Win In & Out of Court

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in I'm thrilled to introduce and welcome Amy Stewart founding partner at business litigation firm Stewart Law Group Amy is named one of America's top 100 personal injury attorneys and has been honored with numerous industry Awards including the 2020 Texas minority Council program Trailblazer of the Year during the covid-19 break Amy made history becoming one of the first trial attorneys to present a case to a jury over Zoom what sets Amy apart from other lawyers are the skills that she has learned in the athletic world she played college basketball at Wake Forest and coached Division 1 basketball at her Alma moer and tlane University before shifting her Focus to winning in the courtroom Amy's unique background helps her bring a competitive nature to her legal practice I'm so thrilled to welcome you Amy please tell us more about who you are and about your early career experience es leading to becoming the founding partner at Stuart Law Group

Speaker 2: thanks Melanie I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be on your podcast I am originally from North Carolina my dad was a drill sergeant in the Marines I think that has a lot to do with the type of discipline that I have and how it led me to Athletics my passion was playing basketball I hear people all the time they say I want to do something I'm passionate about I was passionate about basketball and I used that to get me into college at Wake Forest and and it was so connected with it it's so defined who I was that I coached basketball and was a consultant for the NCAA and then even though I thought I was going to step aside from basketball and all the skills that I learned from being a student athlete and Coach it's funny how those things still have woven themselves into the practice of Law and skills like work ethic teamwork being able to compete gracefully but aggressively the more I wanted to move away from being a student athlete because some people have negative stereotypes about it it's the one thing that really differentiates me in the marketplace and The more I've leaned into exactly who I am um the more success that I've had as I've gone on and started the firm I was in college athletics as well and wasn't it so helpful for staying on track in college you surrounded yourself with friends so you always had a group of friends with you it really kept me on track and focused in college and I'm so grateful

Speaker 1: for that experience absolutely the life of a student athlete is so regimented and so disciplined Pat Summit has a a quote discipline yourself so no one else has to and it comes from being an athlete and waking up at 5: in the morning and and doing your early morning workout to getting breakfast and getting ready to go to class and having to compete with people in class and then having your after school training and practice and 365 days a year and it just ingrains in you this ability to focus and to get things done a lot of times when you look at your schedule you're like there's no way I can get all this done but I know that my experience as a student athlete and a coach has really trained me to just put my head down and

Speaker 2: get it done 100 % what gave you the

Speaker 1: courage to launch an open Stuart Law Group and make that significant leap in your life and career when I started Stewart Law Group I started it with a partner her name was Sarah Bradberry even though she's no longer with the firm I always give her the respect and give her the credit for this because it goes back to what I just said as a student athlete you're on the team and you have your head down and you're just working extremely hard and it's for the team and at one point she came to me and she said you know you have enough business to start your own Law Firm well to me that would be like telling an athlete you know what you're so good you can just start another team and it just didn't connect and then finally I looked at it and I talked to my husband he's a former football player but he's always been the best cheerleader in my life said you should you should do this and and then again that determination and focus and work ethic really just went into play again and I put my head down and create airm that is based on the same skills I learned from being a student athlete isn't it interesting how sometimes people come into our lives and they help give us the confidence to do things we might not have done on our own at that time I would have never started the firm without Sarah Bradberry and I will tell that to anybody that ever asked me I mean if it wasn't for her telling me that I could do it and people see me out in the Dallas Community they're like Amy so confident but we all need support and if it wasn't for her saying hey you know you can do this we you and I Melanie you and I wouldn't have met we all need support and we all

Speaker 2: need that cheerleader at times what do you enjoy the most about what you do now

Speaker 1: I love what I do I love being a trial attorney counseling my clients building relationships with the clients so that our firm is a repeat business type firm you get repeat business from our clients I see myself as a servant leader if I had to pick my one thing is that I'm still a coach at heart I love coaching young talent and sometimes it's hard for them to hear because if you're coaching someone that means you're giving them feedback lawyers or type A personalities that don't really like feedback I have an associate this week she drafted her first app pellet brief this weekend we're going to do a virtual mock trial and that's going to be her first effort in in doing a virtual mock trial and so I'm just giddy about the opportunities that I'm able to give her and to coach her through the process because the business of law has kind of gotten away from training young lawyers to grow up that's the business of law is not really set up like that anymore but the way we build our firm and our culture of our firm is that we train the younger attorneys so I think coaching probably is my most important thing that I love doing my husband is a former litigator so I know it does take a certain personality and I can appreciate your comment about receiving feedback

Speaker 2: yeah but what wonderful luck that someone has to work with you as a coach in the practice of law because not only do they get that passion and that drive that you have for being a trial attorney and that work that you do but they also get the coaching and the mentorship how has coaching influence you as a business leader as it relates to running your own company and how does that experience help your clients and your leadership style and assisted you in the courtroom

Speaker 1: the one thing I've learned about coaching is that sometimes the person that you're trying to coach in help doesn't really understand what you were trying to do until years later I know I feel that way about every single coach that was in my life that it would take years before I realized the impact that my high school coach Coach Carter had on me and how I still use some of the discipline he taught me to this day in regard to running the firm we talk game plans we talk about strategy I talk a lot about being transparent as a firm internally and externally and a lot about communication and all those things are things that I learned about from from playing basketball and coaching basketball if someone's out there on the court I remember screaming all the time you got to communicate you got to communicate it's the same thing at a at a legal office especially during Co we've got to communicate even more these days because we can't just walk down the to the someone's office and say something when I was a young baby attorney watching Partners manage the office and manage clients they would talk to in-house counsel whatever reason they lost their law license when they went inhouse and so what I actually like to do with my clients is partner and be a team with the internal legal counsel of the of my client so that we can solve it together just like again being on a team working together keeping them completely up to speed and we make decisions together and so I think that's the coaching has really helped me there and also with the counseling as a coach you deliver good news you got cut or you you know you're not going to start this game and you get to deliver the great news you are starting this game you are making the team I am very transparent in my communications with people at the firm and with our clients and I think that just makes a better easier relationship for it's great that you take that Collective Outlook to work together because ultimately the goal is to win or to get the best outcome possible and when I was 19 I moved to LA and my parents said we'll support you emotionally but if you call home for money once you're moving home and I did not understand it at the time but now I'm so grateful so I know that the people that you're coaching because you can see from talking to you that you have the their best interest and the overall best interest at that they will be appreciative in the future and I'm sure that that's hard to think

Speaker 2: about in the moment yeah in the moment is okay I know you think I'm being hard on you but it's really it's training that I didn't get when I was a young attorney we do immediate constant feedback meaning as soon as a task is done you get feedback on that task so that you can improve or you know I'm going in the right track with drafting this way whereas at the firms that I was was at before and they were all great firms this is just how law firms do evaluations I think it's part of they don't like the conflict is you would you could go six to eight months never getting feedback and then you walk into an evaluation and they're like you know what really don't like how you do X Y and Z and it's like I did that six months ago I continued to make that mistake and now I've ingrained these mistakes when all you had to do was pull me to the side and say you know what when you start out a deposition you should start out a deposition this way and that doesn't really help anyone not to give the feedback so it's so great that you take that Outlook and that

Speaker 1: approach is there a particular coaching moment either from your athletic days or within your practice that has stuck with

Speaker 2: you that you can share with us so in my athletic days I'm never ever going to forget about this so when I coached college basketball at tan I wasn't but like two or three years older than the seniors and so I had that Authority situation where I could be hanging out in on Bourbon Street with these girls but no I am their coach so there was a line but we still were close because of age we were in the Conference USA championship and the team that we were playing was running this play and under the basket and they kept scoring kept scoring and I knew what they were doing and the head coach Lisa Stockton was like God they keep scoring there keep anybody know what they're doing I am the baby coach on the bench and I'm like I know what they're doing and she hands me the clipboard and I'm drawing out and so I'm literally squatting with all the players around me and I remember looking up and all of them were looking down at me with pride and I looked up at them like oh my God like this is like I'm really doing this right so that's probably one of the most and and we stop we shut that down so I mean it was great and so everybody's jumping when when we stole the ball after we I showed them the play they were running being a

Speaker 1: lawyer is probably early on doing a closing argument it was during this time I talked about earlier that and I think you and I talked about this when we talked earlier that for years I was trying to be a old white man because that was who mentored me and they were fabulous and great but as soon as I stepped into who I am as a person that is when I found all the success in the world so I remember getting ready for this closing argument and it was a case where all these things were happening and I could just hear my grandmother mama May talking to me and once when you would tell her something that was a little bit too hard for her to believe she'd go and so I Incorporated that into my closing with I had my PowerPoint and I introduced my grandma y'all probably have Grandma had this saying when I try to put put something over on her she just look at me she go and so then I went through the closing and every time I clicked something that they had said during the case and I just look at him I go and judge would tell you girl that was great but I felt so vulnerable because I'm sharing with 12 people I've never met and probably will never see again truly who I am and wanting you to accept me for that but when I got done with that I don't even really remember it but someone came up and they said that was amazing and I was just like I think I can do this I think this is this is my new passion basketball was my old passion this is my

Speaker 2: new one those are such great stories and an inspiration to listen to how you found that confidence and stepped into your power because we all need to do that because the world's going to respond to us at our best and when we're being true to who we are and doing our jobs and running our businesses as our authentic

Speaker 1: self absolutely and it's the hardest thing to do it's the hardest thing for you to step into who you are blemishes and all and you know say tell the world Take Me As I Am it is you know ber Brown is someone that I read a lot when things go bad I go to YouTube and I just type in bade Brown and whatever comes up she talks about vulnerability is a strength not a weakness and I truly believe that

Speaker 2: you have built an incredibly success successful career what is your strategy for management for staying on task to accomplish what you set out to do as well as motivating those around you hire

Speaker 1: great people is one because you can't do it yourself because I'm an entrepreneur you're an entrepreneur I think that when we're starting out we're nickel and diamond right and we're trying to save money and keep overhead down when you get to a certain point you cannot do everything and so last year right before the pandemic happened obviously no one could anticipate that happened I'd had Consultants come in I'm a person that likes feedback then I needed a third party to come in and kind of evaluate where the firm is from the rout to the tutor as they say and I just really love the feedback I didn't love it at the time but I love the feedback that they gave me about where the firm is and where's the strengths and weaknesses and they were great at really identifying where I needed to put my focus which was business develop and developing people and then I needed to hire people to be a part of my management team because in my mind I thought well the only people that can be a manager with me or bring on other partners at to be a law firm but that's not necessarily true so I have cherylyn Stevenson who is my um business director and she basically runs the operations of the firm so that my time is invested where it needs to be because I'm while I'm the the rain maker at the firm I'm also a full-time practicing attorney trial attorney so I don't have a lot of time to deal with the HR issues 401k and what's going on with their dental plan and that's not my best use right and so being able to understand that you're going to need more people because you will be more efficient and more effective and make more money if you are focused on what you need to be focused on and you let somebody else be an expert of what they are known to do and as a business owner that can be hard to let go of certain things and to delegate and say I'm giving you this this to run on the behalf of the business absolutely when cheryn came on and it was around this time last year there was a lot of butterflies about because I I did that and even with our marketing our marketing as a firm is very very unique law firms don't market and post on social media like we do we're more than a law firm we are the only minority and women on law firm in Dallas Texas of our size that's doing the type of litigation work that we do and our tagline is support women period go to our social media Pages we we are talking about empowering women supporting women I highlight other women law firms anniversaries but so before though everybody loved what we were putting out social media wise but I was doing everything and so yeah and so I turned it over to Sarah you've met Sarah who has been amazing I thought I can't hire a marketing firm because they're not going to have my unique voice because I don't have just the law firm voice I Athletics women minorities empowerment diversity all those things need to weave and flow through our messaging Sarah Sarah got it like that because she used to work in athletic departments in their sports information Department she gets my voice and so there was a transition where no one knew that I handed the keys over to Sarah just because she communicates like me but I had to be vulnerable because she is my external face of the firm now what she puts out there and at first she probably was like why do I why does she have to see every single post before I send it but now people tell me about how fabulous the posts are I haven't seen them right and that's great and it's

Speaker 2: great that you have the confidence and within your firm to put out that type of social media and that's just another way

Speaker 1: that you're being treated yourself and that's going to shine through to clients and and everyone watching we do it in a way that's empowering we live in such an environment a Cil culture that I could despise on either side that no one can make a mistake anymore not even in high school they can't make a mistake and I want our message to be empowering when we get a lawsuit obviously that's not the highest time in someone's life a small business owner or Fortune t company get sued that's a dispute you need to get it resolved and so I want to empower them to understand that however you define the win if the win is let's get this settled or the win is I'm going to the M on this I'm going to trial your your messaging has to be empowering for your everybody on your team but also to the client that we're going to get through this and even when I engage with opposing counsel I'm not negative or divisive I think you can be aggressive with someone

Speaker 2: and be graceful at the same time 100% I don't think that's talked about enough yeah there's this one clip I watched the show Yellowstone and I actually posted about this and and there's two strong women characters on on opposite sides of something Beth walks into her office and she's being told that she's fired and and these two women and they actually it was a minority woman and a white woman were talking and they talked with each other with such respect and then Beth leaves and the the minority woman points at her and she goes I really like her like we don't have to be ugly it doesn't have to be ugly and aggressive it can be aggressive and sharp with Grace and strategic none of those things need to be ugly none of those things need to be raised voices any coach that

Speaker 1: I ever had if the coach that didn't raise their voice and said I'm very disappointed was the one that got you versus the one that was screaming like an idiot 100% And I've always believed that you can enter a negotiation and like you said be graceful about it right and get to at least hopefully somewhere where you meet in the middle but it doesn't have to be negative and it doesn't have to be you're a bad person and I'm a good person we can be adversarial without being combative it also comes a little bit from Sports though that you know you can't be on opposite sides anymore and cross over try to come to an agreement nor can you walk away and be friends but I refuse to be that way I mean I always engage counsel when we first get a case and you know I say I look forward to working to resolve this with you and that kind of sets the tone I mean if you go an opposite way then I'm going to go an opposite way as well because I got to do the best thing for my client but I ultimately believe best thing for my client is to keep for cooler heads to Prevail to be strategic and to work as hard to get it resolved as soon as possible now as soon as possible may be at trial but it is what it is but you don't have to be ugly about it absolutely you mentioned going through management changes during covid have any successes come out of covid for

Speaker 2: you and your firm we've grown last quarter we were at the end of the quarter and what I do at the firm is I bonus my my entire team on the quarter because I it's St like you're in bonuses because you got to wait so long so I I I kind of like Christmas four times a year so we were at the end of the quarter and Sarah sent me a firm directory and I'm like why do we need a firm directory and then she's like because we got 21 people I'm like what we've grown for 21 people and I'm like well you're gonna need to put some pictures in there we've grown we're fortunate that it didn't feel like we were fortunate but around this time last year Colin County which is a suburb of Dallas selected one of our cases to be the case for the summary jury trial which none of this we knew at the time was an experiment on can we try cases virtually but this again goes back to putting your head down and we just worked really hard and had an amazing experience being the trial team that did the first vo dire over Zoom you know and it wasn't anything binding but it was just an experiment we did not know this until the morning of it was live streamed over YouTube it's still there and so that experience really catapulted me and the two other women that I work with to putting together a virtual proceedings Playbook that we kind of talk about how to show up at your best during anything that's virtual from a legal perspective hearings arbitrations mediation and appet issues and we kind of created this whole Playbook around that so while it's been a obviously tumultuous and challenging year again I I I think it's that student athlete in me you want to make those into

Speaker 1: opportunities which we have good for you and how amazing to be on the Forefront and it'll be interesting to see where it

Speaker 2: goes yeah absolutely you know it looks like we're going to end up going back to court but I think there's always going to be space now that we know we can do it for depositions that are done virtually mediations done virtually arbitrations that can be done virtually everything doesn't need to be done in person anymore some things do some cases need you need to be able to be in a courtroom and to see things and credibility and all those things it's here to stay in a certain respect magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings

Speaker 1: us joy what is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you find

Speaker 2: and live your joy one thing about being a coach and wanting people to improve is I have this same to everybody and you can be 26 year old just getting out of law school or you may be 50 some year old and of counsil with me and I had the same question what do you want to do when you grow up because remember when you were a kid you were asked that and every time someone asked you you said something different I want to be a fireman I want to be a policeman I want to be a doctor I want to be a nurse at some point people said we had to stop

Speaker 1: growing up and stop dreaming and so I ask that all the time just brought on a new senior associate we went to breakfast and I said all right what do you want to do when you grow up because I can't help you unless I know what that is and just like a kid it may change but right now what do you want to do when you grow up and that brings me joy to hear or talked about Kesha earlier Kesha says I want to be an appet attorney so as soon as an opportunity for her to draft an appet brief came up I gave it to her and that's what brings me joy it's like understanding what people want and when you see it happening you grab that opportunity for them and say you roll the ball out there here you go so

Speaker 2: brilliant and it's so wonderful that you cultivate people in the way that you do and that you also understand that we never stop changing and growing and we never stop having those passions and it changes over time and that's okay it's

Speaker 1: okay yeah we have a saying fail fast get up and go and you cannot tell people to try something new if you're not going to give them the grace to make a mistake and so baked in that is I know that I'm asking you to do something you've never done before and just if I ask you to run hurdles I expect that you're going to trip over one of them may not trip over all but you're going to trip over some of them but you fail fast you fall get up because during that get up moment you can't forget that part you got to dust yourself off you got to figure out what happened you got to learn but then you got to go and so with my people I think it it takes them some time working with me to understand that I mean I expect you to fail because you can't get success without failure but you know with lawyers sometimes and other type a type of jobs they're not used to failing nor someone telling them that it's okay to fail but you can't grow and you can't figure out what you want to do until you're giving that area of Grace to fail

Speaker 2: fast to get up and then go so great I love it thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today and for being with us on the show can you please share with us how and where we can find you

Speaker 1: you can find us on Stuart lawgroup.com is is our website we give back to the community a lot we have our newsletters um that gives you kind of a idea of who we are you can see all my wonderful folks I work with LinkedIn just find Amy steuart Stuart Law Group if you are new to Sheil it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our shilt it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer sheb built it business Consulting and the Sheil tip blog thank you to everyone around the

Speaker 2: world who joined today thank thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing

Speaker 1: stop us from experiencing the life that We crave

Speaker 2: [Music]