20 Questions For Episode 20

Your questions answered! A little bit of everything-life, style, law, and parenting. Hope you enjoy this little break from case talk; I certainly enjoyed doing it. 

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Transcript

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The information and ideas expressed in the allegedly golden podcast are legal explanation and legal analysis, not legal advice. While I am a lawyer, I am not your lawyer. If you need legal advice, please contact a licensed legal professional in your area. My opinions are my own. For better or for worse. And my other friend, Diet Coke, she sounds a little different today because she's a McDonald's Diet Coke. So the click-clack sound isn't quite as good, but the taste is elite. It is truly the nectar of the gods. Oh, so good. So on this 20th episode, which by the way, I can't believe I got to 20 episodes. I started this podcast because followers on my TikTok and YouTube channels asked me to. So it seemed like a good opportunity to have an episode, sort of a palate cleansing episode, instead of talking about a particular case, to just sort of talk about all of the things in the law, all of the things in life that I like to discuss on all of my various channels. And I asked folks on TikTok and on YouTube to ask questions in the comments that they'd want to know the answers to, and said that I would pick 20 of them and I would answer those in this episode. So 20 questions for the 20th episode. And honestly, there were so many good questions. I think after this is over, even the ones that I don't answer in this podcast, I think I'm just going to go back and answer them in the comments because so many of them were excellent questions. But I've picked 20. I've tried to pick some of the questions that came up over and over again, because that obviously means that people really want to hear it. And I've tried to pick sort of a wide array of questions so that we're not just talking about the same topics over and over again. And frankly, considering everything that happened in Lively Baldoney this week, which I will touch on a little bit, um, because there were some questions. I think it's a good idea to have a little bit of a palette cleanser this week. Before I get started, though, one of the questions that came up an awful lot, it might have been the most asked question, is a question that I think is from a lot of newer people to my pages because it's something that I've talked about before. I talked about early on. And so this doesn't count for the 20 questions, but that is why I became a lawyer, why I chose to go to law school. People are always interested in that. And I just want to say up front, and those of you who have been around uh my channels for a while know this. It has absolutely nothing to do with justice or helping people or anything like that. I wish I could tell that story, but it wouldn't be the truth. Um, I went to law school because I grew up with a father. My father had many, many stepfathers. Um, his own mother was married, I don't know, four or five times. And it was very important to him that I, as a young woman, never be dependent on a man for money. And so he gave me an ultimatum and said, Listen, you're gonna go to college and you're going to get an undergraduate degree, and then you're going to get some kind of licensed professional education after that. And I don't really care which one you pick, but here's your list. And it was, you know, medical school, veterinary school, engineering, CPA, architecture. Everything involves math, except one. And I'd always been kind of an English person, I'd always been a language person. And I was like, yeah, you know, law school seems like it makes sense to me. So I went to undergraduate and got an English degree because that's what I loved. Figured it would help me in law school, which it did. And then went to law school because it was just the thing my parents said that I needed to do, which I completely recognize carries with it unbelievable amounts of privilege. But, you know, I have come to appreciate the law for what it is, for what it can do, for the harm that it can do and the good that it can do. And I like to think that I've been able to utilize my training and my experience and my expertise in ways that matter to me, including doing things like this. But I cannot lie and say, oh, I got into the law because I wanted to help people, because that's horseshit. I didn't. I wanted to have a profession that would satisfy my parents, that would allow me to be financially independent whenever I needed to be. Um and it turned out to be something I was pretty good at, and it turned out to be the right thing for me in the end. But it was not by any means a dream I had as a kid to stand in front of a court and argue. It just so happens that it was something I was good at, even though I didn't know I wanted to do it. So I feel it's important that people know that about me because I know that a lot of people go to law school because they really have a deep um connection to justice. And I have so much respect and regard for those people, especially for people who don't just have the assumption that they can go to whatever graduate school they want to the way that I did because of how I grew up and how lucky I was. Um, it was just sort of like, oh, I guess you'll go to law school, you know? Um, and the fact that that was such an easy decision that I didn't really have to think about, that is something that has taken me a very long time to unpack how rare that was and how fortunate I am. But I've tried to do with it the best that I can do with it. And I think maybe that's part of the reason why I have such a strong ethical code that maybe even goes beyond what it needs to be sometimes, not because I'm a great person, but because I feel like a little bit of an imposter in this profession. You know, there are a lot of people who go into law so that they can do good because they saw so much bad happening in the world or they experienced it themselves. And that wasn't how it was for me. And I feel like I owe the profession the respect that it deserves for what it can do. And I feel like I have to prove to myself sometimes that it's not just a way to have a really nice house and have people tell you how smart you are. It's more than that. And so, you know, I've ended up in the place I think I'm supposed to end up. There's a lot of, you know, butterfly effect things. I wouldn't have met my husband if I wasn't a literary working in the same law firm. And, you know, how your life kind of ends up. I think I ended up in the right place, but I was not someone who was drawn to the law for any particular reason, other than those are the skills. I'm good with words. Those are the skills I seem to have. I have to do some sort of graduate professional program. And I'm really bad at science and I'm really bad at math. So here we are. With that said, let's start with our 20 questions for episode 20. Question number one, and I've combined some of them, right, that are on the same topic, was about, you know, being in the sandwich generation. And so many of you identify with what I sometimes talk about, um, especially of my Gen X folks, about being a parent, but also taking care of your parents. Um, and, you know, what does retirement look like? If you're a Gen X person, are you going to still be taking care of your parents? And I think, you know, my take on all of this is it's evolving for sure. Um, and I was actually um at an event last night talking to a group of women about this, um, all of whom were professional women who have kids all about the same age. And we were just having this discussion of like, no wonder it's so hard to navigate how we're supposed to do this because no one's ever had to do it before. Right? Yes, there have been people who were helping to raise young children while taking care of elderly parents, but not with the expectation that we have on us. Now, certainly not with full-time jobs. And so if it feels like there's no blueprint, it's because there isn't. But I will say, especially when I think about retirement, right? I think like, okay, what if my parents are still alive when I retire? And what I have decided, one of my boundaries is for myself, is I am not their caretaker. I am their daughter. I am here to love them. I am here to support them. I am here to advocate for them when necessary. I'm here to make them feel safe and loved in this world. But I am neither trained nor have I ever been expected to by them to be their caretaker. And I'm not going to be. They're gonna have to have other people, they're gonna have to pay for people to do that. That's not what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be their daughter, I'm gonna love them, um, but I am not going to try to turn myself into something I'm not. And I think that's a good boundary for me to have. And if that's a good boundary for you to have, I suggest it might be helpful. Now, that is a pretty that is assuming that there is money to have other people to caretake. And I understand that's a very privileged view of things. But it is really important for me as somebody who was sort of raised to look down on caretakers, by the way. You know, my father was the dominant uh voice in my household, and women who didn't work or think or read were very, very condescended to look down upon. Um, and so I wasn't raised to be that person. So why would I turn into that person? That's not the person I'm supposed to be. Um, and I've sort of had to figure out who am I to them at this point, and I'm just gonna be that. And that has to be enough because that's what I'm willing to give. Number two, question number two is a question that this also was probably the most common question in different different wording, which is how do you keep yourself as a lawyer from getting emotionally invested in your cases? And I I this really made me think, I'm really glad it was asked because I think some of it depends on the work that you do, right? If you're doing criminal defense work, which I've never done, I imagine you get pretty invested in whether somebody goes to jail for the rest of their life or not. If you're doing family law, you can get really invested in the lives of people. Um, that's part of the reason I have never done either one of those things. So a lot of it depends on the work that you choose. But I think that what I have learned over time, and it took me a while to learn this, um, but I can tell you this is how I approach it now. It's about what my job is as the lawyer, right? It is the client's job to feel the situation. They are in the situation, regardless of what kind of case it is or which side they're on. They are going to feel it. They are going to experience it as emotion because they are the person that it's happening to. And so it is their job to feel the situation. It is not my job to feel the situation. It is my job to think the situation. It is my job to analyze the situation. We can't both be emotional about it, right? So the way that I've kind of um gotten to it and the way that I've been doing it for the last decade or so is, and I will tell clients this you get as emotional as you want. I'm not gonna tell you how to feel about this. You're going through it. It is very personal for you, and I understand that. But it is my job to not be the emotional one. It is my job to recognize and empathize with this for you, but it is my job to be the one who is logical and clear-headed. And so you have to let me do that. Um, I will often tell clients, you know, I know that this has real life consequences for you. And I can't take those away from you. But what I can do is let you give me the burden of thinking about how we're going to fix it. Let me take that burden from you. That is my job. You don't stay up at night worrying about statute numbers and case law. Let me do that. You just go through it. And so I think that really has helped me. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, there are cases that have gotten to me for sure. Um, you know, if there's not a few cases that get to you, then what are you doing this for? But I try not to let that show in front of the client, unless and until it's such a situation that that's what they need for me. They need me to see, right? They need me to know, like, I see that you are suffering and I need to help you, right? And there are there are ones that get to me more than others. And sometimes I let myself have those moments. I let myself have those moments with colleagues or or my husband or whoever just say, oh my God, this is this is just tearing me up inside. But when I go to do the actual work, that's not the job. The job is to be thinking, to be beyond that. And there's a time and a place to feel, but while you're doing, the job is not it because you'll miss stuff. If you're acting completely with emotion, you will miss things. Um, but you do have to be empathetic and you have to let people know that you see that they are people. So for what it's worth, that's the way that I've been able to do it. I do think it's easier when you are inside of a case as a participant, as a lawyer with a client, because you have more control over that, right? You can say, like, I know exactly what kind of motion we're gonna file. And then you're part of the drafting of it and you're part of the strategy and you see the things happening. And so you feel like we are serving this person. And that helps you to be emotionally regulated about it. When you're on the outside, like all of you are, watching cases from the outside, like we all have been, especially in Lively Baldone, you don't know what's going on on the inside. And so you just sort of stay in this emotional place until you see what the outcome is. And that's hard. That's hard. But I think most lawyers, at least most good ones, um, understand that while it is our role to be human and to recognize other people's humanity, it is not our role to be the person that they sit there and get emotional with. It is our job to do for them what they cannot do for themselves, which is to work the system. I got um a question. I'm gonna call this 2A, okay? I got another question a bunch of times, which is, you know, and this is sort of attached to some of the emotion questions of when you're looking at a set of facts for the first time, you're looking at information for the first time, how do you sort of decide what you think happened that early on? How do you do that early assessment? And that is, you know, I could do an hour on that alone. But I wanted to say this because I think this is one of those skills that I think probably everybody who has a college education should get at some point, which is when you are looking at two different versions of something that happened, right? And this is what I do, just so you know, when I'm reading a complaint for the first time, I'm reading a case for the first time, and I'm planning a video to explain it to you guys, this is what I'm doing. It's also the very same thing I do when anybody brings me any issue at my job. I'm like, okay, let me take all this in. And this is the first thing I do. The first thing I do every single time is try to make a mental list of what are the things that are not in dispute. Start with undisputed facts. If you go in trying to be on one side or the other, or you go in trying to poke holes, you will miss shit. Start in the middle and say, what does everyone agree on? Sometimes you have to physically write those things down. And then you look at those and think, okay, could we have those things that everyone agrees on? Could we decide what's true and what's not just based on that? How much do we agree on and how much do we not agree on? And that will tell you an awful lot about how much of a dispute you actually have. Sometimes things are framed as being hotly contested, but when you sit down and look at what people actually dispute, the only real dispute is what everybody thought happened in the room, different versions of events or different reactions to the same things. And it's important that you know that from the outset. Is this a situation where we have two totally separate versions of facts? We have to go out there and figure out what actually happened, or is this a situation where everybody agrees about what happened? And the only argument is about what laws apply to it and what did it mean? Those are totally separate cases. So that's what I do. Um, I also had a lot of people ask, like, how do you poke holes in things? And I don't really start out that way in terms of thinking, but a process that I have developed over time is to just, it's gonna sound stupid, you guys, but I swear this is what I do. When I'm reading something and I'm trying to sort of understand how grounded in reality is what I'm reading, whether it's a demand letter or a pleading or a news article or whatever, every single idea that's in there, every single phrase that's in there, ask, says who. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This happened on whatever seven, you know, September 8th, says who. And this was the judge that says who. If you just look at every single thing that you read and you ask yourself, says who about every part of it, that's how you start to strip away what assumptions are you making and where is the information coming from, and where might there be a hole in the information? Right? It's sort of basic media literacy. But I do it in in legal cases all the time. Because oftentimes people will come in and they'll just throw a set of facts at you and you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're assuming that these things are true and you're basing your decisions on it, but says who? And oftentimes when you start to trace things back to their origin, things are very, very different from what people are telling you they are. So I could probably do a whole episode on that kind of thing, but for the people who asked, there's my short answer. Question number three, Van Zan. What do we do about Van Zan and situations like Van Zan? And this is a very fair question because um several people articulated it incredibly well as isn't this just sort of a good example of the abuse of power and wealth that is going on, particularly in the United States at this time and in a lot of society, right? Isn't this just another example of the rich and powerful using the system to their advantage and having essentially no consequences for it? And yes, I think you're right. I think this is a problem for lawyers that we need to solve amongst ourselves. We are a self-regulating profession, which means that if a lawyer gets sanctioned or suspended or disbarred, it is other lawyers that do it. Right? We elect our own to hold us accountable. We draft our rules of professional conduct and then we vote on the rules that we are going to follow. And situations like Van Zan can't happen unless we facilitate them. Like, yes, we could encourage there to be there are simple fixes. Like, for example, in New York, um, where this whole thing happened, somebody could just add to the subpoena rule in New York no subpoenas shall be issued until um the case is set for trial or the case is in discovery. Okay. That would be the end of that. But that only solves that particular problem and not the bigger problem. I think the responsibility lies with lawyers, and I think a lot of it is bar associations, right? Because we regulate ourselves. I also think a lot of the responsibility lies with law firms. Somebody signed that subpoena because the ethics people. And that law firm decided it was fine. That to me is where it all broke down. Is that people who have a license and rules of professional conduct to act in a way that is appropriate and ethical and to not weaponize their license decided it was okay to weaponize it in this circumstance for whatever reason in service of their client. And that to me is where the system broke down. And I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if that means monetary consequences for, you know, um, I don't know, if it requires firms to set certain rules and then the firm gets fined if people go outside of it. I mean, you know, lawyers, if you if you don't punish us with money, we don't listen. I think that another way that this could be addressed is that ultimately what happened in Banzan, take all the law out of it, right? Like take all the subpoenas and the lawyers and all of that out of it. If I were going to a legislature to talk about how this is a problem and how we need to fix it, if I was going to a rules committee, right, where they make the rules of civil procedure and I was arguing to them that this is a loophole that needs to be fixed, I think that what I would say to them is this is an information security problem. This is 2026 and information security is everything. And the fact that someone can send a subpoena when there isn't even a case at issue and there aren't even any defendants and get private electronic information is an information security problem. And information security is a big fucking deal, and we really need to pay attention to that as lawyers. That's probably how I would pitch it. I don't have good answers for you, but I'm with you in the fact that it did identify yet another problem, which is if you have a lawyer who will do it, you don't have to follow the rules. And that's not how most of us want the system to work. Um I think that you could easily fix the rules issue. I think the question of you could just say there's no more subpoenas until you get to this point in time. We're not doing this anymore, right? Um, because we think that this is an information security problem. We think this is a potential abuse of power and abuse of the system, and we're not going to allow it. But this is just an indicator of a bigger problem, right? Which is people with money can use the system um in ways that people without money can't. And that's a much bigger problem that I cannot solve on this podcast episode. But I completely understand and am with you on the fact that it is a gigantic problem and that my profession, excuse me, my profession is right in the middle of it. Question number four: What is the biggest lesson you've learned as a parent? Oh, so many. I do not give parenting advice, so please don't take this as such. But I will say that, in fact, I was just talking to my husband about this last night. I think the biggest lesson I have learned as a parent is that they see everything. Your kids see everything. They see everything that you do, they see everything that you say, even when you don't think they see, they see it. And therefore, the best way that you can teach them the kind of person you want them to be is to be that person in front of them. To model the behavior. And that's hard. That is hard shit. That is much harder than just giving people lectures and telling them these are the rules of the road. That's just easy. That takes like 30 seconds. What's hard is to say, you know, I'm handling this situation in my life right now, and my kid is gonna see the way that I handle it. What would I want him to do 20 years from now in this situation? And then I have to fucking do it. But I think that's been the biggest lesson of parenting for me is that it is more important that I be the person I want him to be, that I be the type of person I want him to emulate than that I just say the words to him, which puts a gigantic burden on me. And parenting is a gigantic burden if you do it right. But that is the biggest lesson that I've learned, at least so far. What is my superpower? This will surprise no one. My superpower is I can make an argument for anything. You can take a thing that I hate the most in the world. You could take my mortal enemy being on death row, and I will give me five minutes and I will make an argument about why that is the most innocent person that has ever lived. I don't know why I can do that. I don't know if it's because I grew up in a household where I was constantly having to explain myself. I don't know if it's just one of those things I learned to survive. But I can make an argument for anything. When I was in law school, and those of you who've been to law school, you know you do like moot court arguments, right? And sometimes, a lot of the time, you get assigned a side, right? Like you're gonna argue the appellant and you're gonna argue the apply. And so you you get the your side and you research your side and you argue your side. The ones that I liked the best were the ones where I had to argue both. And I loved a moot court competition where I would argue one side in the morning and then go in in the afternoon and argue the other side. I don't know why. I don't know why I can do it. I don't know why I like it so much. Maybe it's a Gemini thing. The older I get, the more I think that might be it. Because I have two totally separate sides of my personality. But that is my superpower. Give me any position and I will make you an argument. Question six. What is my perfect day? It definitely involves sleeping in because I love to sleep like a lot. It involves hot coffee and cooler weather and being outside, like going for a walk with my coffee in the morning. And then from there, it pretty much goes to I like a good weather, like 60s and 70s, outdoor food and drinking kind of day. Whether it's, you know, in Sonoma, sitting outside drinking wine, or sitting outside at a restaurant, it doesn't matter. Um, but like day drinking in the nice weather and eating and like one of those long meals that lasts forever, and you just keep ordering stuff like that is pretty much my idea of a perfect day. Once it gets to nighttime, I'm not so sure because I'm very lazy these days because I'm old and I don't really want to go out anymore. So it'd probably be either a nap and then some kind of early dinner. Um but yeah, my ideal day is really just having that sort of perfect weather moment and being outside and eating and drinking with people I love and laughing. That's my perfect day. I do that over and over again. Number seven, what is a funny Frank story? Y'all, Frank is a funny story every single day. And I couldn't really think of one that was like extraordinary. But just to paint the picture for you, every single person that comes to my house, it doesn't matter if it's a friend or a kid getting dropped off or somebody who's coming to do maintenance on something, or the bug guy, or whoever. Frank, the very first thing that Frank does when anyone walks into my house is sniff their crotch. He's a crotch sniffer. He's obsessed with it. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. It doesn't matter if you're an adult or a child, it doesn't matter what you're wearing. He just goes right to the crotch. And it's so fucking embarrassing. And every single time I have to pull him down and be like, Frank, no. But, you know, I'm sure somewhere there is a group text amongst all of our friends that's like, hey, if you're going over there, just know that Frank's gonna grab your crotch the minute that you walk in the door. I tried to train him out of it, y'all, when he was little, and I just gave up. I've just decided that that's just part of the experience of being in our home. And if you don't like it, don't come over. You know what I mean? Um, but he's a funny little clown, and when people come over, he entertains everybody, and he's kind of a nice conversation piece, to be honest. Um, but yeah, he's a crotch goblin, he's a crotch sniffer every day, all day. Number eight. You ever had a case that made you want to quit? Or and or how do you not burn out? Well, let me say this. I have burnt out multiple times and then changed course. I have changed course in this career at least three times, and I might do it again because I do get burnt out. I get burnt out of whatever the intensity is of the thing that I am doing. And I have gotten burnt out multiple times for different reasons. Part of that is me. Part of that is whatever I do, I'm gonna do it like a hundred percent. And then I burn myself out because I just can't help myself. Um, but law is a profession where if you're willing to do that, people will just let you do it. It's rewarded, right? Being relentless and not resting is rewarded. And so it's real easy to drive yourself right off a cliff. So I have burnt out multiple times. Um one time that I that really sticks with me, this was the first time that I burnt out. This was within the first 10 years of practicing law. Um, I had a case where um there were three separate parties that were all suing each other. There was a lot of money involved. There's a lot of very wealthy people and a couple of very big companies. And um, you know, we were working just constantly. Just hours and hours we're working, you know, 14, 16 hour days, like doing discovery, whatever. It was highly contentious. Everybody hated each other. And I thought that's just what you did because I was relatively new to it. And I'm like, okay, this is just how litigation goes, right? And I've been doing it for a handful of years, and I was like, okay, I guess this is what it is. But this particular case drug on, and the clients were so ungrateful. Yeah, they were paying a lot of money. Now, I was a young, well, I was like a senior associate, so I wasn't really getting any of that money. The partner that was leading the case was getting the money. But we were working our asses off for these people. Um, and they were so ungrateful. They would come in and say, Well, why didn't we do this? And how come we didn't win that? And it really kind of got to me. And I started thinking, what am I doing all this for? For these people? For my own glory and gratification? Like, what is this about? And I really started to deconstruct, and this is when I was working at and everybody likes to say big law. Yes, it was one of the biggest law firms in the country. I I never called it big law, but it was a very large national law firm. Um, and it was actually not bad in terms of like culture as far as big law firms go. Um, but it was a very intense place to work. And um I just sort of started to deconstruct and be like, what am I doing any of this for? Do I like this? Is this even fun? Or am I just doing it because I can? I'm capable of it. That was sort of the first time in my life I realized that just because you're capable of something doesn't mean you should do it. Which was a huge revelation to me at the time. I just thought, well, you just do the most important biggest thing you're capable of. Took me a long time to unlearn that. And so after that case was over, I quit that firm. And I actually quit practicing law for a couple of years. I went and did some uh nonprofit executive stuff because I needed a break, because it burnt me the fuck out. And I needed to switch gears. I couldn't do it anymore. I just couldn't work my ass off all the time and put my heart and my soul and my brain and everything into these cases for people who didn't care, who were gonna walk away with more money than I'd ever see in a lifetime, no matter what I did. So, yes, there are cases that have made me want to quit. One of them actually did make me quit. But it was good. It was what I needed to do. I needed to cut sort of go off and figure out if I want to continue being a lawyer, how do I do that? Um, and I did. And then I found a new way of doing it. I think all lawyers have burnout. I think it's a question of how big is the burnout and how long does it last? If there's anyone who's been practicing for more than 15 or 20 years, they have burnt out at some point. It's just what do they do in that burnout? Is it like, okay, I'm taking three months off and going to Europe, and then when I be back, I come back, I'll be fine? Or am I just completely walking away, or am I starting my own firm because I can't deal with law firm life? That happens sometimes. But it is a very intense profession. And so I think we all feel that way sometimes. Number nine, ethical lines, which is something that I talk about a lot. Um, and cases that cause me to quit. This is different depending on where you are in your career, right? Because when you're younger, you're not choosing, at least if you're in a law firm, you're not choosing who the clients are. They're putting you on cases and saying, this is a client that we have, and Bob's the senior attorney, and Bob wants you to work on this case. Even when you're a young partner, that's the situation. But there is a place for I'm not going to work on that case because I have an issue with what that case is about. And yes, that happened to me. I've told this story before for some of the OGs, but I was at a law firm that had multiple different departments. And one of the departments, um, the head of the department, was um a very big and sort of well-known around town uh Catholic. He was very like he had a crucifix on the wall of his office. Like he was a very Catholic dude. And he was very proud of it and he was very open about it, and you know, cool. But he took on a bunch of work for the area Catholic Diocese when people started suing over abuse because he was like their go-to guy. And the work at that time that was available at that law firm to work on those cases was to essentially try to write motions to dismiss to say that these cases against the diocese, to represent the diocese, that the case against the diocese should all be dismissed because they had missed the statute of limitations. Because these people had either not filed early enough, or if they just remembered that this happened to them, that wasn't good enough. And that was the first time in my career I ever had to go to a managing partner and say, I will not do that. That's a line for me. I will write motions about, you know, legal positions I don't really believe are very good. I will represent a client that I'm pretty sure is lying to me. I've done that before, right? Shady business deals, that's just part of the deal when you're doing commercial litigation. But I will not put my name or my time on defending the diocese, saying that these people can't be sued or that they can't sue because they didn't remember early enough what happened to them. I will not do that. And they said, okay, it was not a problem. They understood. Um, and you know, I think I had enough credibility at that point as someone who was valuable in the firm that if I said I didn't want to do it, they were gonna, they were gonna say, okay. Did I miss a whole bunch of billable hours because of that? Hell yeah. That would have been easy. It was just you write the motion once and then you just copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, change the names and change the dates. But that was a line for me that I just was not willing to cross. The irony in all of that is that that same group um once had a case come in. I think it was referred to them by somebody, where they had to represent a magazine where people are not clothed. Insert whichever one you think it is here. I'm not gonna name the name. And it was like a contract case. It was not, it had nothing to do with naked people or sex or any of that stuff. It was like a contract case for this particular client. And it had come into this group and they called me down because I was in the the uh bigger litigation group and they were in like a sub-litigation group. And they said, Hey, do you want to handle this? Because none of us feel comfortable representing this client. I was like, Yeah, of course. What do I care? What was funny was the client then sent a whole giant like box of their magazines, like, hey, just so you know our product. I had those in my office for a while. But like, those are the different ethics that people have. For me, representing a magazine that allows people to engage in free speech and adult consensual activity was not an ethical problem at all. But defending the diocese was. For these people in this group, it was exactly the opposite. Right. So I think that everybody has their own ethical lines, and that's the way that I have drawn mine. I think where ethics get complicated is in in-house counsel jobs, where, you know, your client is the company, your client is, you only have one client and it's that institution. You don't get to pick sides, and you can't say, I won't represent the institution, because it's your job to represent the institution, right? Where ethics come in there is you can say there are positions I won't support. There are decisions I won't support. If you're going to make this decision, you're doing it against my advice. Um, and then you paper the living shit out of that to make it clear that that's not what you told them to do. And also being the devil's advocate. Sometimes your ethical lines as a lawyer is being the devil's advocate to say, I know we can do that under the law, but should we? And that is a person that I have become in pretty much every workplace that I have been in for the last 15 years, is I know we can. But should we? Or I know we don't have to. I'm telling you legally, we don't have to, but is it the right thing to do, maybe? That's where ethics come in in a job like that. And I'm certainly not perfect, and I don't want to portray myself as someone who is squeaky clean and has never been involved with anything that was a little bit gross. Because as a lawyer, that's just some like part of the job. But I do think you have to know where your lines are, and I feel pretty good that I know where mine are at this point. Um, what is a crazy piece of evidence that you have seen in an employment case? I have to change some of the facts of this, but I had a case one time where um it was a claim of discrimination. Um somebody said, you know, I'm in a protected class, I was put on this committee, I was then kicked off this committee at work, and I feel like I was kicked off this committee because of my race. And so they had filed a discrimination claim against the person who was running the committee and choosing all the members. And the person who had, you know, put them on the committee and then taken them off. And it was one of those cases where it's like, you know, you talk to the person who made the decision, they're like, actually, it was about workload and it was about having this perspective from this person in a different group. And it was like, I don't know, I just don't know. It's really hard to prove, right? Because there are there are legitimate non-discriminatory business reasons why they could have made the decision to not have this person on the committee anymore. They had nothing to do with race. So I just don't, I just don't think we're gonna, it's gonna get there, right? And then right at like the 11th hour, the person who was being charged with discrimination decides, hey, there's some, I just want to, you know, I've turned over emails and stuff. There's just some some notes from a meeting that I thought you you might want to see if it helps. And it was like notes from a meeting about talking about the committee makeup, and it seemed to go along with their story of like. Like, you know, it was all about having certain voices, people with certain backgrounds and people with certain skill sets and nothing to do with race or whatever. But at the bottom of the page that this person voluntarily turned over. At the bottom of the page was a handwritten note that said, too many, and then the race question mark. Like, do we have too many people of this race question mark in writing? Turned over. They didn't realize it was there, or they didn't see it, or they didn't think about it, or whatever. That was absolutely crazy. And I remember a client calling me and being like, You are not gonna fucking believe this. And I'm like, I you have to send it to me right now. I have to see this with my own eyes. I don't believe you. Um, and she sent me a screenshot, and I was like, You have got to be fucking kidding me. Y'all, the shit I have seen, people do insane things in writing. If people would just do all their terrible stuff over the phone, I would not have nearly as much to do in my job. But that is the one that I can remember offhand that was like the craziest piece of evidence. We're like, oh, that changes absolutely everything. And that went from a case of I don't think there's anything here to this is a slam dunk case of discrimination and heads are gonna roll overnight with that one document. Number 11. This was a great question from some of my international followers, which is what can America learn from other countries about employment law? And I love this question because we can learn absolutely everything. American employment laws are really, really terrible for employees. They are geared entirely towards employers and always have been. We have no paid leave of any kind in the United States that is required. We have medical leave that is required, but it doesn't have to be paid. Um and I think obviously other countries have figured out that it is the right thing to do to provide employees with some benefits. But I think what America and American employers need to learn from those countries and what they do is that people will be better workers when they feel like they have time off or they feel like they have support when they need it. I think a lot of the time the people who make our employment laws fail to understand that when you give people time off, that makes them better at their job because they're not tired and burnt out and they're also not pissed at you. If you want people to be committed to the employer and you want people to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and you want people to want to be at work and want to do their job, you have to treat them like humans. It is to the benefit of the employer ultimately to treat the employees better. And employers always say, oh, they'll take advantage of it, they'll take advantage of it. And my response to that is, yes, some of them will. Somebody takes advantage of every good thing. That's just how the world works. But let's say 2% of them take advantage and 98% of them become better employees. Isn't that worth it? That's what I think America needs to learn. And I think it needs to learn it sooner rather than later. Because with so many women in the workplace now, um, I think the reckoning is coming that we're not just going to work ourselves into the ground until we have a heart attack at work and die. Those days are over. Number 12. A case in the past that I think might have been different if social media was around. And this was such a good question. And oh my God, there are so many. You know, I went back and started thinking about the Darwinism trial and the, you know, the evolution scopes trial. Or yeah. But I think the one that I think about the most, because this is this was part of my life. If you're a Gen X person, you know exactly where you were when you heard that OJ was not guilty, and you know exactly where you were when he was in that white Bronco on that highway. When he was in the white Bronco on that highway, I was at a party, like a high school house party, and it was on the TV. And when the verdict came in that he was not guilty, I was in the language lab at my college. And that case was extraordinary because it was televised and because we knew a lot more than we usually know. We had that was the first time we knew all that stuff about the case and knew the names of the prosecutors and knew the names of the judge and all that kind of stuff. But if social media had been around then, if people had been able to do their own sleuthing then, and people had been able to get online and talk about all of the evidence and what it meant and what the lawyers were doing, and whether people were actually like, you know, the way the lawyers were talking and being uh slick, whether people would buy that nowadays or whether they would see that it was a trick and sleight of hand. I think that case might have turned out differently. I really do. I really do. And every single case now has to deal with this, whether it's high profile, even if it's like a medium profile case. Um and I think lawyers need to get with it. But I also think that lawyers can learn a lot from it because you can learn a lot about how regular people see things. But yeah, that would be a fun thought experiment to go back and do OJ, but we have the internet. That would be wild. Number 13. What have I learned? Various versions of this. What have I learned about myself becoming a content creator? I mean, obviously, I've learned a lot. Like, I like the way I look better if the camera is flipped and the image is mirrored. Um honestly, I think the thing I've learned the most is that I can handle a lot more criticism than I thought. I've always been pretty good at handling criticism, but I've only ever received it like in very small doses, right? Like one-on-one or maybe three or four on one, right? Like a boss or, you know, a client or a judge or a coworker or whatever friend, right? It never comes at you from hundreds and hundreds of people all at one time. And I think in those early days when there were people who were really against me and they were making Reddit posts and they were, you know, kind of like trying to get into battles with me and stuff. I was really surprised by how little it actually bothered me. And I think that that is largely a product of my age and my level of maturity. I think 20 years ago, it would have absolutely destroyed me. I think I would have gotten into a fight with every single person. I think I would have been horribly upset and embarrassed. But I think being the age that I am, I'm like, who the fuck are you? Random person. I know who I am. Who the fuck are you? So I think that's the thing I learned is that at least at this age, I am at a point where if you want to criticize my thought process or criticize the way that I present something, like go ahead. I'm better at it than most people. So if you're like scrounging around down there trying to find something wrong with it, that's a you problem, not a me problem. And I'm pretty proud of myself that that's how it turned out to be because it easily could have gone the other way. So the one lively question, well, other than Van Zam, the second lively question, and it was asked so much, I think it's only fair to answer it, even though I've sort of answered it in the last couple of days, is what do the wayfarer lawyers mean when they say 47.1 was always going to be something they had to deal with, regardless of what happened at trial? And what they mean is that 47.1 is a post-decision process. Um and that it is based on the dismissal of Wayfarer's complaint. So what happened with Lively's claims at trial was not going to make the fact that her that their complaint was dismissed in the summer of 2025 go away. That was gonna be the that was the case from the day that thing got dismissed. And no matter what happened in trial, whether it was a total win for her or a total loss for her, she was still going to say, Yeah, but I got their case dismissed in the summer of 2025. So that's what they mean, is they were always gonna have to deal with it. What's complicating things, and I've made some videos on it now, is because they didn't go to trial and there are certain findings that didn't get made, does it now make it more complicated for the judge to make that sort of ruling? But that is what they mean is the 47.1 motion is a motion that is based solely upon Wayfarer's defamation claim against Lively being dismissed in June 2025. And whether she won at trial or whether she lost at trial, that still happened and she was still going to bring this up. That's what they mean. Number 15. How do I feel about technology and lawyering? Has it made it easier? Has it made it harder? I think technology is always kind of uh bittersweet, right? It is really, really hard to do this job and to be have to be available to people 24 hours a day. Um, most days I am on my computer, on my email, also getting text messages and periodically getting phone calls all day long, all three at the same time. And maybe a better person would be like, I'm going to segregate and I'll call that, but I don't, I feel like I gotta handle it all because I can. Um, and that tires you out. That'll burn you out real fast. I think that's contributing to probably my my next burnout. So yeah, having to be available to people all the time is really, really hard. Um, I think the harder thing for me though is I'm really struggling with people's reliance on not just AI, but the internet in general. Um, you know, over the last, I'd say five to seven years, there's been a real increase in clients and business people telling me, like, oh, I looked it up. And I'm like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You really don't. I know you think you do, but you don't. And I don't think it's because they're trying to make me obsolete. But I think it empowers people to think that they get it. And they do get part of it. Um, but they don't get all of it. And I, you know, the people I appreciate are the ones who say, like, hey, I looked this up because I wanted to understand, and then I wanted to be able to ask you if I understand it correctly. How can I get mad about that? That's amazing, right? Like, everybody wants clients like that. Um, but the people who are like, oh, don't worry, I put it through Chat GPT, here's a draft. And I'm like, your draft is a piece of shit. Because there's nuance to this. And so that's hard. I don't think it's nearly as hard on my profession as it is on doctors, um, with people thinking that they know everything. But that is that is not great. I do not love it. I think that my frustration with people thinking they understand when really they understand a piece of it is why I started doing videos. It was why I made that first video. I could not stand it. I was so fucking mad. I'm just sitting there flipping through videos. They're talking about sexual harassment and they're talking about the wrong standards and they're talking about sexual assault. And I was like, oh my God, I have to say something. And so I think the driver for me behind all of this is, you know, let me at least share, like, yes, you can look it up. And yes, you can have Chat GPT or something spit out a response. You can read a pleading. I love that regular people read pleadings. That's awesome. And a lot of times they understand them. And I think that's amazing. But to the extent that there are things that are invisible that you only know if you do it, I feel like that's worthwhile to share. And I it appears that I'm right because a lot of people want to hear that. Some people don't. Some people still just want to see the headlines and they still want to make it a horse race and good, bad, win, loss. And whatever, those are not my people. Books. This is number 16. Several people ask me, like, what are your favorite books? What do you like to read? And that is just too, I tried really hard. I just I love all kinds of books in all kinds of ways. So I'm just gonna say a couple things. One, um, my favorite book when I was growing up was Catcher in the Rye. And that is a fucking bummer because it has got so many negative connotations to it now, right? Because serial killers and whatnot. But that was the first book I ever read where I was like, oh, this writer, this character thinks the way that I think. It was the first character, Holden Caulfield was the first character I ever read that felt like a real person to me. Right? Because it wasn't Jane Eyre and all these really contrived, and especially like female um protagonists of the books that I was reading back then. Remember, this is the 80s. Um I didn't identify with any of them. They were all very girly and like it just didn't. And then I read that and I was like, oh my God, there are people like this, like me. So that was a revelation to me. Unfortunately, these days you can't go around telling people that's your favorite book because everyone will think you're a serial killer. But um, I did pull a couple of books off my bookshelf when I came in here, um, because you know, I'm sitting here anyway, and I'm gonna rearrange these soon. Um, that are books that have meant something to me, that have spoken to me, entertained me in a way, like just made me feel. And I thought I would share those with you. One is anything by Samantha Irby. If you are not reading Samantha Irby, what is wrong with you? I, by the way, tend to like books that are like short essay books. Um, I do like novels, but I also like books of like stories. And that's what a lot of these, in fact, good God, now that I'm looking at it, it's what they all are. Um, Samantha Irby, she has four or five books. She is one of the funniest fucking people alive. And her books are hysterical, um, but they're also really deep and meaningful and awesome. And like this one is meaty, um, which I think might have been her first one. But her books are excellent. And she's one of the very few authors that the minute I see it come out, I'm like, click, add to cart. Um, this will come as no surprise to anybody, but I think this is my favorite nonfiction book of all time, which is saying a lot because I read a lot of nonfiction. And that is The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. I'm getting terrible. Like, if you're watching this, sorry about maybe that's just because I have glasses on, I can't see. Um, this also has an updated version, I think in like 2024. It's called The Death of Expertise, the Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. And he makes the case, and this, I think this was first in print 2017. Um, but it's been updated since then, like I said, about how the internet makes everybody think that they know everything and they don't know shit, essentially. And how dangerous that is as a society and how it devalues education and all of that. And it is a really, if you are a person who um has a field or a profession where you get on the internet and people think they know what you do, like this book is like a warm blanket. Like, oh, it's not just me. Right? Like, why do people think they know what I can do? Because they can read an article in the Atlantic. Um, it is a great book. I read, I think I've read it two or three times now. I'm probably gonna read it again now that we're sitting here. Another book of short essays. I don't know why I like essay books so much. I just do. I think because if I ever write a book, that's probably what it will be. And so I think in some way I'm like reading what I want to write. All of her books are great, but this book changed my life. Um, it was just it's just insanely good. Um, it is called Thick. It is by Tressie McMillan Cottom. If you don't know Tressie, she is a sociologist. Um, she's a professor, she's a writer. I think she has a column in the New York Times. But this is a very raw book about things that happened in her life. And this made me understand the experience of black women in a way that nothing else in my life ever has, um, to the extent that I'm capable. And she is just a beautiful writer. And it's just one of those books that as you I mean, I've got, you can see here, I've got I've got things bracketed. Like, here's something I have bracketed. It's just like a passage, and it's like, oh my God, are you inside my brain? I hate small talk. It is small. Small is for teacups and occasionally for tiny houses. Too much small talk is how a country is given to sociopaths who thrive on shallow chatter to distract their emotional sleight of hand. Talk should be meaningful or kept to a minimum. Yes. Stop with the fucking small talk. I want big talk and I want it all of the time. Um, and there's some really personal stories in here about stuff that happened to her that's just absolutely unthinkable, but thick is amazing. Highly recommend. Um, and then the last one I will recommend. Um, this is sort of um again, it's in the same vein. Um, but if anyone has ever read Kelly Oxford, she was um she was on Twitter, she became kind of famous on Twitter. She's a Canadian writer, she lives in LA. Um, and then she wrote this book, and I think one other one. Um, and now she writes movies and she writes like a substack. And she's just a really funny kind of body person. Um, but this book is called Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar. And it is a book of humor essays. Um, and she has got such a voice, it is so funny. Um, she also has struggled with incredible anxiety throughout her life. And the way that she describes it and the way that she talks about how it feels, especially how it feels physically, is absolutely astounding. So if you are an anxiety person, I highly rem recommend this book. Um, all of these are great. I could sit in here and talk about books for two weeks. I'm not going to do that. At some point, we will have a larger book conversation. But for all of you who asked, like, what are your favorite books? These are books that I would go back and read again in heartbeat. And don't hold the catcher in the rye against me, please. And thank you. Number 17. Do I have any regrets? What would I tell my younger self? I don't have any regrets, really. Not a regrets person. The closest I will get is that there were some times that I drove that I shouldn't have. And I got lucky. There were some times that I was intoxicated and alone with a man, and I shouldn't have been. And I got lucky. Those are my those are my regrets, right? Like I should have been more careful, should have been smarter. But I don't specifically regret anything that has happened in my life because it all got me here and I like here. But in terms of what I would tell my younger self, and this was a really good question, I think whoever, I think this was asked by a couple of different people, because you know, you have to stop and think about it. And there are a million things, of course. But I think the biggest one, if I could go back to my teenage or 20s self, I think what I would tell her is sometimes the reason you don't fit into the group is not because you're not enough like them or you're not enough of that thing. Sometimes you don't fit into a group because you don't fit into boxes in general. Because you're your own thing. You're kind of bigger than the groups. You're kind of bigger than the boxes. I wish I had known that then. I know that now. I'm one of those people who's been a part of a lot of groups but never really felt at home in any of them. And I think I'm just that kind of person that's sort of like a lone wolf kind of person. And I can go into a group and come out of a group. But I think I wish if I could tell my younger self something, I would tell myself that sometimes it's not that you're not enough for the situation. It's that you're too much for the situation. The reason that it doesn't feel good, and the reason that it doesn't feel right, and the reason it feels like it doesn't fit is not because you're not enough. It's because you're more than this group can offer you. I wish I knew that. I know it now. Number 18. A lot of questions about style evolution. How did I find my style? Did I always like color? All that kind of stuff. Um and the answer to that is no. You know, I grew up in a very waspy atmosphere. And, you know, early on, I discovered that I really liked print on clothing. I don't know why I just did. And I liked color in design. Like when I was 12 years old, my parents said that I could paint my cup my room. Oh Lord, paint my room any color I wanted. And I picked turquoise. So I obviously liked color and I liked print, but I didn't really actually start putting it on my body until I got to be a like an older teenager. Because, you know, everyone, when you're younger, you're just trying to fit in and everyone's wearing like the same shit. But then I would wear something, I would wear a red sweater or I would wear a pattern and people would go, Oh my God, you look great. And then once I started getting compliments on it, I was like, okay, well, maybe this is a thing I can do. I was very scared of standing out and being bold, like all teenage girls are, especially teenage girls back then. Standing out was the worst possible thing, right? Um and I didn't want to wear pastels. That's not my, that's not my personality. So I slowly gained confidence in that over time. But I will say that I didn't fully, even when I first started practicing law, it was in a very conservative law firm. You know, you weren't even allowed to wear sleeveless dresses. That's how conservative it was. And so you could wear some color, but like, you know, especially when you're younger and you're first practicing, like you're not there. It's not a fashion show, blah, blah, blah. Um, it wasn't really until I left that and I started being in other workplaces and being involved with other things and other people in my life that I really started to see like what I wanted my style to be. And it was very slow steps, and it still is. I, you know, I still am like, like you guys saw the other day, where I was like, I feel weird wearing an outfit where it's baggy on the top and baggy. Like, I still have these things that are like rules in my head, and I'm very slowly learning how to break them, but it has been a decades-long process. It didn't happen overnight. But I I cannot tell the story of being comfortable or growing comfortable with bold jewelry, bold colors, bold prints, bold dressing without mentioning the women of color in my life. Because I realized at some point as a professional that the women in the office who were sort of unafraid, and this was not always the people who were at the top of the heap, by the way. In fact, a lot of times it was people who were at the bottom, but people who would wear things and present themselves in a way that I was like, God, that person is just like showing who they are. They were almost always women of color. And whether that's cultural or historical or whatever, I really admired that. And, you know, that gave me permission to take some chances because I saw other people do it. And it it sort of required me to reflect on why do I not do that? Why do other women who look like me not do that very often? Why are we in this box? Why have we put ourselves in this box and why do we stay there? And by staying in that box, aren't I sort of sending a signal that I'm somebody I'm not? What the fuck do I care? Right? And so actually, that was kind of a big part of my evolution in my thinking in life was recognizing that there is this incredible freedom in presenting yourself in a way that just makes you happy, whether you call it dopamine dressing or whatever it is. I mean, it was like a big fucking deal for me to like wear an orange sweater back then. But the people that I saw do it were not the people who were older versions of me. The people I saw do it were women who either didn't care or were ignored enough that they just did what they wanted. And it was very powerful to me to see. And so I started doing it. And, you know, a lot of the accounts that I follow, a lot of the fashion accounts that I follow, particularly on TikTok, are women of color. And I hope I'm not stereotyping anybody here. That is not my intent. I'm sure there are plenty of women of color who do quiet luxury or whatever. But as a white woman who grew up in a very white, waspy, you know, Oxford shirt blue blazer atmosphere, I had to be exposed to that not for uh not from people that were like my elders. It had to be totally different people that I encountered in the world. And I encountered, what I encountered was that people who dressed with boldness also lived that way. And that's what I wanted to be. And so, whatever my style is to this day, that's part of where it comes from. Number 19, we're almost there. We're going over an hour, but it's okay. Um, what is a country I want to visit? I have always wanted to go to Australia and New Zealand. That has been number one on my list since I was a kid. Why haven't I done it? Because you have to take like a month. And I have not had a point in my life yet where I can do that. Um, but I am absolutely dying to go to that place. I have just always felt this weird connection. I think it's because it's like, in my mind, it's like Britain but fun. Right? It's like a casual Britain. I really like Britain. I really like going to London, but it's, you know, it's pretty fucking stuffy. But to me, Australia is like the fun version, like the badass version. Um, and so that is the trip at the top of my list. If somebody said you can have all the time in the world and an unlimited budget, where would you go? That would be the trip I would book without question. And finally, number 20. This was a combination of a couple of different questions about, you know, what do you think makes a good lawyer? What are qualities that make somebody good that people should consider going into law or make you a good paralegal, even just make you a good legal professional? And there are a few things that I have learned over time, I think make people good legal professionals. If you're gonna be in litigation, you have to love knowing every single fact. Like, I need to know everything. I always tell students: if you're like an internet stalker, if you're like the person and your friends who's like the FBI, you'd be great in litigation because you that's what you have to do. You have to like no stone unturned. What do we want to know? Where do we get it? How do we find out? That's what you do. If you want to be a transactional legal professional, you have to be a person who's very detail oriented. And I always say you have to love a checklist because that's what a lot of that is. Do we do this? Did we do this? Do we staple this to this? Did we add the addendum? Do we change this word? Do we change that number? Does that match up to this? That's a lot of what transactional work is. And there are some people who are fantastic at that. I am not one of them. But that's what you need to have to be able to do that work. But the one thing I think you have to have to be a good legal professional, in whatever that means to you, is the same thing that I think you need to have to sort of be an interesting person. And it is the number one quality that I care about in my kid and that I look for in my friends and the people that I associate myself with. And that quality is curiosity. You have to be curious. Frankie, can we stop licking our foot? I'm saying something important. Okay, he stopped. You have to be curious about the world, about people and why they're doing the things they do, about how something happened, about what there is to know, about what else we can do about it, about how it works, you have to be a genuinely curious person to be in law. Because if you're not curious, if it's not like, but why? Well, that I don't, but I don't understand, then it's going to overcome you at some point. But the people that I've seen be successful as lawyers, as paralegals, as legal assistants, as judges are people who are like, really? How does that work? Even if it's something that they don't usually deal with. People who are curious about, nope, I've never done that before, but somebody tell me about it. I've never litigated this kind of case with this kind of business. Tell me everything I need to know. How do I learn? Those are the people who are good. Because if you are going to work in a system and in a profession where you are serving people, you have to be curious about who those people are and what is going on and what those people want. And I know that people do not think of the law as a service profession, but it very much is. You are hired to do a job, and your job is to solve some sort of problem one way or the other. And you have to be curious not only about the problem and not only about the potential solutions, but about the people involved. Otherwise, you're just gonna be sort of shuffling papers across your desk. So if you're interested in law in any capacity, the first thing I would ask is, am I curious? Am I generally curious? And I will say that that is one of the things that I have found most consistent amongst my followers who have been interested in all of the cases and have been making comments and have been asking questions. Y'all are curious. But why is it like that? But who said that? But what's that case mean? Why would they file it that way? That is your interest in the law coming out because your brain wants to know why. And that is something that you share with me and you share with most lawyers, good ones anyway. So be curious out there whether you want to be in law or not. So we've reached 20 questions. So I'm gonna let you go back to your life and I'm gonna go back to my Diet Coke. But next week, we will have, hopefully, if the schedules work out, it'll hopefully be next week, an episode with an incredibly special guest who I will tell you about soon. And either way, I'll be here because the drama never stops, and someone has to make it make sense.