Legal Grounds | Conversations on Life, Leadership & Law

As we approach the New Year, it's almost inevitable that we’ll find ourselves taking stock of all that came and went in the year prior.  For most of us, this happens because we are trying to pinpoint those things we hope to improve on over the next 12 months.  But as my guest and I discuss in today's episode, when it comes to leadership, these sorts of ‘self-audits’ tend to focus inward,...

When someone asks what I ‘do’ for a living, there are times I want to respond with, “I tell stories.” After all, most attorneys spend their time trying to get the “full picture” of what’s happening in a given case, and the best narratives give us just that.  Now, unfortunately, somewhere along the way the expression, “telling stories”, became short-hand for “making stuff up”, and since there’s alr...

For as much as we all joke about the, "kids these days" mentality that every generation seems to have in one form or another, for most of human history this sentiment was often more anecdotalI than anything else.  Typically we see youth as a combination of  'risky behavior' mixed with 'poor decision-making' - a dangerous cocktail to be certain - but trying something n...

One of the best parts of being an early-bird is that I almost never hit traffic on my way into the office – though living two miles away certainly helps, too.  But one thing I do miss about my longer drives to work some days is the time I was able to spend listening to the radio. Usually a mix of news and music, but sometimes it’s just whichever station isn’t playing commercials.  But there’s one...

We all know the question: 'If a tree falls in the forest & no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" This kind of thought-experiment came to mind after my conversation this week which left me asking, "If two people are arguing without a goal of some sort of resolution, at what point does it just become a fight?" Joining me this week to unpack that question is Atto...

Back when smart-phones were just beginning to saturate the market, I distinctly remember thinking that one of the best features they had to offer was 'Notifications'.  Now, of course we'd had text-message notifications for year, but now notifications could come from an almost infinite number of sources.  Emails could be read without even unlocking your phone.  Health apps could gent...

As an attorney that has spent most of their career defending trucking companies, there have only been a handful of times that it seemed a potential piece of legislation might radically change the way I practice law.  Most of these were in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when there was a concerted effort to institute massive Tort Reforms - particularly in the area of medical malpractice - that wou...

My guest this week is Rob Miller , a trial attorney with more than three decades of experience, the founder of Miller Copeland , and most importantly, a dear friend.  Over the course of his career he’s handled litigation in a variety of areas including, personal injury, construction, transportation, oil and gas, products liability, and civil rights cases. And because it’s fun to brag on your frien...

We all know that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I think it’s worth asking why ‘Rome’, of all the great cities of antiquity, was chosen as the subject of idiom. Now, setting aside historical-bias, my best guess for this being the case is that the level of infrastructure at the time of the phrase’s coining (1190) was well beyond anything available or imaginable.  Afterall, the “Dark Ages” earned th...

According to the National Association of Legal Professions, when I graduated from Law School in 1988 only 2.7% of graduating attorneys made the choice to go solo. Looking at those same numbers, it’s easy to track the strength of the economy with the number of new attorneys going solo increasing during economic downturns. But now that so much of the work we do can be done virtually, what used to be...

With some very rare exceptions, all of us have to have a ‘first job’.  This also means we all remember the nervousness that comes with that first day. First month. Even the first year.  While it hopefully wanes over time, those feelings of general uncertainty combined with a vague sense of having to prove one’s self can easily lead to imposter-syndrome and burnout.  But you throw a bad leader into...

As my producer wrote in the margins of this week’s material, the phrase ‘Collaborative Divorce’ can seem, on its face, like an oxymoron.  After all, whether it’s a marriage, partnership, or friendship, the act of separating one’s self from another person usually stems from an inability to collaborate in the first place.  But over the last four decades, Dr. Honey Sheff has designed many of the syst...

We talk plenty on this program about how frustrating it can be to try and function under poor leadership. Even if the team is strong, if they don’t know (or worse, understand) their direction, then it will always be an uphill battle.  But my guest this week faced a situation I don’t know if we’ve ever covered on the show: What do you do when the Leader you THOUGHT you wanted to be collides with wh...

There are few areas of the practice that I think are quite as “client-facing” as Family Law. This is not to say that clients take a back-seat when it comes to other kinds of legal matters, but it should come as no surprise to anyone - regardless of legal acumen - that when you’re dealing with people's money AND family, communication can make or break a case.  My guest this week knows this bet...

It always feels like an easy out to say a podcast conversation is “wide-ranging”, but when the guest has written best selling books for attorneys on everything from Introversion to Fear, it seems like the only descriptor broad enough to fit.  Heidi K Brown is the Associate Dean of Upper Level Writing at the New York School of Law .  Inspired by her own experiences untangling a fear of public speak...

Growing up, I knew I wanted to be an attorney since I was a sophomore in high school; my guest this week had me beat by 8 years.  All of my peers thought I was crazy to have a kid right as I was about to finish law school; my guest this week earned her JD at night while working a full-time job.  I could do more of these comparisons, but the point is that hurdles take on a lot of different forms, s...

My guest this week is Suraj Vyas , an attorney specializing in patent law with a focus on construction and contracts.  Having spent the past 6 years on the Super Lawyer’s Rising Star list, Suraj began his legal career as in-house counsel for Rising Sun Engineering before founding his own firm in 2018.  Suraj developed an interest in construction work at a young age, pursuing an undergraduate degre...

The first time I ever made a billing entry on a personal computer, I remember thinking to myself, “this is so efficient, I’m never going to miss an entry!” 10 years later I got my first laptop, and as I entered some time while FLYING ON A PLANE, I also remember thinking, “this is so convenient, I’m never going to miss an entry!” 10 years later I got an iPhone and made a similar claim.  And while a...

The observation that, “justice is merely incidental to law and order” has been on my mind more often than not these past few months.  Though possibly apocryphal, the quote is attributed to J. Edgar Hoover and – irony aside – is a solid piece of logic.  As you may have guessed from the subject-line, today’s episode is not going to be a jovial one. I also think it happens to be one of the most impor...

In its literal sense, the term ‘Servant Leadership’ is a bit of an oxymoron.  If you’re the one in charge, shouldn’t you be overseeing whatever ‘service’ is being done by your team?  But in the same way that Leadership is confused with the idea of Management, the word Servant in the term ‘Servant Leadership’ often gets mistaken for the idea of Subordinance.    But as my guest today discusses, Serv...

As I get ready for trial this week, I don’t think I could have asked for a better conversation to help remind me that creativity and consistency go hand-in-hand.  As lawyers, it can be easy to rely on a strategy that’s worked in the past, and in some ways it’s necessary. But if there’s anything standing in front of a jury will teach you, it’s that having to adjust your message while maintaining th...

When you make your living settling other people’s disagreements, it can be easy to fall back on the skills and tools gained in that Professional environment when trying to resolve an argument that is Personal in nature.  And like an almost comical right-of-passage, it’s a mistake that EVERY lawyer makes at some point, typically early on in their career.  The type of detached logic we use to naviga...

It's no secret in the legal community that a seasoned paralegal can outmatch most first-year lawyers. And probably second-year. And sometimes even... well, you get the point.  Climbing the career ladder is far from uncommon in the Legal Profession, and when I think back on it, nearly every paralegal we've hired has had some prior job that was at least somewhat legally-adjacent.  But what...

Stephen Jones is one of the most well-known trial attorneys currently practicing.  With six decades of experience working some of the country's most high-profile Civil Rights cases, he would become a household name after accepting the position of representing Timothy McVeigh in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  In this week’s episode, Stephen was kind enough to join me for what I think...