Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 179: Dena Lefkowitz | Winning in Your Own Court
Transcript
- DenaLefkowitzAud === Davina: [00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick, founder and CEO of wealthy woman lawyer, and I'm here today with a colleague and friend Dina Lefkowitz. Dina is the known as the counselor's coach, so I'm really excited to talk about her today. We're gonna learn a lot. Davina: She is a professional coach for lawyers and executives. She is a former lawyer herself. We're gonna hear all about her story there. She is the founder of Achievement by Design, and she's the author of Winning in Your Own Court, 10 Laws for a successful Career without Burning out or selling out. I've got questions. Davina: I know you've got questions. We're gonna be diving in, so Dina, welcome. I'm happy you're here. Dena: Thank you so much. It's such a thrill to hear myself introduced as an author. It's still so new. Davina: I know, right? I've written a couple of books and used the word author. It's, I've been a writer [00:01:00] forever and a copywriter, a journalistic writer, all those things. Davina: But when you hear author, it's a whole different thing. When did you publish your book? Dena: My book was published on September 1st, 2022. Davina: Oh Dena: good. Which happens to be my mother's birthday, so Davina: Oh, happy birthday to your mother. Dena: You and I have something in common now. We both birthed, we were both birthed on on September 1st. Davina: Exactly. That is the truth. That is the truth. Alright, I've got lots of questions for you guys. So let's start with you. Your journey, first of all, to becoming a lawyer. Was it something that you always knew you wanted to do or was it something that. At some point somebody said, probably be a good idea if you went to law school, and so you said, okay, or what. Dena: Being a lawyer was never something that I thought of. I, I never really thought of a career path at all. That was not something that was in my lexicon. I just knew from a very early age that I always seem to want more. I was the youngest of five. My father was [00:02:00] a school teacher. Obviously money was a problem. Dena: He moonlighted, uh, doing part-time work, and there was really never enough. So I, I realized that if I wanted something, I was gonna have to work for it. And I got my first job when I was 10 years old, working in a summer camp for the summer. And at the end of the summer, I was able to buy a camera. The connection between autonomy, making money and being able to get the things that I wanted was forever emblazoned in my soul. Dena: I was never without a job after age 10 part-time, of course, in high school, got working papers at 14, put myself through college, and at that point, Davina, I thought I was done. I thought I, I thought I would get a good job with all my, you know, my, my degree and all my smarts and that I would, I would work for [00:03:00] the rest of my life. Dena: But I found out that a liberal arts degree doesn't get you very many jobs. I'm sure there are gonna be people listening this to this right now saying it doesn't, oh my God, what am I gonna do? It doesn't, and so just like my father. I was moonlighting when I got my first job out of college. I couldn't afford a car. Dena: I couldn't afford to move out of my college apartment, so I, I catered and wrote newspaper articles and did other things on the side, and I thought, when will the day come, when I can just have one job? And I started to think, what am I going to do? Like so many other people have told you before and like so many people are doing right now, I threw a dart at a career I had heard of. Dena: I took the LSAT and I went to law school and I really didn't know anything about what being a lawyer involved. I was [00:04:00] encouraged to go to law school because I'm smart and articulate. Right. How, how much time do you think I spent being articulate every day in my job as a lawyer, I gotta go to court sometimes, but most of the day I was sitting behind a desk solving problems and working hard. Dena: So it really wasn't anything that I, that I, that I knew. But the thing that, that, the thing that really made me wanna help lawyers was what happened next? Because. Once I got through law school and I started, um, working as a lawyer, I focused on the work. I was taking depositions, I was doing arbitrations, I was arguing motions, I was writing briefs. Dena: I was doing it all, and I was doing really well at it, and I was getting great performance reviews, great raises, everything was going great until my law firm decided to close. Davina: [00:05:00] Oh wow. How long did you work for the law firm? Dena: So Davina: this was your first job that you Dena: got? No, it was, it wasn't my first job. I had had, I had worked for a couple different firms. Dena: I had been at this firm for a couple of years and it was closing and all of the lawyers were looking for work. And an interesting thing happened. There was one partner who just wanted to go of council. He had a good book of business, but he didn't wanna do any work. He had a much easier time finding his next gig than I did with all my industry, with all my hard work, with all my jury experience. Dena: It was the book of business. The scales fell from my eyes, Davina: right? Dena: I realized that being a good lawyer was not gonna be enough. Davina: So I find it, uh, interesting because. I coach women, law firm owners in [00:06:00] growing their law firm business, and of course, it the, the business as the business owner, it's our responsibility to bring in work. Davina: In fact, the advice that I give most of them is it's your job to bring in business. You're hiring associates to do the work at, in the beginning, and it's your job to make that investment and bring in the business or any partners. And so we know if we're going to run a law firm business that that's a big part of our career. Davina: But what a lot of people don't think about is if, even if you're working for someone else, if you want a career in the law and you want to make partner in another law firm business, it's an expectation that you will have a book of business that you're growing with you. And if you ever wanna do like you did and move on to someplace else. Davina: That's gonna be something that's gonna make you the pick over another candidate who doesn't have a book of business. So I think it's really interesting that you bring this topic up. So [00:07:00] tell me then, what did you do at that point? Here you are, you've been, how long had you been working as a lawyer? 10 years. Davina: 10 years. You, you already had a decade as working as a lawyer and no one, no mentor, had taken you by the hand and said you need to be working on building your book of business. Dena: No, no. Davina, they didn't. And I think there's a reason that they didn't, they wanted me to be available to work on their things. Davina: Oh yes. Dena: So I, I found, I find when I coach lawyers now and in my career and in all the time in between, that this is not changed. As you just said, associates are brought in to do the work. Now you said, at least initially, but I didn't find there was ever an end to that period where someone said, now come on Dina, what are you gonna do about bringing in some business? Dena: No, they were very happy to have my industrious person working on their stuff. And so, yeah, I, I [00:08:00] was able to, I guess, evade, uh, uh, I didn't have to confront the marketing thing at all. It was never, you want you a topic. Davina: It's interesting because I actually worked as a marketer for, I was the head of the marketing department for a mid-size law firm. Davina: They had 50 partners at the time and a half million dollar marketing budget. And I was, you know, worked closely with the, the marketing, the attorney that was in charge of marketing for the firm, the marketing committee, and he said to me, we don't really want the business that associates will bring in. Davina: Because we want these, they, they did a lot of real estate and business to business, these large businesses. So, you know, uh, an associate who wants to bring in their friend who's going through a divorce wasn't something that that law firm was interested in. So they didn't invest in training them for business development until they had been [00:09:00] with the firm for some period of time and were on the partnership track and they could see this. Davina: They're, you know, they're getting close to where they. We're gonna be partner and this is when they would start to, you know, invest a little bit in that kind of thing. Maybe getting them on a board or something like that. Right. But not your experience at all. Dena: And do you know what the problem with that is? Dena: By the time? Well, lots of problems Davina: with that, Dena: but yeah. Where do we start? Right. One of the problems with what you just said is habits have already been ingrained, so, okay. I haven't been asked to do anything on business development, networking, marketing. Until I'm being considered for partnership. Well, that's many years of not building my network. Dena: Many years of not posting on LinkedIn, many years of not having the social media presence that I now have to catch up to. Right? So it, you lose a lot in those years and then habits are ingrained. You're not used to marketing, networking, making time for those [00:10:00] things, maybe you don't even know what you're doing. Dena: And that's where I find people really fall down because we always go to the things that we feel comfortable with, that we're experts at doing, where we feel confident and qualified. So networking, marketing just falls to the bottom, especially since partners are generally happy to have you working on their things. Dena: Now, you said earlier if you wanna make partner, you better start thinking about. Bringing in business. But it's also true if you just want autonomy over your career. If you don't wanna be, if you don't want the winds of change that happen in law firms to totally control you when you have your own clients, it's like a bulletproof vest, Davina: right? Davina: I love Dena: that imagery. I, I can tell you many coaches get all of their business from big law firms, many coaches that I know. That's not how I am. I get some that way, but I have a lot of individually paying clients that come to me. [00:11:00] And when the pandemic hit, all of the coaches I knew petrified that they were going to lose their business. Dena: And some of them, some of those big firms did immediately pull coaching, uh, agreements. But my individual clients stuck with me. So having your own book of business has proven not just as a lawyer, but as any professional service provider, that it's your security. It's a must. Davina: I also think that when you talk about your network, a network is much bigger than just, uh, business people hiring you and network is. Davina: If you change jobs and or you, you wanna do something different, your network is your source of connections to help you. You know, think outside the box, bridge those gaps, introduce you to somebody. It's important for speaking engagements or [00:12:00] guest podcasting or anything. Anything that you do, anything that you wanna do in your career. Davina: If you wanna enter into a totally different career. Having a good network of professional colleagues is gonna make a huge difference for you as opposed to Dena: you are so Davina: just trying to go it alone. Yeah, for sure. Dena: So I, I can't tell you how many people don't think about their network until they're looking for a new job and then I look at their LinkedIn profile and they have 99 contacts. Dena: You know, and I know it's go going to be an uphill battle because this is a person who hasn't put any value or emphasis on relationships. Davina: Well, there's nothing like getting that email out of the blue too from somebody that you haven't spoken to in forever who's like, Hey, how you been? You're like, okay, what do you want? Davina: I haven't heard from you in forever. I know there's something that you want, and I'd rather people just be direct than try to, you know, like, take up my time to catch me up on things. Just tell me what it is that you want. I'd rather [00:13:00] help you than and move on, than just get caught up in this false sort of relationship that we don't have. Davina: 'cause I haven't heard from you in years. Um, I want to talk to you, I wanna ask you specifically about the laws you didn't learn in law school, because you talk about this, uh, a lot in, in sort of how you coach and how you teach the laws you didn't learn in law school. And I know you have a number of them, but I, one of them in particular was this, um. Davina: Where you were talking about confidence. So can you tell me some of the laws that we didn't learn in law school and what you mean by that? 'cause the lawyers, lawyers are gonna look at it and go, what do you mean? Here's the law? Yeah. I've heard of laws of the universe. I've heard of laws of physics, I've heard of legal laws. Davina: But what do you mean by that? Dena: Well, it's funny that you say that because I, I did have a couple lawyers. Question whether I should call that call, call my book. Oh Davina: really? Dena: The laws, you know, I'm not Davina: surprised by that. Dena: [00:14:00] Exactly. One of them said, how about rules? Davina: Oh. And you're like, Dena: thank Davina: you. So Dena: my point, you know, my point is the law of attraction isn't Yeah. In the statute, but people talk about it as a law. And so that's, that's how I view the laws that, that are in my book. They really came up as a result of the school of hard knocks because I didn't really learn anything in law school that I could take with me practically into the profession. Dena: I learned how to think like a lawyer, how to research, how to write, all that great stuff, but I was like a child who doesn't know where, where babies come from. I didn't know where clients came from. I had no idea. Getting clients wasn't something that entered my mind as a problem to solve much less something that I was going to be involved with. Dena: So, so a couple laws that, that, that, that came up are [00:15:00] understand what you're getting into. I threw a dart at what I thought was a high paying profession and it isn't really. I think the average average salary for lawyers right now is somewhere around $150,000 a year. And when you think about how much money it costs to go to law school and how much time you spend, uh, becoming proficient as a lawyer. Dena: That's not the salary I think people are really shooting for when they think I wanna be. Davina: It's a lot less. It's a lot less in other locations too. I, and it's a lot less for solo practitioners who aren't building a business. Dena: Right? 150 is the average. That means there are a lot of people making a lot less than that, right. Dena: As lawyers, Davina: right. Dena: So I thought I was throwing a dart at a high paying profession. You never gonna, you're never gonna get rich working for a salary as a [00:16:00] lawyer. So I had that all wrong. And even the salaries themselves were shockingly low in my view. You hear about what, what big firms are making, and that is a tiny percentage of what lawyers actually earn. Davina: Mm-hmm. Dena: So that was a, that was a shock to the system. So some of the laws that I talk about in my book are, first of all figuring out what's important to you. This is the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. And I think of wealth as being not just financial wealth is also the ability to decide what you wanna do with your life. Dena: And a lot of people don't know themselves well enough to make that decision. I didn't really know myself until I was in my thirties and I was already practicing law by then. Davina: Mm-hmm. Dena: And I, I, I figured out who I was by being in situations that I found intolerable. So I found it intolerable to be a litigator. Dena: I literally cried on Sunday nights knowing I was [00:17:00] going to have to go back and do that job again. So why did somebody who doesn't even like to send food back in a restaurant become a litigator? I didn't know myself. I didn't know what was important to me. And you know, even if you asked me what's important to me now, I'd give you all the same answers. Dena: Everybody does. Health, family, you know, security. But in what order? Right? Because they say, you, you, you can't have it all. And I agree with that. You can have everything that's important to you. And I think what the tr the trap that people get into is they say, well, I have what's important to me, but I also want what Davina has. Dena: I also want what that person has, and that's where you get into trouble because you can rank your values, you can decide what's important to you. You can do work that you like, but you're not necessarily going to be paid handsomely if the work that you like is highly altruistic. [00:18:00] Right. It just doesn't work that way. Dena: So we all have trade-offs that we make, and that's, that's why I think wealth is a much more complicated topic because you can make a ton of money and be desperately unhappy, right? So I work at, I work at helping people have great careers, successful careers as they define it. So the first thing that, the first law in my book is assess the situation. Dena: Where are you now? If you, if you're not happy, why is it the situation? Is it the firm? Is it the area of law? We have to figure out why you're unhappy before we can do anything else. So you have to figure out what's important to you, what really matters, so that you can figure out what having it all looks like. Davina: Yeah. You and I are in agreement with that because that is one of the things with, with what, what I teach my clients. Wealth is the goal, but wealth is the goal because [00:19:00] oftentimes what we want, we need to be able to fund, and I think women often short themselves by not dreaming big enough about what they can have because they're too busy trying to do it all. Davina: They think having it all means doing it all, and so they're so busy trying to do it all. Then they say, well, if I wanna scale my law firm to a million dollars or I wanna get a large book of business, that sounds exhausting to me on an already to, you know, to-do list that's already overloaded because their first I thought is I need to go and do more. Davina: And I know you have that. I listened to a conversation you had. You were talking about a client who had that, uh. The very first thing you had to figure out what to do for her to be a rainmaker was to find time on her calendar to do it, because that's one of the biggest challenges of high achieving women. Davina: If we want [00:20:00] to incorporate something else in our life that we need, we need to balance out in our life, we need financial security and wealth as well as time with family, as well as time for self nurture. The first place we have to look is how we're spending our time. Right? Dena: Absolutely. So tell me Davina: about that a little bit. Dena: Yeah, I would love to. So she was a working mother with a husband and. And she, she was offered the job of managing partner in her firm, but she didn't wanna do that because she saw it as largely unpaid work, and it would keep her from doing the rainmaking stuff that she thought was her real security, which I totally agreed with. Dena: So she wanted to be a rainmaker. And was having trouble finding the time to do it. So I did an exercise with her that I do with with lawyers. Sometimes they hate it because it involves writing down the time that they're spending on things, and it's kind of like a [00:21:00] time sheet. It comes from another coach. Dena: I think it's Gretchen Vander Camp, the 168 hours log, we all have 168 hours a week, you, me, Oprah, all of us. And so how we deploy them is the important thing. So I have people keep track for two weeks of how they're spending their time without judgment. Just write it down, whatever it is. Because then you can see if your values are really aligned with the way that you're spending your time. Dena: Like if you say Family is the most important thing to me. And then it turns out you spend all night scrolling Facebook without looking at your family once, well then we have a dichotomy, shall we say. Right, right. So, so keep So, so I had her keep track of her time and the interesting thing that she realized was that she had plenty of time for marketing. Dena: That one of the issues was that she and her husband were not contributing equally to the running of their [00:22:00] household, the taking care of their kids, driving them places, all of that, like you just said, she thought she had to do it all. So she looks at her time sheet and she says, why am I doing everything? Dena: She talks to her husband about it and the first thing he says is, well, I'm doing a lot more than Joe is as a husband, right? And she said The best thing she said, you shouldn't be comparing yourself with Joe. You should be comparing yourself with me. We're running this house together. Right, Davina: right. Dena: So they came to a new understanding. Dena: She freed up a little bit more time for networking and marketing and was, and still had all the time that she did, all the time she needed for the things that were important to her. Davina: What do you say to people who tell you, I hate marketing? Just like you have people who hate litigation. They don't wanna be a litigator. Davina: And so they find practice areas where they don't have to interact with [00:23:00] people. And so when it comes to marketing, they, they envision those uncomfortable networking meetings where you have to make small talk with people you could care less about or eat another or chicken dinner or whatever it is. What do you say to those people who just go, oh my God, don't say the word rainmaking to me. Dena: Well, a couple things, DAV. First of all, I would ask them why they're interested in marketing, because we all do the things that we're driven to by our motivations, our values, and our preferences. So why marketing? Why are you interested? What do you think it's gonna do for you and your career? What are your long-term goals? Dena: What are you hoping for? Uh, Davina: I'm, I'm specifically thinking about people who don't want to do marketing. They have a career as a lawyer. They know they need to get a book of business to be successful in that career. They know they need to get a book of business if they have their own law firm, but they're [00:24:00] introverted. Davina: They don't like networking. They don't like going out. What do you say to those people in how, how to get business, how to overcome that, how to find what suits them? That kind of thing. Dena: A couple of things. First of all, one of the people I worked with on marketing was the most highly introverted person I had ever met in my life, and I can say that with data because I do personality assessments on the people that I coach, and she was a zero in sociability. Dena: Zero. Davina: Wow. Wow. Dena: I've never met a zero before. The most highly introverted person I've ever I've ever met, and she became a successful networker and marketer because she did it. She did it in the introvert's way by building individual relationships. First, she dipped into her current client base and started building relationships with the people that she was already working on. Dena: Now, that can be a double-edged sword because that's usually [00:25:00] somebody else's client, but she started honing her relationship skills that way, and then she teamed up with another lawyer at the firm who was more outgoing than she was, and they worked on a, on a. Business development plan together that incorporated some of her talents, which she was a demon about researching prospects. Dena: You know, she, she knew everything when they went into a pitch meeting, so, so they used her skills to. Uh, find out about the client, do market research, competitive analysis, all those kinds of things. And they used the other person to do more of the touchy feely stuff because she was more adept at that. So, so what I would say to somebody who's an introvert is, first of all, um. Dena: I'm a shy person too, and I've overcome a lot of these things as well. I used to, I used to drive to networking meetings with my palm sweating, telling myself, just talk to three [00:26:00] people and you can leave. So, practice, practice makes not perfect. Practice makes comfortable, practice makes it, it's like a rep, you know, you get used to it. Dena: You, you, if, if you've been inside for several years because of, because of the pandemic, you gotta get out. Because we need practice. And I would say to introverts to lean on things like LinkedIn, like writing articles, like giving speeches, because giving speeches is a lot easier for an introvert than one-on-one interaction. Dena: They're, they do much better with performing than they do with socializing. So I would, I would say, let's lean into some of those. I know that's an overused expression. Lean in. And now I've said it three times, but I would say to focus on you didn't mean Davina: it in the Cheryl Sandberg way. I think you mean it like Dena: you're correct. Davina: Because Cheryl Sandberg is a lean in and do more, right? Dena: Yeah. Davina: But Dena: I think I'm really talking about leaning on lean on your introverted [00:27:00] superpowers and we'll figure out how to deploy them in a way that will be comfortable and not feel salesy to you. But I would also ask. Why do you wanna be a, why do you wanna develop business? Dena: Because I find some people, they don't wanna do it so badly. It doesn't make sense for them to do it. They're gonna hate every minute of it. So with people like that, sometimes I talk about, you know, maybe moving to a different area of practice like government or in-house where you don't have to worry so much about bringing in business, but you can still be a good lawyer and get to get to enjoy your practice. Davina: I think with, uh, with my clients, with the law firm owners, we talk about deploying other methodologies. So again, looking at who can help us if it's not the thing, like I, I know how to be a bookkeeper. I was a bookkeeper. I took time off college to work for years as a bookkeeper, and it was enough, painful [00:28:00] enough for me to get my butt back in school and go back, get my journalism degree because although I can do it, I should not be the person doing it. Davina: And I don't enjoy doing it. I love looking at the reports after and making that, you know, making those decisions as a business owner based on what's there. But when it comes to lining up the numbers like little soldiers, I want somebody else to do that for me. And so I think it's the same thing with marketing. Davina: We can get other, just like anything else you pick, this goes back to what you were saying about. What do you want? Like first you have to know like, what makes me happy? How do I like to spend my time? And then we can find other ways to get things done for us. It, you know, it may be an investment, it may be a, a financial investment that we do to, to do that. Davina: But for instance, Google, you know, that's a great, that's a great way we can hire Google expert to get a phone ringing for us, right? Dena: Yeah. Davina: For example, I do want, before I know we, we need to, you know, watch our [00:29:00] time, so there are other things I want to ask you about. One of the things that you talk about is with women oftentimes. Davina: There may be a confidence issue in terms of, um, maybe functioning in a traditional legal environment where it's male dominated being, especially if you join a firm where we have a lot of people who appear to be natural litigators and you're not, and you're having to become a litigator. Um, or even just in meeting and talking with an advising client. Davina: We're not saying by the way, that all women are not confident. 'cause I certainly know a whole lot of very, very confident women lawyers, but for those who went to law school and they, they love doing the transactional work or the behind the scenes and supportive things, but they're a lawyer and so now they need to really, um, convey confidence and in what they're saying, not only to opposing counsel [00:30:00] and their colleagues, but to their clients. Davina: What kinds of, have you seen this, because I know you talk about it and you mentioned Dena: ab. Absolutely. And I was helping a young lawyer get ready for her first trial a couple months ago, and she kept asking me for tips to be more confident and. Tips won't make you more confident. There are some things that you can do. Dena: I showed her Amy Cuddy's power poses, and I, I gave her some exercises to do, but at the end of the day, you know, confidence only comes from doing it. Davina: Mm-hmm. Dena: And coming out on the other side. And being able to evaluate what you did, what went well, what didn't go well, and being able to speak about it, uh, with a little more authority than you used to because you've now done it. Dena: You're now in the club. People who've done it, and people get wrapped up about all kinds of things. I've, I've talked, I hope people write. Posts sometimes because they're so shy [00:31:00] about posting on LinkedIn. I don't know what they think might happen if they post the wrong thing and nobody likes it, you know? Dena: But they're worried. So, so we, sometimes I, Davina: well, I do, I do think lawyers think about, they, they worry about if other lawyers are going to judge them. That is really what it comes down to are, are my colleagues. Uh, you know, like, because we, we graduated from law school and we don't know anything like we graduate. Davina: We're supposed to be this walking, talking blacks dictionary and people ask us something and we're like a deer in headlights. I don't know. I don't remember. We didn't cover that, you know, because the law is very, is too vast and too detailed and too for us to know everything. And nobody tells us that we're not expected to know everything. Davina: And nobody tells us how to answer that when somebody asks us something we don't know and say face, you know? And so I think that a lot of people question. Am I giving the right answer to this? Especially as they're developing their careers and they haven't yet learned that they're not [00:32:00] supposed to know everything and so they'll, they're afraid they're gonna put something out there and their colleagues are gonna judge that and go, no, that's wrong. Davina: You forgot about the exception. To the exception, yeah. But I think that's where that fear comes from. Dena: It also might be because. Every lawyer I've ever tested except for one, is low adjustment, which means that they're highly anxious. We are highly anxious people and we're sensitive to criticism, and we fear being judged. Dena: So you're absolutely right. It is a fear of being judged, and Davina: I find that interesting. I'm gonna have to take your evaluation and see where I follow the scale. Because I, that is one of those things that definitely I relate to that all through law school. I was an overachiever because I was, I didn't wanna be called on and not know the answer, right. Davina: So I spent a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights preparing and those kinds of things. A lot of anxiety, having starting my own firm and all of that. And, and it does come from [00:33:00] this, I, I think it's an overachiever characteristic. It's a, it's a high achieving person characteristic. If you're in a career where you are driven to be high achieving, then you are, you are. Davina: Your success does feel like it depends on other people and it only takes, the confidence comes from mastery and so you have to remember that everybody starts somewhere and you, you have to go through that uncomfortable. You know? There are gonna be times that are gonna be uncomfortable, like good days be uncomfortable, right? Davina: It's the same thing with visibility. When I first started doing podcasts, we, I didn't do video, and then when I started doing video with each layer of it, it's uncomfortable when you start, you, you look funny. You're like, I didn't realize I, my mouth moved that way. I don't like my voice. You know, all of those things. Davina: And you add to it when you're in your fifties and you're going on camera going like, holy cow, what? What's going on here? So, Dena: well, you [00:34:00] can't be a seasoned pro without undergoing the seasoning. Davina: Yeah, Dena: and the seasoning is a process that isn't so comfortable because you're trying things for the very first time. Dena: So you have, you just have to, to take some risks and lawyers also don't wanna take risks. So that's the other aspect that that gets in the way of, of confidence. So one really important thing with confidence is keeping up with where you are. Because I work with a lot of female partners who. Feel lesser than their male counterparts. Dena: And in some ways when I interrogate them about, well, why are you, why is he better than you? You know, and we actually go through qualifications, experience, you know, all of it. And they can't come up with any reason that he is better than them. Evidence really helps. So keeping up with who you are becoming as you are becoming it, because, you know, I still think of myself as little Dina Lefkowitz, you know?[00:35:00] Dena: And you gotta, you gotta catch up to where you are. Old tapes are playing in your head about things that you can't do or couldn't do or wouldn't do. I thought when I thought that I hated being in court and that I would never go to another courtroom again after I left my litigation job. And when I was in my fifties, I had the opportunity to argue before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Dena: There was this little voice in my head going, but you don't like going to court. And there was this other realization happening that I wasn't the same person that I was in my thirties, right? This wasn't a jury trial, this was an appellate argument, and I thought I could do a pretty good job at it. So it taught me to question everything I think I know about myself on a regular basis because I'm evolving. Davina: Those old stories that we hang on to that don't service [00:36:00] anymore because we're no longer that person. I mean, I know people will say to me all the time, you, wow, you know, you, you've written these books, have this podcast you did. You've had this, we're about to celebrate 10 years of this coaching business. Davina: I've been an attorney for 15 years. You know, all of these things. And I, I'm like, yeah, but there's still so much that I want to do. Yeah. But you know, and it, right, exactly. Yeah. But there's all so much I wanna do, and for me, it's not really the. It's not for the outside accolades. It's, it is a feeling of, there's so much I want to talk about and discuss and have, have it out there, and so we can talk about these things. Davina: So it's a driving mission, right? But I, I, it is one thing that I think a lot of women do, which is, which is say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I did that, but, and um, it's hard to accept when people say, look at all you've done already, and then you're like. That's, that's yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't even think about that. Davina: And you don't think [00:37:00] about what it took to get there. You forget what it took to get there. Dena: Right. Davina: You know, to put to first put your ideas out and your thoughts out and be vulnerable in the world to other people. And we live in a day and age where it used to be that if you wanted to put your thoughts out, you did it in an academic paper, in a publication, and you know, that kind of thing. Davina: And not as many people did it because of the. The complexity of that. Now everybody's putting ideas and thoughts out. Yeah, and you, you will, and I know why people don't put things on there on social media because they feel like people are gonna come in the comments and they're gonna say things. And one of the things that helped me was, first of all, a lot of people who come in the content comments are like spammers, right? Davina: They're trolls. So you just discount that as a bot or as a whatever. But if you have people who disagree with you or whatever, you also think yourself. They're not, if they don't resonate with what I'm putting out there, they're not gonna be my client anyway, so I'm just not gonna worry about that. They're not gonna spend money with me [00:38:00] anyway. Davina: The people who are going, oh my God, that makes so much sense to me. I totally get that. That happened in my life. Those are the people that you've turned your focus to because they're the ones who are more likely to. Work with you in some way, whether it's hiring you or referring people to you or singing your praises or whatever. Davina: That helps get you more business. And so really just saying that person who's saying that they're not really, if they're not for me, then you know, rock on. Do your thing, man. Not everybody. I could be the sweetest peach in the orchard. Not everybody likes peaches. Right. That, that thing I Dena: love that. Yeah. Davina: Remembering that. Yeah. Dena: Yeah. Not everyone is for everyone. Davina: Yeah, I, I do wanna address one more thing before we wrap up. I know both of us have a hard stop in a minute, but you, in your book it says, um, your title is winning in your own court, 10 Laws for Successful Career without burning out or Selling Out. Davina: Tell me, we know what burnout is because a lot of people are [00:39:00] talking about burnout these days. But tell me what you mean by selling out, because I think that's a really interesting thought. Dena: We give up our lives for the profession. Uh, we give up our vacations, we give up our time off. We give up our time with our families. Dena: We give up reading, we give up swimming, we give up playing the guitar. Uh, we give up our pursuits because we have to always be available for our clients or our bosses when they need us. We have to drop everything. We, you know, the judges are probably the worst offenders because they will call you to trial the day after Thanksgiving, the day after Christmas, the day after New Year's. Dena: They don't care about your life. They don't care what plans you had. And, um, so burn, so selling out is basically, in my view, agreeing to a life that you don't want in exchange for a paycheck. And I was just talking to a guy recently miserable in his work [00:40:00] doing corporate. M and a stuff, and I did his Hogan assessment and he was a 100 in altruism. Dena: That's the highest score you can have. Wow. So he cares about helping people and making the world a better place. And, and, Davina: and he is doing m and a Dena: right. And the plight of a less fortunate, and he's doing m and a. So why do you think he's unhappy? Davina: Right? Dena: Every day he's living outside, he's Davina: out of alignment. Davina: He's out of alignment with who he truly is. So interesting. Alright, so Dena: that's what I mean about selling out, because he was working at a big firm making a ton of money and absolutely miserable. Davina: And it's not selling out for other people, it's selling yourself out really is what we're talking about. So we're saying. Davina: You're gonna get to the end of your life and you will have lived somebody else's version of it instead of the one that you truly wanted to live. Right? So, I love that. Alright, on that note, we're gonna wrap up today. All right? Um, because, uh, uh, you and I both have to move on to other appointments, but tell [00:41:00] everybody how they can find out more about you and your, where they can get your book and connect with you. Dena: Thank you. My business is called Achievement by Design. I have a website, www.achievementbydesign.com. I'm Dina Lefkowitz. I'm on LinkedIn. Uh, you can find me there. That's where I do most of my social media posting on LinkedIn. And this is a copy of my book, winning in Your Own Court, which is available at Amazon, at the American Bar Association, and anywhere else that books are sold. Davina: So fabulous. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, Dina. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. I'm sorry it had to be so short, but I appreciate having you on and I'm sure we'll stay in touch. Dena: I hope so.