#209: Beyond Work-Life Balance (Navigating Big Law Realities & Partnership with Emily Logan Stedman)

Heather: Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Life & Law. This is your host, Heather Moulder. And today we have a very special guest. And I know I say every guest is special because they are, but this one is extra special.

This one is extra special because she is a colleague – a peer. She is also a friend. And she’s also a client. So, I know her in many capacities. We met a couple of years ago now on LinkedIn, as I meet most of my guests these days, it seems. And she really stood out to me for a couple of reasons. Those are the reasons I brought her onto the show.

She has been talking about attorney wellbeing, especially from the big law perspective, for a number of years. She got started years ago, before she ever made partner, and she continues to talk about it as a partner, which kind of makes her unique because there aren’t a lot of people out there in general talking about this, especially not women in big law who have made partner.

Please give a special welcome (and listen up because you’re going to get a lot of wisdom from her) to Emily Logan Stedman. Welcome, Emily.

An Introduction to Emily

[00:02:28] Emily: Hi, Heather. Thank you so much for having me.

Heather: So why don’t we go backwards a little bit and just start with, you know, well, actually, let’s start here.

What do you do? What is your industry? What would you tell somebody in an elevator (this is what I do) and where do you do this at?

[00:02:49] Emily: Sure. So I’m a commercial litigator at Hush Blackwell, which is an AML 100 firm based in St. Louis. I practice out of the Milwaukee office.

I’ve lived in Milwaukee since graduating law School in 2013.

And I am a generalist commercial litigator. I help businesses resolve and get ahead of contract disputes for the most part. My industry team at the firm is technology, manufacturing, and transportation. Lots of focus on manufacturing startups and then a separate sector for the transportation industry.

[00:03:28] Heather: Okay, and you have been a partner now for almost two years, is that correct?

[00:03:34] Emily: That’s right.

[00:03:34] Heather: Okay. And you did not start at Hush Blackwell, you started somewhere else, correct?

[00:03:39] Emily: Correct. I moved to Milwaukee to clerk for a bankruptcy judge. I thought I was going to be a bankruptcy attorney. She was nominated by Obama to move up to District Court, which really shifted my career path more towards civil litigation. And then I joined Quarles and Brady, also here in Milwaukee. They’re right on the cusp of AMLAW 100, AMLAW 200, and they’re headquartered in Milwaukee.

[00:04:06] Heather: And how long were you there?

[00:04:07] Emily: Four years. Four and a half years. And I’ve been at Hush for four and a half years. Five years in November, I guess.

[00:04:14] Heather: Okay. So I first found you on LinkedIn, and I really was drawn to how you speak about attorney wellbeing because it isn’t the typical “you have to leave law”. It isn’t the typical work-life balance talk. It’s a little different. And it’s very transparent. You are very transparent in the number of hours you are working. You are very transparent in what you’re doing in those hours.

So what got you started? Why did you even start that as an associate, by the way?

[00:04:49] Emily: Yes.

So I was thinking about changing firms, and I took an online class on basically updating LinkedIn, making sure my LinkedIn profile was modernized. It wasn’t something I’d really touched since joining my first firm. Like a lot of firms, I think they made me get a LinkedIn profile, but I didn’t do anything with it really.

And through that process of updating my profile and starting to follow more attorneys, I found people like Jay Harrington, Amanda Haverstick, and I saw what they were doing and using LinkedIn like a blog.

And I had dabbled in blogging off and on since high school. And I thought, you know, this is something I think I can do and that I’m very interested in. I’ve always loved to write.

You know, most lawyers have that feeling. And at First, I started just posting like, oh, this article is interesting, or oh, this other person’s post is interesting.

But this coincided with me being asked to be on the Wisconsin Task Force for Lawyer well-being. So, leading up to this, I had been president of the Young Lawyers Division for the State Bar of Wisconsin, and I talked about mental health for young lawyers at every meeting, had created a CLE for Mindfulness for Lawyers, and really started to run with it. And through that, I was asked to be on the Wisconsin Task Force for Lawyer Wellbeing. And so I started talking about the work we were doing there.

And immediately, the feedback was positive. It wasn’t necessarily likes or comments on my posts, but it was direct messages. It was people – when I would see them out in the community, saying, “Thank you for talking about this”. And I just knew there was something there, and I ran with it.

And at the same, like, literally as I was moving firms and I just told myself, you know, I’ve been able to get a job at another firm and I’m going to go take everything I’ve learned about big law from my first firm and I’m going to be myself and I’m going to do this, and if the firm isn’t supportive, I’ll move on.

And my firm has been incredibly supportive, quite luckily, I think.

Framework for Getting Active on LinkedIn

[00:07:17] Heather: Okay, so there are a couple of things in that story that I really want to point out for people.

Step 1: Update Your Profile

Number one, when you decided, okay, maybe I, I can do something here with LinkedIn, you didn’t go into this “I have to post every single day” immediately. It was actually kind of a stair-step process, which is what I tell my clients to do.

Your first thing was to update your profile, which everybody needs to do. I have a whole podcast on that, y’all. You need to go back and listen to it if you haven’t, because that is how people understand who you are, what you do, what you do for people, and why you’re there talking about the things you’re talking about.

Step 2: Share Other Content

Then you shared, you shared what other people were doing that you felt were helpful and relevant to the people you were connected to and to the overall audience of lawyers.

That is, I think, one of the best things to do to start getting active on LinkedIn. It’s, it’s such an easy thing to do, and we all think we have to go posting. You don’t, at least not initially. You can start reposting other people’s stuff. You can tell them why you think it’s important.

You can start finding your own voice that way.

Step 3: Comment On Other People’s Posts

[00:08:22] Emily: Right. Commenting on other people’s posts was out of it as well.

[00:08:26] Heather: Oh yes, I love that you said that. Because by the time this airs, I will have had a whole episode about getting started on LinkedIn and really doing it that way and not even worrying about posting. You don’t ever have to post, actually. You can get quite active on LinkedIn, gain followers, and gain traction, and really use it as more of a networking, a really high-powered networking tool simply by commenting authentically on other people’s posts.

[00:08:52] Emily: Absolutely.

Step 4: Post Your Own Content (Thoughtfully)

[00:08:52] Heather: So there’s a whole episode on that. I love how you kind of stair-stepped it, and then you started getting into the okay, now I’m really going to post as you wanted to. And you actually, it sounds like you kind of gave it some time to think about, like, how do I want to show up here, what do I want to do?

And it, it made sense given all the outside of LinkedIn things you’d been doing to that point, that attorney wellbeing was one of those things you wanted to talk about.

Why LinkedIn & Why Attorney Well-Being?

[00:09:18] Emily: Yeah. And I should add, this was 2020.

There was a whole other layer there.

You know, as I was thinking about changing firms because it was still the height of the pandemic, I wasn’t sure that firms would be hiring. So I was doing a lot of thinking about do I hang a shingle, start my own firm, Do I leave the law altogether? So LinkedIn was a way to navigate some of those thoughts as well and connect with people who are doing some of those same things.

[00:09:53] Heather: When did you move?

[00:09:55] Emily: I joined hush on November 1st or 2nd, 2020.

And so I, and part of my well-being story is how much I struggled in 2020 during the pandemic. You know, everyone thought lawyers would lose work. The opposite happened. Most of us were working more than we’d ever worked. I in particular was fairly isolated before we were allowed to go back in the office. My husband couldn’t work from home, so I was just home alone all day.

And so LinkedIn also became an outlet for me in that way and connecting with people when I felt like I had sort of lost a lot of connection and was really, really struggling mentally with, you know, thinking. I was very afraid to change firms.

I thought I would be at my first firm for my entire career. I think a lot of people go through something like that. Yeah. And so it was a lot of change, personally and professionally at the time.

[00:10:58] Heather: That’s a really brave time to make a change because that year, you’re right. The initial thought was that lawyer work was going to just go away. And for some people, it did for a brief time, right? We had the shutdown, the initial shutdown, and that’s when I actually launched my first mastermind. We had our first meeting before, right before the shutdown. Our second meeting was right after the shutdown. And the lawyers in my mastermind were so flipped out because up until that point, and still a lot of lawyers see it this way.

Networking and business development were in person to a lot of people, and it had just all been shut down, and they were like, well, how am I going to grow my business? And so we had to kind of, like, recalibrate onto online more, and which, thankfully, I had already done with this business. So I was able to help them make that transition more.

More seamlessly and quickly. But it was a really scary time. And I remember several of them, like, had zero work for, like, six weeks, but then all of a sudden, it’s like the floodgates opened. They really did get busy, and they got super busy during a time when everybody was working from home and trying to manage and navigate whether they had kids at home with them, which I had. And it was a whole heck of craziness trying to work.

[00:12:15] Emily: I can’t imagine.

Heather: Also trying to teach your kids basic math and English.

Emily: And I had friends whose kids started kindergarten online. Like, how does that work?

We Are More Isolated, Less Connected To People

Heather: That’s insane. Yeah, it just. It was insane. And so it was really hard. But even the people who didn’t have that, like, it was hard for all of us.

And it’s something that I’m really passionate about is this isolation thing that is going on. It was in spades during that time for obvious reasons, but frankly, it has continued.

I think that we overvalue the flexibility of working from home.

And I know a lot of people are going to rail at me for hearing this, but anybody who’s listened to this podcast knows I feel this way. And not everybody agrees, but I think it is very clear, and the research is starting to back this up very clearly as well, that online is not the same as in person.

And you can supplement with online.

And there are ways to be very thoughtful, but it’s. It’s very hard. Number one, it takes a lot of extra work to do it.

And number. And the third thing is human beings are meant to connect with other human beings, and a large piece of that is being in person. And we need to understand that it doesn’t mean you can’t ever work from home. I work from home home 24 7.

Because of the way My business is. But I will tell you, I’m very thoughtful in getting out, seeing people doing lunches, like whether. And they’re not often related to my business.

[00:13:43] Emily: Right.

[00:13:44] Heather: So like, you know, and, and it’s easier for me right now because I have a teenage son who is very active in sports. And that provides obvious like. And as soon. And I’m already thinking about, okay, my first is gone, the second will be gone in three years. What am I going to do?

But this isolation thing. And we lawyers are even worse at it.

Anxiety (Is So Common Among Attorneys)

[00:14:03] Emily: Oh yeah. I mean, so I appreciate the flexibility because, you know, part of my mental health is a pretty steady level of anxiety. So I, before we were in quotation marks, allowed to work from home regularly. I would feel guilty on the days I chose to work from home. It was like this huge decision.

And I like, now my firm is very progressive in how they view remote work and hybrid work.

And I like that flexibility. Right. My parents, I live in Milwaukee. My parents live in Atlanta. I can go home and work from their kitchen table for weeks at a time. And I don’t feel any guilt about that because of how my firm is set up. On the flip side, I actually think because my firm has taken the you’re an adult, be an adult kind of approach to it in Milwaukee, at least a lot of us are in the office more because we have that flexibility, because we get to choose it.

Flexibility & Associate Training

And it is driven a lot by our associates who are in the office a lot.

But I believe in leading by example. So I model for them like this.

On a normal week, I work from home Monday and Friday. I’m in the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And I try to stick to that schedule, but if it’s slower, I go home. And I want them to have that permission too. Or, you know, if they need to take their partner, significant other to the doctor, they don’t need to be worried about getting into the office. Right. For that FaceTime because they’re generally in. And so I, I think of it at that level. But I also think there’s a huge generational difference in this.

I have, I got AOL instant Message in sixth grade. I have been developing and cultivating relationships online and through text messaging for over 20 years.

It’s not quite close to 30, but it’s between there and so some of it I do think is generational.

And you know, I, I work very closely with an associate in Chattanooga that has to work remote. Right. I work this huge case I’m on is out of Kansas City. And for months I was talking daily with a senior associate in Kansas City. So it does take a little more int.

And we would have, you know, check ins and not spend the whole team meeting talking about the matter, but like truly figuring out who each other are as people.

But I do think it can be done better than and more meaningfully than some people realize. And that’s not their fault. Right. It’s a generational difference, I think.

[00:16:56] Heather: Yeah. I find. So when I say flexibility has been overemphasized over, I think it’s people see all the benefits without understanding the downsides. And there are real downsides. And because they don’t see or acknowledge the downsides, they don’t intentionally plan in a way that diminishes them.

So that’s why I say it can be done. But you also need some level of in-person upon occasion.

Know the Personalities + Needs of Your People

Also, be very aware of the personality differences because there are definite generational differences. Are there? But I see personality differences too in my. When it comes to the people I coach, there are young people who need and want to be in the office because that’s their personality and they need to be connected. So for those of you out there like that, you need to find a firm that has more. Not just that. Yeah. We have people in the office like, okay, so when are they in the office? How are they in the office? Because it’s all haphazard and you’re the only one in the office most of the time and everybody else, like, it’s not going to do anything for you.

[00:18:00] Emily: So it can vary from practice group to practice group.

[00:18:04] Heather: Yep.

[00:18:05] Emily: Right. Like I think the level of noise and talking you hear on our floor in our office is different than other pockets even just in the same office.

Some of that’s the nature of the practice area, and some of it is what you’re saying. It’s personality-driven.

For sure. A lot of personalities.

Know Yourself (To Know What Type of Flexibility/Remote Work Is Best for You)

[00:18:27] Heather: This is a big well-being issue because if you are not self-aware of where you fall in the mix, then you’re not going to be able to intentionally choose the right places to work with the right people with the right structure.

And that is going to fail you and you are going to spiral down. It just happens. I would also say on the flip side, for those in, you know, partnership and those building teams and you need to be very aware of who your people are and how to best serve them because they’re not just there to serve you, you are there to serve them as well.

Know Your Team (To Manage + Lead Effectively, Emphasize Attorney Wellbeing & Delegate More)

[00:19:03] Emily: Yeah. I think that is something I try to model as well. So I’ve been fortunate over my life to have some management experiences, whether that was as a kid, a camp counselor, where at first I was managing my cabin, and then as head counselor, managing my peers.

As a teacher, you’re managing a heck, a lot of humans.

So I taught fifth grade for two years. That was a real lesson in management.

And then my law journal at the University of Mississippi is a little different. We are not owned and operated by the school. It’s separate, independently funded, and so it’s run like a business. And so as editor in chief, I had a lot of lessons in managing my peers, who some ended up not liking me and my decisions. Right. Which is part of management.

And I try to bring that to my practice. Because attorneys are managers. We’re not told we’re managers, we’re not taught to be managers, but we are managers. We’re managing ourselves, we’re managing paralegals, legal assistance, we’re managing matters, we’re managing up, we’re managing down.

And there’s no one size fits all to how you manage a human being. And it’s a lot of trial and error. And some of the pushback I hear is like, well, that takes a lot of time. Absolutely. It’s a lot of upfront investment delegating as part of managing.

But the more you do it, the sooner you do it, the better you get at it. And that creates the space, you know, that you and I have talked about offline on, like, yes, I work a lot of hours, but I’m also now able to be more strategic and intentional about how I spend those hours because I’ve learned how to manage my time and delegate and manage others.

Transitioning To Being A Partner

[00:20:53] Heather: Okay. So I want to get into a little bit the transition to being a partner.

You know, it’s interesting to me, the number of people who. And I think some of it is just the way the game is played. You know, we work so hard to focus on just make partner, just make partner, just make partner without thinking about, well, what happens after we’re a partner.

So tell me a little bit about how that transition has been for you, what you found that is surprising, what hasn’t been surprising?

You know, just open up a little bit about. For those who are not yet partners, thinking I want to be one.

What surprised you? What hasn’t surprised you? What’s not changed at all? What’s changed drastically?

[00:21:35] Emily: Yeah, so I loved being a senior associate. I became a senior associate when I transitioned to Hush.

Know Why You Want To Be a Partner

Loved, loved. It would have stayed a senior associate forever. And I think that is something people thinking about partners should do. You should constantly be asking yourself, is it what I want?

Because before then, you know, before I decided to change firms, I would have told you, of course I’m going to be partner. That’s the only option. Like, why would I be in big law if I wasn’t going to become partner? But there became a time where I was very fortunate.

One of my mentors here at Hush, I was able to say, like, is it worth it? Like, let’s be real, like, do I really want to do this and have those conversations? And I think that’s incredibly important that you’re not just doing it to check a box and then making partner as a commercial litigator, the work doesn’t change. I mean, in many ways I was still the senior associate on the files that first year.

Know What To Expect (Especially Around Billables)

I also had talked to enough people that I knew my billable hours would take a cut. I did not anticipate how big of a cut they would take.

As, you know, the one-off help stopped coming to me now that I was a partner.

And that was equal parts scary, some days, and very stressful. But then, thanks to people like Heather and others I had spoken to, I used that extra time very strategically and intentionally. I beefed up my LinkedIn, started a podcast, and was reading books about, you know, how to be a good commercial litigator. I was also recuperating, like resting a lot.

It is a track as an associate in big law. So I gave myself permission to take it easy. Right. My firm expects partners to bill 2400 hours.

That’s a mix of billable and what we call investment time. I hit 2,400 hours, it was much more investment time than billable.

The most off-kilter ratio of my entire career.

But I was able to really level set and build a foundation.

Take Advantage of Firm Training (& Other Opportunities)

Some of that was firm training that we did, and I took a lot of advantage of that. And connecting with my peers across the firm. There’s four of us from that class that still meet monthly to quarterly in our own little mastermind to check in and business development with one another and talk about credit and you know, firm politics and really support each other in that.

So yeah, it’s, it’s been a ride, you know, I this time in my first year. So about a year ago I started to really worry about how few billable hours I had. I started reaching out, and through that I got put on a matter where I am now the team lead. If it goes to trial, it’ll be my first time first-chairing a federal jury trial in December.

And so just being open to those opportunities and taking them, no matter where they come from and how they come to you, and writing them out, and that’s been part of the transition too. When I first joined that team, I kind of forgot that like, oh, I can just make decisions. 

And so learning how to do that, learning how to empower and lean on the associates on that team has been really meaningful as well.

[00:25:15] Heather: Okay. So there’s a lot in there that I want to point out that I don’t know if you even realize how much is in there, but so number one, and you were really smart. You joined my mastermind right after you made partner.

Emily: Yep.

[00:25:29] Heather: And you did it on purpose so that you could have a peer group.

We, it ended up being an all female mastermind. All members were fellow partners who were, some of them were further along. Many were in a similar situation, trying to navigate, okay, what is this partnership thing? How do I find my place? How do I step up to that next level fully and start building my book and not totally freak out when the billables go down? Because you’re right, they do.

This is the dirty little secret a lot of people don’t tell lawyers. You make partner. And it’s not like all work dries up. There’s a certain level of work that continues to go to you, but some of that work is going to go to the senior associates and the senior counsel in your firm. That’s who it’s for. And you are no longer in that role.

And you are now expected to spend that extra time to go out and build the foundation to bring in your own book and also cross collaborate.

Cross-Collaboration Is Key

That’s another thing you mentioned. So you joined the mastermind, which was external masterminding, but you also reached out internally to people at a similar level who are in a similar struggle, who are hungry to build.

[00:26:39] Emily: And we all do different things. I mean, two of us are litigators, I mean, I guess technically three of us are litigators, but all in different practice areas. So we have someone in the education team, labor and employment, and someone in the products liability toxic tort, and then me as a commercial litigator. And we’re all in different states, different offices, so really able to bring a lot of different perspectives, practice.

[00:27:03] Heather: And over time, as each person builds their book, you’re going to have cross-selling opportunities there, which is really, really important. I think a lot of lawyers focus primarily on people ahead of them because that’s the immediate cross-sell. And yes, you can and should do that in big law. But also make sure you’re connecting with peers because they’re going to give you more bang for your buck long term. Most likely.

[00:27:26] Emily: It’s already, it’s truly already happening. So for one of them, we are like yin and yang. We are so complimentary. My first CliftonStrengths were the opposite.

We really balance each other out. And so I got an opportunity for a unique business development thing in Chicago where she is. So immediately put her on that event and she’s running with those client relationships, potential client relationships. And we’re talking about how we’re going to split credit when work comes in.

I got a second version of that event in D.C. where one of the other women in that group is. So she’s going to be the one doing that event this year. And yeah, we’re, we’re constantly feeding each other, checking in. One of them just got some work in Wisconsin note. So that is also something I am still trying to figure out how to play up because there’s a ton of business in Wisconsin and people don’t necessarily realize that. And a lot of my referrals come because I’m the only attorney in Wisconsin people know, particularly from LinkedIn. Like a couple weeks ago, an attorney from Arkansas reached out LinkedIn. Like, they know you know who, how else you know? It’s not common for people in Arkansas to know a bunch of people in Wisconsin or attorneys in Wisconsin. So playing that up more and more is helpful too.

[00:28:56] Heather: So, okay, so you, you’ve done a great job of masterminding externally, internally across selling. You get all of that. So you mentioned last year billables went down, but you did the foundational stuff. So it’s been a full year. It’s been longer than a year since we started working together.

How has that started to play out? How are you seeing your billables getting better? How are you seeing, like, the fruits of your initial labor start to pan out? Because it’s, it does take time, y’all.

And you’ve got to be patient, which is hard. We lawyers are not patient people in general. I don’t know. I think generally speaking, we don’t have that characteristic.

[00:29:37] Emily: No. And so I mentioned this time last year, I reached out to a couple of people. One was the chair of my practice group, commercial litigation, and one was a, is a mentor and one of my biggest champions in the firm.

And they both sent fairly sizable matters my way. So those have fed me in 2025. But it took, you know, I was having those conversations in August of 2024. You’re onboarding one really started to pick up in October, but the other one didn’t really pick up till January or February. So you do have to ride it out.

The other is, I think, having – you mentioned, sometimes having someone senior to you. So my first and dearest mentor at the firm is headed to trial soon, and he’s also shifting his practice area a little bit. So now, when people who have always gone to him to say, can you help me with this matter? He started sending them my way. And so that also takes time. Right. And then there’s this.

That’s, I think if you’re getting a referral from outside your firm or inside your firm, then you have to do a really good job. Right. So I don’t want to disappoint him because he’s referring them to me, and I want to keep getting the work from the person who is the client relationship attorney.

And so those start just like when you were a first-year associate. They’re small, they’re one off, and you take them, you do a good job, you treat them like they’re a multimillion-dollar case, and then the ball keeps rolling.

[00:31:14] Heather: Yeah, this kind of points out something. There’s two things really.

Shift Your Mindset Around Rainmakers: Treat Them As Clients

So I tell my clients, especially when they’ve become a partner or are about to become a partner, that you really need to be treating the rainmaker partners in your firm that, you know, you could help out more and do more for and eventually maybe take over some of that work because they are rainmakers. They don’t have the time to do it all and eventually get the managing or even origination credits or whatever is most important in your firm.

They’re like clients, they’re just internal clients. You need to see them that way. And I think that shift is necessary initially because we tend to see them as our bosses.

They’re not anymore. You’re actually more equals in a client relationship way, though. And if you, if you switch. And I had actually about a month ago a whole coaching session around this with another new partner this year.

And it helped her because she was getting really kind of resentful, bitter about, well, this stuff isn’t coming to me anymore. And they’re handing it to all the quote-unquote service partners. And they see that I’m doing this business development, and so they think I can take care of myself, but you know, that’s going to take a while. And so my billables are really dipping.

I’m like, well, have you gone to them? Talk to them and we’ll know. Okay, You’ve got to like, you have to be willing, but you do it in a way that you would with a client.

And when we switch that mentality around, treat them like a client, it’s like something clicked for her, and she was able to go have that conversation. And guess what? She started getting work. And it sounds like this is what you were doing.

[00:32:47] Emily: Absolutely. So I have another partner in our office, very senior, not technically in my practice group, but needed someone to do his commercial, some of his commercial work.

And I started that as an associate. And this is what I tell associates. I think some associates join big law, and they think they’re going to get these big, shiny, very sophisticated cases, and those exist. But a lot of what you’re doing is grunt work, like it is.

But that’s how you build trust. You do that work, you do it well, you do it over and over again, and you’ll see steadily the opportunities grow and become more and more substantive.

Take Opportunities When Presented To You

The flip side of that is, you know, I’m very careful not to say, you should never say no, but part of it is saying yes to opportunities that you’ve been waiting for. Because I had a partner tell me, probably this time last year, you know, Emily, I offered you opportunities and you always took them. Not everybody does. And I, like, couldn’t fathom saying no to some of these opportunities.

And yes, they were a bit out of my comfort zone, but that’s how you grow and that’s how you build those mentor-mentee relationships. Because he was able to train me to, like, take the most substantive deposition of my career at that time.

And so really thinking and asking yourself, like, if this opportunity will propel me further into my career, you should say yes.

And like you’re saying, treat those partners like clients and the opportunities will come. They may not come consistently, they may come sporadically, but you’re kind of always top of mind for them when the next big case comes through the door.

[00:34:39] Heather: And something to note there. But I know it’s really scary for a lot of people. We work really hard to become a partner, to do all this stuff for other people.

The buck stops with them. And then all of a sudden you’re a partner and you’re like, woohoo, I’m in charge. And then a month later, oh my God, I’m in charge.

It’s kind of jarring.

[00:35:02] Emily: It’s jarring because then on some matters, you’re very much not in charge. So you’re balancing it all and trying to like, be a partner, but also continue supporting these partners that you love and admire. And yeah, it’s a lot.

[00:35:15] Heather: But you have to say, like, when you get those opportunities that stretch you and push you and you’re like, I’ve never really done this before. And that’s what partners do. They say yes, if they’re capable. Right. You have to understand, let’s just say if you’re an employment lawyer and you’re asked to do tax work, that’s probably not a good idea. But most people are not going to be asking you to do that.

[00:35:34] Emily: Right.

[00:35:35] Heather: So it’s. But if you’ve never first chaired and you’re taking on your first thing, you’re going to go first chair to trial. Well, everybody has to have a first time. It’s time.

So you have to be willing to take those opportunities and run with them, and then backstop yourself with a good team and have mentors to go to to talk about what you’re doing. And it’s not like you’re doing it all by yourself.

Use Your Resources

[00:35:57] Emily: Right? Absolutely. That’s one of the benefits of being at a big firm. You do have this sort of machine behind you.

And part of transitioning from my first firm to my current firm, I, because I wasn’t sure what jobs would be like, I started reading a lot of books about opening up your own firm and clicked on that entrepreneurial mindset. And so I love being a big law attorney. I love being a corporate employee. I love having an office downtown that I can come to and separate from work and big law. There’s very high expectations, but there’s also a ton of people to help you. But other attorneys, paralegals, legal assistants, marketing, all the business professionals.

And so in a deposition recently, I had something happen that I’d never experienced before. I’m the lead on the case. I’m like, who do I call?

I picked up the phone and called a mentor who knew nothing about this matter. But I was like, they’re probably the most likely to have experienced this before. Right. So there are a lot of. A lot of resources.

[00:37:08] Heather: Yes, there absolutely are. And as somebody who was in Big Law who then started her own business, I can tell you there are pros and cons to both sides for sure. And I don’t think either is better or worse. I think it’s really about your values, your personality, your strengths, coupled with your stage in life and to that in the moment.

[00:37:32] Emily: Absolutely. Yeah.

Thoughts On Work-Life Balance (That Are Realistic)

[00:37:34] Heather: Okay. Which brings me into a topic Balance, work life balance. But I want to, like, look at it from a little bit different perspective with you. You have been super transparent. Every month you talk about my hours. This last month were, here’s where I am, here’s what I’m going for. The 2400 total.

[00:37:54] Emily: Right.

[00:37:55] Heather: This is one of the things I love about you, and I don’t look at all the comments, but I’m guessing that occasionally, at least you get some comments of. This is insane. Why do you work this much? Right.

[00:38:09] Emily: Sometimes they’re really, really negative.

[00:38:14] Heather: There’s this. There’s this mentality within people who, some of whom are in big law or have been in big law, some of whom have never been in big law, that just automatically believe this is wrong and this is toxic.

What are your thoughts about that and how to find quote, unquote balance or whatever that thing is we’re really looking for? Because I don’t think it’s a balance.

[00:38:37] Emily: But no. And you know, I don’t think really. I think in 2025, most people agree work life balance is not the right phrase. It’s just that no one’s come up with something better that stuck.

Reframing the Billable Hour

So I as probably a second, Very, very early in my third year as an associate or towards the end of my second year, I got to the end of my associate year. You realize how behind you are. Not like necessarily how behind, but you need to bill 200 hours in that last month of the year to hit your billable hour requirement. And I was like, there’s got to be a different way.

I’m going to forget her last name. Her first name’s also Heather. She’s out of Nashville. She was a big law attorney and now does a lot like what you do, Heather. And she had a podcast and she talked about how she broke down her billable hour requirement. And I thought, this is what I’m going to do. And so I’m very meticulous, some people would say neurotic about my billable hour goal and requirement, but I appreciate knowing where I stand.

And a lot of it is about mindset. Do I think the billable hour will go away as it is traditionally in my lifetime? Sure. But if you’re in a big firm, even if you’re on an alternate fee arrangement, you still have to bill your time because that’s how the firm evaluates whether or not you’re working.

So I just decided this is like clocking in and clocking out. It’s a requirement of my job so I’m going to figure out how to work within it. And it doesn’t have to be toxic. It doesn’t have to be this boogeyman that hangs over you. You can build systems and processes to manage the billable hour and live within it. And what that does for me is it gives me choice.

I know where I stand on the billable hour. So if everything’s wrapped up and not time sensitive and I’m ahead or on track of my billable hour goals, I’ll go home and take a nap. Like I’ll go for a walk on the lake.

Lake Michigan for those. I’m in Milwaukee, I forget that. I just like the lake.

Reframing How Much You Work (and Readjusting How You Work, Too)

And you know, the pushback is no one should be working that much, 2,400 hours.

Well, I’m here to tell you that if you’re a high achiever in any career, you’re probably working that much.

[00:40:59] Heather: Yes.

[00:40:59] Emily: If I, as a fifth grade teacher, even in quotation marks, not working in the summer when I was lesson planning all summer, if I had billed every, like, tracked every hour, every six minutes that I spent as a teacher working on thinking about preparing for my students and my day, it would have been 2,400 hours. Right. Because I’m a high achiever, I work hard.

And so you’re doing this, so you might as well track it and then get the benefit of the raises, bonuses and promotions that come with it.

And I think, honestly, and this might be a little bit aggressive, but I think some of the pushback I get is particularly from people who left Big Law because of the billable hour, and they see that they could have maybe stayed if they had figured it out and that there’s a way to do it and it not be this big toxic thing.

[00:41:54] Heather: I think this mindset around the billable hour and how to record your time and how to think about it is so key.

If you can get to that place, and I’m a firm believer that every person can, you just got to figure out your way, then it completely transforms the way you look at it and how you perceive big law.

[00:42:12] Emily: Absolutely.

What Really Makes Law Firms Toxic

[00:42:12] Heather: And I’m not saying there’s not toxic law firms out there. There are, but it’s not toxic people everywhere. It’s not billables that that make it toxic. It’s the people culture and how they treat you.

[00:42:22] Emily: Absolutely.

[00:42:23] Heather: And some of it is not that. It’s your specific personality, strengths, weaknesses don’t fit well within the team or that culture. And you need to find a better fit because it’s More about alignment than anything in my mind, for sure. I would also add this, and this might be controversial to some people, but I have a husband who does SAP consulting. He has worked for numerous companies over the course of our marriage.

I will tell you, lawyers think we’re special and how much we work. We’re not.

[00:42:51] Emily: No.

[00:42:51] Heather: We get paid a lot more money than a lot of people do to work the hours we do. There are lots of people out there working just as many hours for less.

[00:43:00] Emily: Money, particularly in accounting. I. I think the more I do and talk about this on LinkedIn, the more I think that accounting, our accountants and lawyers should have some training and collaboration together because we’re working insane hours and having to track our time.

[00:43:17] Heather: Yep.

[00:43:19] Emily: We are getting paid more as associates than, I think entry level accounting, even at the big firms.

[00:43:25] Heather: Oh, yeah. Entry level accounts don’t make as much anymore as they used to, sadly. And they’re still working a ton.

[00:43:31] Emily: A ton, a ton.

[00:43:33] Heather: And I think it would surprise a lot of people how much people, others, other professionals actually work. And I think it would surprise some professionals how much they work because they don’t track it the way we do.

[00:43:44] Emily: They would be shocked, I mean, truly shocked. And that’s why I use the phrase high achiever. Because I had a friend during partner orientation say something like, it would be just so nice to be one of the business professionals who gets to come to this training and like, teach us and hang out in the room with us. And I said to her, I said, look, you’d be working as hard in that role because that’s who you are.

And a lot of us are like that. And I think part of my mindset was coming to accept that about myself. You know, I think for a long time I thought I only worked hard because that’s what my parents expected of me. Or then, like, then it was a habit that I couldn’t kick. And now I’ve come to appreciate, like, well, actually, I like working hard. I don’t know any other way to be. And that is also where this idea of being very concrete and meticulous around the billable hour helps me turn that off. Right.

Knowing Yourself, Your Limits & When (Plus How) To Take Breaks

So last week, I haven’t had a vacation in 2025.

I don’t really think I had one in 2024. I started to really feel that coming off of a very intense first half of this year.

So last week I went up north to our lake house. I worked every day, but I worked half days. Right. I.

Because I knew where I stood with my billable Hour I knew where I stood with all my matters so I could pull back a little bit, still be responsive, still take, you know, time to myself but maybe sleep in a little earlier or my in laws were up there. We went to dinner at 4:30, right? Because that’s their thing. And knowing where I stand with the billable hour helps me with some of that self talk and those habits around working hard and dial it back when I can.

The Preeminent Importance of Mindset and Self-Talk

[00:45:35] Heather: Okay, you raised something there that I don’t want to let go of. Self talk, that is. And that’s a mindset thing, y’, all.

That is so key to attorney well being. And I think a lot of times I’ve said this before but a lot of our stress isn’t the external stuff. A lot of the stress that creates, the anxiety that becomes chronic. It’s because of how we talk to ourselves, the standards we hold ourselves, ourselves to I. E. Perfectionism and our people pleasing tendencies and worries about what everybody else is going to think of us.

That is often what’s causing most of the stress. So you can have stress and it’s how do you respond to that stress? How do you dealing? Are you being reactive emotionally, which is when that self talk takes control and controls your behavior which then creates a spiraling of more stress or do you have the ability to step back, pause, rationally, look at it and be more intentional?

That’s kind of the key. But you have to have the right mindset for that.

And I think if I were to take one main thing out of this conversation, the number one thing would be it’s all about your mental approach.

[00:46:49] Emily: It’s a work in progress. Right. I will have months where my self talk is strong, I’m not beating myself up, I’m doing just fine.

And then out of the blue I will have a month where I cannot turn off that negative self talk. And I’m just convinced that I’m a failure, convinced I’m not doing good enough, convinced that this mistake is going to derail my entire career.

And I mean it can be very dramatic in my mind. And like, yeah, I have a therapist, I have medication to help me with that because that is. Is something I deeply struggle with.

And I think that to bring it Back to the LinkedIn content is when I first deeply started struggling with my anxiety and isolation and low mood, I told myself I was alone. I told myself no other big law attorney is struggling with this. I’m the only one having doubts. Everyone else believes that they’re going to be in this career for the rest of their lives. And they are going to be. And I’m just going to disappoint everyone because I don’t know if I can do this.

Talk To Other Attorneys & High-Achievers (Connect, Share, Be Open)

And I told myself no one else was feeling that. It was a different another colleague who came into my office because we had grown quite close to kind of explain to me some of his what he was telling himself. That really opened the floodgates for me to realize, oh, this I’m not the only one. There’s at least this one other person. And then I started talking to my parents about it. You know, my parents are boomers. They never talk about this stuff. I’ve come to realize, you know, my dad and I have very similar mental habits and experiences. And I started talking to my friends and my now husband and that is what I want to do. Wanted to do on LinkedIn initially was tell associates you’re not alone if you’re thinking this and you don’t have to leave because of this.

So many people, particularly women, leave big Law. I understand deeply all the reasons for that.

I want fewer to, to feel like that’s the only option is to leave. And so that’s why I really started talking openly about this on LinkedIn. Yeah, it was cathartic for me and maybe risky as well. But it has been a tremendous experience building a network and community of people who are like minded and have similar experiences and want to change, you know, Big law one attorney at a time.

[00:49:38] Heather: And I think that’s why I was so drawn to you, because we are so aligned in that. My mission is to help the attorneys who want to make big law or a law firm or they’re a solo law firm. I, I work with all types, but they don’t want to leave law. They want to be lawyers. They want to have successful practices that are really truly profitable, but they want them in a sustainable way.

And both Emily and I believe strongly and no, I think that it’s possible and are people you can go to to kind of figure out, okay, well what’s, how, how do I do it then? Because it is, it is unique to each person.

[00:50:18] Emily: Absolutely.

[00:50:19] Heather: But what you can learn from people like us is kind of some of the steps to take to figure that.

[00:50:25] Emily: Out for you to try. Absolutely. I mean I sustainability and when I give my while your well being keynote, that’s what I say. You know, millennials, I’m 39, so I’m squarely an elder millennial. We’ve been told we’re entitled and don’t want to work hard. Our Whole lives. I think that’s a bunch of hooey. Like, I’m around millennials every day who want to work hard and want that corner office and want to be leaders of organizations.

It’s just that we look at it and how it’s always been done and think, I don’t want to do it that way. Like, I’m not going to be able to achieve my goals if I’m required to do it that way.

And it does buck the system for some people. But I find most even younger boomers that are still in firms appreciate it. A lot of them recognize that it can be done differently. And if you’re going to retain talent, you’re going to have to do it differently, because Gen Z is not going to put up with a lot of this.

And that’s just it. I mean, I say I wanted to make partner, and I did. I want to make equity partner, and I believe I will. But I want it to be in a way that works for me, because I can’t work in the system the way it always has been done.

[00:51:47] Heather: And I don’t think any system is meant to work the same way forever. It’s meant to change with the times, to change with the culture, to change with the people who are there.

And we’re starting to see that, hey, guess what? It can change. It is changing, which is awesome.

[00:52:04] Emily: And some of it’s a little bit of a myth, because in these huge firms, there’s so many people. There’s no way we’re all doing it the same. But we just tell ourselves, because we’re a traditional hierarchical profession. You know, we latch on to the rainmakers who are, you know, and they’re all doing it differently, too. But we tell ourselves they’re not, because we’re. A lot of times we’re not talking to them. We’re not asking them how they’re doing it. That goes back to your networking point earlier.

All of that, I think I wish I had questioned much sooner. I mean, I was still an associate when I started to question it. But, you know, I think back to my first year as an associate, and I kept my head down. I didn’t really make friends, true friendships, with my other co associate.

And I was like, I’m just going to do it within the system that I see in front of me.

And I didn’t really stop to ask, well, is this fulfilling for me? Does this work for me? Does this align with my personality?

And I don’t want to sugarcoat it for people out there that There may be tough realizations when you realize, no, this isn’t aligned, this isn’t a good fit. And that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean the firm you’re at is wrong. It just means maybe you need to make a shift in some way. Some people can make that happen within the firm they’re at. Some people have to do it through a move. But alignment is out there and it’s been pretty. I do say it feels miraculous for me that some days I’m still here doing it, because I’ve been very fortunate to find people at both my firms and through bar associations who were all kind of like minded and trying to build these sustainable careers for ourselves.

[00:53:59] Heather: So we’re at the end of our time.

Before I let you go, is there any final piece of advice that you would like to give that you haven’t been able to or something you’d like to reiterate before we sign off?

[00:54:11] Emily: Yeah, I think it’s been a theme, but we haven’t truly put a fine point on it.

If you follow me on LinkedIn or you start following me on LinkedIn, you’ll see all this advice or things that I’ve done that might not work for you. It’s not about doing exactly what I’ve done. It’s truly about experimenting with ways in the beginning, very small ways to exercise autonomy and choice and alignment over your career.

And if it doesn’t work, throw it in the trash, take what works and run with has to be personalized to you for it to create that sustainability.

It is not about just latching on to someone. I even tell law students this. Like after that first semester, you’ll know who did really well and your inclination will be to study exactly like they did and take their outlines. And you cannot do that. You know what works best for you. So you really have to hone that gut instinct and trust it and follow it. And that’s how you’ll be able to find sustainability in your career.

[00:55:21] Heather: And if anybody wants to find you online, connect with you, where can they find you?

[00:55:26] Emily: Sure. Emily Logan Steadman at LinkedIn or you can google Emily Steadman at with Hush H U S C h and my firm bio comes up and that has all my contact information as well.

[00:55:39] Heather: And then also mention your podcast because it’s wonderful.

[00:55:42] Emily: I always forget about my podcast. So I have the tiniest of tiny podcasts.

It’s called the Grace Period. It is currently four seasons long. They’re 40 episodes. They’re all less than 15 minutes, often much shorter than that. So bite sized episodes where I really try to capture the conversations I’ve had with other associates and colleagues and attorneys on building a sustainable career in big law. But a lot of it’s applicable if you’re just a high achiever in a professional career generally.

Awesome.

[00:56:14] Heather: Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I know that the audience is going to get a lot out of this.

[00:56:21] Emily: Thank you. Heather.