How I Lawyer Podcast with Jonah Perlin

In this episode I speak with Mike Yaghmai who is a Director and Associate General Counsel at Facebook where he heads up the company's legal work related to the company's brand and marketing. In this capacity Mike and his team are responsible for clearance, prosecution, and enforcement of the company's brand portfolio as well as the legal elements of Facebook's marketing policies. Before working at Facebook for the past 8 years, Mike worked at eBay for almost seven years and before that he worked as an intellectual property associate at Willdman Harrolld and then Howrey LLP. Mike is a Bay Area native and graduate of San Jose State University. After college, he worked in the San Jose mayor's office before moving to Chicago to complete his law degree at the DePaul University School of Law.In our conversation we discuss Mike's (largely unplanned) path to becoming a brand and marketing lawyer, what a brand and marketing lawyer does on a day-to-day basis (especially at a large company like Facebook), ways to stand out as part of an in-house legal team or as outside counsel servicing in-house legal teams, and techniques for transitioning into management roles where leadership skills become as important if not more important than legal skills.If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to How I Lawyer! Today's special episode is third in a series called "Panel Opinion" where I bring together experts on a particular topic (don't worry, there will be a new interview episode later this week or early next). Today's topic is on the mind of many How I Lawyer: how to succeed in your 1L year.  I am grateful to the three incredible professional academic success professionals who agreed to join me and share such incredible wisdom for those just starting their legal education:  Maura Demouy is the Director of Academic Success at Georgetown Law. At Georgetown, Maura provides personal and academic advising; develops and presents the 1L 101 workshop series; and oversees the peer tutoring program. She is also the head of the innovative RISE Program, which is designed to serve incoming JD students from backgrounds historically underrepresented in law school and the legal profession, including but not limited to underrepresented racial, ethnic, geographic, socioeconomic, and first generation college backgrounds. Prior to coming to Georgetown, Maura was the Dean of Students at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. She started her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Catherine Blake of the United States District Court for Maryland and as an associate in private practice at two law firms in Baltimore.  She is a graduate of Maryland’s Carey School of Law. Professor O.J. Salinas from the University of North Carolina School of Law where he is a Clinical Professor and Director of Academic Excellence. A native of South Texas, O.J. Salinas is the first Hispanic to hold a full-time faculty position at the University of North Carolina School of Law. His teaching and research interests include academic and bar support, legal writing, and client counseling. He has written several essays and blog posts on academic and bar support, and he is the author of A Short and Happy Guide to Effective Client Interviewing and Counseling (West 2016) and the upcoming book, MBEs for the MBE: Mnemonics, Blueprints, and Examples for the Multistate Bar Examination. Salinas is a graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law and St. Mary’s University. Before joining the academic ranks, Salinas practiced civil litigation in Texas and received a Master’s Degree in Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he worked with individuals suffering from severe mental illness to students seeking educational academic support.  Professor Sarah Schendel from Suffolk Law. Sarah is an Associate Professor in the Law School's Academic Support Program where she teaches and writes in the areas of academic success, legal writing, negotiation and professional responsibility. She was previously an instructor at Emerson College, Northeastern University, and Northeastern University School of Law. Before that, she was an immigration attorney for 7 years, representing immigrants facing deportation, seeking security and safety in the United States, and reuniting their families. She was previously a Board Member of the Irish International Immigrant Center, and the Co-Chair of the Immigration Section of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association. She is a graduate of Bard College and Northeastern Law. Other Resources: - Rachel Gurvich's Article: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1402&context=faculty_publications - Jonah's Tweet Thread on Law School Success: https://twitter.com/JonahPerlin/status/1425809608606507014?s=20

In this episode I speak with Cory Isaacson who works for the non-profit Georgia Resource Center where she represents indigent people on Georgia’s death row in their state and federal habeas corpus proceedings. Before coming to the Center, Cory was an attorney at Georgia Justice Project, where she represented people facing barriers to employment and housing because of their criminal history and advocated for reforms to the state’s record restriction laws in the legislature. Cory started her career in public interest lawyering as a student in and later an attorney and clinical supervisor at the Youth Defender Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, part of the clinical program at UC Berkeley School of Law where she represented young people in juvenile court and in school discipline proceedings. In our conversation we discuss the importance of representing those who have been convicted of capital crimes, the benefit of clinical programs, the challenges of breaking into public interest lawyering, and the power of protecting everyone's humanity and dignity in the legal system.If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In most episodes of the How I Lawyer Podcast I interview individual lawyers about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well. This special episode is the second in a series called "Panel Opinion" where I bring together experts on a particular topic. This episode is focused on how to succeed in on-campus interviewing in 2021. In this episode we discuss the current state of the legal market. It is also chock full of information for those who are about to start interviewing with law firms, those who may interview at law firms in the future, and even those doing the interviews.  I am grateful to have two incredible panelists for this episode: Donna Harris and Rob Cacace.  Donna Harris is the Director of Legal Recruiting based in the New York Office of Cleary Gottlieb. In that role, she advises firm leadership on recruiting strategy and is responsible for the recruiting, hiring and integration of all levels of legal talent across Cleary’s many offices and over 1,000 lawyers. She is also responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with law schools and search firms throughout the country. A recognized leader in the field of law firm talent management, she has served the legal industry continuously for over twenty years. She has held several elected positions in both NALP and NYCRA and is a frequent conference panelist and speaker on topics related to legal recruiting, professional development and diversity initiatives. She is a graduate of Pace University. Rob Cacace is the Executive Director of Professional Development in the Office of Career Strategy at Georgetown Law where he also serves as an adjunct professor. Before entering the Georgetown Law career strategy office about ten years ago Rob was a law clerk to Judge Gladys Kessler (DDC) and a plaintiff-side litigator. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law, and Oxford. One final programming note: traditional interviews will return next week. In the meantime, if you have any feedback or suggestions for this occasional episode format or ideas for "Panel Opinion" episodes please let me know at howilawyer@gmail.com or @JonahPerlin on Twitter. Finally if you are interested in listening to previous episodes or want to be notified of future episodes they are all available at www.howilawyer.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with Judge Robert Bacharach who is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Prior to becoming a federal appeals court judge in 2013, Judge Bacharach served as a Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma for 14 years and before that as a litigator at the Oklahoma City law firm of Crowe & Dunlevy. He has also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Judge Bacharach started his legal career as a law clerk on the 10th Circuit for Judge William Holloway Jr., whose seat he now holds. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and the Washington University Law School.Judge Bacharach also recently published the book, Legal Writing: A Judge's Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word published by the ABA. In our conversation we discuss his path to the bench, his process for hearing cases and crafting judicial opinions, and his general approach to legal writing as embodied in his recent book which draws on his years of experience on the bench as well as the fields of rhetoric and psycholinguistics.If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with Megan Siddall who is a founder and the managing partner of the women-owned, Boston-based, criminal litigation boutique Miner Siddall LLP. Her practice focuses primarily on white collar criminal defense and criminal appeals but she also has extensive experience in civil litigation and government enforcement actions. She has practiced in a number of different kinds of law firms including a large law firm in Washington, D.C. and a medium-sized litigation boutique in Boston. Megan started her career as a law clerk to Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School.In our conversation we discuss her work as a white collar criminal litigator, her experience founding and now running her women-owned litigation boutique, and her approach to handling cases large and small. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with legal commentator David Lat. For more than a decade David has been one of the country's foremost legal commentators and legal bloggers. He started his legal blogging career with the blog Underneath Their Robes where he wrote about the federal judiciary pseudonymously. He then went on to found Above the Law (one the country's most well-known legal media blogs) which he led for more than ten years. After a brief period working in legal recruiting, David recently returned to writing about law and the legal profession full-time with his newsletter Original Jurisdiction (davidlat.substack.com).  David started his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain (9th Circuit). He then worked as an associate at Wachtell and as an Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey before shifting to a full-time career writing about the law.  In our conversation we discuss the his path to becoming a legal blogger; the importance of finding the intersection of what you like to do, what you are good at, and what your experience makes you uniquely qualified to do; some of his favorite Above the Law stories; and how lawyers can (and should) promote themselves and their work on the internet. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with Robert Tembeckjian, the Administrator and Counsel at the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. The Commission is the independent state agency responsible for reviewing complaints of ethical misconduct against the more than 3,000 judges and justices in the New York Unified Court System. As the Chief Judicial Ethics Enforcement Officer in New York, he runs the day-to-day operations for the commission and leads a team of more than 40 based in New York City, Albany and Rochester. He is also an important leader in the field of judicial ethics having worked for the Commission for more than 40 years.  In our conversation we discuss the importance of judicial ethics enforcement, the process for conducting investigations, and some of the common ethical mistakes that judges make. We also discuss the types of skills and experiences that lend themselves to effective judicial enforcement lawyers. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with Patrice Sulton, the Founder and Executive Director of the DC Justice Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to researching, organizing, and advocating for large-scale change to Washington D.C.'s criminal justice system. Patrice not only has experience advocating for changes to the law. She has extensive experience actually rewriting these laws having served as a Senior Attorney Advisor to DC's Criminal Code Reform Commission, an independent agency within the District of Columbia government established to comprehensively revise the District’s Criminal Code. She also has experience representing clients in court and teaching both in the community and at the George Washington University School of Law where she has won a number of awards for her teaching.  In our conversation we talk about the process of drafting criminal laws and how to most effectively advocate for progressive changes to those laws, the importance of diversity and representation in the criminal justice non-profit community, how to balance the need to do individual representation and systems change work, the power of arguing from first principles, how to succeed as a young lawyer or law student in a new legal area, creating a "discipline of rest" to prevent burn out, and the ways that all lawyers--regardless of their primary role--can support organizations that serve their communities.   If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode I speak with Matt Blumenstein, the Head of Underwriting and Deputy General Counsel at Statera Capital, a leading commercial litigation financing firm based in Chicago, Illinois. At Statera, Matt is responsible for leading the firm's investment underwriting and confirmatory diligence process and acts as the firm's Deputy General Counsel. Before joining Statera last year, Matt was an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C. where he litigated civil and criminal cases. He started his career as a law clerk to Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In our conversation we take a deep dive on litigation finance: what it is, the role it plays in litigation today, and some of the potential benefits and challenges that it presents. We also discuss Matt's move from Big Law practice to entrepreneurial start up, and why it is important to build networks, bet on yourself, and take chances when presented with them. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.