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Ep 74: Advice to Young Lawyers | Bonus Episode
44 Plays2 days ago
What’s the best advice you can offer to young lawyers who are just starting their careers? What do you wish you’d known then that you know now?
These are the questions we ask each of our guests at the end of every episode of The Abstract. Listen to some of our favorite answers from the legal leaders and C-suite executives who visited the podcast in 2024 and hear tips about trusting your gut, building strong relationships, taking surprising career paths, and much more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-74
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Adam Greenberg, former General Counsel at Warby Parker and Ro, on being a lawyer who doesn’t litigate: 0:33
Christine Uri, founder of ESG for In-House Counsel, on the value of building relationships: 1:24
Jasmine Singh, General Counsel at Ironclad, on trusting your gut: 2:54
Matt Campobasso, General Counsel at Enfusion, on exploring self-doubt: 4:15
Sarah Feingold, playwright and former counsel at Etsy and Vroom, on not doing everything yourself: 6:33
Chelsea Grayson, Managing Partner at Pivot >, on centering business solutions: 8:26
Ben Klein, CEO at Aero, on not putting pressure on yourself: 9:59
Joe Green, Chief Innovation Officer at Gunderson Dettmer, on experimenting early in your career: 11:23
Kristin Sverchek, President of Lyft, on imposter syndrome: 13:46
Connect with us:
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Reflections
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy holidays. I'm Tyler Finn, host of The Abstract Podcast. And at the end of each episode, I ask all my guests the same question. If you could look back on your days of being a young lawyer, what is one thing that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then? For this bonus episode, we're going to hear some of my favorite answers from the past few seasons. Let's get started.
Exploring Diverse Career Paths
00:00:32
Speaker
First up, we have Adam Greenberg, former GC at brands like Warby Parker, Roe, and Blank Street. As Adam explains, being a lawyer doesn't mean you have to be a litigator. I'd go back a bit further to law school, ahh and I would have told myself Being a lawyer does not necessarily mean you're a litigator. That's what it looks like on TV most of the time, but there there are a plethora of options out there other than and going to law school and going to be a litigator or or law firm. I just kind of assumed that's what it was and hadn't spent much time exploring what other careers could look like. I think I eventually got pretty circuitously to the place where I'm really happy and I really love the profession, but um
00:01:19
Speaker
hadn't even occurred to me back then that this what what I'm doing now was was a possibility. That was great.
The Power of Relationships in Law
00:01:25
Speaker
Next up we have Christine Urie, ESG expert, who focuses on the importance of building relationships. I think when I think back to my early like law firm associate days, the the thing that took me a long time to realize was the importance of relationships. so I went into law firm life and I was Like all about the work production, all about the billable hours, all about having that perfect product, which is, you know, I thought that it was really the key to success. And it, you know, it is important clearly in that area. But what I learned in law firm life is really the make or break was the relationships that you built. And so having a proactive plan and a proactive approach
00:02:12
Speaker
to building those relationships is critical. And this is why when I was a general counsel, I would i always had a 90-day point and for every team member that brought on. And then at least half of that plan would be a list of names. And the I would tell them, the most important thing in your first 90 days is to go find these people and build a relationship with them.
00:02:36
Speaker
You know, get on their calendar, set up 30 minutes, you know, go to a function, however you do it. But I'm i'm going to be asking you at the end of the 30 day or 90 days, like, do you know these people? Because that I would pick out folks that I knew would be making a break for but the team members.
Trusting Instincts and Personal Authenticity
00:02:54
Speaker
Next up, Jasmine Singh, General Counsel of Ironclad, reminds us that you need to trust your gut.
00:03:01
Speaker
trust your gut. like It's not going to leave you astray and you're going to be okay because that gut is going to guide you in the right direction. and So many of us, myself included, spend a lifetime telling that gut to be quiet right because we're like, hu this is what I have to do or this is what's expected of me or this is what I need to do to get to the next level or whatever. right I wish I could go back and tell myself to stop doing that, to let that voice be loud and to listen to it and listening to it.
00:03:34
Speaker
doesn't make me you know any less able to do my job or any less committed or any less resilient. As a matter of fact, it makes me more of those things because I can trust myself. and so i really i really wish i could you know and this is what I try to do this for people that I mentor. I'm like, you know what's right for you, nobody else. right and You can't tell that voice that's shouting it to be quiet because it will only get louder over time. and you might find yourself in Las Vegas teaching spin, which, you know. And being like, huh, this is what it took for me to listen to that voice. And for me, that was incredible. And it was incredible because I had the privilege to do it, but not everybody does. Trusting your gut isn't always easy. Matt Campobasso, General Counsel of Enfusion, encourages us to explore and examine our doubts.
Embracing Self-Doubt for Growth
00:04:26
Speaker
I think what I would say is it's okay to doubt yourself.
00:04:30
Speaker
Like, I feel like, you know, lawyers are trying to so oftentimes like perfectionists. I am absolutely someone like that. I have it has taken me, you know, 18 years now practicing to shut to start to be able to show myself like grace. And, you know, when you're young and you doubt yourself because you don't know how to do something or you've never encountered it, you start, you know, if you don't harness that energy the right way, the self talk becomes You're a fraud. You're an imposter. I remember my first two years at Freeborn and Peters, I was like, they're going to fire me today, like every day. And then I would get a review, and they would be like, you are our top second year associate. And I was thinking, are you guys, like you guys are messing with me, right? Like I, that's, and I honestly, and you know, eventually you start to think, oh, there is, I'm learning. Everybody's figuring it out, right? We go back to your comment about the practice of law. And I think
00:05:26
Speaker
when you doubt yourself when you're young, you push it down, at least I did, and you don't allow yourself to just like kind of live in that. And so I think my advice to myself when I was a prosecutor, um when I was a young litigator, don't be afraid to doubt yourself, like explore where that doubt comes from, and then make a conscious choice to like lean into that and attack the things that cause that doubt, right? Whether it's a lack of experience or a lack of like, not value, self worth, you know, any a number, a doubt comes from so many different places, right? And I know every single human being has doubts in some shape or form. But yeah, I think people view doubt as a negative thing. And it is, I think, conceptually is not great. But like, it's not going anywhere. It's like fear, right? Like, you're always going to be scared of something.
00:06:14
Speaker
You can choose like do I ignore it or do I like double click and do I like dig into it and do I use that as a method or a tool to be better and I think doubt for me when I learned to have a healthier relationship with doubt is when I feel like I started to really accelerate my growth as a lawyer and as a person so Sarah Feingold has had a diverse career, from being the first lawyer at Etsy to the GC of Vroom, and now working full-time as a playwright.
Collaboration and Accepting Help
00:06:45
Speaker
She draws on her experiences and reminds us that you don't have to do everything yourself all at once.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, you don't have to do everything yourself. I definitely, for a very long time, was very hard on myself and tried to do everything myself. And even now, still doing it a little bit. But I think I would tell myself, like, you don't have to do everything yourself. Hey there, legal teams. Big news. Spot Trust fall release is here, and it's our biggest update yet.
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:08:21
Speaker
Now let's get back to the podcast.
Focus on Business Solutions
00:08:27
Speaker
Chelsea Grayson has had a remarkable career from big law to leading businesses through bankruptcies. She reminds us that most of all businesses care about solutions. You know how like, I don't know if you've ever seen a nature show about scorpions and they say that maybe scorpions are actually much more lethal than adult scorpions because Adult scorpions know when to stay know exactly how much poison to give you to stun you so they can get away or whatever. You know, baby scorpions will give you all the juice, you know, so like you will die as an adult, you could die from a baby scorpion sting, you know, as an adult, you might actually live because they just wanted to like get away from you. And I as a baby lawyer, you know,
00:09:13
Speaker
I think all baby lawyers are like this, you're a baby scorpion. So you are absolutely the department of no, absolutely not. You don't lean into risk at all. You can't afford to because you don't know what you don't know. And so you can't afford to say yes to ever anything because everything is a no. That is not appreciated by clients. Clients do not want to hear.
00:09:34
Speaker
no but or no and or yes but or yes and I mean, they want to hear solutions, they want to hear creativity, they want to hear that you can work with them and they'll never hire you again if you just shut everything down. So I wish I would have understood a little bit better how to, you know, um lean in a little bit to the business needs of the clients. or and I learned it, of course, but it would have behooved me earlier in my career to learn that.
Career Decision-Making and Exploration
00:09:59
Speaker
Like Chelsea, Ben Klein has also forged a path from GC to CEO. And he encourages listeners not to put pressure on themselves to figure everything out immediately. What I wish I'd known is I put so much pressure on myself ah to get it right, right out of the gate. Um, and for some people that happens, um, and, and, you know, that's great, but I think for a lot of people. It's whether you're a lawyer or not. There's some way finding that's required, right? As you sort of figure out what your place is and whatever your chosen career path is. So I think what I would tell myself now, of course, with 2020 hindsight is not to be so caught up in thinking you need to make the perfect decision about your career right out of the gate, but to sort of, you know,
00:10:53
Speaker
approach the process like you would if you were navigating. Of course, you take a few steps ahead and then every now and then you just reorient yourself. Am I going in the right direction? If not, it's okay to take a new path. Hopefully in time, if you keep doing those assessments, you'll find yourself where you want to and where you should be. I think that's what I would tell myself now because I know I was pretty worked up early on about making the right decision every time.
Non-Linear Career Journeys
00:11:24
Speaker
Joe Green, Chief Innovation Officer at Gundersen Detmer, has also had a different path. He encourages folks to keep an open mind and experiment throughout their careers. You know, one of the one of the things that has really guided me on what someone once called my eclectic career path, I decided to have a compliment backhanded though it might have been. um Who knows? um One of the things that's really guided me is something that I actually learned a long time ago when I was I think maybe in high school, I was reading biographies of people who you know seem to have really, you know, kind of done amazing things, found really interesting jobs. The type of people, are you know, magazine articles, people who have this job or they're like, I wake up every day and I'm happy to go to work. absolutely That was not my experience of being a practicing lawyer. Yeah, I did not wake up every day thrilled to go to work. In part, that's what drives me to try to make it a better experience for for all of my friends who are still, you know, still still doing it. um
00:12:22
Speaker
I realized that people who ended up in jobs that they really loved, almost in almost to a person, had no idea that that existed when they were going through school, but had no conception of how to get there. There was no linear path to that. And I followed a pretty traditional guy. I went to college. I went to law school. I went to Simpson Thatcher. you know I went to another law firm. right keeping open keeping an open mind to, you know, trying different things out, different possibilities, even when it seems scary, even when it feels like, hey, you're going off of this linear path. Oftentimes the linear path does not lead to places that people are thrilled that they ended up. yeah And that's something that really stuck with me um and has, you know,
00:13:05
Speaker
getp made me more willing than I think I might have otherwise been to, you know, put myself out there, put things out into the universe and see, you see what kind of comes back. And that that's, that's usually my advice for for young lawyers is to, you know,
00:13:20
Speaker
be open to exploring different things. It's hard to carve out the time, especially when you're practicing law to you know kind of pursue other kinds of interests. But you know if you're not happy doing what you're doing, try to try to find low risk ways of experimenting with things that you think you might be more stimulated by. Because the best thing about my job is that I wake up every day truly feeling like I'm going to do something that's stimulating and that I'm going to find interesting and hard. I like solving hard problems. We've got plenty of those. So it keeps me busy.
Imposter Syndrome as a Motivator
00:13:47
Speaker
One of my most accomplished guests has been Kristin Sverczyk, president of Lyft. Even those at the top of the corporate ladder, though, can suffer from imposter syndrome, which she looks at a little bit differently.
00:14:01
Speaker
I think what I wish I had known is that imposter syndrome can actually be a gift, not something that harms you. And what I mean by that is that there were moments when I spent extra time, you know, obsessing and preparing and combing through things.
00:14:20
Speaker
and thinking, ah, I lost my AirPod, I was so excited about the topic. And that imposter syndrome, that that fear really drove me to be the best that I could be. I wish that we had, we need to rebrand imposter syndrome, I think with a positive spin because ultimately what it ended up being for me was that drive to really excel and do well. and and put my best self forward. And that actually helped me tremendously. And so I wish I wish i had that positive framing versus the negative frame of, oh my gosh, i i I don't know what I'm doing and I don't belong here. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
00:15:04
Speaker
Happy holidays and check back each week for more advice from our C-suite guests in each new episode of The Abstract.