100th Episode Special: Recruiting Roundtable with Kendall Waters, Tori Roessler, & Dan Sharpe

In celebration of the 100th episode of The Path & The Practice, Alexis Robertson welcomes Kendall Waters, Tori Roessler, and Dan Sharpe for a super-sized episode dedicated to exploring the path to legal practice. This is a candid discussion with members of Foley’s recruiting committee—Tori and Kendall—detailing how students can best prepare to interview with Foley, and other large law firms, as well as what they should consider when selecting which firm to join. Specifically, this conversation covers the differences in law firm business models, picking a practice group, early assignments, and professional development. The discussion concludes with Kendall, Tori, and Dan giving advice on how to successfully interview with a law firm.

Tori Roessler is a senior counsel in Foley’s Los Angeles office with a focus on transactional matters. She attended Vanderbilt University School of Law and Auburn University. Kendall Waters is a senior counsel in Foley’s D.C. office. She attended the George Washington University Law School and UCLA for undergrad. Dan Sharpe is Foley’s DEI Manager, located in the firm’s D.C. office. Prior to becoming a diversity professional, Dan spent a decade as a practicing attorney focused on intellectual property. Dan attended the University of Virginia School of Law and Princeton University.

Click here for full list of The Path & The Practice episodes.

You can also find, and subscribe, to this podcast on all major podcast platforms including iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and Google Play.

Transcript

Alexis Robertson

Welcome to the The Path & The Practice, a podcast dedicated to sharing the professional origin stories of the attorneys at Foley & Lardner LLP, a full service law firm with over 1000 lawyers across the US and abroad. I’m your host, Alexis Robertson, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Foley. In each episode of this podcast, you’ll hear me in conversation with a different Foley attorney. You’ll learn about each guest’s unique background, path to law school and path to Foley & Lardner. Essentially, you’ll hear the stories you won’t find on their professional bios, and of course you’ll learn a bit about their practice. Now let’s get to the episode.

Welcome to the 100th episode of The The Path & The Practice. I cannot believe I have recorded 100 episodes of this show. So before I tell you about this episode, I’m going to take a few minutes to express gratitude and reflect on my journey. So first things first, thank you so much to everyone who has listened over the last 100 episodes and also to Foley & Lardner and the many guests who have trusted me in telling their stories. I have now been at Foley for over three and a half years, but I started this show less than six months into my time at Foley during a global pandemic. It was something that nobody had done before. I’d never hosted a podcast before, and as far as I knew, no large law firm had created a show like this really featuring the personal stories and the journeys of their lawyers in terms of getting to law school, picking their practice, and getting to their firms.

As far as I know, this is still the only podcast that does that. It has been a wonderful passion project of mine, and while I’ve gotten so much great feedback from people over the years as to the insights it’s given them and how it’s helped them, it’s also really helped me get to know, fully share all the wonderful things about it, and it’s been an absolute privilege to be able to host it and share it with so many. So in terms of acknowledging that, and for the 100th episode, we decided to do something a little bit different, and it was great timing because this is going to publish in late June, early July of 2023, and it happens to correspond with two members of our recruiting committee who I’ll tell you about shortly coming to me and saying, “Could we get on the podcast and just talk about the many things that we would like law students to know as they’re gearing up to interview with law firms?”

I said, “Yes, absolutely. Let’s do that.” So what you have today are actually three guests. You have me joined by Tori Roessler, who is a transactional senior counsel out of the DC office, Kendall Waters, who is a litigation senior counsel out of Los Angeles, and then also Dan Sharp, who is DEI manager at Foley out of the DC office, and almost a year out of the 10 years of practice he spent as a dedicated IP attorney.

And what we do is split this conversation up into, let’s say five or six parts where we cover the various things that we think would be tremendously helpful for law students to know as they are preparing for interviews. And also once they get to the point of trying to decide which firm to become a summer associate at and subsequently join after law school. We talk about law firm business model and how that’s often an overlooked thing that law students don’t necessarily appreciate can differ between firms, some of the nuances behind that and how you can ask some questions to start to tease it out and how that may actually impact what firm is the best fit for you.

We talk about picking practice groups, how associates initially get work and how that also can vary at firms. We dig into both formal and informal mentorship as well as the importance of formal professional development at large law firms. And then we spend the last 20 minutes or so talking about interview tips, but you’ll also note we sprinkle that interview advice throughout. So we’ll cover a section and we’ll say, “Here’s a way that you can unpack that.” Also, this is a really candid discussion. We mostly agree on things, but sometimes we don’t. There’s also a lot of laughter here because it allows each of us to reflect on our experiences. And then also what you get are Tori and Kendall really putting on their hats as members of the recruiting committee to give wonderful advice and insights specifically about Foley. While we also comment on large law firms in general.

So even if Foley & Lardner is not a firm that you are going to interview with or end up interviewing with, this is jam-packed with advice that will help you interview with any large law firm. Couple of things to note. One, there is some sort of quirk with Dan Sharp’s audio. There’s a little bit of clicking when he speaks. It doesn’t stop you from being able to hear him, and I wouldn’t mention it other than I just don’t want you to think it’s me, Tori, or Kendall typing while he’s speaking. That’s not what it is. Also, this episode runs long. I am celebrating the anniversary of the The Path & The Practice by doing an episode that is closer to 90 minutes. My average episode is 45 minutes to an hour, but for this, we really wanted the time to dig in and so we did it.

But with that, all I’ll say is law students, I hope this helps you on your path to eventually identify in your practice, and I hope everyone who listens will join me on what I can only keep my fingers crossed will be at least another 100 episodes of the show. Welcome everybody to the podcast. This one’s a little bit different for me. So a couple things going on. One, it’s our 100th episode, and I’m thinking of this as we’re celebrating the 100 episodes of the show by this is focused heavily on the path, and I have three people who are joining me today. And instead of going through and saying your names, then making you all speak, I’m just going to go down roll call style and have you introduce yourself. So Kendall, can you start?

Kendall Waters

No pressure as the first one to kick us off. Hi y’all. My name is Kendall Waters. I am a senior counsel with our litigation group in our Los Angeles office where my practice focuses on class action and commercial litigation. Before I began in our LA office, I actually started out as a summer in Washington DC. I had gone to UCLA for undergrad and I was looking for something different, my East Coast adventure where I then became a law student at GW Law.

And after a year of law school, I wasn’t really ready to give up on DC just yet. And I had the opportunity to join our DC office where I met some great people, including spoiler alert, one of the other participants on today’s podcast, Tori Roessler. And after having a great summer, I did come back to Foley. I spent my first three years in our DC office working on class action matters and again, business litigation and then had the opportunity to lateral to our LA office, which has been an incredible opportunity. I now sit on our national recruiting committee on behalf of LA and I’m also one of the associate committee representatives for the LA office. So thank you for having me. And I’m really excited to talk with you all about our experiences during the recruiting process and what we’ve seen and hopefully help you on your journey.

Alexis Robertson

Thanks so much, Kendall. It’s taking to everything for me to not ask you where you’re from, where you grew up, but we’re not going to do that. Instead I’m going to turn to Tori and ask that you introduce yourself.

Tori Roessler

Perfect, thanks. Hey everyone, my name is Tori Roessler. I’ve been at Foley for seven years now, which is pretty wild. I’m a senior counsel in our Washington DC office like Kendall Previewed and I technically sit on our tax team, but my practice focuses 100% on renewable energy matters, so solar, wind, battery storage, all things of that sort. Like Kendall said, we both summered together in the DC office in 2016. I came here straight from law school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, and I went straight there from my undergrad in Auburn, Alabama. So slowly just creeping more and more north and plan to stay here.

Kendall Waters

What if we summered in 2015 though?

Alexis Robertson

See it all sort of flows together. It all flows together. Dan, how about you introduce yourself?

Dan Sharpe

I’m Dan Sharpe. I’m the firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion manager. I joined in August of last year, but before that I practiced. I was a patent litigator, a patent attorney for about 10 years at a couple different firms I summered in 2011. So it’s been a little bit of time, but I’m happy to be here and I think this is going to be a great conversation.

Alexis Robertson

Where’d you go to law school, Dan?

Dan Sharpe

I went to UVA for law school.

Alexis Robertson

And you’re probably wearing your Princeton alumni for undergrad shirt. I just feel like the listeners should to set the scene.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah, it’s a little chilly today.

Kendall Waters

Flag in the back.

Alexis Robertson

All right. So I’ll say a couple things because this is obviously a different sort of show. I know that the listeners have already heard an intro from me explaining exactly what’s going on, but there’s a couple things. So this is going to be, I think a really fun round table. Tori and Kendall I know you approached members of our recruiting team saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did an episode of the podcast covering all the things we wish people knew about this firm?” And then you got on a call with me and Dan and we had a really great discussion and I was like, “Yeah,” and I want to talk about that. And so does Dan.

Let’s all just chat for about an hour about the things that we want people to know about Foley. I will say for my part, I was a summer associate back in 2007, at least that was my 2L summer. My 1L summer was at Foley in Chicago. So what you have is one person who hasn’t practiced law in about eight years. You have Dan who’s about closing it on a year. And then of course we have Kendall and Tory who are current practicing lawyers at Foley. And what I want to do is just jump in and I actually think before we talk substance, can you both reflect on meeting each other as summer associates and what we’ve now had corrected to be in the summer of 2015?

Tori Roessler

Yeah, Kendall, you can take that one.

Kendall Waters

So it was the year of 2015 and as all good beginning summer associates do, you dress for the role on your first day. And so we look completely out of place in all black suits at 8:00 AM Georgetown waterfront.

Tori Roessler

It’s the only time I’ve worn a full suit. First day.

Kendall Waters

That makes one of us.

Tori Roessler

I know, I know.

Kendall Waters

But you can kind of spot from across the way. You’re like, “Ah, this person also has shaky hands, sweaty palms, looks like they’re excited for a big first day.” And so I think I had probably gone over and you were sitting on the counter and then kind of poked and said, “Hey, I’m starting to go upstairs at Foley & Lardner in our DC office today is a summer associate. Any chance you are too?” And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. There are actually four of us from our summer class who are all still senior counsel at the firm, and that’s been a really special experience that we’ve gotten to go through this journey together. And I really cherish my friendship with all of them. And Tori, not least among them.

Alexis Robertson

I think you reflected on a couple key things about being a summer that it can be a nervous time. And I also, I think interviewing with firms is a time where you’re like, “What do I need to know? What do they want to know about me?” And let’s hope, I don’t know if this will be the case, but let’s hope maybe this show will cause our summers, we already have folks with us right now, but starting, I think it’d be next summer to be slightly less nervous because we’re about to answer so many things. That a lot of this will come out if you do an on-campus interview with us or if you do a call back with us. But what I suspect is we’re going to have time to jump into a little bit more.

So we have a number of areas that we would like to cover, and I’m going to take them a little bit out of order. And Tori, I’m going to tee it up for you first, but I actually first want to talk about what I’m going to call the law firm business model, the industry of law before we jump in specifically to how things work at Foley. But one, why is this even important? Why was this even on the outline? I think this is something law students don’t think about at all because we all have law firm names, so we’re all pretty much the same and pretty much interchangeable.

Tori Roessler

Everyone looks the same on paper.

Alexis Robertson

Exactly. Tee this up, why is this even something to talk about and then we can dive into it a bit.

Tori Roessler

Yeah, I think it’s really important to sort of understand this as an interviewing law student. And I’ll be the first to say, I did not understand this when I was interviewing, so it would really give you a leg up because I certainly did not have this knowledge. But I think it just really sort of puts in perspective what the job is you are interviewing for. You are interviewing for a job where you can showcase your skills and help the firm achieve this business model. So basically the way that I look at it is sort of if you put every single question and every single thought you might get during an interview and you frame it as to how can I help the firm? I think your answers are going to come across so clear and so level-headed and everyone that you’re interviewing with is going to understand that how a law firm operates. That you’re working for the firm and the firm will help you in return.

Alexis Robertson

Can I ask the high level question? And this is for really anyone to jump in. I think it maybe Kendall though. How does a law firm operate? Can we do the two minute version of what exactly are we doing and maybe what are some of the gaps and differences between us that law students won’t appreciate?

Kendall Waters

Sure. I’m happy to take the lead and anyone is welcome to support. Law firms are professional services firms and we serve our clients. So we are in the industry and business of providing high quality legal services to our clients in order to meet that moment, to serve that need. Things that are really important for us are developing strong skill sets, building expertise, providing high quality work product, knowing our clients, working with them very closely, being able to anticipate their needs and also meet the ones that they’ve already communicated to us and really work as a team trying to keep things more integrated as opposed to siloed. So when you think about the clients that we serve, oftentimes this is a company or a corporation and there are a lot of needs that they have. How can we kind of work together as a firm to meet that moment and be there for them during the times when they need us most.

Alexis Robertson

What’s funny to me is we use the term professional services. We don’t use the term customer service in this industry. And I think this is where people who’ve worked in customer service facing roles will think their prior experience just doesn’t translate or count. That’s what it is. We’re customer service based. We have different fancier words for it. And we’re also a business. Dan, you and I talk about this a lot and frankly I think, I don’t want to call it a failure, but I do think sometimes there’s a fundamental misunderstanding from those really early in their career or in law school that we are a business. And yes, we do a lot of great things for the community and we do pro bono. But you are interviewing for a job that is supposed to eventually at least be revenue generating. Dan, I imagine you have some comments on that.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah, no, there’s a number of different ways that the firm makes money. The one that you probably come into the firm understanding is the billable hour. So you’ll keep track of your time that you work on a matter, and the client will get a bill that says, “Dan worked on X matter, he did these things for two hours today and you’re going to pay two times his hourly rate.” But increasingly that’s not how law firms are getting paid. And it’s relevant in a lot of cases how the fee structures are set up because you’ll have flat fee situations where the client has paid you a lump sum to do a certain job, and then you’ll have different sort of incentives inside of that. You’ll have situations where you have contingency cases where you will get paid either nothing or a little bit with a bigger payment to come if you’re successful or once the deal closes or once you get a good verdict, that kind of thing.

So how your firm and your clients and your practice structures that will dictate a lot of what you have to do as an attorney because there’s this idea of efficiency and the idea of efficiency is how much time are you spending versus how much money are we making off of the time you’re spending? And if the client is willing to pay $5,000 for a draft of a filing and I spend two weeks on it, that’s not very efficient because the firm has paid a lot of money over those two weeks to me and the client is only paying $5,000.

So understanding sort of what the partners are trying to get out of this, how they get value. Similar thing under billing your time can also be not as impressive as you think it might be. You might think that, “Oh, it’s great, they told me this is going to take 20 hours and I did it in five.” That may not be better. It may not be better to under report your time either. So understanding when you are starting at a firm, how they work, what their clients are like. Is it a bunch of large institutional clients? Is it a series of smaller clients that are paying hourly fees? This varies by firm and despite the appearance that they’re all the same, there’s big, big differences between different firms in that.

Alexis Robertson

Yes. And so then we start getting into the so where, for those listening, they’re like, “Okay, some of this, I don’t even know what you’re talking about and I don’t know why you’re talking about it.” But I really did want to start here because I think as a law student, people will say to you, “These firms are different.” And you’re like, “Aha no, they all pay a lot of money and they all have the same website.” And for those law students who are even more wonky, maybe you’ve looked at things like law firm profits for partner, maybe you’ve looked at headcount, but even still, it can be hard to start getting a sense. But I will say is if we move to then how does this apply to Foley? So yes, we are in the business of providing services to our clients, but there’s this term leverage.

We are not as highly leveraged as certain other firms. Leverage really speaks to the partner to associate ratio at Foley or roughly one-to-one, meaning roughly for every one person who has the title of equity partner, there’s one other person who is not a partner, right? Either associate or senior counsel. And that really impacts the experience that our attorneys have. Tori, you caught my eye nodding. So how does the fact that we have less leverage, right? There’s not six associates for everyone, partner, what does that translate to in terms of the associate experience at Foley?

Tori Roessler

I think it just translates into real work experience here that you won’t get at other firms at a more junior level as a first and second year associate right off the bat. I know in my experience, I have always just worked with just one partner. So I’ve been the sort of sole associate on every single transaction I’m on, all the work that I do. So I’m a great example for that one on one ratio. And I remember as a first and second year associate, I was really, really involved in everything that I did. Got a really bird’s eye view of things, big picture. And I would talk to my friends at other firms and they just weren’t doing that. They were allowed to shadow sometimes or they were just doing endless days of doc review where they didn’t know where the case was going or what their real purpose was. I think the one-to-one ratio really allows you to understand your contribution to the firm and to your practice group. And I think it just gives you an amazing experience as a junior associate that you can’t get anywhere else.

Alexis Robertson

And Kendall looks like you have things to say about it.

Kendall Waters

Do I lead with my embarrassing anecdote or do I lead with a good experience at Foley?

Alexis Robertson

Yeah that’s what people are here for.

Kendall Waters

Okay. Let’s lead with-

Tori Roessler

Embarrassing anecdote.

Alexis Robertson

We want both though.

Kendall Waters

We’re going to do both, but we’re going to lead with an embarrassing anecdote, which is on this note of the difference in firm business models and what that might mean for a summer associate. I would love to just kind of play that out with one of my own faux pas callback moments.

I am in a callback at a very large top 10 law firm in New York, and I’m talking with a bankruptcy associate who’s a senior associate. He’s been with the firm five or six years, and he’s asking me kind of where I see myself in five, 10 plus years, and I give my little elevator pitch about how both of my parents were in the service industry, professional services or hospitality, and how that I would love to be able to marry legal substantive expertise with that business development lens. And practicing at a big law firm seems like a great way to do that. And the associate laughs and looks at me just in earnest. He’s so genuine about it, but he’s like, “If that’s what you’re looking for, you should turn around and leave because you will never find that here.” And while that moment was a bit painful, there’s a happy ending here, I promise.

I appreciated his candor. And the reality was in understanding after the fact, that’s not the way that law firm model worked at all because they hired behemoth classes and the name of the game was attrition. You necessarily needed to people to drop out and they would set you up at other places where you could be in house or do something else and be great and happy. And I’m sure that those associates went on to have wonderful and fulfilling lives.

But the name of the model was not that someone who went to GW Law and was really trying to get a job at this top 10 law firm was who they had their eyes on the prize for as their next partner class. The other part of that is that that firm has maybe 10 large institutional clients that make up about 80% of the work that they do, and they don’t need business developers bringing in what may otherwise be small potatoes compared to the clients that they’re traditionally in the business of serving and flash forward happy endings that I told that same thing to David Sanders when I interviewed with him, and I think that it seemed like a better fit with what Foley was looking for.

And when I think of all of the homegrown partners that I’ve seen at Foley, who’ve started at summer associates who’ve made their way through the associate ranks, become senior counsel and made their way to partner, there’s such an entrepreneurial spirit there of really believing in our people and their ability to be that trusted advisor for clients, to bring in business to contribute to the enterprise. I always hear the phrase in the partners that I work with “growing the enterprise, we want to grow the enterprise.” And I love that. So I think it worked out that I found a place that had that mantra and we shared similar goals, but that was an embarrassing moment at the time and probably wasn’t my proudest. But I’m hopeful that for those listening, that can be in informative for your approach.

Alexis Robertson

But like you said, you now in retrospect appreciate the candor because it was accurate. And I know you mentioned at this particular firm, they were about 80% institutional clients. So I think in contrast, almost the opposite of that, right where I think we’re maybe 15 ish, maybe 20% very large clients who don’t get me wrong, can feel free to give us more money every year as long as they want to. They can feel free to grow that. But we do have a lot more opportunity to generate business on your own. We have a really diversified client base, and something that our leadership will talk about is that it means if one client leaves like we’re still here, one client’s not going to take 40% of the business of the firm. So once again, another distinction, and I think it’s so hard, I have so much empathy for law students because it’s so much to understand and I have to be honest, I was not thinking about any of this.

Tori Roessler

I wasn’t either.

Dan Sharpe

It’s something that they don’t teach you in law school, how the law firm works as a business and they kind of take it for granted. Some of that’s because your professors don’t practice at big law firms, but some places you do have professors that practice the leverage point. Just to kind of add a little detail there, is that the more you’re leveraged, the more you’re relying on sort of five junior associates with three mid-level associates, with two senior associates with one partner to staff a matter.  And what that means naturally is that as the class of junior associates matures and gets up in years and up in experience, there aren’t the same number of spots at the next level as there were at the first level. That’s what was referenced with the attrition planning. It almost requires you to be one of the best in your class to get to that next level, otherwise, the work is going to stop flowing because what they really need is they really need the partner to be pushing work down the levels to the cheaper billable rate people to have a more efficient process.

That works really well in a lot of cases as far as some industries have that set up, but because law has these sort of class year steps, it’s not like you’re a first year waiting for a promotion to second year. You just become a second year and a first year class comes in below you. So, there’s no way to say, “I’m really great at this level. I can do this work and I’m just going to keep doing it.” You have to keep moving up in those models.

Tori Roessler

Yeah. I mean, Kendall and I are both on the recruiting committee in our respective offices, and that is not how Foley hires at all. We have so many meetings and discussions during OCIs and not once have we’ve been like, “Oh, well we need five associates in our office now, so maybe in three years, there are three left. Then maybe in five years, there are one left.” We look at it and we’re like, “Okay, we have room for five associates and we have room to see these five associates grow with us.” And that is how we hire. We don’t sort of play the numbers game that we were referencing earlier than other firms.

Alexis Robertson

And grow with us specifically means we can envision these people by making partner. I want to really, really clear that. Now, we have our tagline, “Well, some firms plan for attrition. Foley plans for careers.” But the idea is there is room in the partnership should that be something you want to pursue.

Dan Sharpe

Sure. I think that it’s important to note though that this is a business. This is not some kind of magical place where everyone’s a partner.

Alexis Robertson

Right. Automatic partnership.

Dan Sharpe

The difference is really in how the sorting happens. In a firm that’s heavily leveraged, it happens sort of like cattle. You’re herded into a shoot and there’s just less work as you get more senior. That happens at Foley too. There isn’t enough work for every single person who’s ever joined to stay and whatever, but the way that you’re going to succeed has nothing to do with just your class year was too big and you got pushed out. It will have more to do with how busy your group is and what kind of contributions you’re making to your team. So, what it does is it gives you a little bit more control over your career where you’re not necessarily competing with your classmates. You’re just trying to add value. And that’s kind of the difference between some of the heavily leveraged firms than the less leveraged firms is that the way in which you succeed is not necessarily with direct competition with your peers.

Alexis Robertson

Yep. This actually makes me want to segue or move our discussion forward a little bit into that associate develop. How do you get work? How do you do the things that Dan was saying? I can’t say this enough, I feel I’m compassionate to the law student or the junior attorney listening because this is all stuff that’s incredibly hard to suss out in just an interview, that you’re going to hear some things and maybe take some notes. You’re like, “Oh, I should ask about that.” And you absolutely should, but there are some things that are just going to be hard to get in 20 to 30 minutes with each person. But that being said, let’s talk a bit about slotting of our attorneys, how associates get work. I’m just going to keep listing things until somebody wants to jump in and say words about it, but let’s move to that.

Kendall Waters

Can I just do one follow-up?

Alexis Robertson

Of course.

Kendall Waters

Just in terms of how one might approach asking about that in an interview. I think that it would be well received to ask an attorney. Can you tell me a bit about your firm’s business model and operations and how a junior associate can contribute to that? I think it shows a thoughtfulness that you’re trying to plug in and contribute value for the firm. And I think especially at a partnership level, they may be receptive to someone who’s kind of that forward-thinking. So, food for thought as you approach intern season.

Dan Sharpe

Another phrase that usually gets to that point is the asking someone about how their matters are staffed. Some firms will have matters staffed with eight associates and one partner or two partners. Some firms will say, “Oh…” This is practice group by practice group, firm by firm, but you can ask the people that you’re interviewing with who they work with directly. Some firms follow strict hierarchies where partners pass on work to senior associates who then find junior associates to do the work, and then the senior associate puts it all together and then gives it to the partner. But some firms, you’re working directly with the partner. Some practices, you’ll be working directly with the partner. So, those are both really good ways to get at that detail because sometimes the associates you’re interviewing with have been chosen to interview with you because they’re nice, not because they’re deeply involved with the firm’s structure.

Alexis Robertson

Well, also, people love talking about themselves, so you’re at this two birds with one stone, right? It’s tell me what you’re working on. How is it staffed? People love talking about themselves. And then, as you meet with different firms, you’ll start hearing differences. And then, also you can of course ask the larger, the more macro question about business model, but sometimes getting in the weeds is what helps you learn some of the things that we were just saying. So, I’d raised the issue of how we develop associates, how we slot associates. What does it even mean to slot an associate? What do people need to know if they’re considering Foley or assessing other firms in terms of how they’re developed, how they’re given work?

Dan Sharpe

Yeah. One of the things just as a high level, and then I’ll let two actual practicing attorneys chime in on this, but one of the things that’s interesting is that a lot of places that are bigger and more heavily leveraged will sell the summer associates on this idea that you can try anything, you can do anything you want to do. Well, you’re going to come in. You start as a general associate. You might just be a litigator. You might just be whatever and we just let you find your way. That’s true, but what they mean by that is that they don’t have a set of work set aside for you. It’s get what you can get. It’s find what you can find and hope that you find a place as you get up in your class years, but some firms have the specifics of you’re a summer associate and we have a couple spots in this group or that group. You’re going to come in and you’re going to be immediately in this practice group.

That can sound worse. Sometimes it sounds cooler and better to say like, “I get the freedom to try a bunch of things and choose what I like.” You will almost never get to choose what you like. You will almost always have to do something that the firm has a need for, and the idea that you can choose what you like is usually just code for them saying, “We hired a bunch of people and we don’t know which ones we want to keep where yet.”

Tori Roessler

Yeah. No, that’s a great point. No. I mean, I know that we mentioned that you almost never get to choose what area of law you’re working in, so for my personal experience, I actually did which is very weird for a law firm. When I started at Foley, I came in as sort of a general corporate associate and was doing that, was really liking it. And then, about six months or a year after I started, I had one of the partners in my current group come up to me and say, “Hey, we really need a junior tax associate to start working on our renewable energy matters, our solar deals, our wind deals. We’re growing. This group is growing really fast. Is that something you would be interested in?”

I majored in accounting in undergrad. That was the extent of my tax experience. I did not take a tax class in law school and I was like, “I don’t want to be a tax attorney. I don’t think that’s sounds fun.” But he was like, “Just give it six months. Try it. If you hate it, we will have a meeting and you do not have to do this.” And just being given that option made me so much more open to trying it. I didn’t feel pigeonholed into doing this. I didn’t feel pushed to doing it, and I tried it for six months. I loved it obviously and I’m still doing it now, and I don’t know if I would have given it the same chance that I gave it if it wasn’t presented to me as an option, if I was more shoved in that direction. I think that’s really, really unique for Foley. I haven’t heard that happening to anyone else at any other firm that I know.

Kendall Waters

I feel like that’s also consistent with what I would view as our approach in the litigation group. If you join Foley in our litigation group, you join as part of business litigation and dispute resolution, BLDR, and you have the opportunity to work on an array of matters. It doesn’t have to be specifically sub-slotted within that group. You could even be working on IP litigation if you so choose. But there is kind of accountability and a system in place to track your progress and make sure that you’re getting the right opportunities and that you have a workflow developing and that you’re not up a creek without a paddle, but the hope there is that associates are then able to crystallize in on certain groups or areas of experience that they’re really gravitating towards. And then, we have those specialized groups where associates can designate antitrust or labor and employment, for the consumer class-action group as their primary group or potentially even a secondary group, and find ways to specialize their practice in that vein.

Similarly, I started out in… Actually, for Tori, Sarah Field, and I, we all started as general practice our summer, and I guess it was going to be a Hunger Games of who would become the litigation summer versus transactional. And I was, “Oh, my gosh, I have to be litigation. I would die if I wasn’t litigation.” These two women wanted nothing to do with litigation and they were-

Tori Roessler

Nothing.

Kendall Waters … happy to be corporate. So, all’s well that ends well. But I kind of started off doing government enforcement work, white collar work. That didn’t resonate with me as much as some of the more traditional litigation that I was interested in, so then I kind of bounced over to labor and employment. I did some consumer class-action work, antitrust work, and now I’ve kind of found myself in a place where it’s like a third of my practice is class-action work, and then maybe two thirds is business dispute litigation. But even then I love being able to partner with healthcare attorneys in our office and help their healthcare clients with their litigation needs, and it’s never kind of so set in stone, so for me it’s like the Goldilocks dilemma. They’re just right. There’s enough guardrails up that you feel like people are looking out for you, but you’re not so set.

I’ll also just note to Tori’s point earlier about working for one partner specifically. I’ve had a super different experience. I have worked with partners all over the firm throughout my time at Foley, and for me, I love that. I love the building relationships. I love building connections across the firm. Of course, I love when I have a good rapport with someone and I get to keep working with them, but there’s something that’s so fun to me about seeing my peers have the great working relationship with a partner that I have, and then we can all kind of share in the loveliness of those great working relationships, even if we’re not on the case together and it just feels a little bigger than just the case or just that moment in time. So, to that end, it is really a reflection of the personality and experience that you’re looking for.

I’m not super surprised that I would love that experience and I can also see someone looking for more of an experience where it’s more kind of one-to-one, a dedicated point person, and it’s choosing the firm that’s going to help give you the experience that you’re looking for.

Alexis Robertson

Well, it’s so hard because without thinking about some of this, which I think most of us admitted, we really didn’t very much at that time. You don’t necessarily know what’s best for you and you don’t necessarily understand what the firm is offering. I do want to speak briefly to what we do with summer associate. Generally, if you join Foley & Lardner as a 1L summer associate, we do tend to have say, 10 or 15 one 1Ls every year. They’re going to be completely general. You’re in the like, “Try things. We hope you come back next summer.” But usually by the time you come back, we have projected our hiring needs, and what’s interesting is we each talked about when we summered.

I was pre-Great Recession and that matters because that’s when everything was like there’s endless work. Salaries are… Cost going up every week. Oh, we don’t care what practice group you join because all of the practice groups are booming. So, what we’ve seen since then is firms generally, and there’s so many exceptions to this, but generally are really working to project their hiring needs out and it’s almost two years, and it’s somewhat bananas that we do this. That’s a whole ‘nother discussion. We could just wait till everybody graduates and be like, “Okay, we need four people who want to do tax and six who want to do litigation, but no, no, no, we met you after your 1L year.”

Dan Sharpe

Well, you can see. I mean, you can see that not working right now at some firms who are having certain practice groups delaying their starts.

Alexis Robertson

Exactly. There’s mismatch. But understanding this is really important for law students because one, it explains what Dan was just saying about what you’re seeing, but back to the we are a business, we’re making our best guesses as to what we’re going to have demand, so by the time at Foley when you come back as a 2L, at that point, we’ve generally gotten a sense for how many people we’ll need in real estate in the LA office and how many in transactional in Milwaukee and how many in litigation. The thing is we’re a national firm. We work collaboratively, but we do work for those projections to slot by office, so generally, our 2Ls will say, “I’m here. I’m in Chicago this summer and I’m focused on doing corporate work.” There will sometimes be a handful of people that are still general. There are some of those, but the majority of our 2Ls or the people who are with… This is summers. They sort of know what group they’re going into.

But even within these departments… And I’m saying departments for a reason, and we have three departments. We have litigation. We have transactional, and we have IP. Their names are slightly different than that, but I’m going to call them those words because it gets confusing when I call them other things. There’s some general groups. So, if you go into our transactions group, our corporate group, which generally get called business law, which I sometimes joke like, “But isn’t everything at the firm business law?”

Tori Roessler

Yes.

Alexis Robertson

We have a general transactions practice group that you’ll start in. Do a lot of work there. There’s a lot of partners in that. And then, as you develop interests or practice area expertise, “Oh, I really want to focus on energy finance. I really want to focus on investment management.” And then, same thing litigation, “I’m starting general lit.” A couple of years down the line, “I really want to do government enforcement. I really want to do labor and employment.”

By the way, there’s even exceptions in there because labor and employment, that one year might hire directly into labor and employment. And then, IP, it gets even more specific because now we’re adding in often specific technical backgrounds to be a mechanical engineering IP associate or I want to say biochemical. I’m not making that up. That’s real, right?

Dan Sharpe

That’s a real part, yeah.

Alexis Robertson

But I think it’s so important just to hear the nuance and nobody expects a law student or even a first year to understand all of this, but this is what’s at play. These are the sorts of things the firm’s trying to figure out, so there’s this mix, and if you listen to any of the other episodes, because like I said, this is a very special discussion, you will hear most people reflect on how they slowly calibrated to getting the practice area they were the most interested in because part of the time, they didn’t know it existed and they found it four months into practicing or three years, and they were like, “Hey, can I do some of that work?” Other times, they hit it off with a partner.

So, there’s a lot of ways in which your practice can grow and develop. I hate to say it, many of which are sort of serendipitous if you really-

Dan Sharpe

Right.

Alexis Robertson

… ask people.

Dan Sharpe

That’s something.

Alexis Robertson

Yeah. But there’s so much going on there, and I think often as law students, we think, “I just want to go to the place that lets me try everything and I’ll choose,” but realize, we have business forces impacting what you’re allowed to choose from.

Dan Sharpe

Exactly. That’s actually one of the things is that I understand from any person’s perspective. Tori’s like, “Yeah. No, I totally chose,” but someone came to you and was like, “You’re going to do this for six months, and if you don’t like it, then we’ll figure something else out.” That’s usually your best-case scenario, that degree of choice. You choose litigation or transactional or you can choose a general area, big bucket. But if you’re like, “Hey, I really want to do labor and employment litigation,” and they’re like, “Cool, that sounds really great, but we’re not doing that right now. We don’t have a lot of that. We’re full on that group.” So, it’s either go somewhere else to do that or do something here.

I think that the thing that has shocked me and shocked me the most when I started practicing was how many people ended up doing and loving something that they did not know existed when they graduated law school, not even when they got to law school, not even when they summered, when they graduated law school, and they’re like, “This is great. I have a great team. I enjoy my work.” And I’ll ask them like, “What do you do,” and they’re like, “I do…” And I’m just like, “I don’t even know what that is.

Alexis Robertson

I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what you just said.

Dan Sharpe

I’ve been in the industry for 12 years and I don’t know what half the stuff is.

Tori Roessler

Kendall and I always joke that we have no idea what each other’s job is.

Kendall Waters

I’ve tried to learn though, that’s part of the fun.

Tori Roessler

I know you have. You have.

Kendall Waters

Learning what people do that are not [inaudible 00:42:02]. But just to give kind of a counterpoint that is in a similar vein here, but just a little bit actually opposite to your point, Dan, I think the Foley model is so special, and my personal experience with it, I think, just kind of typifies the Foley approach, which is I’m a summer associate at Foley. I had taken a complex litigation class in law school and I had really loved it, but based on me looking at the litigation specialty practice groups, we didn’t have anything like that at that time.

And I’m talking to Jay Varon in the DC office who if I see, eyebrows going up and wide grins, it’s because those of us at Foley would know he has a very distinguished career, I think were going on four decades at Foley, and he’s the chair of our partner selection committee. But at that time, to a young Kendall Waters, he is a really sweet partner in the DC office, and he’s asking me what I like about law school, and I let him know that I took this complex litigation class that just blew my mind and I’ll just have to put a pin in that because I know Foley doesn’t really have a practice group for that.

He’s like, “Well, funny you should say that. That’s a big part of my practice and that’s something that I’ve kind of always had in the back of my mind was starting a practice group like that at Foley.” Flash forward to my third year at Foley, they start that practice group. I get to join that practice group as the first junior member, and I’m still really involved in that practice group, and I’m an editor for our blog and I have very fun feelings for our current practice group chair and vice chair and all the other attorneys who are in it, which I think just a little different than the narrative of like, “No one’s going to listen to what you want to do,” and, “There’s a need.” It’s like people-

Dan Sharpe

Oh, no, no.

Kendall Waters

No, no. I know, but at Foley, I’m not saying people will create practice groups out of thin air, but the fact that people are taking the time to get to know you and to ask those questions, and then when there was that opportunity later that I expressed that interest, I’d been available to help them when things came up, I just so appreciate that the firm really takes the time to get to know its people and who might be a good fit. Even Tori, I suspect with your story, it’s like they knew who you were on the deal team, that you’re the person with the list and the checkbox is next to it and you’re ticking-

Tori Roessler

That is me.

Kendall Waters

… them off. Yes. And just everything is so on top of it, and it makes perfect sense for your strength to have someone picky for that. So, I think it’s even a little different than just, “Oh, we kind of need someone.” It’s like, “I’m serving who’s out there, and I feel like Tori could actually really love this.”

Alexis Robertson

Well, that’s why this conversation I think is so useful because we’re digging out some of the nuance that frankly no one talks to you about. A couple of things, Dan and I are slightly grizzled, graduated a little bit earlier, works in a few other firms. So, there’s a few things. I hope everybody who listens to this applies to Foley and we hire you, but the reality is a bunch of people are going to listen who this helps assess other law firms. So, I think pointing out the various dynamics is really important. But also, at Foley, we’re trying to hold both. We’re really trying to toe the line of being a financially high performing law firm but that cares about the individuals. So, for example, if someone leaves Foley and they left to go to a firm just because of practice stuff, and they never told us, we’re like, “Wait, why didn’t they just tell us they wanted to do consumer finance work? We just had to make three phone calls. We would’ve tried to figure that out for them.”

But that being said, if you declared that you only want to do corporate transactional work in 2009, it did not matter. There was nobody buying or selling anything, so it’s understanding that I think Foley for sure, and frankly, a lot of firms do want to help you align with the best practice for you while maintaining all the business stuff. Also, law students, often they get petrified at that question, if someone asks me what my practice should be, how should I answer? Here’s what I always say. I say that you should let them know what your interests tend to be, but I would actually move away from being like, “I only want to do bankruptcy.”

Tori Roessler

I totally agree, yes, but I feel like it’s really important to understand when you’re an interviewing law student, just from a confidence perspective in every interview. There are a lot of people that I interview that want to be in a very specific location and want to do a very specific practice of law, and I interview them, and I think they’re great. I think they’re driven. I would love to work with them. I would love to be their colleague, but our office just doesn’t do that. What they see on the other side of it is just like, “Oh, I didn’t get a call back. They must have really hated me. I didn’t do a good job in this interview when in fact-

Alexis Robertson

You got crossed off because you only wanted to do this hyper-specific thing.

Tori Roessler

Right. Exactly. When in fact, if they had just been more open and we could have extended that communication, we could have maybe met in the middle somewhere, but they just see it as a straight rejection that we didn’t like them, that they messed up in the interview somehow, and that is honestly rarely the case.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah. This goes straight to what we were saying before about leverage is that if you are a heavily leveraged firm, you can kind of shuffle people around at the low level because you know that most of them aren’t going to be here. The difference when you have less leverage is the fact that you got to fit a first year into a group hoping that they will be a third year, fourth year, fifth year in that spot when there’s a dozen people coming into a practice group at every year, “Oh, do you want to go be one of the other dozen? That’s fine. You’ll figure it out. If you succeed, you succeed. If you don’t, you don’t.”

But what Foley’s trying to do and what a lot of firms do as far as having the less leverage, they’re making the business decision any other business, they’re like, we are hiring people and we have needs because we have work in this area. And so we’re trying to still fit our people. We don’t want to force someone to do something they don’t want to do because they won’t stay or they won’t be good at it, or they won’t be interested in it. But at the same time, the idea that you can come into a law firm and just do anything, it’s not as impressive to an interviewer, for example, to say, “I want to do this specific thing and I read a book on it. And this is what I want to do. And I had this class and I loved it and blah, blah blah.” That’s not as impressive to an interviewer, unless you’re like, “Wow, we actually have a very specific need for that exact thing.” Then you’re getting that call back.

Alexis Robertson

Yes. Or that’s your background. So with IP, for example, Dan was an IP lawyer, he’s an engineer. It made sense for you to be like, “I’d like to do intellectual property.” “Okay, Dan. We have that need.” And I think it can be really hard for law students to understand, because, so I just saw our stats, I think we saw about 1100 students last year, maybe closer to 12. And I hate to say it so bluntly, but I will. What we’re not in the business of is calling you back and being like, “Are you sure you only want to do…? Because we already had literally a thousand other people say, “I feel like law school’s generally been litigation focused, so I have some interest there, but I would love to be exposed to corporate and to…” Great. I’ll call up Alexis. She seems like she’s open to what we have going on.”

Dan Sharpe

I was tortured by the fact that, when I was choosing where to summer, I had it down to two firms, one of which was a large IP boutique, and the other was a general practice firm. And I was like, “Oh, well, the general practice firm would be great.” This is naive, 2011, 2010 me. “Oh, this would be so great, because I’ll get to try all these things, and I’ll do see what I like and da da, da.” And I ended up going with the IP boutique, and for a while, thought, “Oh, I wonder if there was something else I would’ve liked.” As I’ve gotten along in my career and spent more time in law firms, I kind of realized that I was always going to be doing patent law. There was really a small sliver of a chance that I was going to go to another firm, general practice firm, as a summer associate, and say, “You know what? I actually want to do transactional work.”

And they were going to go, “Sure, Dan, even though you have a mechanical engineering background and you worked at the patent office and you have a patent registration number. Yeah, yeah, no, do this other thing that you’re not any more qualified for than this other person.” That’s just, I guess, the thing of, as you’re doing your interviews, it’s counterintuitive sometimes, but it is important, I think, to ask and figure that out of more freedom for you generally means less hands-on management of getting you into a place where there’s going to be work and support. So less flexibility for you. You may end up getting your choice of two or three or four different litigation practice groups, but because of that, that means they’re going to send you somewhere where there is work, where the partners need help, and that’s going to really help your early years keeping your hours up and that kind of thing,

Alexis Robertson

Which is great. And I hope we’re not scaring anybody in saying this, but I truly think this is the stuff that people just won’t say to you unless you’re in a one-on-one. If you message me on LinkedIn and you get 20 minutes with me, I’ll tell you all this stuff. But this is the stuff students I think will either forget to ask about or don’t know how to handle. And I want to pivot a little bit. I’d love to get a little bit more concrete. So we’ve talked a lot about the business, a lot about considerations, about picking practice groups, but Kendall and Tori specifically, when we bring in new associates, I know, on our outline, we have free market versus assignment system. We have, what kinds of opportunities do people tend to get? What does that look like when you start at Foley and you’re getting staffed up on something and especially if you’re aware of how we may be differentiated from other firms?

Tori Roessler

Yeah. Ken, do you want to take it?

Kendall Waters

So the number one question that I love to hear law students ask if they’re meeting with me informally or through OCI or callback is, “What type of work can I expect to do in my first three years or so at your firm?” I think that will tell you so much of what you need to know, but I really love that, as a litigator, I get the opportunity to pull new associates, junior associates, in on our litigation matters and really give them the opportunity to learn and cut their teeth, with the safety net of our team, who has done this before and it’s not our first rodeo. So when I think about someone who’s really newly starting out, including our summer associates, they are conducting legal research, but they’re also taking the first pass at sections of brief and/or an entire brief.

One of the summers that I worked with last year did the first pass at a motion to, rather, a reply in support of a motion to strike for a punitive class action matter. And this was in federal court. And I think, from my discussions with her, it sounds like it was a highlight of her summer, but I think there is just so much confidence and excitement and buy-in, that comes when you’re getting those type of really meaningful writing opportunities, especially in your first year or so. When we’re looking at first through third year at Foley for litigation associates, I’m really thinking about ways to get them oral advocacy opportunities on our cases. Part of the benefit of having some of the less behemoth institutional clients and clients that perhaps are either smaller companies or corporations or the amount in controversy for the litigation matter in dispute is not so astronomical that we are in a position to actually have the junior associates kind of take on more of a role in that case.

So that would include handling hearings, especially discovery conferences. We have an informal discovery conference or a motion to compel hearing, giving them opportunities to defend and take depositions. I’m happy to report that almost all of the junior associates who’ve been on cases with me out of California have had the chance to take or defend depositions on our cases, which is really exciting.

Tori Roessler

That’s really cool.

Kendall Waters

And even if it’s not on cases with me giving them the confidence and the tools so that, on their next case, we’re kind of continuing the conversation and setting them up to get that experience on that case. And other items would be even just handling a meet and confer. That’s thinking on your feet, that’s being strategic. Maybe early on, they’re not in a position to handle the whole kit and caboodle, but I’m thinking about, “Okay, how can we have them handle a portion of this call? Can they handle a subject on the meet and confer? Can they handle a subject of prep for the witness that we’re preparing for trial or the deponent who’s going to be deposed by the other side in two weeks?”

And so, things that are kind of like you could maybe bite-size break pieces off, and they have the safety net of the bumpers of people being there to weigh in and give them guidance and feedback after. That’s how I was trained up by a lot of the partners. And so, I really appreciate that model, and yeah, I’ve seen that firsthand. And it’s been really helpful for me. So I like paying that forward.

Alexis Robertson

Kendall, but that’s all real work that you just had. Those are real things. And also, just to clarify, what if the junior associate or maybe even the summer associate didn’t do it, who would do the work? Because my guess is it’s you. I just want to be clear. The work that’s getting passed down is the work that has to get done, that if it’s not the first year, it’s going to be maybe you, Kendall. Just to be clear, we’re not making up vanity assignments. This is real work for our clients.

Kendall Waters

Oh yeah. No, it’s going to get done. If it’s in the case of a meet and confer or depo or hearing, sure, I’m going to do those, and I can hoard them for myself. There are other tasks that, because of Foley’s model and being an effective business, we are going to delegate down. And if it’s not to you, then there are a lot of other associates who would love to have those opportunities. And there will be some document review, of course, and that’s good. Get to know the facts, get to know the issues, get to know what that looks like. If that’s your overwhelming experience, if that’s the majority of your experience, then we’re worried about skills development, and you probably have people swooping in and making sure that your plate is a little more balanced.

Alexis Robertson

So before I go to Tori to say some words that are similar, but for corporate, I want to pull out something you said that I just think is every law student’s north star when picking a firm, skill development, professional development, what firm is going to train you how to be a lawyer, period. I could just rant all day about that. I think it’s really easy to get caught up in certain other things, which maybe this is my equivalent of I’m that old person shaking her fist, standing on her front lawn. But truly, that is what should guide your decision making, because who’s going to train you as a lawyer? But I do want to hear words about what that looks like if you’re a transactional focus attorney.

Tori Roessler

Yeah. So I was thinking about what, we have three really fantastic junior associates on my team in my office, Erin, Alexis, and Chloe. And I was thinking about what they do sort of on a day-to-day basis, and they’re doing stuff that helps me out so much. I don’t think I could do my job without them, truly. And we have two first years and a second year. So they are junior associates, and they are running calls with clients. They are sending out communications with clients. They’re fielding calls from clients, answering questions. They’re taking the first stab at basically every single document I draft. As you get more and more senior in the transactional world, at least in my world, you’re not as in the nitty gritty of the details of every single deal. And so, I feel like I am just messaging them random questions all day, which they probably love, and they just know all these answers off the top of their head.

And it’s so impressive. And I think they know that stuff, because they know that they’re the person responsible for that information. They have their own subset of work, where they know that they are in charge of this for this client. And I think it kind of helps you level up as well, knowing that people sort of entrust you to do that. We give them a lot of responsibility. We’re taking our second year associate, Erin, to meet with a client next week to talk about their future work here with Foley. And I don’t know if you would really get that direct client interaction at other places, honestly. And I think it helps you learn to really, really think on your feet when you’re having to answer questions like that all day long from coworkers and colleagues and clients.

Dan Sharpe

I think the spectrum on this kind of varies between training in a formalized educational type environment and hands-on training. And I think that firms fall different places on that spectrum. Where I summered in and started my career, the formal training was some of the best that there is, but there was less hands-on training because of how they staff things and because they weren’t really expecting junior associates to be going to the clients, talk about future work. That’s just not how they were set up. Foley, to your point, has a lot more of the learn by doing, learn with your practice group, get relied on early, and get mentored in that way. Those are different models that people are not usually aware of.

Kendall Waters

And I don’t know, Tori, if you feel like this would be a good question for a transactional practice, but I kind of think of it, if I was in the law student’s shoes and trying to elicit information, that would help me know what the substantive opportunities, what the training was like. Another one that I think of would be, can you think of either your, or perhaps someone that you work with, a big professional accomplishment for them earlier in their career, let’s say the first seven to 10 years of their career?

Tori Roessler

That’s a great question.

Kendall Waters

And follow up is like, and how did the people that you work with set you up for that experience? Because spoiler alert, if you had a really cool opportunity, but they threw you off the deep end and you don’t feel like you were necessarily set up for it, is that the cool thing? And I feel like you’ll get to know the firms and what they’re like if you’re thinking about it with that lens.

Tori Roessler

Definitely. Because if you’ve had that experience, you know the answer right off the top of your head and you’re able to talk about it and you’re excited to talk about it. And you’ll be able to tell if someone is sort of like “Oof, that hasn’t happened to me” and a sort of grasping at straws awkwardly. And so, like Kendall said, that’s a great question to ask honestly.

Kendall Waters

So my ignorance, and I want both of you to answer. What is it for your practice, Tori, in tax, and what would it be for patent and prosecution? I think patent and prosecution, I might know, but I want to hear your answers if they don’t mind indulging me. Teach our law students.

Tori Roessler

For me, I had a very specific thing I was asked to do, as I think I was a second year associate. I was asked to present on an hour long webinar on a topic that I had dealt with twice. And I was like, “Oh, I don’t think I can do this.” And my boss was like, “No, you can. You know this stuff. I will help you. I will help create this presentation, and I will run through it with you.” And I did it, and now, I talk about it all the time. And I’m going to a conference next month to talk about it. And I don’t think I would have done that without being given the confidence that I could do it. So that was just a good stepping stone opportunity for me to like, “Oh, I do know this stuff. I can do this. I can talk about this.” So yeah, that’s probably mine, very specific.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah. Yeah. For me, like I said, they’re different sort of models. And where I started, a lot of the work I was doing was very distant from a client, and it was writing patent applications and editing briefs and things like that. But again, I was learning a lot from the educational standpoint. I just wasn’t learning as much as a hands-on situation. But then, later, when I got to be about a third year, I had more of those opportunities, where I was given portfolios of work, where I had to go meet with clients and engineers and develop patent strategies for them. Or I was handling discovery disputes and arguing motions in chambers on discovery issues, motions to compel, whatever. That’s the kind of stuff that I was able to do at my second firm, that, at my first firm, I wasn’t really given those opportunities, but I wasn’t given nothing. I was given a lot more formal education, a lot more high level stuff. But when it comes to the things that I was most proud of, from a practical perspective, that didn’t come for me until a little bit later.

Tori Roessler

Yeah. Wait, Kendall, what is yours?

Kendall Waters

What I was going to say, in full disclosure…

Tori Roessler

[inaudible 01:02:37] have this one.

Kendall Waters

In full disclosure, for me at Foley, I think it was a slightly slower build. And I do feel like, for my first three or four years, it was kind of cutting my teeth, supporting the team as best I could, trying to make myself essential. And then, things kind of super bloomed from there.

Dan Sharpe

Part of that’s practice too, right? Because what you do matters.

Kendall Waters

And part of it is just like right cases, right opportunities. And I think I had people who were invested enough in my career who took a look at the type of work I was doing and said, “Let’s try to find some balance here, because you’ve done good work. We want to support you.” And the two that kind of come to mind, one was as a fifth year, I got to second chair a big pharma arbitration that was week long in Amsterdam. It was really fun.

Tori Roessler

Oh, I remember when you went to that. Yeah, I remember when you did that.

Kendall Waters

It was major. It was so fun. And I got to bring on one of my colleagues who she had summered when I was a first year. So you never forget your first summer class. You really have a bond with that group. And just seeing her shine and working together to teach her how to do a cross exam, because I’d done the trial ad and depo trainings that she hadn’t yet gotten a chance to do. That just kind of world unlocked, blew my mind, gave me so much confidence, and it just was an amazing opportunity. And then, recently, I had my first chance to sit as first chair for, it’s an administrative trial, but we have two more weeks coming up. In any event, having that opportunity though to have second chaired and to have had other arbitrations in between and felt like somebody really set me up for this moment was really special. And it was fun to check in with the mentors that have trained me up along the way and sharing that with them. Because to me, it’s like I owe them the world. So it’s been a good ride. Can’t complain.

Alexis Robertson

I love that. And we’re starting to transition to the last area I want to talk about before we, I hope, conclude. Hope, not that we need to, but I’ll say another 10-ish minutes. We’ll see what we can do. Although this is episode 100, we could just make it the longest episode and just do that.

Tori Roessler

Go for hours. Challenge accepted.

Alexis Robertson

We’ll make it a hundred minutes. There we go. But I want to talk a bit about mentorship, informal, formal, and then, I also want to add on, because in Dan and I, you have members of our broader talent team and DEI team, we’re going to have to touch on some of the very formal professional development things we have at Foley. Because I want to make it clear that we have that too. But where does this role, and I think you’ve all said it in some way, but where does mentorship, either formal or informal, come into play, in terms of your development as an attorney, particularly at Foley? What does that look like for you? And do you think it’s important? Or why or why not?

Kendall Waters

It’s literally everything.

Tori Roessler

Yep. I was just going to say everywhere.

Kendall Waters

You go first.

Tori Roessler

Yeah, I think personally, that you are both simultaneously a mentor to everyone that is more junior than you, and everyone above you is your mentor. And I think, if you sort of take it that way, that everyone has something to teach you and you have something to teach everyone, it’s a really healthy way to train people. It makes you very invested in your junior associates, and it makes you very thankful for everyone that has acted as a mentor to you along the way. I think pretty much every single story that I have told on this episode has had a sort of common theme that someone either trusted me or believed that I could do something. And that allowed me to also believe that I could do it and trusted in my own abilities. And I think that is just immeasurable, in terms of how much that contributes to your career and just forming your own practice, honestly.

Kendall Waters

When I think about the practice of law and if you are also in a position where you’ll be spending your life as an attorney, I hope that you have fun with it. I hope that you build a life that feels good on the day to day, because spoiler alert, a lot of your life will be spent working. And so, for me, having that community, having that mentorship and sponsorship, that you’re a recipient of and that you’re also providing, that’s just the reason for the season. The work can be fun. It can be intellectually challenging. I love working with our clients, but the thing that really gets me up and gets me so excited is the legacy we’re building together and the investment in the people that I’m working alongside.

I feel like I also get mentorship and sponsorship in their own way from people who are my peers or who are junior to me or who were summers. It’s crazy how much you can be a community and support one another. So similar to Tori, I think a lot of my stories have at least touched upon the people who’ve looked out for me along the way and have really shown me what it can mean to have this type of practice and this type of career. It’s different than just a job. And I’m really grateful for that opportunity.

Alexis Robertson

So you both said a lot that’s really important. But one thing you said, Kendall, was about how you spent so much time at work with the people from work. And I think, especially for type A high achievers, “What’s the next brass ring I can get? Okay, let me get this law firm job and then… I’ll walk off into the sunset, fast forward 40 years, and then, I retire.” And you really don’t give much thought into what’s going to happen between those bookends. But back to the, it’s so important, and you don’t have to get it right the first time. We hope you do. We hope you come to Foley, but you can come to us as a lateral, it’s fine. But there really is a reason to just, I want to say, despite or along with all the things we said, find the practice you enjoy, find people you enjoy, find people that you feel are invested in you.

And frankly, if you find yourself in a situation a few years down the line where most of those boxes aren’t checked, you probably need to find a new place to work. This is the former recruiter in me who’s talking as well. But I think all of that is just so incredibly important. And what I have to add on at Foley, and it’s interesting for both of you, Kendall and Tori, so in 2019, Foley brought in a chief legal talent officer. And what the firm essentially said is “We want to double down on the support that we’re giving our people, especially with an emphasis on our timekeepers.” That was Jen Patton, she’s now our chief talent officer. But this firm has invested a tremendous amount of resources in the people experience. So while we have so many things playing out in the practice groups and the departments, we have a really robust infrastructure, particularly on the talent development side, supporting all of these things.

So in addition to the various ways you focus on developing others, that the partners focus on developing you, we have an entire professional development department focused on the formal opportunities. What are the things the litigators need to know? What are the things transactional lawyers? What are the things IP lawyers need to know? And this is another part of the business of law. We are too big, Foley and all of these firms, for us to just be like, “Go out and figure out attorney development, guys.” And don’t get me wrong, a bunch of that is still happening, but we’ve formalized a lot of our development paths, learning plans, whatever you want to call it, because it’s not 1845 anymore. And this whole you’re going to shadow someone for seven years to learn how to be a litigator isn’t the only way to learn. And so, that’s also where Dan and I come in, as we’re members of the DEI team, but also very involved in our larger talent team.

Because not only are we supporting all the things you just said, but we also want to formalize and make intentional and fair as many of the processes along that attorney development timeline as we can. And I just said a whole bunch of business speak. I’m a talent management professional, but I really want to stress…

Dan Sharpe

Let’s just synergize the…

Alexis Robertson

Exactly. Let’s synergize and make sure we have efficiencies. But that’s another part of, while you’re looking at these firms, not only is it, “What’s the practice group? Who am I going to work with?” But they also all have these robust, formal opportunities to help the lawyers do the development they need to do. And that’s another thing that you can ask questions about. You could ask about informal opportunities, formal opportunities. So in addition, and I swear I’ll stop my rant soon, but I’m like, “I have to get this in.” But, so in addition to all of these informal relationships, we also, you get assigned formal mentors, and that can be in a variety of capacities.

In addition to Kendall saying, “Hey, I need you to draft this,” you’re also going to attend some legal writing things. You’re going to attend some how to take a deposition things. So I wanted to get that out there, because it’s also a big part of what we offer and what a lot of large law firms offer. And what I want to do is two things, as we start to, I guess, land this plane. One, the question is, is there something we haven’t touched on, that any of you want to touch on? And then, after that, I would love to end with some interview advice or law firm interview process advice. So starting with the first thing, anything that, other than interview advice, that you’re dying to talk about that we haven’t touched on?

Kendall Waters

One thing that I think makes Foley stand out and is a reflection of that mentorship and sponsorship that we’ve been talking about is the number of people who have started their careers at Foley as a summer associate and then, made their way to partnership. And I think we’ll also see a lot of people who lateral early in their career and then kind of do the same. And I think that that is a testament to the firm’s investment in its people, the formal and informal training and development opportunities that there are, the sponsorship and mentorship that a new associate can hope to receive while at Foley & Lardner. And it’s just something that I’m not at another firm, and so that is definitely a huge bias perspective. But when I talk casually with friends from law school, I just am not as familiar with another firm who has that signature like we do.

Alexis Robertson

Well, and Dan and I can affirm the fact that our partners don’t tend to leave and we also don’t hire that many in a given year. We’ve had some more recent hiring because we’ve opened some offices, but for a firm of our size, a lot of years will be like Foley brings in six, eight partners. We had an exception because we opened a Salt Lake City office. But same thing with a lot of the partners who leave, it’s because they retired. It’s not because they went somewhere else.

Dan Sharpe

We have whole departments where all of the partners in the department summered at Foley.

Kendall Waters

And in contrast just bringing in six to eight partners a year, it’s like we’ll have a class of senior counsel that make partner each year and that’s about 20 plus individuals. So I think puts it in a good perspective.

Alexis Robertson

But no, that’s a great thing to add. It’s definitely something that’s different about us. All right. So before we jump to our interviewing advice for law students, anybody else, anything else before we jump into it? Okay, so I’m going to change this up. I’m going to go first so that I’m not the last person to talk, although I’m going to be, I’m going to be.

My big advice to law students though is to practice your answer to tell me about yourself literally out loud before you’re saying it to Tori or Kendall. And you should be able to do it in a minute and a half. Shorter’s even better. But don’t be that takes you 12 minutes to do the, because they’re going to ask you, they’re reading your resume, they’ll be like, “Tell me about yourself.” That’s why they’re reading your resume. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. And then also talk in sound bites. People get nervous when they’re interviewing and especially during on-campus interviews, which may only be, or these Zoom virtual screening interviews, may only be 20 minutes. If you take seven minutes to answer one question, I’m just going to guess that Kendall’s not going to cut you off. I think Kendall’s more likely to let you keep talking. So be mindful of how long you’re speaking because you don’t have that much time and you don’t want to waste it all telling them about yourself.

Tori Roessler

Yeah, I think I have two separate points. I think my first one sort of ties back to what we were talking about with just mentorship and the people around you. Just take note of how everyone at the firm you’re interviewing with interacts with each other when they’re sort of transferring you between people. I know a lot of the interviews are virtual, but there will be a 30 second, one minute time period where you have two attorneys on teams that are sort of passing you off in between them and just take note with how they interact with each other.

For as much as I did not know when I was interviewing, that is something that I was really looking at and I just really noticed at Foley that, this was when we interviewed in person, when I was just being taken between offices, people weren’t stopping to talk to each other about work. They were stopping to talk to each other about what they did this weekend and, “Oh, your daughter’s home from college. That must be so fun.” And just things like that that made it really obvious that everyone really knew and care about each other. So just take note of that. I think it’s very important.

Dan Sharpe

I second that. Yeah, that’s absolutely important.

Tori Roessler

And then my other one would just be let the interviewer sort of talk about what they want to talk about. I mean, if they want to pick one point in your resume that they really identify with, just go with it. Don’t try to pigeonhole the interview into showcasing very specific traits. People interview differently. And I think that’s really important to understand. There will be people that you interview with that will just sort of go line by line down your resume and ask you questions. And there will be people be like, “Oh, I see that you love horseback riding. Tell me about this.” And that’s what they want to talk about for 30 minutes or however long the interview is. And I just think holding that conversation and moving it in the direction they want is helpful advice.

Kendall Waters

What if I have a slightly different feel? Maybe it’s because if somebody only wants to talk to you about horseback riding the whole time, maybe you should have some question marks in your mind of does this person like me for me?

Dan Sharpe

That’s a bad interview.

Tori Roessler

That’s fair. That’s fair.

Kendall Waters

We’re not interviewing for best friends and sorority sisters, which I think Tori and I have both done in college. We are interviewing for summer associates that we will hire that we want to invest in and train. And so I would hope that you have interviewers who are really interested in getting to know you and why you might be a good fit for their firm. So my two pieces of advice would be, number one, keep it conversational. And then number two, ask questions that tell you about what your experience might be like.

When I think about the first one, keeping it conversational, I don’t think that it’s a good interview if the format is question, answer from prospective summer, question, answer from prospective summer. Can we keep it more of a back and forth, like an actual dialogue or a ping pong? So if somebody does a, “Tell me about yourself,” and you realize that the interviewer is from your law school, you kind of do your shtick, “And now I’m at GW Law, I see you also went there. How does it feel to be back today?” At least open it up for them, see if it could have some softballs like that.

If somebody asks you about an experience, like, “Tell me something about your resume and an experience that was a challenge that would typify the type of summer you might be for our firm,” giving your vignette and then saying, “How does that match with what you’re hoping to have for a summer associate?” Or something like that that then can give you an in to get to know about the firm, know about the person, know about what their practice group is looking for.

And then on the second point, using that interview as an opportunity to get to know the firm. I think I heard someone say earlier, which is true, I think it was Alexis, that people like talking about themselves, and that’s fair. But I don’t think that it’s the best experience for a prospective summer to really get to know the firm if it’s just about this one person and their practice. Because that’s all well and good that after 30 years this is the practice they’ve been able to build, but you’re also trying to get a realistic sense of what am I signing up for and what might my experience look like?

So knowing that people love talking about themselves, but knowing that you’re also trying to get to know the firm. “Can you tell me a bit about your practice and how your firm has supported that? What role do junior associates play on the matters that you staff? It looks like you had a big deal recently. Can you speak to how a junior can support and add value for you and your clients?” There are ways to bring those together and you might just need to sit there with a notepad and hammer out some questions and be thoughtful about it.

Alexis Robertson

No, and prep, sorry, just to interrupt. You have to actually prep. That’s a big thing. And prep is not memorizing [inaudible 01:19:11] stats, it’s not memorizing Vault stats. It’s doing the sorts of things that you were just mentioning. That is prep. What are some good questions I could ask? If I know who I’m going to meet with before I meet with them, what can I research about them? We do not care that you know there are 204 people in our business law practice group. That’s not…

Tori Roessler

I thought that was so important when I was interviewing.

Alexis Robertson

If you know it, that’s great, but to me that’s not interview prep. That’s you trying to control information and data, which is what law students tend to do, but really prepare.

Kendall Waters

No, that makes sense. But yeah, just to finish it up, I think that north star of thinking about what your experience would be like, not even just as a summer but as a junior associate if you have the opportunity to join that firm and return, I think that that’s just a good barometer to approach it from so that you can really get to know a firm and make an informed decision about what I think everybody here would agree is a really pivotal career decision after law school for better or for worse. And we’re rooting for the best. So Dan, what were your takeaways for interview tips?

Dan Sharpe

So my favorite thing is the analogies between interviewing and dating or making friends. And there’s three main sort of areas where I think this comes up the most. The first is when was the last time you went on a date or were making a friend or anything like that where the person was just so knowledgeable about something that you were like, “Oh yeah, I have to date this person. They know everything there is to know about sushi.” So that’s one thing to keep in mind is you’re not going to impress your interviewers with particular knowledge or skills or experiences for their own sake. The thing that can be impressive about that is how you got to it. Your curiosity, your listening skills, your ability to think critically, solve problems. It’s not going to be the job you had, it’s going to be what you have to say about the job you had, what you took away from the job that you had last summer, that kind of thing.

Kendall Waters

If I could interrupt, Dan will probably be flattered that I listened to his podcast episode and want to hear more about his practice, but I don’t need to go into the nitty-gritty of the suburbs of is it Pittsburgh or Philadelphia and the baritone saxophone. It’s like that’s giving stalker vibes, a little.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit, she says as she’s-

Kendall Waters

Don’t mind me.

Dan Sharpe

Yeah, exactly. And so that’s one of those things where I think the nervousness will drive you to try to lean on what you feel most comfortable with. And you might feel really comfortable with your knowledge of some area of the law from law school, but you’re not going to out lawyer a lawyer as a law student. You’re not going to wow any… No one’s going to say, “You know what? I never thought about torts that way.” It’s just not going to happen. So be thoughtful, be curious, and sort of show your work, show your reasoning, show how you approach problems. That’s going to be more useful than the fact that you solved a complicated problem. It’s how you did it.

The other thing that is like dating is you need to pay attention to them. Because a lot of times when you’re going on a first date or you’re meeting a friend for the first time, you’re so worried about making them like you that you don’t actually walk away understanding if you like them. And to Tori’s point earlier about how the interviewers interact with each other, that’s one of those ways where paying attention to that. Now you might be so nervous and uptight that you can’t hear that stuff. You’re not paying attention to that because you’re so focused on impressing them. But try to give yourself some space to say, “How do I feel about this?” People have different personalities. Some people will enjoy the collegiality or the colloquial or the casualness of a place. Some people will like a different kind of. So it’s not about one thing or the other. It’s just about how comfortable would you feel if you were in that situation.

And keeping an eye on, because sometimes you’ll get through the end of the interview and like, all right, fine. Let’s say they offer you the job. Let’s say you get two jobs. Let’s say you get three offers. How are you going to pick? Because you were so busy impressing them that you actually don’t know the difference between them. Those interviews run together, especially OGI or OCI. Sorry, that’s my UVA showing. But you can lose the thread. It all runs together, and it’s like I went on five first dates yesterday and I can’t remember anything about any of the people is the kind of thing that you can come down to, which takes it to the last part, which is there’s nothing wrong with a place not being a good fit.

This is not collect them all. You get one job to work, so it does you no good. If you get 17 offers to summer at places, five years later, you’ll still only have one job. So if a place is not a good fit, if you don’t feel comfortable, don’t think that that’s a failing. Don’t think that that’s, Tori mentioned some people not getting callbacks for reasons that had nothing to do with you not liking them, that’s a thing that’s going to happen on both sides. Some places are going to be, you’re going to feel like it’s a good fit for you. Some places are going to feel like you’re a good fit for them. And that’s not a value judgment.

Because I think, from my perspective, when I was going through this process many, many years ago, I was looking at rankings and I was like the most prestigious firm and the best firm and like, “Oh, this firm makes the most money and da-da.” That was not useful because it had to do more with fit. And when you find a place that you actually fit, it’s so much more valuable because you can be the fish out of water at the wrong firm and have it really hold your career back. Or you could fit really well at a different firm, maybe a smaller firm, or a bigger firm, or a more prestigious firm, or a less prestigious firm, or whatever the case may be. And when you find your fit, that’s how you have a long career.

That’s what has made many of the partners summer and stay at Foley is not that they are uniquely talented individuals that would’ve done that at any firm. Some of them are, some of them aren’t. But what it is is that they found a place where they fit. They found a place where their skillsets and their comfort level was all in the same line, and they were able to progress that way. And those very people could have had a much less successful career had they made other decisions not having that fit in mind.

Kendall Waters

And on that note, just again, understanding the firm you’re interviewing with or trying to understand the business model and their values. I will often have people ask questions that are a little bit specific about bonus and compensation and what I will deem under the umbrella of perks. And again, if you have 20 precious minutes, 30 precious minutes with an interviewer to get to know the firm and to think about what your experience will really be like at that firm, I think question as to whether someone should want to use their few precious questions asking about things like that, which in my estimation are not a real reflection of the experience.

And I want to know, I understand that financially, a lot of law students come out with heaps of debt, and so that is really top of mind. But from my sense, if you are kind of at a revolving door where you feel like you’re only able to be at a firm for two or three years, that could potentially hold you back a lot more for your financial goals than finding the firm that’s going to be the right fit, that’s going to set you up for long-term success. And that prep will come in handy, but think about how that might resonate or register with the person that you’re interviewing with.

Dan Sharpe

A lot of those questions can be tabled and can be email follow-ups or discussions with hiring department people after the fact. I mean, of course you’re curious about that, right? You’re curious about how the bonuses get calculated and how do you qualify and all that stuff. But some of that stuff can be asked via email after the interview. “Hey, thanks, it was really great talking to you. One thing I didn’t get to was I was just curious about,” or you can reach out to the people who actually work in recruiting and ask them for information about some of that stuff. That way you can avoid putting off an individual because Kendall’s going to see that as you’re here for the wrong reasons, and then.

Kendall Waters

Bachelor talk.

Dan Sharpe

Exactly. We’re going to have a different dating analogy there where you can come off as seeming like you’re trying to make a bunch of money. “Oh, do you work a lot?” It’s like, “Well, yeah.” That’s kind of it, right?

Kendall Waters

And you’re interviewing for a job, so we know that you’re interested in having a salary that compensates you for that job. I think the one that we’ve also seen more recently is with remote work, and I understand-

Tori Roessler

Yeah, we were just talking about this.

Kendall Waters

… that summer associates or prospective summer associates are going to be really interested in understanding the firm’s approach to being in the office and professional discretion and flexibility. And again, I would focus on that prep. Think about ways to ask it that are really consistent with what you’re actually trying to ascertain. So is it are people back in the office? “I’m interested in joining a community where I’m going to have training and substantive opportunities, and I would really love to know if there’s face time with people. Tell me about professional discretion with your offices. I know it’s kind of a wild west now that we’re in the office, but there’s freedom sometimes to work from other places. And how can a junior associate stand out at a new firm?” That might be a better way if you feel so moved to ask. Just can you soften it.

Alexis Robertson

You’re going to want to know. But there’s so many things, there’s prep, there’s being tactful, there’s having good judgment. There’s certain things, like ask even more questions once you get the offer. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know all of these things, but one thing that I think is maybe an unpopular thing to say, but I’ll just be very honest, junior associates, first year associates, you just need to be around. I mean, most of the firms that are really great at being virtual, because there are just virtual law firms, they don’t hire first years. They just don’t. And so even if a firm is in like, “Oh, we only need to be here two days a week,” that’s great, you should know that, but you will benefit by being around because people don’t know you yet.

So whatever the firm’s party line is, you want to know it. But I would add additional time to that. And not because face time’s required, but because you did want to go to lunch with Tori or because Kendall’s going to stop by sometimes. And that’s just being real. With these firms, like I said, we’re developing a lot of people and most large law firms have not figured out how to seamlessly virtually develop first year associates. And that’s being extremely honest, extremely candid.

And this is the thing, clearly we could have just talked about interview tips for three days, but I think there’s so many things that I hope really refocus what prep looks like. And as Dan was saying, moves you away from I want to know who’s number one in this, I want to know the hours requirement here. Those things matter, but they’re not going to matter as much when you’re trying to suss out who this firm really is and make a personal connection with your interviewers.

Gosh, one more thing that I will add, and I swear I will close this up. Also, this is an advocacy piece, so it’s kind of like dating, but it’s kind of like advocacy. So you’re giving the Kendalls and Toris of the world information so that they can advocate for you back with their office’s recruiting committee.

Tori Roessler

That’s such a good point.

Alexis Robertson

And so there might be some things that to you feel like the end of the world. I got a C in torts, or I had a rough first semester because I’m first generation, I’ve never… There was so much for me to adjust to. Think about those things, identify them, have the two to five sentence response, because if you got a C in torts because your mother got really sick, and I recently talked to a student about this, she had to split time being in China. And some of us have much more mundane reasons for certain things, but let’s just say that you have some things that you just want to front, “As you’ll see, it was really tough for me adjusting first semester, but I actually have a 3.7 my second semester.” And that is something that each of you can go back and highlight as we advocate. It’s not only about the grades, we’re looking for the people, but don’t spend 12 minutes explaining why that happened.

Dan Sharpe

And that goes directly to you’re not going to impress with, we see your grades, we saw that stuff, that’s not the impressive part for an interview. That’s something that someone will screen you out, some partner will later sit around and look at your grades, whatever. You can impress someone with how you handled something like that, a difficult situation. You can impress someone with how you came back from, “Oh, I started law school and I kind of didn’t get it at first, but I think I figured it out now. And my second semester you’ll see is.” That kind of thing where you can’t hide it, but every single person who’s ever started as a lawyer has made a mistake, not only immediately, but every year since.

And that’s one of those things where it’s like this is not about being perfect. It’s about what do you do when you’re not perfect? What do you do when perfection is not possible? Because in law school you can get a great grade and you’re, “Oh, it’s great, it’s perfect.” There’s no such thing as perfect in practice. There just isn’t. It’s just about how do you improve and how do you keep from making the same mistake multiple times?

Alexis Robertson

Okay, and watch how I’m going to wrap this up, guys. And if this podcast on our hundredth episode shows anything, it’s that lawyers are people and that truly we’re hiring individuals. We do care about who you are. We want to know who that is. So if this is your first time listening, I hope you go back and listen to some of the other 99 episodes because this podcast is proof that for Foley & Lardner, we absolutely do care about that. So with that, I want to thank Dan, Tori, Kendall. This has been so much fun and I’m going to speak on all of your behalfs right now, which is that for anyone listening, if there’s something that any of us have said, please feel free to find us on foley.com. Send us an email, especially do it for the two members of the recruiting committee, Kendall and Tori. But with that, I want to thank you all so much for being on the show.

Kendall Waters

Thanks, Alexis.

Tori Roessler

Yeah, thank you. This was so fun.

Dan Sharpe

Thanks for having me, boss.

Alexis Robertson

Thank you for listening to The Path & The Practice. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and join us again next time. And if you did enjoy it, please share it, subscribe, and leave us a review as your feedback on the podcast is important to us. Also, please note that this podcast may be considered attorney advertising and is made available by Foley & Lardner LLP for informational purposes only. This podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship. Any opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of Foley & Lardner LLP, its partners, or its clients. Additionally, this podcast is not meant to convey the firm’s legal position on behalf of any client, nor is it intended to convey specific legal advice.