The Art of Negotiation: Understanding the Nuance and Skill of Advocacy

Episode Notes

Transcript

Todd Berger:

In 2023, labor once again came to the forefront of the nation’s attention. Maybe you were following the WGA and SAG AFTA strikes, or perhaps it was the auto workers or the 75,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente. These strikes and others had many causes from pay inequality to existential threats from technology. And these labor actions have resulted in substantial gains in protections for workers across the country. But 2023 was even more of a year of strikes than you may realize. In the first 11 months of the year, there were nearly 400 strikes involving more than half a million workers. And it’s likely that this trend isn’t finished. While our attentions are rightfully focused on those standing on the picket lines and the industry players, lawyers play a key role in negotiating these labor contracts. And as a law student perhaps hoping to have an impact on the world, maybe it’s time you gave labor law a real look. This is the Law Student Podcast. Well, it’s great to have everybody back for another round of the law student podcast. Really excited for this particular interview. So Chay, why don’t you tell us who we’re going to hear from today?

Chay Rodriguez:

Todd, today we’re talking to attorney Meghann Burke, who actually was a former kind of crim law and civil rights attorney, and she headed up the N-W-S-L-P-A, which is the National Women’s Soccer League players Association. She heads up that union as the executive director and she made history sitting at the table and negotiating their very first CBA in 2022. Which, let me just preface this by saying we are going to run through a lot of acronyms here today. So N-W-S-L-P-A-C-B-A-N-W-S-L, it may be hard to keep up and I’m going to try to give an explanation to all of those. A CBA is a collective bargaining agreement. And with this being the summer of Strikes, I think it was amazing to be able to speak with someone who has been able to make history and create something that their players can move forward with, especially as the league continues to grow. Todd you and I think are the big sporters here where the sports bands here, so I knew you would love this. Leah, I’m sorry I got you next time. I got you next time. But I think this was amazing and I am so excited because our last episode, Leah, you had touched on ai and AI was a very big reason why a lot of the actors were willing to walk away from doing something that they loved this summer during the SAG and the writer strike. How did you feel about this interview?

Leah Haberman:

I mean, I really loved it. I mean, the landscape of labor is changing right now because of ai, because of people using their voices and using the megaphones that are social media to get the word out there about these things in totally different ways. And so even though I’m not the sports fan of the podcast, I was really excited about this interview and just the moment we’re in right now before law school was really into labor organizing as part of my work. And I was like, oh, organizing is such a, that’s what labor is. And then seeing it from the legal side and seeing all the different transferable skills that your guest talked about of being a criminal defense lawyer and that was super transferable, was really exciting for someone who’s not necessarily interested in labor law. But I was like, oh, I care about labor issues and seeing the melding of so many things, I was like, oh, this is actually way more applicable to me even as someone who’s not stoked on soccer than I ever imagined it would be.

Chay Rodriguez:

I really think that that is huge, being able to connect sports to just the humanity that we kind of miss in the business part of the game and what this really meant for these women to be able to make more. And we really get into that and I was able to ask Attorney Burke about her transition from being a criminal law attorney, being a civil rights attorney, from going from that all the way to the executive director of the N-W-S-L-P-A and working more so on the employment side of it and what that transition is like. I’m excited for you to hear the totality of the interview and I’m excited to jump in.

Todd Berger:

Alright, let’s get started.

Meghann Burke:

In terms of the transition from the life or the experience of being a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer turning into an executive director of a union, the interesting thing is that I would say those skills were far more relevant to this job than I ever expected. They be really, they were actually very transferable. And I will say one of the pleasant surprises has been that as a criminal defense lawyer, I consider criminal defense lawyers to be my people. That’s when I feel like I’m at home when I’m sitting in a courthouse in the back room with a stale coffee and you’re talking about your cases or brainstorming theories of defenses and impossible cases, that is my happy place. And I very quickly discovered that union side union lawyers are basically criminal defense lawyers. They’re my people too. I mean kind of gallows sense of humor, a willingness to grind and get creative and just a righteous belief that you’re on the right side of a just cause. All of those qualities animate a lot of my conversations with criminal defense lawyers and civil rights lawyers and union side labor lawyers. So I have actually felt very much at home, not just as a former player coming back into the game, but also just professionally with my colleagues in the union space. Did

Chay Rodriguez:

You feel that from the beginning of the transition or did it take you a while? Did it take you getting into it?

Meghann Burke:

I felt it immediately, honestly, really union side labor lawyers, criminal defense lawyers, plaintiff side civil rights lawyers, I would say we’re all fighting the man that’s just a different man. So a lot of the struggles are the same and whether you’re representing the accused in the criminal justice system or people whose rights have been violated or workers who are fighting for a dignity on the job and a living wage, those are all in my mind, righteous clauses. And so there’s a certain kind of personality that gets drawn into that kind of work.

Chay Rodriguez:

You went through literally making history, and I dunno if you feel it while you’re in it or if it’s times like this when you kind of look back on it and you think like, wow, that really was history, but for this league to even get to the point of being able to accomplish A CBA and having a crack at creating it, how did that feel to you? Because the previous kind of league that you were in with the WSP that wasn’t there yet, you didn’t make it to that point yet. So how did it feel to even get to the point where there was a table to have the negotiation?

Meghann Burke:

I think I did on some level in the moment. It’s like when you’re in something you sort of to be driven to do something like that, you have to have some awareness of it’s impact and it’s important. And I do think that as players, we had that awareness that what we’re doing is really historic and is likely to change the game for generations if we get it right. And so there was definitely a pressure to get it right. The decisions you make in that moment strategically substantively can impact people’s lives and impact not just that, but also the course of our game, what the future was going to look like. And as we got closer to when I kind of knew the deal was going to get done in January, 2022, I’m not even embarrassed to say this, I think most people know me. I’m not like a crier, I’m not like an emotional person. I’m like taking a shower and all of a sudden it just came out. I’m just like, oh my God, we we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this thing. We are going to ratify the first CBA in domestic women’s pro soccer history. So it was definitely, I think we had some awareness, but I will say I don’t think we could fully comprehend the lasting impact or the breadth of the impact that that first contract has had on the game. And we’ll continue to have.

Chay Rodriguez:

I think something that I realized as I was researching more and more about this is that kind of the minimum player salary that 22 grand to now 35, and it made me think of Brittney Griner and her having to play overseas because expenses come up, you would like to make more, and women’s sports just aren’t paying as much as what you would think a pro athlete would make. And it’s like, wow, this CBA here is the first step to helping a player not have to have any more side hustles. And I know you guys had that campaign, no more side hustles, just that impact alone I think is so major. And while I know the difference between 22 and 35 isn’t that much and it’s still not livable, it’s still progress that would not have been there had it not been for your work.

Meghann Burke:

Well, thank you for that. Terry Jackson, the executive director of the W-N-B-P-A has been just a tremendous friend, sister, mentor to me personally, but also to the N-W-S-L-P-A. All of the WNBA players have stood with us. And likewise, when BG was held hostage in Russia, we spent every day thinking about her, praying for her to come home. Being connected to the W-N-B-P-A, I can’t even begin to imagine what BGS been through and for her to come home and to get back. I mean, just like it speaks to why sports matter because it’s about what the human spirit is capable of. That’s ultimately why we love sports. It’s not necessarily a bouncing ball in trades and all this stuff. It’s like this belief that there’s something bigger and that we’re capable of more. And to your point about the wages, that’s absolutely why BG was overseas. She and most professional athletes who are women in this country don’t make enough to live on.

So to your point, the minimum salary in year one of our CBA was 35,000 this year was 36,400. Next year it’ll be 37,856. That does not include housing and of course some other benefits like health insurance and some transportation support. But players aren’t getting rich by any means. And what I think does not get figured into is that you’re spending, I mean, I don’t know how old a lot of people listening to this podcast are, but I’m going to guess law students are in their mid or late twenties, maybe they’re early thirties, they’re doing things to invest in their earning potential as they get into their thirties and forties soccer players. This is the maximum earning potential they have in this field, and then they have to go do something else next. So there is an immense pressure to try to maximize this moment because you don’t know what’s going to be next.

You don’t know what you’re going to do with your life, how you’re going to pay your bills, how you’re going to survive. And so yeah, BG went overseas to Russia in order to survive. She’s not living like NBA players and NFL players, and I just don’t think we should have to do that. I would love for our players to be millionaires, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about living wage, we’re talking about not being exploited. Those are the kinds of things we’re talking about. Back in 2003 in the WSA, the year we took pay cuts to keep the league going, the minimum salary was actually $25,000 in 2003. That was the minimum salary that our veterans fought for. And you just said it, the minimum salary, 18 years later when we were negotiator, first contract was less. It was $22,000. In what industry do things go backwards and that’s okay. And that’s part of the reason I think it’s important to talk about our collective history so people know what the facts are when we talk about women’s sports.

Chay Rodriguez:

How do you deal with settling when you are coming up with a collective bargaining agreement, when you know that this is still something that’s impacting someone’s basic human rights or their basic freedoms? How are you okay walking away with, I know progressively it’s going to be 35,000 this year, 36 next year, 37, 38, but that’s still not enough. How do you reconcile that in your mind?

Meghann Burke:

That’s a great question. I think if you asked executive directors of a lot of unions, they’d probably have the same answer. And I know that because talked about it, which is you feel good about a contract and you ratify it and then a couple years later you look at some of those numbers and you’re like, that’s a little, that one’s a little hard. And I definitely have that under the current contract, especially when I see where the money’s going in NWSL, expansion fees and executive pay and all that. It’s a little hard sometimes to see what our players are making as a minimum salary knowing that 50% of our players make 50 grand or less. And that of course does not include housing. But there are two really important things, and the way I saw it in the first contract and continue to see it, two really important things at work when we approach negotiating and compromising.

One is we need to know where we’re trying to go. We need to be able to say, here are the high priority items. The second thing is we have to have a long view because a lot of the things, for example, I would’ve loved to have attained full free agency rights in the first contract. That’s the global standard in soccer. Then I think there are a lot of reasons we should be going that way. I think there are a lot of reasons the league’s best interest and the team’s best interest. The reality though is to reach a compromise. The league wasn’t ready to agree to that. And so this is where in a strange dynamic, it seems like an adversarial process, but it’s not because at some point we have to come together, we have to agree on something, and if otherwise, what’s going to end up happening is we’d be stuck at full free agency or bust. The league would be stuck at never.

Well then what, okay, well now are we going on strike over this issue? Is the league going to lock us out and is that what’s best for the business in this moment in time? Or could we listen to the other side and the other side in this case being league? And one of the arguments that I think was very persuasive is like, look, we might be right that full free agency is absolutely the right call in the best interest of the league, the best interest of the players, it’s the global standard. But to do that in one fell swoop, to just go from one extreme to another would actually compress wages. And here’s why. Because all these players who toiled in the league for 10 or more years, if everyone became a free agent at the same time, the salary cap was still low. And so there’s increased competition and free agency for wages, which means our veterans who built this league never get a chance to be free agents in a free market with money to go around and earn higher wages.

So if you think of it that way, it’s like, okay, so if we gradually introduce this concept and we base it on service years, then what that means is one of our goals was that the people who built this league get some kind of recognition reward for having done it. So we honor the veterans in our league, we give them first dibs, if you will, on free agency. We learn from what free agency looks like when we introduce it, and then we can start marching towards a world where everyone is a free agent in a way that is probably better for the whole ecosystem and allows teams to build rosters and plan for the future without this kind of overnight change. As much as I love change and I want it to happen quickly, there is a benefit to certain things that are massive disruptions to the system to happen in a way that’s thoughtful and pragmatic so that we can do it right.

Chay Rodriguez:

Okay, so everything that you kind of just detailed out seems like a pressure that would be on my mind every time I go to the table. But these were not cut and dry negotiations that Oh, in a month this was done. Oh, in two months this was done. How do you reconcile with the, you are up against a certain type of clock, right? The timing to get this deal done next to that pressure that you’re feeling.

Meghann Burke:

Yeah. Well, one thing we knew for certain and we were unequivocal about and crystal clear every time, I must’ve said it 10,000 times, that we would not start the 2022 season without a contract and there’s nothing like a deadline to get a contract done. I would also say we also, these players, they’re very thoughtful and smart and they’ve lived a lot. They’re pragmatic. They know what’s possible, what’s not possible. We didn’t go into negotiations expecting six figure minimum salaries as much as I think these players deserve it and wanted it in 20, 21, 22, we had an awareness of what is the reality of NWAL today? And we also had a bullish belief in our future. We kept saying, we want to bet on ourselves. We think this thing’s going to grow, this is going to take off. And that was another reason we wanted a shorter term contract because the economic conditions that we’re going to agree to in 2021 looked different in 2022 versus 2023.

NLS already changed in just the year two of our contract, and we expected that. And so that was a reason we wanted a shorter contract so that we’d have the opportunity to get the protections of a contract, get back to work and get busy playing and growing this business, but then come back to the bargaining table with lessons learned and new facts to work with and negotiating a new contract. My approach to it was to involve players every step of the way. We had players at bargaining sessions every time we were in bargaining. I believe with every fiber of my being that our players are our greatest asset in the NWSL ecosystem. They’re some of the most thoughtful, creative, smartest people I’ve ever met. And so in some ways that makes my job easier. It’s liberating to say, listen, I want you to show up and I want you to have an opinion and I want you to tell me you, yeah, tell me what you want.

Speak up. That’s what this is about. And I think the system that NWSL had been operating under for so long had trained these players, this incredible group of humans to believe their voice didn’t matter. And part of my job was coming in and just reminding them who they are. And what we ended up with was a bargaining committee of almost 40 players who I think if you asked each and every one of ’em, they’d say it’s one of the most rewarding experiences they’ve had in their career. And so as a leader, my goal is to harness all that and to tease out them like, okay, how do we interpret all the things you’re hearing, all the things you’re thinking and feeling into contractual provisions. So what that turned into is free agency, a fair wage, a livable wage, the ability to not necessarily get rich on an NWSL income as much as we’d love that, but the ability to singularly focus on being a professional soccer player to minimize the pressures of having to wrap up training and hustle off to be a barista at a coffee shop or clean toilets at the gym to be able to take care of your body and maximize your performance during the short window of time.

You have to be a professional athlete. I mean, yeah, was there pressure for sure. But I am an athlete. I love game time. I love a game. I love to compete. So for me, that’s my happy place. I get fired up when we’re in bargaining. And so it was a very rewarding experience to get to be a part of that.

Todd Berger:

We’ll be right back. So Leah, we’ve identified you as kind of the nods sports fan on the podcast, but I know you’re an aspiring public interest lawyer. What did you think of the CBA negotiations and the progress that they made and what does that maybe spell for other workers, other areas of legal practice as in a public interest lawyer? Were you able to take anything out of that?

Leah Haberman:

Yeah, I mean, I think to Chay’s point about the emotionality and about what it probably meant to sit at that table and all that it meant is that labor, especially in the US and how capitalistic we all are, labor is such an emblematic force for what we value. We put a little price tag on what you are doing and who you are as a person. And so to have their labor as female athletes be valued in less than, there is a larger conversation there, pay equity, and I think there’s all the intersections of gender and race and how do you get to these higher echelons of soccer? You have to play in club which costs money and there’s so much to the conversation. And I think that that’s true in anything of when you show up to these tables, you carry with you the heaviness of all the different forces at play. So they weren’t just talking about soccer, they were talking about something they loved and have cared about since they were three years old. And there’s something that’s said a lot, especially in the disability rights community of no conversations about us without us. And I thought it was very powerful that that’s true in all organizing spaces. So to have a former soccer player

Chay Rodriguez:

Like you both mentioned that she was and how impressive it is, it’s like that’s exactly what this probably conversation needed with someone who cared about the sport as much as she does.

Todd Berger:

Meghann said what I consider to be one of the greatest lines in the history of sports for a long time. It’s probably true with a lot of people who are into sports. There’s a part of me that kind of struggles with how seriously to take any of this stuff because on the one hand, it’s my day job. I’m talking about the law and legal decisions and real consequences for people in their lives. And then this other part of me is like, well, it’s sports, it’s entertainment, it’s kind of frivolous. And I know that at different times it’s not those historic moments, the Jackie Robinson type moments, but what she said, which I thought will always stick with me, I think she said something like, part of the reason you love sports is because it shows you what the human spirit is capable of. And I think that’s absolutely true.

Whether you’re talking about playing a sport and accomplishing something, like winning a gold medal or you have a dream to go to law school and you can play sports and you learn about hard work and dedication and some sort of accomplishment in that your softball rec league that then can translate later on into something you do in life. So I thought that was amazing. It kind of helped for me at least bridge the gap between the seriousness of what you do in the world of law and the entertainment piece of sport. We care about sport because it shows us what the human spirit is capable of. And I take that out of the interview for years to come.

Chay Rodriguez:

Todd, I’m glad that that line resonated with you because I feel like when we talk about sports really showing and pushing you and showing what the human spirit can do, we think about these athletes and a lot of the times before they’ve reached fame and fortune, they’ve actually experienced a lot of adversity getting into their current roles as athletes. So then to see these women be able to not only go through the adversities that they had to get through to get to the league, but then also get to the league and face adversity and even get to this table that historic moment and in the midst of negotiations as we’ll talk about and find out, they face another hurdle of a scandal in the league, the league that is supposed to protect them, the league where they’re finally living and their dreams are playing out literally in front of them.

We find out that they may not be protected by the people who are at the top of the top of the league, the president of the league and the GC end up leaving their positions and they end up actually delaying and changing the course of the negotiating of the CBA. And we find out that that’s actually kind of something that works in the favor of the players, but it’s just another case of adversity hitting these women when they’re trying to make progress and they still stick it out and they still come to the table and they still work with Meghann to advocate for not only themselves, but women’s soccer players that we know are going to come in the years to come because everyone’s going to benefit from this CBA.

Todd Berger:

Great. Let’s jump back in it and let’s hear the rest of the interview.

Chay Rodriguez:

I can’t imagine the experience lasting as long as it did because I know it took you guys a while with the back and forth and the different bargaining sessions to come to that final agreement. And I also know that there were a few bumps in the road in regards to the head of the league leaving and the GC leaving. I am currently in mediation as a student and in mediation we have to ask, do you have the capacity to sit here and do this? Do you have the capacity to make the decisions? Before we go any further, what was it like with two main people that had the capacity and were the decision makers on the other side leaving in the midst of you guys trying to get some work done trying to get to your final? That’s a great question. I think when I found this out, I was just like, but capacity. That’s all I kept thinking.

Meghann Burke:

I’ll say, I’m sure if you talked to folks on the NW SSL side, now I’ve said it a few times where I’m like, there is a benefit to having people who were here from the beginning lived the negotiation who are not on our side. So we have a collective memory and understanding of what we were trying to accomplish together. If you’re going to reach an agreement at some point, there is a moment of alignment, whatever your differences are, different ways of seeing the world you land on, okay, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish. This is where we all can agree we want to live. And one of the approaches to negotiations that I take is don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We have to have as a union, we have to have a long-term strategy. So there are plenty of things in our current contract that aren’t perfect.

Is it how I would’ve written it or what I wanted? No, that’s the whole point. It’s a compromise. It is the reflection of people with different ideas, different priorities, different views, different roles to play to make this league successful, coming together and saying, here’s how we can land on a common understanding of how to do this thing, whatever this thing is. So what was interesting is that we had, from the moment we began collective bargaining, we had said to Lisa Baird, Lisa Levine, then Commissioner General Counsel and their labor Counsel, we want club representatives at the table. We think it’s really important to have people who have skin in the game, meaning owners whose money is being spent in this deal. We want them here, we want them. And not because they’re necessarily going to do a ton of talking, but I sure hope they’re going to do some listening and they’re definitely going to do some learning.

And I’m not saying they’re even going to agree just because they hear me talk or the players talk, but it’s important that we try to understand each other and what’s important to each other and where we’re coming from. I will say that they would not agree to bring club representatives to the table. I think that is problematic on many, many fronts. And one of them is we weren’t sure or didn’t understand and weren’t clear if they actually had authority. Do you have authority to agree to the things that we’re talking about here at the table? Because if not, what are we doing? We’re wasting our time. We need people with authority. Once the commissioner and general council resigned after Mehan ran that explosive article in September 30th, the league then appointed an interim executive committee and created a new bargaining committee that had Julie Erman from Angel City, Yael Abu, who is the PA’s founder, and then became a general manager for Gotham.

Brad Estes from racing Louisville and John Walker from Houston. And I’ll say it improved things quite a bit when we finally had club representatives there, because those are the folks who are going to live a contract. It’s the coaches and the GMs and the players and the equipment managers and the league office player personnel people who are actually trying to implement what we’ve negotiated and agreed to. And we need people who are practical minded who are going to live the contract to say, well, here are the reasons why what you’re saying either won’t work or maybe there’s a better way to do it, or have you thought about this angle? We wanted that intellectual exercise, especially in writing a first contract. So it did help quite a bit when club representatives finally came to the table.

Chay Rodriguez:

It’s funny because when you say a whole new committee came to the table, that means that you might not have had general Counsel there, so you had other people who were negotiating who possibly were not lawyers. How do you come to the table now with, you don’t have the GC there, but now you’re talking to people who might have a different tie to the game and they’re not lawyers, but they’re acting as a negotiator on their behalf. Is there a different way that you approach it?

Meghann Burke:

Negotiations are interesting, right? Because I think sometimes as lawyers, we can get caught up in over lawyering things. And the reality is that a contract, we’re not writing the constitution.

We’re trying to figure out how to play soccer, how to do it professionally and get people to pay to watch. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish. And if we think of it that way, it’s like we need to not overcomplicate some things we’re trying to achieve. For example, soccer should be played in a soccer field, it should not be played on a baseball field. That was the hill we were going to die on, and it was one of the issues we almost want to strike over, believe it or not. That was one of the most contentious issues. But when you put it like that, when you just put it in pragmatic terms, it sounds crazy that we had to fight over it, right? Because soccer,

Chay Rodriguez:

It’s a

Meghann Burke:

Right. Soccer should be played on a soccer field. So that’s not really a lawyer problem. That is like we need people who understand soccer, who understand operations, who understand game day apps and setting up a field and why having a pitchers mound in the middle of a soccer pitch is a problem. And I think good lawyers actually learn to listen to the people who implement a contract so that you can interpret the practical things into a language that works in a contract, but it’s kind of a both end. You need the lawyers and you need the people who operate the business to work together to come up with a contract that can actually do what it’s intending to do.

Chay Rodriguez:

And when you talk about needing certain things to come together, when we think of litigators, we don’t necessarily put a focus on those negotiation and mediation skills because those are alternatives to trial. We think lawyers, we think Jack McCoy Law and Order folder throw, we think. So do you think that those law school classes like mediations, negotiations, a DR, do you think those are critical to a foundation for a young lawyer coming up now? And if so, which classes would you recommend that students take?

Meghann Burke:

It’s vitally important. I was fortunate to go to Northeastern where you have your first year of law school is your traditional one L classes that everyone takes, but then your two L and three L year, you alternate between a quarter of classes and a quarter of full-time practice anywhere in the world. So I actually graduated law school with a full year’s worth of practical legal experience, learning how to practice. The substantive courses you take in law school are obviously very important to learn the substance of law and how to think like a lawyer and how to write, how to research. But the reality is you don’t learn how to practice. Practicing is a totally different ballgame. I think of lawyers more as problem solvers and the tools in the toolbox to solve it certainly can go to trial, but that’s actually your last alternative. There’s many steps prior to that.

There’s even a lot of solutions in the toolbox that don’t involve going to court at all or filing papers. Right? Pre-litigation negotiations and mediation. I’m a big believer in mediation. What I tell people is mediation, negotiating a resolution of a problem is the only time you’re going to have control over the outcome. Because once you put it up to a jury or an arbitrator, you no longer have control. You might think you’re right and they might think you’re wrong, you might be right and they get it wrong. That’s just how the process works. So if you want to have control over the outcome, then you have to negotiate. So I would say in law school classes that teach you how to think like that, how to negotiate, how to prepare for a mediation, very different than preparing for trial. I think one of the biggest challenges for a lawyer is not just learning how to practice and how to think lawyer, but then how to get your client on board with a strategy and how to get someone else to make decisions that are in their best interest based on your analysis. So the more opportunities law students have to do clerkships to be an understudy, to see how lawyers actually solve real live problems, I think is invaluable. It’s the most important thing you can do as a law student.

Chay Rodriguez:

I wonder if we’re doing a disservice by reducing it to labor law or employment law because it seems like it mixes literally everything into it. And I feel like when we talk about it, it’s just kind of Oh yeah, a niche labor law. It’s not something that you think about that you are like you’re impacting so many lives and you’re improving lives.

Meghann Burke:

Yeah, I mean labor rights is human rights, just the fundamental right to exist and to provide for your family to be able to afford a home, to afford healthcare, the ability, everything comes back to your ability to provide for yourself, and these are fundamental human rights. So I think people have an emerging understanding of the importance of unions. And I’d be remiss not to say unions are especially important to women. Women make, I think the most recent study was 78 cents on the dollar on average, but we also know that women of color make even less than that and unions are the way we correct that imbalance. That’s how we take our power back to rectify paying equities and other inequities in the workplace.

Chay Rodriguez:

So I hope from this episode, our law students are able to kind of glean that it’s bigger than just kind of like that niche class. And a lot of it goes into all these things that we’ve been talking about, mediation, negotiations, law, human rights, it combines into one, and it doesn’t have to be a throwaway class that you’ve groan at, that elective being offered. You can make it your own and really impact someone’s life doing it.

Meghann Burke:

That’s right. It’s deeply rewarding. I think for your law students who are listening to this podcast interview, I hope they’re learning something from it. And most importantly, that it’s deeply rewarding to fight for the rights of people. That’s ultimately what we’re talking about is just valuing human life, valuing people, and fighting for their needs and rights.

Todd Berger:

We will be back after the break.

So Chay, Leah, after listening to the interview and for me, some of the things that I took out of it, first on a kind of granular law professor level is I loved your discussion about the classes that she took in law school, and I loved your discussion about negotiating with people who aren’t lawyers. One thing I would emphasize, and I know you’re in a mediation class now, which is great. I’m the director of advocacy programs. We have five classes and trial practice teach everybody who wants to be a litigator. Oh, you got to go to the Courtroom and be this great trial attorney. And that really helps. You should do those things if you want to be a good litigator because at some point something might go to trial, but at the same time, almost every civil case settles. We know that in many federal districts, in many states, there’s mandatory mediation to resolve civil cases before anything gets to trial, and almost every criminal case pleas out, which is sort of a version of a settlement.

So I really appreciated her stressing the idea that students should do things like take a negotiation class or a mediation class, because those are oftentimes going to be the skills that you rely on when representing clients. And I think it was great to hear that from her. She’s obviously achieved a tremendous amount in the law. So I hope our student’s going to take it to heart and realize that if you want to be a really good advocate as a lawyer, whatever that means, you’ve got to have a pretty significant number of tools in the toolbox and the alternative to going to trial or in a labor context having a strike, they’re really important to be able to use those skills to find and achieve some great resolutions for your clients.

Chay Rodriguez:

I think, and if you’re a student listening to this, I stand with you when you get your curriculum or your master curriculum for your three years or your four years and you see these classes, sometimes they’re like pass fail or they’re only a couple credits and you see that they may be a requirement and experiential requirement. You got to take mediation or you got to take negotiations and you’ve groan and you’re like, no, but I want to take a death penalty seminar. I don’t want to. I’m mapping it out and it just doesn’t work for me. But hearing her speak to the importance of those skills as a foundation, Todd and hearing you speak to the importance of those skills as a foundation, I think really hammers home the importance of being well-rounded and at least getting that exposure in law school.

Leah Haberman:

I think the skillset piece, Todd you mentioned of when you’re negotiating with non-lawyers, I was really struck by when she talked about when you’re negotiating with people who just are not experts or even aware of the subject matter, having to convince people that soccer shouldn’t be played on a baseball field. And again, I’ve never played soccer, but I feel like I can really get behind that. It should not be palate on a baseball field. And so often in legal work, whether it’s in policy, when you’re having to talk with different constituents and politicians who aliens from another planet, you’re still going to have to express these core things that feel so obvious and do it in a way where it’s not like, no dummy, you can’t play it on a baseball field. And I’m like, that is a skillset that I think sometimes in trial practice spaces, in trial practice, you go in and you are the authority. You almost want to seem like the other side is dumb, but in mediation, you have to be kind of soft and gentle. You’re not dumb, but come over to my side of thinking about this, and there’s a gentleness that I think law school tends to sometimes not reward in certain context that it was kind of nice to be like, no, this is about how do you massage the situation to get what you want rather than bulldoze through it.

Chay Rodriguez:

Right. And I think it was amazing, to your point, Leah, when she talked about speaking with the players and Todd, you’ve mentioned this a lot with your interaction with clients when you sit down and you talk to them and kind of figure out what they want and the importance of being able to cultivate that one-on-one relationship. I think Meghann’s her previous history as a player and kind of already having that trust with them, but her ability to speak with those players and get from them, okay, this is what you want, and then give back to them the confidence to say, you can sit at the table and fight for it. I thought that was amazing. And I hope to one day be able to empower the people that I work with who may not be a legal mind to still be able to fight for themselves and vocalize what they want and give them the confidence to do that. I loved that so much.

Leah Haberman:

And I’m curious, Todd, in terms of that point that Chay’s talking about, Meghann was a former soccer player, so she could connect with her union members as soccer players. And I know that you’ve done criminal defense work and maybe there was things that you couldn’t necessarily relate to on their whole lived experience, and I’m sure there are probably union reps who have not necessarily been steelworkers and everything that they represent. How did you kind of feel like there’s different skill sets you can learn in law school that can build that connective tissue almost between client and lawyer?

Todd Berger:

Actually, it’s funny. I look back on when I was going through the interview process of public defender and the, I don’t know, early mid two thousands and people didn’t really ask that question that much. Now people do. And I think the closest thing I would say in terms of what makes your experience similar to the experience that clients or different constituents might have is when you go to the doctor, so I’m not a doctor and I go to the doctor and I have some kind of problem and I don’t quite have all the answers to it, and I’m a little bit anxious, maybe a lot anxious, kind of afraid, well, I don’t want the doctor to come in there and just not listen to me. I don’t want the doctor to not ask questions. I don’t want the doctor to move quickly, act like they have someplace else to go.

What I want is the doctor to demonstrate expertise because certainly you want that person to be trustworthy and you want them to feel like they know what they’re doing, but I want them to treat me with respect. I want them to ask me questions. I want them to listen to me. I want to get the feeling that I matter to them and that they’re not thinking about where else they have to be. And at the end of the day, I think those are just basic human qualities. And whether you happen to be a lawyer or a doctor, I think whenever you’re in the position of having to work with someone who has that kind of expertise, you don’t have, that’s what the non-expert wants. And lawyers find themselves in those situations when they go to the doctor. And I always thought to myself, if that’s how I feel when I go to a doctor, that’s how my clients must feel. Now as a lawyer, I always try to act like the doctor I wanted to have, so to speak. And I think that’s going to maps on, again, whether you’re talking to people in the world of indigent criminal defense or you’re the head of a labor union and you’re working with your members who happen to be professional athletes,

Chay Rodriguez:

Lawyers need bedside manner. That is what I got from that. And I think absolutely, that is a shameless plug to our previous episode when we talked about AI and possibly using some components of AI to be able to help us to communicate with clients that may not understand us. And I think that that is so important because again, Todd, like you said, that’s how your client will garners trust in you if you’re able to level with them and ensure that they understand the process and everything step by step and are confident to walk with you in those steps.

Todd Berger:

Before we go, if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player, be sure to share our podcast with your friends and fellow students. We want to hear from you, so send us your thoughts about the show or issues you’d like to hear about in a review. We at the ABA Law Student Podcast would like to express our thanks to our production team at the Legal Talk Network and the professionals at the ABA Law Student Division.

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