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Ep 98: Breaking the Silence: Legal Leaders Talk Mental Health
75 Plays21 days ago
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so we’ve pulled together some of the most vital stories from some of the star legal and business experts we’ve featured on The Abstract about managing stress, achieving a healthy work/life balance, dealing with tragedies at home, leaving toxic working environments and more. Keep listening and feel inspired to make a positive change in your life and career.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-98
Topics
Introduction: 0:00
Ryan Nier, General Counsel at Nova Credit on imposter syndrome and feeling like an outsider in the legal community: 0:43
Joe Sullivan, ex-Chief Security Officer at Uber, Facebook, and Cloudflare on managing the stress of a federal indictment: 6:49
Lawtrades Co-Founders Raad Ahmed and Ashish Walia on how to support your business partner during difficult times: 11:36
Dan Haley, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Guild, on balancing work and life after a cancer diagnosis: 14:07
Zoe McMahon, Head of Legal Ops at HP, on mindfulness and bringing parts of your private self into the workplace: 16:47
Laura Frederick, CEO of How to Contract on the importance of seeing a therapist: 18:59
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 to Mental Health Awareness
00:00:00
Speaker
My name is Tyler Finn, and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Abstract Podcast.
Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance
00:00:06
Speaker
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so we sat down and pulled together some stories from the legal and business experts that you hear every week about managing stress, achieving a healthy work-life balance, navigating tragedies at home, leaving toxic working environments, and more.
00:00:27
Speaker
I hope you keep listening and feel inspired to make a positive change in your life and career, or at least feel a little less alone. Let's get started.
Imposter Syndrome in the Legal Field
00:00:43
Speaker
Here's Ryan Neer, General Counsel at Nova Credit, on navigating imposter syndrome and feeling like an outsider in the legal community. So when I moved to San Francisco, didn't even have a job. I was chasing a girl and I i didn't have this job. And I interviewed at Paul Hastings thinking that I was interviewing for an employment law job.
00:01:06
Speaker
And it was midway through the interview with Ned where he was, it just became obvious that, you know at this time, this was like 2005. So, was responding like a newspaper ad or something.
00:01:17
Speaker
So... um So ah he came out and interviewed, this is not an employment thing. I acted cool, or maybe at the time. And I was like, oh, of course, of course. In my head, I was like, oh, shit, this is not a um this is a ah and this is not employment law.
00:01:31
Speaker
I didn't even know what employment law really was. And and so it was litigation. This is a litigation job. and I was like, okay. And they mentioned they had this big case that could be its own podcast. Like he didn't mention it by name because it was secret at the time. But he told me about this case they wanted me on because I was a software developer in the past. And they this case was going to hinge on software development.
00:01:51
Speaker
And so they really wanted someone with expertise. And so by the time I came in that case, it settled. um But I came in and they're like, just kidding. And my first project was 100 bankers boxes of documents, mostly in Chinese, ah that were dumped after an appeal.
00:02:08
Speaker
um where the client had fired their law firm and hired us. And um i mean, not me, but hired somebody and I was the one who was given it. And so I was one associate and I was given 100 bankers boxes full of documents that were about the development of an acetic acid manufacturing plant that were somewhat in Mandarin Chinese.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I just was like, Okay. So I was excited. In many ways, I was so focused on the work and the problem solving that I was like, all right, let me get a translator. Let me figure all this out. And I was like a beautiful mind in there, man, with red string trying to connect the dots of this trade secret case and who saw what and when and whatever else.
00:02:42
Speaker
And anyway, i I did when I would stop to think I was so scared because I didn't even want to. Be a lawyer. The reason, i mean, I applied to be in the FBI after law school. I wanted to be a screenwriter. i would move to L.A. for a while. Really? had Yeah, I was trying to do anything in some ways. It wasn't that I was scared of a lot necessarily, but I thought, i don't know if this is my passion.
00:03:01
Speaker
So um I applied at the FBI and I am. It was only I'd been working at Paul Hastings for a couple of months and the FBI got in contact with me and they were like, hey, are are you
Identity and Mentorship in Law
00:03:11
Speaker
interested? And i was like, you never got like I was like, wait, what?
00:03:13
Speaker
And they had sent my materials to San Diego instead of San Francisco. And I guess the San Diego FBI regional office was trying to get a hold of me and I didn't live there. So anyway, I at that point was like, all right, I'm staying. it I'm staying at Paul Hastings because this is i I got a bonus to come here. i don't want to clawed back. Like, I guess I got to do this.
00:03:33
Speaker
And I have this memory. of going to a partner's house for a poker tournament. I grew up, and I should say, I grew up on a farm. Like, I grew up when I was, for the early part of my life, upstate New York for okay half my life, half my childhood, and the other half was in rural Florida. And and so I didn't know, I'd never tasted wine.
00:03:54
Speaker
i didn't, you know, i didn't know anything. And so I was at this party and someone handed me what I've come to learn now is a tamale. And I just put that bad boy right in my mouth. And with us with the husk, I didn't, had no idea.
00:04:08
Speaker
And the person, two people looked at me. In retrospect. It's so funny. Yeah. It's so funny. And two people looked at me and they i they they assumed, I think, that I was being funny. And then I just kept chewing. It was like I was eating a shoe.
00:04:21
Speaker
in And then, but because they were mini tamales. um And anyway, I eventually like grabbed a napkin and like spit out this tamale. But I felt like, man, I remember going through interviews.
00:04:32
Speaker
And the the reason I was so excited about Ned, who's like an incredible human and and my biggest mentor, was um I looked at him and I thought, He's the only person I've seen. he and just a brief background on that. He grew up in an internment, he was born in an internment camp. He's like, oh wow. Born in internment camp, grew up on a farm.
00:04:50
Speaker
And he was the first person I looked at and was like, you're, I mean, I didn't grow up in internment camp, but like, you're kind of like me. Like you, I, I could, I could maybe see myself in you somewhat And that was the first time that I had seen and know in any of my legal interviews or what I had done where I was like, this person, I can see a little bit of myself in them.
00:05:10
Speaker
And so in this moment, I think with the tamale and everything else, I definitely had this imposter syndrome. I mean, I had it all all throughout my career.
Handling Legal Challenges and Emotional Stress
00:05:18
Speaker
But I just focused, I think I just put did a lot of heads down, focus on the problem and just solving whatever problem was ahead of me and i and paying off my my crazy bills and like just moving one foot right in front of the other that I never, when I came up to breathe and looked around though, I was like, man, I don't know half of what these people are talking about. I didn't, you know, I i remember getting, they gave me a um
00:05:42
Speaker
whatever Kate Spade's brother, Jack Spade, they give you a Jack Spade bag. I mean, I immediately sold it. Cause I was like, I don't need this. Like why, i got i got like $160 for it and I was so excited. Cause I was just like, I don't need a fancy bag. I need money.
00:05:58
Speaker
um So I just think i was I was very different. I cut my own hair. Like I just, I don't know. i I didn't know anything of what I was doing. I owned one suit at that point my life and it was green.
00:06:09
Speaker
um No one told me like, if you're gonna get one suit, don't make it green. um So I was going to every meeting and ah in that I had and like every interview, every wedding in this like olive green suit. I didn't know anything. So, yeah, imposter syndrome. I still i still like, you know, moments in my career now still or all the time where I'm like, i should I, know, like I'm um ah what I think there are a lot of tasks I have to do on every basis where I go, that's not make bread and butter.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I go, God, everyone seems to know what they're talking about about this. And I don't. And I think what has gotten me through it is just like put my head down and focus on the problem and don't pop my head up for long enough to be like, I don't know what I'm doing.
00:06:49
Speaker
Next up, we have Joe Sullivan, former chief security officer at Uber, Facebook and Cloudflare on managing the stress of a federal indictment.
00:07:00
Speaker
I never believed it was going to come because I'd I'm still fighting the case. It's still, it's pending on appeal and I still believe I'm going to win and and it's taken some turns that I think are going help it get there um from a legal perspective.
00:07:14
Speaker
But yeah, I was talking about it with my attorney you know because yeah I was terminated, like I said, i I was let go in the fall of 2017, Thanksgiving week in a very sudden kind of rude way.
00:07:29
Speaker
And then went to work at Cloudflare six, you know, I did, I probably felt worse after I lost, I was terminated from Uber than I felt when I got indicted just because I just, it just caught, it blindsided me so much.
00:07:45
Speaker
And that the that the company was taking the the view that it was on it. And so
00:07:54
Speaker
I knew for at least a year before the indictment, well, first it was a criminal complaint I was charged with, and then they did an indictment later. So I i learned about the criminal complaint the same way I learned that I was getting fired from Uber in the news.
00:08:07
Speaker
ah Press release? Yeah, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI did ah press conferences. They didn't tell me they were going to charge me on that day. I was sitting at my desk ah working for Cloudflare, working from home because it was August of 2020.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, so was six months into the pandemic, I was sitting at my desk working and my daughter, who was moving into college ah that week, she was with her mom and they called me because Like I was, I was texting with my ex-wife about how we were going to tell her, like literally on the day she's moving to college, I've, I learned about it.
00:08:47
Speaker
And my daughter's calls because her friend heard on NPR that I'd been arrested. And so she, so she started getting people reaching out to her, like, are you okay? Cause the FBI put out ah a press release that was a lie. They,
00:09:02
Speaker
They said that they had arrested me when they actually hadn't. I've never been arrested. I don't know why they did that. um After i asked them to retract it a few weeks later, and they did. ah But they put out that fake press release that everybody, so everybody thought I was in jail.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah. And um I had to call everybody and say, no, I'm not. I'm what's here. Party typo. So it was, yeah, so that was a pretty stressful thing, but... um At that point, I didn't believe it was going to happen because i I knew what it was like when I was a federal prosecutor. Like, we had a million cases we could do, and i only did cases where it just felt like, um ah honestly, it felt like it was a slam dunk, each case, because you could pick from so many different levels of...
00:09:46
Speaker
guilt, so to speak. and so And I knew what really happened in in this case. and And so i didn't believe I just didn't believe it. So I was i was shocked. ah And then, ah you know, I didn't go to trial for another two
Business Partnerships and Support
00:10:02
Speaker
years. So i I went back to work and worked for the next two years and i put my trust in my lawyers.
00:10:09
Speaker
I will say that like the other hard part was the first time I went into the federal courthouse in San Francisco ah a couple of months before the trial and it just hit me on a whole other physical level like here's an office in a courtroom that I've been into as a federal prosecutor and now sitting at the other table was pretty intense and I always think of myself as a person who stays calm under pressure because in security you have what could be the worst situation ever come up like once every two months.
00:10:41
Speaker
And unfortunately it usually isn't. ah But you know you you have to treat it like it could be the worst thing ever. And so I'm used to that. But when it's about you, it's a much harder emotion. It felt like my brain couldn't think the way I normally can.
00:10:59
Speaker
like Usually i can I can look at a situation and be like, oh we need to do this, this, and this. yeah And i was just like, lawyers, please just do what... like My brain just couldn't... um like Even sitting in trial...
00:11:13
Speaker
i just like I just felt like I was a zombie version of myself and I wanted to be more active. um It was, I think, after i lost the trial, but i think of it as winning this. We we won the sentencing because that just like knocked me out of my stupor. And I was like, I need to own this and um and did much more for the sentencing.
00:11:36
Speaker
Next up, we have an excerpt from my conversation with LawTrade's co-founders, Raad Ahmed and Ashish Walia, on how to support your business partner during difficult times.
00:11:47
Speaker
I'll say one thing, then I'll pass it off to you for the details. We have one rule, which is like we both can't be depressed at the same time. So no matter of what, oh yeah ever whoever kind of is depressed, like and they you kind of call that out. The other party can't can't be like sucked into that. Like even if you have to fake it, you have to just yeah you have to be the optimistic one. Yeah, so we get that sort of natural, you know, downside, whatever, when when we need it.
00:12:13
Speaker
But the other side has to, has to you know, i don't know, fake it sometimes. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, optimism. Yeah, we we do a good job at ah supporting each other when we know, you know, that maybe there's some level of self-doubt that one might be feeling or, you know, feeling down about whatever issue you're dealing with at the company.
00:12:33
Speaker
um So that's been important. And we've always still, you know, no matter all the different pivots and the different cycles that we've been through, we've always kind of kept the same routines as well. Right. Like we meet up regularly. We work in the office together every single day. We grab coffee at the same time every single morning.
00:12:50
Speaker
um You know, we hang out when we're. not working as well. um So, you know, I think when you just have that trust with your business partner, your co-founder, um it just helps you survive the droughts much better. You know what i mean? and john It's just showing up. it's it's like It's like going to the gym, right? if you if If you're trying to get jacked, right? Yeah, you show up even on the days you're hungover and you're yeah tired and you're sleepy and you have the worst like or a sleep score, like you're still going in there and you're like lifting that, you know, lifting that weight.
00:13:19
Speaker
um And for us, it was that's that's why, you know, even though we went remote and all that, like we've we always made it a point to have an office. And it's just it it makes the biggest difference to just show up physically show up physically open your laptop.
00:13:31
Speaker
just sit there even though it's it's like a terrible day your revenue's down you're like people are kind of like you know like like leaving the company whatever just to be able to show up and sit there and kind of like be near somebody else that's also showing up like that just goes so far um and um and and again it it compounds it like the skill of showing up even when you don't want to show up and things are hard is i feel like a really underrated skill and yeah And I think there was something on on YC that kind of talked about power of habit. I mean, I'm a big believer in that ah for sure, right?
00:14:07
Speaker
Next up, we have Dan Haley, general counsel and corporate secretary at Guild on balancing work and life after a cancer diagnosis.
Work-Life Balance After Health Challenges
00:14:17
Speaker
So it's interesting. um So that is true. um And I, this is, this is...
00:14:25
Speaker
It's hard to answer this question without sounding self-aggrandizing. um ah The first time I had cancer, I was in my last year of law school, and it was literally my treatments. My surgery was right before finals, and then my treatments were all through studying for the bar.
00:14:41
Speaker
And I was working behind that Goodwin Proctor at the time. So my day was ah get up in the morning. i would go to Goodwin Proctor. i would work for half the day. i would go to my bar review class and I would go to Brigham and Women's Hospital, get my radiation, go home, usually throw up and then study for the bar.
00:14:59
Speaker
And um that sounds like. yeah just, you know, it was not optional. I mean, I suppose, right, that's not totally true. I could have said, like, I'm going to put off the bar a year and I'm going to do all these things, but didn't occur to me at the time. And so in the file of Silver Linings, that experience did give me the ability ever after to say, well, this thing I'm going through is not that six week long period.
00:15:27
Speaker
um You know, I'm not throwing up involuntarily while I study for the bus. So, you know, you kind of get through. ah Right. And I don't know, like, you can't, you can't visit the alternate reality, you know, where I can't visit the alternate reality where I didn't go through that. So I don't know how much of my work ethic or whatever stems from that.
00:15:47
Speaker
I suspect... a pretty good chunk of it. And so to circle back to your actual question, yes, people ask me that. um It often comes up in the context of i do um endurance events sometimes to stay in good cardiovascular health. And you'd be um so I've done a couple of Ironman triathlons and that requires you get up at like three in the morning to do the training and yeah you know how do you work that into your work schedule and you know gosh i'm too busy you know you must and uh i always say actually i'm probably at my best when i'm training for something like that because it is the mind it creates uh you know um the imperative to like actually use your time deliberately and that goes over family time and and social time and all that too um and having a goal is just
00:16:39
Speaker
Having a goal, having an ostentatious goal, it's been a tremendously motivating thing beyond just the goal itself. Here's a clip from my conversation with Zoe McMahon, head of legal ops at HP, where we talked about mindfulness and bringing parts of your personal self into the workplace.
Mindfulness and Personal Values at Work
00:16:58
Speaker
For someone that has been the company for 30 years, I'm a VP, I'm an executive, I'm successful, but I'm human, right? And I think, you know, we all have, or I'm going to speculate that many of us have self-doubt at times or nervousness about situations. um And I'll give you an example for me that's very real right now.
00:17:22
Speaker
I care a lot about... um mindfulness practice and I think it's a little bit missing in the workplace sort of recognizing, yeah, just a little bit of calm.
00:17:33
Speaker
But to actually speak up and say that sure to people at work without them going, you crazy? You know, there's a little bit of like trepidation about it. um But, you know, I have seen by experimenting a little bit by being brave and sort of dropping it in from time to time, like I've seen people respond, but oh yeah, I like that too.
00:17:55
Speaker
and I think sometimes when when people are brave and they bring ah perhaps an aspect that they care about into workplace. Yes, there is. It liberates other people to do the same thing, as you were just saying in this Untold Stories case. And I think that's a really good thing to bring our humanity.
00:18:12
Speaker
Yes. and And particularly if we can like be more respectful, more gracious to each other, bring ease. There is so much stress in a legal department.
00:18:24
Speaker
ah You know, as we've heard at this conference, the demand for legal work is growing, the budgets are shrinking, yeahp there's not enough bodies you can throw at the problem. So along with efficiencies and and skills to and technology to drive those improvements, we have to have some corresponding empathy for each other as well. sure and So I think like if we can all just just take it down a notch and be nice to each other, um I'm a big proponent of that. and Maybe some might think it's a bit Pollyanna, but and's my that's my story to
Therapy and Career Transformation
00:18:58
Speaker
bring. so
00:18:59
Speaker
Here's a clip from my conversation with Laura Frederick, CEO at How to Contract, on the importance of seeing a therapist and how it helped change her life.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's an area that's so important to me. And I didn't, you know, I tell people I i got my first therapist at 42. I didn't realize that I could change some of the ways that I approached, some of the ways that i processed and dealt with life.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I didn't realize what a positive impact going through therapy would have on every aspect of my life. And so before i started with therapy, i very much felt like the victim. I felt like my life had turned into this place and I'd reached this point and it wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything to make it happen.
00:19:49
Speaker
At least when it came to my personal life, my professional life, I felt in control. I have chosen these jobs. I've chosen this path. This is what I want to do. I'm, I'm where I deserve to be. But on the personal side, it was like, oh it's happening to me. I'm the victim.
00:20:04
Speaker
i don't know how to get out of this. And i didn't see how I had created all the circumstances. I had created the situation where I found myself in a failing marriage and just being unhappy and really unable to cope with the difficulties of life.
00:20:24
Speaker
And it was through therapy that I found myself how my thinking contributed to that and that I won was i wasn't seeing the role that I had.
00:20:35
Speaker
um For example, the idea of owning your outcomes and owning where you are in life and that we're none of us are victim. We're all making choices about where to be in life.
00:20:46
Speaker
And just even though we feel like we can't make a different choice, We are making a choice even when we're not making that choice. You know, you're choosing to stay in your circumstances. um And I think the other the other big thing, which I think lawyers really struggle with and I did as well, which was this idea of I can control the world around me if I just do enough work.
00:21:07
Speaker
and I tell people what to do and I set everything up so it won't fail, then it'll all be good. And anytime things go wrong, it's because i didn't prepare properly.
00:21:20
Speaker
I didn't, you know, do these things. And and i had this sense, like, I knew what was best for everything that was going on in my world, the people around me, all that kind of stuff. And I had this great therapist who said, you know, she's like, who are you, God?
00:21:35
Speaker
How do you know what's best for these people in your life? You have no idea. Maybe you are exactly the thing that's causing all the problems in your life. And if you would let go of you're trying to control everything.
00:21:48
Speaker
then they would these other people would be better off. And I just was like floored by that because it really challenged the sense of me trying to control everything. And it goes back, there's a great quote on it, um that you you didn't have control.
00:22:04
Speaker
ah forgot, i have to i don't remember the exact wording, but essentially it's you never had control, you only had anxiety. um And that false sense of control, especially lawyers and people in the legal world, create for ourselves because we're overachiever types and we're used to making things happen. And we're used to being in the smart one in the room and telling everybody what to do.
00:22:26
Speaker
So it's ah hard to kind of take that version of ourselves that who doesn't know what's going on. and isn't in control and is just, you know, all we can control is ourselves. So I think embracing that. And again, my number one career advice for everyone is get therapy early and often.
00:22:50
Speaker
It will, my career, like the joy in my career, my ability to to do a great job went through the the roof once I got my therapy. I learned how to manage my emotions so much better.
00:23:04
Speaker
i learned how to really, you know, embrace the role as opposed to you know, being scared all the time, being worried and and stressed all the time. i just, I found so much more peace once I went through
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:23:17
Speaker
my therapy. So I can't talk about it enough.
00:23:20
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening to this special episode of The Abstract in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. I hope you enjoyed the episode and i hope to see you next time.