Episode 72: Erin F. Giglia
Co-founder and Owner of the Montage Legal Group
00:59:16
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Show Notes
Entrepreneurship isn't a word you often associate with lawyers, but Erin F. Giglia, the co-founder and owner of the Montage Legal Group, is a standout entrepreneur. She and her business partner, Laurie Rowen, founded the company to give law firms and legal departments access to a platform of independent contractor freelance attorneys. Erin shares insights about her journey from lawyer to entrepreneur and Montage's groundbreaking business model.
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Relevant episode links:
Montage Legal Group, Laurie Rowen, LIT Videobooks, My Beloved World
About Erin F. Giglia
Erin F. Giglia
Erin Giglia graduated cum laude from Wellesley College in 1998. At Wellesley, Erin attained departmental honors in Political Science. She then attended University of San Diego School of Law, where she was a member of the San Diego Law Review. She obtained her Juris Doctor, cum laude, Order of the Coif, in 2001.
After law school, Erin practiced complex commercial litigation at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in Irvine until 2002. At Brobeck, Erin defended many national clients through motion practice and discovery in a wide range of litigation matters. Erin then joined Snell & Wilmer, LLP in Costa Mesa, where she practiced until 2009. At Snell & Wilmer, Erin defended entertainment and amusement venues, consumer product manufacturers, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and automobile manufacturers in product liability, premises liability, environmental law, and commercial litigation. Erin has prepared and argued numerous motions in state and federal court, taken hundreds of depositions, conducted complex discovery on a national level, and prepared for dozens of trials.
After leaving Snell and Wilmer, Erin co-founded Montage Legal Group with Laurie Rowen in 2009, and was Of Counsel at Hewitt Wolensky, LLP from 2010 through 2012.Montage Legal Group is a nationwide network of experienced contract/freelance attorneys with impressive credentials from top law schools and training in prestigious law firms. Montage’s attorneys assist law firms with temporary and substantive legal projects on an hourly basis, providing a cost-effective way to manage case overflow.
Montage Legal Group has been discussed and highlighted in numerous articles and publications including Forbes.com, ABA Journal, The Huffington Post, Above the Law, and The Atlantic among others. Montage Legal Group was featured in Freelance Law: Lawyers’ Network Helps These Women Keep a Hand in the Workforce (ABA Journal, 2011) and How Two Stay-at-Home Moms Are Changing the Legal Industry, (Forbes.com, 2014). Montage’s unique business model has been discussed in various books, including Life After Law (2013), Overwhelmed (2015) and Lawyer Interrupted (2016).
Erin is a frequent speaker on issues involving the ethics of freelance/contract lawyering, women in the law, and alternative legal practice models. Laurie and Erin have co-authored several articles, including “Ethics of Contract Lawyering” (Part 1 and Part 2), (Law.com-The Recorder, 2013), “Survey Results: Why are Women Really Leaving Firms?” (Orange County Lawyer, 2016), and “Why Lawyers Leave Law Firms and What Firms Can Do About It” (ABA Law Practice Today, 2016).
In 2011, Erin was named one of OC Metro Magazine’s 2011 Top 40 under 40. In 2014, Erin and Laurie Rowen were honored to be selected by Enterprising Women Magazine as 2014 Enterprising Women of the Year Winners.
In addition to her legal career, Erin serves on the University of San Diego School of Law Alumni Board of Directors, the USD Law Orange County Alumni Chapter Board of Directors, and the Orange County Bar Association Charitable Fund Board of Directors. Erin also served as legal counsel on the board of directors of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Orange County Chapter from 2010-2015.
Transcript
I’m very pleased to have join the show, Erin Giglia, who is one of the Cofounders of Montage Legal Group. I’m interested in her journey in practicing law but also in entrepreneurship in the law. Erin, welcome.
Thank you, MC. It is so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
You and your Cofounder, Laurie, started Montage Legal Group at a time when you created this whole genre of work and agencies for women lawyers, in part, who wanted to have more balance in their life and to do contracting work in that regard. You pioneered that model and some interest in exploring that but also starting with your journey into the law in terms of how you initially wanted to become a lawyer and what you thought you might accomplish through the law.
My path was slightly accidental. I am a first-generation college graduate so I did not have anyone in my family who was a lawyer or an elevated professional. I went to college on the East Coast from California. When I was there, I did not know what else to do. I knew I was not going to be a doctor so I thought going to law school might be a good path for me because it could not hurt and it might be something that I would be interested in doing.
I applied to law school and I ended up getting an excellent scholarship from the University of San Diego School of Law, where I went and proceeded to do well. From there, I did not know what different law paths were available to me. I knew that I had to do something that would be able to help me pay my expenses so I went through the on-campus interview process and ended up getting an excellent summer associate position at a firm that no longer exists called Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. That was an extremely excellent firm back in those days. I had a great summer there.
I thought that I was going to be doing corporate law because that was the big, exciting thing that was happening during the dot-com boom so I thought that that would be my path. By the time I graduated from law school and started as an associate at that firm Brobeck, no deals were happening because that was when the dot-com bubble started bursting.
I found myself as a very recent law school graduate. I was 25 years old and handed a severance package to be laid off. At that point, I did a little self-reflection and thought, “What should I do?” I put my feelers out, reached out to all of my law school friends who were located in the area where I wanted to be and asked them, “Do you have any recommendations? Is your firm interested in talking to me?” I ended up interviewing at several places, big and small. I decided that it would be best to continue on a path to obtaining the best legal training that I possibly could to make sure that if at any point I wanted to continue growing my legal practice, being trained at the best place possible was the way to go.
I landed at Snell & Wilmer, which is an excellent regional West Coast firm. I thought that I would be there for a year or two while I got my feet under me but I enjoyed the people and the work there. I thought that it was a great firm so I ended up staying there for about eight years. I liked it. Everyone there was very supportive and I still maintain strong friendships from that time in my life, which I appreciate very much. The thing that got me out of the firm was not the firm’s fault. I found myself with two babies. I had a toddler and a brand new baby. Things were escalating as far as my husband’s career was concerned. It was very difficult to maintain the level of parental participation that I wanted to have.
There was a lot of sickness during those years. It was tricky for me. The firm honestly did everything possible to make it work for me. I got put in some certain practice areas that lent themselves to doing remote work back before remote work was the thing that everyone does. I have firms pre-pandemic that would talk about how they could not have anyone working remotely. I would always say, “I have been working remotely since 2006. This is not a new thing,” but at the same time, it was not going to make sense for my family to continue on that path so I met with Laurie.
Laurie and I were associates together at the firm. She also loved the firm but she did not like being a lawyer as much as I did. I loved being a lawyer. I thought it was great and fulfilling. The work was very interesting. There were many things about it that I enjoyed. I was also terrified of being a stay-at-home parent. That is the hardest job on Earth. That also did not quite fit my personality as far as I saw it. I worked very hard to be a lawyer and achieve what I had done. I did not want to put that on pause in any meaningful way. I never know what was going to happen down the line so I felt that it was very important to continue in the legal profession.
Laurie knew that she was going to bow out of the big firm life. She had an idea that she would start doing contract work for other attorneys who needed help from someone who knew what they were doing. She left shortly. I failed to mention that she and I were pregnant at the same time. My daughter is sixteen days older than her first child. We went through the whole thing together. She went through the mental struggle of what I was going to do when I had the second baby, whether I was going to stay or not.
I stayed for as long as I felt I could. I did try to make it work but it was not going to work for me. I left when my youngest was a year old and joined up with Laurie who was already doing contract work. She and I started doing contract work together. It worked well. We had some great clients who were extremely grateful for our help. I started doing work right away for some former opposing counsel.
I would come in and unloose motions for them so that was fun. That is not against my old firm or old clients but in different types of matters. That was a nice way to get started. We then realized that there were probably a lot of other lawyers in the same situation so we decided to start a company. One of our former colleagues came and joined us fairly quickly. She also left the big firm environment and then it snowballed from there. We started getting a lot of people applying to join.
All we do is jump in and help law firms that need extra help from someone who has training and already knows what to do. In the litigation context, it would be something like, “I need to oppose this Motion for Summary Judgment. Here is the file. Go write the opposition.” Instead of having to say, “Here is what a Motion for Summary Judgment is and what a separate statement is,” they already knew that part. It was a useful set of skills and resources that we all had for law firms to utilize our skills.
When did you start beyond just you and Laurie? What timeframe was that?
It was probably right around 2010. We have been running Montage for years. Since then, we have grown quite a bit. We work with probably around 400 freelance lawyers and have an internal staff of 8. Laurie and I used to run the entire business. We did that for a long time and then we added an admin. We have a finance director who, along with Laurie, does all of the company finance work. I have a project coordination team that I run and that is four people who are doing the job that I used to do all by myself. I’m in the process of hiring someone else so that will be number five. That is going well.
The concept of freelance work, especially remote work since 2020, after the world shut down and when things started picking back up again, law firms were behind and needed a lot of extra help. Most of our clients are small firms. When you have a small firm, a lot of the time, it is the same work as the big firm but fewer people to do it. They needed our help. Since that time and in 2022, most especially, the big firms are struggling to bring people in so they have been calling us as well. It is all over the map.
That is an interesting part. I was going to ask you what impact COVID had on your business or business model because it seems like more firms are comfortable with having people work remotely, which would make them more open to working with Montage. Combined with that, there is a significant talent war for experienced associates. Larger firms are finding themselves alert at various points while they are looking to engage in long-term hiring within the firms. Something I hadn’t thought about was that part would expand on who might be interested in working with you even beyond more familiarity with remote work.
In addition to that, the big firm in regards to the talent war has been affecting the small firms because the small firms are having their attorneys plucked out of their small firms and into the big firms. The small firms simply cannot compete with the dollars that the associates are being offered. Some of the comp packages that I have heard are mind-blowing.
I’m talking about a full annual salary for half-time remote, which are things that you wouldn’t ever think would have happened even a few years ago. The smaller firms have been struggling. There was a time when during three days, I had twelve separate firms that I have known and worked with called me and said, “We are struggling to hire someone. Do you know anyone looking for full-time?” I was like, “You are the eleventh person that has asked me this in the last 48 hours.” It was astounding. It is hard for firms to bring people in.
We do what I call band-aiding the situation. I fully recognize that if a firm needs to hire someone, that means they need to hire someone. I understand that but to at least continue offering their clients the excellent service that they deserve instead of putting all of their non-urgent work on the back burner doesn’t help with client relationships. Even if something is not urgent, as a client, you need to know that your lawyer is paying attention to your work before it does become urgent and could potentially negatively impact your matter. We try to help with that.
When you expanded the group beyond you and Laurie, at that time, that was novel. Some people were contract attorneys and served that with themselves but not collaborating in that way and beyond themselves individually. What do you think pushed both of you toward that vision?
Laurie has a brilliant business mind. She will even tell you that she should have gone to business school instead of law school. She has these types of ideas and also has an extremely can-do attitude. Some people think, “I do not know how to do this,” and they get paralyzed by it. She is the opposite of that. She is like, “I do not know how to do this. Let’s go figure it out,” and then she does. That was the driving force behind the entire idea.
I want to clarify that while we do have this company that is made up of all these freelance lawyers, the freelance lawyers themselves do not collaborate. They are everyone’s individual. The only time they would collaborate is if they are working with the same law firm on the same matter. Otherwise, it would be a massive conflict of interest. We do not do that.
Even the logistics of setting that up in terms of ethical standards, you had to go from scratch in terms of figuring out how to make that work and comport with lawyers’ ethical duties.
All we do is jump in and help law firms that need extra help from someone who has training and who already knows what to do.
If you do not know the answers to things and you work with lawyers, you better learn the answers fast. That is what Laurie and I set out to do. We researched all of the possibly relevant ethical issues into the ground. Since that time, we have become national experts on the ethics of contract lawyering. I have given dozens of MCLE presentations around the country about various ethical issues. We have written a lot of articles about those types of issues for the ABA, the California State Bar and other places as well so when people have questions, they come to us. That is what you do. If you do not know the answer, you better become an expert on it quickly.
How have you grown in that time from when you originally started doing the contract work and then working with Laurie in Montage? It has been a couple of years. What kinds of new skills have you gotten along the way?
The most interesting new skill that I have gotten is how to be a boss. That was very unfamiliar to me. I was kind of a boss when I had a secretary before but I did not feel it that way. When I was coming up in law, I was already very familiar with the technology. Most young associates are fairly self-sufficient. We did not need anyone to type things or take notes for us. The administrative function for young attorneys is very different from what it was many years ago. I did not have the same type of experience that I do now.
This is our company so we have to make every decision ourselves. We have had to learn how to become business owners, learn every single thing that a business would need from entity formation to marketing, how to handle a customer dispute, how to deal with someone unhappy with anything, how do we bring in freelance lawyers, what is our criteria, what is our messaging going to be and how are we going to handle anything that comes up.
This has been a very interesting education because Laurie and I are not business-trained in any sense of the word. We went to law school. Lawyers are not trained in business and are notoriously known to be terrible business people in a lot of cases. We had to figure out what our business style was going to be. We did not have a lot of background knowledge or training so it freed us up to find the style that was going to work best for us.
The thing that I tell people a lot is that we are not a typical business. We do not have a board of directors that we have to answer to. Our entire strategy is what the thing that makes sense is and what is the right thing to do. That is how we make our decisions. Dollars are not even the top ten considerations on our list. It is, “Does this make sense? What is the right thing to do?” If it does, great and if it doesn’t, then we figure out how to fix it. We deal with lawyers. A lot of people have some strong opinions on things so we try to do the best that we can to explain things in the kindest way possible.
We are here for our law firm clients who do need the help. This is their time. Law is a very interesting profession and we only have time. That is how we make money. Time is also the most finite resource that exists. You cannot create more of it. That is the way it goes. Everyone who goes into law is also a human who has a life. Everyone has a family, interests, health, and all kinds of other things that are at least equally important to their career and theoretically more important than that, but at the same time, as lawyers, we have obligations and duties to our clients.
We cannot set those things aside. We cannot say, “I’m so sorry. I have to go to my kid’s birthday. I can’t go to your hearing.” That doesn’t happen. We have to figure out a way to balance those things out. A lot of our clients do that by working with us so we try hard to make a more balanced life possible for them in addition to the freelance lawyers that come to work with us because of all of those same considerations.
That is a good point that you are also helping those in the law firms maintain that balance like those who are working with you that value that as well. Sometimes, what can be freeing is the idea that we did not know what we did not know and we did not know what we were doing so we were free to be creative about things. We did not know this is according to the MBA strategy, whatever we learned in business school or these are the three options for doing what we are doing. You had more freedom from not having that so you came up with maybe some more creative approaches as a result. You may not have even known you were being creative.
The other thing that we did was we intentionally grew the business very slowly. We did that because when we started, I had a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old and Laurie had a 1-year-old and a new baby very shortly after that. We went slowly. A lot of new businesses get drawn to the one million business resources that are available to businesses and it is very easy to hire someone to do this or that thing, hire consultants, coaches and all of these different people.
It is easy to spend money on a lot of things but Laurie and I took an approach that we wanted to learn how to do everything at the beginning like learning how to build our website, how to pick our branding, figure out how to create our contracts and what was important to us. We also figured out early on that we needed to divide tasks in a very clear way between my work and Laurie’s work. We had to do this because Laurie can stop time.
What I mean by that is we would have these big strategy meetings and then we would each have a to-do list afterward. About ten minutes later, Laurie would be like, “I’m done with my 27 things.” I would be like, “I just sat down. I haven’t even drank my coffee.” That is when she would start going through my list and doing it but then that doesn’t help anyone because she is doing way more than she should be.
Once we figured out how to divide tasks, everything got a lot smoother. We weren’t emailing over each other or both responding to the same things so that worked well. The other thing that was important to our growth and strategy, in general, is that Laurie and I, throughout the history of our company, have met at least twice a year on high-level strategic decisions. We go through all of our data, keep track and record everything so that way, we have excellent data numbers and can understand the trajectory that we are on if we need to make any adjustments.
That has been important because if every law firm acted like they had to report to a board of directors, they would all make different decisions. If they looked at every number critically, then it would lead to a lot of important a-ha moments like, “Maybe I should stop spending time on this and spend more time on this.” Doing speaking engagements is an example. Laurie and I learned very early that when we do speaking engagements, it does not lead to more business. There is no direct correlation between speaking and additional clients, which is fine. Whenever we do a speaking engagement, it is something that we do know.
Speaking engagements take a lot of time. You have to prepare. If someone asks me if I can go speak to a local bar association in Atlanta, I’m going to look at the ROI on that and the answer is going to be, “No, but if you want me to do it virtually, I will.” It was those kinds of ideas that it is important to know how you are spending your time and if it is valuable or not. These are things that most lawyers do not necessarily think about.
That is unfortunately true. Some of us in practice do exactly that looking back and saying, “These are the things I did. Can I tell whether they were effective in terms of more work?” Sometimes in practice, it can be very difficult because there is not any immediate referral or return, and then four years later, somebody will call with something and say they remembered some panel, speech, or article you wrote that you are like, “I never knew that had any impact on anyone.” It does but it is many years later. I have always found it is hard to exactly figure out that connection even if you try to audit it, at least from a practice standpoint but it is important to do what you are talking about.
We are businesses in ourselves as practitioners so it is important to at least try, mark that out and say, “If I can’t tell at this point, is it still something I enjoy doing that I will do?” It is with that knowledge of, “I can’t see a direct connection to anything but I’m still going to keep doing this when I can because I enjoy it, I enjoy meeting people or it is generally reputational.” It is important to do the audit in terms of, “What is having some kind of connection here?”
You are right that it may not be immediately apparent that something is affecting a potential client or not but that is why it is even more important to reuse content. If you write an article, then you can use that as material for speaking. If someone asks you to do a speaking event, then do it but make sure you take that content and make it into something else that you can use as a marketing type of material.
Luckily, we are in this wonderful technology age where you can get that material published by a legal publication or at least self-publish it on your blog so that someone can find it at some point in the future. That is how you make those time commitments into things that do end up benefiting you down the line.
That is a good point too in terms of there is only a certain number of people who are going to be in the room for that presentation but if you can repurpose it into an article or some other kind of publication, then a whole other group of people might have contact with that and then you can share it with others too if it is relevant to their interests. A part of that is figuring out how many different channels you can transmit the information on.
Especially for lawyers, a lot of the information that we would potentially write about is directed at other lawyers but you can always take that more scholarly type of material and change the language a little bit to turn it into something user-friendly that could go to the general population. In that way, you are putting yourself in front of a lot of potential clients that maybe are not legally trained but might be business owners or some other type of person that might need your services or firms. The way to do that is you write the big, long article with all the citations and then start crossing things out. It turns into something that a regular person might want to read.
No footnotes, taking out the citations, and maybe phrasing it a little more practical than legally is true adaptation. There is a lot in your journey that I do not want to say self-taught in part but also taught by experience. Sometimes, people, especially lawyers who are involved in business matters, feel like, “I did not go to business school. I did not have this training and I’m not sure that I can do that.” There is nothing like experiencing it, working with it, handling it, and learning how to do it in the real world in real-time. That is an alternative.
One, the job training is extremely useful and is probably more useful than formal education in a lot of ways, especially for a small business. You do not need a lot of in-depth knowledge about how businesses run. Laurie and I read a lot of business books. We learned that way also. The people who write a lot of those business books are experts and teach business in business school so we can still read those things even though we are not sitting in a classroom.
It is that concept of continued learning and growth. You are constantly growing and learning new things. That keeps you engaged and interested in what you are doing as well. It doesn’t sound like when you went to law school, this is how you thought your route might go in terms of running a small business but in retrospect, does it seem to fit together or make sense given your various skills. I have a question too. You and Laurie divided up clearly so that both of you weren’t handling the same issue or problem. Do you have different roles and talents that you lean toward? Laurie has a lot of business interests in entrepreneurship and innovation. I’m wondering how you divided up the tasks.
Even if something’s not urgent, as a client, you need to know that your lawyer is paying attention to your work before it does become urgent and could potentially negatively impact your matter.
I will take the first question first, which was, does this all make sense in retrospect? The answer is yes. I did not mention it at the beginning but the college that I went to on the East Coast is a women’s college. It is Wellesley College. I have always been a very big supporter of women and women in business. I had a lot of excellent role models in that way and learned about all of the amazing women business leaders that came out of my college. The motto of my school is we are here to serve women. What can we do to advance women in the business professional, legal profession or any profession?
With Montage, one of our main goals is to keep women in the legal profession. That was what we wanted for ourselves. That was important to us. With the reality of how it goes with families a lot of the time, women tend to be the ones to take a step back from practice. We wanted to create a system so that women wouldn’t have to take a step out.
It is a big challenge to come back in so if you are not out altogether, that can allow you an on-ramp leader, if you want, to a full-time position somewhere you can adapt but if you are out of it for several years, that is a lot more catch up to do.
We wanted to help people avoid that resume gap. In addition to that, we wanted to be that on-ramp for women to come back into the legal profession who had been out for a long time. A lot of the folks that came to us initially were people who had been out for 5, 6, or 10 years and needed to come back or wanted to come back for one reason or another but no one would talk to them. It was very difficult for them to find a legal job.
My philosophy is you have the same brain inside of your head that you did years ago. If it is important to you to come back and do legal work again, you are capable of doing that. You have to get yourself back in the mindset. It is the idea to make sure that we could be helpful in that way to bring women back in. Since starting Montage, we have transitioned probably somewhere between 300 and 400 people back into full-time practice who were out, and those people have gone back to firms. Some of them have gone in-house. Some of them have joined courts as clerks, administrative judges, or other things.
One of our big goals was to make sure that we had that and that works. That is for sure something that has always been interesting to me. The other part of this job that has been rewarding and aligns with that philosophy also is being there to understand some of the hardships and struggles that women lawyers can have. I have spoken to thousands of lawyers at this point who was in some kind of career crisis and did not know what to do.
Freelance work is not necessarily the answer for all of them but there are usually are a lot more options than people realize. I do not call it career coaching. It is more like fun career coaching. It is getting people out of their heads and recognizing that we do have agency over our careers. It is just a matter of, “is this working for you? If it is not, then fix it.”
I feel like women stay in situations that are not working a lot longer than we should as a generality. If you are not doing yourself any favors or you are in a torturous situation, we have a lot more options than we tend to give ourselves credit for, including starting your firm. I can’t even tell you the number of conversations I have had with exceptionally qualified women lawyers and the sentence, “I do not know how to start my firm,” comes up. I’m like, “You do not know how? Google, how would you start a law firm?” That has been an interesting and enlightening experience as well. I love all of that.
As far as the dividing work part of your question, Laurie loves math. She is very good at finance and numbers. What we decided originally was that Laurie would handle the finance side. She is gifted at any financial question. Our records are immaculate. Whenever anyone looks at our records, they cannot believe that they are as perfect as they are. She is going to kill me for saying that but they are amazing. She is gifted when it comes to all the finance side so she has handled all of that and learned everything.
I have taken on the project side so when a law firm comes and asks for help, I am the point of contact. I talk to the new firm and answer all of their one million questions because we are lawyers. I explain the whole process. I talk to them about what they need and what they think they need. I explain all the different ways that firms work with Montage because there are limitless possibilities on how law firms choose to work with us. I go through all of that, the contracts, and do that whole process with them. We separate things that way. Even if there is an issue or a problem that comes up, we always collaborate. We always have a back and forth discussion on whatever the issue is and then come to some joint resolution.
That is a good partnership. You have different strengths. You recognize them and take primary responsibility in the area of your strength. That sounds like a perfect business partnership.
The other thing that we do is because I deal mostly with the firms, I tend to have the more difficult conversations with firms to the extent that they happen. Laurie does not love the drama conversations. For whatever reason, they do not bother me as much so I deal with any issue that comes up. The other thing that is somewhat interesting is because Laurie is so incredibly fast at getting things done. It is astounding.
Whenever we write anything, she usually will do the first draft because she gets it done so fast. I take it from there and then we go back and forth with it. It is a great model because if you take, for example, an appellate brief, if I was going to write an appellate brief, it would take me a year because I have to do everything. It has to be perfect from the beginning. I will go back, delete it all and start over again.
For Laurie, she throws it all in there. If you can imagine getting a template that you can fix, it is so helpful because there are all these ideas in there. You can use it and move it around. I’m better at the editing part and she is excellent at the initial like, “Let’s get all this out there.” There is going to be some back and forth discussion but that is useful for anyone to have a second set of eyes to help with their writing. We can all improve on our writing.
It is nice to have that framework to operate from. Somebody puts the framework and then you can figure out how to cut and paste, move things around and adjust it. That is good. It is nice to hear about cofounders who have that clear sense of their particular role in the company where they are best used like you said, “I can handle the difficult conversations. It is not as taxing on me as for Laurie so I tend to do those.” It is a rhythm that you learn over time.
You know your skills initially but then there is the rhythm that you develop from having worked together so long as well. You talked about supporting women and keeping women in the profession if that is what they would like to do. The very collegial relationship that you and Laurie have with each other and the support that you provide to each other professionally in the business and also personally is equally inspiring. It is nice to see women supporting other women in that way too.
It is the love that comes through because that is the case. There have been many instances where if some issue comes up and we need to spend money on something, Laurie is like, “We need to do this. It is going to cost us an amount of money to do this financial thing.” My answer is always, “I do not care how much it costs. Spend whatever you need to spend. If this is going to help you, then do it.” That is a theme that permeates every part of our business. I’m 100% in favor of anything that is going to be helpful to her and she is the same way with me.
If anything is not working for me, she will do whatever she can to help me and fix it. I do the same thing for her. We do not agree on everything. We come at things in different ways all the time, but if something is extremely important to her, I’m like, “That is fine. I do not necessarily agree but if this is what needs to happen for you, then let’s do it.” She feels the same way. It works very well.
It is always good to point out things like women to women’s support and what that looks like. We can talk about it supporting other women but what does that look like in real life? Both of you are a good example of that with each other and then paying that forward through the company in terms of opportunities for women to launch back into the profession or stay in the profession if they want to.
I love your advice thing too. You are so good at listening and providing advice but you are not judgmental about it. I could see why people would come to you and ask, “What do you think about this?” You would be a good point of contact for law firms and the business because you are very even about that.
I even say that to my law firm clients all the time, “If you need help with something, even if it has nothing to do with Montage and you want a sounding board, feel free to ask me. I might not know the answer but at least I can help you think out loud if you want,” and people do. The other thing is the number of people’s kids that I have talked to does it. A lot of people put their college-age or law school kids in touch with me because they want some type of professional advice or ideas. That is what you were saying before about trying to support women.
I also want to make sure I say that that carries through for our internal employees and the lawyers that work with us. We try hard to do right by all of them. I have been referenced so many times for lawyers. For the people who work with us, we try hard to give them a lot of autonomy and credit. If somebody has a great idea, I would never try to make it seem like that was my idea because that is ridiculous. We try hard to make sure we are being as supportive as possible. I do not know how else anyone could be, but apparently, that is not how everyone is.
You can’t see it any other way. That is a testament to how you are as a person and how you look at things. It has been quite a successful and fruitful venture and partnership over the years. It is a testament to everything that you have contributed and built.
Thank you so much. It has been fun.
If you don't know the answers to things and you work with lawyers, you better learn the answers fast.
That is another important thing. It should be fun. You should enjoy what you are doing. If you are not, for an extended period, not be afraid about being honest about that and looking at opportunities, it would be more fun. We can’t ever have a job that is 100% fun all the time but at least 70% to 80% of the time, you are enjoying it, passionate about it, and feel like you are contributing something.
We do have so many options that were not around many years ago. The ability to connect with other people is so amazing because if you are interested in a certain area of law or a certain type of business, talking to someone who is in that area is not that hard. All of the information is right in front of you. As lawyers, we all have professional contacts from law school, undergrad, or colleagues professionally that we can reach out to.
If somebody wants to learn about appellate law, it is not that hard to figure out that you are an expert in appellate law. You are known. If someone has that passion, then they could send you an email. They do not have to sit down, open the phone book and write a letter. Maybe they are going to get it to you or not, but those days are over. Someone could send you a tweet.
It is an interesting environment for law students and young professionals. If they end up doing something in a career path that is not their soul-fulfilling dream, then they can go and figure out what that thing is, talk to people, get in touch, write articles, ghostwrite or have a conversation so that they could start building their professional resume and get that experience that they would prefer to have. It is so much easier.
There are a lot of different access points that were not there before. You just have to have the initiative for those.
I feel like the younger generations do take advantage of that a lot more and are not afraid of it, which is an extremely powerful thing. The fact that they are not afraid of the technology, the options and they feel perfectly comfortable reaching out and learning a lot more is fantastic. The idea that you are stuck on some moving sidewalk of a career path is not a thing anymore. People are much more proactive about it, which is the only way to be.
We all can learn things from each other and the different generations as well. That is something that they are very good at. It is good to be reminded of that. Are you ready for the lightning round of questions?
Sure.
Which talent would you most like to have but do not?
I would love to be musical. I love music and listening to live music. Strangely, a lot of my non-lawyer friends are musicians. I would love to be able to participate in some of their amazing shows, connections, and other things in that way instead of just listening.
What trait do you most deplore in yourself and others?
In myself, it is probably inattention. It is easy to be distracted by things, so I would love to be able to get a little bit more focus back. That is something that has been a challenge for me. A trait that I deplore in others, probably the number one, is anything that is conniving, dishonest, or any kind of real self-serving behavior. People who somehow think that it is just business are a reality that works. It is not. That is not true. We are all humans. If we can’t treat our people in business humanely and kindly, then I do not understand why anyone would want to participate in that. It is harmful all around, including to the person who is perpetuating it.
Who are your favorite writers?
Toni Morrison is the person. I have been reading a lot of her books. She is astoundingly brilliant and ingenious. I have been enjoying her books.
I enjoyed her work in the past, too, so it is a reminder that I need to go and revisit some of her works as well. Good writing is good writing. You can always learn something as well for your legal writing or business writing from reading good fiction too.
Fiction is the thing that I tend to equate most closely with excellent writing and enjoyment for me. Business books, I can read them, but mostly, I listen to them. I went to a lot of schools, so I’m over different types of books but audiobooks are an excellent alternative. I do listen to a lot of business books.
There is this new thing called LIT Videobooks where they do video versions of popular business-related books about grit, determination and those kinds of human spirit books. They turn them into videos and have vignettes that go with them. It is an extension beyond audiobooks to videobooks. You might want to check that out if you have the time.
I do not know if that will help with my inattention problem.
It might not. I just pointed that out that there is that new version of things that is interesting. Who is your hero in real life?
My hero in real life is my grandfather on my mother’s side. He did not come from much. He only went up to the sixth grade because he did not have shoes but he was a very smart man. He was multilingual. Spanish was his first language but he read and wrote in English very well. He also picked up languages very quickly. He spoke some French and German. He went into the military and was in World War II in France.
He then came back to the US and worked his butt off. That is the best way to describe it. There was no complaining. He put in his time and worked hard. He became a homeowner in Los Angeles and raised my mom, who is also a remarkably smart person, not in the traditional sense as far as education is concerned, but she also is multilingual. She speaks fluent Spanish, French, and English at a native level for all. He worked very hard and was very fixated on education for me. He pushed hard with education, school, and getting As. The only option was I would go to college and that was it. He was a cool guy.
It makes a difference, especially for young girls and women, to have men who support that education early on. You are going to do this and we are going to make sure that that is something that you have opportunities to do.
It was not easy. When I was going to Wellesley, a lot of people thought my mom was crazy because how on Earth could she put me in a place like that? The story is that the way that we learned about Wellesley is because my mom was an international flight attendant and she used to ask all of the fabulous first-class passengers like, “My daughter is smart. We are looking at colleges. Where should she go?” She kept hearing Wellesley so we ended up going and taking a look at it. We fell in love. It is still the absolute, most beautiful campus I have ever seen and then everything that the place stands for. That is how we learned about that college.
That is smart, though. She was like, “Let me do a little canvassing here in terms of what is the consensus on what we should consider.” I like that.
If we can’t treat our people in business humanely and kindly, then why would anyone would want to participate in that?
You gather knowledge the way that you can and that is what she did. She used to always say, “When there is a will, there is a way.” God blessed us with the scholarship. Let me say that.
For what in life do you feel most grateful that might relate to what we were talking about?
It is my family. It is my husband and kids. I have the best husband on Earth. His hobby is me and our children. I do not think it is possible to have someone as supportive as he is. We are true partners and anything that he can do to make my life easier, he does it. Anything that I can do to make his life easier, I do it. We do it with love and joy. There are no scorecards here. We are in it together. There is also no subject that we do not talk about and that goes for our kids too.
Our kids are at that super fun teenage age where they are starting to be a lot more independent. My husband and I both feel extremely lucky that even though our children are increasingly independent, they still are open. There is a lot of communication and closeness among the four of us that we truly cherish, so that has been great. No question, my answer is my husband and kids. It is never one thing.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest? You could invite more than one person if you want to have a dinner party.
I’m going to go Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’m sure that answer has come up a lot of times. She is amazing. Also, I loved Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography or memoir that she wrote. I do not know if you remember that but if you haven’t, pick that one up. It is amazing. Her background very closely mirrors my mom’s. For both of those women, everything that they have accomplished is amazing, especially Justice Ginsburg with all of her work for the women’s project with the ACLU. It was so critically important to so much of what we have that we can take advantage of in the profession as well as in life. The two of them are so remarkable. I’m sure there are a lot of other people who I would invite. I tend to like big parties.
The last question is, what is your motto if you have one?
I do not know if I have a motto but I would say that we are always trying to be kind. Be kind and then everything else follows after that. Have a little bit more kindness. It solves almost every problem.
It encapsulates your approach to business and life. That is a great way to end this discussion. Thank you so much for joining the show.
Thank you, MC. I enjoyed it.