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Blending Families & Trial Law: The Inspiring Story of Mike Laurenson & Mollie Burks · Coopers' Code

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You have to be very accessible you and you have to ensure that
0:07
these younger lawyers on your team know that it's not an
0:11
inconvenience for them to text you, for them to say, can we get
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on the phone right now? They call me all the time and
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they say sorry to call you and I'm like, we're talking about
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work. You don't need to apologize.
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It is easy for me to do my job from home when I'm not in court
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and more convenient for me to do my job from home when I'm not in
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court. But I learned because I could
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walk down the hall and ask Mike a question, and I learned
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because I could walk next door and ask my colleague a question.
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And it's important to be able to do that.
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We need to make sacrifices and do things that are less
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convenient and less desirable for ourselves, perhaps so that
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they get adequate experience. I would not have been able to
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achieve what I achieved without an excellent partner.
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And we all know as lawyers how important it is to have a good
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partner. But you know, not just a law
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partner, but my life partner. Well, you know this, you live
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this. And if I if I hadn't, in the
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absence of that, I never would have achieved what I've
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achieved. Howdy, and welcome to the show.
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Cooper's Code focuses on legal issues and notable
1:25
practitioners, distilling wisdom so we all achieve the best
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results for our clients. I'm Miles Cooper and I'm very
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excited for this conversation with Employment Defense World's
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power couple. Wiley Burks and Michael Lorenson
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both have decades at Gordon Reese, Scully and Sukani, each
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establishing themselves in their own ways.
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Molly rose from the tiny town of Tuolumne in California's Gold
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Country to become Co managing partner for Gordon Reese's
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Northern California region, developing A reputation as a go
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to resource for employers with complex wage and hour and
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private attorney General act concerns.
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Mike served in the US Navy during the first Persian Gulf
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War. Now in his third decade at
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Gordon Reese, he's the person to see when reputational employment
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litigation takes when the trial defending Thomas Keller in the
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French Laundry to successful defense verdict against a
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pregnancy discrimination suit with challenging evidence that
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you met and married as partners at Gordon Reese, having worked
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on cases together and share their insights on running two
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busy practices or raising four children together.
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So sit back and enjoy this fascinating exploration of their
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shared work and lives. Welcome to the show, Molly.
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Mike, thanks for having us. We're happy to be here.
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Well, I'm very excited. As I said before we we started,
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this is the first time we've had two guests live at the same
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time. So it's going to be a task for
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me in terms of just kind of, you know, handling, handling the
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conversation. So as we go forward, I'd love to
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hear a little bit about both of your backgrounds.
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And I'm not sure which one of you wants to start in terms of
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how you grew up and how you found yourself in the law.
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Her story's more interesting, so why don't we start with her, OK?
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I am a California native. I grew up in a very small town
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in Tuolami County. Actually the the the town of
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Tuolami, Tuolami City. It's not really a city at all
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and there's no lawyers in my family.
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I come from a very modest working class family that had
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been in that area for a very long time.
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My great great grandfather came over the Sonora Pass in a
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covered wagon, one of the first groups to to traverse that that
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pass and. And has a mountain named after.
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Him What's the mountain? Duckwall Mountain, OK, which
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sits right above Tuolumne as you drive into into the town.
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And I think I was four years old and somebody said you really
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like to argue a lot, Molly, you should be a lawyer when you grow
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up. And somehow that stuck.
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And so I went to UC Irvine. I graduated.
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I didn't, I didn't like immediately go to law school at
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that point. I got a job working for a lawyer
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who represented children who were dependents of the court in
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Orange County. He was actually one of the first
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lawyers to do that kind of work, and he spoke before Congress.
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He was very long. What was his name?
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Harold Laflon, OK, and I went to work for his office and at at
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some point I remember speaking with Harold about maybe going
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into public policy. Maybe I would go to Graduate
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School and go into public policy because of very I was very
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interested in legal issues impacting kids who were
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dependents of the court. And he said you should just go
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to law school. You should go to law school at
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night and it'll be a much better degree for you to have more, you
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know, versatile, you'll have more options and you can keep
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working For me, go to Western State.
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So I went to law school at night and I continued to work for the
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Law Offices of Harold Laflon. And then I got to law school and
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I loved it. I loved trial practice.
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I loved I did the advanced trial practice class and I loved Civil
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Procedure. I just sort of loved everything
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about it, and at some point I decided that I needed to try
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civil, civil practice, and that's pretty much how I got to
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where I am today. Well, I'm, I'm going to put a
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pin in it there and turn to Mike in terms of of the path to law
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school and then we'll come back to your kind of your
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professional advancement if that works, sure.
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After graduating from USF law, just to like start there and
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work back and being on the Board of Governors for a couple years
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there and always coming back and talking to the students.
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They want to know how you became a lawyer.
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And then to that caused me to do a lot of thinking.
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And it wasn't till I came to that point in my life, pretty
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late in my life where I realized my grandfather was a circuit
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preacher. My, both my parents were public
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school teachers and I became a trial attorney.
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And it's really all the same job, just in different places.
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It's all about just being comfortable on your feet in
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front of people and storytelling, really.
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And, and I would, I always had that, you know, from from
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childhood, I was always in church, in youth group up front
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of the church and leading things and talking.
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And for a while the my church wanted me to be a minister, but
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that didn't seem quite right. But I kind of always knew I was
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going to end up on my feet in front of people talking.
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And law seemed like the natural way to do that.
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So I did Navy ROTC at University of Virginia and I had to do four
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years in the Navy. And I started to get into, I got
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trained to be on the side legal officer in the Navy to kind of
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start to work on that. And then I had a choice to make
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when it was time to get out of the Navy, whether I wanted to,
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you know, go into the Jag Corps or just get out and become a
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regular old lawyer. And it things just worked out
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with the Navy and where what I was wanting to do that it just
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seemed like the right thing to do to get out of the Navy.
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And I moved from San Diego up to San Francisco and started at USF
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law and loved it, obviously, and did all the mood court stuff.
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And that was clearly my thing and I wanted to, so I wanted to
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be in a practice where I could be in court, but criminal law
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just never spoke to me. I've, and also talking to the
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students. I've, I've always felt like it's
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either, you know, it's like either for you or it is.
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And it's hard to explain why. I just, it didn't appeal to me
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to do either, you know, DA or public defender.
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It just didn't appeal to me. So I knew I wanted to do civil
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and you know, I just look for a, a small defense firm where I
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could get into court. And Gordon and Reese had that
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reputation at the time and I was lucky to find a job there and
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been there coming up on 30 years now from a.
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Small defense firm to all 50 states.
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Yeah, we were 85 ish attorneys at the time I started 30 years
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ago and now we're 85 ish offices in all 50 states.
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So it's been quite a wild ride. With over 1600 wires, yeah.
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That's a lot of growth. A lot of growth, an
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extraordinary amount of growth. And the funniest thing is, if
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you to ask Stu Gordon and Don Reese back when I joined the
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firm, they would have told you it had already exceeded their
9:24
wildest imagination. I mean they started Stu and Don
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and Gary Zacker started the firm and they had built it to a 85
9:34
person firm in San Francisco with a very good reputation, a
9:38
lot of great attorneys and and I would clearly they would have
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been happy just quitting there. But it just kept going, just
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kept going. And Stu just retired last year.
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Wow. Oh I I didn't realize that part.
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Yeah, Don passed away a couple years ago and Stu just retired
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last year. Because I did some homework and
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I want to make sure that people are, are the best advocates for
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themselves in terms of their bio.
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I, I don't want to overlook your, your service in the
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Persian Gulf because that was one thing I was expecting to
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hear from your Navy piece that I didn't so.
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I was heading too fast towards my attorney.
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Yeah, so you you had two tours? Two tours in the Gulf, the first
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during the Persian Gulf war, the the first Persian Gulf war that
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was the 48 hour one. We were on a regular deployment
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in the Philippines and got sent over to the Gulf and we're there
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for 120 days or so. It constantly at sea and we're
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there when you know, we invaded Iraq and I was on an amphibious
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ship. We were the distraction force
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that was to make Saddam think we were coming ashore in Kuwait.
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Amphibious ship has a bunch of Marines on it and all their
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equipment and all their hovercraft and things like that.
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And so we acted like we were landing in Kuwait and while the
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everybody else came in through the back door.
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And as we know, that one was over in 24 hours or something,
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but it was another month or so that we were there.
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And then, you know, you got to go all the way back to the
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Philippines. And, and so we came up, I was
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going, I was deployed for like 18 months.
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And when you have a deployment like that, you're supposed to
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get a little more time off. But within a couple months, it
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was announced that we were going back because there was an
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important mission to maintain the presence.
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So six months later we were back.
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But the benefit was the first time I went over there, I went
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all the way over there. You know, it's, I don't know,
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10s of 20,000 miles or something, you know, from San
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Diego to there and back. And, and you know, the, the
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water 14 miles off of Kuwait looks just like the water 14
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miles off of San Diego. So you don't get that much
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experience of being in a foreign place or being in Kuwait.
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And we, of course, did not go ashore.
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So a year later when we ended up back there and the war was over,
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it was nice because we were allowed to go ashore and they
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took us on tours and we saw the highway to hell or whatever
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where we, you know, they were all evacuating.
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And so it was nice to get to in the minarets with all the holes
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and things like that we saw a year later.
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So I was in the Gulf for a couple of months and it's, it's
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a, it was a, you know, pretty scary place.
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Saddam uses used at that time, a lot of old World War 2 tethered
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mines that would break free and float around the Gulf.
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And so you know that we would sweep channels in these
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minefields and, and that's all well and good if you stayed in
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the swept channel, but then a mine would break loose and
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they'd. So they're just floating around
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the Gulf. And from a couple miles away,
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you don't know whether it's an oil barrel or a mine or a dead
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sheep, which the sheep, the sheep fall off the sheep
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carriers and Bob around. And yeah, so there's bobbing
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sheep, there's bobbing oil barrels, and there's bobbing
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mines. 11 can ruin your. Day, you know, 2-2 would be OK
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to hit, and the third you don't want to hit.
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So you're, you know, ever vigilant while you're over there
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just 'cause you want to, you don't want your return home
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delayed. If if you're on a Navy ship and
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you hit a mine, probably no one's going to die.
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Probably, certainly not me up on the bridge wing.
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I wouldn't die, but there'd be a big hole blown in your ship.
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And those tend to take nine months or so to fix.
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And nobody wanted to spend nine months over there.
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So you're like, I'll be darned if we're going to hit something
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floating around in the Gulf. The the things one does not
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think of when 1 is. Yeah, the floating sheep, Yeah,
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they get rigor mortis too, so they just Bob around with their
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forelegs and the Yeah, so you can see them up close, but it
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from a distance it's just something bobbing in the water.
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There's a dad joke somewhere in there.
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Right. Rigor mortis.
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I was thinking, Bob, but swinging back to you, Molly.
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So when we left, you had decided Civil might be the right fit for
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you. You're in Southern California.
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Can you tell us a little bit about your path there?
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Sure. So I was entering my last year
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of flaw school. I went at night so it took me 4
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years. It's in a four year program and
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I got a clerking position at a firm, a boutique firm in
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downtown Los Angeles, a litigation firm.
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They did a lot of sports and entertainment.
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So one of our main clients was the Nederlander family who they,
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they run, they still book a number of the Broadway, Broadway
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venues in New York. And they also were the exclusive
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bookers for the Greek Theatre Staples Center.
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They did, they did shows that the Hollywood Bowl, that the
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Santa Barbara Bowl. And so one of the perks was for
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a, for an associate, like, you know, the other associates and
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I, we would, it would be a Thursday afternoon and, oh,
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there's seats available at the Greek for, to see the Strokes
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tonight, really interesting shows.
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And for some musical acts that I wouldn't have necessarily
15:46
thought to go and see, I had the opportunity to see them.
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And, and we, we get to go to the Redwood Room, which is, you
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know, where the, the performers and their, their entourage hangs
15:59
out before and after the show. It was really a fun thing.
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So I worked there for about a year and a half.
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I, I clerked there first and then I passed, I took the bar
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and passed the bar and they offered me a job as an associate
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and I worked there for almost 2 years.
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I, one of my very good friends at the firm was a paralegal and
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she kept encouraging me to meet with her husband who is a part
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who is a partner still at Gordon and Reece.
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And finally I went to lunch with him and he hired me away to
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Gordon and Reece and I've been there ever since.
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I just celebrated my 21st anniversary at the firm.
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So I've been at Gordon and Reece for 21 years, started out as a
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the baby associate and I've held every attorney role there is.
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I'm now an equity partner and was just recently promoted to
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Northern California office managing partner.
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That's the job I'll take on officially February 1st, and I'm
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really excited about that. But you got to put in a plug for
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the unnamed partner who hired you and became your mentor and
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taught you everything you know about what to do in a courtroom,
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right? Absolutely, absolutely.
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Our partner Steve Ronk is the the lawyer.
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I had lunch with my my friend Madeline's husband and he is a
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very important part of my life. He took me to trial as a third
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year and he and I tried maybe 6 cases together and I I owe him a
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a debt of gratitude for everything I know how to do in
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the courtroom. That's I think an important
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point that before we started, we were talking a little bit about
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associates now. And you, you told me a story
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about how one of your associates hadn't had been around for five
17:59
years and had never argued emotion in person in court.
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And, and, and I bring this up from the perspective of
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mentoring, the mentoring you received, both of you, I, I
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presume the importance of mentoring that you received.
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And then how do you bring that forward right now in a world
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where we're very dispersed? It's really tough.
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I, I was lucky enough to get the only job offer I got from Mike
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Lucy, who at the time was doing some asbestos work.
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I had Bendix breaks as a client. So I, you know, during, during
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my first year as an associate, I got to take 50 plaintiffs
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depots. I was, you know, taking the
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depots of very ill plaintiffs in their bedrooms because they
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couldn't be deposed anyplace else.
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I mean, it was a great experience, MM told me.
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And that was the people are probably familiar with that, the
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asbestos world. I mean, a lot of people are
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contract attorneys. They only care about their
19:01
client. They have their 10 questions to
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exclude their client from the case.
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And so you would go to a plaintiff's, Mike told me you're
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going to go to the plaintiff's deposition and there's going to
19:11
be 40 people sitting around the wall waiting for their turn to
19:15
ask their 10 questions. And the chair across from the
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plaintiff is going to be empty and you're going to sit in that
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chair. And I did.
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And so, you know, asbestos work ain't great, but I took 50 depos
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on the first year as an attorney and then expert depos as well.
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Expert, you know, the, the medicine's a big issue.
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And so that experience was was priceless.
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And as the firm had to grow and evolve and Mike Lucy became the
19:47
first managing partner after Stu Gordon and we clients wanted
19:53
experts, we evolved into practice groups.
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And Mike became the head of the employment practice group and I
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became an employment attorney. And it was the single greatest
20:03
thing that ever happened to me. And we had at the time Stanford
20:08
and UC as, as clients and they were, they were difficult
20:12
defendants, people. You know, if you sued UC and
20:16
Stanford, you were going to have a probably going to have a fight
20:19
on your hands and, and might end up at at trial because they
20:22
tried cases back then. And so, you know, I got to try a
20:26
lot of cases and he let me do stuff.
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And so by the time I was a fifth year attorney, I was he will
20:34
just let me try a case on my own.
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And you know, that kind of mentoring is super important and
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we've been struggling with doing that now because it's
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particularly it it's hard for torn.
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She's less torn, she's better at it.
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I'm torn because I'm at the point in my career as we were
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talking about where I can do my job from home, I can do my job
21:01
from anywhere. I have all these established
21:03
relationships that are easy to maintain now because I've known
21:07
these people for so long. So it is easy for me to do my
21:10
job from home when I'm not in court, and more convenient for
21:14
me to do my job from home when I'm not in court.
21:18
But I learned because I could walk down the hall and ask Mike
21:22
a question. And I learned because I could
21:25
walk next door and ask my colleague a question.
21:28
And it's important to be able to do that.
21:31
And it's one thing if they're all sitting in our wonderful San
21:36
Francisco office now with each other, but they still need us
21:42
there in order to have the full experience.
21:45
So it is, you know, we need to make sacrifices and do things
21:51
that are less convenient and less desirable for ourselves,
21:55
perhaps so that they get adequate experience.
21:58
And like I said, Molly's much better at it than I am.
22:02
You have to be very accessible you and you have to ensure that
22:08
these younger lawyers on your team know that it's not an
22:13
inconvenience for them to text you, for them to say, can we get
22:17
on the phone right now? They call me all the time and
22:19
they say sorry to call you and I'm like, we're talking about
22:22
work. You don't need to apologize.
22:25
Right. And it does, it does make make
22:30
that really it makes it more challenging.
22:32
It's it. It adds a level of difficulty.
22:37
I'm curious what steps or or tools techniques you, Molly,
22:42
have found that resonates with younger lawyers where you are
22:47
more accessible? I tell everyone in our very
22:50
first meeting together, this is my cell phone, text me.
22:55
I am a very good texter. I have teenage children.
22:59
I know how to text. I think that younger people are
23:02
more comfortable texting than they are picking up the phone if
23:07
they have a burning question. And I want them to know that if
23:11
we're not in the same office and you can't just come down and
23:15
knock on my door, walk in my office and ask me that question,
23:18
that that text is how we're going to have those kinds of
23:22
communications. And no question is too small.
23:25
The other thing you do that's key is your check insurance
23:28
routine. Check insurance on all your
23:29
cases. I do video conference check
23:31
insurance with you know one on ones weekly with with my team
23:35
and in. Other words, some people like
23:37
me, you might just talk to them when something needs doing when
23:41
it. But she has routine check
23:44
insurance with everybody weekly. I think that's really important.
23:47
Yeah. How large is your team?
23:49
I have 8 lawyers that work almost exclusively on on, on my
23:56
clients, you know, cases. We have a, we have a large
24:01
employment group though in San Francisco and so we have plenty
24:03
of associates who work with many, many partners.
24:08
But I have I have about 8 people that are pretty much dedicated
24:12
to my work right now. The managing partner side of
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things, what does that mean for your work going forward in terms
24:20
of having an active trial practice and mentoring?
24:22
And now adding on this, what does that look like?
24:25
Can't wait to see. She starts in February.
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Fortunately we have a really good sort of structure, right?
24:33
So my role will be the managing partner of all, of all six of
24:38
our Northern California offices, but we have office managing
24:42
partners for each of those offices.
24:45
So there's not just one person who has to field all of these
24:49
questions and deal with these issues, but it's, it's still
24:57
going to be, I've been doing my on the job training.
25:00
It's still going to to to take a a great deal of time that I'll
25:06
have to devote to this. And the way that I'm
25:08
conceptualizing it is that this is a client.
25:13
This is a new big important clients and we all have lots of
25:19
clients and we know what that's like to sort of readjust and re
25:26
prioritize. And I have a couple of senior
25:32
folks on my team who are partners who will take a more
25:35
active role in managing some of my client relationships where so
25:41
that I can, you know, readjust that time.
25:44
But she, I mean, she already works from 4:00 AM to 9:00 PM
25:48
every day. So it, the solution is not going
25:51
to be just adding two more hours of work.
25:53
There aren't any more hours of work to add.
25:55
So she's going to have to step back from her litigation
25:59
practice a little. And I don't think she knows yet
26:03
how to do that and how what that's going to look like and
26:06
how to achieve that. So we'll see.
26:09
It's going to be interesting. It's a good year to become an
26:11
empty nester. Exactly.
26:13
Thank goodness. Yeah, she's going to use up
26:16
every one of those hours that she used to spend with kids
26:20
stuff. Tangented on to that, but I I
26:24
want to come back and and I made a reference to empty nesters.
26:27
At a certain point, the two of you in encountered each other
26:32
and and there's a reason we're having this conversation
26:35
together. And it's not just the fact that
26:37
you're both successful partners at Gordon and Reece, it's
26:40
because you also live together. We do.
26:43
We are married. We just celebrated our 11th
26:46
anniversary yesterday. Congratulations.
26:50
And yeah, so I would. I'd been at Gordon and Reece for
26:56
1012 years. You'd been at Gordon and Reece
26:58
for 7:00 or 8:00 or so. And, you know, we're going to,
27:03
I'm in San Francisco, she's in the LA office.
27:07
We're going to partnership retreats in Yountville.
27:10
And we meet each other and, you know, become friends and.
27:15
I remember it was my first partnership retreat because I
27:18
had just been elevated. And I remember meeting Mike for
27:23
the first time because Mike was in charge of the the
27:29
Entertainment slash new partner hazing event, which was karaoke.
27:36
And so all the new partners had to pick a song and stand up and
27:40
perform for the rest of the partners.
27:42
And Mike was in charge of that. And he came up to me to
27:47
introduce himself and ask me the song I was going to sing.
27:51
And I told him and he said, no one's going to know that song
27:58
and it's not going to be in the book.
28:00
What? What was the song?
28:01
You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You by Dean Martin.
28:04
By Dean Martin, right and. And I said, of course people
28:08
know that song and of course it's going to be in the book.
28:12
And it was, and I sang it. And she's an extraordinary
28:19
singer. She's an incredible voice and
28:22
she killed it and everybody did know it.
28:26
And it was, you know, the very first time of many that she was
28:31
right and I was wrong. And the rest is kind of history.
28:36
We did. We kind of bonded over Tuolami,
28:39
where she was from. I learned that she was from
28:42
Tuolami and I'd spent some time up there and I was really into
28:45
the outdoors and backpacking and stuff.
28:48
And so before long we're, you know, huddled over our phone
28:52
looking over maps of Tuolumne and where she lives.
28:55
And so that was that was something that we had in common
28:58
that I found very interesting in her, her upbringing and, you
29:02
know, what she came from and, and that interest in the
29:06
outdoors. And so that was something we had
29:08
in common. And so we just became, you know,
29:10
we just became friends and, you know, the next partnership
29:14
retreat, we're Frenzy Ann and the next partnership retreat
29:18
where it's nice to see each other and it just kind of
29:21
evolves, you know, to where we're in love.
29:24
I'm pretty sure we're in love and need to be together after a
29:28
couple of partnership retreats where we would, you know, stay
29:31
in touch during the year and stuff and reconnect at the
29:34
partnership retreat and, you know, ended up getting divorced
29:39
from the folks we were married to at the time.
29:41
Very OK divorces, as far as divorces go for each of us and
29:47
people we still are friends with and respect and got together and
29:54
she moved up from LA to San Francisco with her kids, with
30:01
her two children and two children and we became a family
30:06
of 6A blended family of of 6. You've moved your practice up to
30:11
Northern California. You have come up with two kids.
30:14
How old are your kids at this point that both of you?
30:18
We have a 21 year old, a 22 year old just turned 22, an almost 19
30:24
year old and an 18 year old. And at the time that you're
30:27
getting together. The two youngest were six and
30:30
then the oldest were 9 and 10. So that seems like a lot to
30:34
bring together as well as establishing re establishing a
30:38
practice in in Northern California.
30:40
How? How does that evolve?
30:42
I actually think back and I don't know, I, I really don't, I
30:48
think it was just a lot of, you know, putting 1 foot in front of
30:53
the other every day. And we were and are so in love.
31:00
And we really wanted it to be. We, we put so much effort into
31:05
it. We wanted it to be everything
31:08
that we had imagined it could be.
31:10
And it was. But it was a lot of hard work.
31:12
And I mean, there's just been so many moments over the past
31:20
several years where I've stopped and reflected back about what
31:26
things looked like the year prior.
31:28
And I'm, I'm always, I'm always surprised, kind of taken aback
31:33
by it because when I moved up here, I was a, a junior partner.
31:38
I, I had only been a partner for a couple of years.
31:40
I was still learning what it meant to be a partner and
31:45
responsible for your book and generating clients and running a
31:48
business and also being a good lawyer.
31:52
And I came from a place where I had tried a bunch of cases and I
31:55
had a reputation. The judges knew me.
31:58
I in Los Angeles, if you're an employment lawyer, you practice
32:02
in one courthouse primarily. And I, I knew that courthouse
32:05
like the back of my hand. It felt like a home to me.
32:09
So to come up here and to be in a lot of foreign places where
32:16
nobody knew really who I was, especially at that time, you
32:20
know, where now you have a lot of lawyers who just practice
32:24
across California. That really wasn't the case
32:27
before COVID in the area of unemployment law anyways.
32:31
So it it was a lot. I really do think it is, you
32:36
know, the reason why she is where she is today is like a
32:40
kind of a trite trial by fire thing.
32:44
I mean, she had to start over while raising 4 kids in like a
32:49
foreign land, some somewhat hostile foreign land, start over
32:55
professionally and obviously we were starting as a family.
33:00
And I mean, I think there's a reason why over the course of 12
33:06
years, she not only, you know, re established her practice, but
33:12
then, you know, rocketed right past me to where she's an equity
33:17
partner now and taking over Northern California.
33:20
And I don't I don't think you get there unless you're like
33:25
need to fight for survival like she had to.
33:28
You know, I'm sure, I'm sure it's like being in that Crucible
33:32
that it that caused her to be as successful as she is.
33:37
I would not have been able to achieve what I achieved without
33:41
an excellent partner. And we all know as lawyers how
33:45
important it is to have a good partner.
33:48
But you know, not just a law partner, but my life partner.
33:51
Well, you know this, you live this and and if I, if I hadn't,
33:58
in the absence of that, I never would have achieved what I've
34:00
achieved. A question that I was going to
34:02
ask related to any learnings that you might have to share in
34:08
terms of breaking into a new area.
34:12
And the reason I say this is while it's not common on
34:15
occasion now, people, lawyers do have to move.
34:18
And anything that you found that was particularly helpful in
34:22
terms of whether it be networking or showing up in
34:25
court or what have you in terms of redeveloping your roots in a
34:31
new space? I think the way I would answer
34:34
it is we did attend a lot of sort of localized San Francisco
34:42
bar events. Mike was already very involved
34:45
in a lot of organizations and. That's true.
34:48
You would come to a lot of stuff with me, right?
34:50
We'd go to the USF Inn of Cord and she'd come and you know,
34:55
other stuff that groups that I was in that you would, you would
34:58
come and. Yes, and, and, and I met a lot
35:01
of, I met a lot of judges that way.
35:04
And but this all kind of goes back to something that I learned
35:08
from my mentor Steve Ronk, which is this job is a relationship
35:13
job. You have to build relationships
35:16
with people to be a good litigator.
35:17
It's not just adverse, it's not about fighting.
35:20
It's about having a relationship with all of those people, even
35:24
your adversaries and the judge and the clerk and whoever.
35:27
And so I, I knew it was important if I was going to be
35:30
successful. I knew it was important for me
35:32
to develop these relationships with our San Francisco partners,
35:37
who I did not necessarily know a lot of them right before moving
35:41
up from our our Los Angeles office and establishing
35:44
relationships with our associates and going to all of
35:47
those social events. And then, you know, going to
35:50
court and going out of my way to to meet people and to introduce
35:56
myself. From your perspective, Mike,
35:58
any, any observations beyond what Molly talked about that you
36:01
felt were, were ways that she nailed it?
36:04
Yeah, I just, she's exceptional at relationships.
36:06
I mean, she makes all her clients feel like they're the
36:09
most important client. I mean, she's a kind of person
36:13
that yeah, and I've never been this way.
36:16
And again, it's the reason why she's successful as she has
36:20
been. If the phone, if the phone would
36:24
ring at the dinner table and it's a quiet, she's going to
36:26
take the call. The my phone rings at the dinner
36:29
table. I ignore it.
36:31
And so I think when you approach all your relationships like
36:36
that, it bears fruit, you know, and that and so she, because she
36:41
had that skill set, I just think it may be it may have been
36:47
easier for her than some people to re establish herself because
36:51
she just has that real expertise at relationships, you know,
36:56
making people feel important and valued.
36:59
I did maintain a lot of my client relationships in Southern
37:02
California and these are clients that are still my client today.
37:05
And I did for those first few years, I did go down to Los
37:09
Angeles and try cases and handle arbitrations and I still go down
37:16
quite a bit. But, but you know, that was that
37:20
was also, you know, part of what I was doing during that time to
37:26
to further grow my business. Meanwhile, we're raising these
37:30
four kids. That was where I was going to
37:32
go. Together we were thinking, well,
37:34
just because of our anniversary, I guess we've been doing some
37:38
reflecting. And, you know, we, we just spent
37:41
the weekend at our, our place in Tuolumne where Molly's from.
37:45
We have a house on the street that she grew up on now with her
37:48
parents living next door. And we just spent the weekend up
37:52
there and we, you know, got there at 9 O clock and we're
38:00
exhausted and, you know, poured for the tequila.
38:06
And we were like, you know, if this were five years ago, you'd
38:11
be making dinner right now and I'd be laying out everybody's
38:17
ski equipment in piles for the next morning.
38:20
So they all had their gloves and they all had their socks and
38:23
they all had their hats because, you know, 8 year olds can't find
38:27
their old gloves or socks or whatever.
38:29
So I'd be laying out the piles of ski stuff and we'd be up the
38:32
next morning at 6:00 AM heading up to Dodge Ridge to go skiing
38:37
and make sure they had a, you know what?
38:39
We wanted them to have a, a full life of experiences.
38:43
And so we would, you know, working as hard as we were
38:47
working, we would then come home and do a lot of that stuff that
38:50
was, it was really important to us.
38:51
And we don't, it seems impossible now.
38:56
I don't know if just because I'm two years away from 60 and I'm
38:59
just old and tired now or what, but it it doesn't.
39:02
We did do it. We did do it and it didn't seem
39:05
that. Exhausting at the time, I mean
39:07
it. But I don't know how.
39:09
I don't know how. I mean, we would leave we for a
39:13
while got into going to Mount Bachelor and Ben skiing.
39:18
I ended up liking that better than Tahoe or Dodge or anything.
39:22
And that the whole vibe there in Bend and that's that like a two.
39:28
It's better if you do that drive in two hunks.
39:31
And so we get 323 times every winter, 2 times every winter at
39:37
least. We would take the drive up to
39:39
Bend and we'd, you know, we'd leave on a Thursday or
39:42
something. Drive up to weed, spend the
39:44
night at the Hilo Motel, you know, get there at 9:00 at
39:47
night. Spend the night at the Hilo
39:49
Motel, which the kids loved. Dumpy dumpy little place and
39:52
weed. Excellent hot chocolate.
39:54
Excellent chocolate. And we'd get up the next morning
39:57
at I'd get everybody up the next morning at 4:00 AM.
40:00
Because back then I read in the Chronicle outdoor section, Tom
40:04
Steinstrah about where you could go just across the border into
40:08
Oregon and see bald eagles. He wrote about how there was
40:12
this old growth Redwood forest just across the border in
40:15
Oregon. And if you drove through the
40:18
town of Doris, across the border, across the train tracks.
40:23
Make your first left at the grain silo after the train
40:25
tracks. Drive a quarter mile down that
40:27
road and park. And if you park there at 5:00
40:31
AM, between 5:00 and 6:00 AM, 200 bald eagles would fly right
40:37
over your head as they were heading from where they slept at
40:40
night in the old growth forest to the Thule Wildlife Preserve,
40:45
where they would get their fish and their birds and stuff.
40:49
And so, I mean, our kids were game, I guess, for this.
40:53
I don't know but. I don't remember twisting any
40:56
arms. Wake him up at 4:30.
40:58
We put all our winter stuff on because again, it's winter.
41:02
Put all our winter stuff on. Drive over there.
41:05
Watch the bald eagles drive back into California.
41:10
Go to the Thule Wildlife Preserve so that we could see
41:14
bald eagles literally sitting on the ground eating a bird that
41:17
they'd caught or something 10 feet from the car.
41:21
And there was Lava Beds National Monument there.
41:24
And for a couple of those trips, we would then go to Lava Beds
41:27
National Monument and be the only people there.
41:30
And we would put our flashlights on and we would go down in these
41:33
lava tube caves. They have lava tube caves there
41:36
that are 20 to 40 feet big and some of them go for a mile.
41:41
You can just walk right in. They don't lock them up or
41:43
anything. And we'd have our headlights on
41:46
and we'd go walking around in these caves.
41:48
And then we'd finally get in the car at 10 AM and drive the rest
41:51
of the way to bend and ski the three day presidents weekend or
41:56
whatever and drive 8 hours home and go to work and be in court
42:01
on Monday. It seems impossible.
42:03
I don't. I don't know how we did it, but
42:05
we did that for 10 years. What I'm hearing and and it's
42:10
it's neat to hear, is that one can have a successful practice
42:14
and be a successful parent. 100%.
42:17
Definitely. But I mean, we both ended up I
42:20
think relatively successful and we put a lot of emphasis on the
42:24
family stuff. And it does take obviously a
42:28
partnership. You really have to, you know,
42:31
back each other up and be willing to do every anything
42:37
that needs doing. 100% it's. It's not achievable without
42:41
that. I know that you and we're going
42:44
to get there in terms of talking about the trial that you did
42:47
together, I know that you are thinking partners on occasion
42:51
for each other, but you also have, I mean for the most part
42:53
you have independent cases, yeah.
42:55
We do, we have, we have a lot of like cross pollination though
43:00
between our between our books, right.
43:02
So I, you know, if I have a client who has a case that needs
43:09
to be tried, like brand new case in the door that needs to be
43:12
tried, I'm going to turn to Mike and say, oh, I've got something
43:16
for you. When Mike's clients have wage an
43:20
hour class action cases, complex litigation, PAGA representative
43:24
actions, he sends them over to me because he hates that stuff
43:27
and I really enjoy those cases. And so we we do a lot of that
43:33
back and forth. And part of my reason for laying
43:36
foundation to use lawyer lawyers.
43:39
Have there been points where you've both been headed out to
43:41
trial at the same time with you know, 4 youngish middle ish ones
43:46
in the house on the management, child management, household
43:49
management as well as practice management?
43:51
How have you fielded that? Yeah, we did.
43:54
We did have to do that a couple of times.
43:56
Including but not limited to the one trial we actually tried
44:00
together, but there were still a couple other times.
44:02
Yeah. And when they were, when they
44:03
were younger, I had a trial in Santa Barbara last year in well,
44:07
in 24 and I was there for a month and Mike was also in an
44:12
arbitration at the time. He actually came down and helped
44:15
me pick. The jury.
44:16
Pick your jury. But at that time we had two
44:18
teenagers, so it was a little bit easier to manage.
44:20
But early on in our relationship, there were a
44:23
couple of times when we were both in trial.
44:27
But then other times, you know, at least one of us had something
44:31
going on that was local. So if you had the nanny hang out
44:36
longer till I could get back at 7:00 PM, at least somebody could
44:42
be back, you know, but and the the case that we tried together
44:48
was in San Francisco, so we could both get back by 7:00.
44:52
Even though we're trying to case together, we could get home.
44:54
And that was fun when you gave that closing argument two of our
44:57
kids. Oh, need came to watch.
45:00
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45:02
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