Episode 144: Robyn Crowther
Regional Managing Partner for California at Steptoe & Johnson
00:50:48
Subscribe and listen on…
Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | PocketCasts | iHeartRadio | Player.FM Podcasts
Watch Full Interview
Show Notes
Robyn Crowther, the Regional Managing Partner for California at Steptoe & Johnson, sits down with host M.C. Sungaila to share her path to leadership in a large law firm, her earlier experience at a pathbreaking boutique litigation firm, and her work as a trial lawyer and community and bar leader which has led to her being repeatedly named by the Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California.
Relevant episode links:
Steptoe & Johnson, Ann Kappler – Past Episode, Lily and the Octopus, ARRAY Alliance
About Robyn Crowther:
Robyn Crowther
Named to the Los Angeles Daily Journal's list of Top Women Lawyers in 13 out of the last 14 years, Robyn is a trial lawyer focusing on commercial disputes. She also serves as managing partner of Steptoe's LA office.
Robyn represents individuals, multinational corporations, municipalities, and small businesses. She has experience in provisional and preliminary remedies, pleading attacks, and motions for summary adjudication and summary judgment. Clients rely on her strategic and trial skills across a variety of practice areas when their matters call for a first-chair trial lawyer who uses all of the litigation tools to pursue favorable resolutions.
Her matters have included professional negligence disputes, including the defense of an AmLaw 50 law firm in several different disputes. Robyn's client was granted summary judgment in three such cases and she defended those orders on appeal. Robyn has also represented plaintiffs asserting professional negligence claims against attorneys and accountants from time to time, and her well-rounded understanding of the landscape of such claims helps her develop creative and effective approaches to those cases.
Robyn also has particular experience in employee mobility and trade-secret matters, copyright enforcement and contractual disputes. Her cases have involved civil trials and arbitration before various tribunals, including JAMS, AAA, FINRA and various state and federal courts. In the financial services industry, Robyn regularly represents Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. in disputes with registered investment advisors about a variety of contractual and regulatory matters.
She has also successfully litigated intellectual property disputes. For example, in 2016, Robyn won summary judgment for the former owners of Nylon magazine against claims that they had wrongfully sold assets to a third party. Robyn also obtained preliminary injunctions on behalf of a boutique handbag manufacturer against knockoffs offered by a competitor. In 2013, she successfully defended Old Navy in a trademark infringement trial where the plaintiff sought over $1 billion in damages. She also represented Obey Clothing, an exclusive licensee of artist Shepard Fairey, in a copyright infringement case brought by the Associated Press relating to his "Hope" poster created for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential run.
Robyn clerked for the Hon. Gary L. Taylor in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Transcript
In this episode, I’m so pleased to have a longtime friend and a bar colleague, Robyn Crowther, who is the Regional Managing Partner for California for Steptoe & Johnson. Welcome, Robyn.
Thanks, MC. I’m so excited to be here.
I’m so glad to have you and to talk about your new role and your path to leadership in a large law firm, which is still relatively rare for women, and your various paths in different size law firms too. You have experience in a boutique firm also. That might be something that folks are interested in. First, I wanted to ask how you decided to become a lawyer. What was it that made you want to go to law school?
It always makes me sound like a nerd when I answer this question, but I remember having a discussion with my mom when I was eight years old and I had asked her about something that she said was too expensive. I said, “How can I have a job when I’m grown up so that I can make a lot of money?” She said, “You could be a doctor or a lawyer.” We talked about how doctors had to go to school for 12 years, but lawyers only had to go to school for 3, so I decided that was a more efficient path to whatever it was I was looking for.
The funny thing is with the exception of a six-month period in college, I never wanted to do anything else. I went from there to watching shows about lawyers to participating in civics classes, debates, and legislative-related activities in junior high, and then to joining the debate team and doing speech and debate in high school and college. I was always on the path. I’ve taken a number of those personality tests and lawyer was always something that came up and was consistent with the things I like to do. I moved the focus from how I make a lot of money to the public speaking part. That was the first part that appealed to me.
I was thinking about that. That’s so interesting because I know you were involved and quite good at debate. I was thinking, “The idea to become a lawyer must have come from debate,” but you’re saying that preceded that and it’s practical. I like the pragmatic aspect to it. That’s how I often say, “My original career aspiration was to be a poet and then I had an idea that perhaps I might starve in a garret and I should consider something where maybe I could do something like that, but also keep a roof over my head, in a predictable way. I relate to that.
It’s interesting sometimes too, how your intuition where you’re like, “That sounds good like a good fit for various practical reasons, but also it’s something that I’m attracted to.” When you go and do all the personality tests that confirm that you’re right, but you chose to follow your instinct about what appealed to you.
It’s what I like to do. I feel very fortunate that as I understood more about the job, it appealed more to things that I like to do. I am generally a fairly positive and happy person and I can usually find a way to enjoy most things. I don’t know that it’s the only job that I would’ve enjoyed and I don’t know why I didn’t think about working on the Muppet show, which probably would’ve been even more fun. It is nice to like what you do and not struggle against it.
Through debate and things like that, when you were thinking lawyer, were you thinking litigator or trial lawyer that you would end up doing?
It’s always litigator. I imagine myself in front of the Supreme Court or otherwise advocating for those who needed the representation the most. I worked for a couple of years in a transactional practice, which confirmed that my interest lay in the advocacy piece.
There’s something good from that too being open to trying something else and then saying, “I was right. That’s not where I get the full enjoyment.”
Also, add value. Later in my career, I started thinking about that, but when you look at things, “What do I do where I have skills that are above the average bear?” It helps to pursue those.
When I decided to become an appellate lawyer, that was what I was thinking. I was like, “I have an instinct for it, but I could train that in a way that would be the most of service.” It’s the highest and best use. Tell me about after law school. Did you decide to go to private practice straight out of school?
I worked as a paralegal for two years between undergrad and law school then I went to law school at Georgetown. I was paying for it myself so I had giant student loans. I also was funneled through the career services path of on-campus interviews. That only led to a big law. When I summered at a firm, I ran into an amazing woman partner who told me, “You must clerk.” This was when I was coming out of law school. By the second-year summer, all of the clerkships were almost all done.
Most of those interviews happened in the fall, but I was lucky that a judge that she highly recommended, Gary Taylor in Orange County hired out of the third year. I ended up deciding to take that job. I’m grateful every single day for that advice. Sometimes that will always be the best job that I ever had. I loved it.
While I was clerking, I had every intention of going and joining Gibson Dunn, but happened to have the combination of a small environment where you had access to the person who knew what they were doing all of the time. That was super appealing. The firm that I later joined appeared in front of us and they were great lawyers with excellent clients, and all of a sudden there was this option that I had never thought about before.
Two things, first of all, Judge Taylor was an amazing judge. That was an amazing clerkship. I’m a big proponent of clerkships too. It’s such a great experience. Also, you mentioned you were able to see people in action. Being in that role, you get to see how the submissions are perceived by the court and what good advocacy looks like and you never get that opportunity again in the same way. It’s such a great learning experience. Also, I was able to see people in action who I ended up later working with to know that they were good.
It’s interesting that there are so many variations on good. That’s something I learned over time too you can pick and choose what’s effective that you observe and what you can execute. There are some styles that are effective for some people that don’t work for me. You’re right, it’s a unique experience that I feel so grateful to have had.
In practicing law, you can always pick and choose what's effective and what you can execute.
Also, to be true to yourself as you were saying. I can admire some things that other people do that work for them, but it wouldn’t be authentic for you or be a good fit for your personality. You can admire it but not adopt it. You’re like, “That’s great, but I’m a different character. Something else would work for me.”
I say that to younger lawyers. There are often 100 right ways to do things, but the thing that’s going to work best for you is the one that feels right to you because you’ll be in the position to deal better with the things that come up that are either expected or unexpected. It’ll be more natural. Take what you see and see why it works, and then figure out how to make that your own voice and presentation.
You get that by having the opportunity to see all the different options.
Agreed.
Also, the point you made about being open to other opportunities is certainly sometimes a track or a sense that there’s only one way to go when you’re graduating from law school. The path to success is X, Y, and Z. There are a lot of other letters in the alphabet and a lot of other ways to go. You can’t see all of those opportunities until you’re out, but the credit to you for being open to that. You can have an undecided path, but sometimes you got to be open and recognize an opportunity.
I’ve had a great summer at Gibson Dunn. I was looking forward to rejoining them. As I said, it was a partner there who had recommended me for the clerkship and I felt indebted to her. Our firm or what became my firm was recruiting by sending letters to law clerks. When I got their letter, I sat on it for a couple of weeks because I felt guilty about even pursuing it and ended up saying, “This is a place where I’m not going to have the option of joining them all that many times because they’re small. Let’s have the conversation.” It ended up being a long and tortured process for me to join them. When I did, it was the right time. The stars aligned and it was 100% the right move. Although, going from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to a law firm that was then eight lawyers was not a safe choice.
I forgot it was eight when you started.
It was amazing.
That’s very different, but then also you can have such a different role in that setting, not just the work, but in the culture and the framing of the firm itself.
When I decided to go, I had been working at Gibson for slightly less than a year. I had some small cases where I got to have a cool role. I was working on some cool cases where my role wasn’t so cool. I was several layers below the cool part. Looking then at the people who had made partner, their lives were the hardest. They were so stressed, working so hard, and had so many demands. If that was the brass ring, I wasn’t sure it was for me.
At the same time, I was pregnant with my first child and thinking, “Am I going to be able to do the cool stuff and be the parent that I’m hoping to be in this environment?” What I ended up concluding was that at a smaller firm, while the cases might be smaller and maybe not always on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the things that I would do, learn, and the way that I would contribute would be more fulfilling. This was a firm that put an emphasis on life outside of the office. A lot of that means family, but they also had political things or community things that they did, and it wasn’t all work all the time.
Your firm and only a handful of other firms like the Huffstetler firm are of that genre in Southern California where there was a high level of practice, deep commitment to the community in a number of different ways, and also family. It’s a special combination.
It was. I give huge credit to the people who founded that firm Chris Caldwell, Mike Leslie, Mary Newcombe, and the late George Hedges. They were leaving big law too and took a risk by the time I came along. They were several years into it. Although it still felt like a huge risk to me, it was nothing like the risk that they had taken when they were painting their own furniture in order to make it all work.
There are variations of risk. Get to the point of where you are now in terms of managing the region of a large firm. It seems to me that this happens in a lot of the stories that people have shared, which is you can see all the pieces coming together to make complete sense of where you are now. It seems to me your experience in Caldwell has given you a lot of tools in your tool chest to be a regional managing partner of a large firm too.
That’s true. We had a short partnership track, so I became a partner when I was about six years out of law school. In the early part of my tenure as a partner, I transitioned from having a single managing partner to a management committee, which I joined. It was a three-person management committee and I was on that committee until the day that we ended up merging the firm into a different firm. I learned so much about the business of being in private practice, which is, “Who teaches you that?”
That’s what I’m saying about being part of that. If you had been part of a larger firm the whole time, you wouldn’t have that more on-the-ground experience.
It’s certainly not the overview. There are lots of leadership roles, but they’re necessarily narrower. I understood how the finances worked, and how the billing software was important in document management and retention. When I started, my primary role was in people management from the staff to the lawyers. I did a lot of recruiting on that. I found that I got a lot of satisfaction out of facilitating success for other people. I don’t say that altruistically. It feels good when you solve a problem for someone and you see them succeed and you’re like, “I’m part of that. I’m invested in that. We are in fact partners in that success,” and I enjoyed that. I also like the spotlight for myself, but this facilitation role was something that I didn’t realize I would enjoy before I did it.
It feels good when you solve a problem for someone and see them succeed, knowing you were a part of that.
Sheila Murphy who was an in-house at a large company and is now doing executive coaching talks about how good talent management and enhancement are something that she didn’t think she would enjoy in-house, but she enjoyed that. Now, that’s what she’s doing in her executive coaching role. Again, being open to things and saying, “I’ll take on that,” and then realizing, “There are things about this that I enjoy and I have a knack for.”
Also, mistakes that you make along the way, things that you learn, watch other people do, and selecting, “I would do that. I wouldn’t do that.” Having your little laboratory of this work and how to manage different types of people so that all of them can succeed rather than trying to find the people who succeed in the environment that you create. I like the idea that lots of different people can succeed if you step away from, “This is the way we’ve always done things. It’s the only way it will ever be done.”
I was thinking when you were saying that. It’s like meeting people where they are and allowing them to blossom.
It’s critical for diversity.
That’s what I was going to say. It leads to diversity in so many ways. It’s an important ingredient in that.
When Caldwell Leslie started, 3 of the 5 partners were openly gay in 1988. Mary Newcombe went to open the Lambda Legal Defense Office in Los Angeles which was an important part of it.
I forgot that she had done that.
These were people who were already making their authentic selves and who they were also in their professions. We built on that over time to expand to all sorts of diversity. We learned so many important lessons from the diverse people who joined us and told us that our perspective may be well-intended as it was, was not sufficiently brought. We had to rethink some things and it can be hard when your heart is in the right place to get that feedback. Maybe harder than if you’re the person who’s like, “I don’t care about that.”
It’s because your heart is in it too when you’re working on a firm that’s your own creation. You’re like, “Wait a minute, what? No, I intended the opposite,” but being open to that feedback and considering what might be, facilitating for others might not be for other folks.
Everybody who’s invested in diversity agrees that unconscious bias exists, but identifying it in yourself and responding to it in yourself is a whole different question. It takes a little bit of thick skin and a willingness to accept that as a helpful comment rather than a hurtful criticism.
Everybody who's invested in diversity agrees that unconscious bias exists, but identifying it and knowing how to respond to it yourself is a whole different thing.
There’s an important takeaway too from your career path, which is sometimes people think of either a big firm or a boutique firm, and never the two shall meet. There’s a lot of back and forth. At some point in their career, this setting might be good, a boutique setting in another, or a large law firm might yet again be a good setting. Maybe you can talk about that. As you mentioned, the firm moved into another big firm and now you’re at Steptoe & Johnson.
I had a sense when I joined Calwell Leslie as a third-year associate. I could only go in one direction. I could go from big to small, but I probably wouldn’t be able to go from small to big. I don’t know if that’s true at that time. Certainly, over time, I feel like the reputation of the firm became such. If you wanted to do that and could make a business case for it, the reputation of the firm wasn’t the problem. The economics might be different because the matters we were taking weren’t necessarily matters that work out financially in a large firm.
We pitched people on a lower overall spend that’s more bang for their buck. That’s a different pitch that you’re going to make when you’re somewhere else. That was something that I thought a lot about, but probably over time became less of an issue. We grew Caldwell from 8 lawyers to 30. In 2016, as we were looking at the various options for moving from the founders who were the engines of our firm to the next generation was complicated. It’s a hard move to pull off under the best of circumstances.
We had an interest from Boies Schiller which was the reputation of the firm was fantastic as litigators. Our politics lined up with the types of things that David Boies had done. It seemed like it was a great opportunity to be the base of their LA operations. It was a heartbreaking decision to make because we had been fiercely independent before then and proud of the people who had joined us and promised them, frankly, an experience that was different from a big law experience.
We thought that we would be able to maintain some of the things that were most important about the firm, including staying together. That offer was bringing everybody in, all of our work, and some financial security while being part of the Boies Schiller’s environment. I was surprised that my own business transitioned to Boies Schiller pretty well. I was able to step up the types of matters I was doing that could fit into a rate structure that was at big law. It was time for me to make that jump.
I wanted to be a first-chair lawyer. With the support of the firm, God bless them, a lot of different types of smaller cases let me get that first chair experience so then I could translate that to the bigger matters. The Boies’ platform helped me complete that transition for myself. Everybody knows how the story ends. There’s nobody who was part of Caldwell Leslie who’s still at Boies Schiller now and that was true by March 2020.
Part of the calculus was there was not an obvious leadership role for me within Boies Schiller. I thought about, “Maybe I’ll be a working lawyer, focus on my practice, and that’ll be fine.” It turned out I missed it. When there was an opportunity at Steptoe to come and be part of the strategy of building out first the Los Angeles office and now California within a litigation-based firm, I felt like I had the confidence that my practice would translate at the same time that I could play that role. It was too good to pass up.
That’s interesting in discovering that you did enjoy that, you wanted to have a part in those kinds of decisions in shaping this part of the firm’s direction and missing that. That’s being self-reflective, “What’s important to me?” The other part where you mentioned, “I wanted to up my litigation skills and have the opportunities to be the first chair and then translate that to other matters.”
I don’t know that enough people think when they’re making decisions on moves or even decisions in their career to think first about their skills and building those skills out. Too much of the time people, especially newer lawyers say, look at the choice of a big firm or small firm, and that’s not a deep enough inquiry. It’s where are you at, what are you looking to develop to go to the next level, and where can you develop those skills more easily.
Even though we merged with Boies Schiller, I had a friend who did coaching and I said, “I want to work with you now to figure out how to be successful at Boies Schiller. This is a new animal. What’s my plan for getting to the next step?” It was the most proactive role that I had taken in my career. I’m a decisive person. I had made a lot of decisions that I can explain to you, but they probably were closer to decisions made at the moment than in an overall plan. Maybe if I had done that, do it once at 5, 10, or 15 years out of law school and see what you’re learning from the past, what worked and didn’t, and translate that into a plan for the future. The things we write down are the things we accomplish. It’s valuable.
I’ve heard from a handful of women on the show who’ve talked about skill-building in that way. Ann Kappler at Prudential also talks about that. Not just skill building, but who can I work with who has traits that I admire and that I could learn from by working with that person. That’s in the same category of, “I want to develop certain skills that person has in that area and I can learn from that.” I don’t think we’re intentional enough in those discrete ways. If we were earlier, I wonder where we’d be even further down the line. I wasn’t intentional. It’s useful to think of it that way rather than the generic environment in which you are going and how that fits in where you are in your professional health.
I agree with you. You and I both have litigation-related practices, which are necessarily reactive. We don’t go out and create the problems that we solve for our clients. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s a little bit of a challenge to say, “How do I plan for something that fundamentally I have to wait for the right situation to come along and what skills do I need to be ready for that when it does?”
That translates to client development and business development in our context too. In some degrees, I feel like where you’re helping facilitate a deal and you’re deal-making for people, it’s a positive experience. Everybody wants your help to move the company forward. By the time they get to us and particularly to me on appeal, they’re like, “We’re sorry we have to talk to you at this point.” You’re like, “I hate to remind you of tough times.” On the other hand, it gives us the opportunity to help people through that. There is a lot of bonding that comes from that as well. It is different client work and development in litigation because we hope we never have to call you.
I went from what I liked best about being a lawyer and thinking it would be the public speaking part, which I still do enjoy to problem-solving. It’s putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I learned that being able to research is a skill. I didn’t think about that. It’s something that comes to me naturally. If I try and tell somebody how to research, I can’t, but many times over my career, I have found things that other people hadn’t because of the way I was pursuing it. Now I get that is something that I bring to the table and it’s great for my brain. The days that I get to spend hours researching to figure out the answer to the problem are pretty good days.
It gets to the meat of what initially attracted you to the practice. It’s nice to get back to that, even though there are all of these other things you enjoy too. It’s nice to go back to the core and remind you, “I still enjoy this. I have a knack for this particular approach.” You’re right that at a certain point too, you are more aware of your particular skills, your viewpoint, or how you navigate problems with clients and how that might be unique to you, putting together the whole constellation of things. It’s neat once you discover that. It’s usually your best strengths that you don’t see because you assume that everybody else must do that because it is a second major to you.
That’s right. It seems easy. It does not seem like a skill. You also learn it in reverse. There are client relationships that are not natural and where the style that they want is not the style that you naturally bring. Sometimes you navigate that and you get to a good place and sometimes they hire another lawyer because it’s a better fit. Being able to recognize that’s not a failure, that is a choice, those are personalities, goals, or those types of things, and what am I going to learn about that and what’s it going to tell me about the next place that I look to a client, and what questions will I ask going in to identify the friction that might exist and deal with it is a totally unexpected, but valuable.
That’s a real pragmatic practice and management thinking too. Much of this was not taught enough. There’s a lot of on-the-job in figuring this out. Part of that is figuring out that you identify there are things you enjoy that include the talent management aspect, which 100% was not anything that was even on the radar in law school as far as training and things like that. The business schools had that teamwork component to their training moving forward to a common goal and all that stuff. It’s not generally something that comes up on our radar.
If I think about my law school classes, and this is something I’ve said to other people, I’m not sure that most people who go to law school are natural for that either. It’s not a personality trait that probably ticks up high when you’re looking at who should be a lawyer. It’s figuring out I’m naturally better at this than lots of people and can do work that other people don’t want to do necessary or may not think to do. I can do work that if someone else does it is going to make me less comfortable because working under someone where you think the management is not right. Our jobs are so hard anyway to create more friction at that level is so irritating and sucks the joy out of what you’re doing.
There is so much gratifying about seeing people grow and blossom. You’re giving them the space to do that or giving them the tools to do that. It’s cool to see that.
When I think about folks who were associates at Caldwell Leslie have ended up now and I’ve got a group of associates that I’ve been working with at Steptoe since I joined in 2019, but not all of them have stayed. They have found different places. Again, you have to look at the fact that law firms don’t want everybody to stay and make partners. It’s not the business model. Where is the success in finding ways to continue those relationships and finding fulfilling places for everybody? I’ve got so many people who have taken steps up in their careers. I am a total cheerleader for them and on their team. When I look at it, I have a lot of pride in it and feel invested in it myself.
To have people go on to other things and still have perspectives with regard to their experience with you and to have you continue to support them, that’s what we all hope for.
They run the gamut. We have a woman in my office who made partner in 2023 and I was a big part of helping her put together the package that made that happen. I have a woman who’s identified the practice area where she’s going to be super successful and she’s flourishing. I then have a couple who went in-house. I have a couple of people that changed practice groups and are happier now because of what they found and how it fits. Those were people who at one point might have said, “This isn’t for me. I’m not good at this. I don’t know how to do it.” Let’s find a way that you feel satisfied because one thing about private practice, there are so many options.
Being a lawyer, there are so many different options and ways to practice in different practice areas. Within private practices, there are so many aspects to it. If one part is not a good fit, something else is likely to be.
You can do it in the way most of the time works for you. It doesn’t matter where geographically or when we do it too, it’s the end result that matters. How you achieve that success is not set in stone. There are a lot of downsides to private practice in big firms, but the flexibility and the ability to shape it yourself is a real plus.
Also, one of the things I would always impress on newer associates, in particular, would be to make sure that you get out of your office and hallway and contribute in some way to the larger community or the bar. Get out and meet people both within the firm and outside the firm and work with them on projects so that you’re known. It’s a long game towards developing your own clients and you need to start early. People have to know first who you are and work with you in some capacity for that to happen. I’m sure that’s part of what you encourage people to do also.
Much of that is important post-COVID because I don’t mean physically coming into your office and putting in FaceTime. I mean as the bar associations or other groups get back to doing their work and putting on their events and as you say, getting to know the people in your firm. Honestly, getting to know your colleagues. How much did you learn by going to lunch with the other associates when you were a junior person? It’s not all about impressing partners.
That was one of the huge issues I got from COVID, especially for the newer attorneys. All that informal mentoring and things like that happened. How can you recapture that and experience that? Some of it you can find ways to do, but some of it is the benefit of exactly that. It’s like, “Let’s go grab a sandwich. Let’s have this discussion,” and things happen naturally in those conversations.
One of the things that I’ve learned that I needed my environment is I need other people who like being lawyers because I’m interested in the cases that people are working on next door. If they want to come to talk to me about an issue, I enjoy hearing about it. Whether it’s my matter or not, I need the same thing. To be either in an environment where I’m isolated and can’t do that or where people don’t like what they want to do and they’re trying to get through their stuff and go home is bad for them, it’s also bad for me.
I was like putting more heads together than not and working through problems and talking through them. That’s how you get to the best approach.
I agree with that.
It’s brainstorming there and thinking about different approaches to things and then you go, “Here’s another perspective. We might pursue that.” We’ve talked a lot about your management changes and responsibilities. Tell me about your actual practice of litigation, what kinds of cases you’ve worked on, and what you enjoy about that.
I grew up in the general litigator tradition with a view that litigation itself is a skill. What you learn in a copyright case, you can translate from an employment case to a real estate case to whatever is coming along. One thing I love about being a litigator and about a lawyer generally is the variety. What I’m going to do now is probably going to look super different a couple of months from now.
That’s what I enjoy too.
I like smaller businesses. They’re valuable businesses that have a lot to do, but they are not necessarily public companies. There’s some problem that they’re facing, whether it’s among the people or the founders, the people who are involved in the business, or somebody outside. A lot of times I find that I’m working with companies that don’t have in-house counsel when you’re the liaison for them to the court system.
If they do have in-house counsel, maybe it’s a general counsel who handles more transactional matters and is not familiar with litigation. It’s helping guide them through that process. You are also the recipient of all of the frustration with that process, which is understandably high sometimes. That is someplace where I enjoy talking with a client about how the system works and the strategic options that are available to them.
My perfect case is like a founder’s dispute with a non-compete that’s got a preliminary injunction because I like frontloaded or the sprint. That’s got them thorny issues. Maybe it’s in an industry that I don’t know yet, technology that I need to understand, or something. Someone once said, “If you have a case for a couple of years, it’s like getting a mini-MBA.” I love that too. I like it when the litigation matters to both sides. It’s not just a grudge match. It’s going to make an impact because then you feel like you’re doing something important.
There’s pressure from that, but it’s also meaningful. That is a different role where you’re being the translator of legal proceedings to executives or a different trusted advisor role. It also requires that you have a deep understanding of everything and then also have a deep understanding of the people you’re working with and what their frustrations are, what their company is needing at a particular point in time, and things like that. All of that is put together in a different way than you would with a public company in a large in-house department.
I totally agree. Public companies will have super interesting issues too and are also often driving changes in the law. That can be rewarding, but if I could write my perfect case day-to-day, I would take a little of both. The public company’s pace is usually different. The level of stress and pressure can be different as well.
That’s a good mixture or combination. What advice would you give to folks who are graduating from school other than for a judge, but who might want to be litigators? What would you recommend they investigate or pursue?
One thing I would say is to remember that your career is long, especially if the partnership track is defined. There’s this sense that there are all these things you have to do in the first eight years. You have to make the best choice for your first job. I don’t know that many associates think where they’re coming in is going to be their only job, but there’s all this pressure to get it done in that eight-year period. It’s often at a time when people are getting married, starting families, or doing other things in their lives. An eight-year partnership track is pretty rough. It’s a competitive business to get to the point where you’re ready to be a partner and litigation cases are taking longer.
To get the experiences that you need to get by that time, I wonder whether those eight years are not just realistic, but beneficial to new lawyers to say that’s enough time. If you can take that time pressure off yourself and give yourself time to investigate and experience the things that you don’t like in a place, see if those improve over time. You don’t have to make a move the first time you feel some friction or tension. You can sit with it for a little while. You’ll end up enjoying the profession longer. It’s an overall approach. I’m not sure what I would say to somebody coming out about the best way to find the first job, except that looking beyond OCI is at least going to help you make a choice about what you’re going to do instead of feeling like there was only one option and you were funneled into it.
In law, you don't have to make a move the first time you feel some friction or tension. You can sit with it for a little while and end up enjoying the profession longer.
That’s right. Maybe be more proactive about that instead of saying, “These are the only people who came on campus and these are the only interviews I got.” If there are particular opportunities you want to explore, do that yourself. Reach out so that you’re the master of your opportunities to some degree, and not feeling like that’s all we had on campus.
Law schools usually do a great job at bringing in speakers or having adjunct professors. There’s access to a lot of people who might help identify other opportunities. It doesn’t go through the structured OCI process.
That’s a good point. The adjunct professors often are great gateway because we are out there practicing in the universe in many different ways. If there’s some area that you’re interested in and that the adjunct teaches in that area, you can ask them questions about what it’s like to practice and how this translates from academic to non-academic. You have the opportunity to be in clinics now to have experiences developing your skills and doing things in areas that you think you might want to practice in. Those are good avenues too instead of thinking about recruiting and hiring as purely that OCI process.
They’re purely responsive to it. These are the opportunities that I can choose from. When you’re doing your adjunct work, you’re choosing to spend time, which is your most valuable commodity in a law school environment. You’re someone who’s interested in law students. I’m seeing that as an incredibly valuable resource. I had no clue about that when I was in law school. I didn’t appreciate it. Looking back, it was amazing the people who came in.
When you're doing your adjunct work, you're choosing to spend time, which is your most valuable commodity in a law school environment.
You’re right because those are people who want to contribute to the next generation for whatever reason already. There are primed to be a sounding board or to assist you. That’s a good resource. I think of it now being an adjunct, but at that time, I don’t think I understood that either. That’s a good piece of advice. Turn to the resources that are right there already for you in law school. That’s a good point.
Thank you so much, Robyn, for having this rich discussion of so many different aspects of your career, but also of the many different settings that people can consider and not think about if they don’t make this particular right decision now that everything is done for. Know that your career is long and there are a lot of different paths to take. Even in your case, back to big law after being at a boutique is not a narrow set of constrained choices.
It’s not a one-way street.
To close, I ask a few lightning-round questions. My first question is, which talent would you most like to have, but don’t?
I would love to be a good proofreader. I am not naturally good at it. There’s nothing that can make a brief worse than having a glaring typo in the first paragraph. To catch it, I have to read it so many times. I can’t do it on the screen or on paper. My best solution is to find somebody who is a good proofreader and has the time to work on it with me, but I so wish that I saw them at the time.
There’s a difference for me between online and print. In print, I can see everything. If it’s online, I sometimes miss a few things. That’s a good lesson too. If there’s something that isn’t your thing but is still essential to the overall presentation, find somebody else who has a strength in that area and can be on the team and help.
Let’s be a team.
That’s a value of the team. Who are some of your favorite writers?
It changes all the time. I have eclectic writing and I know you’ll appreciate this because you love your dogs. I read a book called Lily and the Octopus by Steve Rowley. Don’t read it. It will break your heart, but it is so beautifully written. One is the voice of the owner and one is the voice of the dachshund named Lily. It is such a lovely book.
I hadn’t heard of that one. I’ll have to make sure I’m ready for it. Thank you for that warning. Who is your hero in real life?
That also changes from time to time, but someone for the last several years I’ve been so impressed with is Dolly Parton. She is a national treasurer. She is so authentically herself which is a funny thing to say given her persona. The way that she has contributed to the community and the world in general is in a non-self-aggrandizing way. It’s lovely. I wish there were more Dollys in the world.
There is a level of authenticity to her presentation, even though you think, “That persona looks a little manufactured.” There’s something about her generosity too in the community where she grew up and the kindness to that, and not as you said a self-aggrandizing ego way, which easily could be.
She’s embraced so many cultures along the way too. Someone from her background, you maybe wouldn’t have expected that. She’s wonderful.
I like that. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
It’s the general privilege of growing up and continuing to be in middle to the upper middle class in the United States. There’s a lot to complain about, but we don’t struggle for things like food and can plan for the future. I also say I have this lovely ability to feel like everything is going to work out, even in difficult times. It’s not that everything always feels like it’s working out right then. It makes me a balanced person. I’ve not had a great tragedy in my life and that’s not true for so many people. They’ve had to go through that and I don’t know what to do about it except to acknowledge it, be thankful for it, and not overlook it so that in those more difficult times, I’m feeling put upon or, “Why does this always happen to me?” The truth is it doesn’t.
Also, sometimes in those challenging times, the only way out is through. You’ve got to go through it and do get some growth and benefits from the challenging times, but it’s hard to see that every time that it’s happening. If you were to have a dinner party, who would you invite? It could be more than one person.
I thought about it a little in advance and the person that I came up with is a client that I’m working with right now. The producer, Ava DuVernay, who’s done amazing advocacy and film work. She is an incredible businesswoman. She is an advocate. She is funny and creative. I would love to have an uninterrupted hour with her to hear her talk.
She does amazing things. Isn’t that nice to be able to say about one of your clients?
It is. It’s work that I feel good about being a part of. I work primarily with her nonprofit called ARRAY Alliance. We do a variety of things for them. It feels like this is a real contribution. Some days I don’t feel like I’m contributing to society as a whole, but on the days that I work on those projects, I do.
That’s awesome. The last question is, what is your motto if you have one?
Trust your instincts and be brave. They’re related. Being brave isn’t being reckless, but it is taking some calculated risks. When your instinct is telling you that you can do it, even if there’s reason to think you can’t, be brave and do it. If your instinct is saying that you shouldn’t, it can be equally brave to say, “I’m not going to do that,” and just say no.
Being brave isn't being reckless; it’s taking some calculated risks.
That’s a good point. That’s what happens as you mature and get more comfortable in your career. Instinct is based on experience too. As you get more experience, your instincts get more finely tuned because you’ve seen a lot more. You incorporate that into your thinking. You can’t articulate it and that’s where the instinct comes from. Every time I have not listened to it, whether it’s a good instinct or, “Watch out. There’s something not right about this,” instinct, I’ve always regretted it. It’s a great reminder to everyone to trust themselves in a way.
I feel the same way. Not that I’ve been right about everything, but when something is telling me, “You can do this,” or “You should not do that,” I put a whole lot more value in it than I used to.
I’d just say, “Okay,” except that you may not be able to rationally figure out why you’re feeling this way. Pay attention to that feeling because there’s always something down the line that you go, “Now, I know why I have that feeling.” Thanks so much, Robyn, for having this chat and sharing your insights into your career with our readers.
I’m happy to do it. It does remind me that we need to spend more time together. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, MC.
Thank you, Robyn.