EP 1009: Introducing Sydney Marino

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Heels in the Courtroom where the trial lawyers of the Simon Law Firm break down what it takes to win in the courtroom and in life.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Heals in the Courtroom. I’m Liz Lenivy, and today I’m joined by Mary Simon, Elizabeth McNulty, Katie St. John, and making her heels in the courtroom debut. Sydney Marino. Welcome, Sydney.

Sydney Marino:

Thank you everyone. I’m really excited.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

We are really excited to have you joining the podcast. And for those of you who don’t know, Sydney is actually the newest attorney at our firm. She is a former law clerk. A little bit of background on Sydney so you can get to know her. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri, Columbia in 2022 and a graduate of SLU Law 2025. She clerked at the Simon Law Firm from 2023 until 2025 and upon graduation worked at the Keen Law Office focusing on business law, class actions and other litigation matters on behalf of both individuals and small businesses. We are very lucky that she has rejoined Simon Law as our newest attorney. So welcome back, Sydney.

Sydney Marino:

Thank you. Thank you. I am very happy to be back.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe starting with your journey to law school? Why a legal career?

Sydney Marino:

So let’s see. I’ve actually had to answer this question more times than not in the past two weeks, so I kind of have a good answer. I don’t feel like I have a great story by any means, but I think if you ask my parents and anyone that I was around growing up and told them that I would be an attorney, they would be like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” I was always very argumentative with my brother, my parents, especially growing up, but my dad, he actually worked as a sheriff and was actually a sheriff for a couple judges that are still on the bench today and I’ve actually got to go and meet them and talk to them. And then he became a homicide investigator for the Circuit Attorney’s Office. He does not do that anymore. He is a fraud investigator now, but growing up, that was his job and he wouldn’t tell me obviously the details of certain things because I was a child, but he told me his interactions with judges, attorneys, things like that.

And I always found that really fascinating. I always thought I was going to first get into criminal law and I feel like a lot of people also feel like that as well and they start out that way. So correct me if I’m wrong. Then I always had that in the back of my mind. I went to Mizzou, I was in the journalism school, which is if you know about Mizzou, that’s the first journalism school in the country. We’re very proud of it. I’m sure you’ll hear me talk about it. I call it the J School. I called it the J School multiple times last week during my interview for our website and no one knew what I was talking about. But there I sort of learned, I was like, “I still want to go to law school. That’s still in my mind, but I want to have it tie into what I’m learning right now.” And I was like, “I think I want to be a sports agent.” That was my track.

And I was like, “That sounds really cool.” I had a degree in strategic communications with an emphasis on public relations, sports and entertainment promotion. And I’m like, “I think being a sports agent, I grew up playing sports. My brother played four sports. My dad was always a coach. I was always surrounded by sports and I find it very fascinating.” And then the entertainment world, I’m a big pop culture person and fashion and things like that. So I’m like, “That seems like something I could do and getting a law degree would make sense with that. ” And so that was my whole thought process. I applied to schools in LA. I applied to schools all over the country. I applied to SLU because I was like, I think just to have it in my back pocket, I eventually ended up going to SLU. And then when I started clerking here at Simon, I was like, “This is what I am meant to do.

” And it really inspired me to want to do trial work. I find it so fascinating. It’s an adrenaline rush. And I think the big main, I don’t know, aspect of everything that we do here and the attorneys, what their work is, is helping people. And I’ve always been a people person and I want to help people in any way. So that was something that really drew that to me. And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not going to be a sports agent. I’ll throw that out the window.” So that’s sort of my long-winded story that doesn’t really have any exciting aspects.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

No, I appreciate that answer. And I feel like I’ve already learned something that now I have in common with you. My dad was also in law enforcement and I went to law school fully thinking I was going to do criminal law. He thought I was going to be a prosecutor. So it’s a long journey, but you never know where you’re going to end up, but we’re very glad to have you back here.

Mary Simon:

I love how you said that the work that we do is an adrenaline rush because I feel like no one really describes it that way, but all of us around the table know that and there’s a certain level of excitement in it that I think kind of maybe would be an eye roll to explain that to someone who isn’t an attorney or doesn’t do this type of work. I’m curious, what about clerking here? I know that you said emphasis on helping people and stuff. What do you like about plaintiff’s work specifically?

Sydney Marino:

I do. I like figuring out different issues and creative ways to say you have a case where you need to figure out liability and who to actually sue or something like that. I think creative thinking is really helpful there and problem solving, things like that. And then when you have an answer and you know you’re right, pushing that home is also, that gives me an adrenaline rush as well. I don’t know, being right almost.

Mary Simon:

Yeah, it is like investigation. It’s just on the other side of it. When was your first day here?

Sydney Marino:

Last Monday.

Mary Simon:

How’s it been since, what has it been, a week?

Sydney Marino:

Two weeks.

Mary Simon:

Two weeks.

Sydney Marino:

Coming back here, one, it’s great because it’s familiar faces. It wasn’t that long ago that I was clerking here last May, so less than a year at this point. So that’s always great. And it’s like I’m back and picking up right where I left off, but also when you’re here, there’s always something happening. There’s a deposition, there’s five depositions in a day. There’s going to court on a hearing or helping out in some way. And then it’s just all of the trials. I’m very excited to be involved in so many different trials in some aspect and my calendar is completely full and that’s great.

Mary Simon:

Welcome to Simon Long.

Sydney Marino:

I know. It’s just very exciting. I don’t want to fall into the mundane getting up, going to work, sitting and looking at a screen for eight hours or however long, going home, making dinner, going to bed, working out somewhere in between. I don’t want to fall into that and I don’t think being here that’ll ever happen ever. And so that’s what I’m most excited about. I think for my first day I got here and I went and sat in a depo the entire day and that was great. I’m like, “That’s the best first day I’ve ever had.” Instead of getting signed up on your email or whatever, doing administrative tasks. So I knew what I was getting myself back into here and it’s a great feeling to be able to know that I can be excited to come to work every day.

Katie St. John:

Some of our listeners will know I’m also on Johnny’s team. Sydney has joined Johnny’s team, so I’m super excited about that. I get to work closely with her, but she already has sat through her case meeting with all of us that lasted an entire day and she got her very own set of a nice size case list. So she’s been through it already within two weeks of starting.

Sydney Marino:

No, it’s nothing better than jumping in and head first. I don’t know. Shawnie said something about, it’s like a fire hose. I don’t know. I was

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Like- Drinking from a fire.

Sydney Marino:

Drinking from a fire hose. I was like, yeah, that’s a good way to describe it, but that’s the way you learn. You do the uncomfortable things.

Katie St. John:

Do you think that your experience … So I also went to Mizzou but I was not at the J School. I was a history major, so very different. But do you feel like your time at the J School helped you with your ability to think frame the law in more of a creative way? Because I don’t feel like I would not consider myself a creative person.

Sydney Marino:

I think so just because how the journalism school starts out is I was never on the track of news reporting and going out and doing investigative work. You start out that way, everyone takes the same intro classes, but then I went into the more marketing, advertising, public relations, things like that. But those are still creative aspects. I did things that were probably not, necessarily they wouldn’t fall into law, but it does help me in a way that I can think critically of certain aspects of a case and how to build upon this. I think making a story, that’s a big thing, especially on the plaintiff’s side is making your case a story. I do think that I got a lot of that from being in the journalism school and the sort of classes that I took and the skills that I gained there. So I think that’s probably the only way.

I don’t know. Some of the stuff there we did wasn’t necessarily wouldn’t translate well, but I mean, those are two completely opposite career paths.

Elizabeth McNulty:

We’ve heard a lot about your professional life and kind of how you are professionally, but what is something that you like to do in your free time that kind of best describes your personality?

Sydney Marino:

Okay. I think if you know me, you know that I love La Gree. Malagree is a form of Pilates. I used to work at Plank. It’s a studio here in St. Louis and I used to work there during law school. It was one of my multiple jobs that I had during law school and I just love it. I love the people. A lot of my friends are instructors there, but it really is something that is also just an aspect of my life that I think if you know me, you know that I love doing that. What else? Fashion. I love fashion.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

This is the problem with an audio medium is that you can’t see what we’re looking at right now, which is that Sydney’s wearing a sick outfit and she’s consistently one of the coolest dressed people in the office. So yeah, when she says fashion, she means it. Probably the coolest in the

Katie St. John:

Office.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

It’s

Katie St. John:

Not fun of. Yeah. Okay.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

Great. Yeah.

Katie St. John:

I’ve already confessed to Sydney that when I found out she was coming back to the firm, that that was my biggest. I was like, shoot, there’s two of us on this team and one of us wears legings in a pullover and the other one looks like a model. So that’s great. Yeah.

Sydney Marino:

Okay. No. Just take it girl. I’ take it. Thank you. I grew up, my mom is a fashionista. She worked at a jewelry wholesaler, but she always was in the fashion world. She would go to New York for things and I think that just kind of transferred into me. Growing up, I was the biggest tomboy ever. I only wore soccer jerseys to school and long basketball shorts, probably up until

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I love

Sydney Marino:

That fifth grade.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

The Adam Sandler specialist.

Sydney Marino:

Yeah. No, that was my outfit. But now I think I see that it’s all translated into me and my mom’s fashion sense. And if I probably wasn’t doing law work and being an attorney, I would want to do something in fashion. I’ve always enjoyed it. I don’t know. I’m someone that’s like, look good, feel good, you work well. I feel like I work the best when I’m, I don’t know, feel confident in what I’m wearing that comes into part of it. That’s another thing that’s a big aspect of my life. I love fashion.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

We talk about, I feel like clothes in the office so much and it’s something that women have to talk about more. A guy shows up in a ratty shirt and a pair of sweatpants and nobody bats an eye. Women have to focus more on it. And the thing that I’ve sort of settled on is whatever makes you feel best when you’re working, that’s what you should wear to the office. As long as it’s obviously court, there’s certain places where you got to present well, but otherwise just wear what makes you the most effective and efficient at your job. Okay. We have some old episodes that we’ve recorded. Obviously we’ve got quite a bank of prior material where our audience gets the opportunity to know us a little bit more and whenever someone new joins the podcast, it’s always a bit of catch up. You’re jumping in.

And so what we thought would be fun is maybe going back through our catalog and touching on some of the previous topics we’ve talked about that might give our audience a better sense of who you are. So I’m going to go back to episode season five, episode 20, relighting the fire after burnout. So

How do you manage burnout? And I think it’s one of those things too where everyone reaches it at some point. We do our best to avoid it. So how do you try to avoid it, but when it inevitably sneaks up on you, how do you bounce back from it?

Sydney Marino:

So I think this is something I’m learning every single day too. What works best for me with burnout and how to avoid it or to bounce back. I take really long walks. I think that’s something that helps and I just completely turn off everything. I try and turn off everything in my brain. I try and walk every single day after work if I can. I’m fortunate enough to live across from Forest Park so that always makes it easier. But that’s something where if I’m working on emotion, writing something or just trying to process a case in my head, if I can’t look at it any longer, I know myself best to be like, “Okay, close the computer, get up, you need to walk, take some time away from it. ” And then I usually come back feeling more refreshed. The only other thing I can think of, and this is something I learned in law school and studying for the bar exam, I rely on my family, mainly my mom so much.

I think I call her three times a day sometimes, at least every day, once a day. And when I start to feel overwhelmed with something or I just am at the end of the gas in the tank, it’s empty. I call her and she always knows how to bring me back to reality. So that’s something I really appreciate from her. And I wrote in my notes, my mom is the GOAT. She is the greatest of all time. So if she ever listens to this, shout out mom. But yeah, walking, knowing when to give yourself a break and relying on the people around you.

Katie St. John:

I love that. I mean, I think a lot of us in this room rely on moms and that’s such a gift in this profession as a female attorney. I mean, my mom is a florist, we don’t deal with the same types of issues, but it is so refreshing to have such a strong support in your mom. So I can relate to that 100%. One of the other episodes that I really enjoyed that we did was a word that defines your 2026 and that was an episode that Liz, Elizabeth, and myself have already given our words. So now it’s Sydney and Mary’s turn to come up with a word that would define your 2026. Sydnee, you want to go first?

Sydney Marino:

I can go first. I’ll give Mary some time to think on it.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

And maybe it would help as a reminder of what our words were, if that’s helpful. Elizabeth’s word for 26 was observation. Mine was shaping and Katie’s was perseverance. So Mary, no pressure, but think of something good.

Mary Simon:

Yeah, I’ve got mine already now.

Sydney Marino:

Do you want to go ahead?

Mary Simon:

Yeah, sure. Mine’s resilience.

Sydney Marino:

Nice. I like that.

Mary Simon:

And probably for all the similar reasons that Katie talked about perseverance, it just sounds like another word that I could bounce off of. Thanks, Katie. You’re welcome.

Sydney Marino:

Yeah. Okay. Mine, I feel like it’s a little cliche, but mine is change. This is the first full year that I won’t be in school, that I won’t be studying for an exam, the bar exam, the LSAT back when I was graduating college. And I feel like that’s different for me. Change is always scary, but it’s also really exciting. I’m in that stage in life where everyone around me seems to be either getting married or I have people having kids and I’m in my best friend’s wedding this year and she’s grown up with her. I’ve went to school with her from fourth grade to through college through grad school. So that’s kind of a different change in my life as well. I’m in a new apartment. My brother’s graduating college. There’s a lot of things that are happening mainly to people around me, but it’s kind of interesting to see where I’m at in my life and where they are.

And so I think change is a good word because it’s, I don’t know, it’s different this year is a completely different realm that I’ll be in.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

I think that word, the point where you are in your life, I’m saying this is someone 10 years older than you. There’s a lot going on and it’s going to be a constant feeling of change for the next several years, but you seem ready and prepared for it.

Elizabeth McNulty:

We recorded another episode inspired by another podcast called I’ve Had It. Anything that’s really just been bothering you that you’ve just had it with.

Sydney Marino:

I think this one’s funny because if you know me, I tend to have it with a lot of things, but I have three that I love that. I thought of.

Imposter syndrome. I think that’s something that everyone struggles with at some point and I’m going through it a lot right now. Work-life balance, I dislike it. And then a timeline, having a timeline. That’s something that I said it in my what word describes my 2026 as change, and I think I’m at a point in my life where everyone around me seems to be on a timeline. I don’t want to abide by a timeline ever. I’ve had it with having some expectation that I have to be at at a certain age and where I should be at in my life or who I should be with in my life or something like that. I’ve just had it with timelines.

Mary Simon:

Gosh, I love that so much. I even feel like not only are we so happy to have you here at Simon, but also even in the last 10 minutes, I just feel inspired to just be an overall better person listening to you talk.

Elizabeth McNulty:

What more can you ask for?

Mary Simon:

I know. Right? Man, I’m

Sydney Marino:

Feeling great. Well, you all inspire me. Everyone at this firm inspires me. It motivates me to be the best of the best like you all are. So I’m very happy to be back here and learn from you all and everyone else around this firm and everything.

Elizabeth Lenivy:

And we’re so excited to see everything that you’re going to achieve here. Sydney, thank you so much for letting us rapid fire questions at you and sitting there and answering them and letting us and our listeners get to know you. And thank you all for tuning in for another episode of Heals in the Courtroom. Remember, new episodes drop every other Wednesday, and if you’d like to join the conversation, you can reach out to us at heelsinthecourtroom.log. Thanks, guys.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Heels in the Courtroom. At the Simon Law Firm, we know that trial success isn’t just about experience. It’s about strategy, resources, and the power of collaboration. That’s why attorneys across the country partner with us to strengthen their cases and deliver justice for their clients. If you’re interested in working with our team of seasoned trial lawyers, call 314-241-2929. And if you enjoyed the podcast, be sure to subscribe and send us your thoughts at heelsinthecourtroom.law.

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