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

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.

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.

Heather Stevenson went from litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell to running a juice bar, then returned to law as a transactional lawyer at the Boston Globe where she rose to Deputy General Counsel, then became General Counsel at Red Cell Partners, an incubation firm. I've been influenced in more ways than one by Heather's adventurous career, and I admire her first-principles approach to thinking about what's important in career.

Nimesh Gupta is the founder of Briefly, a legaltech generative AI company. I met Nimesh through a mutual friend, and we hit it off - our patent litigation background, views on parenting, therapy, and entrepreneurship.

We take Nimesh’s unconventional moves from biglaw to big tech to startups and dig into the decisions. We explored how to assess risk and opportunities in new technologies and businesses, including legaltech and generative AI. Along the way we explore how mindfulness and authenticity provided a north star for career decisions.

Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Briefly.

I didn't expect to interview someone at another Florida sports franchise so soon, but I'm glad I had a chance to talk to Megha Parekh, Chief Legal Officer of the Jacksonville Jaguars. One of the most interesting themes from the conversation was around work-life integration and the systems she's used to foster it in herself and others. There were insights into the relation of remote work and inclusivity, and lessons on the perils of perfectionism. This interview is for anyone interested in being unapologetically yourself and refusing to cut out the fun in your life.

Avanti Bakane is a partner at Gordon Rees. I've known Avanti for some years now, and I've been consistently impressed with her ability to collect and connect people. I sat down with Avanti to discuss her people-driven approach to her career and what she's learned about building allies and how to manage by playing to your team's strengths. Avanti is just easy to talk to and I admire how even-keeled she is for a big-firm lawyer.

Rudhir Kristhel is the founder of Krishtel Coaching and a former attorney. We started the conversation talking about how his beard helped me strike out on his own and ended it with Rudhir's three-part framework for how to think about growing relationships. The theme of this conversation is how to tune in to yourself to be a better player in the game of career and life.