says Ashmore.

Working at Atticus gave Ashmore the work-life balance she needed to prioritize her health without burning the candle at both ends. The company also opened the door to significant growth opportunities, allowing her to combine her legal expertise, business savvy, and analytical mindset to help scale the business. More than four years in, she’s grown into one of the company’s most senior—and beloved—people leaders.  “I wouldn’t have had that opportunity if I didn’t come to Atticus.”

Her first role at Atticus put her directly alongside client specialists speaking with potential clients on the phone—a sharp contrast from the spreadsheet-driven job she held previously. “It filled my cup being able to directly tell somebody on a call that ‘I can help you,’ and press the button that actually impacted somebody's life.”

Later, Ashmore became instrumental in building Atticus’s lawyer network, spending two years scaling that side of the business and helping onboard top disability firms across the country. She helped grow the network from 30 to 86 partner firms, dramatically expanding the number of clients able to access support throughout the disability application process.

Another major opportunity came with the launch of a new legal vertical at Atticus: workers’ compensation benefits. Ashmore spent two years overseeing both the client specialists and the lawyer network supporting that side of the business. One of her biggest contributions to scaling the vertical was reworking the messaging strategy for workers’ compensation clients, rather than relying on the existing playbook built for Social Security disability cases. “It had a huge impact on our ability to help clients,” says Ashmore. “This speaks to what we care about at Atticus: we take seriously meeting clients where they are and that each legal situation is different—we do not take a one-size-fits-all approach.”

“This speaks to what we care about at Atticus: we take seriously meeting clients where they are and that each legal situation is different—we do not take a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Today, Ashmore leads Atticus’s 80-person client specialist organization, helping people access benefits during some of the hardest moments of their lives. The company supports more than 100,000 clients annually. Day to day, she focuses on strategy, operations, and empowering client specialist managers to lead effectively.

“I make sure we're thinking strategically about how to optimize our leads, marketing, and staffing. The biggest part of my job is empowering people to do their jobs well. I am the manager of managers, and my job is to empower them to make sure that their teams are successful in a way that is productive and makes the team better—to challenge the status quo.”

At the center of her leadership philosophy is what she describes as a multiplier effect: empowering managers so they, in turn, can support and elevate their own teams. The opportunity to lead and develop people has been one of the biggest areas of growth for Ashmore at Atticus, and it’s an experience she says she likely would not have found if she continued working in mergers and acquisitions. One of Ashmore’s biggest motivators is helping others grow and build confidence: “I get to work with somebody on their confidence, and they can take that with them,” she marvels.

For her part, Ashmore believes you’re only as good as the people you work with. “So as much as I love the numbers, being strategic, and thinking about the business of it all, the thing that I love the most about my time at Atticus is that I learned how to manage and lead people. That cuts across anything in any job you have.” Outside of work, Ashmore spends much of her time with friends and family, including her husband and young son. “My life these days is filled with my friends and family,” she says. “I’m really satisfied because my cup is really filled by work.”

Ashmore’s firsthand experience navigating a chronic illness and burnout continues to shape how she approaches leadership at Atticus, where empathy is core to both team culture and the client experience. In stepping away from corporate law, she found the work-life balance and sense of purpose she has been missing—and Atticus gained a lawyer-turned-leader whose impact now extends far beyond the legal world.