One Lawyer’s Journey from France to an Associate in New York City

Episode Notes

Transcript

Montana Funk:

This is Young Lawyer Rising from the A BA Young Lawyers Division and Legal Talk Network. Welcome back listeners. This is your host, Montana Funk. Today I’m joined by Nancy Maurice. Nancy is an international business lawyer who advises foreign companies in the us, a first generation attorney. She also serves as the co-chair of the first gen initiative of the A, a Young Lawyers Division as a leadership scholar of the Young Lawyers Division, and as a business law fellow of the business law section of the A BA today, Nancy joins me to discuss the challenges with being an international lawyer and using your personalized skills no matter what walk of life you come from to make yourself a strong member of any team. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy our show. Nancy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Nancy Maurice:

Thank you Montana for having me.

Montana Funk:

So this episode is talking about things that you wish you would’ve known when first starting your career, but I think what’s important for our listeners in this episode is to actually take it back to your education journey because you do have a unique experience in that you actually had education that came from Europe. So I would like just to start off the episode, if you don’t mind giving our listeners a little bit of information about your background, your education experience, and where you were in Europe before actually coming to the us.

Nancy Maurice:

Sure. Happy to share. I do have a very unique background. I will say that my education reflects a lot of travels and a lot of curiosity. I feel very privileged to have been able to live and study in different countries. It has forged my character and it has helped me grow as a global citizen but also as a person. And it’s really great to have this background. As a lawyer, you wouldn’t think that it would be that helpful to have experienced that many different things in a field as seemingly conservative as law, but I know for a fact today that it has made me the lawyer than I am and I’m very happy to share this journey with you.

Montana Funk:

No, absolutely. And something that I’m curious about is how you decided being in Europe, gaining your education there with that legal background, what made you actually decide, hey, I’m now ready to leave. I want to actually go to the us. I want to practice there. What kind of I guess encouraged you to make that jump?

Nancy Maurice:

So it’s really funny because every time I’m asked this as this question, I have to tell people that a lot of things came from either a bed that I’ve lost or something that came up or a friend that really pushed me. A lot of things that I’ve learned like languages were the result of a bed that I’ve lost. I picked up Portuguese in high school because I lost the bet against France. So many little things that make me think in retrospect everything was supposed to happen the way it has. So my first leg of legal education happened in the uk At the end of high school. I knew that I wanted to become a lawyer. There are many different paths to explore to get there. At least in Europe, we go to law school straight out of high school. So there were different degrees that I could pursue, either pure law in any French university that I would choose to go to or I could pursue law and languages.

The high school that I came from was not the best to be honest with you. I have great memories there because I had great teachers, but it was very low in the rankings, whether it was in the district that I was in or in France. So typically I would be advised against going into a joint degree program which makes law and languages, and it’s actually someone from my church who told me, Hey, your English is really good. You should try to get a French law and English law degree. So I thought, why not? And I actually told one of my teachers about it and she told me, based on your background, you are unlikely to get in. You can go and take the English test, but most people that get into this degree have been in foreign schools or have been speaking English from a very young age.

So for you or you, and that meant the child of immigrants, the child of people who have not even graduated middle school. And for someone who’s learned English from maybe age 10, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to compete with people who actually have an English speaking parent or who have been in English speaking schools from kindergarten. So I still went and took the test because I thought I had nothing to lose, and my rank on the test actually allowed me to go study in England for two years. So that’s how I actually started studying abroad. And it was a very wrenching experience. I studied at the University of Essex, which has one third of its students coming from all over the world. So I met people from South Africa, Botswana, Angola, India. I had friends from all over the world and that really opened up my perspectives and my mind and I thought I should do this again if I have enough money to afford to go abroad again.

So I did my degree, I completed my studies at the University of sx, got my LLB from there, it’s actually a two part degree. So I had to complete my master’s in France where I got a degree in European business law. I continued to work in France for a few years and then another friend told me, Hey Nancy, you should try the us. He had just completed a JD at the American University and he told me, you should really go to the us. I think it would be good for you. And I told him, Hey, I’ve done it in England. It was really great. The US is really expensive. I don’t think someone like me will get a full ride and I can’t afford it right now. So he kind of forced my hand. He signed me up for an English test that I had to take to prove that my English was good enough to study at the US institution.

And out of principle and out of pride, I told him, I don’t think that someone like me should need to take an English test. And I think I still had that form of trauma from my high school experience where I was told that I would never pass an English test. So I thought I don’t need to put myself through that. I already have an English law degree. I lived in England for a couple of years. I know that my English is good enough. I really don’t want to have to go through a standardized test to prove that my English is good enough. And looking back, I don’t think that was a good way of thinking. So I’m kind of glad that he forced my hand. So he signed me up for the test, he paid for it, he just signed me up and he told me, so the test is next Saturday.

So I showed up and I took the test. Oh my gosh. And I scored very high. I think out of one 20 I scored like one 10 or something or one 12. So once that was done, he told me, well, now you have to apply to law school. And I told him, okay, I’ll do it just because you’ve already paid for the test and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t think I will get a ride to study in the US so I’m probably not going anyway. And then I sent my applications in and I started getting these offers and I thought, well, I got all this funding, now I got a full ride from LSU, I might as well go. And I just thought I was going to spend nine months in the US and maybe do an internship or something like that.

And then opportunities just kept coming. I think I landed in the US with two suitcases on the 25th or 26th of July, 2018 and a week later I was in the chambers of the chief judge. So around the 26th of July, I landed in the US with two suitcases and one or two weeks after that I had a research assistant position. And then I also met the chief judge of the middle district court of Louisiana. And she took me on as an extern. And so just arriving in this country and having all these opportunities all at once, I just thought, okay, this is possible here. I might want to stick around a little bit longer. And I just kept working and showing up and talking to people and having all these amazing opportunities that unfortunately I didn’t have back home despite having a very interesting background. And so I thought, I’ll give it a try this time, I will do it because I want to and not because I lost a bit or someone told me that I should do it because the way my life had been up until then was I worked very hard, but I feel like I didn’t take opportunities because I felt that I deserved to be in this room, but I always needed someone to kind of put a bug in my ear and tell me, I think you should be there and you should go for it.

And you can kind of see how through all my decisions, I was kind of fighting my own beliefs of self-doubt and impulsive syndrome thinking, okay, I’m going to take the test but I’m going to fail or I am going to apply for this, but they will never give it to me. And then when the result come, the results come and it’s always way above what I had expected. So I think that the shift happened in the US when I started to really believe in my capacities because there is no way that someone who’s not competent, someone that doesn’t have the capacities of passing English tests, has studied in England, in France and is now in the US on a full ride scholarship. There’s no way that all these people see something that is not there. So when the shift happened, I think that’s when I started pursuing opportunities more aggressively and it has been great experience and it has been returned to me tenfold.

So the decision to come to the us, I will not say that it was a matter of luck, it was a matter of fate. I just had to believe that this is where I was supposed to be and I’ve made the most out of my experience during law school. And again, that was a great return on investment because as you may know, it’s very difficult for international lawyers or generally foreign students to actually manage to stay in the US after completing their studies there. But I have done the work and I was able to come across opportunities and people who have been a great help in getting me to stay here and have a great career.

Montana Funk:

Well, I think that there’s a lot of really interesting things you just told me. And first of all, I want to commend you for taking that DARE and learning Portuguese when you were younger because that right away I was like, oh my goodness. I mean that just shows right? Even at a younger age, you took challenges head on. And I think something also that’s important is you had this idea of self-doubt and I can’t do this, it’s not going to work out. But even despite that, you still tried and you had said earlier on too, you were like, I’m just going to try this and give it a shot. I have nothing to lose. And I think that that’s a really important message because I want our listeners who not only are starting their career, but who maybe in law school or maybe they’re just someone who’s deciding if they’re even going to go and pursue law, I think it’s important for them to know too, Hey, look, you might be still kind of in this area of can I do this?

Am I capable of it? People are throwing challenges at me and telling me I might not be good enough or can’t do it, but you still did. Right? And I think I want to at least portray to our listeners as well that if they’re having doubts about themselves or their skills or someone’s in one of their ears saying that that’s not going to work or they won’t do it to follow how you did it where you just tried, you gave it a shot and it paid off. So I do think even with that doubt, and even with those people telling you no, it helped you grow into this person that you are today because you still said, Hey, look, despite all of this, I’m still going to try. And that in itself I think is really commendable. So I wanted to just touch on that. And I do also want to touch about how you had mentioned as an international coming an international lawyer coming over to the states, there are different challenges, right? Not only are the challenges that you face when starting your degree, but challenges actually converting that to now a US practice. So I want to take a quick break and then when we get back, I do want to jump into those challenges.

So before the break, Nancy, we were talking about how you made this decision. You had all these challenges that you faced not only out of high school, but also through your degree then making the change from coming to Europe to the us and then also that there were challenges with actually practicing in the us. And like you had mentioned, I do somewhat understand as I was, I’m from Canada, so I’m not a citizen of the US and I don’t have the ability to just practice here freely. I do have to work on a visa. And I think that that is important for our listeners as well. So if you don’t mind touching on the challenges that you faced once you actually got to the US and started looking for positions, I think that would be really helpful for our listeners.

Nancy Maurice:

So I think that the first challenge is being a foreigner in the us. It comes with a layer of difficulties in itself. Because the first question is I think that comes up, and I know this because I mentor and advise a lot of international students and they all have the same experience when they talk to me about the rejection that they’ve experienced is are they going to be able to fit in because the culture is so different. The professional culture is also so different. You have to know certain codes in the workplace. The legal industry is a totally different field in itself. So I think that the first challenge slash rejection was the assumption that I would not be able to fit in the second one after that was do I take a chance on someone who might not fit in, who has a different legal training when I have plenty of JD graduates who are ready to hit the ground running and who are not going to experience all these challenges that this person who has a very interesting profile might experience?

And it’s very difficult to overcome that just by sending a resume and a cover letter and a writing sample. Because as soon as the potential employer knows that you don’t have the same background and you don’t fit into the boxes that are traditionally ticked with a law school grad, US law school graduate, then either you get a chance to have a conversation, an interview, and you can pitch your profile and say, I am different and this is why I am going to add value to your team. Or you just get a standard rejection letter. So that’s why I encourage international students and lawyers to network and get to know people and have people get to know them because I think that’s the easiest way to kind of overcome these challenges and maybe these preconceived ideas because I think that one of the things that I’m very fortunate about is that I’ve made friends from all over the world from a very young age. So when I see someone who’s different from me, I don’t really have any preconceived ideas about anything about them because to me, we are all the same. And even if we are different, I think that anybody can fit in anywhere, especially because that has been my personal experience, but I can understand how there might be some reluctance to hire someone who doesn’t have the same knowledge of the language of the culture and of us law when other candidates might be readily available.

Montana Funk:

I think you made a good point too when you were mentioning earlier, you’re coming from a different background, so there’s different experiences. But something that I think is important to note is that you still have skills that are transferable. So no matter where you come from, no matter what walk of life, no matter what part of the world, we all have similar skills that we can share and build on and that are beneficial when firms are looking to hire. So I’m wondering if there was anything that you did, especially when you came across maybe jobs that were a little bit hesitant based on your different background, maybe some of them questioned, can you practice law in the us? Are you actually able to do so? I guess something that I would like to know is what skills did you show or that did you focus on when you did have those questions? Or I think something else that’s important too is obviously there’s that period of time when you’re waiting for paperwork to go through and to actually be able to practice here. So what skills did you hone on and what skills could our listeners use that may not be directly what you could only use when you’re actually able and barred to practice law, but that you can apply no matter what area or what part of your career that you’re in?

Nancy Maurice:

That’s a very good question. And I really think that when we talk about skills, I think that my soft skills really gave me an edge here. And when I say soft skills, I’m talking about my personality, whether it’s my grid, my courage, my resilience, and I think that I don’t get discouraged easily. I’m very willful. And I think that that transpired in the work that I did while I was waiting to have my work authorization and other things fall into place so that I could work here and what I have showed to potential employers, I’ve learned how to show it through my A commitments. I think that being in leadership positions at the A BA really increased my confidence and it gave me a sense of purpose and it gave me a sense of all those soft skills that can be helpful to employers. So public speaking, doing webinars, putting together webinars and actually presenting them is a great opportunity to increase your public speaking and generally communication skills.

And that’s something that I spoke about during interviews because when some firms actually my firm, I think that’s something that they thought about in a boutique law firm. When you hire new associates, you want to see how they will manage to bring in new business in the next few years. And typically somebody who has confidence is used to networking, is great at public speaking, is going to do really well with clients and bringing new clients. So this is something that doesn’t have much to do with me being an international lawyer, but it has a lot to do with my soft skills and things that I’ve learned at the A BA. There’s other things that I have showed to potential employers is that having a dual education, I was trained in civil law and common law also means that I can think fast and I’m quick on my feet because knowing that many legal systems I think is a strong testament of my capabilities.

And if I can learn how to practice law in a country that is not mine that fast, and if I can do it two or three times, I don’t think that any US employer should have any doubt as to my ability to master the legal system in the us. I think that’s another thing that I’ve advanced being different than knowing that many things about that many different legal systems is something that they should look up to and not see as a, well, I wonder if this person is capable of practicing US law because I have done so many things before.

Montana Funk:

I love this response. I genuinely do think that a lot of the times people, whether not even necessarily in the legal career, but people will go into interviews or opportunities and they’ll say, Hey, I don’t have exactly the skills that are set out on let’s say the job posting. And it’s a matter of saying to yourself, Hey, look, maybe I don’t have these exact specifics, but I do have strengths and I think it is really important. And I actually think that it’s a really strong point to say, Hey, I’m going to go into this interview or I’m going to approach this opportunity. And they might be looking at one of my, what I think is a skill in a negative light or as a challenge, but then showing them just how your personal skills can actually be a benefit I think is huge. Because I think a lot of the time that can also be what people feel down about or what holds them back from opportunities when really each person is going to have a different journey and a different skillset.

So it’s a matter of, like you said, being resilient and taking the bull by the horns and saying, I know what I’m worth. I know what I’m capable of, and I’m going to show these people just exactly how that translates to be a beneficial member of their team. So I actually think that that’s a really good point, and I actually think that that’s a message that our listeners should really take to heart because I don’t want anyone listening to be like, I’m just discouraged from a job. That may be my dream job because I don’t have every single qualification because like you said, you don’t know what could happen, right? And things that may be fate you may have never thought actually would happen.

Nancy Maurice:

Yes, that’s true. Thanks for driving the point home.

Montana Funk:

No, of course. I truly do think that that’s a really, really good point. And I think that that’s something that can be lost on us, especially in this profession when a lot of jobs are looking for specifics and lawyers can be perfectionists. So I do think that it’s important to know that even if you’re down on yourself about a skill that maybe you aren’t a hundred percent good in or you’re lacking another area, we all have so much to offer. And I do think that that is so important to focus on.

Nancy Maurice:

I did want to add another point. So I was doing mainly litigation work up until I joined my firm. The firm that I’ve joined two years ago, and actually this one again, is a senior, now senior associate of the firm who I had met in France almost 10 years ago. And again, the reason why I met him was because I went to my first internship interview and the partner decided to hire me on the spot, and I was so surprised. He told me your cover letter was written beautifully. There are no typos. You look very friendly. I’ll be happy to work with you. So you got the job, and I thought, this is so strange. This is my first interview for an internship. Why is it so easy? So I thought I’d like to talk to the current intern, and he would usually come, I think two days a week.

He had a special agreement with theBar school and he was there that day, the day that I had my interview, and I asked to meet him and 10 years later, he was the connect between me and my new firm. So that also goes to show that you have to be bold, you have to ask questions. I don’t think when I told my friends that I asked to meet the current intern at the interview that I went to, they told me that I was crazy that that’s something that people don’t usually do. But I did it because I wanted to know the type of environment I was going to work in. And I didn’t know that it’s something that people don’t usually do because I had never been prepared to be in those environments. So I would just kind of follow my gut. And 10 years later, I’m very glad that I’ve done that because I was not going to apply to that firm because I have a litigation background.

And so fast forward, I go to that interview and I’m thinking, I’m not going to get the job because I’m not a transactional lawyer. But while I was preparing the interview and as I was talking to them, I found so many things that I could connect directly to that job posting or just the kind of work that they do. If you draft contracts and you’ve done litigation before and you’ve done commercial litigation before about contracts, I can promise you, you can be a very valuable transactional lawyer because you’ve seen certain risks and how they impact your clients and distance from the contract. And I explained to them that having done litigation work for so many years, I do want to be able to solve problems instead of being in court and just trying to get damages for a problem that has already had such an impact on a client, a company triggering, maybe layoffs or something like that.

So I was able to frame my background and my experiences in a way that, okay, I haven’t done the exact same thing that you’re doing now, but the skills I’ve acquired doing litigation and just seeing, I’m very good at spotting risks basically as a litigator. And I didn’t know that this was a thing until I’ve met more litigators, turned transactional lawyers. And I think that’s something that they really appreciated that I was able to connect my litigation experience to how I can add value to the team. And it still really helps me to have this litigation background in my conversations with clients who might not be risk averse and who might think that they can take a chance on this situation or another. And I can tell them, I’ve seen this unfold in court, and you don’t want to go there, especially for foreign clients who are not very aware of the cost of litigation in the us, I’m able to tell them, I’ve seen how much this costs, and if you’re trying to expand in the US and this is already an investment, you want to be risk averse at least for a start.

And you definitely want to be in compliance with the law at all times as a foreign company and as a company operating in the US generally. And they’re very receptive to that once I tell them that I was doing litigation work before.

Montana Funk:

Listeners, we’re going to take a quick break and then we’ll jump right back into this conversation.

Welcome back listeners. We are still here talking with Nancy, and we’re going to jump right back into our conversation. Well, that’s something too that I actually wanted to touch on was that you had started off in the idea of doing commercial litigation, right, and business litigation. And then now like you had said, you’re actually working in transactional law and working with mergers and acquisitions. So obviously you just touched a lot about how there are actually a lot more similarities than people might think off the bat, but can you think of one piece of advice you would give yourself when you’re first starting this journey saying, I’m going to be a commercial litigator? What skills have you used both in your litigation experience as well as your transactional experience that you didn’t even realize at the start of this career would actually apply to both?

Nancy Maurice:

I think being organized, that has saved me throughout law school, that has saved me as a litigator and as a transactional lawyer. I am so organized that even when I talk to people and I meet them for the first time and I start speaking to them, they tell me, you sound like you’re very organized. That has become a character trait because when I was in law school, I had to juggle with a lot of stuff, volunteering, working several jobs to put myself through law school. And so I had to have a very tight schedule to make sure that not only did I have a good life balance, but I would manage to balance all my commitments. And so when I started doing litigation work, it was kind of the same thing. It’s very deadline intensive, you have to calendar things. I was in boutique law firms most of the time, so I didn’t have someone to calendar my deadlines for me.

I just had to stay on top of things and sometimes on top of people as well. And that has helped me grow into leadership as well, because I’m very organized, I’m very organized, and thus I’m very reliable. So that’s a skill that really helped doing litigation work. I didn’t think it was going to be that important being a transactional lawyer, but that’s actually a skill that helped me to do more and more mergers and acquisitions because you have to be very organized for that as well. It’s not as deadline intensive, but you have to be very organized to do that kind of work. And I think that’s the skill that really set me apart in a lot of environments and that I was able to use it everywhere in all areas of law being organized.

Montana Funk:

I think that that is really important because I’ve had a background in only litigation, but I did civil and criminal now. And I think, like you said, the organization aspect even applies to all the positions that I’ve been in. So I think that that is something that is applicable to any area of the law, right? Because organization is going to help you actually make sure that, like you said, you’re either hitting deadlines or you’re not missing out if there’s an important meeting or even a plea, a continued legal education. So that is a huge skill. And I do think that it’s cool to see how a lot of our guests, including you, had started off with this idea of where their career was going to go, and then they look down the road 5, 6, 7 years later and it’s completely switched, but a lot of their skills that they hadn’t focused on at the beginning are still the primary skills that they’re using now.

I think that that is super important just in terms of the theme of using your skills and the variety of skills that everyone has to make you a strong member no matter where you go. One thing I did want to touch base on too with you before this conversation ends is I know that you, like you said, have had a really unique experience and I think that gives light to an episode like this where we haven’t had someone kind of come from a different background and move over to practicing a completely different area. So if you could give advice to all of our listeners right now who may be in a similar situation or who may be questioning themselves or questioning if they can make a career move because it might be bigger than they ever imagined, what advice would you give that person?

Nancy Maurice:

I think the first advice I would give them would be to be open-minded. I never thought that I would be practicing the kind of law that I’m practicing today. About 10 to 12 years ago, I had no idea that I would get this far, but also that this is the type of work that I would be doing right now. And I think that I allowed life to surprise me, and I always kept an open mind. I took each opportunity as either a stepping stone or just a why not. And every single opportunity that I took and I made the most out of it, allowed me to move further progress further into my career and get to where I am today. A lot of students that I meet tell me I want to do mergers and acquisitions, so do I go for classes on business associations, mergers and acquisitions?

Do I just do that in law school and then just go for big law or what do I do? And I did not do that. I did a lot of different things, and yes, I took mergers and acquisitions when I was in France, when I was in the us, but that’s not what made me a great m and a lawyer. What made me a great m and a lawyer was seeing how businesses operate, seeing what risks might exist as far as the type of products that the manufacturer employees, sometimes intellectual property issues that might come up. And having a well-rounded set of skills is what’s going to make you a great lawyer. The type of law that you decide to practice, it might just come down to opportunities or faith. And I think that if I had left law school thinking I’m going to be an M and a lawyer, that wouldn’t have happened the way it has happened for me.

It has happened in a very organic way, and because I was very open-minded, I was able to touch on so many different things that allow me to represent my clients well. So keep an open mind. Don’t be afraid to experiment different things because between law school and your first job and your second job, a lot of things can happen. You might work in an environment that you do not like. You might find out that the type of practice that you’re in might be tough, but not as interesting as you expected it to be because practice and traditional teaching are two different things. I would also encourage young lawyers and lawyers generally to be bold and not to be afraid to take a chance on themselves, whether it means a care or pva. If you want to go into a different type of practice or if you want to go from nonprofit to in-house, there’s always a way to go somewhere.

Personally, once I graduated from LSU law, a lot of people who not necessarily potential employers told me that there was no way I was going to get employment in the US coming from a school like LSU, which is a good school, but it’s not an Ivy. And because I’m an international lawyer, they told me that I basically had no chances of getting employment here because why would they hire someone who studied abroad and then went to LSU when they can have someone from Georgetown nor another id? And I work in Manhattan. So there is no straight path to success. There’s not just one path to success. I’m very happy with the type of law that I practice. I’m very happy at my firm as well. And I got there because I was open-minded, I was bold. I took opportunities. There was no job that was too small for me.

There was no firm that was too small for me. There was no speaking opportunity or writing opportunity that was too small for me and everything that I do, I do it generally with work ethic and it works out. And if you want to get somewhere, you have to have this mindset that this is going to happen for you, but you just have to be open-minded about the way to get there. The journey is way more interesting than the destination, and I’m very happy that I didn’t take a straight path to get to where I am today.

Montana Funk:

I love that. I love the idea of just being bold, like you said, and I think, Ken, you ended it off perfectly with the journey and everyone’s journey is going to be unique, and that’s what makes everyone different and special in their own way, and allowing yourself to be open that your final destination may not be the one that you originally anticipated, but that may mean that the journey is 10,000 times more exciting than you ever thought it would be. So I love that. And I want to end off on an easy question for you, Nancy, because I think you’ve given a ton of amazing advice. So the easy last question I have for you is can you tell our listeners where they can find you and where they can reach out to you if they have any further questions or want to seek out any more advice?

Nancy Maurice:

Sure. You can reach me on LinkedIn. You will find me by my name Nancy Maurice. I might show up as Nancy M, but it’s me. You’ll see a picture of me with my curly hair probably as a headshot, and we can follow up if you send me an invite with a note and we can have virtual coffee. I like to do that.

Montana Funk:

Virtual coffee sounds amazing to me. Well, Nancy, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. I think you have immense helpful advice for our listeners. And like you said, I think it’s so important that our listeners just remember that they can be bold, they can be powerful, and no matter what their skill is or no matter what they think they have to offer, there’s always options for people to open up new doors and opportunities that they may have never thought possible. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Nancy Maurice:

Thank you for having me.

Montana Funk:

Listeners, that is our show. As always, I want to thank you for tuning in, and if you like what you’ve heard, please recommend us to our friend. As always, you can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts. Until next time, I am Montana Funk, and you’ve been listening to Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the a Young Lawyers Division and the audio professionals at Legal Talk Network.