Tyler Finn
My name is Tyler Finn and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Abstract Podcast. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so we sat down and pulled together some stories from the legal and business experts that you hear every week about managing stress, achieving a healthy work-life balance, navigating tragedies at home, leaving toxic working environments, and more. I hope you keep listening and feel inspired to make a positive change in your life and career, or at least feel a little less alone. Let's get started.

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Tyler Finn
Here's Ryan Neer, General Counsel at Nova Credit, on navigating imposter syndrome and feeling like an outsider in the legal community.

Ryan Nier

So when I moved to San Francisco, I didn't even have a job. I was chasing a girl and I didn't have this job. And I interviewed at Paul Hastings thinking that I was interviewing for an employment law job. And it was midway through the interview with Ned where he was, it just became obvious that you know, at this time,

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this was like 2005. So, you know, I was responding like a newspaper ad or something. So, he came out and he interviewed, this is not an employment thing. I acted cool, or maybe at the time, and I was like, oh, of course, of course. In my head, I was like, shit, this is not a, this is a, this is not employment law. I didn't even know what employment law really was. And so it was litigation. This is a litigation job.

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And I was like, okay. And they mentioned they had this big case that could be its own podcast. Like he didn't mention it by name because it was secret at the time, but he told me about this case they wanted me on

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because I was a software developer in the past and this case was gonna hinge on software development. And so they really wanted someone with expertise and so by the time I came in that case it settled. But I came in and they're like, just kidding. And my first project was a hundred bankers boxes of documents, mostly in Chinese, that were dumped after an appeal

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where the client had fired their law firm and hired us and I mean, not me, but hired somebody, and I was the one who was given it. And so I was one associate, and I was given 100 banker's boxes full of documents that were about the development

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of an acetic acid manufacturing plant that were somewhat in Mandarin Chinese. And I just was like, okay. So I was excited. In many ways, I was so focused on the work and the problem solving that I was like, okay. So I was excited. In many ways, I was so focused on the work and the problem solving that I was like, all right, let me get a translator.

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Let me figure all this out. And I was like a beautiful mind in there, man, with red string, trying to connect the dots to this trade secret case and who saw what and when and whatever else. And anyway, I did, when I would stop to think, I was so scared because I didn't even want to be a lawyer. The reason, I mean, I applied to be in the FBI after law school. I wanted to be a screenwriter. I would move to LA for a while.

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Tyler Finn
Really?

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Yeah, I was trying to do anything in some ways. It wasn't that I was scared of the law necessarily, but I thought, I don't know if this is my passion. So I applied at the FBI and I, it was only, I'd been, like, I was like, wait, what? And they had sent my materials to San Diego

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instead of San Francisco. And I guess the San Diego FBI regional office was trying to get ahold of me and I didn't live there. So anyway, I, at that point, was like, all right, I'm staying atl Eastings, because this is, I got a bonus to come here, I don't want to claw it back, like I guess I got to do this. And I have this memory of going to a partner's house

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for a poker tournament. I grew up, and I should say, I grew up on a farm. Like I grew up, when I was, for the early part of my life, upstate New York for half my life, half my childhood. And the other half was in rural Florida. And so I didn't know, I'd never tasted wine. I didn't, you know, I didn't know anything. And so I was at this party and someone handed me what I've come to learn

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now is a tamale. And I just put that bad boy right in my mouth. And with the husk, I didn't have no idea. And the person, two people looked at me in In retrospect. It's so funny. It's so funny. And two people looked at me and they, they, they assumed, I think that I was being funny. And then I just kept chewing. It was like I was eating a shoe. And then, cause they were mini tamales.

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And anyway, I eventually like grabbed a napkin and like spit out this tamale. But I felt like, man, I remember going through interviews and the reason I was so excited about Ned, who's like an incredible human and my biggest mentor was, um, I looked at him and I thought, this is the only person I've seen. He, and just a brief background on Ned. He grew up in an intern, he was born in an internment camp. 

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Tyler Finn

Wow.

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Born in an internment camp, grew up on a farm. And he was the first person I looked at and was like, you're, I mean, I didn't grow up in an internment camp, but like, you're kind of like me. Like you, I could maybe see myself in you somewhat. And that was the first time that I had seen in any of my legal interviews or what I had done

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where I was like, this person, I can see a little bit of myself in them. And so in this moment, I think with the tamale and everything else, I definitely had this imposter syndrome. I mean, I had it all throughout my career, but I just focused, I think I just did a lot of heads down, focused on the problem and just solving

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whatever problem was ahead of me and paying off my crazy bills and just moving one foot right in front of the other that I never, when I came up to breathe and looked around though, I was like, man, I don't know half of what these people are talking about. I didn't, you know, I, I remember getting, they gave me a, um, whatever Kate Spade's brother, Jack

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Spade, they give me a Jack Spade bag. I mean, I immediately sold it. Cause I was like, I don't need this. Like why I got, I got like $160 for it. And I was so excited because I was just like, I don't need a fancy bag. I need money. Um, so I just think I was, I was very different. I cut my own hair.

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Like I, I just, I don't know. I just, I didn't know anything of what I was doing. I owned one suit at that point in my life and it was green. No one told me like, if you're gonna get one suit, don't make it green. So I was going to every meeting and I had like every interview, every wedding in this like olive green suit. I didn't know anything.

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So yeah, imposter syndrome, I still like, you know, moments in my career now still all the time where I'm like, should I, you know, like I'm, I think there are a lot of tasks I have to do on an everyday basis where I go, last night I had bread and butter.

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And I go, God, everyone seems to know what they're talking about about this and I don't. And I think what has gotten me through it is just like put my head down and focus on the problem is just like put my head down and focus on the problem and don't pop my head up for long enough to be like,

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Tyler Finn 

Next up, we have Joe Sullivan, former chief security officer at Uber, Facebook and Cloudflare on managing the stress of a federal indictment. 

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Joe Sullivan

I never believed it was going to come because I'm still fighting the case. It's still, it's pending on appeal and I still believe I'm going to win and it's taken some turns that I think are going to help it get there from a legal perspective. But, yeah, I was talking about it with my attorney, because I was terminated, like I said, I was let go in the fall of 2017, on Thanksgiving week, in a very sudden, kind of rude way. And then I went to work at Cloudflare.

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You know, I probably felt worse after I was terminated from Uber than I felt when I got indicted, just because it blindsided me so much. And that the company was taking the view that it was on it. And so I knew for at least a year before the indictment, well, first it was a criminal complaint I was charged charged with and then they did an indictment later.

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So I learned about the criminal complaint the same way I learned that I was getting fired from Uber, in the news. 

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Tyler Finn 

Press release? 

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Yeah, the US Attorney's Office and the FBI did press conferences. They didn't tell me they were going to charge me on that day. I was sitting at my desk working for Cloudflare, working from home because it was August of 2020. Yeah, so six months into the pandemic, I was sitting at my desk working. And my daughter, who was moving into college that week, she was with her mom and they called me because, like, I was texting with my ex-wife about how we were gonna tell her,

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like, literally on the day she's moving to college. I learned about it. And my daughter's calls because her friend heard on NPR that I'd been arrested. And so she started getting people reaching out to her, like, are you okay? Because the FBI put out a press release that was a lie. They said that they had arrested me when they actually hadn't, I've never been arrested.

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I don't know why they did that. After I asked them to retract it a few weeks later, and they did. But they put out that fake press release that everybody, so everybody thought I was in jail. Yeah. And I had to call everybody and say,

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no, I'm not, I'm not here.

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Tyler Finn 

Quite a type, huh?

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So it was, yeah, so that was a pretty stressful thing, but at that point I didn't believe it was gonna happen because I knew what it was like when I was a federal prosecutor. Like we had a million cases we could do and I only did cases where it just felt like, honestly, it felt like it was a slam dunk each case

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because you could pick from so many different levels of guilt, so to speak. And I knew what really happened in this case. And so I just didn't believe it. So I was shocked. And then I didn't go to trial for another two years, so I

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went back to work and worked for the next two years and put my trust in my lawyers. I will say that like the other hard part was the first time I went into the federal courthouse in San Francisco a couple of months before the trial, and it just hit me on a whole other physical level. Like here's an office in a courtroom that I've been into as a federal prosecutor and now sitting at the other table was pretty intense.

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And I always think of myself as a person who stays calm under pressure. Because in security, you have what could be the worst situation ever come up like once every two months and then fortunately it usually isn't but you know you you have to treat it like it could be the worst thing ever and so I'm used to that but when it's about you it's a much harder

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emote like it's it felt like my brain couldn't think the way I normally can

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like usually I can I can look at a situation and be like we need to do this It felt like my brain couldn't think the way I normally can.

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Like usually I can look at a situation and be like, oh, we need to do this, this, and this. And I was just like, lawyers, please just do what, like my brain just couldn't, like even sitting in trial, I just felt like I was a zombie version of myself and I wanted to be more active.

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It was, I think, after I lost the trial, I think of it as winning this. We won the sentencing because that just knocked me out of my stupor, and I was like, out of my stupor, and I was like, I need to own this,

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Tyler Finn 

Next up, we have an excerpt from my conversation with LawTrade's co-founders, Rod Ahmed and Ashish Walia, on how to support your business partner during difficult times.

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Raad Ahmed 

I'll say one thing then I'll pass it off to you for the D.N.O.s. We have one rule which is like we both can't be depressed at the same time. So no matter what, whoever kind of is depressed and they kind of call that out, the other party can't be sucked into that. Even if you have to fake it, you have to just, you have to be the optimistic one. Yeah, so we get that sort of natural, you know, downside, whatever, when we need it, but the other side has to, you know, I don't know, fake it sometimes.

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Ashish Walia

Yeah, I know, for sure.

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Raad Ahmed

I mean, optimism.

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Ashish Walia

Yeah, we do a good job at supporting each other when we know, you know, that maybe there's some level of self doubt that one might be feeling or, you know, feeling down about whatever issue you're dealing with at the company. So that's been important. And we've always still, you know, no matter all the different pivots and the different cycles that we've been through, we've always kind of kept the same routines as well, right? Like we meet up regularly, we work in the office together every single day, we grab coffee at the same time every single morning, we hang out when we're not working as well. So, I think when you just have that trust with your business partner, your co-founder, it just helps you survive the droughts much better. You know what I mean?

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Raad Ahmed

It's just showing up. It's like going to the gym, right? If you're trying to get jacked, right? Yeah, if you show up even on the days you're hungover and you're tired and you're sleepy and you have the worst like, or a sleep score, like you're still going in there and you're like lifting that, you know, lifting that weight. and we went remote and all that. Like we've, we always made it a point to have an office and it's just, it makes the biggest difference to just show up, physically show up, physically open your laptop, just sit there, even though it's like a terrible day, your revenue's down, you're like, people are kind of like, you know, like leaving the company or whatever, just to be able to show up and sit there and kind of like be near somebody else that's also showing up, like that just goes so far. And again, it compounds it. Like the skill of showing up, even when you don't want to show up and things are hard, is I feel like a really underrated skill. And I think there was something on YC that kind of talked about that.

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Tyler Finn

The power of habit. The power of habit. I mean, I'm a big believer in that for sure, right?

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Tyler Finn 

Next up, we have Dan Haley, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at GILD on balancing work and life after a cancer diagnosis.

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Dan Haley 

So it's, it's interesting. So that is true. And I, this is, this is, it's hard to answer this question without sounding self-aggrandizing. The first time I had cancer, I was in my last year of law school and it was literally my treatments, my surgery was right before finals and then my treatments were all through studying for the bar.

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And I was working part-time at Goodwin Proctor at the time. So my day was I'd get up in the morning, I would go to Goodwin Proctor, I would work for half the day, I would go to my bar review class, and I would go to Brigham and Women's Hospital, get my radiation, go home, usually throw up, and then study for the bar. That sounds, ugh, just, you know, it was not optional.

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I mean, I suppose, right, that's not totally true. I could have said, like, I'm going to put off the bar a year and I'm going to do all these things, but it didn't occur to me at the time. And so in the file of silver linings, that experience did give me the ability ever after to say, well, this thing I'm going through

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is not that six week long period. I'm not throwing up involuntarily while I study for the, so you kind of get through. Right. And I don't know, like you can't visit the alternate reality,

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you know, where I can't visit the alternate reality where I didn't go through that. So I don't know how much of my work ethic or whatever stems from that. I suspect a pretty good chunk of it. And so to circle back to your actual question, yes, people ask me that. It often comes up in the context of I do endurance events sometimes to stay in good cardiovascular health. And so I've done a couple of Ironman triathlons and that requires you get up at like three in the morning to do the training. And yeah, you know, how do you work that into your work schedule? And you know, gosh, I'm

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too busy. You know, you must. And I always say actually, I'm probably at my best when I'm training for something like that, because it is the mind, it creates, you know, the imperative to like actually use your time deliberately and that goes for family time and social time and all that too. And having a goal is just having a goal having an ostentatious goal. It's a tremendously motivating thing beyond just the goal itself.

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Tyler Finn 

Here's a clip from my conversation with Zoe McMahon, head of legal ops at HP, where we talked about mindfulness and bringing parts of your personal self into the workplace.

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Zoe McMahon

For someone that has been at the company for 30 years, I'm a VP, I'm an executive, I'm successful, but I'm human, right? And I think, you know, we all have, or I'm going to speculate care a lot about mindfulness practice, and I think it's a little bit missing in the workplace, sort of recognizing, yeah, just a little bit of calm. But to actually speak up and say that to people at work without them going, are you crazy? You know, there's a little bit bit of trepidation about it. But I have seen by experimenting a little bit by being brave

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and sort of dropping it in from time to time, I've seen people respond, oh, yeah, I like that too. And I think sometimes when people are brave and they bring perhaps an aspect that they care about into the workplace. It liberates other people to do the same thing, as you were just saying in this untold stories

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case. And I think that's a really good thing to bring our humanity. And particularly if we can be more respectful, more gracious to each other, bring ease. There is so much stress in a legal department. You know, as we've heard at this conference, the demand for legal work is growing, the budgets are shrinking, there's not enough bodies you

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can throw at the problem. So along with efficiencies and skills and technology to drive those improvements, we have to have some corresponding empathy for each other as well. Sure. So I think like if we can all just take it down a notch and be nice to each other, I'm a big proponent of that and maybe some might think it's a bit Pollyanna, but that's my story to bring.

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Tyler Finn 

Here's a clip from my conversation with Laura Frederick, CEO at How to Contract, on the importance of seeing a therapist and how it helped change her life.

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Laura Frederick

Yeah, it's an area that's so important to me. And I didn't, you know, I tell people I got my first therapist at 42. I didn't realize that I could change some of the ways that I approached, some of the ways that I processed and dealt with life. And I didn't realize what a positive impact going through therapy would have on every aspect of my life. And so before I started with therapy I very much felt

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like the victim. I felt like my life had turned into this place and I'd reached this point and it wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything to make it happen at least when it came to my personal life. My professional life I felt in control. I have chosen these jobs. I've chosen this path. This is what I want to do. I'm where I deserve to be. But on the personal side it was like, oh it's happening to me. I'm the victim. I don't know how to get out of this. And I didn't see how I had created all the

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circumstances. I had created the the circumstances. I had created a situation where I found myself in a failing marriage and just being unhappy and really unable to cope with the difficulties of life. And it was through therapy that I found how my thinking contributed to that. And that I, one, was I wasn't seeing the role that I had. For example, the idea of owning your outcomes and owning where you are in life

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and that none of us are victim. We're all making choices about where to be in life. And just, even though we feel like we can't make a different choice, we are making a choice even when we're not making that choice.

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You know, you're choosing to stay in your circumstances. And I think the other big thing, which I think lawyers really struggle with, and I did as well, which was this idea of I can control the world around me if I just do enough work. And I tell people what to do.

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And I set everything up so it won't fail, then it'll all be good. And anytime things go wrong, it's because I didn't prepare properly. I didn't do these things. And I had the sense that I knew what was best for everything that was going on in my world, the people around me, all that kind of stuff. And I had this great therapist who said, you know, she's like, who are you, God?

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How do you know what's best for these people in your life? You have no idea. Maybe you are exactly the thing that's causing all the problems in your life. And if you would let go of, you're trying to control everything. Then they would, these other people would be better off. And I just was like floored by that

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because it really challenged the sense of me trying to control everything. And it goes back, there's a great quote on it that you didn't have control. I forgot, I have to, I don't remember the exact wording, but essentially it's, you never had control,

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you only had anxiety. And that false sense of control, especially lawyers and people in the legal world, create for ourselves because we're overachiever types and we're used to making things happen and we're used to being the smart one in the room and telling everybody what to do. So it's hard to kind of take that version of ourselves that's, who doesn't know what's going on and isn't in control and is just,

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you know, all we can control is ourselves. So I think embracing that. And again, my number one career advice for everyone is get therapy early and often. It will, my career, like the joy in my career, my ability to do a great job, went through the roof once I got my therapy. I learned how to manage my emotions so much better. I learned how to really, you know, embrace

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the role as opposed to, you know, being scared all the time, being worried and stressed all the time. I just, I found so much more peace once I went through my therapy. So I can't talk about it enough.

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