The Filevine Fireside

Our guest today has worked in Big Law, a boutique firm, and now owns her own practice. She's logged her billable hours and she's figured out flat rates; she's represented multinational Fortune 200 companies and scrappy startups.

Our guest today is Radiance Harris, the founder and managing attorney of Radiance IP Law. Today she's going to share with us the lessons she's learned throughout her incredibly diverse experience.

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In our podcast interviews, we usually talk about new ideas and innovations in law. But today, we're talking about a very old idea. And by old . . . I mean thousands of years old.

But our guests today believe it holds the key to transforming the modern legal practice.

Kentucky attorneys Renee Heinrich and Helen Bukelmez are here to talk to us today about the role of mindfulness and meditation in the modern legal practice.

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We live in a country that touts itself as the land of the free and the home of the brave. And yet we spend the majority of our waking hours in undemocratic workplaces where we fear retaliation for speaking out against fraud, assault, or other forms of misconduct.

We've seen how the #MeToo movement is pushing back against workplace harassment and nondisclosure agreements. We're also living through some hard fights over mandatory arbitration agreements, the place of unions in our society, and whether whistleblowers should be protected.

We're living through a battle over what justice looks like in the workplace. And today's guest is right in the thick of the fray. Welcome to the Filevine Fireside. I'm Katie Wolf.

Today we're talking with attorney R. Scott Oswald. Scott is a hugely accomplished trial lawyer working with the Employment Law Group in Washington DC. He has done groundbreaking work around employment law and whistleblower law.

He's also a prolific speaker, advisor, and writer on these issues. We're lucky to have him on the show today.

As Patrick Arenz says, there are few jobs that can change another person's life forever. But being a trial lawyer is one of those jobs.

Patrick Arenz is a trial lawyer with the firm Robins Kaplan, working on patent and copyright law. And he's a pretty big deal for the intellectual property cases he's handled. But I first ran into Patrick's name in a very different place. It was the story of one of his clients - not a tech company or an internet startup, but a young Hmong woman who was suing her abuser.

What made this case unique, is that the abuse happened in Laos, and the man was a U.S. citizen who was participating in sex tourism. Never before had a victim of sex-tourism won a civil suit against an abuser until this case.

This story got international attention, but it wasn't Patrick's first pro bono case. Since he became an attorney, he's been finding ways to help clients who would otherwise have no access to the legal system.

In 2018, he wont he Pro Bono Publico Award, given to attorneys who have shown a remarkable dedication to the public good. Somehow, he's been doing this work in-between the massive multi-million dollar patent and copyright law cases he runs.

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When you talk to potential clients, do you connect with their fundamental hopes and fears? Or do their eyes glaze over? Does your website make potential clients excited, or does it leave them confused? Our guest today will share his tips for remaining relevant to our clients and thriving as an attorney in a world transformed by technology.

Jeff Echols is managing principal of professional services organizations for the marketing agency Revenue Path Group. He'll share with us the science behind human decisions, and how an attorney can harness it to build a successful and sustainable practice.

Learn more about Jeff and Revenue Path Group at www.revenuepathgroup.com.

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You've seen it in your Facebook feed. You've watched it bring down media empires and elected officials. We're living in the #MeToo moment, when unprecedented numbers of people are coming forward to share their experiences as victims of sexual harassment and survivors of sexual assault.

Today, we're talking to civil rights attorney Jean Hyams, who has gained national renown for her work representing victims of sexual assault. Jean is sharing with us what it means to be a "#MeToo Movement Lawyer" in exciting but difficult times.

Learn more about Jean Hyams at her law firm's website: levyvinick.com/portfolio/jean/

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Can you really have it all? Can you have a profitable job and live true to your values by making the world a better place? Attorney and writer Allen Bromberger believes the answer is yes, and he's built a thriving legal practice on that idea.

Allen Bromberger is a pioneer in a new field combining non-profit and for-profit legal structures. That means his clients are simultaneously pursuing two goals: financial well-being, and social or environmental well-being. Sometimes this is called the 4th sector, and in Allen's 35 years of legal practice, it's moved from a fringe idea to a thriving pillar of our society and our economy.

In addition to practicing at the firm Perlman and Perlman, Allen has co-authored the book "The Art of Social Enterprise: Business As If People Mattered." He's much sought-after for public speeches and presentations, but he's taken the time today to tell us about his work, the skills it requires, and how these same ideals can build a successful law practice.

We talk a lot about the future of the legal practice on the Filevine Fireside. But one thing we maybe forget is that the future of Law really belongs to future lawyers. We should be asking: who will the next generation of lawyers be? What challenges will they face? And how will they get through them?

Our guest today has some insight. Christopher Chapman is the President and CEO of the non-profit AccessLex, and AccessLex is in the business of improving law schools - and the well-being of students who attend them.

Car collisions are the bread and butter of many personal injury attorneys, but today we talk to an attorney who has changed her focus from four wheels to two.

Ann Groninger from North Carolina is a co-founder of Bike Law, a national network of personal injury attorneys representing injured cyclists. There are now 66 million cyclists in the U.S. Cities and individuals are promoting bicycles as a feature of healthy, fun, and sustainable lives, but cyclists still face a higher risk of death and injury than drivers do. That's where Ann and Bike Law come into the picture.

Ann has found that her cycling clients are special. Their needs and interests set them apart from car drivers, and she's generously agreed to share her stories and thoughts today on the Filevine Fireside.

In every legal drama, it's the oral arguments that get all the attention. But for most cases, what really wins is good legal writing. And today on the Filevine Fireside, we're talking with one of this country's most esteemed legal writers.

Ross Guberman has worked with thousands of attorneys and judges and dozens of state and federal agencies teaching the in's and out's of great legal writing. He's the president of Legal Writing Pro (an advanced training and consulting firm), and he just released the editing tool BriefCatch at briefcatch.com.

Ross is also a professorial lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School, and holds degrees from Yale, the Sorbonne, and the University of Chicago Law School. He's here to talk about his work, and to give us a few tips to improve and polish our legal writing.