Law Firm Realities, The Generational Gap, and Building a Portable Reputation with Susan Van Dyke

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. I talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Studying Law Around the World. Tonight's guest brings nearly 30 years of experience working inside and alongside law firms across North America, helping shape how they manage talent, strategy, and growth. She has worked in senior leadership roles, advised managing partners, and supported firms through everything from recruiting and retention to major structural changes. She's also the founder of Lawyer Launcher, where she focuses on helping law students and new lawyers better understand how the profession really works and how to succeed inside it. I'm very glad to have Susan Van Dyke joining the conversation this evening. Thank you so much for coming, Susan. Thank you, Claudio. What an introduction. I really appreciate that. And I love the way you emphasize the way law firms really work. Absolutely. I'm so glad you accepted to come to the show. And I'm so excited to hear from you today. Listeners who are listening to you for the first time today, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself. Even about your career journey. You worked on legal marketing, law firm management, the Lawyer Launcher project, and the podcast. Thanks for asking, Claudio. So it's a long career, and in brief, it's been a really exciting journey working with law firms and lawyers that I'm still loving to this day after 30 years. I started, as you said, in marketing and business development in a regional firm. I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, by the way. I started in a regional firm as their marketing manager and kind of grew up there and grew up in a couple of firms leading the marketing and business development of those firms. And I had kids, I stepped away, I was on my maternity leave, and I started my consulting practice while I was away. And I really loved it. The entrepreneur in me kind of just came alive. It was more out of necessity, wanting to be at home. This is 20, oh my gosh, 25 years or so ago. Anyway, that grew into doing all kinds of really cool and interesting work for big law. I got pulled into a couple of client firms to sit in their firms in various roles, senior roles, doing really cool and interesting things, global projects, leading another firm as their chief operating officer. So I did some really cool projects, but I always wanted to come back to consulting. So that's kind of my home base. And I have now worked with thousands of lawyers, literally, thousands of lawyers, dozens of firms, and I have this really exceptional cross section of perspective and experience with big law, large firms, small firms, solo practitioners, and consulting in strategic planning. I do a little bit of recruitment for my clients that are experiencing growth. I work with students, I work with associates, I do a cross section of work. So it's really anything under the banner of management. So how a firm runs itself, how it concerns itself with profitability. So I get to kind of peek inside all these firms, I get to look in closets, I get to see skeletons, I get to see all the good, bad and ugly and help them, work alongside them with their senior people, and help them recover and plan for the next stage. So I work alongside management teams. And in doing so, I've had this view of their evaluation of their associates and also their students. And from that, I thought, you know, I've 30 years in, I want to take all this experience and funnel it into students for the benefit of them crossing that threshold from law school into their first law firm, and then taking flight. There's so much that we don't tell them. So I've been incubating Lawyer Launcher for a few years. And then last fall, I started the podcast, Lawyer Launcher, behind the bar. And as I'm sure you experienced too, Claudio, it's been just such a privilege to talk to people, I'm curious by nature. So asking questions of lawyers and others who work in the sphere of legal for the benefit of students, right, goals, with as much information and building as much confidence as possible. I love that. Thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through a little bit of your career. And I find it fascinating all that you've done and the roles you've taken on as well. I'm curious here, you know, you know, the audience of studying law around the world is very much law students who are, you know, looking for optionality and knowing what they can do with their law degree. And after all of these experiences you've had, I'm curious to hear what do you think law students and new lawyers are misunderstanding the most about how law firms actually operate? There's probably a couple things. I think the first one is that law firms are a business. And certainly that is my perspective. That's where I spend all of my time is working on the business of law. And there's so many components, it's a very complex ecosystem. And it's not just about the practice of law. If you only practice law, there's only a few positions, a few firms where you can be successful in only practicing law, where you don't need to concern yourself with clients, with relationships, with developing business, etc. There's just so many other components to it. The other one is that, you know, law students come in and they sometimes believe that others are responsible for feeding them work for the long term. So students and new lawyers really need to start concerning themselves with the long run, how they're going to develop work for themselves. So it's not just getting your articling or internship position. It then becomes, how do I develop a practice that I want for myself? The long run, taking responsibility for the long run is the second thing. And then the third thing is taking initiative is really welcomed in firms. A lot of students will join firms and they will be shy, they are waiting for a direction, they're waiting for instructions. And that's fair initially. But what I think is missing is, and I talk to my clients about this all the time, I just want to say that partners are often tired and overworked and a bit overwhelmed. And when a student or a junior comes in and takes initiative around volunteering for something or anticipating needs or, you know, having the opportunity to think out loud with a partner on scaffolding a file and contributing to that out loud thinking. I have one client who loves that, he's super senior, he's a litigator and he is a big personality and he loves to think out loud with a student or an associate in his office. And I'm so encouraging of that because they get to hear the inside thoughts and he welcomes their input. It's not just that they're there to nod and agree with everything he says, right? He's like, I'm really interested in what they can contribute to my own independent thinking. So taking initiative, stepping into these rooms, I think is really welcome. And I don't know that that's done enough. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think it's one of those things that we really have to shine a light so the profession knows what's happening and what's expected of them. I also wanted to hear a little bit on the flip side from your management work with law firm leadership teams, with consulting. What are maybe some concerns that they have about this next generation of lawyers? There's a few themes that I'm hearing and one is succession planning. And it's early days, right? For a junior or a student, they're not thinking necessarily that they're going to come in as a partner and they're going to take over the firm, et cetera. But it's something that occupies the thoughts of founders and partners is succession planning. So they're looking for successors for the business, for their own practice. They're looking for really strong communication skills. They're looking for the ability of those students to build relationships. They're looking for reliability, they're looking for hard work. And they're looking for that initiative that I talked about earlier. And another theme that I'm hearing a lot about is what I'll call the generational gap, where partners are of a certain age and these students come in and there is really different expectations about the practice of law. And I actually just talked to a client about that this morning, where the student is leaving before the partner is leaving in that practice group. The student is leaving, where the partner is staying on until 6, 630, thinking, geez, I'm here working a full day and you're going home what appears to be a bit early. The expectations are very different. Some associates in another client firm, they want to come in at 10 o'clock in the morning. They want to get a few personal things done in the morning before they get into the office. Whereas by that time, if you're working, let's say in Vancouver and you're working with an Eastern client, that's middle of the day for them. And now their hair's on fire because their associates not in the office. The associates version is you can reach me. I'm available on text, email, Slack, what have you. And the partner's like, I want to see you in the office. I want to wander down to the office and lean against your door and have a conversation. So that can be really frustrating. So, and that's a common conversation that I have is around that generational gap and how do we close that gap? And how can we build greater understanding on both sides? Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing those. I think that knowing about these expectations really can help you to know how to succeed and really thrive. Being aware that that could be the case in the firm where you're working, it really gives you an edge, right? It does. It does. I think if you can anticipate some of these things and be sensitive to them and, you know, it's all about understanding expectations, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, through this work that you've done as well in recruitment, retention, associate development, you had very much a front row seat in these hiring decisions. And I'm curious, are there a few things that separate students and junior lawyers who get hired back from those who don't? There are a number of things that can help. And one of the top ones is how effective are you at building relationships? And those relationships can be with a key partner that you're working with. It could be positioning yourself across the firm. It could be somebody who is potentially going to be really great at business development because you're good at listening. Not your sales. I'm not talking about sales. I'm talking about developing meaningful, authentic relationships. If you are that person, you have good conversations. So, building relationships is key because we're in a human business. And I have had occasion with some students and juniors who are so very shy. They are so very introverted. And that's real for them. But there's got to be a way that they can find to build skills to develop relationships. And I think that self-awareness is going to be really important because if you can't build relationships, it's going to hold you back from your full potential, right? Certainly hard work. I mentioned that earlier. Not just showing up and quitting in the hours, but hard work and caring about the work. If you're submitting work that's falling short of expectations, care that it fell short. Pick it up, dust it off, figure out where you, you know, went sideways, finish the work, work hard, work the weekends, work an evening. Make sure that it actually delivers on that next round. Don't just shrug your shoulders and better luck next time. So, really have that authentic care. And that's part of relationships, you know, wanting those relationships to really flourish that you are actually seeing the work through. So being super reliable, being somebody who's trustworthy, we want those partners to see a future with you. And we're not talking about perfectionism here. We're talking about being accurate, being interested in delivering good work, making those incremental improvements over time. If you're showing up like that, you're going to position yourself really well. But it also depends on the economics, as you say. I mean, you can be all those things and not have an opportunity because a firm doesn't have a seat for you. And that's terrible, but that does happen. But at the same time, if you're exhibiting all those things and you're building a great reputation and you are developing into the professional that you envision for yourself, you're going to get a great reference from that firm. And that's, you know, leveraging that on your way out. Who can you introduce me to? Who would you recommend? Who should I meet with? So leverage the relationships and the reputation you've built on an outbound exit. I'm thinking here of a few different things that law students have mentioned in the past articling. A lot of it might be really based on your grades, on your course selection, maybe a little bit on your extracurriculars and how you wrote your cover letter. But really those grades might not define your career. From the perspective of law firm leadership, what are qualities that might matter just as much? How can you make sure that those can shine through? And I think, and I think, you know, this grades aren't everything and there's only a certain percentage of firms that are focused on grades. There are firms, there are high end firms that are really, they want that intellectual horsepower and then they might have to build out other skills. Most firms are interested in where you got your high marks. What are you showing in terms of your, your interests and your capabilities? You know, if you're looking to be a corporate lawyer, were your corporate related courses higher marks or were your litigation related, you know, courses higher marks, were your research courses high mark? What are you showing that you had higher competency and certainly would be of interest. But here's the thing, I think the most important thing in recruitment, what you're talking about is going in cold. And what I'm suggesting is people go in warm. The recruitment starts in my view, and this comes to the benefit of many years of experience. The minute that you're thinking about law school, start networking. Who do your parents know? Who do your neighbors know? Who does your family know? Who are your family friends who work in law? Start networking, start having conversations, authentic conversations. Be curious, let your curiosity shine. If you do that consistently, when it comes time for recruitment, whether it's OCI's or interviews or, you know, any of those more formal processes, you're way ahead. Because you're not starting cold, you're way ahead. You've already shown people who you are. You've shown curiosity. The next thing that I'll say is recruit, recruitment teams and firms are looking for a connection. They're looking for an intersection between that student and their firm. And that intersection could be a number of things. It could be something extracurricular. It could be the law school they went to. It could be showing their personality in a cover letter. I know that I have had the experience of facing literally 400 student resumes. And it was the most horrific, most difficult thing I've ever done. I think we had to whittle them down to, I forget, let's say it was 20. All these students look like superstars. They were all digging wells in Afghanistan. They were starting charities. They spoke 18 languages. I mean, I'm exaggerating, of course, but they were all superstars. And I wanted to hire them all. I'm not kidding. Like it was so painful. And one of the ways that we filtered them was, did they have a connection to the city of the firm I was working in? So if you have a connection to that city, let it be known. Look for things where you might have a connection to the firm. So do your research. Look for connections with your top 10 choices of firms. Do that deep research. And the rest, I think it's a numbers game. That's amazing. Since you just mentioned your podcast, I'd love for you to tell us, where can law students, new lawyers, also firm partners, if they want to engage you, find out about your podcast, learn about the work you do these days. Can you tell us a little more about how to contact you, Susan? Thank you, Claudio. The easiest way really is through LinkedIn. So through my LinkedIn page, Susan Van Dyke, I'm in LinkedIn. They can also email me at susanvandyke.ca, that's Susan at V-A-N-D-Y-K-E dot C-A. And the podcast, Lawyer Launcher Behind the Bar, is available on YouTube. It's on all the podcast platforms. Lawyer Launcher is also on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you were speaking specifically to a law student right now, or maybe to a newly called lawyer, speaking to these professionals starting out their careers right now, be it setting foot at a firm for the first time this week, or returning now as a newly called lawyer, what practical advice would you give them to build both a successful and sustainable legal career over the long term? I think there's so many tips there. The first thing would be focus on learning before earning. Don't be too quick to worry about salary and bonus. Find the right environment where you're going to learn effectively and take an independent interest in your own learning and professional development. And included in that is learning how to build relationships. The income will come. I promise you, if you learn and build relationships, the income will come. Number two is build your reputation deliberately. People remember reliability. They remember how they felt working with you, even if you don't stay with that firm. If you're an articling student, an intern, maybe a first year associate, and you found yourself in a firm practicing in an area that does not light you up, make a change and make a change quickly. However, have a gentle exit. Do the best work, even though it's not the practice area for you. Protect your reputation by doing your best work so that when you do leave, you have a gentle exit, an elegant exit, and you have a good reputation. So protect your reputation because this is a long game. And then the third thing is really think long term and know that every interaction is part of your professional brand. Keep your reputation intact when you're challenged, when you're working with staff, when you're working with a difficult partner, perhaps. Keep yourself steady. Make sure that you are paying attention to how you're interacting. And that requires a lot of self-control, a lot of self-awareness. But I would say your reputation is really so very important because it's the one thing that's portable. It will go with you. That's amazing. Thank you so much for making the time to come on the show and share all of these incredible tips. For all of you who are listening, please make sure to check out the show notes here below so you can take a look at Susan's podcast and also all the incredible material that she's been sharing. My pleasure. Great work, Claudio. I love the podcast. Thanks again. I really appreciate it. And thank you all for tuning into today's episode.