4 | What It’s Like to Be an Associate at a Plaintiffs’ Firm

So far, we’ve been speaking with veteran attorneys—litigators who’ve spent decades taking on corporate giants. But today, we wanted to bring on someone who’s a little closer to law school. Someone who only recently went through the gauntlet of school, summer jobs, and studying for the bar – and who’s currently working as an associate at a plaintiffs’ firm. Jenna Forster is a fourth-year associate at Motley Rice. In just a short time, she’s already worked on cases taking on opioid manufacturers, vape companies, and social media platforms. Jenna joins Spencer to discuss her path into plaintiffs’ law, and what her day-to-day work is actually like. She also makes a strong pitch for joining your law school’s mock trial team.

Suggestions for topics? Questions for our guests? Email the show at Spencer@CauseOfActionPodcast.com.

Learn more about plaintiffs’ law from the National Plaintiffs’ Law Association. Additional details on the NPLA’s Linktree.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A Walk-Up Melodia Kelly and Schoenberger podcast. I'm Spencer Palkey, and this is Cause of Action. A show about how to build a thriving legal career and practice law that can change the world. All right, episode four. We did it. And already, we've been able to sit down with some of the most influential attorneys in the country. I mean, Shannon Spector, Shannon Lis Reardon, Rob Ballot. Working on the plaintiff's side, these attorneys have taken on some of the biggest corporations in the world and won. But it's been, well, how do I say it's been just a few years since all of us were in law school? Shannon, Rob, Shannon, I promise, I'm not calling us old. But the point is, I thought it'd be good to bring on a guest who's a little closer to law school, someone who recently went through the gauntlet of school and summer jobs, studying for the bar, getting a clerkship. I wanted to talk with someone who's still relatively new as a practicing attorney and who's working as an associate at a plaintiff's firm, which is why I wanted to sit down with Jenna Forster. I met Jenna when she was a law student at Berkeley, a 1L, in fact. Jenna made the trial competition team in her first year at law school, which is quite an achievement. And she was great, not only in the classroom, but in the mock trial courtroom, where she had a ton of successes. Of course, outside that, she was Order of the COIF, which is of course top 10% of the class, and also on the law review. To call her a superstar, a bit of an understatement. Flash forward a few years, and Jenna is now a fourth-year associate at Motley Rice, an esteemed plaintiff's firm. And she's had the chance to work on some incredible cases. Jenna has helped the firm sue opioid manufacturers, she's taken on the vape company, Jewel, as well as social media platforms for the effects their products have on children. Jenna also lectures on trial advocacy at Berkeley Law, and she's joined me to co-direct Berkeley's trial competition team. In our conversation, we're going to talk about Jenna's path into the law. We're also going to break down the day-to-day of what her work as an associate at a plaintiff's firm is actually like. That's all coming up. Jenna Forster, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I honestly, with the lineup of guests that you've had so far, I'm kind of amazed that I made the cut. But yeah, happy to share whatever I can.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

No, you obviously made the cut, and I'm so excited to have you on the show to provide yet another perspective on plaintiff's practice. Now, I gotta focus on that perspective, right? Because we wanted to have you on the show to give our listeners a glimpse of life working as an associate at a plaintiff's law firm. And in a funny kind of meta twist of events, we actually had to reschedule this interview because you were handling something that came up at the last minute yesterday when we were gonna talk. Seems like that's a perfect opportunity to say, hey, in the life of an associate, what happened?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yep, that that's certainly one of the realities of the job is unexpected things happening. I just got switched back onto a team, so I'm getting back up to speed with meetings and such, and got an email about being on a pre-call before a meet and confer and got on the call and then realized that the meet and confer was right after the call, and that was when we were supposed to record. So it's just one of the realities.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

It's totally true. I mean, how often is it that you you maybe look at your calendar at the beginning of the day and like, oh, this is how it's gonna go? I mean, how often does it actually go as it is laid out to go?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Totally. And the number of times that I've gotten a call from my boss, especially right before trial or during trial, and it's hey, we need an emergency brief on this, and you know, that's the plan for the day. Everything else is getting thrown out the window.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

All right, so you're four years into your career, uh, and looking at it, you've been super busy out of the gates, right? So you've got your work with Motley Rice, which is a career. Then you're lecturing, which we get to do together, and then working together as well on the trial competition team at Berkeley, co-directing it, all of that stuff. So how do you make that all work? How do you make the balance happen?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Wow, um, sometimes the balance doesn't happen. I'm sure you feel the same way, uh, because you're balancing a lot of the same things plus more. Um, I just try to create flexible, you know, I have some flexibility in my job because I work remotely. And um, luckily I love all of the things I do. I love the lecturing, I love the coaching and the running the program with you, and I love my job at Motley Rice. So um it's easy to want to spend time on all of those things, but over time, and I'm curious to know if you relate to this, it's gotten harder over the four years balancing all of it. And so it's an ongoing learning process, I would say. Is that is is that the same way for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

You know, it really is. And I feel like the challenges that that I face now are like somehow, you know, greater than they were, you know, a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, that kind of thing. Like the the amount you need to accomplish to succeed increases. But to kind of make it keep working, you gotta find other ways to make it happen. Like, for example, yeah, I got I got a family, right? And as you know, and a couple kids, and like that's its own wonderful thing, but complicating in life uh in terms of planning. And I don't know, somehow you get faster at doing the things you need to do, you get a better sense of what you need to do, uh, and therefore are able to make it happen. But like the math is is complicated to just look at, I will, I will admit. All right, enough of you asking me questions. Uh let's I don't know if that's gonna be the end of that, but but enough for now. Fair point, fair point. Um, so I want to talk now about how you got started in the legal field because we've been hearing these incredible stories from veteran lawyers about their approach to how they got into it, but you're much closer to law school and therefore have a little more in common with our listeners. So I'm curious first, what was your inspiration to go to law school in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah, I wish I had a unique story, but instead I think I have what's probably a pretty relatable story. I think I was just one of those kids who talked a lot and argued back a lot, and adults started telling me, you know, maybe you should go to law school someday. And I was the first person in my family to go to law school. So for a while it was just kind of this idea or concept. I didn't have a lot of flesh on the bones of what it would really look like. Um, so I had to navigate a lot of that, you know, on my own without folks in my family to advise me, but got there eventually.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Well, and you got there uh eventually by, you know, making some, I think, smart decisions after college, right? What did you do after college that gave you more insight?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, I wish I could call it a smart decision. I think more accurately it was luck. I graduated college and originally, you know, knew I wanted to go to law school and had wanted to go to law school right after college, and then during senior year of college, realized I was just not prepared to do that, um, hadn't got the score on the LSAT that I was hoping for, and just was not ready to navigate the law school admissions process, which is daunting. So graduated from undergrad and realized I needed a job to pay my rent in DC and started applying to paralegal jobs and interviewed with and accepted a job at Motley Rice, a plaintiff's firm in DC, and one that I work for again today.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Was that intentional? Were you thinking, well, I am, I want to go to law school, so I should be a paralegal as opposed to, you know, any number of other sort of businesses that you could have worked for? Was it was that a was that part intentional?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Totally. Yeah, I knew that law school was on the horizon, and paralegal was a job title that I knew in the field that seemed like something that could be my first step.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

So you get the paralegal job at Motley Rice, famous plaintiff's side firm.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Which, by the way, I had no idea about. I couldn't even have told you what plaintiff's law was. I didn't know what I was getting into. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

That's what I'm so curious about, right? Because is is it equally possible that you could have been hired by any other practice area firm? Could that have happened?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yes. And in fact, um I think it was kind of the luck of the draw. I had interviews with big law firms that were, you know, maybe scheduled for a week after my interview with Motley Rice. And I really think I could have ended up at one of those firms. And I would like to think that I would have made it to plaintiff's side work eventually, but it might have been slower because I just wouldn't have had any way of knowing that it was out there, which is, you know, especially going through the law school process, you realize that law school pushes you in a couple of specific directions. And until the last few years, plaintiff's law just has not been on the radar for a lot of law students, I think.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

One thing that I've heard so many times from law students is about when they first learned what plaintiff's practice was. Like they went to law school and learned what it was, didn't even know it existed. You found out obviously before because you're working in Motley Rice, but do you remember at Motley and like it's your first day, first hour, first week, first month, where you're like, oh, wait a minute, we are on the plaintiff's side. We are suing the bad actors. And when do you remember when that like dawned on you?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

I don't know if I remember when it first dawned on me. I I mean, I know that the work sounded really cool to me from the beginning. And I think I always wanted to be a lawyer to do good work, to make the world a better place. And so I think a lot of people feel that way and then get into a kind of law and then sort of realize belatedly that they're not accomplishing that goal. And I had kind of the opposite experience where it just ended up being what I wanted. But I do remember being in an Uber with my fellow paralegal and the Uber driver is asking us what we do, and we can explain what we do at the time we were working on opioid litigation primarily, so we could explain, like we're suing opioid manufacturers for lying about opioids being addictive. And we could explain that to a person, to our Uber driver, in a way that meant something to him and that he thought this is really cool, this is doing good in the world. So that that feels really good and has felt that way ever since the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Now, how long did you work as a paralegal before you went to law school?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Two years.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

So then you decide you are ready to go to law school and you go to Berkeley Law, which makes me very happy. Go Bears. We're very lucky to have you.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Go Bears, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

And so when you're at Berkeley, are you thinking uh automatically, um, for example, as a one L, you're gonna go to the plaintiff's side, or are you sort of, you know, in the ocean of law school thinking, I don't know which way it will go? What happens?

SPEAKER_00 11:27

I was definitely swimming in the ocean for a little bit. I think plaintiff's law was never off the radar for me, but I wanted to kind of go through the process of elimination and take out of contention some other options. I was really thinking about public defense for a while and some more direct services or direct client work because what I do now is a little more on the impact litigation side of the spectrum. So yeah, explored some other things, but honestly, I think probably by the end of my 1L year, knew that the plaintiff's bar was where I wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

I'm curious. Now you were a superstar in law school in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

That's very kind of you.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Huge superstar. Uh, but also in the classroom, I mean, Jenna was uh on the California Law Review uh with a high uh level editor position. Which one was it? It was what?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

I was an executive editor, which is not as fancy as it sounds. I'm mostly typically thinking.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

How about Order of the Coiff? Is that is that fancy?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I uh I declined to answer.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, so she's also Order of the Coiff. And so any door was open to you, you know, any law firm would have been in in the country, would have been eager to have you. And certainly there would have been pressures for you to go to any of those places with, you know, their arms spread wide open to, you know, suck you into their embrace, such as it is. How hard was it for you? And I don't mean to I don't mean to flatter you too much or embarrass you, but I mean sometimes folks in your position feel a lot of pressure to go do the quote unquote fanciest thing because they can. How did you deal with that?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

That's a good question. I definitely remember feeling that that angst. Um I guess what I'm trying to say is um prestige gets talked about a lot in law school, and I was not immune to that conversation going on. I think I channeled it more into I was interested in doing a clerkship because people talk so highly about them and and that's seen as quite prestigious, a federal clerkship. And I did end up doing that. So, yeah, the big law path was just never attractive to me, I think, because I knew about the the plaintiff's law alternative.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

All right, now we've talked a lot uh on this show about how summer jobs can lead to full-time jobs that can last an entire career, and as you know, that's been pretty much my path. Um, but I know you tried on some different hats uh with your summer experiences, and even of course, after law school before settling back into what seems like a great fit at Motley Rice. I think this could be really valuable for our listeners. Can you kind of take us through your trajectory of summer work to where you landed now?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah. So my first summer, I got the advice, and it was good advice that you're summer between your 1L and your 2L years in law school, you should just explore. You should just do whatever sounds most exciting, and really that it's the following summer where you should be honing in on what you want to do with your career. So for my first summer, I externed at the California Supreme Court with Justice Goodwin Liu on that court. And that was an amazing experience, pandemic aside. We were deep in the depths of the pandemic at that point. Um, but doing an externship lets you see a lot of different kinds of work, and that I think helped me realize nope, plaintiff's law is still the kind that's most interesting to me. So then in my second summer, I was a summer associate at Leif Cobrazer, a well-known plaintiff's firm that is headquartered here in San Francisco, and accepted an offer to return as an associate after law school. And yeah, spent some time there before I got the opportunity to come back to Motley Rice. And to your point about, you know, and you and I have different experiences where you have been at the same firm for a really long time. You got to write on the first try, I guess. Um, and I end up telling people a lot when I talk to current law students who are feeling a lot of anxiety about what do I do with my second summer. I tell them, you know, it could be your forever job. And when I was feeling that anxiety and picking that summer associate position, I thought it was gonna be my forever job, and it wasn't for me. So I just try to tell people obviously make the best decision that you can, but your career is gonna be long and there are gonna be lots of opportunities, and it's hard to find the place that is the right fit for you in all kinds of ways when you're on the outside looking in. It doesn't matter how many informational interviews you do, you kind of just need to experience it. And so, yeah, I think people shouldn't feel pressure to to get it right on the first try when it comes to picking the place where they want to land.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So then for you, when you realize, you know, that this is not gonna be, you know, my long-term spot, you know, your first spot, how did you make the move? I mean, how did you then get back to Motley?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, I had such good mentors at Motley Rice that when I was thinking it might be time to make a change, I just called them up to ask for some advice, really. And at that time they had no attorneys on the West Coast working for them. But I spoke to one of my mentors and former bosses at the firm and just said, you know, I was maybe curious to see what was out there. And she said, We'd love to hire you. And I said, I'm not moving to DC. And she said, That's okay, we'll work it out. And so that's exactly what we've done. And it's really cool because, Spencer, the program that you and I run, there are obviously students coming out of that every year looking for jobs. You and I are evangelizing about plaintiff's law sometimes, and so the other California attorney in our soon-to-open office is another alum of the trial team. So that's really cool too, Wesley Dunkirk. So it's been, and that is the reason that I was excited to go back to Motley Rice, is they have taken leaps of faith on me. And, you know, one of them is opening this California office and letting me work from California. So that's been um really cool to be a part of.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Uh totally cool to be a part of. And I still love how you're opening their office. That's a very cool thing to do, to open up a new, a new beachhead, as it were. So what I wanted to ask you about was there was not an opportunity, you know, Motley Rice didn't call you up and offer you a job. They weren't advertising, hey, we're looking for a job. They certainly weren't advertising, hey, we're looking for a San Francisco lawyer. But you made it out of whole cloth. Tell us about that sort of philosophy or what what gets you to make a move like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah, I think that the people who end up being successful on the plaintiff side have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit to them. And I wouldn't even credit that decision that I made to make that phone call as being entrepreneurial or, you know, because I really was not asking for a job. I didn't even think that was on the table. But what I see talking to students and just speaking to others in the community is the the people who just reach out to firms and express interest and reach out even when there isn't a job posting and are willing to kind of make their own paths, are the people who succeed on the plaintiff side. I think for two reasons. One is because hiring on the plaintiff side is just not as cookie-cutter smooth as it is in a big defense firm, for instance. And then two is that I think that that initiative, that entrepreneur entrepreneurship, lends itself to other aspects of plaintiff side practice.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Okay, so through your entrepreneurship, which is what I would call it, entrepreneurialism. These are all difficult words to pronounce, but what you use to get back to Motley Rice. What I'd like to do is paint a picture of what aspiring plaintiff's lawyers can expect to be doing as an associate. But just as a quick primer, is it a primer or primer, by the way? I was I was once told in a sixth grade spelling bee it was primer, and I misspelled it, and I've always pronounced it that way since then. And I think the answer is primer, and if I've been pronounced properly in the spelling contest, I think I would have gotten it correct.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Did you spell it with two M's in the spelling contest? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

I my sense is that people of a certain generation say primer. Very charitable. And younger folks say. No, but what you're saying is that you thought it was primer. So you're young at heart at least.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Somewhere, I'll take it. Um, but just as a quick primer, tell us what kind of cases or what kinds of cases Motley Rice litigates.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Sure. Motley Rice does lots of things. And what I do in particular at Motley Rice is I work with the public client practice group. So it's more specialized. We represent basically exclusively public entities. So states, cities, counties, and we bring affirmative litigation for them. So, you know, if a state wants to sue a corporation for doing something bad and hurting people who live in that state, then they might bring us on as their outside counsel to do that kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

That is its own entire category of litigation, which I love. And it's it's foreign to me. I mean, I don't, my firm, it does a little, little bit of litigating on behalf of public entities, but it's very much a small part of our overall practice. Is it true for Motley just generally? That's a huge part of the practice, or your practice at Motley?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It's a huge part of my practice at Motley. I think it kind of ebbs and flows how much of the firm is working on public client cases. We have lots of other kinds of cases, but there have been big public client cases that have come along, the opioid litigation being probably the primary example, where then I think most of the firm ends up working in some capacity just because the cases are so big.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

So let's talk about day-to-day life as an associate. So out of the gates at a plaintiff's firm like Motley Rice, in your first year at the firm, what are you doing? Like what could a typical day on the calendar look like?

SPEAKER_00 21:21

A typical day is so hard for me to describe because every day is different. And in particular, because we work on what I would say are big cases as opposed, you know, I'm I'm maybe assigned to one to four cases at any given time, which I'm sure is pretty different from your own practice, Spencer. And so what that means is that my life might look very different when we are in, you know, say the early discovery phase or versus when we are going to trial or in trial, the or, you know, or when we're still in the investigation phase for a particular case. So it can be Weeks of prepping lots of depositions, or it could be weeks of prepping for trial. So it's kind of a different chunks of time. The work can look pretty different.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

So, how close are you to making the decisions that are affecting how the litigation is going at this stage in your career, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I would say not very close. That's that's one of the realities of working on big cases, is there are a lot of people working on them and a lot of people who are a lot more senior than me. Um, it depends though. I mean, I'm certainly in all of the rooms. I think that's one of the great things about the team that I work with is there's not a lot of, you know, siloing. It's it everyone is sitting in the room. It it just might be that, you know, I'm more quiet because there are folks who are a lot more senior than me who have a lot more to say when decisions are being made. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

And depending on the phase you're in, you're right, because it's like, you know, if depots aren't happening in the phase of the case you're working in, then you're not taking depots, that kind of thing. But for example, when you are in like a pretty heavy discovery phase of a case, is it your experience or your expectation that you'll be, you know, in the fire, taking depots, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, at this point it is. My goal for my first year at Motley Rice, and it kind of worked out to where I had about a year or maybe a year and a half at Motley Rice before I went to my clerkship. And pretty much at the start of that year, I told the partners I work for my goals this year are I would really like to take a deposition and defend a deposition, and I'd really like to have at least one oral argument opportunity in front of a judge. And they ticked all of those boxes in that year, year and a half. So that was great. So it kind of happens that since returning to the firm after my clerkship, we've been post the heavy deposition phase and closer to prepping for trials. So I haven't been in one of those phases recently, but I would think that depositions are a big reality of my practice now.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Jen, I wanted to ask you about the clerkship, right? Because you're at Motley for a period of time, then you go clerk, and then you come back to Motley. I'm just curious what the challenges were of having a clerkship sort of in the middle of otherwise working at a firm, but then also what the upsides have been of the clerkship.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah. The thing that people told me about clerking before I clerked was, you know, you come out of it feeling like you really know how to be a lawyer. And I didn't really understand what they meant by that until I came out of the clerkship. And I felt like that really taught me how to be a lawyer. And I think what it is is being on the other side, you know, deciding, for instance, a motion for remand. Once you go back to being a lawyer, you're much better at writing that motion because you know what is most salient to the person who's deciding it. Now, that's also a bit terrifying to be the person who's deciding it, or at least who's writing a draft of an order to decide it. So, you know, it's a steep learning curve, certainly, and frankly, a lot of imposter syndrome in that position for me. But um certainly glad I did it and learned a lot.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

So then you come back to Motley, and the interesting thing is, you know, folks you clerked with and other people who did great in law school there at, you know, other jobs, some of them at big law jobs, and you're at Motley. And how does the experience on the plaintiff's side as an everyday sort of what's happening as an associate compare to what's happening for some of your other friends who may be at big law firms?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, I would say that with all due respect to my friends at big law firms, of which I have many, my day-to-day work tends to be a little more interesting. You know, I think I took my first deposition before a lot of folks on the big law side. I've never been asked to do doc review unless it's, you know, for a very targeted deposition prep, or I'm not doing doc review just for the sake of doing doc review. So yeah, I it it felt like what I was looking for from the get-go was feeling like I was treated like an attorney. That's what I went to law school for. Um, and I get the sense in big law and also at you know some of the bigger plaintiff side firms, even that there's a few years where you're supporting more than you're practicing law yourself.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

So that's what I was looking to avoid, and and I have and in avoiding it, you've got to work on some really interesting cases. You mentioned the opioid litigation, um, but I know there's other litigation you've done. Do you mind sharing you know one of the litigations, one of the cases that's been particularly meaningful and interesting to you?

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Well, have you heard about our big trial win, our big jury verdict recently?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yes, go on though, go on.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Breaking news. Um my group, the public client group at Motley Rice, we represented the state of New Mexico in litigation against Meta over social media addiction, harms to youth, failure to protect youth from exploitation on the platform, and we just won a jury verdict for$375 million.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

That was huge. And that, you know, there's been a couple verdicts that, of course, that's the that's the bigger of the two thus far, but it's such a great example of how plaintiffs' practice can be on the cutting edge of changing corporate behavior, changing perceptions about corporate behavior. What's what's that part of it mean to you? That like, hey, the this firm and the work that it's doing is changing society for the good.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

It feels so good, especially when, you know, I think I was not quite young enough to get really sucked up into social media. It wasn't quite addictive enough. They hadn't, you know, fine-tuned it enough when I was in middle school or whatever, and my brain was not fully developed, but um, but still, it's really hard to put down Instagram sometimes or whatever for me. And so it's really great to be working on an issue that I see affecting my own life and the lives of you know, lots of children everywhere. So yeah, it it feels really good. And when we got that jury verdict, it just felt like there are people who see the world the way that I see the world, you know, which especially in times like these, it's it's um, it's just a breath of fresh air. I and I'm curious, Spencer, because you've had many more jury verdicts go your way in in cases that you've worked on. I'm curious what that feeling is like for you.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Oh my god, it's a it it is if trying a case is the purest high and the most connected you can feel to like the processes of justice that our government can offer. And I do feel that way when I'm in trial. I just feel like you're sort of floating in a good way. Um winning is um, boy, it feels good. Like uh a relief and just this to know that what you've done has changed things for your client. I it is it's hard to describe, actually. I'll get like misty-eyed thinking about it because it is, man, you feel like you're working hard and you're being affirmed, much as you said, you know, um, the affirmation. So tell us, Jenna, what was your what was your role in that amazing New Mexico jury verdict?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah, it was very small compared to all the folks who moved to New Mexico for two months. I didn't do that, but as I've said a couple times, I came back from the clerkship in fall of last year. And at that point, we were basically at the motion for summary judgment phase, so I worked on those, and there was a lot of sort of cleanup discovery stuff going on. So I briefed a lot of motions, including motions for summary judgment, argued a motion for summary judgment, argued some discovery motions, and then I was pretty hands-off during the trial, at least for phase one, and I will be more hands-on for the second phase of the trial.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Which is what?

SPEAKER_00 29:57

The second phase of the trial is our public nuisance claim. So the first phase was the jury trial portion, and that was for our New Mexico Unfair Practices Act claim. So basically, you know, deceptive marketing, and then public nuisance will be tried to the judge. So it'll be a bench trial.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

And good luck with that. And such righteous and crucial work. So I'm glad you are working on it, Jenna.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Jenna, you've accomplished a ton in four years, and I've had the great privilege of getting to see so much of that so far. And if it's just four years that you've done this, and I can't wait to see the next decade or more and more and what you'll accomplish. I think it makes a lot of sense for me to ask you, given what you've done so far and what I know you'll do in the future, what advice do you have for law students who see what you've been able to accomplish and say to themselves, hey, I'd like to get into plaintiff's practice as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

First of all, that is very kind of you. I appreciate those kind words. Um, what advice would I have? I guess it's hard to say. There's not a magic bullet. I I would say for me, I work really hard and I put a lot of energy in when I care about what the case is about. So, you know, it's it's totally cliche, but follow your passion maybe, because for me, if I was at a big defense firm, I wouldn't be working as hard, I wouldn't be getting the opportunities I'm getting, I wouldn't be as engaged, and all of that matters, and all of that pays off in the long term in terms of, you know, opportunities and career advancement, yada yada. So yeah, for me it's it's just been really important to focus on the things that I'm really passionate about because then work feels less like work.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

That's been my experience uh as well. You know, we've talked about uh jury trials and verdicts, and that dovetails nicely with uh what you and I do together a whole bunch, which is we co-direct the Berkeley Law Trial Competition Program and coach and teach and we do all these things, which we really enjoy. Um I am curious if I can uh put you on the spot to give the pitch. Why do you think it's so important for law students to do trial advocacy, especially if they are interested in a plaintiff's practice?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Yeah, I think it is huge. And the way I think of it is that doing trial advocacy, you know, joining your mock trial team and even in college if you can, and then in law school, gives you a couple of things. It gives you hard skills and soft skills. So, you know, you know what an opening statement should look like, you know what a direct exam should look like. And even though doing your own direct exam may not come for many, many years in your practice, depend maybe it will, it depends on the kind of work that you do. You you'll be asked to contribute to direct examinations, and showing that you can draft one really well will get you closer to being able to, you know, put on your own witnesses at trial. So hard skills, absolutely evidence is huge. You can take evidence as a class in law school. That doesn't get you there. What gets you there is just the reps, just you know, issue spotting evidentiary issues with different sets of facts over and over and over. And that's what trial advocacy experience in law school gives you a head start on. So those are the hard skills. And then I'd say they're also soft skills. You learn how to have credibility as a speaker. You learn how to say something in a way that hopefully gets other people to agree with you. So, you know, not only is that helpful for any jury trials that you might have later on in your career, it's helpful for any motion that you argue before a judge or, you know, any time you're trying to convince your boss to do something a particular way. So yeah, and it just gives you a level of confidence, and especially for me as someone who was the first lawyer in my family, I think getting to be a pretend lawyer just made me feel more like I could do it for real.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

How about another side of the coin? I don't know how many sides this coin has, but one thing that I think our students get out of it is, in addition to what you said, and I totally agree with, is just the camaraderie and the culture. What do you see of our students in terms of what they get from that?

SPEAKER_00 34:20

It's so great. And, you know, Spencer, I've been involved in the program now, I guess, for seven years, and you've been involved for more like 17 years. Forever years. Um and it's so great because I felt that camaraderie when I was on the team. And now that you and I co-direct the program, I feel like it has just increased exponentially. Like it just keeps snowballing. So that is so exciting to see. And my closest friends from the law school era of my life are the folks who I was on that team with. So yeah, it just really bonds you.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Well, we get a lot of questions from law students, and I wanted to give one of them to you. So, so here it is. It's could one of your guests talk about what didn't matter in law school? I love that. Oftentimes you get asked, what did matter? But Jenna, what what didn't matter to you in law school to get you where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Um, no shade to any of the things I'm about to mention. I love Berkeley Law. I loved all of the things I do, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Um I was on two journals in law school. I would say those experiences were less important for me in the big scheme of things. I'm, you know, I was never gonna go into academia, most likely. I wasn't that interested in publishing. So that's, you know, we you and I talked a little bit earlier about prestige and the pressure around prestige in law school. And I think journals can be a big part of that. And for me, had the prestige not been there, I probably would have spent my time on things that would have been more useful to me later on. Still good experiences, but you know, that's just my two cents.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

And that's what we asked for. So we have a final question we ask all of our guests. Let me hit you with it. It is if you could go back to law school, go back in time and talk to your former self, what would you say to yourself about the journey ahead?

SPEAKER_00 36:19

I think I would say trust yourself and trust your gut and the things that feel huge and life-altering, and like you better not screw them up right now, are all gonna be fine in the end. And you know, there there aren't right and wrong choices in your career, they're just the best choices you can make at the moment, and you know, nothing is undoable in terms of career choices. You can always get back onto the path you want to be on at some point later on.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Well, Jenna, so nice getting to chat with you in this forum. Uh, it really is nice to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

This has been so fun, Spencer. Always glad to chat with you, even when there's a mic on. So thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

That was my conversation with plaintiff's attorney Jenna Forster. If you have any suggestions for topics you want to hear covered, or if you have any questions that you want to hear our guests talk about on air, send us an email. The address is Spencer at cause of actionpodcast.com. And if you like what you're hearing, subscribe to Cause of Action wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, share it with your friends. It means a lot and helps us continue to make the show. Cause of Action is hosted by me, Spencer Palkey. Thanks so much to today's guest, Jenna Forster. Peter Arcuni is our senior producer, and our executive producer is Gabe Riven for Walk Up Melodia, Kelly and Schoenberger.