Kate Bridal: Hey, everyone, Kate here. I am still producing all of these episodes myself, and I am an amateur, so I made a stake on this episode. I was concerned Kyle was sounding too far away, so I had him switch his audio input at one point in the episode. The result was that he sounds kind of muffled or like he's on the other end of a phone call. A friend of mine was able to improve the sound somewhat, but it is still lower quality than I normally want to deliver to you all. Hopefully, you can still enjoy the episode and Kyle's insights, because he said a lot of really fantastic stuff. I promise I will continue learning and growing, and I appreciate your patience while I do that.

Josey Hoff: So rare that I actually know how to do something on technology. So that felt very…

Kate: You sell technology, Josey, for a living. 

Josey: I know. The irony.

Kyle Robisch: We're definitely gonna scrub that line from the final cut. 

Josey: Yeah. We'll just- we'll just take that out.

Introduction

Kate: I'm Kate Bridal, a former attorney who never cared that much for the law.

Josey: And I'm Josey Hoff, a former paralegal who loves it. 

Kate: And this is our podcast where we talk about all the stuff that leads to burnout in the legal industry, try to offer some solutions, and maybe occasionally live up to our title. Welcome to The Legal Burnouts.

Episode 8

Kate: Honey, honey. 

Josey: Yes, darling?

Kate: You wanna do a podcast?

(Pause)

Josey: I sure do.

Kate: I like to think that the delay is because you're just not hearing me immediately, but I do think that you have some genuine hesentation every time. 

(Kyle laughs)

Josey: I do always have genuine hesitat- I hesitate about everything.

Kate: Fair enough.

I'm glad, hesitation aside, that you decided you would like to do a podcast today, because we've got our first duo episode today with- with two guests. We've got Kyle Robisch and Marissa Khetan here. Kyle is a litigation partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Tampa, Florida. You can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and- as of recently- Threads @Floridamanesq. I'm so excited to have you here, Kyle. Thank you for coming on the show. 

Kyle: Thanks for having me. I'm excited too.

Kate: Joining us as well today is Marissa. She is a portfolio manager with Equal Justice Works, a DC-based nonprofit, and the largest facilitator of postgraduate legal fellowships in the nation, which is amazing. She and I also happened to work at the same nonprofit for a couple of years together. She lives in Los Angeles and can be found online @marissapkhetan. So, Marissa, thank you so much for coming on and being with us today. 

Marissa Khetan: I'm excited to be part of such a cool podcast. Thanks. 

Josey: You flatter us. And it will get you everywhere.

(All laugh.)

Kate: One hundred percent correct. We're so excited to have you both on and to do an episode that talks about boundaries. It’s something that we've touched on a few times in kind of less detail in other episodes, but I think, you know, the legal industry isn't great about encouraging boundaries as a general rule and so it can be a struggle for a lot of people to learn how to set boundaries and how to encourage others to set boundaries. So very excited to have this chat with the both of you. Would love to start just by hearing from each of you kind of your- your stories, your journeys into the legal industry, and maybe when you have experienced burnout, and then we can get rocking and rolling on the boundaries conversation.

Marissa: Yeah. I'm originally from northwestern Pennsylvania. I don't know any attorneys, really. I'm not related to any attorneys. We don't have family friends who are attorneys. And I was not at all interested in anything beyond college. I was ready to be done with school. Kate, I listened to the first episode of your podcast, which was great. And I know that you sort of came to the law in like a roundabout way, and it sort of was like a means to an end. It served a purpose for you, and that that's sort of how it felt about it too. 

Kate: Mhmm. 

Marissa: And I always, you know, approached it with an eye towards public interest. But I went to a small private undergrad in Pennsylvania and I went to law school in central Pennsylvania on a scholarship, which I think is important to mention not to toot my own horn, but just… In the context of the nonprofit world, there are a lot people who would like to do public interest work who maybe can't afford to because they have to incur the same loans as people who go into private law. So -- 

Kate: Yes. 

Marissa: -- I was privileged to have a scholarship to law school and didn't have to worry about that when I graduated. I went into immigration law, which I practiced for about ten years, and then kind of felt a little burnout at the end of the last presidential administration, and felt like I needed to pivot away from immigration law for a little bit in order to preserve my sort of energy for public interest work.

So I joined, the same organization that Kate was working at here in Los Angeles at the time and started working on a consumer finance consumer advocacy project. Did that for a couple of years. And then, I had been an Eagle Justice Works Fellow when I was practicing immigration law. And thought it was a great organization and if I ever had the chance to join, I'd like to sort of be a part of the team that's helping facilitate other people's work. I'm happy to report that they seem to be as friendly as they appeared to be when I was (Kate and Josey laugh) a fellow, but that's where I am now. My role is essentially liaising between sponsors and fellows and helping facilitate those relationships. So it's been great.

Kate: That's such a cool role and and job that you've found your way into. Alright. Well, Kyle, you're up next. Let's hear- hear the story of Kyle.

Kyle: Yeah. My story is a little different except it starts in the same place as Marissa. So I also- no- no family lawyers. I didn't even think I wanted to go to law school until my mom in high school forced me to sign up for debate. And- Forced me, drug me, kicking and screaming, and told me I wouldn't be able to do the things I wanted to do unless I did debate. And then I did it, and I was like… Damn it, Mom. You’re right. (Kate and Josey laugh) And not only do I wanna do debate, I think I wanna do law school because it seems like it's a lot like this. And it turns out it was. So out of high school in Kansas City I went to the University of Florida, and I was on the debate team there.

And I knew I wanted to go to a law school that was gonna eventually put me in DC. And law school is gonna be expensive, especially if I wanted to go to an expensive place. I went to UF, and then ended up going to Vandy for law school ended up being a summer associate at a law firm in DC, doing environmental law, which is what I was interested in. Clerked for a couple years in Orlando, which was not part of my plan. I don't really know what a clerk does, learned pretty quickly and then found out that was actually one of the coolest jobs I'll probably ever have.

And then when it was done, I resumed the sort of dream, right? And I moved back to DC full-time with my wife, and we lived there four years and I worked at Venable, a big baw firm doing environmental litigation around the country. It's funny because that was sort of my plan all along and a lot of it is exactly what I wanted it to be. But there were moments where I was exhausted, tired, not able to really talk my wife, not really able to talk to anyone else just because of the amount of work that I was doing.

And I was loving the work, but I was still burnt out, just from the volume and the stress what I was having to do, even though I was where I wanted to be, doing the thing that I wanted to do, and that- I wouldn't even say the thing that I thought I wanted to do, it was what I wanted to be doing. It was just at the same time I had this cognitive dissonance of, hey, I'm also getting kind of burnt out.

Fast-forward a little bit more, and we were getting ready to have our first child. We had make a decision, are we gonna move to Florida where all our family and friends were, or stay in DC and do the DC thing? And moved to Florida, I thought it was a bad career move and a good family move. It turned out to be both a good career move and a good family move. I have no regrets now. (Kate laughs) Yes. Made partner- just made a partner beginning of this year, at my law firm. 

(Kate, Marissa, and Josey applaud and cheer.)

Kate: Congratulations!

Kyle: Thank you. Thank you. 

Josey: That’s a big deal. 

Kyle: Still feels like I'm really an associate in partner shoes, and that's fine.

(Josey laughs)

Kate: The imposter syndrome is still- still naggin’ ya?

Kyle: This isn’t the impostor syndrome episode, but let me just tell you: If anything, it's like ratcheted it up to a hundred. 

(Josey laughs)

Kate: Ohhhh.

Kyle: I'm enjoying life down here. I- I have two kids now, working at a lawfirm where I really like my colleagues and I feel respected by them, and I try to pay that back. Especially now that I'm a partner, it's important to me to make sure that the associates do not get burned out, that they have paths in their career, whether it's here or somewhere else. Anyway, that's a really- (Kyle laughs.) My story was three times as long, but half as interesting. That's my story. 

Kate: Not true! 

Josey: No, it's- That's great.

Kate: I do wanna dive a little more into to each of your experiences with burnout. What were some of those things that you started seeing in yourself that made you sort of sense that something wasn't quite right?

Kyle: For me, it was this all-consuming feeling. Right? So I would be going to dinner with my friends or with my wife, and I would not be able to turn off my work brain. Then I'd go to sleep, and I wouldn't be able to turn off my work brain.

And my wife would say, “Hey, dude, we're in the same room, we're doing the same thing, and you're not there. You're physically here, but you're not mentally there.” And- and those moments when that happened, when I caught it and when she caught it, the thing I was almost always thinking about was work. Not almost always, it was always. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Kyle: Those moments were typically when I was- when work was very stressful, when there was a lot of work. And a lot of times it happened when I was, again, doing something exciting or new or cool, and I was terrified because I wasn't- I didn't believe I should be doing that thing, so I had to make sure that I was three hundred percent more prepared than everyone else about it, so I couldn't make any mistakes. And that led to those intense moments of burnout when I couldn't unplug.

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: I think for me… I've only ever worked for in the nonprofit world, and I think that there's a trend there at least towards training people on burnout and vicarious trauma and how to recognize it and how to avoid it. At least in the, like, sort of surface area like common ways. There was a few years there where I was working with human trafficking survivors. I- I was like, I need to be dialed in on this. I need to, like, pay attention to boundary-setting with clients, and leaving work at work, and being really intentional about that. 

I think where it showed up for me was sort of in the reverse, I would say. I think it came up in ways that I wasn't looking out for. Because I had been trained on the, you know… Oh, you gotta make sure, you know, if you hear a super traumatic story that you should practice self-care or whatever. There ended up being things that were going on in my personal life that were affecting how I was practicing law, and I was bringing that, like, loss of a sense of control over my personal life into my work. And I think it was- it was sort of affecting me in that way. 

And then I was feeling burnt out. I had a sense that, like, my work wasn't actually filling the void of whatever my personal problems were (Marissa laughs), like I was magically expecting it to somehow. 

Kate: (Laughing) Yeah.

Marissa: That wasn't something that anybody ever taught me. Like, “Oh, watch out, make sure that your, like, bad home life isn't affecting how you're practicing the law.” Like, no one ever said that to me.

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: I was also sort of- have been trained that, like, burnout and vicarious trauma are two different things and that people tend to intertwine those definitions. I've always been trained that burnout is like you feel under-resourced. Basically you just don't have what you need to do your job well. And that could be not enough time, not enough support from your supervisors. Vicarious trauma could be a contributing factor to feeling burnt out: I don't have, like, the mental health support that I need in order to do my job properly.

For me, burnout was this sense of like overwhelm. It was something apart from like, “Wow, I'm hearing these terrible stories all the time.” It was like, “I'm not sure the direction of my work.” There was a time when I was working for an organization where I'm like, “I'm not sure where this organization is going, I'm not sure what my work is contributing, I'm just kind of spinning my wheels.” I think that's sort of where it came up for me. 

I know I'm not supposed to be the one asking questions here, but I'm interested, Kyle. In the, like, private bar do they give you trainings on, like, burnout and stuff, or are they just like, “Listen, guys, you should be burning the midnight oil. If you're not feeling a little burnt out, you're probably not doing it right”? Is there…?

(Marissa laughs)

Kyle: If it's the latter, then you have a problem. Right?

(Marissa, Kate, and Josey laugh)

Kate: Yeah.

Kyle: That should not be the answer. So there’s a difference between that, right- which does exist, even though I say it shouldn't- and saying, “Hey, yes, sometimes you have to work really hard. But let’s try to make it so that you're not working really hard into the point where you're doing that twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.” I think there's a world difference between those two things, and I think the private bar needs to get better at that. 

I also think the private part probably needs to get better at training its associates and its partners- really it should start with the partners, if I’m being completely honest- about burnout and how to recognize burnout, but how to proactively prevent it from happening in the first place or slow it down or intervene. Right?

Because a lot of times it starts with the partners having lots of demands from the clients, and then that  it's passed down to the associates. Partners are sort of the middle of that chain. Thinking about it from both directions. How can I make sure that a real client emergency is treated that way, but not everything is treated as a client emergency? So I'm not pushing down on my team that way. 

Kate: Yeah.

Kyle; There are definitely people, and I try to be one of them, that try to be conscious about that when we take projects, we take cases, when we take matters, right? There's a lot of spaces blind spots where that doesn't happen. And it's really easy in this environment to let that become a problem very, very, very, very quickly. It comes down to the partner doing the right thing. 

Josey: So, you’ve talked about associates and how- mitigating burnout for them, training them. As a partner, does the staff and, like, paralegal experience fall under your control as well? And if it is, how do you kinda look out for that in your paralegals as well on your staff? 

Kyle: That's a great question. And and I think it does fall under our purview. Right? Because you literally own the law firm.

Josey: Yeah. 

Klye: So the buck does stop with you, it has to. There's another layer in most law firms of the office manager or administrator, who does have some sort concurrent authority over a lot of the the staff and paralegal roles. 

But my philosophy is largely the same, and I'll just give an example. A good partner will ask, “Hey, do you have capacity to handle this?” And they'll mean it, but that's not usually enough because a good associate or a great associate will say yes, even if they don't actually have capacity. And they might not even know if they have capacity, right? Because they're new to the law. They're new to the career.

A great partner, I think, will check their hours. Check them and then have a conversation and say, “I can- I can see that I shouldn't even ask you in the first instance whether you can handle this assignment because I don't think that you should be having to work on this. Let me see if I can find someone else.

And let me also kinda check-in and say, “Hey. You had a crazy month. Can we take ten minutes to get a coffee and make sure everything's good?” That's the kind of next-level thing that I everyone should be trying to do. I know in my career when I had those things happen to me, it meant the world to me in those moments. I felt actually heard, actually seen. And I felt better. I physically and mentally felt better afterwards.

Josey: Mhmm. Yeah. 

Kate: Absolutely. Yeah. Having someone just to talk to about it is so important. It can be really difficult if you don't have those people who are affirmatively reaching out to you. And like you said, a lot of people are gonna hide the fact that they're overwhelmed and just take more work, and they are not going to be the ones to affirmatively say it themselves until they're already past that point of burnout. So I- I love that. I think that's so great that that's something you're instilling in your firm. 

Josey: And I think too, most people, they get into- especially firm work. I- I can't really speak to anything outside of that because I only did firms. You go into it aware that the partners, you know, at that firm have probably experienced burnout, have done insane hours to get to where they are. You- you go into it with that assumption. And so you don't even wanna admit–

Kate: Riiiight.

Josey: – when you're working those long hours that maybe I don't have capacity or I'm overwhelmed. When a partner takes the initiative to just check some hours and check in with someone -associate, paralegal, whomever it is- it is huge in giving them that opportunity to acknowledge that maybe they are a little overwhelmed and to not feel as though they cannot even come to you. 

Kate: That's such a great point, Josey, because it's like, yeah, you don't wanna complain to the person who's already been through it. You're like…

Josey: Exactly. Yeah.

Kate: Well yeah, this person obviously went through it because they made it to partner. So

Josey: -- Yeah. 

Kate: -- they probably didn't complain. They didn't burn out. It's just-It’s just me. 

Josey: And you want them to see that same work ethic and grit to make it to that level in you. 

Kyle: For some people, it's a feature, not a bug, right? And that's problem. 

Marissa: Mm.

Kyle: Again, there's that distinction between having to work really hard in certain moments, or working hard all the time, but having moments of intense work, and saying, “Work needs to be your entire life.” I think that model is dying at law firms and just generally corporate America.

At the same time, I think you can still have really, really hard workers who are dedicated as a job who also to say, “I want my work-life balance or work life-integration to look different. I'm not going to grind away my twenties and my thirties and miss my kids growing up, or miss my friend's birthdays,” or miss whatever it is that matters to them, “for a job. I want to do it all.” And I think you can do it all, but it requires buy-in from the entire ecosystem. 

Marissa: I've always wondered how the differences there between the private bar and the public sector because, you know, it's no secret that people in public interest work don't get paid as much people in the private bar. And I've always sort of felt that that is really useful in my boundary-setting and work-life balance. I've never felt any qualms about saying, like, “I'm not working weekends. There's emergencies sometimes, you know, something comes up, but I'm not routinely working more than like an actual full-time job. If you want me to do that, you need to pay me like people get paid in the private bar.”

Kate: This is why I love Marissa and why I wanted her on here. (Marissa and Josey laugh) I was like, “I can't ask a nonprofit to pay me more money! I- that, you know, they're struggling!” Like, you come in and you just are like, you own it. I love that. That is not where I would have started from. I was just like, “Well, people need help. Like, I'm gonna do it at all hours, like, of course.” Which is exactly what they take advantage of to be able to underpay you, basically.

Marissa: Yeah. I've literally been in meetings where I've heard funders say things like, “Oh, well, you get emotional compensation. That is, like, really nice for you.” And it's like, okay, but I can't pay my rent with, like, emotional compensation.

Kate: (Laughing) Having practiced housing law, I can say that landlords will not accept emotional compensation in lieu of rent.

Marissa: Yeah. (Laughing) I can tell you. I feel so… so like validated to hear you say that because I often describe myself as like, I'm a good advocate for other people, but I'm not a very good self-advocate. And so it- it's very gratifying for me to hear you say that. 

But I think my approach is a little bit different. When you think boundary-setting, you think, like, I'm gonna, like, build a wall and sort of step behind it. I've sort of come to think of boundary-setting, it's an action. You're like, you have to do something sometimes. You have to talk to somebody about something or you have to… You have to say “no.” Saying “no” involves, like, affirmatively doing something. You have to say “no.”

And so once I started trying to think about boundary-setting as like taking action instead of like refusing to do something or not taking action, I think it sort of changed how I was approaching stuff. And also I was like more religious before. After I got rid of sort of the religious guilt about, like, participating in nonprofit work, the, like, guilt of my employer was like nothing compared to the, like, religious guilt I had been previously experiencing. 

(Kate laughs)

Kate: See, I never had the religious guilt. That's my problem.

(All laugh)

Marissa: I think it's sort of like a complicated series of emotions is- is what I'm saying, and sort of my- my approach is just, it's not always about withdrawing from something. Sometimes it's about doing something to set yourself up for what makes you feel empowered so you don't get burned out, so that you- you can do your work.

Josey: To pivot slightly, there was something in both of your intros that I- I think I identified with and I think other people do as well, is that you both mentioned that you ended up working in a practice that you wanted to, that you were interested in, that you set out to kind of work in. And both areas that you intended to be in, ended up bringing you out to a degree.

And I kind of wanna explore that a little bit because I had the same thing happen with my initial burnout, is that… Exactly what I wanted to be working in ended up being what first burned me out. And so how did you guys kind of reconcile that? Where did you find that line of, like, this isn't worth it anymore, it's not working or serving me anymore?

Kyle: Marissa, do you wanna go first?

Marissa: Yeah. In my case, when I was working in immigration law, one organization I worked at, they had us all read a book called… I think it was called Trauma Stewardship. And it's basically a book about burnout and vicarious trauma, geared towards not necessarily attorneys, but, like, people in helping professions.

One of the things in the book that they talked about was, like, if you think that you're the only person who can do the work and that if you quit, the world will like fall apart, that's a huge red flag. I read this book when I was on staff when I was in law school, and I was like, very idealistic. And I remember reading it and being like, “Pfft. That's bullshit.” (All laugh) Of course I'm the only person who can do this work! What does this PhD know about this? You know, and it came back and bit me later. I think I always sort of kept that in the back of my mind. I'd like return to it. I'd be like, do I still feel this way? Like, yeah, that's still a bunch of crap. 

And then I got to a point where I was like, “Oh, you know what? I do think there's probably someone else who can be doing this.” And maybe doing it better, because I started to feel a little like jaded about the work maybe. And I think actually having been a- a fellow- So EJW fellows are typically like right out of law school. They're all like so idealistic. These people can do this waaaay better than I can.

I simultaneously came to the conclusion that I was not special and didn't need to be the one doing the work, and also there's a whole cohort of people who- who can do this and do it like really well until they decide that maybe, like, they wanna do something else. And then a new group of energetic people will come in. Someone is going to be here and do this.

Kyle: It's interesting. I had a similar moment, and it was when I left my old law firm. I was really liking my work even through those moments of burnout. But when we left, I remember thinking, like, “I have poured so much into this job. When I leave these cases are gonna collapse. So I'm gonna be letting these partners down.”

The reality is I had sort of lied to myself along the way, and that’s part of the reason I couldn't turn my brain off I think, because I… It's important that I'm the one to touch everything and see everything, not because I'm a special and a genius, but because I own this the most. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Kyle: And I'm gonna be the person who owns it the most, and that's my thing. And it's that corollary of getting burnt out on something that you're actually really enjoying and feeling passionate about. And I think that can actually sort of fuel burnout if you're not careful. Right? Because if you are really bought into it and you feel strongly about it and you're really enjoying it, you're going to pour a lot more of yourself into that thing. Maybe at the expense of other things in your life.

I was having this moment, you know, it was the week I left in DC. I remember these feelings of it's gonna be a problem, and everyone’s gonna hate me, and it's gonna be an issue. And, of course, none of that was the case. Especially the part about the cases not being able to move forward. That was fine. 

Marissa: I'm glad to hear that was your experience, because I have heard in the nonprofit world, people who have been made to feel guilty by their, like, organizations or their supervisors. “Oh, you're not as committed to the work as we thought you were. Like, don't you care about the community?”

Kate: Mmm.

Marissa:  I'm actually glad to hear that that was your experience.

Kyle: I've- I've heard versions of the opposite. I have a colleague who left her law firm to go to government work. When she left, the partner she was working for pulled her into her office and said, “You're making a mistake.”

Kate: Mhmm. 

Kyle: “You're making a giant career mistake you're never gonna recover from.” Fast-forward six years later, that was incorrect. (Josey laughs) And, obviously, deeply unfair and judgmental. But I think my- my- the only reason my story is what it is, is because I- I tried to be conscious about finding people that I wanted to work with and prioritizing that. And I think I got lucky. 

Kate: Yeah. Who you work with is really, really important.

Josey: Yeah. It's true. I remember when I left my firm in DC, and I was kind of similar. I loved the firm, I was doing the exact work that I wanted to do in a place where I knew it was gonna be advantageous from my career wherever I wanted to go. But it to your point, I was emotionally invested. I cared about the topic, I really wanted to see these things happen. And so as soon as I got invested to that degree, it made the impact of it so much more. And it did affect my work, I think, because was so invested. I couldn't give to the other parts of my life. Even though my part of it was so minute. I wasn't an attorney, so I not like anything was writing on my work. 

Kate: Hey, paralegals are important. 

Marissa: (To Josey) That’s not true. Yeah. 

Kyle: Yeah, I don't know about that. 

Kate: (Laughing) The three attorneys are like, “God help us if we didn't have paralegals.” 

Kyle: The chill paralegal has saved me. 

Josey: Oh, yeah. The chill paralegal thing is- is real. I've heard that so many times, and I didn't know about it at the beginning when I first kinda got into the work. 

Kate: I don’t know what this is. 

Marissa: I don't know what that is either.

Kate: (Laughing) In nonprofit you never have a paralegal, that's why.

(Marissa and Josey laugh)

Kyle: I think if law firms just had armies of chill paralegals, you wouldn't need associates and they’d get three hundred percent more work done. Because the chill paralegal is the person who steps in over your shoulder when you can't figure out how to use (inaudible) and file something and is like,--

Kate: Ooooohhh.

Kyle: – “No problem, I gotcha.” Or, “Oh my god. I need to get this subpoena out. What’s a subpoena?” (Kate and Josey laugh) “No worries. I got you.” Any problem you have, they step into the breach. They solve it. They're cool as a cucumber. The chill paralegal has saved my life many more times than I can count. 

Marissa: We do have an equivalent for this in the nonprofit world, but it's not the paralegal. There's always, like… It's maybe the office manager, usually.

Kate: Office manager, mmhmm.

Marissa: There's like one lady who works in the office who knows everything. And if she ever quits–

Kate: Yep. 

Marissa: --the office is gonna shut down. Rent won't get paid. The printer is gonna explode. I don't know what this is. 

Kate: The whole nonprofit is gonna- Yep. 

Marissa: So we have the chill paralegal, but it's like the office manager.

Kate: Yeah. She's she's the the paralegal, accountant, filing assistant, secretary… 

Marissa: She orders the birthday cake. 

Kate: Call monitor. Yeah. And then if she quits… You have to keep her very happy. Yeah. 

Josey: Yeah. I didn't feel like when I left that every case was going to go to shit, but I did have a lot of guilt and kind of like a little bit of an identity crisis. Because I had worked to get into something I cared about. I still loved it. There was nothing about the work that I didn't love, but it wasn't working for me and I had family things as well that kind of made it necessary for me to move. It was really difficult to leave the thing that I- I loved at first, but it was definitely necessary. 

Kate: For me, the moment that I, like, felt validated in deciding to leave was when I started telling my clients, ‘cause that was what I felt guiltiest about, right? Which, of course, as Marissa said, other people step in. But I, you know, had really close relationships with some of them and I started telling them, you know, “I- I don't even know if I'm gonna be an attorney anymore.” They were all so supportive and lovely. Like, all my clients were like, “Take care of yourself, like, go be- do wonderful things.” Like, were just so wonderful about it that I was like, okay. Yeah. This is okay. 

Josey: Kyle, I'm curious with how you run your firm now, especially as a partner: How do you encourage boundaries with clients, especially if you have a client… You know, we've all had the client that thinks everything's an emergency, right? And if you're younger and you're just getting started in your career, you kind of buy into that a little bit and you're like, “Yes, I wanna prove myself to you and and to the firm!” So how do you kind of encourage and- and train young attorneys to navigate that and set healthy boundaries while not- while still making a name for themselves? 

Kyle: Yeah. So first, I don't run anything. (Josey laughs) Because I'm- I'm a new partner at a giant law firm.

Josey: Your contributions. There we go.

Kyle: Yes. It's a great question, Josey. And I actually am gonna start by saying- I’m going to  start with myself. I'm a new partner. I'm the one who sends the bills and gets the clients and does a lot of things I was only doing a little bit of before. The client pressure, in particular, is brand new because before when I was an associate, there was a partner in between me and the client. The buck didn't stop with me.

Now it does, and I also have that, you know, pressure of I have to go get clients and build a client base, and that can quickly lead down to a path of “I will take any work from anybody.” The lesson that I've learned most quickly is that cannot be who you are, for a lot of reasons. I've learned that there are certain clients that you just don't want to work with. And other people might wanna work with that client, but something about them doesn't mesh with you. 

Either they're too demanding or they're demanding over things that perhaps maybe they shouldn't be demanding over. Everything is an emergency. Theor communication style might be the, you know, exact opposite of yours. There's no training on what kind of clients you could you should take or shouldn't take. 

Kate: There should be, really.

Kyle: There should be. I think for associates, there's a- there's a similar story and it's the partner is the sort of client. And I don't mean that in, like, “The partner is the client!” I mean, well, you wanna work with partners who value you, who you feel valued working with, who respect your boundaries, who make you a better lawyer and person, who, you know, do all of those things. And so if you can find those people and attach yourself to them, people who sort of see their career as an extension of yours and vice versa, that's gonna be the key, I think, to happiness and success, and certainly some- some longevity and slower burnout. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Josey: Yeah. 

Kyle: But it- it takes some purpose, right? You have to be willing to kind of reach out and say, “Hey, I'd like to do some work with you because I- I really like that one thing we did last time. Think of me next time. Please give me a call.” 

And it might also require having some conversations with your firm management and saying, “I just did a project with this person. There there was not a mesh. And it caused me a lot of anxiety, difficulty for whatever reason, and I just don't know that we're a good work fit.” You can't always do that, but I think you can do it more often than you think. Again, you're sort of putting yourself around people you want to be around and sort of removing yourself from people that there's not a fit for whatever reason. I think that's the key from a partner perspective with clients, and from an associate perspective with partners. 

Kate: Marissa, I would love to ask you basically, like, the flip side of that question. In the nonprofit world, it's obviously a little bit different, especially legal aid, which is what we were doing. Sometimes you are the only person doing the type of work that you were doing in the entire organization, as you and I each were. I wasn't the only housing attorney, but I was- For the COVID eviction protection stuff, that was basically my- my purview. You were the only consumer finance attorney.

And additionally, when you're working with a number of clients who are highly traumatized or who may have mental health abilities, drawing boundaries can be especially difficult, because sometimes those boundaries can be triggering for them. 

Marissa: Mhmm. 

Kate: And I always thought that you were really great at drawing boundaries with clients in a trauma-informed way, and I would love to hear a little more from you about kind of how you learned that skill and got more adept at that, because I definitely learned a lot from you. 

Marissa: Yeah. And if memory serves, I think you talked about this a little bit in your first episode of the podcast. 

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: The, like, basic theme is managing expectations, and I think particularly with traumatized populations of people it's really important to be very clear about what it is that you're doing, why you're doing it, and when they can expect to see you do something else. 

For example, when I worked with human trafficking survivors, when we would do intakes, we'd be asking them all these invasive personal questions, and it's really important to explain to someone, “The reason I'm asking you this is because immigration's gonna wanna know x y z. I'm not just asking you because I feel like I'd like to know.”

I had some formal training about trauma-informed interviewing, but then I think it's really just pushing past some discomfort and like employing that stuff because it can feel a little unnatural. The example that really comes to mind is, I don't know if any of you have ever, like, screened someone for suicidal ideation. It feels really awkward at first. And so- but after you do it a couple of times, as long as, you know, you don't make a big deal about it… The big deal is not that you're asking question. The big deal is, like, the situation. 

And I think a lot of that applies to boundary-setting with your clients. They have way bigger problems in their life than like whether their attorney is going to call them back or not. So if you can help remove that piece of concern for them, then it also makes your practice easier. I- I mean, I just try and think about, like, if I were that person, how would I want someone to explain to me what their course of action is gonna be and how would I want them talk to me about it?

And I think if you- you can set those expectations in the beginning, it's really easy to boundary-set for the rest of that relationship because you can refer back to that. “I said we were gonna talk once a week for this amount of time about these things. We agreed that I am going to help you with x y and z. We signed a retainer document, and that's what I can help you on.” It's way easier, I think, to set those boundaries upfront. When I was in law school, I had a contracts professor who said one time, “You can always get nicer over time, but you can't get meaner.”

Kate: (Laughing) I love that so much. 

Marissa: She was like, “You know, you gotta start off the 1L year being very strict with your students because you want them to take you seriously. And then if they do, in the 2L year you can be friendlier with them.” That was one of those non-lawyer lessons I took out of law school into practice. I can always loosen up, but I can't start off, “Oh, yeah, call me anytime,” and then put the hammer down later. That doesn't go over well, especially with populations people who've been taken advantage of.

Kate: Right.

Marissa: That's my, like, tagline: You can always get nicer, you can't get meaner. 

Kate: I like it.

Kyle: It's not that different at all from what- what I- what I have to do and what I try to tell the associates to do with me: The- the boundary-setting and the setting expectations piece, right? Because you go to a client, you say, “Hey, you asked for x. I know I can't do it for you by tomorrow, but I could do it for you in a week.”

The difficult part for me is my gut is like, “I need to give it to them as soon as possible because I need to be the guy that hire, and I'm a new partner, and I need to make sure that this is perfect, and they hire me for more work, and I'm over delivering and,” blah blah blah blah. If I actually stop myself and install a reasonable boundary, I feel much better throughout the life of that case and the life of that client relationship.

I think the same is true for associates when a partner comes to them and says, “Hey, can you work on this?” “Yeah. But I have these three other things that have deadlines on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So I can get to your thing on Monday. Does that work for you?” It's really hard for the associate to say that. 

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: Mhmm. 

Kyle: But when you do that, if you have the courage to do that and if you have partners who are willing to accept that, which they should, it can make you feel a lot better and feel a lot more in control of your situation and your relationships, and avoid- or again, at least kinda slow- the burn a little bit. 

Marissa: Yeah. You mention that those things are important to you up front, then later it's easier to refer back to them.

An example of that for me would be every time… You know, usually when you start a new job, they- they have you do like a work plan. Because usually in the nonprofit world, you're working on grant cycle of like two years or something. And we can talk a whole other time about how funding cycles as a source of burnout because…

Kate: (Laughing) Yeah.

Marissa: They have you sit down in the first couple of weeks and like, this is what your plan is to meet your deliverables. And they have you put in whatever you want into the work plan. And when I do my work plans, I always add a section for like self-care and like boundaries. They don't ask me to, I just put it in.

Kate: Oooo!

Marissa: “I take time to do x y and z. I wanna read this many books this year.” They know that there are things outside of work that are important to me. And they always end up asking me about it. And I'm like, “Yeah, you know, I just wanna make sure that I have- These things are important to me. I wanna make sure that they're built into my time.” And I always add a little bit about boundary-setting with clients too, you know, so that they know I'm not gonna take calls after the end of- of the day. And it's a good place to sort of put it in so they can digest that information and then we can talk about it.

Kate: That's so smart. 

Marissa: They’re always like, “Yeah, of course,” but it's good to have it written down because it's like, “Hey, remember, you know, when I started and we had this conversation about what I am and I'm not gonna do. I wrote it down and you said it was cool. We signed it. So…”

Josey: Great approach.

Kate: Gosh, yeah. I hope law students listen to this episode because that was definitely- My downfall was not… Not knowing to do that expectation setting, and it was a huge problem when I started at the nonprofit. I was overpromising and underdelivering to these people who that happens to constantly. And of course I never intended to do that, but I just didn't have a firm enough grasp of what I could do and what- what was accomplishable. I was obviously far too optimistic a lot of the time.

I was never trained to do that and to- and to do that upfront. And I think it would have helped me so much with my own burnout. 

Josey: Yeah. 

Marissa: I mean, the caveat there is that I- My privilege, like who I am, helps me to draw those boundaries too, because my life experiences, by and large, do not mirror the life experiences of many of people that I've worked with. I, thank god, have never been subjected to systemic crime. I am not a first-generation immigrant. Like these are not things that are triggering to me.

Kate: Yeah, same. 

Marissa: So it's a little bit easier for me to set those boundaries and not feel like I'm shutting out my own community. And some of the fellows that I work with now often express, like, “I feel a sense of urgency and commitment to this group of people that I’m serving because they are my community.”

Kate: Yes.

Marissa: “And I feel really like that I need to be on top of that.” That distance and that privilege sort of protects me from that- that aspect of it.

But I- I do wanna say, like, I'm not heartless about this. When I worked with detained people who are in the- the immigration system, you know, I leave on a a Friday afternoon. I'm like, “Okay. Well, I'm gonna go, like, live my life over the weekend, and you're just still gonna be here.”

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: And it's not lost on me. I can confidently say I don't think my clients would describe me as heartless, but I can see why other practitioners might sort of feel like it's sort of a cold way of approaching things, but I- I think if you were to ask my clients they would….

Kate: I- I would agree with that. (Laughing) I would never accuse you of…

(Josey laughs)

Marissa: No, but you know me. And so maybe somebody else who’s listening is like, “Wow. She's like–”

Kate: Yes. I'm just saying I can testify to the fact that Marissa is a very caring and lovely, warm person. (Marissa and Josey laugh) Yeah. 

I remember the first time I left a prison, the first time I did a prison visit. It was a client who was in for life, and he was in solitary, and he was in a dry cell, which is really horrible because you can't- You have to ask every time you have to use the bathroom. Like, there's no running water in it. And I remember walking out of the prison having that moment where I was like… Like, looked up at the sky, and was like, “I just got to walk out,” after watching them, like, two, you know, massive guards just like drag him away.

And it was like, man… Never taking this for granted again. And- and also it is like such a heavy feeling to leave someone in there. So I don't think anyone… I- I agree with you that you have to have boundaries in place because otherwise that feeling's gonna drag you down real quick. 

Marissa: Yeah.

Kate: I was thinking we might wanna go into the issue of whether there should be different standards for, like, how hard you work in private bar versus public interest.

Marissa: Yeah. I know that before I was saying that the fact that I get paid less in the public interest sector makes me feel like I can set firmer boundaries. Kyle, do you feel like there is a difference in expectation between the level of work, the standards of workiness, I guess, between the private bar and the public sector? And should there be? 

You know, I'm- I don't know how much money you make, but I assume that it's a lot more than I do. (Kate laughs) And so do you think that there there should be an expectation that you work nights and weekends and that you have a harder time saying no when people give you work? Let's assume for the sake of argument that the quality of our work is equivalent. It's just about quantity. Do you think there should be differences there and how great of a degree of difference should there be? 

Kyle: So I'm gonna give the great lawyer answer, right? I won't call- I won't say “it depends,” but I will say “yes and no.”

(All laugh)

Kate: Oh, that's a good one.

Kyle: But that's- that's how I I feel about it right? And I have to caveat, right, I've not worked in the nonprofit sector, so I don't have that background and perspective. I'm learning a lot just, Marissa, from hearing you talk about it. 

All that sort of caveat aside… I mean, look, clients are paying us a lot of money per hour to do the work that we're doing. That means that work has to be done well. But it also means you have to be able to do two other things: You need to probably produce a bigger volume of work even for a given client because they're usually paying you for a pretty big matter. But, also from an availability perspective, right, when they're paying this much for their services or vendors, that means you need to be available. 

That does not mean, in my view, that when you call me at three AM, that I need to pick up the phone. But probably means if you send me an email overnight, I will respond from when I wake up in the next two to five or six hours, typically. My point being, yeah, I think I do need to do a little more because that's part of what the bargain is with the client, and that's part of what the bargain is with the law firm because they're paying us a good bit of money to do that. 

But I don't think those boundaries should be in- should be nonexistent. A- a private bar lawyer is a human, a nonprofit lawyer is a human, who as humans can only do so much, no matter who they are and how much they're paid. I also think there's, like, like, human decency component too. Right? You should not be able to treat a- a human being, a lawyer, as chattel, right, just because they’re paid a lot of money. That is not license to abuse them or run them to the ground. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Kyle: Again, that's- that's sort of the yes- the yes and no. I do recognize that with with the salary and the compensation comes higher volume of work, yes. But there is still a limit to it. I- I still try to remind myself of that fact. Right? I'm not great at it, but I try to- but I- the boundary piece of it. Right? And then I also try to remember to remind the associates…  “Every once in a while, and I really want it to be every once in a while, we’re going to have to work on weekends.”

Marissa: Mhmm.

Kyle: But I don't want that to be the norm, and I certainly don't want it to be just because. 

Kate: Yeah.

Kyle: There's a law firm- I'm not gonna name names- that is known for its Sunday work hours. Doesn’t matter whether there's work that needs to be done on Sunday, from like one to five PM the attorneys in this particular practice group of this law firm will come in. Even members with- with new babies.

Kate: Oh my god. 

Kyle: But that's the general rule. You will be in there in this practice group on Sundays from one to five because the person who runs that group thinks that's a good culture thing. (Kate laughs) That does not make any sense to me. Even- even in a world in which you're paid a lot of money and you have very demanding clients. 

Kate: Yeah.

Kyle: If the work demands every once in a while, sure. But as a rule, that seems like a recipe for burnout.

Kate: Absolutely. And I- I think it almost comes back to the expectation-setting. As an employer, it's important to set those expectations too and say what you were saying, Kyle. Yes, okay, you need to expect that once in a while you are gonna work over these hours. Or If it's more than once in a while, be up front about that fact. Let people choose to- to do that for themselves. And the expectation setting cannot be, “You're going to work endlessly and be treated like shit.” That's not an adequate expectation to set. 

Marissa: I mean, if it's gonna affect the quality of work, then that's something that your employer is gonna be concerned about too. They say when you're negotiating something, you wanna put it in terms of what's beneficial to the other person. “You make me come in on Sundays, I'm not gonna feel like I'm adequately rested and my work over the course of the rest of the week is gonna suffer.”

Josey: Yeah. And I think when we talk about setting expectations with clients as well, or even with, you know, whomever you're reporting to, I think being able to say, “I will…” Say you set a timeline for yourself, you know, “I'll get back to you on this.” or “I'll get this to you at this time or tomorrow.” And that time comes up and there's been, you know… Whatever's happened because sometimes emergencies happen and your time gets pulled somewhere else. Making sure that you send an update at that time or before to let them know, “I am still thinking about this. This is is still front-of-mind, but I'm gonna need a little extra time.”

Updates is something that I did not value at the beginning when it came to setting expectations, and that's why I felt like I had to work late into the night sometimes.

Marissa: That's a good point.

Josey: Because I didn't do the updates. I didn't set those expectations, and then make sure that I was following up at the time I told them I would follow up. Because no one likes to be- for that time to pass and for them to become a back thought, you know, because their- their problem is important to them.

Kyle: That's so true.

Marissa: That's something the nonprofit world could learn from the the private bar. Because that's just not the way procedure works in the nonprofit world. I think, you know, it's like out of sight out of mind because we just don't have that culture of like, “I must get back to you.”

Kate: That's so interesting because I was always like that, but I- I think it's just something that, that's just how I am. Anything immediate that I can take care of, I will take care of. I know I'm someone who likes to get a lot of updates and so I would want to give an update to a client as well. So I tended to do that, and I did- I had good client relationships, and clients really appreciated it. And it was a frustration I would hear from them about prior attorneys that they'd had, or about, you know, whatever housing nonprofit they were working with.

And they would be even blown off, like, their case worker wouldn't show up to a meeting and wouldn't tell them until the next day where they were, and didn't even bother to say, you know, “Hey, I- I can't make it today.” It's so disrespectful, and when you're encountering that over and over and over again, it’s like, it becomes really valuable and they will be very understanding when you say that. Because they're not used to always someone actually having the respect to give them that information.

Kyle: I, like Kate, like to do everything as soon as it comes in my inbox. I think it's a product of ADHD. So for me, it took me a lot longer than I think most people to learn when somebody asks for something, I don't need to respond with the full answer if I don't have it, and I don't have to drop everything to go get it immediately. I can say, “Received. It’s gonna be forty-eight hours,” instead of, “Oh my god, I need to work overnight to find the answer so in the morning I can respond and say, ‘Here's your your memo, here's your brief,’” or, “‘Here's your answer.’”

Josey: Yeah.

Kyle: That's- that's I'd say it's a recent skill that I've learned. 

Kate: I'm still learning it. Just last week, Josey had to talk me down and be like, “Hey, maybe, like, will you send me that email first? And then we can, like, you know, we can both think about how to respond?” Thank god because I was gonna, like, do some knee-jerk… Like, it wasn't anything dramatic or bad, but I was like, “Oh yeah, let's do this, this, and this!”

Josey: It's where my chill paralegal thing comes in.

(All laugh)

Kate: Exactly. Yeah, she chill paralegled me.

Kyle: But it's a boundary. Right? I- I try to teach associates, right, that skill. Because, again, it took me so long to learn, I would prefer for them not to have to take as long as I did, because it  unlocked a boundary in my life, which was: You can be responsive, but also still create boundaries and time limits. And once I learned that, I felt a sort of burden lifted in my life. 

And so I try to teach associates, like, listen, if I ask you to do something, I'm gonna try to be good about it, and I'm gonna say, “Hey, do you have bandwidth?” I'm gonna mean that when I say it. But other people aren't gonna do that. And sometimes, I'm gonna forget myself. So don't hesitate to say, “Hey, received. Got it. Let me take a look at my calendar and get back to you.” That's huge, again, for burnout, and sanity, and boundaries, and respect. 

Josey: Yeah. And I do kinda wanna jump in a little bit with the staff, just because of, you know, our audience and- and my experience, is that it is hard as a young attorney, obviously, to set those boundaries and to learn those skills, but it is incredibly hard as a staff or paralegal who does get paid significantly less…

Kate: Mhmm. 

Josey: … And who also is looked at, kind of like we've said, the chill person to intervene or the person that knows everything about the office and has it all handled. That does not mean that they are not overwhelmed. It does not mean that they do not have a lot on their plate and they're afraid to say no to a partner or to even associates sometimes.

Just because we're able to do something quickly and and efficiently doesn't necessarily mean that it's not taking away from something else that we also have on our plate. And so I think from that perspective, the same applies, is learning how to advocate for yourself, learning how to say, This is what I can handle at once. I can get this to you by this point, or I can rope in someone else that I know can also help with this.” 

Because attorneys of all kinds, you find someone that you work well with, especially a staff person of paralegal that knows how you work, and you want them on your stuff oftentimes because they know you. They get it. You know what's gonna happen, and that's great. But you are not the only person they have to serve. And so being able to navigate that and have those boundaries, but in a respectful way, is so important to the longevity of your staff as well, not just associates and attorneys. Not to diminish the attorney perspective.

Marissa: No. Not at all.

Kyle: No, no, no! 

Kate: No! Partners and attorneys need to, like, learn to- to recognize that in their staff as well, and respect the burnout that comes in those positions as well. Josey, like you said on our first episode, the same stuff is coming across your desk. You're seeing the same things. You are going through a lot of the same stuff that the attorneys are. Of course, you wanna nurture your young associates and stuff too, but you wanna nurture your paralegals and your staff and those people that you do lean on all of the time who your practice would definitely fall part without.

Kyle: I- I think it's maybe even more important to do that with- with your support staff because they're going to naturally feel less empowered to tell tell you no. 

Josey: Yeah. 

Kyle: For- for example, my- my assistant's incredible, and we have this policy that you have to get approval to work remotely or take a day- take a day off. It's- it's always given. It's always given, but you have to sort of have a record that everyone said yes. And so I told her, like, many months ago, I was like, “Don't even email me. Just copy me on whatever, and I'm not- I'm not gonna send you a- a yes. Unless I tell you no, the answer is yes.”

Kate: Blanket. 

Kyle: “You can work remotely when you need to work remotely.” Right? Because it takes one less thing off of her plate to sort of docket and have to go turn around and do, and she doesn't have to feel like she's actually asking a favor from me. Because it's not a favor, it’s something that makes her life easier. I had to remind myself, no I should go up here and affirmatively offer this to her so she doesn't feel like, “Hey, do I need to keep pestoring you via email?” Because, of course, you've never say that.

Kate: Yeah, no. And that's such a great point, like, that the more you have to affirmatively ask for that, the more it is gonna feel like you're being judged for asking for it. 

Josey: And it's not as much your right.

Kate: Exactly, yeah. You feel like less and less entitled to to ask for that every time. And that's such a great point, Kyle.  I like that you did that. Great tip. 

Josey: Yeah. And I think too, just, I know that the attorneys that I worked with that invested in me, that took time to have a lunch with me or to check-in on how, you know, the work was going for me, or I had one attorney who asked me what I would like to work on. Sometimes it can be viewed as, you know, someone in a support staff does not care about the law as much or maybe isn't as invested in their legal career, or don't have as many goals for themselves as far as where they want to go. But that's not always the case. 

I mean, we get into it for an interest as well oftentimes. And having this senior person, senior attorney at a law firm ask me, who at the time was just a legal assistant, what I wanted to do or what I wanted to see was huge. Anytime she asked for anything that could go over hours, I was like, “Yes, I'll do it.” (Kate laughs) I felt so respected by her that I wanted to give more. 

Marissa: Before you started talking about that, I was sort of thinking about the importance of like, I guess you could call them like mentor-mentee relationships. But I really hate… Because I didn't know any attorneys or anything, everyone was like, “Oh, find a mentor who can help you, like, through this stuff.” And I'm like, where? Just like a random person? (Kate laughs) And you know, even if people offer, which is like very nice, it feels a little bit weird to me. That's just my personality. It feels a little bit like internet dating.

Kate: Yeah. No. I'm- I'm the same. I'm with you, I don't like it either. 

Marissa: But I think people who’ve got a little bit more experience, you can, if you're comfortable, like, imparting these lessons, like, look around for people who are interested. And make it known that you're the kind of person... Like, I will tell everyone right now, I am the person, I will tell you how much money I make. I'll tell you how many hours I work. I'll help you figure out how talk to somebody about it, you can call me. 

And once people know that that's who you are and you're willing to be open about that stuff and help people set boundaries and talk about things, people will come and ask you about it. I just encourage other people, whether they be attorneys, non-attorney staff with more experience, to to make themselves available in that way. I think it's really, really helpful. And it takes a lot of the edge out of, you know, feeling like you're the only one who has realized something is not quite right for you. 

Kate: Mhmm. 

Marissa: And like the onus is all on you. You've realized that, and that's sort of crushing, and now it's your responsibility to, like, talk to somebody about it. And how are you gonna do that? And maybe you're the only one. And I think if we can help create a culture of, if you need something, if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling like you don't have the resources, be they like monetary or otherwise to to do your job well, then hopefully there's someone you can look around who will talk to you about it. And if not, you can come talk to me, I'll talk to you about it.

Kate: (Laughing) I love that. Yeah. And that was really valuable for me when I burned out, was like… Yeah, my supervisor, I felt perfectly comfortable being honest with her, because she had made it very clear time and time again that I could be, and- and that it was gonna be okay. And it enabled me to stay there through my burnout for longer than I think I could have somewhere where I would have had to just go on in silence and try and figure it out. 

Kyle: Yeah. I mean, I always tell our associates… Actually, a couple paralegals who ended up going to law school, but because they got pulled onto our cases, they were asking me questions and that turned into me now serving as references for them and now–

Josey: Oh, that's amazing.

Kyle: Now one went to NYU law school, and is a–

Kate: Oh my god!

Kyle: – associate at Sullivan and Cromwell.

Josey: That's so great!

Kyle:It's really, really cool. 

Josey: That's awesome.

Kyle: You know, thinking about some of the more recent experiences for me, or examples is, you know, this might not be the thing you wanna do for the long term. And that's okay. Yeah, right now, you need to do a good job at it. But if in three years you wanna go… 

As an example, we have someone who is moving somewhere else. I've tried to facilitate some connections to that place because I have some. And he was, like, shocked by this. Like, well, no, listen. You shouldn't be shocked, I don't want you to be shocked. And I don't want the culture of places to be that that is a shocking thing to happen.

Kate: Yeah.

Kyle:  You shouldn't have to feel like you have to hide that. And to his credit, he's told our managing partner about it and was well-received. 

There's lots of different legal paths from all the different places in the legal sphere, and it can be kind of taboo to talk about that. I'm in a place I never thought I'd be. I never thought I'd end up back in Florida. In fact, I would have bet a substantial amount of money that I would never end up back in Florida. (All laugh) And here I am.

If I hadn't had conversations along the way with people who were ahead of me, I never would have had those opportunities. But I think in order to have that discussion, you have to put it out there. The person sort of above you… And it's a lot easier if they put it out there and say, “Talk to me about it.”

Josey: Yeah, I completely agree, I think that's so important. And that's exactly what the attorney that I worked with did. She made the initial step to let me know, you know, “Door’s open,” and to break that kind of barrier because she was above me. And that- it… I think it's equally important that you as the associate, as a paralegal, you know, whoever's under that person to be able to ask for something as well.

It's not… You- you can't expect someone just to come to you every time and be like, “What do you need? What do you want?” You know, you have to be able to advocate for yourself. And so after she did that, I was able to tell her, “You know, I'd really like to work on this with you.” She had opened the door, and then I had to take the initiative to get it. And I think that that's important for everyone. 

Kate: Yeah. And definitely practice what you preach too. Like, if you're gonna say that you're gonna be available, like be available, be genuine, and and don't overpromise something. Again, set those expectations. Because some people it might take more time to trust you and they're gonna wait until they see whether you've demonstrated those qualities that you are saying you have before they come to you. 

This has been a fantastic conversation. I am so happy that you were both able to join us. 

Marissa: Yeah. I learned so much. 

Kate: Me too.

Josey: Me too. 

Kyle: Yeah. Again, the the Venn diagram is- has way more overlap than I would have anticipated at the beginning. 

Kate: Yeah.

Marissa: Yeah.

Josey: I know, I felt the same way. I was like, “Oh my gosh, everything's aligning so well.” It's great.

Outtro

The Legal Burnouts is produced by me, Kate Bridal. Our music is by Keegan Stotsenberg. Our art is by Growlforce. Thanks for listening.