Legal Grounds | Conversations on Life, Leadership & Law
After over three decades in the legal-trenches, Mike Bassett has learned to appreciate two things: good conversation & good coffee.
Legal Grounds is an ongoing series of interviews with the people who are shaping our world - legal or otherwise. Witty, irreverent, & always thoughtful, these brief discussions fall somewhere between “Night Court” & Hopper’s “Nighthawks At The Diner”.
With that in mind, we promise your coffee will still be warm when the podcast is done.
(Legal Grounds was written, recorded, and produced by Dust Devil Press)
Episodes
211 episodes
Legal Grounds | Rob Miller On Getting In the Hard Work Early, When to Start Prepping a Case for Trial, & Creating Bridges Between Generational Gaps
My guest this week is Rob Miller, a trial attorney with more than three decades of experience, the founder of Miller Copeland, and most ...
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53:55
Legal Grounds | Brian Glass on Building a Life Before Building a Firm, Leadership as an Exercise in Empathy, & the Future of Personal Injury Law
We all know that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I think it’s worth asking why ‘Rome’, of all the great cities of antiquity, was chosen as the subject of idiom.Now, setting aside historical-bias, my best guess for this being the case is ...
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45:00
Legal Grounds | Nikita Lamar on the Connection Between a Firm’s Culture & Its Clients, Learning Curves as Breathing Room, and Meeting Zealousness with Empathy
According to the National Association of Legal Professions, when I graduated from Law School in 1988 only 2.7% of graduating attorneys made the choice to go solo.Looking at those same numbers, it’s easy to track the strength of the econo...
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57:21
Legal Grounds | Cyndie Chang On How Having a Group Helps You Find Your Voice, When “No” Can Be A Complete Sentence, & Why Relationships are an Investment, Not a Commodity
With some very rare exceptions, all of us have to have a ‘first job’. This also means we all remember the nervousness that comes with that first day. First month. Even the first year. While it hopef...
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46:02
Legal Grounds | Dr. Honey Sheff On How A.D.R. is Reshaping Family Law, Retaining Empathy While Keeping Boundaries, & the Difference Between Being an Advocate and Giving Someone a Voice.
As my producer wrote in the margins of this week’s material, the phrase ‘Collaborative Divorce’ can seem, on its face, like an oxymoron. After all, whether it’s a marriage, partnership, or friendship, the act of separating one’s sel...
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1:15:15
Legal Grounds | Ryan Crittenden On Choosing Your Mentors Intentionally, Playing to Your Strengths, & What It Takes to Create a Team
We talk plenty on this program about how frustrating it can be to try and function under poor leadership. Even if the team is strong, if they don’t know (or worse, understand) their direction, then it will always be an uphill battle. <...
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55:10
Legal Grounds | Larry Praeger On Effective Client Communication, How to Leverage Existing Resources, & Navigating the Nuances of Family Law
There are few areas of the practice that I think are quite as “client-facing” as Family Law.This is not to say that clients take a back-seat when it comes to other kinds of legal matters, but it should come as no surprise to a...
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54:57
Legal Grounds | Heidi K. Brown On Bringing Identity to Our Legal Writing, Unpacking Introversion, and Why Finding a Shared Vocabulary is Necessary for Success
It always feels like an easy out to say a podcast conversation is “wide-ranging”, but when the guest has written best selling books for attorneys on everything from Introversion to Fear, it seems like the only descriptor broad enough to fit.&nb...
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1:02:42
Legal Grounds | Breeana Somers On Law School as a Non-Traditional Student, the Shifting Landscape of Big Law, & Making Space for Yourself to Make Space for Others
Growing up, I knew I wanted to be an attorney since I was a sophomore in high school; my guest this week had me beat by 8 years. All of my peers thought I was crazy to have a kid right as I was about to finish law school;...
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54:35
Legal Grounds | Suraj Vyas Curiosity as a Catalyst, Helping Others to Help Yourself, & Going In-House Right Out of the Gate
My guest this week is Suraj Vyas, an attorney specializing in patent law with a focus on construction and contracts. Having spent the past 6 years on the Super Lawyer’s Rising St...
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36:16
Legal Grounds | Molly Kremer on Becoming a Better Time-Keeper, How Consistency Leads to Confidence, & Why We Need to Change the Narrative Around Billing
The first time I ever made a billing entry on a personal computer, I remember thinking to myself, “this is so efficient, I’m never going to miss an entry!”10 years later I got my first laptop, and as I entered some time while ...
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49:51
Legal Grounds | Astrid Munn On Seeking Out More Narratives, the Language of Dehumanization, & the Frontlines of Immigration Law
The observation that, “justice is merely incidental to law and order” has been on my mind more often than not these past few months. Though possibly apocryphal, the quote is attributed to J. Edgar Hoover and – irony aside...
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47:17
Legal Grounds | Ben Morton on Developing the Currency of Leadership, Safety as a Foundation for Growth, & Embracing the Paradox of Planning
In its literal sense, the term ‘Servant Leadership’ is a bit of an oxymoron. If you’re the one in charge, shouldn’t you be overseeing whatever ‘service’ is being done by your team? But in the same w...
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50:43
Legal Grounds | Marty Strong on Solving Problems in Context, Leaders as Practitioners, and Trusting People so that You can Trust Your Plan
As I get ready for trial this week, I don’t think I could have asked for a better conversation to help remind me that creativity and consistency go hand-in-hand. As lawyers, it can be easy to rely on a strategy that’s wor...
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47:58
Legal Grounds | Rod Jeter on Deconstructing Our Disagreements, Solving for the Problem Behind ‘The Problem’, & Letting the Relationship Win
When you make your living settling other people’s disagreements, it can be easy to fall back on the skills and tools gained in that Professional environment when trying to resolve an argument that is Personal in nature. A...
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35:46
Legal Grounds | Shelly A. Walker on Listening as Collaboration, the Power of Being Present, & the Importance of Intentionality on Both Sides of Mentorship
It's no secret in the legal community that a seasoned paralegal can outmatch most first-year lawyers.And probably second-year.And sometimes even... well, you get the point. Climbing the career l...
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49:24
Legal Grounds | Stephen Jones on the Oklahoma City Bombing, Adherence to the Law in the Face of Tragedy, & the Right to Representation as a Pillar of Justice
Stephen Jones is one of the most well-known trial attorneys currently practicing. With six decade...
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54:23
Legal Grounds | Todd Smith On the Art of Appellate Law, the Benefits & Burdens of Owning Your Own Practice, and Evolution of Technology in the Appeals Process
Whenever a trial is notable enough to make the headlines, the initial verdict is often the only one that sticks in the public-consciousness. But when it comes to appeals, unless it’s a particularly heinous criminal case, ...
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1:07:24
Legal Grounds | Jack W. Williams On the Shifting Nature of Priorities, the Difference Between Teaching & Telling, Remembering Your Role in Effective Communication
I think it’s fair to say that oftentimes when we hear the word ‘Belief’, we immediately associate it with something either Spiritual or Political – two of the three things my mother told me to never bring up in polite conversation. ...
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41:27
Legal Grounds | Michael Molthan On Addiction as a Symptom, Replacing “Tough Love” with True Love, and Freeing Others to Free Yourself
Addiction is one of those words that - whether consciously or unconsciously – causes most people to instantly conjure up a stock-image of a person at rock bottom due to drugs and alcohol. Now, as we’ve discussed in previo...
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43:51
Legal Grounds | Allison Mahoney On Empathizing Without Internalizing, the Nature of Victim-Blaming, and Standing Up for the Voiceless
Creating legitimate points of access to justice is a cornerstone of our legal system.But when it comes to modern forms of abuse such as digital bullying or image-based sexual abuse, or even with children in the foster-care sys...
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53:51
Legal Grounds | John Trimble On the Need to Both Seek & Provide Mentorship, Why Integrity Isn’t Optional, & the Pitfalls of Generational Transitions in Law Firms
Even if they know the exact field of law they want to dive into after graduation, my guest today is a testament to why good mentors make sure young attorneys are forced to slow down and consider the larger picture.
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49:00
Legal Grounds | Rachel A. King on On Walking Clients Through Their Case, Why Bosses Can’t Be “Friends” & the Perks of a Non-Traditional Path to Law
There are plenty of things about being an attorney that make it seem less than desirable as a potential career choice. The long hours are pretty much a given and there's a reason that most portrayals of lawyers include some allusion to titanic ...
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49:52
Legal Grounds | Corey Poirier On Buying Back Your Time, Making ‘No’ a New Mantra, & Why Even Good Lessons Aren’t Always Meant for You
If you've ever dabbled in the world of self-help, then you've probably heard something along the lines of,"saying Yes means saying No to something else".And while this is absolutely true, It also means the equation w...
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45:14
