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Ep 60: Sharing Legal Secrets Onstage with Playwright and ex-Etsy and Vroom GC Sarah Feingold
71 Plays19 days ago
Where's the intersection in a career as a creative and as a lawyer? What stories would you tell if you were writing a play about your career in startup law? How do you go and convince some accomplished actors to sign up and perform it off-broadway?
Join Sarah Feingold, the legal expert and playwright behind Dirty Legal Secrets: Based on True Startups—running Off-Broadway this October in New York City—as she shares her experience collecting and staging anonymous stories from startup lawyers that they can’t tell themselves. She leveraged her own experience as the first general counsel at start-ups Etsy and Vroom.
Listen as Sarah discusses how she leveraged her own experience as the first general counsel at start-ups Etsy and Vroom to tell other lawyers’ brave legal stories, how to balance your creative pursuits with legal work, how to expand beyond in-house to advise, teach, and join boards, and much more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-60
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Becoming Etsy’s first lawyer (and 17th hire): 2:48
Transitioning to General Counsel at Vroom: 6:57
Writing a play: 9:18
Getting started on your first draft: 13:59
Finding actors and producing your own play: 16:52
Learning to promote yourself after a career in legal: 19:54
Staging Dirty Legal Secrets: 21:37
Keeping your creative spirit alive while working full-time: 25:28
Leaning into a “portfolio” career: 28:20
Favorite part of your day and pet peeves: 30:13
Book recommendations: 31:24
What you wish you’d known as a young lawyer: 33:21
Cellunova Productions presents Dirty Legal Secrets
October 17-27, NYC
Buy tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dirty-legal-secrets-tickets-1001791825317
Connect with us:
Sarah Feingold: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahfeingold/
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
00:00:00
Speaker
in the early days of Etsy and I'm reading everything about the ah company and I'm even reading their policies because I am a lawyer and that's what lawyers do. And a little light bulb went off in my head and I was like, I think we need to tweak these a little bit. So I wrote to their generic inbox and I said, you know, I'm a lawyer and I have a couple ideas. And one thing led to another and I got on a phone with the CEO and founder. We had a really nice conversation about business, about the law.
00:00:29
Speaker
And when I hung up the phone, it like occurred to me that they didn't have an in-house attorney. And I was living in Rochester, New York at the time. And I thought, okay, why not?
00:00:46
Speaker
Where's the intersection in a career as a creative and as a lawyer? What stories would you tell if you were writing a play about your career in startup law? And how do you go and convince some accomplished actors to sign up to perform it off Broadway. Today we are joined on the abstract by Sarah Feingold. Playwright, creative, and lawyer, she is the mind behind Dirty Legal Secrets, which has its initial run off Broadway coming up October 17th to 27th.
00:01:25
Speaker
She also teaches media law at and NYU Law School and advises a number of startups as a board member at Chloe Capital. Previously, Sarah had a accomplished career successful career as a full-time startup lawyer. She was the first lawyer at Etsy and their 17th employee. She was also the first general counsel at Vroom. If that's not enough, she's a jewelry designer on the side.
00:01:51
Speaker
Sarah, thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of The Abstract. Thanks for having me. Okay. When we were talking and getting to know each other a little bit, you said you consider yourself to be a creative first and foremost, as opposed to a lawyer who happens to be creative. So tell me about how you found your way to to law school. Sure. a Great question. So I like to say I was born an artist. I've been always doing things like, and then especially making a mess.
00:02:20
Speaker
yeah When I was in college, I took as many metalsmithing classes as there were available. And I started thinking about how could I protect myself? I made a piece of jewelry. What could I do to make sure no one copied it? ah hu That's what led me to law school. And even before I took my first law school class, I had this idea that I was going to help creatives like myself um through my practice of law.
00:02:47
Speaker
That's great. And tell us a little bit about how you joined Etsy because I think it's a really great story and it's something that demonstrates the power of putting yourself out there. It's not a traditional, oh look, there's here's a general counsel posting with 257 applicants and I'm going to compete. That is definitely not what happened. So as I mentioned, I'm a jeweler, I make jewelry. And after law school, I was working at a law firm and I was trying to figure out how to sell my jewelry on the side.
00:03:16
Speaker
um because I just keep making all this jewelry and I love it. And I discovered Etsy and I thought it was such a phenomenal business model, a phenomenal platform. It was really cool looking. And it was, you know, in the early days of Etsy and I'm reading everything about the ah company.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I'm even reading their policies because I'm a lawyer and that's what lawyers do. And a little light bulb went off in my head and I was like, I think we need to tweak these a little bit. So I wrote to their generic inbox and I said, you know, I'm a lawyer and I have a couple ideas and one thing led to another. And I got on a phone with the CEO and founder and yeah, we had a really nice conversation about business, about the law.
00:04:03
Speaker
And when I hung up the phone, it like occurred to me that they didn't have an in-house attorney. And I thought that I could add value. And I was living in Rochester, New York at the time. And I thought, okay, why not? And I booked a plane ticket to New York City and I called them back and I said, I'm going to come down for an interview. I want to be your first lawyer. um I'll make things easier for you. And I did. And they hired me on the spot.
00:04:31
Speaker
And you had a great run there. I mean, really cool to be at a company like that so early. I would even say being hired as the 17th employee is probably relatively early in most companies' lifecycle to bring a lawyer on board. Yeah. I mean, to tell us what the early days there were like, too. Like, what all did you have to build? I mean, listen, when you're one of the early employees, especially as a lawyer, you're going to have to show value add, why would they pay my salary when they could pay for a marketing person, right? Right. To pay somebody to build the website.
00:05:07
Speaker
like think So I really had to make a business case for myself and as for the early days, it was doing everything, right? Like there is no job description. There is really just like take things and run with it and really try to understand the priorities of the company. What's their profile? What are some of our goals and how can we do things and such? How can I say yes, right? These are really right <unk> entrepreneurial, creative, awesome people with great ideas. How can I say yes so that we all feel comfortable and we can have a great company?
00:05:42
Speaker
Did you at the time have any idea that Etsy was going to take off the way that it would? I don't know. I don't know. But did Etsy have like blue chip VCs? or so tell Tell us what the early days there were were like. And I would assume it must be pretty exciting to then watch the company sort of blossom in the eyes of consumers and investors and creatives who are selling their wares, like feeling like you're a part of something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like listen, it went from people to like, where do you work? Like you were aware like, literally, I would go to places and turn my badge around because I didn't want people to know where I was where I worked because know like either I love that CEO, or I got a problem with you people. Or I want you to hire me.
00:06:25
Speaker
a outside council or whatever I felt like a guppy in a shark pond. But I had high hopes for the company. I mean, listen, I took a giant career risk and moved to New York City with very little. ahha And I put my whole life into Etsy for over nine years. So I was hoping things would go well. Did I think that it would go as well as it's gone?
00:06:48
Speaker
I don't think so, not in the early days when we were building something. When you're building something, you just um keep your head down and hope for the best. And it's just such a difficult road. Yeah, I'm really excited also to hear today about sort of your your career after these more traditional full time GC roles, maybe just to make sure we don't shortchange that chapter in your your life though. Can you tell us a little bit about being GC at Vroom and being again, the first sort of legal leader there. And also, maybe if there was a moment where you felt like, hey, I want to step back from doing this type of work full time, or if it was something that happened more organically for you.
00:07:28
Speaker
Great questions. So after over nine years at Etsy, the company was growing. We like have a bigger legal team. Like we became more subject matter experts. Like when you're the only lawyer, you know everything and you're doing everything. But then as the legal team grows, you start to become a little more silent. And I start, I have a lot of energy. I don't know. It comes through over the microphone. And so we started like having my little antennas out. Like what else is going on? and A recruiter reached out to me and was like, what do you think about this company room? And it looked really interesting. um I don't even own a car. I i didn't own a car then and I don't now, but I understand the pain points of trying to buy a used car because I had to do that before. And so it sounded like an interesting and
00:08:20
Speaker
complicated and exciting and it was outside my comfort zone and it scared me and I thought, sure. So i why I was their first lawyer in their general counsel for around three years. And then I just started thinking more about myself as a whole human.
00:08:39
Speaker
And I wanted, I had a bunch of projects that were sort of like I was thinking about working on. And then I thought this a recruiter reached out to me a couple months ago and said, like, are you happy with your portfolio career? And I really liked that term. um Yeah, and I thought I think I need a portfolio. I didn't know the term back then. So I started pushing some of my other my other goals and my other projects with more of a portfolio career. So I'm on a couple boards. I teach at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. And what else do I do? Oh, I consult a little bit and I wrote a play.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, and I'm an artist. I still have some art out there in the world. When did you decide that you wanted to write a play? I mean, I think that's just so cool and so exciting that you're able to like literally sit down and put pen to paper. Well, I think it all started with the Me Too movement. When I started hearing all these people coming forward and telling their stories in such a vulnerable and brave way, and I started thinking about how lawyers like us are privileged and voiceless. We cannot tell our stories. I cannot tell the cool things that happened to me at Etsy. and i And I started talking with an amazing human being, Michael Weinberg. He works at NYU at the Engelberg Center and we started, and we love theater. I go to theater all the time. I love yeah and love theater. And we started talking about theater and we were like, how cool would it be if lawyers could just like get up on stage and tell our stories? But we can't because of attorney's line privilege. And then we started thinking like,
00:10:10
Speaker
What if but if I could? What if I put out a call for entries, a call for stories, and an anonymous Google form, and offered my phone number, and offered my email address, and said, like so give me your stories. Redact what you need to redact. aha Hire actors to play lawyers, and put it on as a play. And people have said to me, Sarah, you wrote things down. This could be a book. This could be a series of articles. This could be a podcast.
00:10:38
Speaker
But if you see my play, you're going to know why it is not any of those other things. Because when I but had the idea to have the play, it became four-dimensional. It is interactive. It time it is It is a whole situation. And so with Michael Weinberg and the Engelberg Center, in, I think, November 2019,
00:11:03
Speaker
we had our initial performance and we called it legal madness. And it was just like a bunch of monologues, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. We hired a bunch of actors and it was great. It was sold out. It was one of those like disgusting nights in New York City where it's raining and cold. like No one wants to go out and somehow people were wrapped around the entire building, like trying to get in to see the show. It was amazing. And then when the pandemic hit, I thought,
00:11:31
Speaker
I should turn this into more of a play, less of a bunch of monologues that you know and more of something that's a play. Yeah. Over the pandemic, I took some playwriting classes. I read a bunch of books. I took a producing class. And very slowly, dirty legal secrets started to take form as the way it is now.
00:11:52
Speaker
I mean, you raise such an interesting point about attorney-client privilege, right? I have a lot of folks on this podcast, a lot of GCs with amazing stories. Sometimes they can tell them usually when they're like three to five to seven years in the past, right? But you know that a lot of the very best ones are things they told me over dinner but are not going to end up on this podcast.
00:12:14
Speaker
and Exactly. And listen, I was in ah I was a general counsel for many years. And I've had many of those dinners where we were crying together and laughing together. And I'm like, and I've literally gone to my friends and be like, Hey, remember that story? Can I have it?
00:12:28
Speaker
yeah aha I mean, there's there's a question in there, I guess, for me, which is, how do you decide which stories to tell, right? Like you're curating this, one, I'm sure you want to have some that are like slightly salacious and entertaining. But yeah, what was your process? How did you decide what stories you really wanted to include?
00:12:46
Speaker
That was really hard. And there are some people who I unfortunately had to say like, hey, I i i couldn't include your story. Some themes emerged. And if a theme emerged, I really wanted to di dive into it. I was looking for stories that were unique, that we maybe haven't heard before, that were absurd, that kind had some sort of law in there that I thought would be entertaining. But I'm really trying to bring the audience on a roller coaster ride.
00:13:15
Speaker
ah in the show. So yeah, you know some of the some of the stories I just couldn't fit in. And I don't want anyone to go to, listen, I could have put them all in the show and we would have been in the theater for 12 hours. right to but I I only needed to take the best of the best and the ones that I felt that where you know I could tell in a way to do it justice that fit in with the rest of the stories that I was telling.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's like it's almost curatorial in it in a way. right You and I could sit here on this podcast episode probably and talk for six hours, and we could spend an hour and a half just on your time at Etsy. But what i you know what I'm really curious about is being a playwright, because that's something that I've never had a guest on like that that before.
00:13:59
Speaker
Tell us when you were getting started and you you were writing the first draft of this play. I mean, what what's that like? How do you get the first draft done? I think a lot of people are going to listen and say, you know, oh, I would love to write a pilot for a TV show or I'd love to maybe consider writing a book or end. But then they think like, OK, but how do I get from here to there having this whole thing done? Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
Right. Well, I think especially lawyers, like we have this perfectionist tendencies in our head and yeah humans, we walk around the world and if we go to a Broadway show or an off Broadway show, we see like the best of the best. So we're kind of holding ourselves up to that standard. So between the perfectionist tendencies and seeing things that are out in the universe where these playwrights have dedicated their entire careers to honing their craft.
00:14:48
Speaker
If you want to do something as a brand new newbie, do it. You got to get the bad first draft out of your system. Because I promise you the stuff that we're seeing on the stage has been years, decades in the making. And it started with a really awful first draft. So if you have an idea in your head for anything,
00:15:11
Speaker
make just Just get it out of your system. Get a really bad, ugly, horrible first draft typos. Don't format it right. Get it out of your system and don't get bogged down on the details that'll come later.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, an example, i i maybe you've seen it. I recently watched this series, Presumed Innocent on Apple TV, which is really good. And it was based on a book written by a lawyer, Scott Turo. And I have to imagine, like you know I'm sure but but that was not his but not his first draft. That was not his first book. The first book that he wrote, or the first draft, or the first book he wrote, I'm sure was nothing like the sort of quality with all the twists and turns. Talk to us a little bit. Yeah, I can't be, right? And I hate using sports analogies, because I don't know anything about sports. But like the first time you like got on a bike, you fell over, right? The first time you tried to shoot a basketball, it wouldn't go in. Like, you have to like practice. And the first time you wrote a brief, it wasn't good. Like, I don't know, you know, whatever analogy yeah you use, the first time your child
00:16:15
Speaker
like stands up in waddles, they fall. So you have to give yourself some grace that if you want to do something that you haven't done before that something that's difficult, Do it poorly and get better at it. I promise you, I've been, my my script, I'm making changes all the time. People say like, what draft are you on? I do not know I have lost power. It has gone through so many iterations and every time I put it on the stage, every time I have an actor read it, I learned something about it. I say, oh, that word is terrible. I chuck an entire story. Like it's it's constantly a work in progress.
00:16:53
Speaker
Did you find that that process of of going out then and finding actors to perform it and and you know a director to help and the stage, so did that all come very naturally or did did you really enjoy that process or was it really scary? Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
00:17:11
Speaker
It's impossible. So I didn't know anything about this industry when I decided I was a playwright. I think I literally knew LinkedIn and was like, I'm going to call myself a playwright. Done. I wrote a play. Done. So there are a couple of ways to go about producing a play. One is self-producing, where you go hire everybody and you write all the checks and you and you do all of that. And that's really difficult and it's expensive.
00:17:33
Speaker
And you're basically the boss, and it's your vision. And my thought was, I don't have the vision. I don't want to be the boss. That's not my area of expertise, right? Yeah. So thankfully, the the past couple of of performances that we've had, and we've had really, this is but this will be the third major accomplishment, you know, major milestone of this show. I have had amazing people who have stepped up and used their skills.
00:18:02
Speaker
So the first big thing that came out of this script was I had a blind submission and Jeff Daniels' theater did a reading on Zoom. And just yeah, and jeff they chose my script out of like hundreds of scripts that were submitted. And actually, Lucas Daniels, Jeff Daniels, his son was the director. So it was one of those, you know, just cold submissions, I didn't know anyone and they chose my script and they found the actors and they found the director. And it was a collaboration where like, you know, we had some conversations and change some of the script and
00:18:35
Speaker
but it was really the director's vision. And in this case, for this off-off Broadway premiere, um I'm working with an amazing group called Solanova Productions and they have taken over and they found a director and they're they're working with the cast because that's their expertise. It's not mine. How do you hire an actor? I can figure it out, right? We can figure these things out, but why? When there are people who can do it for you.
00:19:06
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah. as As you were talking about that, you know ah something that came to mind or a question, I've had a number of folks who were GCs and now have become founders or started businesses. This is very similar in a lot of ways to to doing that. Maybe an observation that I'd be curious for your response to is, I think if you're going to do that, one of the things that makes people, particularly people who've served as like advisors or general counsels, uncomfortable is they now have to go out and almost like promote for themselves, or right it's their baby that they're bringing to market, or bringing to the stage, or and they have to go out and sort of say, like look, I've created this great thing. Come and take a look at it. right ah Was that process natural for you, or has it taken, ah yeah what what's that been like?
00:20:43
Speaker
The process of getting rejected time and time again. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's the flip side of it, right? Which salespeople get very good at, but. you you You have to exercise your rejection muscle if you want to get anywhere entrepreneurial. You know, listen, I could have just written a play and thought it was great and put it in my computer folder or whatever it is, but no one would be able to see it. I have been rejected dozens and dozens and dozens of times.
00:21:12
Speaker
And that just goes with trying things that are super hard. And if you're going to be an entrepreneur, a business person, if you have these dreams, you have to.
00:21:23
Speaker
put yourself out there and it sometimes stinks. yeah know I got rejected today and I'm going to write them back and say, great, thanks for the rejection. Come to my show. It's right. yes If people want to come and see it, please tell us, yeah, tell us where, you know, where is it running? I said a little bit of the intro. We'll put stuff in the show notes too, but yeah tell me how they can come and come and watch and support you.
00:21:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh, please come to my show. So it's in New York City. It's on it's um October 17th through the 27th. We are having 11 performances. There are some matinees. There's someone's at night. So there's there's all sorts of options. You can go to dirtylegal.com. D-I-R-T-Y-L-E-G-A-L.
00:22:10
Speaker
Dot-com and you can get on my mailing list or you can see how to get tickets right from the website right there It's going to be it's in a really cool intimate speak easy theater bar kind of place 50-second Street. It's so cool and it'll be a really great time. You don't have to be a lawyer to Anything about law to just have a fun time. I want people to come and enjoy themselves.
00:22:34
Speaker
And so bring your friends and your families. Of course, and outside counsel, bring people you want to sue. Don't bring your kids. Don't bring your kids. But bring everyone else. Only one rule. Yeah, yeah. OK, I'm not done with questions, though. But I want to make sure, yeah, we we got that in. what What are your hopes for dirty legal secrets? Like, do you want it to be a TV show? Do you want another run? like what what's what Yeah, what's what's going to happen to it?
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah, so listen, every step of the way the script gets better and better, I learned some new things. And I would just love it if another we had another round of this, I would love it if people sell out the show. And I get a little bit of buzz. And maybe we could take this to a bigger theater. Maybe we can do it. Maybe I can take it to a different audience. I would like to continue. I see ah For this show, I think it's a really great show, and I can see a lot of different paths for it to succeed. I always joke, sort of joke, that I love a Tony, you know? Like, let's do it. I've never seen lawyers like me on the stage told an authentic way. And this is as authentic as you're going to get. I'm working on some other projects. I am working on a television pilot.
00:23:54
Speaker
And so that's in the works as well. And then I've also been thinking about other ways to tell lawyer stories. Dirty Legal Secrets, ah it um is it's called true ah based on true startups. And this is about startups. But I was also thinking that maybe the next iteration might look at a different type of lawyer story.
00:24:16
Speaker
For example, Natrimonial law or immigration law. I still haven't figured it out quite yet. But I want to, this could be a franchise, I guess. um ah But I want to start with the startup law because thats that's my that's my area of expertise. And then I'll see what's next.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to see something like this as a TV show. I used to joke. I mean, I used to do like public policy for tech companies and I loved Silicon Valley, which I thought was incredibly accurate. And I also loved Veep, which I spent a little bit of time in DC. I thought was very accurate. And I used to describe my day to day as some mesh smash mix up between Silicon Valley and Veep. You're the writer. yeah did HBO should bring you on.
00:24:56
Speaker
first Listen, I feel like if you want something, you need to ask for it very specifically. And I'm literally working on a pilot right now. It is awesome. It is sort of like the play, but not like the play at all. So listeners have connections to HBO or Netflix or whatever or Hulu.
00:25:18
Speaker
Find me, and I would love to send you the pilot, and let's get her done. Let's get her done. Our Angel Secrets, the television show, is in the works, and it is really cool. That's great. OK, I'm curious at at a slightly more macro level, how you kept this sort of like creative spirit ah alive while you were practicing full time, and how maybe if you have advice for others on how they can too. Because I'm sure that wasn't always easy.
00:25:45
Speaker
It's not, I mean, listen, I had a very, very, um, difficult job and it was all encompassing and, and, and, and yeah, I, I, I have a family, I have a child, like, you know, balancing anything is, is literally possible. So the only thing that you can do is to prioritize. And if something is really important to you, what I suggest doing is put it in your calendar and do it.
00:26:12
Speaker
So if you have a creative goal in mind, then set the time aside, prioritize it, and do it. Because you're never going to find the time unless you commit to the time. So yeah people some people cook. Some people go to the gym. Some people cry every day. I don't know. Whatever people go to the bars, have friends. But you know I would set things aside and be like, this is the time I'm working on this thing, because this is important to me. and Oh my God, things take way longer than you ever want them to take all the time. So yeah, be kind to yourself. Progress. Yeah. I mean, ah one step at a time is not a mark of failure. I hope not many people are scheduling crying time into their calendars. You gotta do what you gotta do.
00:26:58
Speaker
Maybe it's time for a new job or a new boss. Do you see any overlap? We're talking about this portfolio career idea. Do you see overlap between the sort of work you do as a playwright and that as a professor at and NYU? And I'd said law school. I was wrongw i guess it's the engineering school. yeah I almost think of being a professor sometime. It's like you're performing in a sense. It's it's interesting because I'm an extroverted person. I put myself out there. i'm not very shy, I just will go up to people and ask for things. And people just assume I'm starring in my own play because I am not that is a whole other level of skill. and i do not have But I do a lot of public speaking, I used to speak all the time, and public speaking and teaching that kind of goes together. And so that's the way I see it for
00:27:51
Speaker
NYU. And I'm in my third year teaching media law to Tandon graduate students. And they're phenomenal. And they are like our future and they're my future boss. they're all our future future So that's sort of where the overlap is, is law. And I guess, keep talking about law. Yeah, maybe it'll run HBO someday. You don't mean media law. You never know. They should. Yes. And then they'll then they'll make sure that my television show gets greenlit. Awesome. I i think I think one of the cool things about having this sort of portfolio career is that you don't fit into any clear professional category, which means you have a lot of flexibility. And yeah I want to focus on this right now. or i really want to like But there's also an ambiguity that comes to that. And I think that a lot of people struggle with not having like a very clear professional identity at a given moment in time. Do you think it's just a function of like your personality that makes you comfortable with that ambiguity or something you get better at over time? Yeah.
00:28:50
Speaker
Listen, this isn't for everybody. Right. i You know, it's, it's definitely a little bit outside the box. And if you go to law school, you're probably a little bit risk averse. And this might feel really uncomfortable to you. But for me personally, this feels right. And this moment, will I ah will I someday get a full time job? Maybe, you know, right it could happen. But right now, this feels right.
00:29:18
Speaker
What are you most excited about working on next? You know, I'm still working on the play. So we're at rehearsals right now but and they're doing just such a great job. The production team, the director, the actors, they're bringing my words to life and it is not an easy script to bring to life.
00:29:41
Speaker
So that's what I'm excited for. I don't want to give away too many of my other secrets, but cool. I've got a few fun questions for you now that I like to ask our guests as we start to wrap up. The first is your favorite part of your day to day.
00:30:00
Speaker
My favorite part of my day today. Well, I like taking my child to school. That's really fun. We take the subway together. We do wordle on the subway. That's great. Maybe not something you have to focus on as much today, but you have a professional pet peeve of any kind. I think the number one professional pet peeve I have, like as long as like weird in my face right now. I really dislike it when people tell me they're going to do something and then they don't do it. Like they literally, they say to me, I will get this done by the end of the day at this time or or whatever it is. And I'll say to somebody like, when can you have this done? And they, what's reasonable for you? Like I'm, you know, I'm not making like a fake deadline and I just trust it's going to get done and then it's not done. That's, I,
00:30:56
Speaker
I want to be able to trust people when they say they're going to do something, they're going to do it. I think that's very common amongst all sorts of execs. And the people who rise up and work well with them are the people who get things done oftentimes. ah It doesn't even have to always be the most important things to begin with. Just getting things done means you're going to get bigger, better, more interesting work and projects I think in the future. right I'm sure you'll have a good answer to this one. I'm a big reader and I like to read when I travel. Do you have any book recommendations for our audience? They could be legal related, they could be not legal related, they could be something you read this summer. Yeah, let us know.
00:31:38
Speaker
This is what I want from your readers. Go to the theater, a theater near you, go see a show. If you can't see a show, read plays. They're wonderful. I don't think people read enough plays. One, if you go to like a regular bookstore, there probably aren't that many unless it's Shakespeare, but there are so many amazing plays out there. And you can read, if you're gonna be sitting in the audience and see an hour and a half play, you can probably read the play in an hour.
00:32:05
Speaker
And it's quick, and it's dialogue, and it's so awesome. So I have some suggestions. Susan Lori Parks is amazing. Sarah Rule, I love her. Lucas Nate, Paula Vogel. They all have, they're all alive. They have plays, and replays. They're wonderful.
00:32:25
Speaker
And can people find these just online as PDFs or? I don't know. I think I just go to the library and you can check them out of the library. That's where I usually get my stuff, but you can go look around and find them and they're super skinny because they're short and you can read them really fast. You can carry on an airplane.
00:32:46
Speaker
So easy. I've, oh my God, they're so easy to carry on an airplane. I've left them on airplanes like several times, but I'm like, okay, somebody just got to read an amazing play. I'm like giving a gift to the world. I love that. That's a great answer. mean play And see plays like seriously, if you can't see my play, I totally understand the theater industry is really, really struggling. There's amazing theater all over the world. Go to, go to the theater.
00:33:12
Speaker
Great, great answer to that question. As we start to wrap up my my final question for you, my sort of traditional closing question for our guests is if you could look back on your days as a lawyer just getting started, something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then.
00:33:32
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, world but I think I would tell myself like you don't have to do everything yourself. That's great. Great advice. And probably something I could learn from too.
00:33:53
Speaker
yeah Sarah, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Abstract. And I hope at least a few of the folks who are out there who are in New York City or traveling through New York City, check out your play later in October. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And to all of our listeners, besides going to Sarah's play, I hope you enjoyed this episode and we hope to see you next time.