Advisory Opinions - Getting Your Legal Career Started

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

While David is still away on his well-earned vacation, it’s time for some career advice! Megan L. Brown – partner at Wiley Rein LLP – joins Sarah to talk about choosing (and getting hired by) the right law firm. How to get your best self across in interviews? How to judge a firm’s work culture? Is it wise to inquire about a firm’s work-life balance? And, most importantly, should you take career pointers from Netflix’s Partner Track? All shall be answered. Oh, and by the way, the views expressed in this episode are Megan’s and Sarah’s, they do not represent necessarily the views of Wiley Rein, its partners or clients. Editor's Note: Views expressed are not necessarily the views of Wiley Rein, its partners or clients Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. David French is still out. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. David French is still out. And this episode, I think we're going to do something a little non-law of the day because David and I are going to be together later this week. You're going to get your next episode a day later. It'll come out on Friday. But since David and I are together, I'm going to save the Department of Justice's continued efforts over the special master litigation. Also, really interesting religious liberty case over PrEP drugs coming out of Texas that we'll talk about. I know David's

going to want to talk about that one. But in the meantime, he's on this cruise with very limited Wi-Fi. So our normal text exchanges on, for instance, who the special master ideas were, were so limited and sad. We miss you terribly, David, but not that much that we're not going to continue with AO because today I have an exciting guest. Megan Brown is a partner at Wiley Rhyne. It's an AM law, 200 law firm, roughly 300 lawyers. They're all in DC. It's where I summered, of course, because this entire podcast is just a trip through Sarah's life. And Megan specializes in Federal Trade Commission Act work, Federal Communication Act. She does a lot of cybersecurity, data privacy. She's Associate Director for

Cybersecurity at George Mason Law School's National Security Institute, where I've also taught a course. But none of that is really why she's here today. She's also the former hiring partner at Wiley-Rhyne. She's on the management committee. And I got some questions from law students about to head into OCI, on-campus interviewing. And we don't talk a lot about actual law firm life on this podcast. We're too busy talking about fun cases and law clerks and all of that stuff. So this episode is dedicated to you law students and all the

questions you might have about trying to go to a law firm, what to do once you're at the law firm, what to do to try to make partner, all of that stuff. We're going to get to it with Megan Brown. Megan, welcome to Advisory Opinions. We're so thrilled to have you. I am so thrilled to be here. As you know, I'm a big fan. I listen to most of them, and I think you and David do such a nice job. So I'm really honored that you invited me on. And Megan, you and I have known each other since I was a summer associate at Wiley Ryan, although I guess technically we even knew each other before that because I summered at Cooper Kirk, also your former law firm, the summer before that, my one-off summer.

And so we actually met at Cooper Kirk stuff, I think. And then I went to your law firm. Yes, because I had been a summer at Cooper a million years ago before, long before I ended up at Wiley. So yes, we have lots of little connective tissue. Okay, so Megan, I know half the law schools don't call it OCI anymore,

but I'm going to call it OCI for the purposes of our conversation. Again, on-campus interviewing, the idea is that these law students travel from around the country. The law firms put them up in posh hotels in the city that they want to interview in and then have rounds of interviews, maybe a dinner. What does OCI look like post-COVID? Well, that's a great question because it is very different. And I find myself regularly correcting my advice because, of course, what you and I went through eons ago is not what students are going through now, either in terms of timing or format, right? I think, you know, you and I went through this a couple, maybe decades ago

when things were on campus and in the fall. And it was, I think, more orderly, although at the time it was stressful. Now, I think it's much earlier in the summer. They are doing a lot more by Zoom. I know we are being sort of hybrid in a lot of this. Maybe screening interviews are done by Zoom. We still go on campus to several campuses, but I think the virtualization of some of this has actually helped to open up the aperture for certain students at schools that don't have the same roster of firms coming onto campus for that sort of day-long marathon of students in the hallway coming into a little cubicle or something,

doing their 10 interviews and moving on. So I think it's more varied than I think it used to be and has a virtual component. But I think firms are trying to get students into the offices at some point in the process to sort of size you up and see what fit looks like. That's such an interesting point about how OCI even worked back in the day. Because if you, like for me, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to potentially go back to Texas. But if you're a Texas firm and there's one random student who maybe wants to go to your firm, are you really going to send up a partner and two associates up to Cambridge, Massachusetts for up to two or three days just

to interview that one student who probably isn't coming to your firm. So opening it up over Zoom, of course they do that because why not spend 30 minutes talking to that student? So that would have been really interesting and certainly a help for some students who are looking at those more regional spots, for instance, or just law firms that would otherwise not take a flyer the other direction, you're at some law school that they're not particularly interested in otherwise, but you happen to be the number one student, but it's in the boondocks. So that's exciting. Also though, Megan, at least back in my day at Harvard, we would interview in the partner's hotel room. Did you do that?

Yes. I have done that both as the student, uh, back in the day, back at when we did it in October, you would have interviews late into the evening and it would be dark. So I hadn't, I had interviews in hotel rooms when it's dark at like, I think the last slot was a 7.20 interview slot. And in October in Boston, it's dark. So it's super weird. And it's also super weird to be the partner in the hotel room interviewing someone. My firm always got a separate room. So it's not literally the bed you slept in. But it's still weird.

I'm sorry. It's just weird. And now our firm has, I think, gone to two interviewers at a time to break up the weirdness factor of the hotel rooms. Yes. Two people in a hotel room means not weird at all. Slightly less weird, or at least there's a witness, Sarah. That's true. And so many of the partners were male, obviously. I think I exclusively interviewed with male partners in those hotel

rooms. And you're just trying to make it as un-weird as possible for them, in part. If you make it weird, then just the whole thing. All of it's weird. I'm glad we have moved away from some of that. Okay. So this is just a screening interview. A lot of firms, by the way, screen out law students before they can even get the screening interview. A lot of firms, by the way, screen out law students before they can even get the screening interviews. Some law schools prevent the law firms from doing that. Can you walk through how even you get your foot in the door to get an in-person, even if it's over Zoom, meeting at this point? Yeah. And I remain a bit frustrated by the school's different approaches to this. And I was a hiring partner several years ago,

so it may yet have again changed. But some schools will require you as a law firm to take whoever wants to bid on you. Others will allow you to screen. So it's complicated on both sides. And one thing I would say to students is, you know, don't be discouraged if the mechanics of your school's OCI process, which some places can feel a bit like a medical residency matching program. If it doesn't, if you're not getting access to the places you want to get, I would disregard admonitions to sort of follow the process religiously. And if you know people at a firm, you should be talking to those people. If for some reason the OCI magic yielded a schedule that you're not psyched about, don't sort of give up because the law firm hiring is frequently very much a, hey, I know this person or, hey, someone went to my undergrad. So, you know, you can still be creative to go after what you want. But for a lot of

schools, it is you put in your list of firms, they might select out based on grades or something, and then you've got your schedule and you go and do the 20-minute screeners. And let's say you'd fall just below that grade cutoff that the firm says they're going to screen for and they're not going to interview people on campus who have grades below that. Should you still try to get in there? Do you have a shot? Are those cutoffs hard and fast if you don't know someone? What if you do know someone? It's hard to generalize across all firms because I remember from my process, there were certainly firms where it was hard and fast. But I think, you know, kudos to the

student who's going to try and be scrappy. And if you really want to work at X firm that is a grade snob firm, then good for you for trying to do it. I mean, maybe people on the receiving end of this outreach from students will curse me for encouraging it. But I think if you think you're close and you have some compelling reason you want to be at a firm, it never hurts to, I mean, I guess it could hurt, but you probably won't hurt to email the hiring committee. Usually a firm has staff that you can reach out to. So you're not inundating law firm partners with your emails and just flag it. And sometimes they'll have cancellations for on-campus. And if you're the kid who's standing at the door and you're willing to say, like, I'll wait,

good for you. I mean, I think that's sort of refreshing, right? You're hungry, go for it. How do you stand out in a screening interview? I mean, they're 20 minutes. Maybe you're in a hotel room. Maybe this part is where Zoom is worse. Maybe you're over Zoom. There's not a whole lot of rapport you're going to establish. Also, the questions are going to be sort of, all the answers are going to be the same. All the questions are going to be the same. What are you supposed to do? Wow, that's a really good question. How did I get hired at Wiley, Megan? Oh, stop it. The faux, How did I get hired at Wiley, Megan? Oh, stop it.

The faux, I'm not going to indulge the faux humility. You know, I think one of the things that is deadly on these interviews, whether it's Zoom or in person, is if a student can't carry their end of the conversation, right? It is a conversation. And if you come in and you sit there and you just respond to questions and you're expecting the interviewer to do the work, that's asking and expecting a lot because some interviewers are energetic enough to pull that off. And even on the 12th interview of the day. But I will tell you that the deadliest interviews for me in person or on Zoom are where I'm doing all the work and the person isn't in that give and take of a conversation because that's what working with the lawyer is going to

be like. So try and make it a conversation and have a couple of questions that you could pivot to so there's not so much dead air if you end up with an interviewer who is maybe not as chatty as me or Sarah or some of the more extrovert interviewers. So I think this is interesting because interviewing, in my view, yes, is like so much else. Yes, some people have a talent for it,

but it's actually a skill like any other that you can build up. And having sort of go-to small, short anecdotes, things that you can carry the conversation with. I review a ton of resumes, both law students and undergrad, and it's very popular to have the interest section at the bottom. And I will put big red marker around interest sections that say things like, and I mean, how many times have I seen this exact interest section? Running, cooking, reading. Okay. So first of all, those aren't really interests, right? Those are verbs, gerunds, technically. The point of the interest section is not because anyone cares what you are interested in. Not really. The point of the interest section is to

be able to carry on that conversation and you're giving basically cheat cards to your conversation partner so that they can ask questions or elicit your best interviewing self. So instead of running, cooking, reading, it should read something like, have participated in 15 years of our turkey trot 5K on a full stomach, comma. Have perfected my mother's meatball recipe, comma. Have read, have actually read, you know, all of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Again, those aren't interests in a general sense, but they're very specific things.

Now you're giving people three shots. Feel free to add a fourth or a fifth if you want to. Maybe, you know, assume that very few people will have read Infinite Jest. So that's out. But if you get a partner who has, they're going to cue in on that one and be like, oh my god, how many times did you have to start before you were actually able to finish one time? That's going to be a whole conversation thing there. Meatballs, everyone's had a meatball. It's easy of the conversation lulls for them to go to your interest section. So I think that's a place that people can spruce up their resume, but Megan is making a face at me. I am. I'm using my podcast recording signal to signal disagreement. Yeah. Mild disagreement, because I will say sometimes the interest

section starts to look really silly or like you are trying so hard to be different. Like we, I've seen some that say, like, you know, make artisanal kombucha and right. Like, and so you've got to balance having an interest section and getting an eye roll. Right. Um, I'd love to interview the makes artisanal kombucha person, except some of the interests can be like, yes, it might make a fun interview, but it also could suggest something a little wacky. So you just want to be careful with your intersection. I lean into wacky more than most perhaps. And you've been very successful. So take what you will. I also think on your point about carrying the conversation, again, conversation skills, it's just a skill.

Don't say to yourself, well, that's not what I'm good at, so I guess I won't be good at OCI. No, it's actually just something you can work on and actually put thought into and come up with things that you think you're good at talking about, not the weather, unless the weather's crazy that day or something. But Cambridge is cold, not going to carry your conversation very far. Yeah. The best interviews I've had are the ones where a student can ask a good question

that they're confident will elicit something from me that they can then respond to with a relevant thing from their background, their interests, their resume, right? But it is something you practice. And if you're someone who is intimidated by this, just think of this as like the skills that you'll need as an associate to learn and grow to become a partner, which is not every associate comes in the door with the same skill set that we or anyone else looks for, for certain tasks in the law or for making partners. So you're going to have to flex and get better at stuff you're not good at anyway. So start practicing. I also think your point about like, I'm going to have to work with you. And so I'm looking for someone who's not going to be miserable to work with. That is true across any interview, regardless of whether you're a law student, a law clerk interview, but just like normal human interviewing for any job. The person

interviewing you is thinking about what's it going to be like to come into work every day with this person and chit chat with them. Is it going to be miserable pulling teeth? Or is it going to be something I can sort of look forward to a little of like, oh, that'll be fun. Water cooler person to hang out with at work. You're not looking for your best friend, but you're also trying to weed out the like, oh, I need to get away from this person every Monday morning. Someone said that to me. I was actually like in my maybe mid twenties. I was a little old to hear this for the first time, but it blew my mind where I was like, oh, they want to know whether they'd enjoy working with me, not on the merits, not whether I'm a brilliant lawyer at Westlaw and

know all the cases and have read that footnote. They actually just want to see if I'm a normal human that they'd, you know, when we're at trial and get a beer at 7pm, is that something that they'll be like, yeah, let's get that beer? Or they're like, oh God, I don't want to bring that associate with me. Well, and a big part of it also is you're trying to get a sense of how this person will mature in the setting in which they're going to be working. And very few lawyers have the luxury of sitting in an office by themselves, writing briefs and doing big thinking and never having to interact with the client, talk to a fact witness, meet the engineer who's designing the system that you need to get regulated approval for. So I want to see that you can build relationships

with others that you will be, that I can send you if I need to. Like I recently just sent an associate on site to a client and I just sent him and I didn't go babysit him. He was, but I had to have that confidence that I can just deploy you. You will go, you will make the firm look good. You will do excellent work. You will go. You will make the firm look good. You will do excellent

work. You will come back with the task done and you will not have, you will have expanded the goodwill for the firm because the people there will find you both competent and affable. And that is an important thing that you have to do to be able to grow business and to serve clients. For those who are worried that we're not going to talk about the new Netflix show partner track, don't worry. It's coming at the end. Okay. I want to expand past Wiley a little here to some of the questions that either you're going to get in OCI or you're supposed to ask in OCI and how you, Megan, would think about these as a law student. Litigation or transactional? And can you explain what those mean? I don't know. I think most law students have an inkling of which direction they want to go. A lot of law students, though, are still

in their summer trying to figure out what those actually mean in practice. Because in law school, you read cases, so you think you understand what litigation is. It's an adversarial process. And you read, you know, contracts. But it's a very different thing to be at, you know, a New York deal firm working on a transaction than to read about a dispute over a transaction. So I think, you know, a lot of law students can and should have some inkling of the kind of work they want to do. But I don't think people need to feel this huge pressure to be able to articulate exactly which flavor of those they want to do. And, you know, quite frankly, you should be open to if you think you want to do litigation. I like hearing that people are open-minded enough to know that they're going to try some other stuff and they they might find out that they love counseling and compliance work and after five

years of litigation they might want to be managing litigation and not taking depositions so you just I I want a student and I think lots of law firms want a student that are that are open to different things interestingly of my little girl group of four from our section, two went transactional, two went litigation. None of us are currently... Nope, wait, that's not true. One is still technically a practicing lawyer, but very much in-house and not in the general counsel's office. So to some extent, it also doesn't matter. I mean, frankly, you'll do a lot of what the firm will tell you to do. I mean, certain firms you have to know. And if you're going to certain firms, you're going to have to pick and have a good reason why

and understand those specialties. But I still have no idea what transactional lawyers do. None. They do some very interesting things. We are frequently regulatory counsel on these massive transactions. And I will say they work extremely hard. Some of them are just absolutely brilliant when you think about the moving parts and the chess that they're playing with respect to both the structure of a deal, right? How to create a business, how to create an entity for all these different

purposes and pulling together like the tax team and the regulatory team and the this team. how to create a business, how to create an entity for all these different purposes, and pulling together the tax team and the regulatory team and the this team. So it is pretty intense work. I just think, from my perspective, it's a long road to get to that sort of master the universe kind of roles at these big firms. And it's daunting. It's becoming a real moneymaker for a lot of the firms, though. So if you do go that path, you're arguably in the more profitable section of that law firm, which for long-term career stability and other stuff may also be interesting to think about. Maybe. But one of the things I also encourage, and I'm now sort of angry at myself that I went to the big M&A side of things. The really interesting piece

to me is like corporate work can be a lot of different things. And you can be in-house and be a really great counselor on business risk and helping your company sort of structure things and mitigate risk and do really creative, innovative things without being at, you know, Cravath or Wachtel sort of setting up those master of the universe deals. So here's a question from one law student. Do firms actually differ internally in their culture? If yes, how so? And how would you get to that in an interview? How would you get to the bottom of that difference? Or even in, you know, if you only get to summer in one place, how would you know the other law firms cultures? difference? Or even if you only get to summer in one place, how would you know the other law firms' cultures? So yes, a thousand times yes, the firms differ dramatically in their culture.

And that's driven by a lot of different things. It's driven by, at one level, the comp system and how the law firm decides how to allocate the funding and whether that creates a culture of competitiveness or whether it fosters collaboration. Going sort of down to the associate level, are the associates encouraged to help each other and work together towards shared goals? Or is there a sort of a competitiveness that's built in there where the associates are sort of feeling like it's a zero-sum task at the firm? And I think to your question about how do you possibly discern that, right, you can't do it just by reading websites because the firm websites all use the same basic buzzwords. So you really, I think, have to work your network, talk to people who some are there, talk to people who know associates and look at like, are their associates happy? Do they stay? Are they doing work they care about?

And when you're in the office, I think that is a key time to try and just get that vibe from the firm. Are people nice to each other in the hallways? When you get in the elevator, do they greet each other? And try and get a sense of whether people are sort of happily or contentedly engaged in the work that they're doing and feeling fulfilled by it, as opposed to, you know, asking questions about the structure of the summer program and how assignments are handed out. I always found this to be the very hardest thing because the firms know who their sort of rockstar

personality people are, and that's who they send to interview on campus. They're going to send sort of their most fun, interesting person and the associate who is happy. They're not sending the unhappy, grumpy, misanthropic associate to come talk to you. And at the same time, I found the walking through the hallway thing helpful, but I didn't have that like, you know, well, I can just call up my dad's best friend, my uncle, my whatever, who are, you know, know everything about these law firms and they can give me the, at least the shorthand gossip on what the law firm cultures are like. So I was sort of flying blind. Maybe there were some students who had summered there the year before who were still around campus, maybe. But even then, the nerds I was hanging out with were like,

I'm going to make partner in six and a half years if I don't sleep and build 3,500 hours a day. And I'm like, okay, well, that's not helpful. You don't care about any of this. So I found this really hard and I didn't know what questions to ask in OCI because you sound like such a dweeb. If you're like, I saw on your website that you say you have a collegial culture. How would you say that that manifests itself? Like, okay, well, what are they going to say to that? Well, I get that question a not insignificant amount of the time. I'm sure. And listen, I mean, it's, I think it's a fair question. I wouldn't maybe ask it exactly the way you just did, but it's a fair question to ask, say a mid-level associate or a junior partner,

if you're talking with them during the office visit, sort of, why are you still at the firm? Like, what about the firm have you liked? I've gotten really good questions about what about the firm don't you like, right? What would you change if you could? And, you know, those are interesting questions. Sometimes they're uncomfortable, but I like it. And, you know, I wouldn't ask a lot of questions about sort of lifestyle because you don't necessarily want to telegraph that you don't want to work hard. But I think the atmosphere questions and how you get along with people and what the expectations are, those are all fair questions if targeted at the right level. But you can even ask a senior partner, you know, why have you been here for 20 years?

Right? It's a fluid market. People can move around. Why have you stayed? What is your go-to question to a law student on campus that helps you sort of discern wheat from chaff? I have a couple. I like to ask about like, what have you found intellectually fun about law school or the law? Like I kind of want to get to a student's like, do they care about the law? Do they care about sort of this whole enterprise? Um, so I sometimes ask questions like that. I will ask, you know, you know, what about the practice of law in DC is attractive to you?

Um, cause I think there are unique aspects to that. And I think there's a variety of questions, but I'll often ask someone about a class they took just to see if I can get them to see sort of how their brain works and if they can coherently and interestingly talk about some legal idea. That's always a good sign to me. Okay, let's move on to now you're through OCI. always a good sign to me. Okay, let's move on to now you're through OCI. You've done the interview at the law firm and you've picked and now you are a summer associate. What is the number one thing a summer associate can do to ensure they get invited back? And what's the number one non-insane thing that a summer associate can do to not get invited back? And believe me, the law students, I mean, I hope you guys still have amazing stories and lore handed down of what law students have done to not get invited back. I really hope that

story of the law student who jumped in the Hudson River off the riverboat cruise remains handed down by oral tradition. It was a very famous story that happened before I got there. So it was handed down only oral tradition in my day. And my understanding is she did get invited back on the booze cruise, jumps into the Hudson and they were like, eh, we need bodies. I'll take her. She seems fun. Yeah. I mean, there's that element.

I suffered at another law firm, my 2L summer before coming to Wiley. And there was certainly some hijinks and it didn't seem to be offer-preclusive of anyone in that summer class. But I do think, you know, sadly, the whole social media and above the law, I think, have squashed some of the hijinks and hilarity. And I know hiring departments are now more conservative and tend to send a babysitter along on a lot of things. So I think the hijinks have tapered off. But to your serious question about how to succeed as a summer associate, one of the biggest things that I think sets a summer associate apart anywhere is, are you showing that you care about getting the work done and being a team player so that you're not just handing in your memo on X and piecing out and like you're done and now you're going out. It's the students who

show up, they do the memo, they do a nice job, they follow up and they say, hey, is there anything else you need on this matter? Have you thought about this? Not in like a pushy, annoying kind of everyday email kind of thing, but the kind of thing that you would want if you're a busy lawyer and you're trying to serve your clients. And now you have an additional team member who's got your back to be able to say, you know, you asked about this article three standing thing three weeks ago. I just saw a case pop out of the third circuit. Have you noticed it? Right. And if not, fine. And I'm not saying you need to be like just all over everybody all the time, but just those check-ins or just when you'd hand off a project to be suggesting that you're around and you're

more than willing to come back and tweak it, revise it, follow up. Cause that's, that's one of the funny things about summer work is that boomerang effect. You do something in week three, week eight, it comes back to you because the partner finally got around to reading it. And now they're like, oh, I have three more hard questions about this. So it's that telegraphing of you're on the team and you're going to help. And if that means you're working a little bit late tomorrow night, great, because you're there to work and you're there to help the clients and the partners. And then I guess you did ask about how you blow it. And I think, um, I think one of the things that jumps out to me, and this is for summers and associates is the opposite of what I just said, which is if you, if you telegraph inadvertently

or not, that you're not helping, that you're not ready to jump in and be enthusiastic I don't I'm not gonna necessarily want to work with you um a lot because I want to know that like you're on you're on board you're in okay uh fast forward again let's take another giant leap forward now you're working there and you're a young associate and it just like the gaping maw ahead of you can seem really long and you've got to, you don't want to burn out, but at the same time you need to impress. It could be an up and out type firm, up or out type firm where you're looking at your first, second year associate class, and you can do math and see how few of you are going to make it to

the end of this line. What are you doing as a first year or second year associate? And how do you balance all of that? And another subpart to that question is, do you focus in on one partner and try to become their pet so that they can sponsor you? Or do you try to get as many relationships as possible across the firm, even if that means you're only doing one project

for each of them and they could forget about you? I mean, it just feels like there's a lot of strategy involved that can be a little daunting. Let me take a step back and say, as a first or second year associate, I think a lot of people should relieve themselves of the pressure to have it all mapped out, right? There are going to be curveballs. The partner you work for for three years on something may go in-house and your docket may shift dramatically. So I think in the early parts of one's career, your focus, my advice to young lawyers is do excellent work for whoever is giving out work, right?

Like say yes, say yes a lot. That's the thing. And firms may have a very specific path and you may have a certain firm need to be all in in a very narrow group. So I'm not addressing those circumstances, but I'm saying if you're at your average AMLAW 200 firm, you know, there's going to be a lot of different things that you might get asked to do. And I would say, you know, don't overthink it your first couple of years. You're there to get experience. You're

there to show that you can work hard and that you're on the team and you'll say yes. And you'll really do a good job once you say yes. When you're closer to partner, I think some of those factors of wide net, focus on a single partner, they almost are thrust upon you. But in my experience, I was really well served by having done excellent work for a variety of partners who then could back me up and advocate for me to make partner. But there's no one path for it. And I think at your first or second year, you're fooling yourself if you think you can sort of figure that out and have that path mapped out unless you're in a very particularized firm or practice. Okay, now let's get to the question that you're not supposed to ask in interviews. Well known.

Do not ask about lifestyle because it is code for I want to be paid as much money for as little work as possible. How would you say I do that? But everyone wants to know about it. And not just because they want to do less work, but truly, how am I going to, you know, I'm in my 20s and up to my early 30s before I'll possibly make partner. How am I supposed to also build a life, find a spouse, get married, maybe have kids during this period of associate-dom? Because look, I love your firm. I want to do good work. I do enjoy the law, but that's not the only thing I'm going to do on this planet. And so what's your advice on work-life balance? How you sort of seek that out when you're saying yes all the time? I found it, by the way, funny side note story of part of the reason I did not go to a law firm after clerking is I just felt constantly at a competitive disadvantage on

this stuff because A, there was always going to be someone who didn't want those things in life. And so they were going to put in more hours than I was. And in a culture, whatever you want to call it, where hours are sort of how the metric by which you're judged. Just starting right off the bat, I felt like I was used to working harder than everyone around me, but that was no longer going to be the case. And I didn't like that feeling. Two, and this got into some ethical gray areas, but I felt like, you know, I went to the bathroom, I had to stop billing. I, you know, obviously like went to go exercise, took a shower. I wasn't billing that time. And yet there were associates who were. And they were like, well, I was thinking about the

case. And I was like, oh, I'm not going to do that. First of all, I don't know that I'll be thinking about the case in any smart way. But second of all, maybe I don't want to think about the case during my shower. So again, I'm at this huge competitive disadvantage. And yet, I still value... Part of what my value add to this firm is going to be eventually would be relationships. I can't maintain relationships if all I'm doing is working 20 hours a day. I don't have a significant other. I don't have a marriage, a family, nothing. So I don't know, Megan, how is a young law student, new lawyer supposed to think about all of that? I mean, I think the proxy for a lot of those questions is can you discern that at any particular firm, people are there who have a life that looks

like what you want, right? I saw some folks being trotted out at various firms and they were held up as sort of great examples of various achievements, but their lives were utterly foreign to me in what I envisioned is my life, right? I don't, I didn't at that point, um, and wouldn't now want to bring my four week old newborn into a document production. Um, and so when I heard that touted as like, awesome, I thought not so awesome. So I think you have to figure out what you care about. And if some people want to spend eight years grinding and billing 3000 hours, you know, yeah, they're going to do that. And that's, you have no control over that, but you do have control over whether the organization values that and only that. And I reject the idea that most law firms or all law firms do. We are extremely interested

in well-rounded lawyers who can actually go out and generate business. I want people to go for their run at 6.30 at night to clear their head. And it's not just all about family. It's about, you know, you've got, there are people who have outside interests and that makes them interesting and that makes them good colleagues, right? You know, I, when I was going through the process, I was insufficiently attuned to those differences, but it lucked out where I ended up but in hindsight I think the proxy way to get at lifestyle is when you talk to a senior associate ask them what they do outside of work ask them why they're still there and you might get an answer that says like I would say I'm still here because I have the um control over my life at this point, having built up trust with my firm to go do things outside,

whether that's get home to my nanny, or as some colleagues would do, they run marathons, or they volunteer at N Street Village, or they take care of a sick parent, or whatever it is. You want to be a place where you're encouraged to be a whole human, because quite frankly, clients want to hire whole humans. They don't want to work with a robot, but they do want hard work. And so you have to expect that's part of the deal. You can't maybe do the ultra marathon

as a fourth year associate. Maybe you just do the marathon, right? So I think there's a way to get at what you want to know without asking lifestyle. And to me, it was always, when I look around, if I don't see people whose lives I want, I don't want to be at that place. And Megan,, it was always, when I look around, if I don't see people whose lives I want, I don't want to be at that place. And Megan, because we're such good friends, I happen to know that part of your experience at Wiley was very specific. Wiley, Dick Wiley,

who is the named head of the firm, actually called you up to his office at one point? Oh, I think I know which little anecdote you're talking about. I was a junior associate at the firm. I think I'd only been at the firm for two years off my clerkship. And I had the wonderful good fortune to be pregnant. And it was a little concern that maybe that was early. So I went down and Dick had been sort of a mentor and had recruited me and I felt very loyal to him. And so I went to his office to sort of a mentor and, and, you know, had recruited me and I felt very loyal to him. And so I went to his office to sort of say, Hey Dick, got some news, gonna have a baby. And, um, I was nervous about it. And he gets up from his desk and walks around and, you know, gives me a hug and says how thrilled he was that I wasn't, um, feeling pressed to wait to make partner,

uh, because, um, it's, it's a poverty to have to have your job dictate those kinds of big family decisions. And, you know, I felt extremely supported by both Dick, but everyone that I worked with, there were many of us, some of the women, you know, who were simultaneously pregnant and we were toddling around the office together, sort of laughing that we were all, all within six weeks of each other looking like giant houses, uh, walk in the halls. Um, but I felt very supported by Dick, by Bert Rine, by my practice group leaders, um, that, you know, I could go do those things. I never went part-time. I always worked full-time. Um, and because I worked very hard and built up credibility, I was fully supported

in that. And that is one of the anecdotes I will tell recruits when I get asked, why are you still at the firm? It's because I have felt supported to do pro bono work. I have felt supported to get home to see my kids. It has sacrifices, but yeah, thanks for the opportunity to share that. I'm getting a little choked up. You know, when I wrote about double clerkships, for instance, and the new trend of double and triple clerkships, and how I thought that was uniquely hurting women, in part because of, you know, at some point you've got to get into that pipeline. So if all of a sudden your one year clerkship turns into a two, three, four-year clerkship,

because maybe you have one year where they don't fill you, but then you're booked the next year for a clerkship. And so now you're doing some sort of gap thing. Maybe it's at the Department of Justice, which is great, but you're now four years out of law school before you're starting at the law firm. And then you want to build up, as you said, some credibility at the law firm before you can start having kids. And all of a sudden, that whole pipeline gets just really moved forward. I'm curious how you see law firms as a whole, I don't know, dealing with the gender reality of the difference between male and female associates and what that means.

Oh, golly. We need a whole podcast to talk about this. And you and I, you care about this a lot, which is why I'm asking you. Because you, I mean, you and I, this is our conversation that we have over wine. Like no matter what we're supposed to be meeting up about, like, oh, let's meet up because we want to go for a walk.

And it always, you know, we talk about this stuff. Yeah, because it's important. I think firms are going to struggle with this. I think, you know, the move to have really broad parental leave is a good one because I really felt when we, when we extended years ago, our paternity leave, um, you heard a lot, I think a lot of people were cynical and they said like, no, one's going to use it. Right. That's. And I really thought it was remarkable when I look around and I see the dudes at my firm taking their full leave and taking it meaningfully. Um, so I think the industry will continue to struggle because women tend to feel this acutely in, in a timing sense that men might not, but I see so many of my

colleagues, both at the firm and elsewhere that want to be really involved in their kids' lives. And so I think the, the industry is, is meeting it. Um, and I think we're doing a pretty darn good job, but I think people need to look for places where they can hit whatever balance they think they need to hit for whatever life goals they have. But I do think it's going to be a challenge for firms. I just think it is. The pressures, the opportunities that people have to go into government, to do other things. I mean, a lot of your listeners may find themselves thinking, you know what? A law firm is not for me. And that's okay we have lots of friends who have made lots of choices about their career path and what things

make them happy and satisfied professionally and for some people that's not a law firm for me and a lot of my my female lawyer friends it is and we've killed it and we're having a great time but you kind of got to figure out what setting will work for you. And I think the industry is just going to continue to work at it, but there's no real, you and I've talked about this. There's no like easy solution. You can't just mandate like, on either side. Yeah. No, you can't, you can't just mandate. You will have 50% female equity partners. Like, you know, that's, it'll get there. It's just going to take some time, I think. Okay.

Last topic, most important for some probably listening to this podcast. The new Netflix show Partner Track is about a senior partner who can see that gold ring. That brass ring is right there to make partner. And there's three spots. There's a lot of associates, senior associates left. She's an M&A or transactional associate. And there's sort of these archetypes that each character plays. There's like the associate who knows she's not going to make partner and who likes her life and is clearly ducking out of work as early as she can, trying to hide from partners

to not get work. I think we all have known that associate. They know they're not going to stay at the firm forever, but it's where they're going to land for now until they can find some in-house job maybe or just go do something else. There's the real jerk male associate partner who doesn't actually, he does work hard, actually, which is nice that they show that. But a lot of this is going to be that he played lacrosse at Harvard and can talk about the coach with clients or whatever and sort of be that bro-y dude with the swishy hair. And then you have this woman who is just trying to kill it, trying to

have a boyfriend, trying not to hook up with another associate. I'm curious, Megan, what you thought was most realistic in the show and what you thought was least realistic in the show. We all know you watched it. Okay, I confess to watching it. The clothes are fantastic. The clothes, it's very, I think you actually said in a text, it's very frothy, right? Or one of our friends said that, that it's very frothy. So it's visually lovely, right? The offices are very lovely. I'm going to go with a really nerdy option on the least realistic, which is, spoiler,

mild spoiler alert. There is a situation that happens with a document that has to be reviewed and compared to a previous document. And this law firm, this like captain of industry, big New York law firm, their document comparison software goes down. And then the two people that have a love interest have to be trapped in a conference room for like nine hours to physically manually compare like eyeball red lines. That was laughably, obscenely not right. Like I can't, firms have technical fails, but that, that, that struck me as just a little one bridge too far. So sorry, that's my least controversial thing that's wrong. Okay, can I tell you the thing that sticks in my craw that is least accurate? Because it didn't

need to be, and it makes no sense why they did this. And okay, this is going to sound so obnoxious, but at the Department of Justice, the Attorney General exclusively vies private while he is the Attorney General for security reasons because he is in the line of succession and because of the work, the specific work that the Department of Justice does. Because of that, for 18 months, I flew exclusively private as well. The private plane scene is absurd. The ceilings are 15 feet high. It's still a plane, y'all. All they do is make the seats bigger and put fewer of them in there. The plane itself doesn't get taller. So that was really annoying. They're in this like palatial foyer of a private plane. There you go. It really bothered me.

Yeah. Now people know about Sarah's habit of private flight, one to which I aspire one day myself. You know what the worst part is though, is that like, now I don't, I'll never be on a private plane again. So is it, I don't know. Is that, yeah. So it's sort of like, do you want to go do that to then never have it again? Probably worse. I'm worse off. No. So to get back to your question, I think as far as accurate, I think there were little kernels of accuracy about the lump in the stomach insecurity that people feel in trying to navigate situations where they feel like they're at a disadvantage. Like she walked into a conference, the character walked into a conference room at one point and you could just, I think they captured

well that feeling, that subjective feeling, whether it's objectively true or not, that she felt at a disadvantage and unfairly so. And like, she couldn't make up for it with grind. She couldn't make up for it with anything that she could bring to the table because of some of the characteristics you had identified earlier in that. That's just a thing, right? People know people, people have different things in common, and that can make people feel bad at work. And I think it's also a lesson that people have to be very thoughtful about staffing and how they do things and being thoughtful and inclusive with their peers to make sure people don't have that icky feeling. When the client walks up to the paralegal and introduces himself and then turns to her and says that he'll take a coffee,

it actually, that makes it sound more intentionally sexist than they did it in the show. I thought they actually did a very nice job. The client was mortified once he figured out what he had done. It wasn't intentional. It was this subtle assumption. You know, they're about the same age, frankly. And like to a 70-year-old man, the difference between being 20 and 25 is going to be pretty minimal, frankly. And I thought some of that, ooh, is it sexist or is it inadvertent or is it, you know, like that sort of part? I thought they did a really nice job compared to shows that hit you over the head. This character is sexist.

This character is being treated in a sexist manner. Instead, the show does a little bit of a better job of her clearly subjectively feeling some of that, that she's being treated differently because of her gender. But it's actually unclear how much it hurts versus helps versus it's in her head. And people screw up and old people say dumb things sometimes. Yes. Yes. I would just also say to the listener, do not watch partner track as anything other than a frivolous light thing to take your mind off of anything. It is not a source of career advice. No, it's like Grey's Anatomy for medicine. That's not how to become a doctor. It's not a substitute for med school. But if you are a lawyer, it can be sort of funny to watch because

you're like, oh, that part actually they got and that part they didn't. It's sort of like law and order for DAs. Megan Brown, thank you. You are one of the most impressive women that I know, and I'm so lucky to call you a friend and, uh, you know, we'll, we'll take that walk again soon. Happy to. Thanks for having me on. Good luck, everybody. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos. She'll love looking back on your childhood memories and seeing what you're up to today. Even better, with unlimited storage and an easy-to-use app,

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