Episode 173: Bailey Reichelt
Partner And Co-Founder, Aegis Law
01:01:25
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Show Notes
Our Space series featuring the leading ladies of Space Law and Space Exploration, sponsored by Association of Commercial Space Professionals (acsp.space), continues, with Bailey Reichelt, Co-Founder of startup law firm Aegis Space Law and former in-house counsel. Bailey and Aegis focus on trade law and regulatory counseling for NewSpace companies and startups. In this conversation, Bailey shares her journey in establishing Aegis Space Law and steering it to its current success. This episode is not only for those interested in carving out a Space Law career but for those seeking to start their own cutting edge law firm. Tune in to not miss out!
Relevant episode links:
Aegis, Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Lockheed Martin, Jack Shelton, Recoding America, Witcher Series, Invictus, Dr. Seuss
About Bailey Reichelt:
Bailey Reichelt is a founding partner at Aegis Space Law, a boutique firm centered around assisting commercial space companies in navigating the complexities of federal regulations. Her primary focus is designing and implementing cutting-edge international trade compliance programs as well as helping clients to develop effective, long-term regulatory strategies to take them from incorporation to successful mission execution.
Bailey also helped to found and is a member of the Board of Directors for the non-profit, Association of Commercial Space Professionals ("ACSP"). ACSP exists to empower current and aspiring space professionals through training and advocacy.
As for professional credentials, Bailey maintains licensure in Texas and New Jersey and holds a certification in air, space, and remote sensing law from the University of Mississippi School of Law. She has advised all sizes of businesses as well as educational institutions on the fundamentals of international trade regulations. Additionally, Bailey teaches SME level courses on international trade compliance for the Export Compliance Training Institute.
You can read more about Aegis at www.aegis.law or learn more about the regulations applicable to commercial space by reading a publication co-authored by Bailey and her law partner, Jack Shelton here: https://internationallawsection.org/ilsquarterly/international-law-quarterly-spring-2023/
Transcript
I’m so pleased to have both a lawyer and an entrepreneur. A lawyer in a emerging area where she’s staking out new ground, Bailey Reichelt. She is a cofounder of Aegis. Welcome.
Thank you, MC. I’m excited to be here. I love talking about space law. Even more than that, I love talking to other women and other young women about the realities of everything we experience, all of us, all together. Hopefully, the things I say will be helpful to someone somewhere in finding their own path.
You never know who it will resonate with and who you’ll help. Sometimes, you’ll never know who that is, but it’s always good to share the knowledge and someone will resonate with one or more people. You’ll make a difference. I appreciate you being part of this. That’s what I hope the show does just overall for a lot of people.
Maybe it’s the wisdom you need to hear on a particular day to continue in the challenges that we all face in law practice. I wanted to ask first about what prompted you to go to law school, what made you think you wanted to be a lawyer to begin with, then we’ll maybe compare that to where you are now.
When you told me you were going to ask me this, I had to think about what I was going to say. I hope this is a good answer, which is I never intended to become a lawyer. I am so glad I did. It seems like that’s not an uncommon path or answer. Sometimes, we go to law school not because we want to necessarily be a litigator, but because the skills are appealing or because the degree itself or the license itself helps us accomplish something.
For me, what I wanted to do, coming out of high school, and going into college, I wanted to be like Margaret Bourke White. I wanted to go be like a war journalist. I wanted to embed myself with the military or be an aid worker going in humanitarian situations. I wanted to do foreign affairs type things with the State Department. I wanted to be anywhere international and in policy and on the ground, making a difference.
I got this undergraduate degree in political science then I left school. I was like, “I can’t do any of those things with an undergraduate degree in political science. I’m going to have to do something else too before anyone takes me seriously.” As probably many of your readers know, being a twenty-year-old woman, you don’t necessarily get taken seriously at that age.
Maybe for old that age, but especially as a woman. People tend to disregard what you’re saying and not taking you seriously or undervalue how you can contribute. For me, I thought if I went to law school and got a law degree and a license, people would take me more seriously and I’d be able to accomplish more faster on my route to go work in humanitarian aid or foreign affairs. I ended up getting a job and that’s true.
I found that to be overwhelmingly true. A law degree does get you taken seriously faster. People assume that if you’re able to put forth the effort of going through law school and passing the bar. You are capable of a certain level of maturity that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise give you credit for at the same age. As a young woman, I think law school is the right decision for me because it did do the thing I wanted it to do, which gave me a voice sooner than if I had waited, at least in my opinion.
That’s a good point. That’s something certainly that I’ve heard others say that it gives you authority. A certain level of authority and people listen to what you have to say a little bit more. That’s definitely part of it. I loved your vision of what you wanted to do. Now, I see connections, though. There’s the international aspect and I would say, swashbuckling aspect of the law that you’re in now. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, how you found your way to space law and also to your firm, which is uniquely set up but has a unique specialty also.
Let me see if I can take you through that story. The story evolves over time. As I matured and realized what I needed to do in life to achieve different things as they became important to me. When I first left law school, I did not get a job in space law. It turns out that didn’t exist quite yet. There were a couple of people in the State Department thought that was it. I ended up getting married to an Air Force officer and I moved with him to Dias Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, and there were no jobs.
I don’t see a lot happening there.
I became a public defender for lack of a better way of saying it. I took on Child Protective Services cases and minor state-level criminal cases. I did not know what I was doing. I was very terrified. The thing they instill in you in law school is ethics and you have a responsibility. From what it seems like, to know all the laws upfront so that you don’t mess up anyone’s life.
In reality, that’s impossible. You have to start somewhere and young lawyers are often more ethical because they are hyper-concerned about malpractice. What ended up happening and I was practicing on my own. I approached attorneys that have been older attorneys in Abilene and the judges even that I was practicing in front of and said, “I have no idea what I’m doing. You guys trusted me enough to put me on this list though. Please help me.”
When you said that, I had this flashback. Simon Sinek has lots of suggestions about leadership and things like that. One of them he says was, “There’s a weak way to ask for help,” and to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Help me.” There’s a confident way that even though you don’t know, it instills confidence in others that you’re willing to figure it out and they’re confident that you will. The way you said that, I was like, “That’s the confident way of asking.”
I hope it came across that way. I’m not sure I was feeling it inside when I said it but that’s what I did. I find that throughout life, the more you are authentic with people and say, “I will work as hard as it takes to do it right. Please tell me how to do it right.” People will rise up to help you. They will go out of their way to help you. That’s exactly what happened when I first started practicing.
I was practicing in a field I never intended to practice in. I got my specialization in air and space law at Ole Miss but I was practicing family law with child protective services. There were two main judges I practiced in front of. Whenever I was before one of them, the other one would give me pointers on litigation and be like, “You need to walk into the council table. Here’s which one it is.” That level. “We’re going to work on your objections and some soft skills like how to negotiate with other attorneys and standing your ground.”
As a young woman, when most of the people you’re negotiating with may be a 50 year old man who’s been doing this for twenty plus years. The confidence that these older professionals instilled in me by helping me, by taking the time, their own personal time to say, “Let’s work on these skills,” is a tremendous value to me. Some of the best people that I’ve met feedback I got from them was that so long as I was authentic and hardworking,” that’s what led them to want to help.
Coming full circle with this, I practiced in that area of law. I’m running my own practice for several years. What I learned was that, I got my why for air and space law out of practicing family law. Honestly, I know that sounds crazy but I needed that point in my life to bring me to where I’m at now. Teenage girls often have been removed from their families and they were runaways or they had other issues, teenage pregnancy and they didn’t know how to read. All of these issues. By the time I was involved, I couldn’t fix most of them.
They were already too far in life and a cycle that couldn’t be corrected without a crazy new input of resources that I didn’t have the capability to do. What I did learn is that if we had more technology available to them earlier on. Maybe that’s through more access to the internet or more technology available at the school level. It looks like technology, though, across the board and those inputs and the things that I see at space company doing every day. Those types of things change what poverty looks like.
They change our ability as a society to increase our inputs to break these cycles. I had some of my clients who again, teenage girls, still stay in contact with me after I represented them to tell me that my intervention in their life helped them get into the college. Deciding to tutor them or letting them use my laptop or working with them on reading a little bit or things like that help them. When I finally ended up in Erin’s base law, that was my why.
It’s like, it was cool before and I enjoyed it, but I’m here now because this can change the world. I don’t have to go to Mars, but if I Help a company figure out how to go to Mars, all of that technology that they spin off changes every other aspect of everyone’s life across the entire world. That’s important and that’s my why. I don’t think I answered your question.
There’s so much in that. I’m thinking about which thread to follow first. I can see at least three things. The first thing is, there are things that seem to be detours or not what we planned for ourselves in our life, in our legal training and how to use that. There’s always some aspect to it that ends up adding to your experience later or to fill out either your skills or something that gives you your why in your particular case.
It’s such a human. People can talk about space as saying, “All this technology comes back and helps us on Earth in various ways.” Technology we wouldn’t have if we weren’t developing it for space because space is hard and we need to do all of this unusual stuff. People can talk about it generally as well in terms of space, benefits and humanity from being in space itself but also people back on Earth.
Your experience is more powerful story, which people often say, “One person’s story of how they were impacted is way more influential or can move people to do something than some general statement. We’re going to help all these thousands of people or people in a certain area.” You’re able to describe the impact of space and almost be an ambassador for it in a different way because of your personal experience and why you’re working on it. Also, to have that more human and heartfelt connection to the work that you’re doing now. It’s all amazing.
It’s important that everyone sees themselves as part of space, as much as they see agriculture is important to them. You should see space is important to you. We all participate in space every day by using cell phones. That’s an antiquated example. The more fun example is being like, “Did you know John Deere uses satellites to guide their tractors?” Agriculture and space are tied together or that we use remote sensing to increase crop yields to feed people.
We’re a major exporter of grain, so if you don’t think we’re using remote sensing satellites to increase crop yields to go reach refugee populations or starving second third world countries. We’re all interconnected and technology increasing in one area can have global effects. It’s important to realize you’re part of that, whether you want to be or not.
People don’t recognize how wide ranging that is. There’s something, too, about what you talked about in terms of having the different experiences in practice that you had. First, I would say more of an in interest in space law and some of that interest from Ole Miss and your studies there. Now, you have a more, I would say, heart connection to it in terms of what it can achieve.
When you put that intellectual interest plus a certain passion or reason for doing something on a larger level that it can contribute to the world, then you have a perfect intersection. That’s all to say that even though it wasn’t something that you planned or had to do because of your circumstances. That enriched your original interest and intellectual interest in space law. It has made you a fuller person in that particular area that you’re practicing.
Whenever I talk to students like, “What’s the path?” I’m like, “Take a step forward. Don’t stall out on which step to take, because so long as you keep moving in the general direction, anything contributes to the final destination.” It is so much about the journey and you have things to learn and every aspect of the journey.
For me, I needed grounding and soft skills. I needed a why and the ability to do it. One of the skills that I gained early on from being solely responsible for the outcome of people’s lives, in litigation and family court was, “If I walk into this and I don’t prepare or I screw up. This person’s life has irreparably changed because of my bad night.” That put a level of responsibility and also confidence in me.
Those were things I was lacking at 24 years old. Going on my own was a terrifying thing. I had no desire to ever do that. They tell you in law school and your ethics course in your third year, “Don’t go hang your own shingle. You don’t have enough experience.” That’s exactly what I did and I didn’t want to. I had that ethics professor’s voice in my ears, “Don’t hang your own shingle. You’ll screw up someone’s life.” That did not happen to my knowledge because I was very concerned about screwing up people’s lives.
When I realized at some point that I was capable of learning things and managing my own practice at that age, and making a difference. There was a level of confidence that gave me the ability to do what I’m doing now, which is, again, hanging my own shingle and blazing a path where none existed before. It goes full circle to say, “Whatever you’re looking at doing now, it probably is the right thing. Whatever the next step is, go and take whatever you can from it because they all contribute to the ultimate destination.”
If you're not sure how to go or you know how to get there, take the next step. That's all you can do. You're like, “I can only see one step ahead.” We'll take that one then keep going. Let's talk about the transition the transition from that work and hanging your own shingle to now where you are with your team.
There were some steps in the middle. I went to DC for a little while. I worked for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation very briefly. DC was not where I wanted to be at that point in time in my life. I had some other priorities like my marriage. My husband was deployed to Germany at that point in time. I did want children. I wanted a couple of other things as well as my career. They were like equal priorities in my eyes and I was trying to figure out how to balance them but DC wasn’t right for me at the time. I ended up going in-house for an aerospace company in New Jersey where they decided I was their chief compliance officer. They’re like, “Have you ever heard of this thing called the ITAR?” I’m like, “One time. I don’t even remember what it stands for.”
They said, “Great, you’re in charge of it.”
It turns out, that’s often how this goes when you’re in house. They’re like, “We don’t have anyone else to wear the hat. Can you acquire the skills to wear the hat?” Again, that’s where it comes down to, “Do you have enough confidence in yourself to learn what you need to learn to do this competently? Can you go figure it out? Find the training, find the mentors, and figure it out and apply some skills.”
That’s the great thing about law school. Law school does give you the ability to learn and teach yourself and that’s my big takeaway. If you learn nothing about contracts law, you learned how to figure out how to read a contract by using the library. I went in-house and they threw me a compliance hat. I was in charge of foreign correct practices act, export controls, import imports, contract review, government contract review, commercial, and foreign military sales. You name it. They’re like, “She learned this stuff. Let’s just keep adding things.”
The great thing about law school is it does give you the ability to learn and teach yourself.
I thought it was completely overwhelming and this was insane. How could they possibly do this? This is unethical. I left and went to another company and it was double that. We started with where I was at the previous company and that was the base expectation. They kept adding and I have this realization, “This is what corporate is. This is what all corporate is.” There’s certain expectations and hats get thrown around. This is how organizations work at a certain size. You either like it or don’t like it.
For a while, I loved that challenge. At some point, I could not work twelve-hour days anymore and still pursue my goal of having a family. I also wasn’t getting to choose what I worked on. I was barely keeping my head above water and answering emails about ITAR. I was like, “I want to work with space companies. I’m not letting go of that dream.” I like working with startups because I love their passion. No offense to Lockheed Martin, but their employees don’t tend to be as passionate as those at like astroscale.
Anyway, I had a buddy, Jack Shelton, who’s now my law partner, whom I had met on a YouTube video. He had made a video called the ITAR in 10 Minutes. I had dropped a message in the comments, like, “You should make one of these for the EAR. This is fabulous.” We started chatting and became good friends. We never met each other and we decided one day to meet for ten minutes at a cracker barrel while we were crossing paths in Memphis, Tennessee.
A few years later, we still chit-chatted about trade compliance issues. I’m wanting to leave my job because I need more balance and he calls me. He’s like, “I’m starting my own firm. I need another international trade attorney. You’re the only one I know. Do you want to join me?” I said, “Yes, I have some ideas about what I’d like to do and where there’s a gap in services.” We took my space background and he had a maritime background. We thought this goes great together.
We started an international trade law firm. As it progressed, we’re like, “While export controls are fundamental to helping space companies, they need a lot more than this. There aren’t a lot of places for them to go get like telecoms for FCC or remote sensing from NOA.” They don’t even know that they need these things half the time We are telling them in the context of export controls or when they need a sypheus review because they’re taking foreign money.
They’re so small. We found a lot of these companies were failing because of regulatory stumbling blocks. We’re like, “We’re growing we have clients. We know that internationally trade is not going anywhere. We could create a space law firm. We could round out our offering to cover all the regulations that space companies need to talk about. We could change our business model away from hourly. We could do something that works for small companies that have very tight budgets. We could probably figure out how to streamline a lot of this and make it flat rate so it’s predictable.”
It can incentivize us. You and me and our telecoms attorney will. We have a government contracting attorney, Kelly. We could work together and could come up with the best and most optimal solution for this small company to achieve their goals with minimal stumbling blocks at an affordable rate. We can do that. We could also have kids and still get to see them every day. We can have it all. We just have to build it. We can’t start with what’s already existing. We have to figure out a different way.
That’s been the most amazing journey. My team is so amazing. We’re united around this mission that we all want to be more than just lawyers. We want to make a huge difference in bringing technology to the market for small space companies and for creating regulatory paths and streamlining. We also all have our kids and want to see our kids. We all enjoy having hobbies and having identities outside of being a lawyer. We’re united around these missions and support each other in creating a new way forward, both in what we do as work and in how we run and govern ourselves. That’s where we’re at now. It’s continuing to figure out what the next steps are.
You’ve created your own culture, which is almost counterculture to a lot of large firms anyway. A lot of firms don’t carry that same culture of the whole person. Also, what’s interesting in your story of you’re marrying the startups you served to some degree in terms of figuring out what would be most helpful or what coverage the firm would do. You start with an narrower regulatory focus, but then recognizing, “There’s this full array,” which is challenging because most people or business people would not recognize in the space arena in the US is very splintered across various agencies about which one is responsible for which license and all of these things.
Trying to navigate all of those and coordinate those is a challenge. Do you even know that you have to? Where do I go for this? It’s an important service to orient people about which ones they need to go to. The whole subscription or flat fee model that is a whole new way of approaching and being client-centric and client-sensitive as well.
To be completely transparent, if you want to buck everything and do things differently, it’s very hard administratively. We have no idea how to govern things on the back end sometimes. It’s like learning. There’s no one to go ask. We don’t have a book of other people trying to do these things. It’s from scratch every time. It requires a lot of creativity and a lot of experimentation then failure. We felt like our flat rate billing tier model was a failure at first because it was so hard to administer on the back end across multiple attorneys to see who’s doing how much work on which client.
When we tried to change to something more traditional, all of our clients were like, “No, this is the thing we love the most about you.” It facilitated building a relationship between us and our clients because they weren’t afraid to call us. We were able to save them from making mistakes that had they told us after the fact, “Now we’re doing a voluntary disclosure instead of working on building your compliance program procedures or training you on how to use them.” It had all these unintended consequences in building positive relationships with us and our clients and facilitated us helping them even more. They were like, “We’re going to have to figure out how to administer it. We’ll get it eventually.” We kept it and we’re still figuring it out.
It does do that. That’s what incentives are built into the various models. In that case, having discussions with people and having people feel comfortable calling you, thinking, “Unless we know that we need them immediately for something, we’re not going to call because that’s going to cost us extra.” It facilitates more partnership with the client and also proactive aspects to it, which I always appreciate, too.
As an appellate lawyer, often I say, “I wish you called me before. We’re at the appellate stage or before you’re filing an appeal,” because we could do more strategy and set it up nicely or maybe even win and be on the other side of the appeal if we’re in there early. Nobody ever wants to think that they’ll have to have an appeal. They’re like, “We’re going to end it here. Nobody wants to keep going.” It’s challenging to be in that, “No, we’re going to be proactive and save you some things on the back end or some heartache on the back end by being involved earlier.” It’s always better to have whatever incentives you can in whatever law to be more of a strategic partner with the client earlier rather than putting out fires later.
Be a strategic partner with the client earlier rather than putting out fires later.
It brings us more reward internally, too. Not just the client. We get to work as a team, which fun. We’re not siloed and we don’t have competition with each other either. When a client wins, the entire Aegis team wins. We all celebrate together. That’s made us very close friends and allies. It’s given us much better solutions because we’re not competing internally. We’re all on the same team always with the same mission.
Also, our clients feel that. They feel how much we care about them. We want to work with them and solve their problem. We get up every day and say, “This is where I want to be because I’m working with people who care about what I’m going to advise them.” They’re going to follow my advice and we care about each other. It’s wonderful getting to love who you work with.
That is great and that’s interesting. That’s a good observation to say the model encourages that connection. That people understand that’s where your heart is out to you for their best interests. What advice would you give to someone, I would say two things because one is finding their way to a space law career? Second of all is breaking out of the box and doing some new legal entrepreneurial venture. Do you have any advice to either of those folks about what they should consider or think about or things you wish you had known before you had started this adventure?
One of the things that I’m grateful for is my law partner. If I had tried to do this all on my own, I couldn’t have succeeded. We are very different people. We weren’t best friends going in. We didn’t even know each other than having a vague idea of what the other looked like. We took a big risk. Knowing that you can always go get a job in a big firm and you can always go to in-house. You have a law license. At least most of the people reading probably have a law license, so you’ve got that.
You can always go get those jobs. I didn’t see it as big of a risk as other professions might. Also, my partner, had I not had this counterpoint to everything I thought and I didn’t have this opportunity to bounce ideas off a completely different viewpoint. I don’t think I would have grown a lot as a person or into a creative person. I very much was not creative. I was very risk averse when I started this. Corporate had trained me to be more so.
When I met him, he was out on his own. He was already doing creative work, building training programs, and trying to come up with better training programs for trade compliance. When he and I started working together, I felt my creativity start opening up and my risk aversion start to fade away. He started putting more structure to the way he approached things to meet me where I was at. Those opposite viewpoints and our ability to cooperate and work together as a team even when we disagreed. Quite frequently, we’d disagree. We always came together. Had I not had that opposing viewpoint, I don’t think I would have been successful or that we would have been successful.
I completely agree with that. For me, I appreciate being able to brainstorm and bounce ideas off people. The goal being that our goal is to have like the best product, the best thing for the client, and the best whatever. If we need to like bat things back and forth, have disagreements, and work to some combination of different ideas, then that’s what we do. The goal always is, how do we get the best thing?
For me, thinking alone somewhere about how to draft an appellate brief is not as effective as brainstorming, talking through issues and what are the pros and cons of different approaches to things. That’s much better and having somebody else to bounce that off of is essential to excellence like the best product you can create.
Unintended consequence is figuring out how to cooperate with people unlike myself on my team and collaborate in this very holistic way that we’re trying to collaborate. It challenges me to grow in every different way on a daily basis. Am I being the best leader I can be? Am I listening? Am I leading by example? It challenges all of my core beliefs and my thoughts. I constantly feel like I’m growing. One of my big fears is stagnation. I love that my team challenges me in different ways. It’s so rewarding.
You and I are committed to that same principle, continual growth, learning new things and incorporating things. That’s often where creativity comes from. You have all of these different strands and seemingly disconnected pieces of knowledge or expertise. Sometimes, you can see things and apply one principle to a new area and that’s an important aspect of creativity for sure.
There was so much in there in terms of personal growth and whether you’re founding your own firm or creating your own practice within a law firm. All of those things that you talked about are part of the feeling of that, other confidence, being able to collaborate with people, and being able to grow. That, to me, often is the indicator of when I need to move from some places if I feel like I’m not growing.
There’s no, “I will find a way to grow, but if it’s being impeded, then I need to think about, is this the right place for that?” A weed will find its way, even if there’s like concrete sidewalk. It’s going to come up some way to grow but it’s better if it’s watered and fostered and you’re able to grow as much as you can and to become the best lawyer you can and the best person you can.
Thinking about those things and where you personally can do that best at any point in time is probably a good indicator of making a move or not making a move or what you need to do next to go to the next level. All of that is generally applicable even if people are not looking for their cofounder and startup law firm as it were. I do think it’s interesting because your firm and your experience as a cofounder also adds depth to your counseling of various companies. You’re like, “I’ve been literally been there.”
I get what you’re going through. No, when we talk about being a counselor, we mean counselor. If you’ve ever practiced family law, you know what being a counselor means through. You do a lot of just sharing your own experience. I don’t know how many of our clients that I’ve explained like quick books to them. I’ll be like, “This is how you’re going to set up your payroll. I recommend you use this service when you hit the size inflection.” The basics of how you run a small business. Truly, we are a startup small business as well. I get the governance issues and we can’t agree on a file naming structure. I get all that.
That’s also encouraging. Again, the client relationship, a connection, and being someone who is a well-rounded counselor, as you said. We’re consulting on various issues with regard to the law and very highly expert specific areas of the law. You want to be someone that the client calls and says, “I have this other problem. I trust you.” You’re my trusted advisor on the legal aspects, but I trust you in to ask him, “What do you think about this? I want to talk through something with you.” Both satisfying as being the advisor, but also connects you much more deeply to the client in that way.
I was just thinking about a specific experience. We were asked to sit on the interview panel with a company that was interviewing to hire our replacement in-house. I could see this as like, “Why do you want to replace us?” I could try to talk them out of it, but that’s not the goal. The goal is always for the company to mature and maturing does mean bringing capability in-house.
That’s one of the things I tell our clients now. It’s like, “You want me to come sit on an interview panel and ask all the right questions for your new compliance officer. If you want me to train your compliance officer, I know what the facilities manager does. I know how a company works. I’m happy to walk a new person through that.” That was one of the big things I struggled with when I went in-house.
I worked at a factory and I was a lawyer. I did not know how a factory worked or the requirements to be a forklift driver or you had to wear steel toe shoes in this area. Sometimes, now when I work with in-house people, I explained to them, “Here’s how inside sales interacts with your shipping department. This is important because when we get the compliance, these procedures apply across here.” Giving you an example.
It is fun to interact with them in a way outside of just the hard legal questions of regulations and say, “We can make the regulations make more sense if we talk about how a business works just generally, and fill you in on that. If you want us to help you interview people to ask questions like, have you ever to pick apart their ability to build a training in PowerPoint?” Sure. That’s all part of your success.
Your larger goal is to help the client succeed. Also, having that continued connection with them. Who knows, you know, what will happen after that? You do positive good things for people and eventually, it comes around. It’s much better to be kind and helpful and see where it goes rather than to be difficult.
We have had questions about like, “What’s your marketing strategy?” I’m like, “Be a good person. I swear, it will come back to you.”
Be a good person because it will come back to you.
That’s a good one. That’s a good tagline. You’re like, “Here’s our general rule that we follow, which isn’t hard. It’s how we roll generally. It all works out.” I want to talk to you a little bit about a couple of things which may tie together, which would be the legal industry has become overall in different settings. Still not as male-centric, shall we say. There’s more women in certain practice areas, but I would say still in the area of more technical, aerospace and space. Maybe not as many women in certain roles. How have you navigated that? What role have mentors or sponsors played in that?
I know that there’s been some discrimination. There’s still clearly very different standards. I get this when I’m doing any type of public speaking or training. There’s different standards for how a young woman presents herself to be taken seriously, versus like a 50 year old man would. You have to overcome some of those hurdles. It’s not fair, but I also try to not think about it in the context of gender.
I try to think, “These are my goals for myself. I’m going to carry myself with grace. I’m going to be respectful and authentic. I’m going to do the best that I can.” I want to have empathy, be confident and assertive. I just try not to think about myself in the context of comparison or gender roles but here’s the standard I hold myself to. They’re both typically masculine and feminine traits. I’m going to grade myself according to that metric.
As long as I’ve held by that principle, I haven’t felt the effects of the sexism as harshly. Certainly, since I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten a little better. When you’re young, it’s very clear when people are not taking you seriously. This may be old advice. It’s going to sound like mom advice, but I am a mom, so I guess I can say that now. Dressing for how you want to be perceived is still important. Wearing a suit to work when you’re 24 years old and fresh out of law school does add to the way people perceive you and treat you. I know that’s old advice, but I found it to be true.
You’re demonstrating that you’re taking the role seriously, too.
It’s how you carry yourself defines how other people treat you. I do believe that there is a growing equality in how people are treated. At least, I’m seeing that in my generation. That’s more true for the younger generations. For those who have experienced extreme sexism or racism, that’s awful. It sucks. We’ve got to figure out ways to do better always but I do think it is getting better.
There’s certainly been an evolution that I’ve heard across the show with people from different generations of law school. The real pioneers who were the first women in law school who will put in the Sandra Day O‘Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg category where they were only men need apply to these jobs thing.
To note, the jobs are open to the point where we are now where the majority of associates at big law firms. The study came out that said, “Over 50%, the income ones are primarily female now, the associate classes.” That’s a vast change. Along the way, we had a few other things. In my experience in my era was that if you came in, no matter how nicely just you were and you had your litigation bag with you.
You were always presumed to be the court reporter. Never the lawyer. Always the court reporter, set up over here in this corner of the room or why are there two of you here for the same deposition? I’m like, “Two of me? There’s only one of me. What are you talking about?” There was that error, but you were in the room. You were doing stuff. There’s a whole array. When you look at that, you say, “I can apply to a bunch of jobs. I’m not told from the get-go that I can’t.” Certainly, the court reporter thing has fallen away in most cases. We’re making progress through all of this. I hope that’s one other thing from my past.
You said the court reporter example. There was a time where they asked me if I was the court reporter and I remember that. To some degree, I let it roll off. I’m like, “I’m the attorney,” then they didn’t make the mistake again. It wasn’t a big deal. I’ve tried hard.
I was happy because I was like, “Great. They underestimate me to the end of the world. I can’t wait.”
It’s a lot about your outlook and how you want to use that information and prove people wrong, too. If you get hung up on it and trying to prove yourself, it shatters your own confidence and how people perceive you. I had a point where I was young, where I felt like I had to prove myself to everyone. I was overcompensating and it made people not want to work with me. I was being artificially aggressive.
I was going to say that goes against your principle of authenticity.
It took years to figure that out. Honestly, going to counseling to try to figure out who am I? Who do I want to be? Is it important to have this persona? I remember, I used to be described as intense a lot. They’re like, “People don’t want to work with you because you’re so intense.” I was like, “I don’t understand why intense is bad, first of all.”
It took me a while to figure out, “The way that person was using it is like I was trying to prove myself.” There’s a way to be intense that comes across as passionate and aggressive. It takes age and experience to figure out that refinement. When people are out to prove themselves, especially young women. You know it. You feel it and you sense it from them.
To everyone out there that feels that and this describes you, call me, because I can so talk about that level of insecurity and how much we all have to go through it. There are not enough women out there admitting how insecure they were, or how they thought they had to act like men to get where they were going. You don’t anymore and it’s wonderful.
One other thing I want to say though, I haven’t had to deal with this because I’ve been self-employed for quite a bit. I had my daughter and I’ve worked for Aegis for a years, so I never had to deal with maternity leave and the stigma involved with that but I know that that’s a big deal for many women. I do think the culture is slightly shifting and men are stepping up more.
I see that with my husband and he came out of a military background. I feel like that was a big leap encounter to what the culture he was in was. I feel like we are seeing changes there. I can’t speak to the experience of discrimination in that context. I know it still exists, but we’re making progress and there’s still more work to be done there.
You’re point was a good one in terms of being in your own firm and being able to set the parameters, the culture, and the experience that allows for you. Sometimes there can be a sense of it’s safer to stay at a larger company but I would encourage people to think about the opportunities that having your own firm or a boutique firm can allow for you to impact and create the culture that may be different from where you are.
In other words, it isn’t just, “I’ve stayed practicing law as a mom,” means I can only stay in this setting. There are a lot of other settings and a lot of other ways to practice. That’s one of the beauties of the law. There’s so many different things to do substantively, but also different places to practice. Before you think, “I can’t do both of these things.” Is there some other way that you could do that?
Maybe whatever that choices is for a certain period of time. As your life changes, certain things are more appropriate based on what’s going on in the rest of your life professionally. I think too in law school, a lot of people think there’s a certain route. If you go off that route, you’re going to fall off the cliff and not be successful but that’s not true. There’s many definitions of success. The most important one is your own for yourself and what you want your life to look like.
You made just the most important point that anyone can hear, especially a young female attorney or a young female professional. Success is your definition and not anyone else’s. If success to you says, “I want to prioritize both my family and my career equally.” That is your definition of success. If your definition of success is, I want to help people and you want to be on a nonprofit board, but also be a lawyer at a high-powered firm. You want to plan date nights for your husband and be it the stellar spouse, stellar mom or stellar daughter to your mom.
You can do all those things. You do not only get the label of success by doing all of them perfectly. By compromising your time. This drives me crazy, compromise is still a form of success. We, as lawyers, know that through and through. That’s what we do, help people reach agreements or compromises. Yet, in our own lives, we say, “If we’re not putting 100% into our job and 100% into our kids, we are failing.”
Compromise is still a form of success. I wish I didn’t have that negative connotation. Working and being a mom. All those things. Percentages change. You put 80% into work and 20% over here then the demands shift. They’re always shifting and that’s the balance everyone talks about. If you embrace the shifting, it sucks a lot sometimes. It is so unpredictable. We like order and control over the chaos but you embrace it. the chaos. You are successful. You’re successful because you’re getting to work in all of these things. Not just the 100% to one thing. that’s a ridiculous and equated limiting definition of success. It’s such a good point.
Success is your definition and not anyone else’s. If success to you says, “I want to prioritize both my family and my career equally.” That is your definition of success.
I’m so glad we talked about that because that’s an important thing. Also, the concept of what you think will provide you that might be very different from what you have in your own mind. Most people would not think that cofounding a law firm would allow you to have that opportunity. If you create the law firm that allows that, then that is a way to do that. I would invite people to be open-minded about different aspects of their career and what is a good fit. It might be something different from what you expect.
It’s going to shift in different phases of your life, too.
It’s so important. There’s no one. You change and you grow, as you said, hopefully, in the best of worlds. Also, the circumstances of your life change, what is most appropriate for what you’re focusing on at that time or how you’ve grown. It’s important because a lot of things in the law, there’s certain ways of succeeding and those remains to be found throughout your career or life but that’s not true at all. That’s another myth to bust for law students.
Thank you so much, Bailey, for participating and for sharing your journey and being authentic and honest about it with the audience as well. I appreciate it. It will resonate with a few folks on their journey. Typically, I close with a little set of lightning round questions. I’m going to run through some of those. I’m going to start with, what’s your first tip in terms of starting a company, starting a law firm? What tip would you give to someone? Besides find a good cofounder.
Probably, be flexible. Keep looking at what works and what doesn’t work trying to be objective with yourself. Don’t be afraid to pivot. You’re going to have to pivot a lot to figure out what works for your business and what works for you. You might find out none of it works whatsoever and you liked it better in-house and that’s okay. You’re not a failure.
That question of pivoting and adjusting is something that’s important for a lot of different things. I remember when I moved firms and I realized if you’re going to create your practice, you have to go out and get clients and you are responsible to bring the bear home. If there’s no bear, you’re not doing any work. You need to go out and do that.
Sometimes what in my mind was the best idea or collaborating with a client or potential client, turned out to not at all go the way I thought it would, then you had to keep adjusting that. This question of pivoting, adjusting, and collaborating with others is something that’s valuable across many settings and particularly, I would say in the client development or business development. You have to be willing to say, “That was a great idea, but did it not pan out the way I thought. It was just an idea. Now I need to think about something else.”
Being willing to do that because as you said, it’s not a failure. You’re just testing things out. “If I do this, what happens on the other end? Not what I expected. Interesting, but I’ve learned information from that that I can now use to be more valuable to clients and more responsive to them.” It’s something that pivoting is helpful in so many different settings. Which talent would you most like to have but don’t?
I’m a bad swimmer. I’ll definitely survive, but I look like I’m a dying salmon going upstream when I try to swim sometimes because no one ever taught me how to do it properly. I’m going to regret saying that later when someone read this. I wish someone would teach me how to swim properly.
You’re putting that out to the universe, Bailey. Someone might show up and offer that to you. Be careful we put out there. Next question, who are some of your favorite writers? Who do you enjoy reading? Even outside the law.
I like fantasy, Sci-Fi, and historical fiction. All of it. I try to switch it up all the time. I read a book, Jennifer Palka. She’s a tech person and she wrote Recoding America. Super insightful about how the bureaucratic process works. She pulls out a lot of the problems why the bureaucracy failed during COVID and how we could shift it going forward. I also read the Witcher Series. That was a great series too.
There’s variety. There’s an eclectic sense to your reading. That’s cool. I’ve heard of the first book you mentioned. It sounds interesting. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll have to put it on my list as well. Who is your hero in real life?
My hero in real life would be hard to narrow down. I would probably put it out there as my mother and my grandmother. They are gritty and hardworking women whom always did what was needed without being asked and without any accolades. They have so much humility and grace about them. My grandmother passed a few years ago, but she was 93. She did her own yard work up until she died.
She didn’t need anyone’s help. She wasn’t going to ask for it and she just raised generations. She had probably 30 great grandchildren, even my mother. She worked the entire time I was young. Even now, we’re best friends. I call her for parenting advice all the time. Her favorite thing to ask me is, “Do you remember when I did that to you when you were two years old?” I’m like, “I don’t remember any of those things.” She’s like, “Your child won’t remember it either.” I’m like, “Yes.”
That’s a good point. I was like, “I don’t remember that either.” You’re like, “It’s okay. Whatever you do, we can move on from even if it wasn’t the right thing.” I like that.
It’s the mom guilt. I get a lot of mom guilt because I travel a lot. I’m like, “Do you think I’m messing her up by being gone? She’s two and she knows I’m gone. She asked for me.” She’s like, “I also worked and traveled when you were little. Do you remember?” I’m like, “No.” I can still do this and I’m not going to mess her up irreparably. I don’t think I messed up irreparably so I can continue to be a less guilty working mother.
I love that response to the question a question and you’re like, “A-ha, I have the answer.” That’s awesome.
I have proof.
I like that. I like that socratic method of mothering. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
Probably freedom. One of the things we’ve hit on several times is the that I’ve gotten to make choices as they’ve suited me over and over. I’ve gotten the opportunity to learn, apply the information and change course. That’s one of the things I continue to value so much in my own practice, is the autonomy to choose what I’m going to learn and how I’m going to apply it and who I’m going to help or the autonomy to take a half day and go spend time with my daughter because I feel that that’s where I need to spend my time now. That autonomy and that freedom, I don’t take it for granted ever. This is exactly my definition of success. This is what I wanted was autonomy. This is the thing that means the most to me.
I like that. More detailed description of that is great because freedom can meet a lot of things and what it means to you. It’s almost like success. Here’s what freedom means to me.
There’s a poem called Invictus by William Ernest Henley. That poem captures what I’m trying to say about autonomy and freedom, “I am the captain of my soul. I am in charge of my own fate and nothing could be more important to me than that.”
That’s great. That’s a way to put together the reading material and authors with this question. Good job, Bailey. Given the choice of anyone in the world with us or not with us, who would you invite to a dinner party? Who would be your guests?
I told my husband I had to answer this question because you told me you’re going to ask me this question. He laughed at my answer. He’s like, “You’re supposed to give historically famous people and sound intellectual,” but I do not have historically famous people or an intellectual response. I have the space law friend. He puts together like a scuba club outing once a year for all of his closest friends.
I was inspired by him doing that. I’m like, “I want to put together an outing for all of my friends specifically some of us like lady lawyers.” I have a couple of friends who we never get to see each other in person or we’ve only met once. I want to know them and I want to understand how they work. I want to us to share the things we’re all thinking that we never get to talk about and some of the things we’ve shared like how do you define success? What are you trying to get out of life? How can I help you?
I want to gather them all up and I want us to go to a beach. I want us to hang out and get to know each other and help each other. I can name like twenty women off the top of my head and that’s my idea of the greatest week I could spend. It’s getting to know those people in the here and now and like, “What can we do together? How can we help each other?”
That’s great. I like that. I could see it even before you said a group on the beach. It’s like, “I had this image. It would be a group on a beach.” I’m aligned with you on this one. It sounds great and I like that.
You have to join us. You’re on the list.
That’s awesome. I’m so excited.
You have to come.
I’m there. It sounds fun and I like that. It’s important to have that outlet and connection. Great idea. I love that expanded it. It’s not just a dinner. Here’s, we’re going to have this whole party. It’s going to be on the beach and we’re going to have a weekend. I love it. It’s a retreat. It’s not a dinner.
There’s a lot of fun to be learned from historical figures, but my value is in the people that exist right now to some degree and what can we do immediately to change the future and help each other? That’s what’s most meaningful to me at this moment. I can go do this.
That was awesome. I love it. It’s an answer that fits you and of demonstrates a lot of your outside the box thinking. I appreciate that. Also, your groundedness in the present. That’s cool. Last question is, what is your motto if you have one?
This one comes from a Dr. Seuss book. It’s Horton, The Elephant. It’s, “Mean what you say and say what you mean.” I believe that Horton said that. I was thinking about this. There is no better advice than just be authentic, say exactly what you mean, and follow through. I like that as a motto.
Be authentic. Say exactly what you mean to say and follow through.
That’s awesome. I’ll have to go look up my Dr. Seuss books and see where that was. That’s a very good motto. Also, I was like, “I didn’t know Horton said that.” I’m going to have to go check that out.
Maybe he said, “Elephants are faithful 100%.” I’m sorry if I misquoted someone famous and interchange them for Dr. Seuss.
You took this principle, though. You’re like, “I extrapolated from Horton.” That’s what he meant.
Sorry about whomever I misquoted. The meaning is still the same.
You took the core out of it and applied it beyond Horton and the elephants. Thank you so much, Bailey, for doing this and for having this chat. I’ve enjoyed it. You’ve covered a lot of things that are applicable to folks who might be starting either in an emerging practice area or an emerging firm, but also, more generally our experiences as women in the law. I’m so pleased that you joined us and part of the show.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I enjoyed how much your questions made me evaluate my core values and how I say them out loud. I’m going to keep reevaluating.
That’s it. That’s one of the benefits of the show, too, is being able to have that time to think back and either see your path and think about it and go, “I hadn’t seen how this all fits together.” Also, stepping back and thinking about what’s important to you and what wisdom you can share from your career and pay it forward. I’m glad it was fun to do.
It’s so much fun, MC. Thank you for doing this show. It means a lot to me. I’ve been inspired by it. I hope that other people are inspired by it. I’m so honored if someone does take something useful from this. I’m very sincere in my offering that if you ever want to talk about how hard it is to balance all the things, I am open to that conversation. Come join us on the beach.
Thank you so much, Bailey.