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Brand Building for Legal Teams: With Lydia Cheuk, GC at Away
132 Plays1 year ago
What’s your legal team’s brand? And by that, we mean, what does your team look like from the lens of the rest of the organization?
Join Away’s GC Lydia Cheuk as she shares insights on marketing Legal within the organization, authentically building your personal brand, shaping legal as the first hire at early-stage companies across different industries, and more.
We’ll also discuss Lydia’s experience in supporting the business through hypergrowth, a pandemic, and then through the recovery period, as well as offering stability and support during transitions.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-7
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Making the jump from law firm to in-house life: 3:11
Lydia’s journey at an entertainment studio start-up called First Look: 7:03
Hiring at the right time and building a strong team: 09:33
Moving from Media to the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) sector: 11:56
Building relationships and trust with the executive team: 14:25
Empowering your team and improving motivation and retention: 16:49
Fostering a unified culture and goal within the legal team: 19:13
Driving visibility into legal’s impact and improving legal’s brand: 20:34
Building a brand for your team and for yourself: 24:19
Lessons from Away's hypergrowth phase and pandemic challenges: 28:24
Being on NYU Law’s venture fund jury: 31:37
Closing questions: 33:23
Connect with us:
Lydia Cheuk - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydiacheuk/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Introduction of Lydia Chuuk and Her Journey
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome listeners to another episode of the abstract podcast brought to you by spot draft. My name is Tyler Finn. I lead community for spot draft, and I am so excited to be joined today by my friend Lydia Chuuk, the GC and corporate secretary of away. Thanks so much for being here with us today. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks for inviting me.
00:00:29
Speaker
I am a big fan of Away, actually. I've had an Away suitcase for going on, I think, seven years, and it's got to be hundreds of thousands of miles with my penchant for travel. So even before I knew you worked at Away, I was a huge fan of the brand, and I'm really, really excited to have you here. The suitcases are actually indestructible. I think it's time that you buy like two, three, four, five more. Just saying.
00:00:55
Speaker
And then there'll be an IPO in the future. No. Just buy some more suitcases, Tyler. Well, I want to give some folks a little bit of background on you. Lydia's had a super interesting career. She got her law degree from NYU. She still is a New Yorker and started her career at Goodwin. And then as we'll talk about, she worked at the Blue Man Group. Yes, the one with the people in the blue faces beating on the drums, doing an awesome show. And then at First Look Media before joining away.
00:01:25
Speaker
So Lydia, I want to kind of go back to the beginning. And even before you went to law school, what inspired you to become a lawyer in the first place?
Navigating Law School and Career Goals
00:01:34
Speaker
So I would love to be able to say that I have this like huge multi-decade grandmaster plan, but I can't. Like many people, I think I didn't know what being a lawyer would mean when I chose to go to law school. And I definitely had no informed view of what life would be like after law school. And I think looking back, it seems super naive now, but I wanted to have this really robust academic experience.
00:02:00
Speaker
So I had imagined law school and I don't know where probably from like a movie or something. I imagine law school to be this place where there's all these smart people and I could study some really interesting and maybe lofty philosophical subjects. Look, the end of the day, it all worked out. But now when I talk to people thinking about going to law school,
00:02:22
Speaker
I try to impress upon them. They should really consider what a career for them would look like. I mean, big picture, what are your goals? But also very small picture. What do you want your day to day to look like? Because you might be working quite a lot.
00:02:35
Speaker
And by the way, totally okay if the answers to those questions change over time because those answers change for me all the time still. Yeah. I mean, that really resonates with me, right? I can't even imagine sort of where I am today, even five years ago, right? Being part of some master plan. So.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's refreshing actually to hear from someone who didn't think I was going to go to law school and then I was going to become a clerk and sort of was following just curiosity and general interest. And that led you to Goodwin and then to Blue Man Group. I'm really excited to hear about Blue Man Group, but talk us through those early days of being a lawyer and what ultimately led you to your first in-house role.
Transition to Blue Man Group and Defining New Roles
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, so like many law school graduates, I was a corporate associate. And like many corporate associates, I knew from the beginning that the law firm was never going to be my long-term career path.
00:03:27
Speaker
And I remember still so clearly, I will not name the other law firm, but I was a mid-level, I was in a conference room surrounded by lawyers. And I literally thought, Lydia, you have three months to find a new job. And I had to give myself a timeframe, otherwise the time just keeps ticking and ticking and you're working all the time, right? So I literally started calling everyone I knew.
00:03:53
Speaker
especially those people who were not lawyers because I was thinking, hey, I could leave the law. I could do something else. And essentially I heard about the Blue Man Group job through a job posting. I didn't know anything about them. I knew there was a theater show.
00:04:07
Speaker
I didn't know anything about what was in the job posting as far as the actual tasks that were listed, but I called the theater producer that I knew at the time. And I asked if she knew anything about the organization or if she knew what any of this job description meant. And she said, no, but she's like, Hey, I'm sure you can do it. So I'm like, yeah, I can totally do it. So I applied, interviewed, and took that leap off of the typical associate track.
00:04:36
Speaker
So that really was kind of a risk. Tell us a little bit about what your experience there was like, because it sounds like you were entering into something where you were almost making up the job itself as you went and really having to sort of forge your own path within the blue man group.
00:04:53
Speaker
I think that's probably an apt description. The truth is is that I think they didn't know what they wanted. They had never hired a lawyer before. And you have to remember, this is an arts organization that at the time was owned and run by the original three artists who founded the group.
00:05:12
Speaker
They did have a lot of legal work. They used outside counsel. They used Paul Weiss, and that lawyer is still my friend today. So they knew they had to do something in-house, but they really had no idea what that role would mean. So the good news is I got to really set the footprint for what that role looked like. But it was really early in my career. I was in my 20s.
00:05:32
Speaker
I didn't know what I was doing, but I learned everything on the job. But the beauty of that at the time, and I think this is part of what made that experience so special, is that we were all learning everything together.
00:05:45
Speaker
So there were people that I worked with back then who are still some of my best friends because we all grew up together there. And we were lucky enough to be really, really successful. So it was like a startup and we like grew this brand. We grew the show. Revenue was amazing. We expanded internationally and I got to ride that wave and I got to learn while I was in that seat. So it was really, really incredible.
00:06:12
Speaker
And I've got to ask, were the perks pretty good? Like, did you get free theater tickets? Did you still get free theater tickets? I will say that I got to do some really amazing travel because of the international rollout. I mean, yes, obviously theater tickets without question. And actually, like, now that you bring that up, some of my best friends now are still in theater. And so I still have a pretty strong foot in that world. And as a New Yorker, I think that
00:06:41
Speaker
really just adds to my life and my experience. Absolutely. Then you take another role as first legal hire, again, when you move to first look. And first, let's just start and kind of set the stage. Tell us a little bit about first record, because it's not a household name, but it is a pretty interesting sort of idea, interesting co-founders, and then I've got a few questions about your time
First Look Media: A New Frontier
00:07:05
Speaker
there.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, so First Look was an incredibly rare opportunity also that I could never pass up. And this is why. So it's, I mean, it still exists. So at the time it was an entertainment studio startup. That's very, very rare because it's an almost impossible thing to do. We were founded by and fully funded by Pierre Omidyar, who's one of the eBay founders. And so I was the first legal hire
00:07:32
Speaker
I started there very, very early on. It was, you know, we were just putting together a leadership team and, you know, carving out a strategy and forming those relationships in the business. When I say the business, I mean show business. But that was a really interesting company because it was a startup entertainment studio. This is, and again, I was like, that's super, super rare. It was so fun. It was really fun because it felt like we had freedom to do so much.
00:08:02
Speaker
And I will say that I almost want to say that's the hardest I've ever worked. And I was a corporate associate, but I worked so much because I took too long to hire up my team. So that is always a tip that I would give people. If you're the first legal hire, start thinking about your hiring immediately. It will always take longer than you think. And I have this problem where I'm like, I can just do it myself.
00:08:27
Speaker
No, we may suffer from the same affliction. I suspect you might be the same, Tyler. But you know, so I took too long to hire up. I did eventually hire my team who I love and I still love. And that was its own special brand of chaos, right? It's startup chaos.
00:08:43
Speaker
But I think every startup has its own particular wrinkle around what kind of chaos. And I have learned over the years that that is a chaos that appeals to me. And I don't know that every lawyer feels this way, but I love the building. I love the building of the process. I love, you know, there's so much going on and it's really, and it's excruciating, but it's so fun. Type two fun.
00:09:09
Speaker
I want to ask, how long did it take? When did you decide to make your first sort of hire? And I thought about this too. You enter a new place, you think, well, maybe I'm just going to take six months to get my feet under me. And also, I don't necessarily want to ask my boss or the CEO or whomever it is for resources.
00:09:26
Speaker
right at the point of joining or even a month or two in thinking like there may be still a lot that I have to learn about this place. You're saying that this sort of like time to actually be able to hire, even if you start right at the start, like how long did it take you ultimately to get your first sort of team member there? It took over a year and that was a torn mistake. And again, I think it's because I'm the person who's like, Oh, well, I can just do this on myself. I mean, it both at Blue Man group and at first look,
00:09:54
Speaker
It was people telling me, Lydia, you need to hire. I don't know what you're waiting for, but you need to get on it. And I was like this, and you know, this is me looking up from my computer. What? Oh, okay. That sounds like a good idea. So yeah, it took too long. And I also sometimes take a long time to hire because I want someone who's great. I think it is worth waiting a little bit longer to find someone
00:10:21
Speaker
who's really, really excellent. And a lot of it is, you know, not just the technical skills, but it's just, it's a culture fit. And it's also someone that you're going to want to spend a lot of time with. Yeah. And how do you evaluate that? And we'll talk about this a little bit more and sort of like how you've built the team at away more recently, but how do you evaluate the sort of softer side or do I really want to spend, you know, 12 hours a day?
00:10:48
Speaker
It's totally different, but similar. It's too much. How do you screen for that? I mean, a lot of chatting. I mean, I would do more than just, you know, a virtual interview. If you can do it in real life, that's much better. I think it reveals more than just, you know, a 30 minute conversation over Zoom. I think for me personally, I think I kind of know pretty quickly
00:11:14
Speaker
I'm just a really open person. And so I think that probably invites other people to just be themselves. And so you just get there a little bit quicker. That makes sense. And then there was Away, which is very cool. And also a little bit of a pivot for you, right? Moving out of media and into D2C at a time when D2C was, and still is by the way, but like was super, super hot between Away and Warby Parker and Casper and all of these very cool New York companies.
00:11:44
Speaker
Tell me how you made that leap and how you ended up
Joining Away: Embracing the Direct-to-Consumer Shift
00:11:47
Speaker
at away. And then we're going to talk quite a bit about what's happened since. So again, my experience at First Look was completely invaluable. I think it was also very singular in certain ways and I had a great experience. But over that time, I think I realized maybe entertainment's not my thing, right? It's the work is very specific. The cadence of that is very specific. I
00:12:09
Speaker
started thinking about other things I wanted to do. And I found out about the job in a way, the old fashioned way, a job posting. Job postings do work sometimes people. And my predecessor, the GC who was in the seat at the time, we knew tons of lawyers in common, which I didn't know when I reached out to him, but I reached out to him and it was just very casual. I'm like, Hey, Josh, looks like you're looking.
00:12:32
Speaker
let's talk. And we literally met he needed someone with really strong media experience, basically, because that was a gap in his experience. And then away, obviously, being so heavily embedded in social and right out there, especially at the time, I mean, now it's totally normal. But at the time, like all these DTC brands, like, you know, that you mentioned earlier, we're all coming up. And it's, we're creating content in different ways that hadn't been
00:13:00
Speaker
you know, the norm in the past. And so he wanted someone with really strong media advertising experience. And that was me. And because we knew I think it's because we knew so many people in common. And we just it was just really great. Like we felt very quickly, this is a good fit. I think I was hired three weeks later. Wow, that's fast. That's amazing. Yeah. And it felt really great. I was shifting into a Tyler new industry that was surprisingly not hard at all.
00:13:30
Speaker
It felt pretty seamless and it was really fun. I was learning so much and I was already sold on the brand because I had already owned two away suitcases before I joined. So that was kind of just super exciting. And you've been away and away for five years now? How long? Since 2018. Since 2008, five years. Yeah.
00:13:50
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about the founders of a way, developing deep relationships with the executive team. I'm curious about that both early on and also as there have been transitions, as the business has moved through different leadership models, how do you maintain that trust and continue to build those strong relationships with your peers on the exact team?
Fostering Growth and Relationships at Away
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Back in 2018 and 19, we were in this really early hyper growth phase. I think building those relationships was very different than probably what it would look like now. Everyone was all hands on deck. The hyper growth just meant there was this chaos and everyone was doing all the things.
00:14:36
Speaker
I think the relationships just grew very organically. I did the lion's share of the day-to-day work, which meant I worked with every single team all the time. And I think legal typically has a seat at the table. If you're lucky, legal has a seat at the table.
00:14:51
Speaker
So building those relationships just happened, right? Because I necessarily had to work with exec team founders. One, because we were all doing it together. Now we're a much more mature company. Our exec team, like all those seats are filled by true industry veterans.
00:15:10
Speaker
We're just at a different stage now. So, you know, I've been there the longest of anyone on the exact team. And so from my seat, I think what I do, what anyone should be doing, like any team member, like I try to be supportive, I help with transition, I share context, and I also lead my team to try and help through any kinds of transition. So my team has been with me for a while now and because they're pretty long tenured,
00:15:40
Speaker
you know, since like 2019, which for a way is a really long time. So we've together as a team have seen a lot of changes, like, you know, reorgs, et cetera. But I think that we can provide a bit of a through line and a kind of like a steady foundation in some ways for other teams. So when they're having a little bit more transition or a little bit more tumult, like our processes remain the same.
00:16:06
Speaker
That makes sense. I want to ask you a follow up there, you know, through that transition, how have you kept your team motivated, right? I mean, keeping, keeping a whole team, not just for four years, but also four years from 2019 to present through the pandemic, through a time when a lot of employees were looking for new opportunities or jumping ship sort of in light of a pretty hot job market. Like how have you kept folks really motivated and wanting to stay to work with you and continue to build a way?
00:16:36
Speaker
That's a good question. I think about it a lot. I think there's a few things for me. I provide my team with a lot of autonomy because I think that's what people want, right? So, I mean, I can also do that because they're amazing, right? Like they do great work. They're very committed to the company. They're very good professionals and most of them are
00:17:00
Speaker
I mean, I also don't have people on my team who it's their first job out of college, like that kind of thing. So I think providing autonomies, if you can, is invaluable to employees. They also, for the most part, get to work completely remotely, which is not true. That's not true of all the other teams in a way, but to me, that's a retention lever. And also something that I always try to offer is the opportunity to learn and to do new kinds
00:17:31
Speaker
So I always say, even when interviewing and recruiting from my team, I always say we decide on what the role is working on. It's based on two things. One is the needs of the business, but two is what are you interested doing? Right. So it's both of those things. So if someone on my team says, you know, I'm going to work more on the brand side. I'm super open to that conversation. Right. Okay. What does that look like? What kinds of things do you want to work on? Let's keep an eye on that.
00:17:59
Speaker
Because like me, I think they want to learn and that makes their experience more rich. And it's something that they could take with them to their next job. Sure. They want that. Right. So those are kind of the things I focus on. And also, I think like we're lucky we have a team that we all like really get along and we like each other and we like working together. So
00:18:21
Speaker
I think that really helped. As we were prepping, we had a sort of long conversation around coaching and establishing culture. You know, you've talked a bit about providing folks with opportunities. How do you also think about the flip side of like, we need to have sort of a little bit of a unified culture within this team. And sometimes there's some coaching that needs to happen to make that happen for the team.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that we talk about, I mean, we talked about it much more in the past, but they've been together with me for a while. Right. But I think I've been very clear and I think they agree like, how are we going to show up? So how do we show up to the rest of the organization? So obviously within our team, like we're total safe space, but I think I've made my expectations extremely clear as to like how we should show up to the rest of the organization.
00:19:09
Speaker
And it's not a problem because it's what they want as well, I think, which is we will always be helpful. We're always business first. We will be your thought partner. We will help you come up with a creative solution. And I think being business first is number one, really important, but number two, I think sometimes other teams find that refreshing because they've had experience with maybe legal teams at other jobs they've had where they haven't felt that.
00:19:38
Speaker
And legal at Away is actually really highly valued, right? Like you've built a great reputation within the business. For those folks who may be stepping into a role as GC, taking over a position where, you know, maybe things are a little bit more tenuous with the other functions, do you have advice for people who might be in that sort of position? Look, I'm so grateful that Away values our legal team and I know not everyone enjoys
Marketing the Legal Team's Value
00:20:04
Speaker
that. So I don't have any magic bullets here.
00:20:06
Speaker
The short answer, it's marketing. So I think it's marketing people. Lawyers often forget that they have to market themselves and their teams. And I get it, because I have this impulse as well. We're somehow trained to think that the work's just going to speak for itself, and sometimes it can. And so the excellent work is the baseline, of course. But you have to remember, all the other teams, they're doing it. They are marketing themselves to the organization.
00:20:36
Speaker
Absolutely. So it's that kind of visibility that one should try to have for their own team. And that could be like really easy things in the early days I did office hours, it was an hour a week, it was a drop in policy, I met so many team members that way. And then that's kind of where I would get like, what's really going on.
00:20:57
Speaker
because you can have like a chit chat, right? And you would learn a lot about the context of why decisions are being made. And I think it also made the legal team feel very accessible, right? There's really no downside to doing the office hours. So you do an hour every week. You could put it on the Slack. Hey, drop into this. You can do it virtually. You can just write, just log onto a Hangout. If no one shows up, you're just working at your desk anyway. If 20 people show up,
00:21:25
Speaker
then that's great too, right? So that's something I always recommend, especially if you're just really trying to establish your team into the company. Trainings, I know everyone says you should do trainings, but you actually should do trainings. I believe that, like, at away, I work with a lot of really smart people and they want to learn the same way I want to learn.
00:21:46
Speaker
Right. And so I find that those trainings tend to land really, really well. And there's always really good feedback. And of course, you just have to tailor them depending on what's needed in your company. Right. So like I have an IP training that I've done. And then, you know, the marketing team is like, oh, oh, and it's really interesting to them. Right. But it's also a way for us to explain the context under which we work. So when we ask questions or make decisions, they understand where that's coming from.
00:22:16
Speaker
We're not just asking these questions because we're just doing that. We're doing it because we have to do it. I think it helps everybody. Another thing you might want to do is just work on and create policies that no one else is focusing on. Gin up that gen AI policy. Do it. If no one else is doing it, do it.
00:22:36
Speaker
or your document retention policy, go do that. It might not be fun, right? And so that just kind of breaks in cross-functionally a lot of other people into your fold and then you collaborate on something and you're providing value for the company. I would also say
00:22:52
Speaker
data. So whatever data you have, when I tell my exact team, Oh, my team reviewed 300 contracts this quarter, like that number sounds really impressive. And no one else is thinking about what your team is doing other than you. So I think just people and people love the data. So if you have it, share it. And then I think the last thing it's kind of what we talked about before, which is brand. So this is talk about sometimes
00:23:20
Speaker
And it makes the lawyers nervous a little bit. But what is your team brand? And all that means is, how do you want the rest of your organization to perceive your team, even if it's subconsciously? So my team talks about how we're the team of yes, and we're only half joking. That's our brand. We're the team of yes. I'm really proud of the way my team shows up.
00:23:43
Speaker
We're here to enable the business. It's all the things I said before, right? We are business forward. We're the team of yes, we're gonna get you there. If you wanna do something, even if we are like, it's not great, but let's go through all of the risks and let's decide what makes sense for the business. So the answer will be yes.
00:24:01
Speaker
I really love that word brand, actually. And I want to talk about it not just in the context of the team, but also sort of you personally. How do you think about your team brand sitting alongside your sort of personal professional brand? Because this is something that you thought quite a bit about.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, look, the team brand is something that I focus on a lot more because, of course, that requires me disseminating that. And I think it's a little bit of a North Star that my whole team, like we can all row in the same direction on that, right?
00:24:32
Speaker
And I think that not only is great for the business, but it's great for us as lawyers. On a personal level, for every individual, that's very, very personal. And yes, by using the word brand here, it sounds a bit like I'm treading into this territory reserved for influencers on Instagram.
00:24:53
Speaker
But so but I'm not meaning it doesn't have to be that deep. Right. And it's not even something you have to necessarily articulate aloud, but it's really about how do you move through the world? So whether that be in a professional setting or not. Right. And all of us go to networking events or we meet people professionally or we go to work. Right. So what does that look like for you in a way that's very comfortable that you think other people can value? So and it has to be incredibly authentic.
00:25:23
Speaker
Like, it's not a persona you're putting on. So for me, I don't have a moniker for my personal brand. It's not like we're the team of guests. But I carry myself really in a very open, casual kind of way. So if I meet you in a professional setting, I'm happy to discuss that new Gen A AI policy that you just ginned up to give your team more visibility.
00:25:47
Speaker
but I'm probably way more interested in the last vacation you took. And that's just authentic to me, right? I think I do meet lawyers in a professional setting who they want to talk about the policy and they want to talk about those things. And that's great too. But for me, I think I'm more comfortable taking a very, very personal approach. I'm just better at it, right? And it's just something that I've noticed that other people are very receptive to, but that's personal to me.
00:26:16
Speaker
Something I don't do is I don't think I need to prove that I'm smart. I don't think I need to prove that I'm a good lawyer. I would like to think that in a professional setting that we GCs get that presumption. So there's no need for me to flex in that way. And look, at the end of the day, I think people are attracted to
00:26:37
Speaker
and want to work with people that they enjoy and that they're comfortable with. And so for me, those personal conversations move that needle. And in any event, I can only be myself and to try not to be myself and something else is that would be disastrous, basically. I love that. You don't need to be anybody but you. Well, thanks, Tyler.
00:27:01
Speaker
And I can confirm that you do like asking about vacations when you get together for coffee or lunch with someone. I can, from personal experience, as we sort of like wrap up the journey at Away, tell us a little bit about how it shaped you as a lawyer and as a leader.
Reflections on Leadership and Growth Amid Challenges
00:27:18
Speaker
I think, I mean, Away has been incredible, right? Because I started there when we were in this insane hyper growth and Away was enjoying like, we were a brand explosion.
00:27:30
Speaker
And that was an incredible opportunity, I think, that I had to join a company in that time. And so that was really, really fun, right? So again, I was tasked with doing the lion's share of the day-to-day work. So that meant and working with all the teams. So then I'm setting a process with all of the teams. I'm also hiring up our team, right? So I've hired up the rest of our people.
00:27:53
Speaker
I'm doing all the things. It's a ton of work, but it's super, super fun. I learned so much. And again, I'm in a new industry. So that was an incredible experience. And then there was a pandemic, right? And so it kind of, you have to build other muscles when the company's going through a really tough time. Nobody's traveling. No one's buying travel goods. It was, you know, 2020. I mean, I know we're not alone on this. 2020 was hard.
00:28:22
Speaker
And I think all of us as lawyers were dealing with situations no one had dealt before. We were answering questions that no one had asked before. You're trying to.
00:28:33
Speaker
kind of keep your company together in a cultural way. And everyone's kind of scared and everyone's suddenly working from home. And right. So there were just all of these things. But I think the great thing about being one of the great things about being a lawyer is that in really good times, like the hyper growth, you get to do all these incredible things and it's really hard work and there's chaos, but it's so incredible and everyone's really happy. But in the down times, it's much more challenging. But the opportunity to learn is 100 percent there.
00:29:02
Speaker
And you might even be able to say that the value a lawyer can bring to a company in tough times is even more ample than in good times, because it's tough times that people really lean on lawyers. Don't let a good crisis go to waste. I mean, it's not as fun, but it definitely builds your skill set. It builds who you are as a leader. It builds who you are as a person.
00:29:32
Speaker
So it's been a little bit of a roller coaster. And then we moved into a recovery period in 21. 22 was amazing, because you may have noticed everyone, including you, Tyler, decided they had to buy luggage. OK, you didn't buy luggage. But you had to travel. I had to travel. You had to travel. I created a lot of opportunities for my luggage to get broken by someone on a tarmac.
00:29:57
Speaker
Oh, correct. And you are not alone. So everyone traveled. So I mean, the recovery was incredible. And so then we kind of just went up this wave again, right? So it's being here has been all the things. I've got a couple of fun questions for you. I noticed that you are on a jury for NYU Law's Venture Fund.
Fostering Entrepreneurship at NYU Law
00:30:20
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, it is. It's really cool. So I'm really grateful to have been asked to join this fantastic group of people, my friends there. The jury is comprised of NYU Law alums who are in finance, VCs, some GCs, some entrepreneurs.
00:30:39
Speaker
And the goal of that organization is to foster community around entrepreneurship at NYU Law, especially because I think, and sure, of course, most people who graduate from NYU Law become lawyers and some have a lot of interest in being entrepreneurs and starting their own thing. And so we want to support that.
00:30:59
Speaker
So it's really great. And throughout the year, we have law students and alums pitch the jury with their startup ideas. We offer grants to a lot of those folks and we offer them really good feedback, which is, I think, probably equally important to them. And they get to talk to a group of people that maybe they normally wouldn't have access to. So it's just really fun.
00:31:21
Speaker
The coolest idea that you've seen is I'm putting you on the spot a little bit. I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you. Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think what's actually really interesting is that the ideas are so across the board, right? So there's been like biotech. We recently had one that was around like an experiential event. So it's just like all different business models, but it's just cool to see that people
00:31:50
Speaker
are germinating these really cool ideas and really committed to them. Another sort of fun question and I'm really glad that you said yes to answering this one because I love it. What's a book that's inspired you professionally and one that's inspired you personally as well?
00:32:06
Speaker
Okay, so I want to be able to tell you that I'm a person who reads books all the time. I don't. I don't. I just don't. You might think about other people's vacations, but you don't have the opportunity. You don't have a lot of time to read books.
00:32:22
Speaker
Correct. That is correct. And I think it's because I think maybe I read too much for my job, but I just listened to my first audio book. I had never listened to a book before because I was really strictly very podcast driven and it was recommended to me. It's Shonda Rhimes, The Year of Yes.
00:32:39
Speaker
Look i'm a yes person like i like to say yes to life i like to do new things i like to meet new people all of those things but it was just a great reminder and especially if you're not familiar with her like she's the show runner and the creator of like grazing out of me and scandal and like right and so she's one of the most powerful women in hollywood. She's black and she's a single mom to three kids.
00:33:01
Speaker
And she got to be the hardest working lady in show business. And she's worked just really hard. And she has earned every single penny and every accolade that's gone her way. And I'm never going to be as cool as Shonda, but that book was totally inspiring. You and me both. You haven't left showbiz entirely. You still got a little bit of showbiz left in you. OK, I'm going to dig deep, Tyler. A little bit of showbiz.
00:33:30
Speaker
Final question for you. What's some advice you've got for young attorneys or something that you wish you could have told yourself when you were very early embarking on this career in law?
Advice for Young Lawyers on Career Paths
00:33:43
Speaker
I would say don't be afraid to go off the beaten path. It's going to be okay. I promise. It's going to be okay. I totally agree.
00:33:53
Speaker
Lydia, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Abstract and for sharing your insights with our community. And listeners, hope to see you next time on our next episode. Thanks very much. Thanks, Tyler.