Podcast: Interview with Author on Resilience & Former Biglaw Hiring Partner Clint Schumacher

In this podcast, Mike interviews Clint Schumacher — author, podcaster, and former biglaw hiring partner — on resilience in the legal profession, imposter syndrome in law school, what hiring partners look for in applicants, and more.

Clint spent the first part of his legal career at Locke Lord, where he went on to be a hiring partner, then transitioned to Dawson & Sodd, a boutique firm with a focus on eminent domain. In addition to his legal practice, Clint hosts a podcast, The Eminent Domain Podcast, and recently published a book about resilience and overcoming adversity, Second Wind.

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Full Transcript Below:

Mike: Hi, it is Thursday, August 18th, and this is the Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. We're going to cover just about all three of those, in fact we'll even talk about the "little bit of everything," because I have the great fortune of having a friend of mine on the podcast today, Clint Schumacher.

Clint’s a fascinating guy in respect to just how much he does. He is a father of three and husband, who coaches football, runs a podcast, has written a book titled Second Wind — and we'll talk about that, it’s on resiliency — is a biglaw partner, and is a former biglaw hiring partner.

So what we will do is we’ll cover all those elements, why he went to law school, what he does as a lawyer, why he hired the students he did — what stood out in the hiring process — what his book about resiliency can teach us in the law school admissions process, and then we’ll talk a little a bit about all the other plates he’s juggling and how he and I both try to find balance in our lives. So I think that would be a great note to end on, but to start, without further delay, here’s Clint.

Mike: Clint great to see you!

Clint: Mike, great to see you, my friend! It’s been too long since we visited. It’s great to catch up with you.

Mike: I don’t know how many years. Does it feel weird being on the other side? For our listeners’ sake, you have a podcast, The Eminent Domain Podcast.

Clint: Yeah, it’s a little bit different, so as you know, I mean it’s a very different role being a host and being a guest. So as a guest for example, I don’t know exactly yet what you're going to ask, and when you are a host, you are kind of in control. So it’s like kind of being the difference between a witness and a questioning lawyer, but yeah, it’s great.

Mike: I like the analogy. I’m soon going to be on a legal education podcast, and I’m worried that I’m going to just ask the interviewer questions all interview long.  

Clint: (Laughs) I’ll try to stay in my proper role today Mike.

Mike: No, we can go back and forth; we’ve known each other for a while. I was going to start with sort of, how you got to where you are, but let me shift gears from my sort of rough outline in my head.

Mike: You wrote a book.

Clint: I did.

Mike: Second Wind.

Clint: It’s called Second Wind; it’s about resilience, finding resilience.

Mike: The reason why it dawned on me to start on that is the admissions process — which is going to be most of our listeners, going through the admissions process — is so different from when you and I applied to college, when you applied to law school.

Clint: Right.

Mike: It’s not even a marathon. It is an endurance run; it’s a hundred-mile run.

Clint: Yeah.

Mike: So what did you learn from writing your book about resilience that our listeners who are just now applying — and they are going to have to wait, believe it or not Clint, five, six, seven, eight months before some of them will get decisions.

Clint: Wow, wow.

Mike: Yeah.

Clint: I mean so your question opens up a number of different things. As an initial matter, I mean, I wrote the book really because I, in my work with young athletes, found that there was this need to teach them how to be more resilient. You know, it started in games situations, but then it really grew from that. And then Mike, what I saw was, what I was learning and teaching my young athletes, I mean I needed in my own life. I needed it when I was working and mentoring younger lawyers in my firm. Then I even needed it when I was interacting with my clients. And so it dawned on me that, although all of us have you know some inborn resilience and natural resilience, that there are intentional things that we can do to build our resilience.

And as I studied that, I saw a common set of principles or things or thought patterns that people had that enabled them to take another step forward in their resilience. And so I think, one of them is, for a law student or a soon-to-be law student, going through that very arduous process — being able to take a long-term view, being able to find gratitude even in the moments that you are in, being able to consult with someone that has been down that road before and can help you navigate it in a more efficient and a better way — all those are takeaways that help build resilience and, if you're intentional about those things, can put you in a better position to be successful.

Mike: So let’s say you are a high achiever, like a lot of people applying to law school are. I’m going to guess if they found this podcast they're high achievers; they're searching for everything to get an edge. And you’ve done so well in your life, you got into every college you applied to, and you get your first rejection in the law school process — and this is going to be a tough cycle, so some people will get their first rejections ever. What would you say to them based on not just your book but your TEDx speeches, your coaching, your podcasting, etc. What’s the best advice you would give someone like that, what would you give one of your sons?

Clint: Well yeah, so I mean high achievers — I’ve got a son that’s going through the undergraduate admissions process. He's a senior in high school; he is as you’ve described a very high performer. He wants to go into some reach schools that he may very well get rejected in, and so yeah, this speech is warming up in the bullpen. Part of life is failure, and part of life is learning to deal with failure. And quite frankly, if we're not putting ourselves out there in a place where we're failing some, we're probably not putting ourselves out there far enough.

And when we begin to look at failure not so much as a rejection of who we are, as a definition of our worth, but instead as a place to grow from — then I think failure takes on a very different connotation. Failure is not final; it’s just another step in the growth process. And for someone who is going through law school or the law school admissions process and beginning to be told ‘no’ for the first time or have a door slammed on their face if they are not used to — man, there's another door that’s open. And so look at that in that kind of context with a longer-term view, and that can help deal with some of that — not frustration, I mean we experience frustration, but failure should lead to growth.  

Mike: One of the aphorisms that sticks with me is – and I interpreted it all wrong when I first heard it — Gandhi used to look in the mirror every morning and say, “I shall fear no man.” And when I was college and I heard that, I had interpreted it as "Oh, what a badass, he's not afraid of anyone." What I think he was really saying to himself is, "I’m not going to fear anyone including myself. Of course, I'm going to fall down, of course I'm going to have thoughts that don’t align with my actions." But at the end of the day, it’s what you do that matters.

Clint: Mike, that’s so wise. And I’m somebody that has suffered from that, I mean I’ve had a fear of failure — man I still have a fear of failure; I’m not going to say I don’t anymore — but I have learned to do exactly what you’ve said, which is, I’m not going to let my failure define me.

Right, so right, we talk to our athletes, I talk about it in the book about this formula — and as I began to really internalize it and think about it, it changed how I viewed things that were happening in my life. And the formula is this, and I didn’t originate it but I think it’s powerful. It’s E+R=O. Right, so there's the Events in our life, and we can’t control all the events that happen to us, but our events don’t have to lead to the O, which is Outcome. I mean the events don’t have to automatically dictate our outcome. We get a chance to have R, which, is our Response to those events. So E+R=O. The events of our life plus our response to those events equal our outcome. And yeah, we're not going to be successful all the time, yeah, we're not going to do everything perfectly, yes, we're not going to get into every school that we want to. We can’t control those Es, but we can control how we respond to those Es, and it’s that response to the events that happen to our lives then dictate the outcomes that we have.  

Mike: I love it. I’m going to write it down. Let’s shift gears. You're at a relatively small college in Texas, you meet your wife there, I think. Is that right?

Clint: Yeah.

Mike: How did you guys meet?

Clint: That’s a great story. We met the very first day of orientation, and she was in a group of girls talking and I was with a group of guys. Mike, she had had ACL knee surgery, and this was back in the time before arthroscopic knee surgery, so she kind of had the tell-tale scar on her knee, and she is a very athletic lady, very nice-looking lady, caught my eye. But in my mind, I thought, "that’s something I know," about because I’ve been around athletics enough to know what that scar meant, and I said that’s my "in," you know, I am going to talk to her about her knee surgery. So despite my lack of Don Juan-ness, we struck up a conversation and hit it off and have been dating ever since.

Mike: And now married with three children. At what point did you say, "law is what I want to do"?

Clint: Man, it was really towards the end of college. So I went to college, Mike, and I don’t know if you and I have ever had this conversation, so this is maybe news. I went to college to be a preacher. So I wanted to, you know preacher or pastor of a church. My father had studied the same thing although he didn’t stay in ministry very long. And he said, “Son, I’ll support you, that’s great, but you need to have a major in addition to Bible. Because if you decide you're not going to be a preacher, nobody is going to hire you.” And I said, “Okay dad, that seems like good advice, what do you suggest I major in?” He said accounting. And so I doubled majored in Bible and in accounting, and as you’ve already referenced, I met my wife somewhere along the way, and I began to think about, what does life look like as a preacher or a pastor? And though I loved a lot of the ministry part of it, it would mean my family was in a fish bowl, and in those days, you know, the church came first, your family came second. It’s maybe not so much that way anymore, but at the time I didn’t like the way that looked.

And so I decided to walk away from that part of what I wanted to do, and then I just had this accounting degree, and I started to interview with accounting firms, and Mike, I mean young accountants work really hard. And as I was looking at it and meeting some of the people, I’m like, I’m not sure this is what I want to do. And so in the back of my mind I had always thought about going to law school, I didn’t have lawyers in the family or anything else, but at that point it seemed like the best alternative. And so that’s what I did.

Mike: It amuses me that you were like, "Young accountants work really hard so I am going to work in biglaw."

Clint: (Laughs) Yeah, you know sometimes you're blessed by what you don’t know.

Mike: Right, did the hours shock you at first when you started — you started at Locke Lord, correct?

Clint: I did, yeah. I started at –

Mike: Went to UT law school —

Clint: That’s right.

Mike: When you were at UT, if you can think back to your first couple of weeks. Did you feel imposter syndrome, did you feel like you didn’t belong there?

Clint: Oh my gosh, totally. Yes, yeah you put your finger on it. Yeah, so I'm sitting in class and I came from a small, you know West Texas school Abilene Christian, and I’m in with these people that went to Ivy League schools and went to the University of Texas, and went to Texas A&M and all these highly regarded schools. And I’m looking around going, “What in the world am I doing here and how did I get here?” And so imposter syndrome — man, you put your finger right on it. That’s exactly how I felt.  

Mike: Well, the reason why I knew that is — as you probably know, roughly — I’ve done 22 years of this stuff. I’ve probably interviewed now, I don’t know, 15-20 lawyers, including Jeff Chapman, who you know.

Clint: Yeah, yeah.

Mike: Being at Gibson. And not a single one didn’t feel severe imposter syndrome.

Clint: You know that’s great to point out. I’ve never thought about that, but you're exactly right. I mean if you're an incoming law student, just expect that, and know, you know what – and I figured this out at some point — "I really do belong. I really do have what it takes."

Mike: I’m glad you figured it out, and I’m glad our listeners got to hear that. So you started at Locke Lord; did the hours surprise you?

Clint: The hours didn’t surprise me. I mean, I knew what I was walking into and I was good with that. You know, I was a hardworking kid; I had a work ethic. What got away from me though, Mike, is my life got horribly out of balance. You know, there were the hours the firm wanted, and then there were the hours I was working. Because, like all lawyers or like most lawyers, I was super competitive. I came in with a class — you know at that time of 17 or 18 first-year students, and I wanted to be the best. And so I was working really hard, the saying ‘law is a jealous mistress’ is very true. You know, you can get lost in doing things on your cases, particularly as a young lawyer, and I absolutely did that.  

Mike: You spoke to all my students when I was at WashU once, and you said something that I still remember to this day which is, when you were talking about balancing family and your legal career, you now schedule in time with your family just like you schedule time with clients, no different.

Clint: Yeah, yes that is correct. I’m impressed you remembered that, but yes. Yeah, I mean at some point — and we can get into this — I mean, at some point, everybody's got core values. You know, values that bubble up from their heart. Core is really, in the Latin translation means heart. And so you have these values that come up from who you are, and that’s really what defines who you are, at least your vision of yourself. And at some point, I figured out, because my wife really, you know, sat down and helped me figure this out. That the way I was living was completely inconsistent with who I said I wanted to be and who I in my heart really wanted to be.

And so if you decide, these are the values that are important to me and this is how I want to live out my life, then you’ve got to be intentional in terms of structuring your time so that it matches your values. And you know, even at the time I was coming out when you were in St. Louis, I would say I was still at the very beginning parts of that process. I knew I needed to do it, I didn’t do it perfectly, and I still don’t do it perfectly, but I’m trying to get better.

Mike: Yeah, we're going to get back to that, because I’m curious how you balance so many things you do. So we met when you were at Locke Lord, you just touched upon that. You were the hiring partner then, and my goal in life was to get my students hired during the Great Recession, so thank you for hiring some of them.

Clint: Well, you did a great job. You were best in class, my friend.

Mike: Thank you. So what was it about students during the interview process, on their resume, what were the things — because you were hiring people, like you would get 1000 resumes, probably you could say no to 998 of them.

Clint: Yes, that is true. I mean we were — and I forgot that it was during the years of the Great Recession; now that you're putting that timeline together that reminds me of that. But yes, we were getting way more resumes and we were seeing way more qualified candidates than we could have ever hired. And we would sit in meetings and go, “Man, we would love to give out offers to all 20 of these people, I’ve got two jobs I can offer people.” And so then, you're trying to sort through and figure out who to offer.

And what jumped out, particularly during the time that I was a hiring partner and trying to influence those decisions, there were a couple of things that always jumped out at me. One was, what I called at the time, somebody that had fire in their belly. And I think now with the advent of some further books and writing about this, we would call it somebody that has a "growth mindset." I mean, somebody that sees a problem and then can figure out how to deal with that problem and has exhibited some of that resilience in their life.

And so I found that you get past a certain amount of academic credential and you know, a certain class of school. And once you get over that initial threshold and you’ve got the horsepower to do the work, now it comes down to, "Man, can they deal with a hard situation and figure out how to solve it?" So that was one.

The second was, do they show leadership, and can they work with other people? Because in a law firm you're working with other people, whether it’s your client, whether it’s your colleagues, whether it’s the partners that you're answering to, whether it’s the staff that’s helping you do your job well. You’ve got to be able to work with many different types of people, a variety of people, a diverse set of people, and do that well. And so if I could find somebody that had those two characteristics, normally those were two good indicators that they would be successful in the profession.

Mike: You know, it’s so interesting, we happened to catch the movie, The Martian. You’ve seen it right, with Matt Damon?

Clint: Well, I’ve read the book, yeah.

Mike: Okay yeah. There's actually a website dedicated to how much money they’ve spent bringing Matt Damon home — from Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan. (Laughs) It’s in the many trillions of dollars. But you mentioned growth mindset and solving a problem. It dawned on me watching that movie for the second time — you know you watch it the first time for entertainment value —

Clint: Right.

Mike: All that movie is, is this guy solving one problem and then the next. It’s just, he solves 74 problems then he gets to go home.

Clint: Yeah, and to some extent that's what lawyers do for a living. My clients bring me problems they can’t solve themselves, and then I got to figure out how to solve it. And often that problem has a set of mini problems to get there. And so while it’s never as extreme as The Martian — hopefully nobody is going to die at the end of the day — that is in essence what it is.

Mike: You mentioned, you had a certain caliber of schools, and you were at that school so you already know that the person can do the intellectual work. What about someone who goes to a – and I don’t know what the cut off would be for you — but outside that caliber of schools, how would they get on your radar? If they're at the 100th rank law school and your firm only recruits the top 20 ranked law schools. And I always think of the movie Wall Street – and don’t do this by the way for our listeners — where Buddy would send that guy like his favorite bourbon once a year, and he finally got a meeting with him — which would not work, I don’t think. What would work?

Clint: Yeah, now that’s good advice, I don’t think that would work either! But, as I thought about that while it was going, here is what jumped out and what grabbed me. If I’m hiring somebody other from our core set of schools, right, so I’m hiring outside of our core group of schools — the risk to me increases. If that person is not successful, one of the first thing is they're going to ask is, “Okay, why did you hire somebody from so and so school? We don’t normally hire somebody from there.” So in essence, to the person that you are trying to convince to hire you, you’ve got to convince them that you are worth the risk. And so how do you do that? Well, you’ve got to bring enough to the table that you can convince them that, notwithstanding the fact that you don’t come from a school that they normally interview with, you have the toolset to be successful at his or her firm.

And so I think that requires a couple of things: one, learning about their firm to figure out what they value, and then explaining what it is that you bring to the table that matches what it is that they value. Second, indicating that you’ve got experiences in your life that you can bring to bear to be successful in that firm. And then third, back to your example, probably it’s going to take more than one effort. Develop a relationship with somebody over time, and social media brings tools that we didn’t have 15 years ago to do this — and I’m not saying hard sell them, I’m not saying wear them out, I’m not saying stalk them — but develop a relationship over time, and they get an increased comfort level with who you are.

Mike: I have this horrible analogy, but I haven’t thought of a better one yet for getting to know someone over time. I think of these two like, revolutionary war warships.

Clint: Yeah.

Mike: And they each have 12 cannon balls, and you know the ship’s 400 yards away. You don’t shoot all 12 of your cannon balls at the same time. You shoot one and then you let the ship get a little closer, and then you shoot the other. And it’s the same way to reaching out to law school admissions offices. You can’t just like, bam! Bam! Bam! You only have like 10 of those throughout the entire admission cycle, so you’ve got to space them out. Same thing for hiring?

Clint: Yeah, same thing. I think that’s a great analogy. Same reason you wouldn’t ask somebody on a first date to marry you. I mean it takes some time for that person to get to know you and you get to know them and for a relationship to build. I like the cannon ball analogy, that’s good.

Mike: Anna, our COO who is helping us with the technology today, did get married on her first date I think so —

Clint: (Laughs) We’ll make an exception for her.

Mike: So you talked about things that stand out. How did you transition from a big firm to a smaller firm? Was that part of the whole balance part?

Clint: It was part of the balance part; it really came about from a decision that was made a few years before I left. So I left the big firm in 2018, and sometime in 2016, Mike, I was going through this process of, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? You know, I guess it’s a question people ask themselves at some point, midlife crisis or whatever else. But I was going through the process of, what do I want my life to look like, what do I want my law practice to look like?

And I really liked this really niche area of law called eminent domain. I mean at the time I was doing eminent domain cases when the government comes and takes property, I was representing property owners that found themselves in that situation. I was doing other kinds of cases too, accounting malpractice and some other more run of the mill oil and gas type cases. But as I went through the analysis of, what is it that I do well, what clients do I most enjoy serving, where do I bring the most value to my clients? And as I was wrestling with those questions, it became apparent to me, I liked eminent domain cases, I was relatively good at it as compared to most. I felt like I brought a lot of value to my clients in that situation, and I enjoyed the people that I was working with when I was working on those types of cases.

And so I said, okay, I want to transition more and more of my practice over to this super niche area of the law. And as I did that, it became evident to me that it would work better outside the big law firm situation and into a smaller law firm, and that’s part of what brought about the transition.

The other part was, at the same time, I had an opportunity to get more involved coaching football at the high school level, which has its own time demands. And at some point, I just decided it was really not going to be compatible to work in a biglaw situation and do what I want to do on the side, and do the kind of practice I wanted to do. And so I started to look for a firm where I could do all those things.  

Mike: Yeah, did you know I coached football?

Clint: I knew that only recently, yeah.

Mike: Yeah, I coached football at Boulder High School for a year. I’m going to take credit for the fact that I coached running backs in the freshman team, and it was the only year Boulder freshman team had a winning season in something like 10 years. And our running back — the other thing I did extensively was coach running backs — led the state in rushing that year.

Clint: Man!

Mike: But he was a freak talent; he probably would have led the nation not for my coaching him.

Clint: Talented kids make you look good as coach, don’t they? (Laughs)

Mike: It’s the truest thing that you’ve ever said. Anyone listening to this podcast whoever has coached or will coach in the future will relate to that statement. You look really good when you have good players as a team.

Clint: You do.

Mike: So you do all these things — public speak, motivational speak, you're a published author, you’ve been a biglaw partner, now you have a thriving practice, you coach football which is significant. You have three children, a wife. I’m curious how you balance this all, but I'm also curious like what — well let me say, when I was young, I didn’t realize how busy my parents were or how busy professionals were. What does your typical day look like? Then I’ll give you what my typical day looks like, because I think it’s also a little bit crazier than maybe our listeners realize.

Clint: Yeah, no, that’s a good question. So to your point, and you will see this when I answer your question, I mean you have to be super-efficient with your time, and you have to be brutal about saying no to a whole lot of things.

And so, I will typically wake up, Mike somewhere around 6:15 to 6:30; one of the disciplines I have and that I encourage is when my alarm goes off, I get up. If that’s the time I plan to get up, I get up. So let’s start the day with a win. And then I'll exercise in the morning; I'll spend some time with my family getting them out the door on their way to school. I’ll sit down and plan out my day, because if I don’t have a plan for my day inevitably it runs away from me.

And then, I'm best in the morning, and so between that time, between about 8 o’clock and noon is my best time of the day. So I really try to schedule in some really focused work times during that window. Normally I’ll schedule in one meeting but try to spend the rest with time that I can really think and work and that’s where I bring the most value to my clients. And then in the afternoon when I’m a little more sluggish, I'll schedule some additional meetings, phone calls, things like we’re doing right now. And then around 3 o’clock during football season, at 3 o’clock I leave to go to school. I coach until we leave school around 7:00 or 7:30, I come back home, eat dinner with the family, get everybody situated on their way to bed, and then normally I will spend another hour, hour and a half catching up on whatever emails I missed during the day.

Mike: So is that about, what, 10:00 to 11:00 PM you're doing your final emails?

Clint: Yeah, by about 10 o’clock, 10:30, I’m normally done for the day.

Mike: Okay, so here's my schedule. It’s actually surprisingly similar in some ways; it’s just a little forward shifted. I get up at 3:30 believe it or not.

Clint: Ooh, yeah.

Mike: I go to bed earlier than you. I get up at 3:30 — but just like you, I never ever, ever lie in bed. I’m up. You know, I have my caffeine, and by 4 o’clock, I’m well into emails. And there's two people I talk to, my business intelligence director and one of my partners, they're both early risers on the East Coast. So I'll talk to often my business intelligence director because he's really good with data, and we have to have a handle on data every day. At 6 o’clock, as I think you know because you mentioned this in the email, I’m hiking.

Clint: Yeah, awesome.

Mike: From about 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM I’m up on a trail either trail running or hiking. I also use that time to catch up with my COO Anna, who sort of has my day organized for me.

Much of the day is grinding, you know I get home at 8:00 from that beautiful two-hour hike in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, and then, you know, grinding can be defined as any of as you know a thousand different things.

Clint: Yeah.

Mike: But much of the day, I’m grinding. I wind it down at 5:00. From 5:00 till about 7:30 I’m not grinding; I’m doing personal stuff. And then just like you, from like 8:30 to I’d say 9:30 I’m doing final emails – so it’s a similar day.

Clint: I kind of suspect you're like me in that, people can look at my schedule, when someone somebody asks me that question, they look at my schedule and are like, “Where is your down time, I mean where are you watching Netflix, where are you watching movies, where are you doing all that?” And I mean just to be brutally honest, I don’t really have time for it. And I’m cool with that because what I’m doing gives me such life and it gives me such energy. And I don’t feel like I’ve got to unplug because the whole day I’m living absolutely consistently with who I want to be, and at the end of the day I’m tired, but I am — and here is the key word — fulfilled.

Mike: Yeah, I would say similar. I feel like I do have two pockets of downtime, and I love what I do tremendously, so in some sense, the entire day is downtime.

Clint: There you go, that’s it.

Mike: Like, when I’m talking to a stressed-out student, that doesn’t leech my energy, it actually gives me energy. What advice, as we wrap this up — and I think you had a question in the email for me about my travel, what was my favorite trip, so I’ll answer that at the end — what advice would you give to someone now who’s just starting to apply to law school, just thinking about going to law school. If there's one piece of advice, or two pieces or three pieces that you could give them — how long have you been doing this now for?

Clint: Oh, man that’s a great question. So I graduated law school in 1997, so I guess I’m coming up on 24 years.

Mike: After 24 years of doing this, what would you say to someone who’s 22, 24 years old who’s just starting?

Clint: Well, so the first thing I would tell them is the law is really a noble profession. And I think it’s easy — well I’ll speak from personal experience; it was easy for me to listen to people criticizing lawyers. Whether it was friends who were not lawyers, whether it was the media, whether it was whatever outside voice that would deride our profession. But at the end of the day, 24 years in, I look back and I see that a lot of people that are making a difference in the world — and more often than not, far more often than not a positive difference in the world — a lot of them are lawyers. And it’s because they have a unique skill set and a unique talent to be able to make a difference for people. And so you're going into a profession that will allow you to do that, and so you are to be commended for exploring that profession.

The second thing, Mike, and I'll conclude with this part in terms of the advice, is what you are about to do is hard. You are going to run into hard things. You're going to fail. You're not going to do as well as you wish in some areas, in some areas you will surprise yourself and do better, and that’s okay. Learning to fail, learning to pick yourself up when you fail, is an important skill set. It’s important to learn while you are in law school; it’s important to learn as a 50-year-old man. And so that’s great, go enjoy it and get after it, and learn as much as you can.

Mike: I appreciate that. I think our listeners have asked us to have longer podcasts, so I’m pretty sure most will stick around for the end of this one, and that’s such good advice I really appreciate that, Clint. You had asked me what my favorite trip was, you're not going to believe this.

Clint: Yeah.

Mike: And I swear if a hundred other people ask me I would say the same thing. I guess it was a tie between Chicago and Dallas.

Clint: Okay.

Mike: And the reason why Dallas I like so much, is I had three people — you, Jeff and a guy named Cash Nickerson, do you know Cash?

Clint: Yeah, I do. I know who he is, yeah.

Mike: Yeah, so all three of you sort of took me under your wing, and I never went to Dallas and like suffered, it was the opposite.

Clint: (laughs)

Mike: Like, you know, I was staying at Jeff’s house, or Locke Lord was putting me up at that — I think it was the Ritz-Carlton.

Clint: Okay, yeah, the Ritz was close to our office, that’s right, yeah.

Mike: And so I always lived very well. And the city I least liked visiting was New York City; it was just too frenetic to me. It was — you finish a meeting, you get into a cab, and you go across the city to another meeting, just go, go, go. I will say, kudos to Sullivan and Cromwell; on one of my trips to New York City they got me a limo for the whole day.

Clint: Oh man, treating you right.

Mike: I mean, you know, I was visiting their competitors! The limo, I discovered the limo had a menu in the back so I could order food. I never did, I was too young, I was too afraid I would violate some protocols. So thank you for asking that question. Any wrap-up thoughts, anything else?

Clint: When you were in St. Louis, I always loved coming up there, you ran a first-class program. Man, I thought you brought great value to your students, you fought for them. I’m sure you talk about this, and I’ve only listened to some of your podcasts — mostly to follow you; I mean I’m obviously not applying to law school, I’m not your target audience, but I enjoy keeping up with you. And you know one thing to consider as you’re picking law schools is, what does your careers office look like? Because you fought for your kids, and we hired a lot more students from WashU because of you and the programs that you ran, and so that’s something — first of all kudos to you, I always enjoyed our time that we got to be together. And secondly, as you're looking at law schools, think about that, don’t overlook that.

Mike: I appreciate it, thank you for the compliment. I agree, a lot of career services offices just want to build a resume. And there are a few others that do it the right way, which is, they form relationships with the people they can hire and then those people hire their students. So thanks Clint, I appreciate it. It’s great to catch up.

Clint: As it was for me, it was good to catch up with you. I love watching you from afar, I love the way that you're so intentional with your life, and I love the things that you are doing. So keep doing great things in the world my friend.