My guest this week is Anne-Marie Rabago, the founder and principal of Modern Juris, which provides tools, training, and support to help lawyers build financially sustainable businesses designed to serve the latent legal market. Anne-Marie started her legal career at Pricewaterhousecoopers, then launched a solo tax law practice before transitioning into law school and non-profit legal incubator programming.     I wanted to have Anne-Marie on because I, admittedly, wasn’t familiar with legal incubators when she first mentioned it to me and I thought it was a great resource to ..read more

My guest today is Kate Bridal, a former lawyer turned legal tech marketer turned co-host of The Legal Burnouts podcast. We explore her professional journey, from drama school to working with primates (yes, seriously - she got to sign with chimps), to law and beyond. Kate shares with us how she's navigated the pressures of the legal profession, her adventures in legal tech marketing, and the ongoing career transition she’s navigating. It’s an open and honest conversation that highlights that the road is rarely linear, and getting comfortable with change and uncertainty is the name of the game ..read more

Our guest today is Sejal Thakkar, a former employment law attorney, a 2X TEDx speaker, and the Founder and Chief Civility Officer at TrainXtra, a woman/minority- owned training consulting firm, where she helps leaders create positive, safe, and respectful workplaces through customized training and coaching.    In this episode, we discuss: Sejal realizing that litigation was a bad fit; she wanted to build workplace culture, not clean up messes Following your interests to build skills and open doors Leveraging your legal background in a business  Leaning into a growth mindset to ..read more

April Roberts is a former attorney turned financial advisor who now coaches Gen X women to achieve more abundance, love, spirituality and alignment by connecting with their femininity. She also hosts the podcast Vixen Voice where she shares stories of Gen X women that have shed the traditional definition of success to pursue their life’s true passion. April shares with us all of the twists, turns, and lessons she learned in her personal and professional journey. Key Takeaways from April's Journey: (1) Being open and flexible: Be open to your career path taking different turns, for both persona ..read more

Today’s guest is Laura Terrell, an executive coach with over twenty-five years of experience as a legal and business leader. Prior to coaching, she was a Special Assistant to the President at the White House, a senior level appointee at the U.S. Department of Justice, an equity partner in two large, global law firms, and in-house counsel at a publicly traded company.  In this episode, we discuss: How to be brave in your career moves That taking a risk to do something different teaches you that there’s not one “right” path Laura’s moves between private and public sector work  Laura’s ..read more

Today I’m talking about how success is an entirely personal thing.  It looks different for each of us. Yet, our society (and our industry) tend to have a pretty narrow and uniform definition. That's how so many of us get stuck climbing one particular type of success ladder.  I encourage you to give yourself permission to personalize your definition of success. And in this episode, I’m giving you some tips on how to start doing that. ~ Connect with Megan! Schedule a Catalyst Call: https://megansmiley.com/schedule-a-call Website: https://www.megansmiley.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linke ..read more

This week’s guest is Leah Campbell Badertscher. She is a former lawyer who has become an artist and a coach to world-class performers and leaders in the arts, business, and social good. Her work is about fulfilling her client’s greatest potential by cultivating a way of being that energizes, strengthens, and enlivens every aspect of their life, including their mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being, relationships, finances, life experiences, creativity, and the desire for meaningful work. We discuss Leah’s journey to embracing the calling of her creative side. She tel ..read more

This week's episode is a little different. I teamed up with Chiara Woods (another former lawyer) for an episode that is airing on both this podcast and on hers, The Soulicitor Podcast. We tackle the question of how lawyers and other left-brainers can engage with the world of woo. Those of us in this category are grounded and practical people. We think critically, and aren’t off the deep end woo-woo… But we’re curious. We’re open to thinking about the world and ourselves in new ways. Many of our friends and clients seem intrigued by some of these modalities. So - we decided to both have this co ..read more

Dorna Moini is the CEO and founder of Gavel (formerly Documate), an easy-to-use platform for building client-facing legal apps. Prior to starting the company, Dorna was a litigator at Sidley Austin. There, in her pro bono practice, she worked with legal aid organizations to build a web application for domestic violence survivors to complete and file their paperwork, which led to the idea for Documate - to enable other attorneys to do the same in any area of law. Dorna is on the Legal Services Corporation Emerging Leaders Council and a member of LAFLA's Advisory Board. She was named an ABA Lega ..read more

The truth is that building a business you care about does take time, and there's no way to have a clean, complete map of the process in advance that guarantees success. And in this episode, I argue that it's still worth. It has a lot to do with the fact that a heart-centered business is more than a job, it's a life project. And when you look at it like that, the journey is more than worth the cost. ~ The Sick of Being Stuck Workshop Series (Starts October 12): https://megansmiley.com/sick-of-being-stuck-workshop ..read more