• Law School,  Legal Practice,  Work Life Balance

    Here to Stay: Balancing Social Media with Your Legal Career

    Bloomberg’s latest article discusses the pitfalls of Biglaw attorneys on TikTok. It discusses how slow firms are to respond and how conflicted they are with associates being active on social media. I’ve been seeing more and more legal content on TikTok and when a recent Cravath associate opted to resign then to stop creating content (content that seems to be very lucrative), I couldn’t help but notice how far we’ve come! fyi, Cravath is the most white shoe of white shoe firms–if any firm is going to have a conservative stance on social media it’s going to be these type of firms. In 2015, I wrote a social media dos…

    Comments Off on Here to Stay: Balancing Social Media with Your Legal Career
  • Legal Practice

    Big Law is Horrible…Or is it? What the Latest Big Law Drama Can Teach Us

    This week a slide from an alleged presentation by Paul Hastings dropped and boy…did people have a lot to say. Whether or not it was actually part of the presentation, the overall consensus was the Big Law is horrible and this is just another example. And I get it—seeing the slide by itself and how it prioritizes work above everything seems, at the very least, a little unhealthy while others may see it and think those expectations just come with the job. There is a widening gap in the way people approach work with a younger generation being more attuned with their rights and pushing for a more tenable work/life…

    Comments Off on Big Law is Horrible…Or is it? What the Latest Big Law Drama Can Teach Us
  • Legal Practice

    What, Like it’s Fancy? Understanding Prestige in the Legal Industry

    I spoke recently on tiktok about not grasping how “prestigious” it was to work for the governor’s legal team when I was in law school. It just didn’t set on how other folks may view that as important or how I could leverage that into another opportunity. I just had no clue! And for a lot of us first-gen, low income kids who grow up detached/excluded from professional spaces, who don’t know any attorneys or people in the field, we often fail to see prestige. Why is that important? Because, as always, the legal industry loves its systems of power. Being able to create hierarchies even within the industry means…

    Comments Off on What, Like it’s Fancy? Understanding Prestige in the Legal Industry
  • Legal Practice

    Who are You to Judge? Managing Feelings Around Clients

    You’re not going to like your clients. Well, you’ll like some of them but more than likely you’ll have a few that you just don’t like. It could be because of their personality or because of their decisions, or because they zap your energy, or they’re downright rude…clients are humans and we normally don’t always love every human we engage with. But when you’re representing them, you’re duty to your client requires you figuring out how to overcome feelings of dislike. Now to be clear, there’s no duty to like your client. But when you dislike someone or find yourself judging their behavior/character, it impacts your work and that is…

    Comments Off on Who are You to Judge? Managing Feelings Around Clients
  • Legal Practice

    On Being Liked…

    Over vacation, I finally read The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are by Alicia Menendez. I’ve had it for a while and fiiiiinally read it—and I’m so glad I did. I recommend it, especially for those a few years into their careers and trying to figure out the next steps. The Likeability Trap is about just that—the trap that women fall into when trying to succeed at work. It’s the rock and hard place where if we’re too nice we’re seen as ineffective but if we’re not nice enough we’re seen as aggressive and angry—far too emotional to be leaders. The book goes into case…

  • Legal Practice

    Managing Angry & Volatile Clients

    One thing they don’t teach you in law school is how to respond when you think a client is going to harm you. Hopefully you never need to know that, but reading a recent article of an immigration attorney who was stabbed by their client, it dawned on me how necessary it is to talk about managing experiences with volatile clients in order to keep yourself safe. First, I don’t want to talk about this to instill fear in people or make lawyering seem overly dangerous. However, in one study of 22 states, it found that up to 46.5% of registered attorneys had been threatened or assaulted. It helps no…

  • Legal Practice,  Work Life Balance

    Two Years Later…

    Two years go by so fast that you don’t even notice how things change. I  want to take some time to reflect on the past two years (times BC) because I think it’s important and also because, in general, people are so quick to dismiss the trauma and the shift we’ve experienced and that’s not healthy, bestie. First, and most important, there are so many people whose lives were upended because of this illness (to put it lightly). And as a country we’re really quick to overlook the loss of millions of people gone and what that means. I don’t have any solutions on how to make us more empathetic…

  • Law School,  Legal Practice

    The Magic and Panic of Post-Bar Life

    If you took the February Bar, I have one thing to say–CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DID IT!   Ok, I actually have more than one thing to say (obvi). It is such a relief to be done but the reality is that even after putting in all that work, you don’t know the results for weeks and the anxiety of what if can really drag you down. Life post-bar is filled with both the magic of what is possible–your entire career ahead of you. And the panic, “what if I didn’t pass?” It’s a horrible predicament. I remember, still, the weeks after the test where I’d have moments so excited about what…

  • Law School,  Legal Practice

    Best Way to Calm Nerves When First Working With Clients

    Ok, you’re a licensed attorney, you have a real lawyer job, with a client case and everything! But now you actually have to talk to clients-on your own and sometimes they don’t trust you because you look so young. Or they expect you to know about some random issue that has nothing to do with your practice area. How can you present a cool, calm, collected persona so that your clients trust you when you know there is so much you don’t know? First, take a deep breath. The good thing is that knowing there’s a lot you don’t know is the first step in good client counseling. It’s good…

    Comments Off on Best Way to Calm Nerves When First Working With Clients
  • Legal Practice

    Red Flags to Avoid When Considering a Job Offer

    It’s always exciting to receive a job offer (and what a relief!). During the interview phase, each party is putting their best face forward and there’s no reason to think you’re stepping into a bad situation. But it can happen that you go in with rose-colored glasses and suddenly a few months in (or worse, weeks),  you realize they were selling you a false bill of goods because the office is toxic AF. How can you avoid that? Especially in an industry where the work is always high-stress, fast-paced and urgent? Are you doomed to just work someplace you hate always? Not so much. First, I went to differentiate between…

    Comments Off on Red Flags to Avoid When Considering a Job Offer