Lawyers Who Learn

Noah Waisberg left Weil Gotshal without a company, without a plan, and without knowing if the technology would work. For two and a half years, the AI kept failing. There was zero revenue, a newborn at home, and mounting financial stress. Then his co-founder finally cracked it. They bootstrapped to 100 employees before raising $50 million, then pulled off one of the most creative exits in legal tech by selling while keeping 30 people and launching a new company as a spin-out. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores Noah's philosophy that you become your best self through challenge, not comfort. As a junior associate at Weil, Noah watched lawyers bill hundreds of dollars an hour for repetitive contract review work they hated and weren't particularly good at. He saw an opportunity for disruption even before legal tech was a defined category. Noah shares the brutal reality of those early years: meeting four computer science PhDs at a Starbucks, choosing his co-founder, then watching month after month as their AI simply didn't work. His candor about going from a well-paying BigLaw job to financial stress with a newborn offers a rare glimpse into what bootstrapping actually costs. The conversation reveals how Noah became an expert at selling efficiency technology to hourly billing lawyers, navigating the paradox that making lawyers faster doesn't automatically reduce client bills. Whether discussing his children's book on AI, his Wall Street Journal bestselling book, or his creative deal structure, Noah proves that challenging yourself and being willing to face years of uncertainty can lead to outcomes you never imagined.  

Miriam Benor convinced her firm to let her create a role that didn't exist: Director of Attorney Coaching at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, where she coaches attorneys on anything they want to discuss, personal or professional. After finding her calling as a law school career counselor following seven years as a litigator, she moved over to Pillsbury to do training and development. After innovating numerous firm programs in that role, she pitched her dream job to the firm, and they said yes. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores Miriam's unique coaching philosophy that challenges conventional wisdom. When clients struggle with difficult situations, she offers a powerful reframe: instead of only exploring how to overcome obstacles, she asks whether it's worth changing yourself to fit the environment or changing the environment to fit yourself. Her approach combines active listening with direct advice, using metaphors that help people see their challenges from new perspectives and analytical skills that uncover the true root of problems. Miriam has become her firm's canary in the coal mine, spotting trends before they become crises, from pandemic burnout to creating forums after George Floyd's murder to now addressing generational shifts with Gen Z. She presents internally on topics like resilience, feedback, and confidence, sharing how the term "imposter syndrome" has now permeated the zeitgeist - with only a small percentage of attorneys having familiarity with the concept eight years ago to nearly universal awareness today. Beyond coaching, Miriam plays violin with the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic orchestra, performing annually at Disney Hall. Her message resonates: pursuing what makes you happy and fulfilled creates more authentic success than forcing yourself into someone else's definition of achievement.

Virginia Driver spent 36 years as a patent attorney in a profession she entered through a loophole, hired only because no men had applied. Today, she's building AttainIP, an AI-powered platform that could transform how patents get filed, saving attorneys 50% of their time while making the process accessible to entrepreneurs who previously couldn't afford it. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores Virginia's journey from being one of eight girls in a 120-person engineering program to becoming the second female patent partner in London. Her path began when a headmistress insisted engineering was "a huge mistake" and urged her to study medicine instead. Her mother's response? "You do what you want to do." Virginia's career took an unexpected turn last December when a former colleague showed her what new reasoning models could accomplish. Within months, she went from part-time consultancy to startup founder, building software that reveals AI's reasoning process—the missing piece that makes other patent tools hard to verify. Her platform uses OpenAI's O3 model to guide users through patent applications while showing exactly how the AI thinks through each task. The conversation reveals how Virginia navigated a male-dominated profession without formal law school, studying at night while raising three children, including a baby during her qualifying exams. Her philosophy, borrowed from Lizzo, captures her approach perfectly: "Get out of your own way." She's learned that lawyers excel at imagining barriers to their own ideas—and that people often don't block you if you just keep moving forward. Now she's applying that same mindset to an industry facing its biggest technological shift, proving that career reinvention doesn't have an age limit.

Nichole Velasquez has never tasted coffee, not since that childhood moment when her sister convinced her to try it and she spit it out all over the kitchen floor. Yet as Fellows Program Director at LCLD, she energizes hundreds of mid-career and senior attorneys through intensive professional development that focuses on something law schools never taught: emotional intelligence. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores how Nichole recently stepped into running a program that brings 400 high-performing attorneys together for three-day sessions across the country. What she's learned surprises most people: firms don't send their top talent primarily for substantive legal training. They send them for the relationships that form through interactive, table-based learning experiences. Nichole's newest skill is a two-day certification in the EQ-i 2.0 assessment, allowing her to administer emotional intelligence evaluations and coach attorneys on their results. She connects every leadership topic—active listening, difficult conversations, managing up—back to emotional intelligence, showing how this trainable skill underpins everything else. Her managing partner mentor exemplifies this perfectly: despite running an entire firm, he makes every conversation feel like you're the only person who matters in that moment. The conversation turns personal when Nichole shares her experience as a Mexican American growing up in Maryland, where teachers consistently mispronounced her phonetic last name. When she shares this story with audiences, hands go up across the room—that first-day-of-school identity moment resonates deeply. Drawing on Mel Robbins' "Let Them Theory," Nichole teaches a framework for letting others' actions be theirs while controlling your own response. It's about connection over control, presence over perfection.

Jennifer Nelson Flynn never expected to become a TikTok creator. As a fractional general counsel at Dorf Nelson with inhouse counsel and chief privacy officer experience spanning from Arizona Beverage Company to Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. and Zevia PBC, she initially joined the platform anonymously just to learn about skincare and her long COVID symptoms from other users. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman discovers how Flynn's curiosity transformed into something much bigger. Her daughter showed her TikTok's educational side, and Flynn dove deep into Korean beauty products, researching ingredients and testing routines. When the results showed up on her skin, she decided to pay it forward. Now Flynn runs two TikTok accounts under Glow Legally Blonde. One teaches skincare routines involving toners, serums, and the skin flooding technique she learned from Korean beauty influencers. The other helps people navigate dysautonomia and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTs), sharing practical tips about hydration, compression socks and managing symptoms the medical community is still learning about. Flynn goes live for an hour at a time, talking directly to her audience without scripts or heavy editing. She records shorts right in the TikTok app and posts consistently to build her following organically. The most surprising benefit? Her confidence as a lawyer has soared. Speaking live to audiences honed her communication skills even more, enabling her to speak clearly and concisely with clients and focus her naturally fast-moving thoughts. Her advice to lawyers hesitant about social media is simple: your unique perspective matters, the learning curve is manageable, and the algorithm rewards consistency over perfection - but if you are speaking about your own legal practice, don’t forget to abide by the rules of professional responsibility and lawyers’ advertising!  

Visibility is not a personality trait. It’s a career skill—and one most lawyers are never taught. Paula T. Edgar, CEO of PGE Consulting Group LLC, helps lawyers and other professionals build influence, credibility, and opportunity through intentional visibility. Often attending more than 18 conferences a year, Paula is strategic about every room she enters, every relationship she builds, and how she positions herself in professional spaces. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman sits down with Paula at the NALP Professional Development Institute in Washington, DC. Paula shares how early lessons from her Barbadian grandmother and her Jamaican mother, growing up in Brooklyn, shaped her belief that how you show u p matters. She also reflects on how the loss of her mother on September 11, 2001 revealed skills she did not yet recognize: finding information, navigating complexity, and communicating clearly during moments of crisis. After graduating from law school and practicing labor and employment law, Paula realized her real passion was teaching the concrete, often-overlooked skills that differentiate lawyers beyond technical expertise. She challenges the outdated belief that doing good work quietly is enough and explains why visibility, relationship-building, and strategic presence are essential to long-term success. Paula never delivers the same presentation twice, often conducting stakeholder interviews and pre-surveys to customize every training. She shares practical insights on building an intentional network, creating memorable professional experiences, and showing up authentically without performative personal branding.

A year ago, Bjarne Tellmann walked away from three decades as a lawyer, including 17 years as General Counsel at companies like Haleon and Pearson. Today, he's a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, running FjordStream Advisors, finishing his second book on AI's impact on law, sitting on boards, and advising large companies. He didn't retire to do less, he retired to do only what gives him energy. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores what triggered Bjarne's shift: recognizing when work that once gave him energy started taking it away. Instead of pushing through, he rebuilt his professional life around teaching, writing, and advising on legal disruption. Drawing on Clayton Christensen's innovation theory, Bjarne explains why dominant law firms face their Kodak moment, not from weakness, but from the very success of legacy models that blind them to change. Law firms charging by the billable hour may discover what Kodak and Nokia learned too late: by the time you realize the game has changed, it's already over. The conversation moves between disruption theory and creative practice. Bjarne reveals how he uses ChatGPT for brainstorming and editing while preserving his voice, why he obsesses over the first minute of every presentation, and how he transformed an 82-page law review article into a podcast using Google's NotebookLM. His reading list spans The Rational Optimist to How Will You Measure Your Life, showing how curiosity across domains fuels innovation. For lawyers contemplating personal, professional, or organizational transitions, Bjarne offers this: focus on the "why" of change before the "what" and "how." Transformation is an emotional journey, not just a rational decision.

Kellam T. Parks never planned to become an entrepreneur. After walking away from practicing law at 26 to wait tables while his mother battled cancer, he discovered something profound: life offers infinite choices, and you're never truly trapped. Today, that philosophy drives how he runs his 14-attorney, 37-person firm with his co-owner and coaches other lawyers through his coaching business, The MOTIVATED Lawyer. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman dives deep into Parks' strategic approach to building a future-ready practice. As a cybersecurity and family law attorney in Virginia Beach, Parks breaks down the biggest threats facing law firms today, from phishing attacks that exploit human error to sophisticated infiltrations where hackers monitor systems for months before striking wire fraud schemes. He explains why enterprise-level security like Cisco Meraki firewalls and multifactor authentication aren't optional luxuries but ethical obligations for protecting client data. The conversation shifts to AI implementation strategy, where Parks shares his firm's transformation journey. They are exploring moving family law from hourly billing to tiered flat fees because AI fundamentally changes the efficiency equation. Parks reveals his entire tech stack, from Lexis AI and StrongSuit AI (formerly Callidus AI) to using Perplexity's Comet browser for research and information gathering. Working with coach Stephanie Everett and implementing a modified EOS system transformed his practice from haphazard success to strategically planned growth. Drawing from Stoic philosophy and books like The Obstacle Is The Way, Buy Back Your Time, and Deep Work, Parks explains how living in the present while planning strategically allows him to run multiple businesses, launch his coaching platform, teach CLE courses, and still maintain work-life balance with seven and a half hours of sleep nightly.

Alexander Almazan almost walked away from practicing law entirely. After bouncing between three firms in five years, the first-generation Cuban-American attorney was exhausted by the billable hour grind and ready to accept a money management position at Credit Suisse in Connecticut. The only thing that stopped him: raising his young family far from Miami meant depriving his children of something his immigrant parents had sacrificed everything to give him. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman sits down with Almazan to explore how he transformed his frustration with traditional law firm models into a thriving 29-person Florida based law firm now leading the charge on AI integration. His father's journey, arriving in Virginia at age 13 through Operation Peter Pan, separated from family for five years as communism seized Cuba, instilled a work ethic that wouldn't let him settle for pushing paper at firms where success meant hitting arbitrary billing targets. His approach to adoption is refreshingly practical: hire an assistant first, then an office manager, and build systems that free lawyers to practice actual law. He's candid about the billable hour's inevitable death, admitting he's scared but believes fear signals necessary change. The conversation reveals concrete strategies for small firms navigating this transformation, from using AI to turn dense articles into podcasts to training attorneys through short videos rather than hour-long sessions, proving that the right tools can make average attorneys good and good attorneys great.

JJ Powell answered his Eton College scholarship exam at 12, earned degrees from Oxford and Harvard, passed multiple US bar exams, and just completed his doctorate on AI and M&A, all while building a 150-lawyer global firm, producing Tony Award-winning Broadway shows, and maintaining homes in three countries. Yet his most transformative month came not in a courtroom or theater, but in rehab, where burnout forced him to reconsider what success actually means. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores how JJ’s radically reimagined legal practice through Powell Continental Group. Instead of traditional offices, his firm operates through nearly 100 exclusive members clubs worldwide, transforming every client meeting into a networking opportunity. Clients become members with access to the firm's clubs and a secure digital vault containing every legal document they've ever signed, accessible at 3 AM when needed. Powell’s journey reveals the power of following unconventional instincts. His client events break the corporate mold, like hosting medieval-themed gatherings in the Mexican jungle that attract major luxury brands. Meanwhile, pro bono work fighting corporate injustice keeps the practice grounded. Now he's launching the legal industry's first members-only retreat in Sicily, in the actual villa where The Godfather was filmed, where clients can vacation while attending lectures and building connections. The conversation turns candid as he discusses struggles with OCD at Oxford that extended his undergraduate degree by a year, and how recent time in rehab became unexpectedly productive both personally and professionally. His advice: don't fight the AI revolution, hire passionate young lawyers hungry to learn, and create your own traditions rather than following society's repetitive annual rituals. High achievement and personal challenges coexist—the key is knowing when to raise your hand and ask for help.