When Mani was an associate at Susman Godfrey, he took a new colleague out for lunch for a vulnerable conversation about the demands of elite practice.

A decade later, Mani's lunch friend was now a rainmaker - and Mani was who he called for funding.

In this episode, we explore how Mani has used principles of trust, focus, and alignment to go from trial lawyer to GC of a multi-strategy fund to launching a litigation fund:

• Trust
  • being trusted as a peer trial lawyer created the relationships that led to the fund
  • the intangibles become the tangibles
• Focus
  • focusing on Texas trial lawyers creates operational excellence
  • it also enables them to act faster on decaying assets using limited information
• Alignment
  • aligning upside and downside with firms creates a flywheel for trust and repeatability
  • it also allows them to take risks others shy from

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Joe Ahmad is a trial lawyer who’s tried 100+ cases and built his entire approach around a simple premise: trials are a risk sport. If you need certainty, don’t go to trial. 

In this conversation, Joe breaks down what separates persuasive advocates from “polished” advocates, and why the jury can sense the difference immediately. He shares specific stories (including a New Year’s Eve mistrial decision he’d never repeat) and practical techniques for dealing with bad facts, corporate narratives, and the emotional game of the courtroom.

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Patti Burris had two kids and an associate's degree when she started her path towards law school. Yet she made her way to the top of her class by building systems to succeed even when there wasn't a safety net. And she's reframing her biglaw path from a necessary drudge to an opportunity to build a rewarding life. 

Patti's law school story begins with walking into the wrong job interview, which led to a life-changing mentorship. She shares the principles she used to call her shot in law school and end up at the top of the class through relationships with peers and professors, systems for learning, and cycles of sprints and rest.  

Now, as a driven biglaw funds lawyers, Patti shares the formula she uses to ensure she's investing in herself every week. Patti also shares how she stacks goals (social, academic, professional) for exponential returns.

This episode is special because it's both incredibly inspirational and full of practical techniques to achieve more with limited time. Patti has challenged me to make the most out of my time to ensure I'm living in line with my values and ambitions. 

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Priyanka Timblo left the comfort of Paul Weiss to join a five-year-old litigation boutique, betting on a place where she could practice the skill she knew she was best at: being on her feet in court. That calculated risk paid off spectacularly, culminating in a $101 million jury verdict against Walmart in Arkansas, one of the largest verdicts in the state's history.

Her path wasn't conventional. A Canadian law school graduate who was told by recruiters to pursue business development instead of litigation, Priyanka has built her career on being underestimated and using it as fuel. Priyanka lays out how starting as an associate, she leveraged being underestimated to prevail in overlooked opportunities. We also explore the anti-optionality path in law — the competitive advantage in getting good at one thing and sticking with it. 

Priyanka talks about what it takes to continue down this path: the sacrifices in her personal life and the challenging and rewarding inner-game of skill mastery. 

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Judge Vince Chhabria is a district court judge in the Northern District of California. When I shared with previous podcast guests I was interviewing Judge Chhabria, the excitement was palpable - these experienced litigators think of Judge Chhabria as "insightful", "focused", and "sharp", and this is a rare opportunity to learn how an influential judge thinks.

Judge Chhabria and I talked about:
- his unexpected path from the office of the San Francisco City Attorney's Office to the bench, any why city attorney roles are so valuable. 
- the surprising impact of case management on justice, and how few motions are decided by precedent
- what keeps the job interesting 11 years into the role
- why moving cases forward is an underrated part of public service
- the "memdispo" technique that efficiently allocates judicial resources to opinions 
- what he misses most about not being a federal judge
- his most important career advice for his clerks

We also discuss how he researched and considered precedent for the recent Kadrey v. Meta decision on fair use in generative AI. 

Any lawyer looking for an original approach to career decisions and how they practice should listen to this episode. 

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Rakesh Kilaru is a partner at Wilkinson Stekloff. In a few years, Rakesh has resolved headline-making disputes, including defeating a $21 billion challenge to the NFL’s media model, defeating the FTC’s challenge to Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and negotiating an innovative settlement over the NCAA’s compensation rules. 

And he's barely over 40. 

I reached out to Rakesh to learn more about his practice, and the conversation  flowed. For someone of his accomplishments, Rakesh is remarkably humble. He's driven by excellence and impact. We could easily have recorded a much longer episode. 

In this episode we discuss these frame-shifting principles:

- Practice making decisions under uncertainty. From his time at the White House, Rakesh learned to map the real stakeholders, build trust as an honest broker, and make sure everyone who needs a say is actually in the loop before deciding

- Choose environments that improve decisions. A fixed-fee model  removes distortions, encourages collaboration, and lets teams right-size effort to outcomes.

- Focus. Work out from first-principles what is helpful to a jury or judge, and continually ask what are the 1-3 issues that matter. 

- Challenge assumptions. Don't rely on conventions from the practice area, but identify your own solutions. 

- Develop a generalist mindset. You can settle cases, you can try them. You can take principles learned in products liability to antitrust cases and beyond. 

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Dai Wei Chin Feman is Managing Director and Corporate Counsel at Parabellum Capital, a litigation funder. This conversation gets practical in breaking down the system Dai Wai has built for career success: a diversified portfolio of relationships, skills, and value-creation mechanisms. 

Business development creates differentiation when technical skills are commoditized. 
Optionality multiplies this by developing multiple career paths simultaneously. 
Affinity networks become firm-wide value platforms, not just personal networking.

Deliberate generosity treats relationships like portfolio diversification - invest broadly since you can't predict which connections matter. 
Policy expertise becomes a defensive moat in niche industries.

Progress from "say yes" to strategic "no" to protect your systems while preserving ability to seize high-value opportunities.

Daily habits (20-minute social support + real-time alerts) create information arbitrage at scale.

Raw talent isn't sufficient. These strategies build transferable assets that maintain value across market conditions.

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

When tech platforms face “bet-the-company” speech fights, they call Ambika Kumar. We dig into how Ambika built a First Amendment practice from Seattle, argued a 7:30 a.m. TRO that blocked the first TikTok ban, and balances high-stakes litigation with raising two kids.

Ambika explains why eagerness is an asymmetric bet, how concise emails and phone calls keep clients calm, and what Section 230’s future means for AI. She also opens up about career inflection points, from early mentor hacks to leading headline-grabbing cases.

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Quinn Emanuel partner Manisha Sheth has moved twice between elite private practice and high-stakes public enforcement. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss:

• how to bet on yourself to cultivate new skills
• how she ran 250 lawyers at the N.Y. Attorney General’s office and sped up investigations with two simple process tweaks
• the hottest state-level enforcement trends in climate, consumer finance, and AI
• dangling from an ice face at 19,000 ft

Listen for practical insights on career strategy, process and delegation as competitive advantages, and a couple mountaineering stories that will make your palms sweat.

About the host:

Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

Want a 20-minute bootcamp for your LinkedIn presence? Episode 037 for Khurram's Quorum is a little different. My guest is Sunny Kim, who went from biglaw to make a big reset for her career helping lawyers find their voice in social media. 

We cover how Sunny tinkered her way into discovering some of the best ways for lawyers to share their stories to build trust and authority with peers and clients, and get into brass tacks about how to position yourself on LinkedIn through your profile and posts. 

At the end of this 50 minute episode, you'll understand why you should bother sharing your ideas on LinkedIn, and have an easy playbook for getting started.