Episode 39: Kalpana Srinivasan
Co-Managing Partner at Susman Godfrey, one of the U.S.’s leading boutique litigation firms.
01:06:20
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Show Notes
M.C. Sungaila sits down with Kalpana Srinivasan, co-managing partner of one of the U.S.'s leading boutique litigation firms, Susman Godfrey. She discusses her path from journalism to the law, from a federal clerkship to high profile litigation and becoming one of the few women of color to lead a major law firm. She provides powerful insights into navigating a law firm and gaining valuable skills and experience along the way. Tune in for in-depth insights on law and leadership!
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Kalpana Srinivasan
Kalpana Srinivasan tries high-stakes cases for plaintiffs and defendants across the country. She has secured significant victories for her clients in antitrust, intellectual property, copyright, class action, media and other disputes
Ms. Srinivasan was elected as Susman Godfrey’s fourth managing partner in 2020. She is the first female and diverse leader to serve in that role and the first to rise from the associate ranks.
Ms. Srinivasan has been described as an “engaging, exceptionally smart and approachable lawyer” with the ability to “handle and manage large cases” by Chambers USA; deemed a Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar by Law360; and recognized by Benchmark Litigation as one of the Top 100 Trial Lawyers in America, its California Intellectual Property Litigation Attorney of the Year, Plaintiff Attorney of the Year, Trial Lawyer of the Year in California and one of the Top 10 Women Litigators. The Legal 500, in its Tier 1 rankings, described her work at “the intersection of intellectual property and unfair competition, all while displaying strong know-how of the technology industry.”
Ms. Srinivasan is also a leader in advancing the interests of diversity in the legal profession. She has received the Cornerstone Award from the South Asian Bar Association of North America and been recognized as Chamber’s Gender Diversity Lawyer of the Year.
Transcript
I'm very pleased to have as a guest on the show the Co-managing Partner and a wonderful Trial Lawyer at Susman Godfrey, Kalpana Srinivasan. Welcome.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to talk about so many different things with you. We can talk about law firm structure and some of the still enduring issues to ensure women's advancement. First, I want to start with your journey and then we'll go from there. How did you decide that you wanted to become a lawyer or go to law school? What was the first spark that sent you in that direction?
I had an early spark in high school and maybe even before then. I was interested in argument, mock trials and all of that. When I got to college, I went on a little detour and became a journalist, a newspaper reporter, and a reporter for the Associated Press, The Daily Wire service. I love the pace of the writing and coverage. Over time, I became a beat reporter covering communications policy in DC.
I spent a lot of time writing about issues that impacted consumers, cable deregulation and the impact of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Those issues started to implicate a lot of legal questions covering some of the DC Circuit's challenges to rulings on challenges to the legal framework that had been adopted. It got me interested in that aspect of the law, too, because the legal decisions and the policymaking were having such a huge impact on our experiences as a country. The rollout of wireless internet, high-speed broadband access, and things like that deeply affected our daily lives as consumers.
Over time, I started feeling like I wanted to be more in the mix as a reporter. Especially as a daily reporter, your job is to cover the news and try to share what's happening with a wide audience. That's different from being an advocate, having some skin in the game and trying to influence the outcome of some of those issues.
I realized over time that while I enjoyed what I was doing, I also wanted to have some impact on the outcome of those issues. I was interested at a level beyond which I needed to write about for my audience and that led me to go to law school with a deep interest in a lot of the issues I've been writing about, internet policy generally, technology law and intellectual property litigation. Most of my practice is focused on IP litigation and competition law.
That's interesting, subject matter-wise. You came into it saying, “There are important policy and legal questions that I'd like to be a part of.” You followed that through and have been an advocate in that regard. You had a clerkship before practice. Can you tell me about that experience? What did you learn from that?
I clerked for the late Honorable Raymond C. Fisher on the 9th Circuit. It was a highlight of my professional life for a lot of reasons. When I thought about the type of judge I wanted to clerk for, he embodied all the things I could have hoped and dreamed for in a mentor and a judge. Judge Fisher had a long and storied history in private practice. He had been in litigation. He had run an office for a major law firm and then subsequently had worked for the Justice Department as the number three person there before then going to the 9th Circuit.
During his time being in the private office, he had done all kinds of other civic activities outside of his work. He was involved in the Christopher Commission. He was engaged in a lot of the efforts to review some of the conduct of the LA Police Department. For me, his combination of the great skills he developed as a private practitioner, a litigator, a trial lawyer, combined with his commitment to the community and his willingness to serve, resonated with me when I was going through the process of deciding where to clerk. It played out. That mentorship was very formative for me.
Judge Fisher passed away in 2020. Until his passing, we had a close relationship long past my time as a clerk. I talked to him about career decisions in my life, where I wanted to work, what I was working on. We ultimately came to serve on a board together, which he was chairing at that time. He thought it would be valuable for me to also be on the board. It gave us another outlet to spend time together, share ideas and work collaboratively.
I learned a lot about problem-solving difficult and big issues from being a clerk with him and then having the chance over the years to talk about those issues or think about how to approach them in my work life. It was a real gift. We were close. He married me. He was close to my parents, my spouse and my child.
When I talk to young law students or young lawyers who are thinking about clerking, I emphasize to them that you're looking for what could be potentially a lifelong mentoring relationship. That role extends well beyond the year or two years you spend working together, somebody who can give you input and guidance. I was fortunate to end up working in a legal market close to him where I got to see him a lot. It was a deep mentoring relationship.
I'm glad you explained and talked about that because I don't know that everyone understands when people say, “The judge I clerked for was a sounding board or a mentor to me.” It’s how deep and how long-lasting that is. It can be lifelong. To be able to have someone who always has your back and is wise to discuss career moves or things like that is special.
The second thing about my clerkships is that I learned how to be a lawyer clerking for the judges. I learned how to think like a lawyer and all of that in law school. In the district court clerkship and federal appellate clerkship, there was a lot of discipline to it and a lot of things that I'm like, “I learned so much about the discipline of being a lawyer and what that means in practice from the judges I worked for.” I'm forever grateful for that.
Judge Fisher was intellectually engaging and challenging. You learned how to test your views on things and he was willing to engage in that. If you took a view about how the outcome of a case that was different from his, he was willing to go through the mental exercises of debating it, discussing it, looking at the law together and going back and forth. It was iterative. That helped form the way that I thought about justifying your position and refining your legal skills.
It makes you a better lawyer to have that system in place, “Let's press this. Let's try this. Let's think about the different approaches,” and not say, “I have one idea for this and I'm going to go with that.” You want to press all the edges and see what's going on with that particular problem. It’s wonderful to hear that tribute to him but you as well in terms of nurturing that relationship after the clerkship. Did you go immediately to Susman after the clerkship?
I did. I had not intended to practice in California. I came here to Southern California to clerk and I was convinced that I would spend my year here, which would be fantastic. I would probably end up back on the East Coast. I planned at least to practice in DC, where I had been a journalist and had a lot of relationships. It’s where I had a summer where I had all my legal ties.
My time spent clerking here made me change my view a bit about being in a different city and environment. I liked the energy of Southern California. In general, it was a more open legal market, less hierarchical, maybe a place where a younger lawyer starting would have more opportunities. I appreciated that because I had a little career already.
That's a different perspective. You came into law school having had a career, so you may understand how things might operate in an organization. Most law students wouldn't necessarily have that in mind if they hadn't experienced that.
I was ready to maybe hit the ground running a different way. It’s not that that's good, bad or otherwise, it was where I was at. I decided I wanted to be in LA or was open to that. I restarted my legal law firm search. I always tell young lawyers and law students never to be afraid to revisit those choices, your views of all the law. You look at some law firm when you're a second-year law student and you’re maybe a different person 3 or 4 years later when you finish clerking or when you finish doing something else. That's where I was at. Somebody who had clerked for Judge Fisher the year before I was working at Susman at the time. At that time, there were four lawyers in the office in Los Angeles.
He invited me to come to dinner and see the office. It was beautifully chaotic. They were super busy. When I went into the office, two of them were in arbitration and the other two were getting ready for trial. There was something about the energy of being in a place where everybody had exciting things going on. It was different from what I expected I would want or be comfortable with. I thought in advance, “I don't know about being in a small office. I don't know how that's going to feel.”
Having come out of a clerkship where you worked closely with three co clerks and a judge suddenly seemed appealing. I can see how collaborative everybody was. Even though they weren't necessarily all on the same cases, there's a lot of informal sharing of ideas and knocking on people's doors and I liked that. Our firm's home base is in Houston, which has a large office. It’s a relatively large boutique office. LA was a much newer outpost, that's why it was small. As I learned more about the firm, the culture and the opportunities, it began to seem the right fit for me. It was and still is a great place for people who are self-starters who are ready to get to work.
You talked about feeling like a lawyer or clerking. When I came to the firm, I felt like a grown-up lawyer because I was given weighty tasks and it was my job to figure out how to get them done with support. I got to plan my schedule. I got to balance the things in my docket. I got to figure out how to make judgment calls. That opportunity was striking to me as being different from a lot of other places I was looking at. I saw those things might be happening but happening at a different pace.
Those were beatings. After a few years, you would have that experience instead of at the starting gate.
My first assignment effectively when I joined the firm was I was sent a list of 300 prospective trial witnesses from a partner in Houston who later became my co-managing partner and he said, “We'll figure out which ones we should bring to the trial of this group.” I spent the next four months on the road interviewing witnesses by myself. I thought to myself, “How do they know that I even know what a good trial looks like?”
I was going to ask that. I was like, “Any criteria?”
They said that I had learned enough about the case and I should go forth. I'd been gone for a couple of weeks out of LA when I finally realized, “Nobody knows what I'm doing.” They don't know what I’m working on. They don't know where I've been. I started coming up with my methodology, “Here are my summaries for the week. Here's how I rank them, the witnesses I met,” and building off of that. When I was done, I had about 40 of those people that I said, “These are the key pool of witnesses.”
We ended up going to trial, in that case, 1.5 years later in a long 4-month bench trial. We called all the witnesses I picked and who I developed relationships with over that period too. They call me and catch up. I’d fill them in on what’s going on from our high-priority pool. They were fantastic. They did a great job at the trial too.
The lesson that I learned about the firm and a lot of what I also convey to people looking at the firm is that people don't start with a presumption that you can't do something. Partners start expecting that you can take on a task and you're going to figure out how to use your judgment. If you don't, you're going to get guidance along the way and support.
You don’t want to be in an environment where there is too much structure on top of you.
They don't necessarily think, “That's something they're not going to be able to figure out for five years. They're not going to have the skills to do that until they're at this or that stage.” That presumption is not there. It's the other way. Set the bar high and let people show you what they can do. In a lot of cases, for the types of associates we attract, they can do those things and relish the chance of being able to show what they can learn and how quickly they can go up the learning curve.
You're having people join who think that's an enjoyable challenge that would like to do that. They're going to meet the challenge. It's self-select in a way before getting in the door.
There's no shame or anything in wanting to proceed differently in your legal career and maybe wanting different steps or layering to how you get there. When I started, I was on a short partnership track, which is a little bit longer. In one sense, that might seem great to people. In another sense, it might seem daunting because you have a short time to have a skillset to say, “I'm a partner.” That's not necessarily for everybody and that's okay too. For me, especially because I had another job, I didn't want to be in an environment where there was too much over structure on top of me.
It worked for you because of that. That's a good lesson in terms of when people talk about culture and fit. Thinking about that, you also need to figure out where you are in your space and career. Do you need more structure? Do you feel more comfortable with more structure or a longer lead time? Do you want to have a longer leash? That's a good point that you thought about those things in terms of, “What feels comfortable to me? Where am I in my life and professional experience?” That's an important point because a lot of people maybe don't think, “That's something I should be considering in where I land. What works for me then?”
The firm is bigger, so we still don't have that over-layered structure where we feel things can't go to great associates, exciting opportunities. There are more formalized structures for supporting that, too, as we've grown. We have a robust pool of young partners who can share their wisdom having been through the associate ranks. There is more opportunity to get formalized input on things, not just your team but maybe even somebody else who can share their wisdom. The key is the opportunity still exists. Even as we've grown, that aspect of our operation has remained the same. It’s something that can be appealing to the right person.
It sounds like you, very early on, had 1 or 2 trials and then made partner quickly. Was it four years or something like that?
At that time, we had a track that was five years, but your clerkship counted as a year against that. It was four years from when I started.
You've ended up trying and litigating cases that are focused on the IP realm as well. From your experience previously, that's the sweet spot for you.
For our associates, it was true then and true now. We don't let them over-specialize. Even if they come in the door with interest, we want them to try a lot of different cases. I even had some defense side cases, employment, IP, and commercial breach cases. That was great. It helped me with having a broad view of the law, the litigation strategy and the basic practice. I was grateful for that. That remains how we operate.
When I became a partner, I focused most of my time and cases on intellectual property, patents, copyrights and trade secrets. From there, also into the areas of antitrust law and unfair competition. That's been the bulk of my practice. With the way we work on cases as an associate, I also love to have a plain, old breach of contract commercial dispute of any variety because that can be fun.
I've always gravitated a little bit to the IP cases because they involve questions of law but also interesting questions of fact and the landscape shifting. Also, figuring out, to some degree in the application of a law, the balance between trying to protect innovation and allowing for that to be monetized by people who invest in it versus people having access to technology too. One step abstract from what I'm doing every day are interesting questions to me, what is the right balance there?
Also, the different types of technology that I've been able to be exposed to through my cases are fascinating too. I've handled copyright cases involving music, compositions and sound recordings. Learning about that world and how it works is its dynamic. The trade secret cases often involve fairly complex fact patterns because accessing trade secret information can happen in a wide variety of ways that can involve anything from reverse engineering to direct copying to machine learning. In patent cases, there are all different types of subject matter claims. That aspect of it continues to make it interesting and appealing to me to see where the valuable technology is what are the assets that people are trying to protect. That's evolved.
That is an interesting perspective. I like a broad appellate practice too because I like to see interesting problems, but they can come up in a lot of legal areas. What I see is where the law is unclear or developing. That's where my practice moves by legal issues. Employment law is big. Other issues are where the movement is in terms of defining the law and refining it. It seems like the corollary of that is you're seeing where technology is going, what's valued in that arena and how that changes over time. That's an interesting perspective as well at the trial level.
For example, data and the ability and what you can do with data and its analytical capabilities that derive from access to data or how you process data, it’s in its value proposition and is an important area that’s evolved IP protection. The people’s conception that you’re protecting is something more on the hardware side, something more physical or that might have a higher value. It has evolved because data has such inherent value in so much of what we do. That’s one trend. Seeing how cases in trade secret and breach license agreements have evolved has been fascinating.
What advice would you have for lawyers who think they might want to be a litigator who goes to trial? How would they test the waters in that regard? What skills should they be looking for to get to that point, get into court and be able to do what you do?
A lot of young lawyers or law students talk themselves out of trial work because they associate it with a certain persona. I heard that a lot when I was younger. Especially women sometimes will say, “There’s a certain perception that a trial lawyer needs to be like this, sound like this or behave like this and that’s not who I am.”
The first message I would give is that a successful advocate in the courtroom takes a lot of different forms. They don’t all sound and look the same. You don’t know what clicks with a jury. The presumptions about that may be old school. Media influences from a different era are not necessarily born out in how juries and judges respond to lawyers.
That’s the first thing I would say because it can be daunting if you feel like, “I want to be a courtroom lawyer, but these the courtroom lawyers I’ve seen are nothing like me. I don’t sound like them or I don’t feel I could be like that.” It’s important to get over that feeling to start. It was always the case that it should have been more broadly conceived and it is changing.
You even see the bench wanting to see different types of lawyers, younger lawyers, more diversity in leadership roles and big class cases. Part of the reason they want to see that is to encourage different types of styles in the courtroom to encourage the training of those lawyers to be comfortable in the courtroom. That’s message number one.
Message number two is to spend some time in court. One blessing, perhaps, or silver lining of COVID is a lot of courts have Zoom public access or YouTube access to watch live proceedings. There’s real value in doing that and it’s probably for a lot of people in a positive way. Meaning, it demystifies what it means to be in the courtroom or what it means to be a trial lawyer to watch a lot of proceedings. You can do that from the comfort of your laptop and get online. It would give a lot of people confidence who might otherwise feel like they think they want to do that, but they’re not sure.
Third, in terms of development and skills, there are classes in civil procedure and other things that are valuable to take. Opportunities to get on your feet in whatever forum are useful, whether that’s a moot court, mock trial, giving speeches or speaking on a panel. Getting comfortable engaging in some level of extemporaneous speaking is a great skill.
A lot of it is about mastering the subject matter to be a great trial lawyer in a specific case. You’re going to have to do the specifics of that case. Getting over psyching yourself out about things like, “Could I answer a question on the fly? Could I retool what I was going to say to respond to somebody else?” Those are things that you can work on generally. It would be useful things to do besides getting into the weeds of legal practice.
That’s a good observation. There are so many other components to presenting the case and sometimes people might feel like, “I need that particular opportunity to get my skills.” What you’re saying is democratizing in a way. You have more power than you might think about in terms of making yourself comfortable with similar circumstances or at least the nuts and bolts of what it means to stand up in court. You’ll then be in a better position or hopefully worrying about fewer things when you have to stand up for the first time. That’s great advice.
We always hear the general advice that you should put your hand up and that opportunity. If you’re in a team and you see there’s an argument, raise your hand and say, “I want to do it.” That’s all true too. There are some things even before you put your hand up or maybe that helps you put your hand up. It’s getting familiar with that. The bench has done a good job of trying to facilitate more of this.
We talked about how several judges have the rule that if a younger lawyer is arguing, they will not take the motion under submission, but they’ll hold an oral argument. Some judges have been clear about wanting to see different lawyers arguing. We’ve said that if that lawyer wrote them a brief, they should be the ones arguing. Philosophically, at our firm, it’s often our view that the lawyer who wrote the brief should argue, even if that’s a junior lawyer.
Sometimes I hear that advice and that’s great to tell somebody to put their hand up, but we can do better to give them some of the tools to have the confidence to say, “I’m going to put my hand up and I know I can do it.” Part of putting your hand up is, “I want to do it and I also want to do a good job with it. I don’t want to disappoint anybody or let down a client.” There are things young lawyers can do to get some different ideas. It’s a lot to do with confidence and not psyching yourself out about how you’ll be perceived in the courtroom. Some of the things I mentioned I feel are valuable to start that process.
It's excellent for the r’ason I mentioned, which is you have control to get yourself prepared to r’ise your hand for that specific opportunity. It also recognizes the components of what’s required to be a good trial lawyer. Different things are not necessarily about the law. It’s being comfortable speaking, being comfortable on your feet, being comfortable to adjust when things change as they can quickly during the trial. All of those things are components of that work. Recognizing the non-legal per se things that are part of that is important so you can build those skills.
Also, listening. That's why maybe being in a round table or a panel or something where you get questions and you have to learn to answer a question that you were asked. It’s not the question you want to answer but the question that you answer. Learning that skill, you may have a plan, but you may have to pivot to be responsive. That's another example of a broader skillset that would serve people well who ultimately want to be in court.
You have to be calm and not always think about the next thing you're going to say to be able to be a good listener as well.
You're familiar with that from the appellate bench. I’m sure you have thoughts on that, too, because you might go in at the whole argument planned and those are not the questions you get.
It would be great to be in an all equity partnership at a specific firm.
That's radically different. It’s like, “Toss that out. Let's go with this.” You want to follow where it goes because you want to help the court and answer their questions. They’re the most important part of this. It’s not what you think is important but what they think is important in terms of deciding something. I am impressed by your advice in this regard because you can be blind to it as a newer lawyer. Even I came to some things later in my career that I'm like, “I should have asked you. I probably would have come to them a lot faster.”
Many things are on tape. Every argument I do, I listen to it afterward, no matter how painful it might be to hear yourself. It's helpful because you can listen to it dispassionately and say, “This was good. This could be better. What can I do to improve that next time or be more responsive? I thought I was responsive, but I should have also covered this. How does my voice sound in terms of presenting?” It’s all of these different things that you can look at when you're far enough away to say, “I should think about maybe some voice coaching or something like that.” That's something that you need distance to see or even to recognize. That's why your advice is valuable to think outside the box.
When we say skills, people usually think, “I have to know how to write the brief and the legal research and how to do a cross-examination.” Those are all important skills as well, but you're talking about other skills on top of that, which you can improve or learn. It’s separate from doing it in a legal context. It’s important to be prepared to raise your hand and take that opportunity in court. It's also a very prismatic view of what you're doing as a trial lawyer. You're thinking about it in 360 degrees, which says a little bit about how your mind works and why you're such a great trial lawyer.
Also, it’s possibly why you were chosen to be a co-managing partner at your firm. I want to talk about that too because there are not a lot of women trial lawyers in 2022. There aren't a lot of women managing partners of law firms either. I wanted to talk about that in terms of leadership and how it's contributed to your overarching view of things to be a managing partner of a firm as well as a good and active trial lawyer still at the same time.
What ideas do you have from that position to help young lawyers succeed and tackle some of the problems we were talking about in terms of women's continued progress in the profession? First, with leadership and managing partner, what does that involve? Are there surprising things about it that you hadn't thought about, new skills that you needed or skills you had that you're like, “It translates to this question in leadership?”
Some skills travel well from my work in trial practice, but I've had to evolve and think about how I want to deal with it as a leader and in leading a group of people. Some of the skills that have worked well are the natural problem-solving tendency of litigators, generally, which is to figure out how we get to a result. Certainly, in our practice, whether that's a trial or settlement, how do we fix that?
Having a can-do attitude to fix things is the belief that has been helpful in asset, which is that there are going to be issues, things or complicated matters to figure out that affect the firm and the future. They're not insurmountable at all. They require creative thinking. It’s the way sometimes our legal questions do, sometimes fresh thinking and fresh ideas. The other thing is that I like collaboration. That's been a formative part of my practice. I like working together with people. For me, it makes it more fun.
I felt the same way. I've always found it challenging for people who are solo appellate practitioners. I don't know how to do that because I like to have people to discuss issues with. It's the collegiality and collaboration to me that lead to the best result or work for clients.
Some people may be more of a silo. There are some things that I do well with having a little quiet time, but there are a lot of things that I do best at by talking them out or getting some back and forth some dynamic process going. In the leadership role, I tried to continue something that my co-managing partner at the time had done and expand on it, which is to have little working groups of other partners working on important issues. It’s a brain trust.
You need a sounding board for ideas and having a smaller group of those on different issues and involving maybe younger partners or partners who are not always putting their hand up to do stuff or partners you know who are interested in that issue. I’m trying to get their input and collaborate. That's something that was naturally a progression from how I did my cases to how I like to lead. It's been a fun part of the process to have that group thinking and to make people also feel invested.
In the cases that I run and the clients I bring to the firm, I want everybody on the team to feel that's their client too and feel invested in the case to give them the opportunities to do things that make them feel it's their case also because that yields better results for the case. It's a better way to work. It helps to follow up younger talent. That's been a big part of how I've approached running my trial teams.
Likewise, it’s making sure that people are invested collectively. Sometimes it means plucking out a few people to say, “Let's work on this issue together. I'd love to get your input on this. Let's work on this.” It yields better results for the firm and it ensures that people feel they're being heard. Partners and associates have a say in how things evolve too. Those are things that were useful crossover skills.
A thing that I learned about myself is that for some of the hard questions, and maybe this is something I probably do in my trials, too, is sometimes I need to think about it. Life can move fast and litigation moves fast, but some of the decisions that we're making will have a long impact. While speed and efficiency are important, there are times when I need to sleep on something or I need to walk on it.
I do the walking. I like to walk around the block. I even do that in the office. When I have something, I'm like, “I need to think about it.” If I'm processing something and figuring out how we're going to approach a problem, I'm like, “I’m going for a walk. I'll be back.”
While deciding a case can impact the life of that case, the success of that case, deciding for the firm can impact an issue for the firm for many years to come. There are some issues where I've said, “I have a feeling about what I want to do. I have a thought, but I want to flesh it out. I need some time to think more about it.” That's been interesting for me because I'm good at being decisive. It's also good to know when you need a little space, distance or additional input. That's one example of something that I've learned and evolved as a skillset in the role.
In your second piece about being able to do what I'm able to do in this position, it's been a great platform, broadly, for me to be more candid about things that I see in the profession that still need more. You can say that we've made progress and not have it be all negative while also still recognizing. I like to call them Frontiers to Cross. Hopefully, people don't view that solely as a negative thing. There are places where there's work to be done, no doubt. The courtroom remains one of them.
In most of my IP cases, the number of female lawyers in them on the other side remained small. I've tried cases where there have been no women on the other side. That's a frontier when a case goes to trial, especially one that's a big-ticket matter, a lot of money at stake, a civil case that's gone to the mat. Some of the goodwill and good intentions of firms, maybe even companies to diversify their legal team, changes. At that point, if there's any risk involved, if it's a younger lawyer, if it's a lawyer they don't know as well, they don't want to calculate for that risk or they don't want to provide for that risk.
To some degree, it's also understandable. If it's about the company case and they have their go-to lawyer that they've used before, do they want to use a lawyer they've never seen in a trial? Do they want a lawyer who's much younger or different vintage? Some of those issues are business concerns. We need to be thinking about how to approach them and how to develop relationships, so when the moment comes, it's not surprising that a female lawyer or diverse lawyer should be in the mix.
I still see that as a place where the rubber hits the road. You see that despite the good intentions of many companies, in-house counsel, the commitment by GCs and all that stuff, the big company case may not reflect some of those aims. Likewise, in the upper echelons of firm management of client development and relationship, those are still frontiers we're moving to conquer or come to. There's a business aspect to it that has been perhaps centralized in certain companies or firms with people who have been there a long time. We're seeing different women coming up the ranks and that's an area that moving into is probably going to take some comfort.
Who’s going to inherit the institutional clients in that regard? That's always a question. I had an interesting take on this from a guest on a previous episode, Patricia Hunt Holmes. She was one of the first woman partners in a big firm in Texas. When she went to retire, she had a whole lot of clients in a lot of business.
She made sure that a woman lawyer who would not get made partner would inherit those clients and then would be made partner with those clients. It was very forward-thinking of her and smart to know where those decisions are made at the dollar level. If you want these clients to be inherited and held with this firm, it will go with this woman. If not, they're not staying here. That's pretty amazing.
One thing I've been cognizant of is pitching. Even if a prospective client comes to me, I bring other partners to pitch with me. When I can, I try to include diverse lawyers, female lawyers. It’s not because the client expects that or would want to see that but because of exposure to how a pitch is done. Even the best-trained lawyer doesn't come into being a partner knowing how to forge business relationships.
The idea that you wake up one day and you're like, “I'm a good business generator,” that's not a realistic view. In the same way, there are general skills you can learn to be a lawyer that will help you segue into business generation and client development. We need to be more inclusive on that front, too, even if it's so that somebody can see how a pitch is done.
There are a lot of things like that where if you were to ask someone what they do, they would only say a small part of what they're doing because it's inherent in your makeup and you don't think to explain that to someone. You have to see someone doing it to even realize some of the things that people are doing. They're not conscious of them anymore. Unless you’re there, you don't get the full picture.
It can be helpful to see how issues are presented, how a case is analyzed and how you put together a budget for a case. I have younger lawyers and young partners who come to me on things I'm not involved with and I'm happy to give them my feedback. They say, “Is this realistic? What would you do?” We need to be facilitating more of that and not like, “If you ask me a question, I'm going to insert myself in your client business.” It’s like, “You can come to me and ask me questions.” We need to be a resource.
Going to pitches is one thing, but helping prepare pitches to understand what is being presented to potential clients. I would have especially more senior associates involved in how we frame this, pitch this and draw me up a budget. Try it for the first time and see how that works. It’s like, “It's off for this reason.” Explain how that's done from an accounting standpoint and how you estimate hours or work on projects.
A whole thing is open to them. They've never had to do or think about that. That makes a difference in how they think about the work they're doing and their cases as well, efficiency and all that. Many of them who were very close to a partner would tell me, “I've never been involved in any part of a pitch before.” You need to know how to do this before you get to that point. That's how you get there and stay there.
That’s how you get there. That’s how you cultivate the judgment to know and do that stuff. At our firm, many of our cases have some component of risk, whether it's a contingent case or a hybrid with a success component. One thing we do is we vote on those cases every Wednesday as a firm, not as a partnership. Everybody gets 1 lawyer, 1 vote, including our associates who started months ago. The lawyers proposing the cases circulate a memo on Mondays that analyzes how they diligence the case, how they're evaluating the merits, how they evaluate the fee proposal, especially the contingent and success components and present that. That's been a hugely helpful tool.
When you start as an associate, you're more focused on the legal issue. How do they analyze the merits? Over time, you start to think more about damages. You might have a great liability case, but if the damages are not robust enough for us, is that the right fit for the firm? Over time, you begin to think, “How do we monetize this if it's a full contingent case? How does the firm recoup the money?” You start to get in the mode of thinking about the business aspect of it, which is how do you achieve a good result? Is this a case that makes business sense for this firm?
That’s an ingenious way of doing it, having the vote be not partner level. You're engaging all attorneys in the business part of those questions and analyzing cases in those ways. Whether or not an individual partner includes you in putting together a pitch, everybody still has a baseline of looking at that and thinking about those questions and cases.
How we see business leaders should change too, in a way that's going to influence the ascension of more women into management too.
It helps to shape their view of, “This is the case that's a good bet for the firm. This is the case. That's a risky bet but maybe still a good one. This is the case that doesn't make sense for us.” I felt a little more equipped than maybe some of my peers and other institutions when I started that process. The partners have a high level of transparency around financials and compensation.
We also have some level of transparency. We try to do a financial presentation for the associates at least once a year, sometimes twice. Also, talk to them informally about our structure and different aspects of our financial system. We don't see a lot of upside in keeping that under wraps when we have a relatively short partnership track.
You can't expect people to wake up on day 6 years plus 1 and say, “I understand what this report is that I got.” We're trying to make at least a little bit of the business side of it accessible. They're thinking about it because it is an entrepreneurial business. In addition to trying to generate great trial lawyers and successful ones, we also want them to have some understanding of the business.
I like that approach to having that open in terms of the business aspects of individual cases, deciding to take them in and having people at all levels in the attorney ranks look at that. That's cool.
It helps them feel invested, too, because we’re together at the firm.
That's also a good thing, which leads to better results the more people are invested in cases. It's their case, so they're invested in the outcome. That's awesome. Overall, the show has been interesting. Seeing the opportunities and progress of women in the legal profession from those who started practicing in the 1970s or 1980s and folks at our level who will be in the 1990s, there's a huge change in what's possible or easier and more accessible for women within the profession. There are some very positive things from that, but there are still some more things to work on.
One of the things we agree on is women at the equity partner ranks that there are few of those and in the management ranks, whether it's practice groups or firms. The management ranks are largely driven by the question of equity partnership and having a book of business. To me, that's still an important frontier to work on and increase because that doesn't seem to fluctuate or expand as much as we'd hope each year.
We are in an all-equity partnership. At my firm, it's always been. I thought that was a huge asset, frankly, for ensuring the transparency that is valuable to women and diverse lawyers. You're not going to enter an unknown stage after finishing your time as an associate and not have a clear path to becoming an equity partner at the firm. I thought it was valuable.
We tend to tell people when they're going to be considered. While it's great to have a mentor and a sponsor, you don't need a sponsor to be put on a vote. You're these associates who are at firms where they don't even know when they'll be considered. For me, that would have been stressful. That level of transparency is critical and making sure that people can have an opportunity to get to an equity place.
Ascending into management is a whole other question. Part of it is ensuring that our senior women or women who are becoming partners or who are senior associates stay in the profession to be able to do that. Depending on the management structure of a given firm, some firms want the person who's in management to have demonstrated their ability to be client business generators. Those two issues are bound up together.
It might be more of being a successful administrator in other firms, which is also part of the job. The expectations can be different at different places. I do feel that is the area where there's a lot of complexity around women in the business generation. Frankly, as that term is loosely used for business generation, what even means for people like the old school model of there's one person in a firm and everybody goes to them? I don't even think that is true in the real world of most private firms anyway. What I see is a lot more collaboration of people pitching together or being approached about a case but maybe inviting other people to work with them on it.
We need to also move away from the concept of there's this rainmaker that everybody goes to. That may be true, but that's not the only way in which you can develop and cultivate a business and be a successful business person. Even if that client comes to you indirectly or with two other people or you acquire that client, you can successfully maintain and grow that business relationship.
Some of our conceptions around this have become outmoded with the way things work. If you have big companies that are putting out an RFP for very high-level legal services and somebody successfully gets that RFP, maybe they didn't get the call, but they won the business. Our conception of what makes somebody a good business leader needs to be broader than the name associated with them. There's a rainmaker or they cultivated this business. If they are helping to drive important revenue at the firm, they are implicitly doing real business at the firm. I hope that changing and evolving conception will create more flexibility and opportunity to see women as great lawyers and great business leaders who should naturally ascend into management.
That's a good way of describing it. If things are centralized with one person for all time on one particular client, that makes it difficult for other people to expand that and get credit for expanding it. What does it mean to bring in work? That's a different question. It can look different in different ways. People have different skills in that regard. They should still be rewarded for that instead of courting.
Recognizing that successfully getting clients can be a broader endeavor than it was in the past, given the nature of what GCs want, the broader legal office. Somebody might get a call, but to be able to secure and land the business may require other people. The nature of the business generation has changed. How we think business leaders should change too in that way.
That's going to influence the ascension of more women into management too. I hope that women view that as a positive opportunity to make that transition. I feel there are many opportunities to grow the women’s ranks there, but it will require some concerted effort and some changing of some mentalities about what leadership looks like.
It’s the framing of the question, “What are we doing here? What's involved in this process? What should we show that we value?” That's differing. The in-house legal departments drive that in terms of what they want and how their RFP process and all of those various things. It might take a village or several folks to obtain a piece of business.
Thank you. Those are very thoughtful observations. There are different ways of looking at the challenges that we face in the practice of law and as managers in firms. I appreciate your insights there. Hopefully, those who read this will think of things a little bit differently, too, “Maybe it’s the lens I'm looking at through this. Maybe there's another perspective to look at and consider.”
Unfortunately, our founder passed away, which gave rise to an opportunity to become a managing partner under sad circumstances. When I did assume the role, I was delighted by how much support and how many different people reached out to me about what they thought was good about my leadership or what they hoped that it would accomplish for the firm. It was varying. Some people felt that it was great to have a plaintiff-side leader or practice with a lot of contingent work.
Some people felt it was great to have somebody who had grown up in the firm. I'm the only managing partner who's been at the firm since the first day of their careers. Our founders came from other firms. Some people thought it was great that I was in an office that was a little bit younger at the firm, which had grown substantially since my time there. Some people thought it was great that I worked with many different trial teams across the firm with different lawyers in every office and felt that was a signal of collaboration.
I was moved by how much people had evolved their thinking about leadership and what makes a good leader and what they were looking for in a leader. I say all of that because sometimes we tend to psych ourselves out of something to say, “Maybe I'm not ready. This isn't my moment and the right job for me.” You may be telling yourself something that others are not. Maybe they're saying the opposite. It’s like, “That is the person we want to do the job. She has the qualities that are exactly what we're looking for.” Keep the opportunities or concepts that are taking on the lead role in an organization as well within your reach and not something off the table for your career. It's important to have that mentality and not to second guess what people are thinking about you because you won't know until you test the waters.
One way that I've heard that view on the interviews is sometimes, as women, we’ll take ourselves out of the running for something because we say, “We need these 10 things and I only have 4 or 5 of them. I'm not going to ask and apply.” Another way of looking at that is what you're talking about, which is you have no idea what people will perceive as what's right for this leadership role or how they might perceive you in terms of a fit for that. Don't take yourself out of the running because maybe people will see you exactly to be right for the time and right position.
I can see how people came to decide that you would be an excellent leader or co-leader for the firm. Having this discussion with you on the show, whether we've had other discussions in the past, but with this, I can see the fresh ideas that you have and the sound judgment that you exercise. It doesn't surprise me why they felt comfortable having you be one of the leaders of the firm. I'm happy for you. All the lawyers you're working with are very lucky to have you in that role. I wanted to close up with a few lightning-round questions. Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
Playing an instrument. I did play the piano a little bit when I was young. If I could play the guitar now, I'd be pleased with that.
Who is your hero in real life?
My mom is my hero. For all of the challenges of being a working woman, she did it in an era where it was much more difficult. She had this lifelong dream to become a doctor, which her parents couldn't afford to facilitate. After I was born, my dad said, “I'll make that happen. I’ll help you.” He's also my hero in that manner because he made it possible. Certainly, her ambition and feeling that having a dream and achieving it is a wonderful thing and not a negative thing and not a trade-off for your family or something inspires me every day.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?
Probably Mahatma Gandhi because I would like to hear how he mentally elevated himself above politicized and difficult times. There were many different issues and situations but mostly his ability to be mentally strong and focused and have a clarity of vision in the midst of all of that. That's what I would like to talk to him about.
What is your motto if you have one?
To experience life. The experience of life matters, what you feel day-to-day, how you go through your day, the little things, the experiential moments. Think about the experience of life, not just the work of your life or the end goals of your life but the day-to-day experience.
That's a great reminder and a great way to close out the show. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts.
Thank you so much for having me, MC. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear from amazing women and their accomplishments and women who have inspired me in my pursuits. Thank you for giving that platform to all of us.
Thank you so much.