Alumna Allison Notari honed her reading, writing skills at FSU, then followed a familiar pathway to her current career in law

By Amaris Falcon

No matter where Allison Notari’s academic path has led her, she always finds her way back to her English studies.

Along her journey, she paved her own road to following her family’s legacy. Having grown up in Jacksonville, Florida, alongside a family of bright and passionate legal minds, Notari always felt she knew that was her future would lead her.

“I grew up around it,” she says “My grandfather was a lawyer for almost 60 years and he really, really loved it. It was his passion… helping people.”

From the halls of Ponte Vedra High School to Legacy Walk at Florida State, she formed the foundations necessary to get there. Then she continued to learn at the sun-streaked southwestern campus of Stetson University’s College of Law in St. Petersburg, Florida, before landing a job at a law firm in that city’s downtown bayside neighborhood.

Now, five years after Notari graduated cum laude from FSU with her Bachelor of Arts degree in English-Editing, Writing, and Media, she speaks very highly of how her relationship with FSU’S Department of English has guided her way. (Click this link to read more about how an English degree can prepare you for law school.)

Upon high school graduation and after touring FSU’s lively, red-brick Tallahassee campus, Notari said she fell in love with “the typical college experience.”

She admitted that EWM was not her first choice, but a result of one dreadful political science class.

“I changed to EWM because I knew I liked English,” she explains, “and I knew I wanted to do law school eventually.”

Notari thrived in the new curriculum, especially the editing aspects, she notes. In addition to her time in Tallahassee classrooms, Notari spent five weeks during the summer of 2018 studying abroad in Valencia, Spain. She was one of 13 students in the FSU Valencia Editing, Writing, and Media Program, which is co-taught by Jack Clifford, the English department’s media specialist, and Susan Hellstrom, teaching faculty for the College of Arts and Sciences.

As a student writer for the program's magazine, Nomadic Noles, Notari chose for her article assignment to highlight the resources FSU's International Programs provides to study abroad students who might struggle with mental health issues while they are away from home. When Notari returned to the main campus, she was an editorial intern-writer for the FSU English department with Clifford.

“I enjoyed working with Allison both in Valencia and in Tallahassee for her internship,” Clifford says. “She is a dynamic person with a strong intellect for any subject matter she studies. I am happy she is practicing law, her preferred choice for a profession, but she easily could be a skilled journalist as well.”

She admits that a big reason she decided to apply for her leadership certificate was to prolong her time at FSU. In fact, she advises students to soak up as much as they can handle and enjoy the beauty of being a ‘Nole as long as you can.

Law school at Stetson, Notari notes, was a “whole other ball game.” She says the transition from FSU was a challenging and unconventional adjustment. Not only was her class load arduous, but the necessary study and writing styles were very particular.

Then, during her 1L year, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the world a large. On Stetson’s campus, the pandemic completely altered how things operated as the shutdowns interfered with the communal and conversational experience of law school.

She calls this her hardest obstacle to overcome during law school. Specifically, she describes the difficulties she had during this time in one of law school’s most important classes, evidence.

“We could not hear what was going on, even though the teacher had a microphone,” Notari says. “That situation really took away from the experience of actually getting to learn.”

The struggle to transfer her academic skills to law school under these conditions was especially hard.

“I had to teach myself how to study,” she says.

Even though during orientation the school emphasized the difficulties to the students, the Socratic method, the memorization, and the high-stakes tests were intimidating. Notari stresses the two most important ways she readied herself for law school were building a strong writing foundation at FSU and taking downtime, if possible.

“Being an EWM major will give you a leg up,” she states, adding with a laugh, “and watching some mindless TV, like Love Island, before school starts might help."

In addition to those tips, Notari divulges law school’s biggest virtue, the people. Between the professors and the people she met, the connections she made at Stetson were her most cherished aspect of law school.

“I made friends that are going to be my friends forever, but I also met professors that are such invaluable resources,” she says.

Notari describes law school as such a tight-knit environment that “reputation is everything,” and that carries into life as a lawyer.

“These are the people that may be on the other side of the table from me one day," she adds. "They might be the judge on a case one day.”

Upon graduating from law school in 2022, Notari took an entry-level job in St. Petersburg. A year later she moved to her current firm, Zinober Diana & Monteverde P.A., where she practices corporate insurance law. She says as a fledgling lawyer, she’s still learning the ins and outs, but one reason she loves her career field is its flexibility.

“There are so many different areas that a lawyer can practice in,” Notari says. "A person does not need to be boxed into a certain practice area."

Now, one of her favorite hobbies is reading the Florida Bar Journal and seeing where and what her former classmates are practicing in their careers. She does not have to look far for an update from her close friend Shelly Perry, who studied abroad with Notari and graduated from Stetson University's College of Law one year after her. Perry is an FSU alumna in criminology, and she currently works as a public defender in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located.

Notari says her goal is to get to a place where she can truly make a difference in people’s lives, like she grew up watching her family do.

“Lawyers get a really bad rep,” she points out, stating that in reality, “the core of the profession is helping people.”

As for a material goal for her future, Notari says that after some years in litigation, she hopes to move to transactional work.

Expanding on her future, saying that what she really wants to do is “transfer it back to the EWM side” and contribute to the Florida Bar Journal, editing articles for her favorite legal publication, giving a huge credit to her English studies at FSU.

Once an English major, always an English major.

Amaris Falcon is an English-Editing, Writing, and Media major, with a second major in communication and a minor in textile entrepreneurship.

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