Latest / Daily Influence / 581. Breaking Barriers in Law: Vanessa Seiler on Mentorship, Integrity, and Women Leading Change

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581. Breaking Barriers in Law: Vanessa Seiler on Mentorship, Integrity, and Women Leading Change · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily influence where our mission is to deliver a daily dose of positive influence that can uplift you personally or be shared within your sphere of influence.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: While not every episode may directly apply to your unique circumstances, we strive to provide insights and inspiration relevant to most people's daily, weekly, and monthly lives.
• 0:30
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• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, share, and embrace the power of influence in your life.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Daily Influence, I'm Grecollino.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today we welcome Vanessa Siler.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: a powerhouse in the legal field and a champion for women in law.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vanessa has been practicing law since 1999 and has navigated a profession traditionally dominated by men from breaking barriers to becoming a partner without female mentors to co-founding M.A.S.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Law and all female boutique firm Vanessa is rewriting the net.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Beyond the courtroom, she dedicates herself to
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  [SPEAKER_02]: aspiring to enter the legal profession, proving that success and influence can go hand-in-hand with empathy and support.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her story is one of resilience, leadership, and responsible influence and we're honored to have her here today and share it with us.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vanessa, welcome to Daily Influence.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Greg.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you so much for having me.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really will have been a introduction.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you start about your background and what led you to where you are today with our listeners?
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just like you said, I've been an attorney since 1999 and I primarily represent banks, lending institutions and real estate investors.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The landscape, kind of.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you described has changed dramatically in many years that I've been practicing.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I first started, there were not a lot of women in courtrooms.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: There weren't a lot of women and law firms that I could look up to.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now when you go to court as I often do, there are many more women.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: many more opportunities for mentorship out there.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just didn't exist when I was first starting.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had to learn how to navigate law firms.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of tricky situations and navigate a world that was very predominantly email oriented.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that was a big part of my beginning with understanding what that world entailed and trying to move around it.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: As you reflect on your journey, what were some defining moments where you had the lead with integrity or influence through adversity?
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, as an attorney that goes to court for banks, it's very interesting.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never thought I was going to be a foreclosure attorney or, you know, and then now that I do a lot of commercial foreclosures, I didn't I didn't think my life was going to be unfold this way, but when you go to court every day, you start to understand how there's a little finesse, as I say, to being a courtroom attorney and
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: understanding what everyone's position is, what everyone's perspective is and leading with integrity to me means being upfront with the things that are maybe
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: difficult in the inner case and being truthful and consistent and being someone that the judge is relying on and know and respect and the respect comes from years of doing it but it also comes from being honest with them, not
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: not looking like you have something to cover, not looking like you have something to hide, but almost fronting the things that are difficult about your case, and I think that judges are very, very aware of what's going on even on Zoom court of their courtrooms, and they can see it.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know who is being truthful and who isn't.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, your firm amass law is an all female boutique firm.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: What does that representation mean to you and how is it received the way you approach leadership and influence.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like I said, I didn't have a lot of female leaders, and I was desperately looking for them now.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now, they're more available, especially if you seek them out.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of, I'm a part of a lot of amazing networking group of women that I respect.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I was at one of the larger law firms that I practiced at,
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I met my partner Sandra and Sandra became the mentor that I desperately needed over the period of many years and she taught me one of the things that she taught me was we need to stop focusing on pleasing the partner and start focusing more on pleasing the clients.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The change the shift of direction was essentially
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it made me understand that I needed to create a space where women could be seen and women could be taught how to be effective in court, in certain rooms, how to get into the room to even be able to talk to clients.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: In many cases, I was not even allowed in the room to talk to the client.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So grateful that you're out there and able to do that for so many.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and Greg, you know, mentorship is a funny thing.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, mentorship is not just about teaching.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about, you know, and I think you've had a podcast before about leadership and how to teach, you know, some people teach from being an example.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're an attorney,
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Back in the day, we were very much siloed in our own little offices and I just sought out other people and I wanted the collaboration and I needed to create a space where there was collaboration because I felt like that was the way I could learn.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's not a lot of learning in a courtroom because we're not sitting in court all day watching other people.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not able to always learn because we go on Zoom court and we exit when we're done.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as a younger attorney, it was very, very important for me to learn from other attorneys.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you create a space where there's more collaboration and there's more mentorship is not just about teaching the law, but it's teaching how to do invoices, how to do billing, what a structure of a law for how what is overhead all the things.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: that I needed to learn.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had to unfortunately learn over time, and I wanted to create a space where I could have a young female attorney here, and I could say this is how it works behind the scenes.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is why this is valuable and this isn't, and I didn't have, I personally didn't have that, but I wanted to create a space where that existed.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that you did that.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell us about a moment or experience where you felt you made a positive impact on someone's life?
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, one of the things I have on my desk is an email I got from a judge's clerk and I often look at it, you know.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that I've talked to younger attorneys, especially women, and I've tried to help them.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've taken the time to try and tell them my story and tell them you can have the balance of a career and a family, you can do it with the law, you have to be in the right place with the right support, you know, but it's really important that you keep trying every day.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to be really hard days and they're going to be better days.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things I had on my desk is an email from a judges clerk and, you know,
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember that day very vividly because someone came to court and some attorneys in court don't take the time to explain to people that come to court what's going on and I took a lot of time to explain to this pro say litigant what was happening and the judge's clerk was listening and I didn't know that he was listening and he wrote me an email saying,
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have never seen a lawyer do what you did today.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You took a very difficult situation, made it your personal mission to resolve the matter the best you could and to offer a motor come of comfort and support.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to say to you and thank you and express to you how I appreciate and respect you for doing so.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the way exactly the way every lawyer should act and how professional and Curtis courteous you were.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, this was just a random email that I got, but it made such a difference because sometimes you think the little things are seen and the things that you do don't matter, but people are watching and your reputation is is out there.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you need to be careful, you know, what you do and how you treat people and and to be kind of everybody is watching court.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a positive influence you've had on that clerk and your client.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I love that you shared that story and the point is that you don't know when people are listening, but the fact is, someone's always listening.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're listening, you know, and you have to live to be able to live with yourself afterwards.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, and law firms are hard to navigate there.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that they're better than, can we hear that they're used to either learning?
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's now these hybrid learning or hybrid working environments and maybe some more support for women and law firms now, but when I was younger, it just wasn't there, it didn't exist.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was a difficult time.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember it being a difficult time.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you personally define responsible influence and how is that definition of all for you both as an attorney and a mentor?
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the things that I do, I have two young younger daughters who are in college and graduated from college and there's a lot of younger women that often ask me, you know, what to do, how to navigate, whether it's even possible to have a really good career and be a mother, you know, the usual structure.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: law firms and lawyers weren't really conducive to, you know, women being able to feel like they were successful at both, right?
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, oftentimes I would run on the train.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I always say the conductor and I became very close because I would cry on the train because I was leaving my children.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like I needed to
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of transition to the the the career that I was trying to have and also balance them the being a mother and now it's so different because you can maybe have more of a hybrid situation like I was saying before but back then it just wasn't a thing and for sure you couldn't really take a lot of time off and you couldn't take a lot of occasion you have to build your hours and so
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just not, it was really difficult, but if I survived what was in store like back then and what the structure was like back then I think it's much more conducive for balance now.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want something and if you need something to make yourself a better attorney, I always say you have to ask for it.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, have the courage to go talk to a managing partner and say, listen,
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would be much more effective if I had this.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or I would be, in fact, I think that this person, one of my last law firms that I worked at before I started mass law, was I felt like one of the partner that I am with now.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I felt like she had not been recognized.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was a Latino lawyer.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was brilliant.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: She had a lot of respect from our clients, but the firm was recognizing her.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, we need to create a space where people can see,
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: how amazing you are.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And but you know you also have to be the kind of person that knocks on the door and says I need to talk to you and I need I need to see what I'm doing and I need you to know what I'm doing.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I need you to understand my passion so that you know you reward me.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You reward me from my passion.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the one message our words have encouraged what would you like to share with our listeners to aspire to make a positive difference in the world?
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well my message is
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: To take a, take a breath and to listen to other people's perspective a little bit more.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things about court that you learn is you don't always have the floor and if you want to be good, you need to listen to other people's.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: arguments, you need to listen all the way through the best advice I ever got was from my father who said, you know, listen to everyone's perspective and then take a minute and then do what's best for you.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think about that a lot because I have to listen to the judge's perspective and understand it, not just here, but understand it, my opponents, my opposing counsel's perspective.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not always right.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think you begin with, okay, what, how can I get better?
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: How can I understand their perspective more?
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: What arguments are they making that are valid?
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What arguments aren't valid?
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can only really dig deeper into that if you can kind of see it from their eyes.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that also life is sometimes about nuance and it's not always so black and white and so, you know, categorical where you can, it's not so easy to define the things that that makes someone.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, I keep saying the word effective, but I think it's the only word I can think of.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't see someone else's perspective, you're limited in your growth, you're limited to how you see the world, you're limited in how the world will see you.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so not only do you have to kind of figure out who you are and what your passion is, but you have to understand the world and how it works and you have to do a lot of work.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: think about your own, you know, your own message, your own, your own thoughts, your own emotions, you have to kind of be much more consider the other persons that makes sense.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: That absolute makes sense.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your incredible journey.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the positive impact that you're making, your story is truly a testament to what we need to meet with strength, purpose and compassion.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do so?
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So email is the best.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a view like Vanessa, as like Sam, E.I.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: L.E.R.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: at M.A.S.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: LawLLC.com.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the best way to reach me.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you Greg so much.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I loved talking to you today, it was a pleasure.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: you're welcome Vanessa.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll put your information on the show notes and thank you so much for joining us and sharing your stories and advice.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so grateful for you.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to daily influence.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope today's conversation brought you inside an inspiration.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: If it's spoke to you, share with someone who could use a little positivity today.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Influence isn't about the loudest voice.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the quiet guidance.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The doors you open and the resilience you should know.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Small actions create big impact.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Keep showing up leading and growing one data time.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep making a positive response