Mediator, Arbitrator, and Former Law Firm Managing Partner

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Jean Lawler shares her journey from law firm managing partner to mediator and arbitrator, and her experience leading the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel. She is a great example of how to design your legal career and stack skills to find new career directions. Tune in to this insightful conversation between Jean Lawler and podcast host MC Sungaila.

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Relevant episode links:

Jean Lawler, WillWorkForFood.news, Association of Attorney-Mediators, Southern California Mediation Association, Wild Swans, The American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Committee

About Jean Lawler:

 After more than three decades in private practice as a commercial litigation and insurance coverage attorney, trying cases, arguing motions, drafting contracts and opinion letters, settling cases, and providing legal and practical advice to clients, in 2017 Los Angeles based Jean Lawler left her law practice behind to devote 100% of her time to helping attorneys and parties resolve disputes and litigation at the pre-suit, trial and appellate levels through Mediation and Arbitration.

She regularly mediates a wide variety of insurance, business, and tort matters, as well as federal ADA accessibility lawsuits re architectural barriers and websites. CIPP/US (Certified Information Privacy Professional) certified, she also mediates matters involving data breaches, ransomware, and cyber losses. Jean has served on the Mediation panel for the United States District Court, Central District of California since 2017 and serves as an Arbitrator on the American Arbitration Association’s commercial and consumer panels.

As she would tell you if asked: “I absolutely love what I do!” Prior to making this move in a leap of faith, Jean was a Senior Partner and former Managing Partner of a California based litigation firm, with a diverse and international legal practice. She is a Past President of the FDCC (the first woman to so serve) and the Insuralex Global Insurance Lawyers Group (Chambers-Band 1) and is a Fellow and Founding Regent of the American College of Coverage Counsel.

A frequent speaker throughout her career, she hosts the “ROADS TO Resolution~Closure~Certainty” podcast and YouTube videos and is a co-moderator of the amazing weekly webinar series for the global legal community, raising money for foodbanks around the world, “Will Work for Food: The New Possibilities Hour”. See www.willworkforfood.news for more information. As she says, feed your mind while feeding the world.

A graduate of Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Jean has long been recognized as one of Southern California’s top lawyers and in 2022 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals. All of that said, however, she considers her most important roles in life to be that of a wife, mother of four and grandmother of eight, her husband and children being active participants in this journey.

I’m pleased to have join us on the show, Jean Lawler, who has done many things in her career and reveals the evolution that one can have within the practice of law and the law writ large. Welcome, Jean.

Thank you for the welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

You have such a varied career and important leadership career from servings managing partner in a large firm, serving as President of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel, and now with your own mediation practice. I want to dig into how you got there and the law initially, and then we can go through some of the different parts of your career. What drew you to the law? What made you think you might want to go to law school?

When I’m asked that question, I have to chuckle. I don’t have lawyers in my family, although one of my grandmother’s brothers was a lawyer. He was going to Georgetown Law at the time that suffragettes were marching in Washington DC. You can see that goes back quite a while. I tribute it probably more to when I was in college, people were thinking about law school or whatever. At the same time, my father, who was in the Air Force, was stationed over in Okinawa. It was during the Vietnam War. I was the oldest of five.

My mother went to go see him and spend some time over there. The car that I was driving, which was a hammy down for my grandparents broke down and went in for service. I’m driving home after I picked it up, and it overheated. It broke down and wouldn’t drive. I had to call and have them tow this car that service place didn’t think that they had done anything wrong. It mounted something major. I don’t remember all the details now. Needless to say, I figured out what led this to happen, and the cause and effect essentially. They ended up fixing the whole thing for free.

I think that was one of the things. In general times, I wanted a Doctorate degree. That might sound funny, and I didn’t want to go to med school. I wasn’t scientifically oriented, but law school seemed like a good fit. I was thrilled to go and become a lawyer. Even after graduating from law school, I remember telling my sister-in-law that I was glad to have that degree, to graduate and be done with law school too. Because the bar exam was coming up and she was focused on it, “Now, you go to the bar,” I go, “That’s okay. That’ll take care of itself.”

I remember that feeling being satisfied with having gone through that gauntlet of law school, but then knowing, “There’s one last thing to do of passing the bar after that.” There’s a very short celebration period from graduation day to studying for the bar. Law school is not for the faint-hearted.

If you have tenacity, perseverance and brains, you don’t have to be brilliant to graduate from law school. When the bar results came out, I’ll never forget that day. At that point, it wasn’t on computers. You would go down to the Daily Journals Office in Downtown LA and they would post them on their windows or you could call a phone number or you got the mail that day. I remember calling on the number, my husband was sitting on one side and I’m sitting in another chair. I call and they said, “You passed.” I hung up and called again to make sure that was the same.

It was meant to be soothing, but it never was. The judge I was clerking for at the time would say it in a way that’s supposed to make you feel good, which is none of my law clerks has ever failed. You don’t take that at the time as like, “I’ll pass.” It means, “I’m going to be the first one that fails. That’s great. It’s super disappointing. It’s a great choice for a law court judge.” No one ever did, but it wasn’t exactly the backup little camper comment that she thought it was. It would not be more stress and more sense of disappointment. How did you decide what kind of law you wanted to practice and where you wanted to practice it and what setting?

You sound like you assume that that’s a conscious decision.

I do assume it was a conscious decision, but it wasn’t.

Life happens. Part of it is it depends on where you get a job. Straight out of law school, I worked for a very small firm. Two lawyers in Century City, Selvin and Weiner. I don’t know if you’d remember them or not. They were doing the Carol Burnett case back then in the First Amendment. One of the lawyers from there knew this other lawyer. It’s who you know. It took life for so many things, whether it’s babysitters or our jobs.

I called him up and told him I passed the bar. He said, “You’ve got a job.” I had a one-year-old at that time. I did it on a part-time basis and that was great, then we moved to Oregon around a bit. Where I ended up at a Murchison & Cumming in LA. That was because we are moving back to LA. By that time, I had four children. My brother-in-law was a partner of the firm. I knew that they had a part-time program. They had a law and appellate attorney. We only have a 30-hour work week. I called and asked. He arranged an interview, which I’m sure was retrospect, pro forma, but at that time, you have to look sharp, do this and make an impression. I then came in and started working there and stayed for more than 30 years.

You have to look sharp and make an impression.

That’s remarkable in many ways because that isn’t very common, especially now people do many more lateral moves. I’m reminded of a comment that resonated with me. One of our previous judicial guests, who’s now on the LSPI court, mentioned this concept that she’d encountered in her career, which was that she felt that sometimes to move to the next level she would have to go somewhere else to do.

She said, “The imagination of the people in the firm, for women in particular, might be a little more short-sighted than it might be for men. They can see where you could be in a couple of years, but you could see yourself doing more, maybe 5 to 10 years out. The firm or management wouldn’t see that you’d have to go somewhere else that could have a broader vision.” It’s as much about you and your accomplishments, but also about the colleagues and the culture of the firm that saw that potential in you and said, “We want to keep Jean around. We can see where she can go.”

It’s a little hard I suppose not to see or do that if you’re bringing in business. If you got good client relationships that you’ve developed and you make your boss the partner you’re working for look good because of what you’re doing. They know they can count and rely on you. I would say to associates even as a goal when I’d be talking to them as a senior partner, “You should make yourself in all these different ways both your skillset, client development, client retention, relationship building, but then your skill as a lawyer, make yourself valuable that you could go anywhere because then that makes you hopefully invaluable to the particular firm.” 

They would see that and not want to lose you as things come up. It’s different for everybody. I don’t know what it was for me, but I focused on what I needed and wanted to do. I remember the managing partner at one point when I was still an associate sent out a questionnaire to all the attorneys and some consultants probably suggested this. One of the questions at the end was, “Where do you see yourself with the firm?” I wrote on their managing partner question mark. When I was retiring from the firm, I asked to see my personnel file. I was in there and I made a comment. You have to think big for yourself.

There’s so much in that. Ask out there and let people know that you’re interested in it, but also dreaming big enough for yourself and working towards it. Having ideas and dreams is good, but you have to take tangible action steps toward what would lead to what you wanted. That’s funny. Did you remember that you had written that down?

I did, and then later on, I was a managing partner. I’m the only woman to be a senior partner. There was an equity partner in the firm at the time I was there. I remember teasing the guys about that at one time and asking. I don’t remember exactly what the managing partner said, but it is a teasing comment. The other thing was I spent the first fifteen years of my career working on a part-time flexible-time schedule.

That was the other thing I want to dive into because that’s something people think, “If you do that, there’s trouble in paradise or something. It’s hard to stay in the practice and to become a managing partner.” Certainly, people have concerns about that. Maybe you have some advice about navigating something like that?

Certainly, foreign cultures differ. If you’re in a firm where there is some schedule, I would say most firms have it now for flexible or part-time work. I remember that as an associate, going into an annual salary review thing, being given my raise and being told that I put in more billable hours than some of the full-time attorneys, it’s like, “Something is wrong with this picture.”

I would say create your own way and your niché. If you are able to bring in work, do great legal work, build a team and manage a department, those are the things that will give you the freedom to pretty much design your future. If you do want to work a part-time flexible-time schedule, then if you’re doing those kinds of things, on the one hand. On the other hand, you could be doing something that you’re there for people, and you’re only there for those many hours. I went to the other extreme, where I made myself available. I tried cases, but then, I also chaperone the kindergarten trip to the zoo.

I’m using gender here because that was my experience, but it could be totally genderless. Bear with me on that one. The men would be taking clients out to play golf and they’d be gone for lunch for the rest of the day. Clients would come to town to visit some women and we go find things to do. A couple of times, I went with the Vice Presidents of their companies, and we went shopping and to lunch. Be creative with whatever it is.

The reality is as long as you get your work done, you do it well and juggle everything under the sun that you’re juggling when you’re able to. If you’re not, then there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s no fault with that either because the harder job is if you’ve got kids at home. This is why you’re doing it being the parent. I used to leave at 2:00 or 2:30 to go do the school carpool.

I remember somebody saying to me once in a while standing by the elevator, they were, “Now you’re done for the day.” I said, “No. Now I’m going to my hard job. Are you kidding? I have carpools to run, soccer, this and that and the other thing, and then I get back on and work to send out emails in the middle all night.” You make it what you want to make it and you can do it probably in your own firm if it’s a good fit, and you certainly would get that film early on.

Sometimes, people don’t always lay out what’s required. You ticked off the various points that I call required freedom and independence. I think you and I think about it the same way. Sometimes newer attorneys aren’t told that formula. It’s more like, “Work hard and do a good job for whatever partner you’re working for,” because that’s what’s needed at that point in time, but to become a partner and to have the freedom, you need to have clients.

You need to be known outside the hallways of your firm or anything you can do to demystify that whole process of getting a book of business and how you get your name out there. Certainly, bar leadership is one of those things as you were president of a major National Bar Association. That’s one way because you get to know a lot of people. What would you say about that in terms of client development?

I would say several things. It changes over time, first of all. As a new associate, you’re probably not going to have too much client contact directly. If you can make the attorney you’re working for look good and if that attorney hopefully should be open-minded enough to let the client know that they’ve got you on the case that helps builds it, then go along like that.

It’s many things. Attorneys who will take you along on client trips and introduce you, for example, to the clients. If you’re asked to go on that trip or something, go. It’s a big mistake not to do that. They’re fascinating. It’s wonderful. Now I know with Zoom and more of those trips are on Zoom, there’s nothing that is better than an in-person meeting and an opportunity as many Zoom meetings or phone calls.

Another thing is to remember that every time you talk to a client, it’s relationship-building. It is promo and marketing. If you’re calling to tell about the result from a court hearing, talk strategy, or talk about a new case that came in, and what they think, whatever it might be, that’s all client development. From internally in the firm, if you see that you’ve got a lawyer that you’re working for who won’t open up then maybe see about working for different lawyers at the firm. Use that, but then ultimately, go where the clients are. Join some of these professional associations and be nominated to professional associations, because a lot of them are by nomination. Get out there, write articles and give presentations. I was reminiscing with somebody about Y2k.

Every time you talk to a client, it’s relationship-building. It is promo and marketing.

You have to describe what might happen if the world might collapse, but there are some things you could do if this happens. Yet something that would be like a speaking circuit where you could go around, and maybe then another partner or attorney will take you to go see their clients. You give the presentation and they will want to do some of it too. I say professional associations are out there. One of the biggest game-changers for me in my career was not just even joining but being nominated for the FDCC and becoming a member of the FDCC. You go where other lawyers are the cream of the crop and it was these lawyers who had written the book, like Appleby and all kinds of people. It is like, “How am I part of this?”

You’re humbled, and I still am humbled, and then volunteering to speak. That is what I did. I spoke many times. I’ve written many articles. Now with Zoom and webinars and things, there’s no reason that anybody at any level couldn’t do that. Even on LinkedIn, you could get something going. Figure out something that is uniquely you. If you can’t figure out something that’s uniquely you, just do something. 

What you said in that last part is important because it’s important to do things that you enjoy doing or that are more natural to your talent. Some people would not want to write articles. They’re  like, “I’d never want to do that.” You don’t have to if that’s not something that you enjoy doing. That comes across as something that’s authentic and genuine to you, but these are the different ways of doing it. There are some people who would rather write articles and never want to speak on a panel. It's adjusting to what you feel comfortable with.

The ultimate goal is to develop relationships. At the same time, you’re developing your own skillset as a lawyer as you would have no credibility. As you’re developing these relationships, and even then friendships as some of them easily turn into. That’s wonderful when that happens. People like to hire people they like and trust. During the phases of a legal career, I remember hearing this one time, “You start and maybe work for other lawyers in the firm. You do good work there, then you build your practice.”

The ultimate level is to become a trusted adviser. The sooner you can become that trusted adviser to clients means that you have built that up with the marketing and all along the way, which then, in turn means that you’ve brought work into the firm and you would be considered very seriously to become a partner for small, probably non-equity and then an equity partner. Think of the firm as your business. “Here’s another one I would tell people.” Think like an owner, not like an employee.

Being the CEO of your own career in that regard, you have agency or the power to impact what it looks like in your career instead of waiting for somebody else to do something. You have a lot of power and agency that I don’t think people may not fully recognize, especially associate.

At all levels, the first-year associates, start thinking like an owner, not an employee, and not with someone else can do for you but what you can do for yourself in the firm. Don’t sacrifice yourself for the firm, either. Make sure you’re appreciated.

Having that kind of agency can also allow you to be a free agent if you want to be. If it’s not working, then it gives you that flexibility to say, “I’m not being valued in that way. I do bring value, and maybe I’ll investigate some other venues that might see that a little better.”

That’s how a career is built.

It’s important because many people think it’s like this mystical thing and no one ever breaks it down for them in that way. It’s important to think about that from the beginning and not being too pushy about things and like, “I am the partner already.” Having that sense of ownership in your own career and of the work for the client, all of that leads towards your vision. When you wrote down managing partner question mark, having an eye towards that, like having a vision beyond your 1st or 2nd year as an associate.

That’s not to say that it’s easy, or that there won’t be bumps in the road. There might not be days when you want to chuck it all and forget it. It’s like Tom Hanks in that movie about baseball. There’s no crying in baseball, but it’s stuff that makes it good. We think of that too, “Seize the day. Every day is a new day.” Even if the day before was pretty hard and you wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, you get out there you stand tall. You put your shoulders back and you head on into the courtroom, the office, or in Zoom.

My mother always says like, “Put your big girl pants on and go on back out there.” That’s so much of what’s come through in the different conversations in this show. Sometimes people see the end result, the success, what you’ve achieved and the impact you’ve had. People sometimes assume that that must mean that you never had any challenges, you never had any days like that and everything was all golden rainbows or something. The truth is it’s not the case at all. Everybody has challenges and it’s how you deal and move forward from them that will help decide whether you end there or you keep going.

There are always other options and roads you can take. Maybe branch off here or branch off there. On days when things didn’t very happy to hear or whatever it was, you’re driving home, you start dreaming and thinking about, “What else could I do?” “Think about it realistically. Do you want to start your own office? Let’s see now what could go into that, and what’s involved in this in that and the times when I’d have lawyers come to talk to me about things.”

Ultimately, we’re doing lots of old faces here. The grass is not always greener on the other side, and you know maybe where the roots are with your own current place. You know that everybody doesn’t get along 100% of the time anyway. You go with the flow. Always would bring back the focus to my own practice, the people that were working on my team, buidling my team, clients and all that whenever I had things like that.

It can be hard to do when it’s happening, but sometimes you’re like, “Things I have control over. Things I don’t have control over.” The things you don’t have control over might be going completely sideways, “Push that aside. What can I have an impact on? What do I have some control over to maybe add some positivity to this day?” That’s what you can do because there are some things that they are what they are. Tell me about the transition to mediation, how that came about and what interested you in doing that.

Being in practice handling litigation for many years, I was always in mediation to see with my cases and negotiating settlements. In the beginning, you didn’t go to mediation. It wasn’t a thing. I got good at settling cases. My husband used to tease me about that. He goes, “Pick up the phone. Let’s figure this out, try and get this case settled.”

I enjoyed that part of it because I could be very practical in the sense of, “What is it that the other party is asking for? What’s the crux of this? How can I get some of this? Maybe I needed a few orders for the court summary judgment motion first and summary verification on some issues, but let’s get this situated. If we can’t sell it right upfront then let’s get it in a posture where we can try the case if we have to. We don’t indicate certainly that we’re afraid to try the case because we aren’t but most cases settle. Every case is going to have settlement discussions. To whatever point, let’s get it in a good position for that as well.”

I get a lot of that as an appellate lawyer. Most people say, “There’s no chance that you would potentially discuss settlement. Once you have a judgment, verdict or something, and you’re going on appeal, that’s no chance of that.” In fact, that’s not true at all because, for the same reason that you mentioned, there can be different junctures in the process that cause people to reevaluate things. Maybe they see your opening brief. Maybe they look at the verdict or the ruling, and they realize there are some vulnerabilities there and they should come to the table and talk about it. There are a lot of still opportunities in turning points where new facts and new developments in the litigation might cause people to reevaluate.

Even at the appellate level, because I have mediated a number of appellate bases including for the Second Appellate District, and a couple of theirs, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Decisions get overturned. Not all the time, but they do get overturned, or you might have to go back and try something else. Maybe you couldn’t settle for a reasonable number before based on whatever version of reasons you’re talking about. After a win at the trial court for one side or the other, then you know what you’ve been through. You don’t want to go through it again.

The other side is the one who was going to pay is more inclined to make a payment or not either. Maybe they’re the ones that won the ones who would make payments and there’s going to be a settlement with a waiver of an appeal. There are different things at all levels. I love settling cases, and it makes me happy. I love what I’m doing. I’m very happy these days. Not always of course, but for many years, even when I was practicing law. I expected that I would go into mediation at some point. At one point, I tried to build it within the firm. I went and took Pepperdine’s mediating litigated case all the way back in 2007.

I’m thinking that I would be able to build that, but there were too many conflicts. You couldn’t do it within the firm at least in California. I know in other places in the country where you can like Los Angeles anyway. Maybe other places, small towns or something but California can. Others can, but I couldn’t so I decided that I was ready to go and wanted to step out and start building that practice. As I said to my partners when I told them that I was going to retire, even earlier than I probably would have expected because I wasn’t 65 yet, that was always like the magic number. Life is too short. This is something I want to do. I know it takes time to build a practice. I’d rather get out now and build the practice rather than come out at 65 or 66 starting again.

Even not taking the leap to that, it wasn’t a total leap because you had started developing and seeing if you could develop it more within the framework of the firm and then realizing, “That’s not going to work,” which is often the case. It can be challenging with conflicts, especially in larger firms.

I’m very entrepreneurial. Maybe you haven’t guessed that already. It doesn’t scare me. In the middle of the night, it sometimes does, but not normally does it ever scare me to start a business, think about opportunities or try something new, whether it was within the confines of my practice or putting myself out there to develop a practice area.

That gets back to knowing yourself, your strengths, and what you enjoy doing. There’s still a certain amount of risk and a tiny bit of fear but you know your comfort level with doing that kind of thing. Somebody else might not have the same entrepreneurial mindset. It’s funny that you said that you’re entrepreneurial. Everybody thinks about that in a particular setting like, “That means you’re the founder of your own startup or something like that,” which is true. That’s one way, but you could be entrepreneurial within a firm in your own practice area with your clients like how you think about what you do and how you develop that practice and the strategy you have for doing that. 

This goes back to the what’s up and coming. We have privacy right now, the AI things, there was a blockchain and all this tech stuff. There are people who are making whole careers out of this now, at least for this phase of their lives. 

There’ll be a new phase with a new development.

The other thing is you can be within your firm. If you have an interest in something, develop a bit of an expert in it. You don’t have to be a massive perfectionist expert, but enough so that you can provide advice or look more into it.

If you have an interest in something, develop a bit of expertise in it. It doesn't have to be a massive perfectionist expertise, but enough so that you can provide advice or look more into it.

You become the go-to person for that.

That’s what I did when I think about it for insurance coverage because I was at the firm for maybe a year or so. I went to Murchison as a six-year lawyer. At that point, I was a seven-year lawyer and the attorney who was doing the insurance work at that time was leaving and going to another firm. I happened to be walking down the hall and one of the partners, my brother-in-law, said, “So-and-so is leaving, would you want to do coverage work?” I said something like, “What’s that? What do you mean by coverage or insurance work?” I remember asking him, “If I don’t like it, can I go back then to regular liability types?” He remembers me asking, “Will it make me more valuable to the firm?” I don’t doubt that I said that.

It must come out of my mouth because he doesn’t lie. Lo and behold, I began to read insurance policies. We subscribe to the Daily Journal. I would read all those Daily Journal cases. I clipped out, at that point, of the paper the insurance cases and put them in a notebook based on what the issues were. I had nice little tabs, dividers and everything.

I bound some of these cases that were interesting so I send somebody down to the courthouse to make copies of some of the pleadings that had been filed and then develop like a brief bank so I could learn. I did this under him for about a year and drafted opinions and all. It was under him and his name on it, so he would do the final thing before he signed it if he didn’t agree. He started introducing me to clients, and move files over, took it and ran with it, and then built the insurance practice at the firm. He hired more lawyers. If you build it, they will come. We built it and they did. That’s exactly what you were talking about.

I love the notebook and the brief bank part. Appellate lawyers are famous for that. We have our years of filings and all of that stuff. It’s such a cool idea for you to think about that looking at the filings of others in different cases that may have had good results to see how it works in practice. Reading the treatise and the law is one thing, but then seeing how people are using that and what the strategy is or the tactics are is a whole other thing. It’s smart of you to think about it. 

Getting the court’s opinions and motions had been filed. Remember, at one point, subscribing to Mealeys, but now it’s Law360 to see what comes out and how the court applies the law.

It’s self-taught in that way, but thinking about it in a practical way instead of a pure law school class way which would be much more theoretical.

I did go to a couple of classes.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone describe how they’ve built their practice or their niché before. You see it in some people, especially in newly developing areas, where there are no experts because no one is doing it yet. It’s new to everyone. If you have a little bit more experience on someone else, you can become an expert very quickly.

That’s an example that nowadays, it’s with Blockchain, but it’s all the NFTs and all this stuff. Justin Whales spoke on Will Work For Food-The New Possibilities. He is interested in this same kind of thing. He was the one person interested. He’s gone on and done other things. He has taken it and moved it into other things, but he’s a good example of up-and-coming. I’ve always thought of these emerging areas of the law because they’re always there.

You got to get in ideally in the beginning or before it peaks because if you’re on the downhill side, then you’re doing the work. If you’re on the uphill side of it, the beginning to the middle part of it while it’s developing, then you have a hand in developing that law. Whether you’re consciously doing it or not, that is what you are doing. There are no answers there at that point or the state Supreme Court, whoever hasn’t ruled yet. If you’ve got different appellate divisions ruling differently contrary to each other on the same issue, keep going because that’s going to reach the supreme and see what happens. That ten-year cycle is what I always figured whether it was the environmental stuff or some of the insurance things, or a lot of the employment. Give or take ten years.

When you say ten-year cycle, what do you mean? There’s a new area like that every 10 years, or it takes 10 years for one of those areas to mature.

In ten years for an area to mature, new areas are coming along rapidly now.

That’s right on the maturity arc for a particular area, but it feels like in new areas, that cycle is much more accelerated.

I find it exciting. All this privacy stuff, the tech, computer, and the cyber, it’s a different world than you and I are started in. Who knows where it’ll take us?

It’s definitely in the very nascent stages of some of the technologies. it’d be interesting.

Think about this with my ten-year thing. It was back in 2015 for this group that I was involved with, InsurX. It was a global insurance group and the firm was a member. In 2015, we hosted a group from around the world. It was an international group here in Los Angeles. The topic that I chose that we had for the program was all about the internet of things, technology, and all that. That was in 2015. We’re now in 2023. Look at all this stuff we’re talking about with autonomous vehicles. All this stuff has come to pass. It’s not where it’s going to be in the future, but it’s not quite ten years. A lot of that now is in litigation. That was very cutting-edge back then.

When you said 2015, I was thinking to myself, “That was very early for that kind of discussion.”

We first tested emails out to go outside of the office because we did work for insurance companies and self-insured entities, but this particular one was an insurance company Vice President. This was 1994. I was at an FDCC meeting. It was these insurance executives. The vice president claims. He was into tech and he had the fastest new modem around that you could get. He was eager to try this out. We arranged that we would email things to him to his email address, and then he would forward them to the particular claims representative. That was how that insurance company and our firm at that time first started doing emails outside of our individual offices and the rest is history.

That talks about accelerated that grew from there.

Those are the same kinds of things that are happening now with our technology. 

You mentioned the podcast that you work on Will Work For Food-The New Possibilities. How that came about, your collaboration, and putting that together? What kind of role has that played in your development, relationships, and work?

It’s a labor of love and it’s not a marketing type of thing. In my mind, it never has been. Certainly, there’s more visibility because we’re reaching out once a week on this thing. Natalie Armstrong-Motin, who’s married to a Frenchman living in Normandy, France. I was working with her on my marketing to help build a practice that had been for over a year. She developed this Will Work For Food, her brainchild in the spring of 2020 with the pandemic. I remember listening to the first ones. It was Natalie and somebody else. They were giving marketing for mediators or arbitrators seminars and then asking you to contribute money to a food bank, then it developed. Jeff Kichaven joined the team with Natalie. They started every Thursday morning at 8:00 Pacific Time.

It became Will Work For Food-The New Possibilities. It was for January 2021. Natalie asked me if I would come on board as a co-mediator with Jeff, so I did. I was honored and thrilled to be asked between me and a woman who is in Canada. She is a lawyer and was in school for a Master’s or Doctorate for ADR work in that field. She is amazing. She joined the team. The four of us would come along and take care of the scheduling and more in the background. Finding speakers and getting them involved, but ultimately, the global legal community at one of its finest moments that it has. Lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, court clerks, anybody connected to the law in any way, our people who come to this, their mailing list has over 40,000 people on it.

What it is is there’s a presentation every week. People are asked to donate either to the food bank the speaker suggests or the food bank of their choice. We don’t handle any money so the people would tell us how much they donated. We can keep it with the running total. People don’t always tell us how much they’ve donated. As the donations that we know, it was over $360,000.

I can see $1 million in the offing. It grows exponentially. It’s like a snowball. It keeps gathering steam. It’s wonderful because that $360,000, the LA Regional Food Bank for every dollar, they say they get 25 meals is my understanding. Others maybe get 10 meals per $1 depending on the buying ability of how much they would buy. If we’re talking $360,000, that’s at least 4 million or 5 million meals around the world. It’s thrilling. I would highly encourage everyone to take a look. You can check it out at WillWorkForFood.news. You were kind to have been one of the speakers as well early on.

We raised a good amount of money for Sir Bruno Serato’s Caterina’s Club, which is an amazing thing that Sir Bruno has been doing for years of serving, essentially homeless, but those kids living in motels with a good meal every day.

Thank you for that.

I’m glad to be a small part of it, but I can’t believe how far you guys have come in that time. The last time I checked on it, it was over $150,000 or something, but you’ve gone beyond that. That’s exciting. It’s exciting to think of that collective group coming together and exemplifying what difference you can make. Sometimes people don’t think, “It’s such a big problem and issue. I don’t know if we can make a difference.” By pooling all the resources and fostering that community through the podcast, you’ve been able to have a real impact in the real world, and that’s pretty exciting.

It’s another good example of how one person can make a difference or you can make a difference in your own life if you have something you want to do. Natalie started as a real grassroots effort. Nobody gets paid anything. We’re paying for Zoom and we are donating our time. Now people are getting certificates for having attended CLE. There’s a lot that is going on. It’s authenticated all the time.

There has been a lot of interesting thought leadership in a range of areas too. The substance is good as well as the good works that the podcast is allowing to happen to you.

“Feed your mind while feeding the world.” That’s the little line I came up with.

You have a knack for marketing and branding. That’s very good. That’s another example of your saying, “I have this entrepreneurial spirit,” and what you bring to the project that was Natalie’s initial brainchild. Sometimes people think you can be entrepreneurial for the community or the public good. You can use those same skills to pay it forward to others. I want to make sure we talked about that because you mentioned it, and I didn’t know if folks might know what that was. Check it out. There’s a very interesting range of guests on that program.

What kind of advice would you give to someone who might want to go into mediation or consider that as an evolution of their career? Are there particular things that you would recommend to check out or try to investigate to make sure that they might think mediation sounds good, but maybe they wouldn’t enjoy it? How do they find out whether that’s something they would enjoy?

To find out, you have to do it. Reach out to some mediators and ask if you can shadow them, especially with Zoom. It’s easy. I had a number of different folks shadow me, not even from just California, but from prep to a retired judge from Texas.

That’s a good recommendation because the geography is unbound with the Zoom meeting.

I would be happy if I had many people shadow me. I’d be happy to do that for the readers and think about it. It’s not to say that my style would be your style or someone else’s style. You have to find your own style and what it is.

What about training? You mentioned you had some formal training and some volunteer mediation experience for the Court of Appeal. For example, you mentioned Second Appellate District. What about getting out there and getting training and experience?

To get started, you need to take a training course. Pepperdine is fantastic. We’re West Coast. It’s always either number 1 or 2 with Harvard or whoever does those ratings. Every state has its training programs. It seems like most states do anyway. It’s generally a 40 or 42-hour class you need to take. I would do that for sure. You’ve got that down.

You don’t have to be an attorney to be a mediator. There’s the Association of Attorney-Mediators. It’s based out of Texas. I did all this research on mediator associations because I’m used to professional associations. Which ones would be good for the business as I was trying to develop it? That’s what you’re doing.

You don’t have to be an attorney to be a mediator.

You’re creating a business and building it. Think that way. Think like, “I’m building a business,” and you do your financial things and this and that. If you’re looking for malpractice insurance, which I couldn’t find and it was very expensive because it’s more geared to the lawyers, join the Association of Attorney-Mediators. It’s $275 per year. You get your malpractice insurance as part of that and an enclosed site for mediators and arbitrators. If you join it for no other reason than the insurance, it’s a fantastic deal.

Most people need to figure out that they will be independent mediators and not be on a panel right off the bat. If you’re a judge, you can go straight onto a panel. If you’re not a judge, then some people with real special skillsets or commercial panel might be looking for, they might bring you on. Ultimately, the least I was told was they’re looking for a way for you to have a book of business. In fact, what I was told, and this is paraphrasing, “We’re not here to help you build your business or build your practice. We’re here to help take you to the next level once you build it.”

That’s what I always did. I went to these places for my mediations. I go there immediately. It’s wonderful being independent. There are sorts of things. Even Southern California Mediation Association has some good training. You want to go where your clients are, not just because there are other mediators, but for resources. The American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Committee is worth the price of poker or admission as a mediator. 

The ABA thing and the Association of Attorney-Mediators for nothing else in your insurance, and then maybe whatever your local group might be. Look at what your own skillset is. You’re not going to necessarily be mediating cases that you did when you were in practice. You might think. I certainly thought that, but that’s not necessarily the bulk of my practice. Do real estate and all kinds of things. It’s fascinating.

As a friend advised me to apply to the Federal Court, US Central District here in LA, to be on that mediation panel. I did and I was accepted. That’s wonderful. You’re doing this free for three hours and the preparations. You don’t get paid for any of it, but you get a great experience. You do get some exposure.

Depending on how you view things, you aren’t doing a good deed for the court anyway, although there are some people that think what you should get paid. That’s an age-old little debate. The Federal Court even versus the state court, because the Federal Court has maybe a little higher end more exposure cases, but in any court. Get some experience, get your website in order, and get on LinkedIn. Do your social media marketing, and I’m now a convert. I have made many connections there and work has come from it, relationships, and friendships.

I feel like the pandemic was the turning point for a lot of attorneys, at least in terms of that. You could engage and meet with people online on LinkedIn, in particular, during the pandemic. It turned a lot more people towards recognizing the value of that and being able to connect with people. My experience has been I’ve met people from all over the world through that who I’d never would have met otherwise.

Your clients will ultimately be the lawyers. They will certainly be the clients. They are the lawyers. Sometimes the claims representatives have, they’ll say, “I want to use this one or please put this person on your list or whatever,” which is wonderful to hear. 

That’s an important point. When you’re saying clients, that can differ throughout your career about where that comes. The reality of how work filters through and who makes the decisions.

At least two lawyers have been out there two parties more and the clients will agree to you.

I think in any specialty, there has to be a convergence. I always think of it as you need to be on the shortlist of all the people involved in that decision-making process. If not, number one for all of them, at least on that shortlist. That’s how you end up getting selected because as you said, in this case, the mediators, both sides, parties, or lawyers have to agree, then the client or claims representative also might be involved. In all those people, there needs to be some convergence. How do you meet and become known by that entire group? That boils down to how to think about relationships and client development in a couple of sentences.

It’s pretty much what we talked about before. How the lawyers meet your interests and think of the professional associations you belong to when you’re in practice. Stay involved and give presentations. Be present, maintain those relationships, and let them know what you’re doing because if they don’t know, then they can’t hire you either. 

They got to keep them up to date. This has been the best practice session on thinking about your career and your career trajectory. Also, it’s such an important aspect of it, which is building your practice, both through client relationships and what the next interesting part of your practice might be. I appreciate your sharing all of that. That’s a valuable way of thinking. Because you can state it succinctly, it’s clearly something that you know well and have internalized. They do it, but not many people think about what they’re doing and are able to share that with others. I hope people realize how valuable this is, especially the newer lawyers. 

I would love to follow them on their roads to success, the roads of their life, or the paths that they travel. There are many paths we can all travel. 

You exemplify that in your career and the evolution of how that happens, how you find the next stage and the next adventure. It’s been great and helpful. Thank you so much for sitting down, having this discussion, and sharing all of those tips. I think of them as frameworks to apply in decision points in your career as well. It’s amazing. Usually, I ask a few lightning-round questions as we close. My first question is, which talent would you most like to have, but don’t?

The self-discipline to get up in the morning and get back in the swimming pool and swim my laps, which I used to do religiously for many years, and then gave it up. I need to get back in the pool. 

Once you get going, it’s hard. They say, “Thirty days to build a habit.” You got to do that for 30 days.

It’s not a talent, but it’s a discipline. 

Who are some of your favorite writers? 

I must admit I love John Grisham’s books. One of my favorite books that I would still tell people about if they ask was Wild Swans. It was written by a woman who wrote about her family, the woman in her family, her mother or grandmother, maybe it goes back to another generation. It’s been years since I read this book. They were in China. The first generation was the grandmother was a concubine to a warlord then. You had Japan coming in and communism. This writer was in university when Nixon came.

It sounds like an interesting history. 

World War II books I read too.

Who is your hero in real life? 

That one is easy because I would look at a hero as someone who would save you from a burning building if necessary. Real life is day-to-day stuff. That’s my husband. He’s wonderful and my inspiration all these years. 

That’s a good choice. He’d be glad to know that. What in life do you feel most grateful for? 

My family. Definitely, on a personal level and on a broader level branching out a bit. I am very grateful that I became an attorney. I’m grateful for those people along the way, whether I recognized them at the time or not, or they even knew it at the time or not. They let me stand on their shoulders or gave me advice and suggestions or told me I needed to do something different than what I was doing. I’m very grateful for the FDCC. That was a life changer for my whole family as well as for myself and the opportunity to have been a president of that, of all things, to see the doors that it opened. I feel like I have been able to give back. I made fantastic friends. Family, friends and opportunities, I’m grateful for it all. 

I know you have that important or pivotal in your participation in FDCC. From my experience, it is very small at this point. Everybody is not only very good at what they do. They’re also very open and, and giving to others in the organization, which is a nice feeling to have. 

I always came back from those meetings and I’d go to plenty of other organizational meetings too. For some reason, those meetings would come back and I would feel re-energized. I believe that it made me a better lawyer and person. The friendships that we made with people in that organization, we still have them. We’ve traveled the world with some friends that we’ve made there. You meet people that you would lead parallel lives. You may live in different places. If you lived in the same town, you’d be good friends, but your best friend may live halfway across the country because you’ve got a lot in common. 

The friendships we made with people [in the FDCC], we still have them.

The highest possibility of what we hope is our experience with a lot of the associations we’re involved with.

That comes back to the old adage that you get what you give or you get as much as you put into something. You get out of something, what you put into it that would be. The other piece of advice and the lessons learned if you’re going to become a member of something. It’s not for the resume, but it’s to get involved and be active in some form or fashion. 

Given the choice of anyone in the world, alive or not, who would you invite to a dinner party? 

There were a lot of possibilities there. You could have some interesting politicians. Condoleezza Rice would be an interesting person to have at the dinner table, I would think. President Zelenskyy would be a fascinating person. Bruce Springsteen wouldn’t be bad. Oprah Winfrey has been around and talked to gazillion people. She could probably carry on a good conversation at the dinner table. 

One person would be an interesting choice, but sometimes it’s the eclectic combination of the potential guest that is a whole other level. 

I can see Condoleezza and Bruce talking. Springsteen having an interesting one.

When you mentioned all of them, I was like, “That would be a quite big group.” I like your comment about Oprah, and through her, because she’s interviewed many people, we would also get to ask questions or learn about others that she’s interviewed.

She’s an amazing person in and of herself and all that she’s accomplished. 

Last question. What is your motto if you have one? 

I have probably several, but I have one in particular. I’m probably known for it by people who’ve worked with me on Carpe Diem. It says, “Carpe Diem. Seize the day.” This is a greeting card that I saw somewhere and I put it in one of those little glass frames. If you don’t seize one day, there’s always another.

I like that too because it’s kind of a fresh thing. You can re-up that every morning. Thank you so much for chatting with me and sharing all of these insights, the turns of your career, and all of the amazing things you’ve accomplished in it. I appreciate you are doing this. 

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a delight. Thank you for what you’re doing here. I think this is a fantastic project. There is much that can be learned from reading these blogs. You’re making a wonderful documentary for future generations. 

Thank you so much, Jean.