Lawyers Who Learn

What if you could say "build me a spaceship" and watch it happen within the hour? Ben Dach, a partner at Pierson Ferdinand, believes that the future isn't as distant as it sounds. A self-described "futurist patent attorney," Ben has spent his career turning ambitious ideas into real products—from surgical robotics that have saved thousands of lives to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, aerospace, and defense.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Ben to unpack his recent Lawline course, AI and the Future of Patent Law. They discuss why patent approvals have nearly doubled under new USPTO leadership, why AI-related filings keep climbing even as approval standards stay strict, and what quantum computing actually means for the future of innovation, from superposition to real-world use cases already reshaping entire industries.

Ben also traces his own winding path—from biomedical engineering and a chemistry PhD to pharmaceutical patent litigation and law school at night—showing how a "zigzag" career can build genuine expertise. Beyond the science, he shares what teaching means to him: not lecturing from a distance, but building real dialogue with the professionals he trains, treating every course as a two-way conversation rather than a one-sided lecture.

For attorneys navigating an AI-driven legal landscape, Ben's conversation offers a grounded perspective on where patent law is headed, and why staying human matters most as the tools around us get smarter.

About one week before every Lawline update, Mark Conrad checks his slides and makes changes, because the law hasn't stopped moving. A 38-year veteran of Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, Conrad has spent the last decade turning the chaos of sports law into some of Lawline's most-watched courses, with nearly 10,000 completions and near-perfect ratings.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Conrad about the collapse of the old "student athlete" model. The $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement cracked open a system built on amateurism, ushering in NIL payouts, deregulated transfers, and a de facto free agency for college stars. Conrad explains monopsony power in pro leagues, the murky legality of prop betting and prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, and why private equity is rushing into franchises now worth exponentially more than they were five years ago.

Conrad also traces his own unlikely path—a detour into journalism, and an accidental teaching gig that turned into a career reinventing itself every year. He shares a sharp lesson on where CLE teaching ends and legal advice begins, plus a book recommendation, Mary Cain's memoir on abuse in elite athletics, that exposes the human cost behind sports' biggest brands.

For any attorney trying to keep pace with an industry being rewritten in real time, this conversation is a fast, sharp briefing on where the money, the power, and the legal fights are headed next.

When DEI became a political lightning rod, Natalie Holder didn't shut down her business — she renamed it. Quest Diversity Initiatives quietly became Quest Employment Initiatives, a small shift in language that let Holder keep doing the same work for clients suddenly nervous about the label, while the backlash swept through boardrooms around her.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Natalie Holder about the winding career that led to that decision. Holder traces her path from litigating discrimination claims for the New York City government to shooting scrappy, homemade YouTube videos like "Dinner at the Boss's House," a side project that eventually became her full-time business and led to consent decree and training work with organizations including Fox News, following the Bill O'Reilly harassment scandal, and the NYC Fire Department. She explains why she believes most organizations haven't actually abandoned DEI so much as rebranded it as "culture and belonging," citing data showing roughly 80% of companies remain quietly committed despite the public retreat — and why staying visible, through bar association events and CLE teaching, kept opening doors she never could have predicted.

Holder's rebrand is a case study in surviving a hostile climate without abandoning the underlying mission. For attorneys navigating today's charged DEI landscape, her conversation offers a grounded, practical look at how compliance obligations, business strategy, and personal reinvention can move forward together, even as the language around them keeps shifting.

Angeli Raven Fitch failed the California bar exam five times before finally passing on her sixth attempt—collapsing on a sidewalk in tears when she saw the results. That resilience now fuels a career spanning criminal defense, AI ethics education, competitive storytelling, and caregiving for her mother with advanced dementia.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Angeli to trace the thread running through her many careers—attorney, faculty member, voice actor, children's book author—and finds it comes down to one thing: authentic self-expression. That instinct shows up in her legal work, where as co-founder of the Three Strikes Justice Center she's helped free clients serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses, once putting a vulnerable client on the stand against expert advice and watching the judge visibly soften. It shows up again on stage, where she's won storytelling competitions drawing on an acting background that taught her to live inside a story rather than recite it.

Fitch also teaches Lawline courses on AI ethics, warning that lawyers who ignore confidentiality and competence rules are courting real risk. Just as striking is her reflection on caring for her mother, who no longer recognizes her: rather than grieve the parent she lost, Fitch has learned to join her mother's world, finding unexpected joy there.

This conversation offers a model for embracing failure as fuel, treating storytelling as a skill, and approaching AI's ethical demands with curiosity rather than fear.

Hector Valle spent 11 years trying nearly 150 jury trials as a Dallas, Texas gang unit prosecutor, piecing together complex evidence and reluctant witnesses into stories that jurors could understand and trust.

He had no idea those same skills would one day make him one of Texas's leading voices on college athletes' rights and a go-to communications strategist at the crossroads of law, public opinion, and sports.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman sits down with Hector to trace a career that refuses to stay in one lane: from the DA's office to the General Land Office under George P. Bush, from launching his own podcast to teaching strategic communications at Southern Methodist University to testifying before the Texas Legislature on NIL legislation and advising athletes and stakeholders before most attorneys and casual fans knew what NIL stood for.

Hector's years prosecuting gangs, where witnesses didn't want to testify and cases had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, became the North Star for his later work helping state agencies communicate and exhibit transparency to the taxpayer during active litigation.

While many attorneys respond with "no comment," Hector built a philosophy and methodology around educating and winning in the court of public opinion while achieving favorable results for clients.

Now a Lawline faculty member with five-star ratings across more than 2,000 course completions, Hector also challenges attorneys to stop wrapping their identity around their job title, which frees them to pivot their career to other industries and advocacy that can be even more fulfilling.

This conversation is essential for any lawyer questioning whether their skills translate beyond their current role, or ready to build a brand that outlasts any single position.

Kyle Shanon earned the nickname "Bitcoin Kid" in his first semester of law school, when he peppered professors with questions no one could answer: Can cryptocurrency go in a will? Is it a security? Years later, he's built a thriving niche answering exactly those questions for real clients.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Kyle about the unlikely path that took him from a directionless 3L—who put off the bar exam to chase other options—to an estate planning attorney at Crow Estate Planning and Probate, now deeply entrenched in the cryptocurrency and digital asset space. Kyle traces his fascination with Bitcoin to childhood in Tennessee, watching his father return from Iraq with foreign currency that turned out to be worthless—an early lesson in how fragile money can be. That instinct now shapes how he helps clients protect digital wealth, from securing crypto wallets to avoiding cautionary tales like the man who tossed a hard drive holding thousands of Bitcoin into a landfill.

Kyle also unpacks where Bitcoin fits in a world eyeing digital currencies, translating complex financial ideas into plain-English estate planning guidance. His Lawline course, "Estate Planning and Probate for the Digital Age," has drawn over 1,000 attorneys and a 4.9-star rating.

As digital assets go mainstream, Kyle's conversation offers a roadmap for attorneys who want to stay ahead of a fast-changing practice area—and proof that understanding the technology isn't optional anymore.

When Tracy Sanders Rucker began researching workplace appearance discrimination after her own hair loss experience, she uncovered a space where employment law, personal identity, and corporate culture collided. What started as personal curiosity became a book, then a brand, then a thriving CLE teaching platform — with a speaking calendar now booked through year's end, from Yale to major national law firms.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Tracy, a Syracuse Law graduate specializing in employment law and workforce development, to trace her decade-long journey from first-time author in 2016 to full-time legal educator and consultant. After stepping back from immigration practice during a turbulent political climate, Tracy settled into her South Carolina lake house and turned 10 years of quiet brand-building into a full-time teaching career.

Tracy breaks down the post-DEI workplace through her employee handbook course, explaining why smart employers are now focusing on voluntary inclusion and risk management rather than checkbox compliance. She also shares the story behind her hair straightener MDL course — and how one honest student review pushed her to expand the topic beyond a single demographic into the broader world of carcinogens in beauty products.

Throughout the conversation, Tracy reflects on how The Four Agreements, The Let Them Theory, and The Prophet shaped her core belief: character matters more than comfort. Her story is a reminder that the best time to build something meaningful is long before you think you need it.

Chip Cannon graduated from Tulane with a history and German degree, no burning desire to practice law, and a scholarship to study in West Berlin — where he'd find himself in a bar with friends the very night the wall fell. It took four years abroad, a near-expired LSAT, and a year and a half of temping to finally land at a small energy regulatory firm. He never looked back.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman speaks with Chip Cannon, partner at Hogan Lovells and adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, about a 30-year career that has tracked almost perfectly with the transformation of the American power sector — from regulated monopoly to competitive markets, and now to the AI-driven data center boom.

Cannon brings rare clarity to one of the most urgent infrastructure challenges of our time. A data center can take six months to build but six years to get powered — and regulatory complexity across 50 states makes that gap hard to close. He describes a site in northern Louisiana nearly the size of Manhattan, currently nothing but land and worker camps, that will require three new gas-fired plants just to operate.

Beyond the energy world, Cannon shares a personal lesson from a toxic workplace that forced him to examine not just what others had done wrong, but what he owed himself — including self-forgiveness. His message to law students: careers are not linear, scrappiness has real value, and the path forward rarely looks the way you planned.

Christine Hummel walked into law school with one goal: become the compassionate estate planning attorney who helps families through their darkest moments — just like the attorneys who helped her mother after her father died suddenly when Christine was a child. What followed was anything but the plan. A cross-country move, no law license in a new state, and a single emergency phone call from a loyal colleague became the unlikely foundation of a 24-year consulting business she never saw coming.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Christine Hummel, founder of Hummel Consultation Services, to trace the winding road from grieving daughter to accidental entrepreneur — and how a niche she stumbled into became a career that may be helping far more people than estate planning ever could have.

Christine shares how she launched her Medicare Secondary Payer compliance practice with almost no contacts and no clients — and how teaching became her secret weapon for growth. She unpacks why she insisted on delivering entire five-hour CLEs solo: one clear, authoritative voice in a notoriously gray-area field keeps attorneys from leaving more confused than when they arrived. It also turned out to be brilliant marketing.

With over 15 courses and 5,000 completions on Lawline, Christine's teaching has become her most powerful business development tool — converting curious attorneys into consulting clients one CLE at a time.

What if the reason you became a lawyer had nothing to do with money, prestige, or even a specific practice area — but with preparing for a geopolitical event that hasn't happened yet? That's Jeonghoon Ha's story. A former foreign policy scholar, he pursued law with one goal in mind: being ready to contribute to Korean reunification when the moment comes. That unusual origin shaped everything — including how he ended up as one of the clearest legal voices on blockchain, stablecoins, and digital asset regulation.

In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Jeonghoon, a solo practitioner and Lawline faculty member specializing in Web3 and digital asset law. Together they unpack why stablecoins exist, what the GENIUS Act actually does, and why the U.S. pivot away from a central bank digital currency may be a calculated move in the global currency war — all in language that doesn't require a finance degree to follow.

But the conversation goes well beyond the law. Jeonghoon talks about leaving Big Law to build his own practice, how preparing CLE courses forced him to become a sharper thinker, and what surprised him about teaching on Lawline — including client referrals he never anticipated. He rounds it out with the book that shaped his twenties and the rap song he keeps returning to.

A wide-ranging conversation about curiosity, preparation, and building a career around something you genuinely believe in.