LAWRENCE
Continued from Page 11
But Lawrence, who is a one-woman show working out of a
14th-floor office at Broad and Sansom streets, knows that she’s not
just a one-stop shop for rubber stamps. She’s been given a shot to
do something she’d never thought she’d do — run her own outfit
— and it’s working. Not bad for the lady who didn’t know what
she was doing when she got started, as Lawrence said.

Born in Camden, New Jersey, Lawrence spent a year
in college before beginning to work as a legal secretary in
Philadelphia. She was a sponge, and learned as much as she
could in the halls of powerful law firms.

She started with Zarwin Baum, and then worked for a
lawyer named Alan Fellheimer, by Lawrence’s account a tough
guy to work for who nonetheless taught her how to be success-
ful in business and law. She spent time at Ballard Spahr LLP,
WolfBlock and Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, a
period of her life that she describes as her matriculation at the
College of Law Firms.

That she was single and without children worked to her
advantage, and she moved up, taking on greater responsibil-
ities, making connections at other big firms and sitting on
firm-wide committees where her opinion was sought, and
valued. It was a time when working hard and working longer
hours, she believed, meant that they’d keep on moving you up.

She felt safe in her job.

Linda Mitchell, who worked with Lawrence as a paralegal,
found her to be kind, generous and spirited; she was a hard
worker that their office superiors turned to frequently, and she
was fun, too.

Judith Lawrence has adapted to the pandemic.

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“I knew, as soon as I started,
that this was for me, that I had
never done anything so exciting
or so challenging.”
JUDITH LAWRENCE
“She would always go the extra mile,” Mitchell recalls.

On a beautiful May day, Lawrence was let go from her job
at Montgomery McCracken. It was a total shock, especially for
someone with such a stable employment history. The summer
that followed was a dark, miserable time.

Still emerging from the fog, Lawrence called a notary for a
personal matter, whom she paid $100. Lawrence watched $100
walk out the door. Why couldn’t she do that? She’d done it for
the law firms she’d worked at; why couldn’t she do that again,
but on her own?
She drew up a business card that day. Two weeks later, she
made $150 for a mortgage signing. After a brief interregnum
running a small firm called NotaryService100, a friend told
Lawrence she should talk a man who owned an outfit called
Center City Notary.

When Lawrence arrived that day, Center City Notary saw that
records were scattered, and little had been digitized, probably
SEE LAWRENCE | Page 14
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