Article: 50 states project: How this Massachusetts lawyer turned designer adopted a law firm’s approach to billing
may 2024

The 50 States Project is a series of candid conversations with interior designers across the country about how they’ve built their businesses. This week, Lexington, Massachusetts–based designer Robin Gannon tells us how her law career informed her design trajectory, why she doesn’t stress over systems and how she she bills for every hour of design time that any team member is working on a project.

Kaitlin Petersen, Business of Home EIC: Design was not your first career. What made you realize that you wanted to pivot into this field?

Robin Gannon: I always knew that I wanted to be a prosecutor, and that’s what I did. I loved every minute of it, but it just didn’t pay. My first job out of law school, I made $22,000 a year. By my third year in, I was prosecuting felonies in the district attorney’s office and making $29,000 a year. I was like, “This is just not sustainable.” But I loved being in court, I loved getting up in front of a judge or jury and I loved coming up with creative ways to argue things. So I left the DA’s office and started my own practice as a criminal defense attorney—I was still part of the game, just on the other side. I did that for a lot of years, and I really liked it. Then I got pregnant.

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