Bullying In The Legal Profession: The Hard Data And Hard Reality

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dave Scriven-Young:

Hello everyone and welcome to Litigation Radio. I’m your host, . I’m a litigator practicing environmental and construction law in the Chicago office of O’Hagan Meyer, and I also coach young lawyers on how to accelerate their careers without burning out on the show. We talk to the country’s top litigators and judges to discover best practices in developing our careers, winning cases, getting more clients, and building a sustainable practice. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app to make sure that you’re getting updated with future episodes. This podcast is brought to you by the litigation section of the American Burner Association. It’s where I make my home in the ABA. The litigation section provides litigators of all practice areas, the resources we need to be successful advocates for our clients. Learn more at ambar.org/litigation. There’s no doubt that a lawyer’s life is stressful and a litigator’s life is perhaps the most stressful in the profession.

A recent social media post described a litigator’s life as doing everything you can to help a client and then having someone on the other side trying to undo everything that you just did and what can be more stressful than that. But compounding that stress is the way that litigators can treat each other even within their own law firms. These experiences recently led the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism to commission a study on bullying in the legal profession. And that study was administered by the Red B Group, LLC, under the leadership of principal Stephanie Scharf and Bobbi Liebenberg, who also co-authored the report. We’re lucky to have Stephanie and Bobbi with us discuss their work and recommendations. So may introduce our guest. Stephanie Scharf is the founder of Scharf Banks Marmor, LLC, practicing in Chicago. Her broad substantive experience includes the litigation of complex commercial disputes, class action, defense products, liability and mass tort defense insurance coverage for corporate policy holders and employment litigation. Stephanie is a longtime leader in the A BA and the section of litigation, including her service as chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. Welcome to the show, Stephanie.

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And our next guest is Bobbi Liebenberg. She’s a member of the law firm of Fine Kaplan in black in Philadelphia, where she focuses her practices on class actions, antitrust, consumer protection, data privacy, products, liability, mass torts and complex commercial litigation. Among others, Bobbi is also a longtime leader in the A BA and the litigation section, including her service as chair of the A standing committee on the federal judiciary. So glad to have you on the show, Bobbi.

Bobbi Liebenberg:

Thank you Dave. Glad to be here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

So Stephanie, let’s start with you and would love to talk to you more about the report. How did the study on bullying in the legal profession come about?

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Well, it came about in a way that many projects come about. People get together and start talking. I’ve known Erica Harold, who’s executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism for a number of years. We got together for coffee someday, and she started to tell the many stories she had about bullying in the legal profession, especially women lawyers, lawyers of color, young lawyers. And we got to talking and she decided, you know what the time is now. And she decided and got permission for the commission on professionalism to do this research. Bobbi and I put together a research project because everyone agreed that you’d have a lot of anecdotes about bullying, but anecdotes catch your attention. But it’s data really that gets change done that catches the attentions of leaders and decision makers in the profession. And as you know, this survey gives a lot of data and a lot of very compelling data from over 6,000 lawyers in the state of Illinois alone. It’s a representative sample of all 55,000 lawyers who practice in Illinois. So it’s going to be very hard to say, oh, that’s just a few people. Oh, it doesn’t happen very often. Bullying happens a lot and the proof is in the pudding of our report.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Well, and let’s dig into that data, Bobbi, first of all, let’s define our terms though. How did the study define bullying?

Bobbi Liebenberg:

Thanks, Dave. So bullying is more than incivility being rude or disrespectful, and it typically involves a power imbalance with often unrelenting aggression, intimidation, or humiliation. And we define bullying for the study as inappropriate behavior intended to intimidate, humiliate, or control the actions of another person. And bullying may take many forms including verbal, nonverbal and even physical acts. And I think it’s important to remember that in terms of our study, it was chosen, bullying was chosen because workplace anti-harassment laws and policies may only apply to abusive conduct that is targeted at someone due to a protected characteristic such as gender, sexual orientation, race, or other personal characteristics. And while bullying that cannot be proven to be motivated by such a characteristic is usually not illegal under anti-harassment laws, and therefore it may not be encompassed by an organization’s anti-harassment policies. And because there may not be formal legal mechanisms to redress conduct, it was important for the study to collect data to assess its prevalence and its impact.

Dave Scriven-Young:

So Bobbi, why should our listeners care about what happens with the study and how does bullying impact not only individual lawyers but the profession at large?

Bobbi Liebenberg:

We’re going to go into this in great detail with our data, but as an overview, it’s important that bullying has a pernicious effect on a lawyer’s career productivity, the quality of their work, their emotional wellbeing, and their physical health. It can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression. And it often creates a toxic workplace culture where this conduct is normalized as either a rite of passage and where lawyers who are bullied are afraid to come forward. And many lawyers believe because you’ll see how often lawyers are bullied that this is just sort of normal hazing that every lawyer has to put up with in terms of their progression within their legal organization. And because there is no widespread set of standards in the legal profession about what bullying entails. And of course before our study, no database of information about bullying, our study provides an empirical foundation for legal employers to address and ameliorate bullying.

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Of course, I agree with everything Bobbi is saying, and I want to add a little bit different perspective. 30 years ago, bullying was prevalent and widespread, but the attitude as well, you had to kind of suck it up. It was part of becoming a lawyer, but even then it was driving people out of the profession. And as more and more women came into the profession, it became even a bigger problem. And as more people of color came into the profession, it became a problem. So this is something that simply is not going to go away unless people in leadership positions do something about it. And it really does have a very bad impact on individuals and on employers and the culture of companies and law firms where lawyers work

Dave Scriven-Young:

Well. And Stephanie, what does the data show with respect to bullying in terms of who is most impacted by bullying? And you spoke of lawyers who are women and folks of color. How does bullying impact those individuals, especially

Stephanie A. Scharf:

I believe the data show that in some sense everyone is impacted by bullying, but there are people who are directly impacted because they experience more of it other people, let’s say. So there is a strong gender effect. 38% of female lawyers report they were bullied at work in the past year compared to only 15% of male lawyers, 38% of lawyers with a disability report that they were bullied in the past year compared to 23% of lawyers without a level of disability for race and ethnicity, 23% of white lawyers are bullied, but higher percentages in every ethnic group that the ABA tracks much higher percentages of people of color were bullied in the past year, younger lawyers are substantially more bullied than older lawyers. And that, I mean, 39% of lawyers between the ages of 25 and 35 were bullied. In the past year, only 12% of senior lawyers were bullied.

And you can see that also in the area of sexual orientation, 29% of lawyers who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual were the target of bullying because of their sexual orientation, while only 3% of heterosexual lawyers were verbally bullied to that extent. So we can talk about various groups and breakdowns in levels of bullying, but I do want to get back to the idea that bullying impacts any workplace in which it takes place and nothing is done about it. In a culture that tolerates bullying, where there are leaders that turn a blind eye that impacts how people feel when they walk in that office every day because people who work in a firm or a government agency or a corporation, they know what’s going on, they know people, they know the bullies, they know when people are bullied and it tears at them. And over time, as we’ve seen in this research, people leave and they leave because of bullying. So I would not say only that some people are affected. I would say whether you think you’ve been directly bullied or not, if there is bullying in the environment in which you work, whether it’s your firm or the courthouse or a company, if you experience that, not just yourself but other people in your environment are being bullied, that’s going to have an impact on how well that business does in recruiting good people and retaining good people.

Bobbi Liebenberg:

And I would just add to this in terms of going back to how robust the data was, the sample was in this survey. So we had over 6,000 responses. They were all anonymous, and the responses were provided by lawyers in all different types of practice settings. So it wasn’t just law firms, it was corporate legal departments, government, public, not-for-profit organizations and the judiciary. And so the responses were also representative of the diversity of the lawyers in the legal profession. And indeed the profile of the lawyers who took the survey approximate the age and gender distribution of lawyers who practice in Illinois. And just to go back and put a fine point on the prevalence of it, based on our survey, one in four lawyers were bullied in the last year. And if you extrapolated that to more than the 55,000 active Illinois based lawyers, it means 13,000 lawyers in Illinois experienced some form of bullying in the last year.

And I think it’s important to say, yes, this study looked at Illinois lawyers, but this would happen in every state. We are very confident we would encourage other state supreme courts actually to conduct a survey like the one we did for the commission on professionalism. So you have this hard data on the extent of bullying in the profession because as Stephanie said, these are lived experiences and data helps to allow people to say, I’m not crazy. This has happened, this is happening to many people. It’s not only happening to me, but I’ve observed it as a bystander happening to many more.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And what I found I think most interesting about your report, Stephanie and Bobbi, is the quotes and the stories that are within the report. And I encourage all of our listeners to take a look at the report because it’s more than just facts and fingers. That also is the stories behind the bullying and the folks who responded. And certainly as a young lawyer, I’ve certainly seen my fair share of that. I remember after filing a complaint against a company, I got a call from a much more experienced seasoned lawyer basically saying that if I don’t withdraw the complaint, he was going to have the A RDC take away my law license, which I found fascinating. But also that gets your heart pumping a little bit when someone’s going to say they’re going to try to take away your livelihood. Nothing

Bobbi Liebenberg:

Like bullying to prevent you from reporting bullying. Correct.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Exactly. Right. And I guess I can understand, not that it makes it right, but I understand kind of the context in that sort of opposing counsel relationship where things can get acrimonious and maybe your clients are stubborn, you take on that position. I get that sort of what I don’t understand, and maybe we can talk about this more fully, is workplace bullying, especially in a law firm context where as I think both Stephanie, you and Bobbi mentioned certainly affects retention, affects everyone’s kind of attitude in a law firm. So we would hope that bullying stays in the schoolyard, and once we become adults, we kind of row out of that. But do we know what the kind root cause is why people bully in the workplace? Bobbi, do you have any kind of explanation or did you see anything in the research that suggests why that still occurs?

Bobbi Liebenberg:

Yeah, I think the data is very clear about this one. I think bullying is perpetuated because employers do not take any action to stop it. And Dave, your experience is not one that is dissimilar from many of our respondents. In fact, 52% of our respondents gave their employers low rating on how they reacted to the reporting of bullying. 31 said that their employer’s response was not sufficient, and 21% rated their employer’s response as totally unsatisfactory. So if you think about that, if you report bullying and nothing happens, people understand that nothing is going to happen. And so they just really put up with that behavior. We were also surprised, and I touched on this, 79% of bystanders who witnessed bullying ignored the conduct. So they didn’t step in, they didn’t intervene, they didn’t do anything. And so for lawyers and particularly the underrepresented groups that we described who were really the targets of bullying, they’re really on their own when misconduct happens.

And to top it off, and I think this again shows your story, Dave, 20% of lawyers took no action after being bullied and only 20% reported the conduct to the supervisor, which as I said, most took no action. So why is bullying under reported? And again, the data is very specific about that. And these reasons included fear of the status of the bully. Similar again to what happened to you when someone, a senior partner or someone who has power over you tells you you better not report that they think the employer will do nothing. They’re afraid of what would happen if they report the conduct, they think they might lose their job or suffer adverse work consequences. They have to report the conduct to the bully. And many people think that they will not be believed. And I think I also encourage our listeners to actually download this report, which is free and to read those comments because I think they really provide heartbreaking instances of not only the conduct and what happened, but just the impact of the bullying on a lawyer’s professional careers. And as all lawyers, we should be appalled at this, and we should, as Stephanie said in the beginning, as the commission on professionalism understood, we need to take action now. This behavior has just gone on for far, far too long.

Dave Scriven-Young:

So speaking of action, I know that the report had several recommendations for what lawyers and other entities and others can do to combat bullying. Stephanie, can you run us through some of those recommendations?

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Bobbi mentioned, and we’ve probably both mentioned it several times, that what employers do is really important. So one of the key actions that can happen is to implement anti-bullying policies in all places where lawyers practice. And part of that is to send the message that we are a firm. We are a company, we are an agency that will not tolerate bullying. One of the interesting things about our report is we also surveyed bullies and the bully people who said in our research, yes, I bullied people, and they, very few of them reported that there were any consequences for their behavior, and some of them were even promoted where they worked after the bullying took place. So the idea of employers putting together a program to minimize, if not eliminate bullying is very important to really an important best practice. And a program can involve setting forth definition of bullying and examples of bullying, making clear that procedures for confidential reporting for reporting that’s retaliation free, making sure there are procedures for prompt investigation and follow-up communications to the person who was bullied, not just the bully and implementing appropriate remedial actions.

And it’s not the case necessarily that every single report of bullying is what an employer or what generally would be considered bullying, but most of the time when people get to the point where they want to report it, it’s because it’s serious and it happened. And if there is not the appropriate follow-up and not the appropriate consequences, it just becomes a snowballing problem that won’t end with severe consequences for the employer itself because it will tend to drive people out of the firm, lots of movement in and out, inability to retain the diversity of lawyers that is now graduating from law school. Over 50% of lawyers graduating from law school are women, something like a third of lawyers graduating from law school or people of color. Those are the groups that get targeted more often for bullying. And if you don’t have an anti-bullying policy in place, you’re going to lose those people and eventually lose your ability to recruit a large number of people who are lawyers.

Bobbi Liebenberg:

54% of those who reported being bullied reported experiencing anxiety, loss of self-confidence, and other negative feelings. 39% of the respondents believe they were less productive at work, 20% experienced a decline in physical health and 12% had reduced opportunities to work on other matters. And as a result of that, there is a significant cause and effect to attrition. So 18% of respondents reported they had left a job practicing law because of workplace bullying. So again, as set forth in our report, if you extrapolated that to the total number of lawyers in Illinois, that would mean that nearly 10,000 lawyers currently practicing in Illinois left at least one job due to bullying. The other thing that I wanted to just expand on why you need examples of bullying is that many people believe that when you bully someone else, especially in the litigation context, you are being a zealous advocate.

And there really has to be an understanding of when that crosses the line between zealous advocacy and bullying. And I think lawyers have to be armed with understanding what bullying is and how to respond to it. And that goes back to even being taught this in law school because there are many times you may get client pressures, clients believe you’re a more effective and zealous advocate if you engage in this type of behavior. And so you not only have to understand it for yourself, but you also may have to explain it to your client why that isn’t going to work and why you’re not going to engage in that kind of conduct.

Stephanie A. Scharf:

We’ve been talking about workplace bullying. The workplace is not just where your desk is and where your telephone number rings, especially in litigation. There are other places where bullying can be rampant In discovery, depositions, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen lawyers bully other lawyers in discovery, and unfortunately bullying can take place in the Courtroom itself. And we had a number of discussions about that in focus groups and hundreds if not thousands of comments about it from survey respondents. And as one of them said, if it’s in the Courtroom, it’s on the judge. Now, a lot of judges are aware of that, but not all. And one of the problems is there aren’t any uniform standards within a courthouse or let’s say within a circuit in the state of Illinois, but within a set of courtrooms, there aren’t standards typically about what constitutes bullying.

And that would be very helpful. That’s one of our recommendations that there be circuit wide standing orders about what to do, what is bullying and what to do when you see it. We’re fortunate that in the state of Illinois, there is already judicial training against bullying, but it needs to be expanded. And training really should be expanded to bar associations. Bar associations have a reach that any given employer doesn’t necessarily have. And bar associations can also be a safe place where people can talk about bowling and figure out what they want to do about it themselves.

Bobbi Liebenberg:

And I would just say for individuals, because we looked at broader recommendations than just looking at all legal employers. And I do want to emphasize that we do say very strongly that the responsibility for preventing bullying rests with the leaders in legal organizations that have the authority to set and implement policy and to stop this behavior. But individuals have to understand that they are victims of this type of behavior and that there may not be one right way to respond to, but it is important to be able to enlist the support of mentors, of colleagues and friends. Having bar associations that have set up circles where individuals can go for advice is critical. We also recommend that if you are bullied to document it and to document it contemporaneously with its occurrence. And our survey provides the empirical evidence of that many lawyers are encountering this conduct in the workplace, and we want lawyers to know that they’re not alone, that we hope organizations will actually implement these recommendations. And as I said before, we hope other organizations, Supreme Courts Bar Associations will conduct these types of surveys so that we have the data to show why it’s important to take action. Now

Dave Scriven-Young:

We’re talking very practically, we have young lawyers who have run into these situations either in the Courtroom or across from a deposition table or even on a phone call with opposing counsel where they feel like they’re being bullied for whatever reason. What do you suggest that they do? And I loved your quote Bobbi, which is responsibility rests with the leaders, but if you are a young lawyer who feels like they’re being bullied for whatever reason, especially in those two contexts, what would you suggest that that young lawyer starts off with?

Bobbi Liebenberg:

I’m sure if you polled the lawyers who are listening to this program, everyone will have a story about being bullied during a deposition, particularly as a young lawyer. I know that in one of the first depositions I took, one of the real lions of the class action bar stood over me as I was asking questions of the witness trying to intimidate me, and it was intimidating. And what I did was I told him I was going to call the judge, which I did. The judge had him on the speakerphone, told him to stop. I also put it on the record about the conduct in case I could not reach the judge so that I could move for sanctions or a motion afterwards with respect to that conduct. But again, you have to act counter that they’re trying to intimidate you. And I think there is that power imbalance, especially at a deposition between an older and a younger lawyer and really thinking about that before you go into the deposition. Thinking about if a problem arose, what would I do? Having the judge’s law clerk’s number ready, I mean, a lot of lawyers have reputations about being bullies. So think about it as you proceed.

Stephanie A. Scharf:

I think it’s important to be able to be in a safe place with a safe group of people who are not necessarily in your workplace. I think bar associations are a great place for young lawyers to be, whether it’s something like the Chicago Bar Association or the California State Bar Association or the American Bar Association or any kind of a national affinity or local Affinity Bar Association. It’s good to get out of yourself and out of your firm or out of your company anyway and be in those groups. But when something troubling is happening, when you’re having a problem at work, when you feel you’ve been bullied or going to be bullied, those are safe spaces to talk to people. And I believe that there will be some bar associations now forming groups around people who want to come in and talk about bullying and what they will do.

So don’t keep to yourself if you have a problem, find a safe place or a safe group of people to share it with and discuss it. And even discussing it can make you feel better, and it will certainly give you ideas about what you should do next. Bobbi had a great idea. I always tell young lawyers learn the rules because there are a lot of rules that bullies don’t follow, and you can cite them and put them in their place with it. There’s no one way to deal with bullying. Some of it is how your personality is and how you are. So we also advise people practice the conversations you would have if you see bullying, say to yourself, well, what would I do then? What would I do in that situation? I’ve seen people in court do something that can be very effective. I hope it doesn’t depend on the judge, but sometimes when people are bullied in a Courtroom before they get on the call, they can stand up and tell the judge what happened. A lot of judges these days will not tolerate that. Again, these are ideas. Not one way to handle it is written in stone. But I do think when you are involved in a setting where you feel welcome and where you feel free to talk, that’s a very good step.

Bobbi Liebenberg:

I would just add, do not stay in a workplace culture that is toxic, that promotes this type of conduct for your own emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Great advice. Stephanie and Bobbi. We’re at the end of our time together. I wanted to give you some time to provide any last thoughts that you might have. But before we do that, I wanted to let our listeners know that if you want to hear more from Bobbi and Stephanie, you should check out two books for which they were contributing authors. The first is Her Story, lessons and Success for Lawyers Who Live It and Her Story, the Resilient Woman Lawyers Guide to Conquering Obstacles Book two. These are really powerful and uplifting books about achieving success with grace and authenticity. From the Litigation Section’s Women Advocate Committee, and you can enjoy them from start to finish or you can pick out an essay of interest to you. You can order your copy at ambar.org/litigation. Books and litigation section members save 20% on these litigation section titles. So any last thoughts? We’ll start with Stephanie,

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Be brave. If you’re bullied, you can overcome it and do something about it, and don’t be afraid to move forward and taking steps to protect yourself and to also be able to practice law in the way you’d like to.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Love that. And Bobbi, any last thoughts from you?

Bobbi Liebenberg:

I would just say as members of the legal profession, we each have a personal responsibility to eliminate bullying from our workplace. I think we do want to give a shout out to Erica Harold, the executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, the Commission’s Advisory Council for the Bullying Project, the Illinois Supreme Court for undertaking and spearheading this important and groundbreaking research, and to our fellow Red B colleagues who helped us do the focus groups and to gather the information that’s contained in the report.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Absolutely. Well, Stephanie, Shar and Bobbi Liebenberg, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention and for your work on this issue. And thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Stephanie A. Scharf:

Thank you. It was a great pleasure.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And now it’s time for our quick tip from the ABA Litigation Section. I’m pleased to welcome Lauren Williams to the show for her first tip on the podcast. Lauren Practices Corporate law at Morgan Stanley in Columbia, South Carolina. Welcome to the show, Lauren. What’s your quick tip?

Lauren Williams:

Thanks, Dave. So today my quick tip is about navigating internal investigations and best practices for in-house counsel. So a lot of the work that I do, I specialize in investigations, compliance, regulatory matters. The purpose of this is just so critical to maintain organizational integrity and navigating those legal risks, whether we’re, earlier in the podcast we were talking about workplace bullying and things like that. So that’s something that people would normally report during investigation and their investigation complaints. So whether you’re addressing a whistleblower complaint or regulatory violation or workplace misconduct, the ability to conduct an effective investigation is essential. It’s an essential skill for in-house counsel. So the first step that you really want to do is to find the purpose of your investigation. So you want to find the focus of the allegations, whether it’s in regulatory compliance or is it addressing a broader issue.

So when we focus on that well-defined scope, it keeps the process focused and efficient. After that, you want to kind of create a framework where you outline the steps of your investigation. So identify your key stakeholders. Are we evolving all of legal compliance? Hr? Sometimes we have to reach out to external counsel, or sometimes we have to reach out to our clients that we work with. And in that scope, we ask the main important questions, the who, what, when, where, and how. So when we’re determining what’s at stake, we look at potential regulatory violations, litigation risk, or reputational harm, because sometimes when we do these investigations, it does escalate into litigation matters where we do have to seek outside counsel, and we always want to remain focus on maintaining privilege because these investigations will normally be covered by attorney client privilege. So we have to explicitly say that to participants and just ensure our documentation is marked appropriately.

A helpful tip is to just draft an investigation plan in a timeline to set clear expectations. This is helpful when you’re trying to meet those tight deadlines or you’re trying to work across cross-functional teams. So when you conduct your investigations, you could be working with anybody from IT to hr. You want to secure preserve the evidence. You want to make sure you’re in compliance with HIPAA or GDPR or data privacy laws, just ensuring compliance. So when you’re conducting your interview, you want to be prepared, you want to make sure you have a professional tone. Documentation is key because you’re going to be notating any inconsistencies, any key statements or facts. And then of course, those legal notices like our Upjohn warnings and disclosures to employees clarify their rights and their obligations. And we know that a lot of these internal investigations are emotional or high stake issues.

So we always want to make sure that we’re handling them sensitively and empathetically and always have a neutral ground because a lot can be at risk. And it’s important to focus on facts and not those assumptions. As you document your findings and your review of the evidence, you always want to make sure you have a summary of the allegations, what method you use to investigate your key findings and your key evidence and your recommendations for next steps. So you always want to tailor your language to your audience. Are you sending this to the C-suite? Is it going to go to executives? Is it going to hr you, just you to be aware of your audience as well. And then another helpful tip is to, when you’re doing your investigation, make sure you address the root causes. Do we need to update any policies? Do we need to close any gaps?

Do we need to implement any trainings, raise awareness? Are there any internal reporting mechanisms that we can improve on? Just so we can just recommend ways to monitor compliance. For my young lawyers, it’s just important to know that you have to build a strong foundation in your investigative process. Stay up to date on your regulatory trends because they change so much, and don’t hesitate to seek guidance from those experience mentors. Internal investigations are tricky, but it’s an incredible opportunity to grow as a trusted advisor and then learn also the business of the company as well as the legal aspect. So those are my tips that I hope they’re helpful.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Absolutely. Thanks so much for being on the show, Lauren, and welcome to the podcast.

Lauren Williams:

Thank you. A pleasure to be here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And that’s all we have for our show today, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about today’s episode. If you have comments or a question you’d like for me to answer on an upcoming show, you can contact me at dscr Young at O’Hagan meyer.com and connect with me on social. I’m at Trinity d sy on LinkedIn, Instagram X and Facebook. You can also connect with the ABA Litigation Section on those platforms as well. But as much as I’d like to connect with you online, nothing beats meeting you in person in one of our next litigation section events. So please make plans to join us at the 2025 joint regional CLE program presented by the litigation section, environmental and Energy, mass Torts and Products liability litigation committees. Join us January 22nd through the 24th at View Line Resort Snowmass in Colorado for hot litigation topics and cold weather outdoor activities.

This popular section event is a great way to earn CLE, hear from industry leaders and network with litigators from around the country. For the complete lineup and to register, go to ambar.org/joint. If you’d like the show, please help spread the word by sharing the link to this episode with a friend or through a post on social and invite others to join the show and community. Do you want to leave a review over at Apple Podcast? It’s incredibly helpful. Even a quick rating at Spotify is super helpful as well. And finally, I’m want to quickly thanks to folks who make this show possible. Thanks, Tom Mighell obs, who’s on staff with the litigation section. Thanks. Also goes out to the co-chairs of the Litigation Sections audio content committee, Haley Maple and Charlotte Stevens. Thank you to the audio professionals from Legal Talk Network. And last but not least, thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time.