S04E180 Evict The Doubts Squatting Rent-Free In Your Mind with Stan Lewis

Doubt has a way of sneaking into high-performing careers and then acting like it owns the place. One day you are leading a team, arguing a case, or scaling your firm, and the next day you are hearing that quiet voice saying, “You are not ready,” “You do not belong here,” or “Do not risk it.” We sit down with leadership coach and author Stan Lewis to name that voice for what it is: a squatter living rent-free in your mind, and we talk about how to evict it with clear, repeatable habits. 

Stan shares stories from his time in the Navy, law enforcement, federal investigations, and hundreds of mediations to show how self-doubt and imposter syndrome show up at every level, including seasoned executives. We dig into his vantage point shift framework for moving beyond comfort zones, plus practical communication tools like DISC behavioral styles and a listening hierarchy that helps you stop talking at people and start connecting with them. If you lead in a law firm, a legal department, or any high-stakes environment, these are the skills that tighten culture, reduce conflict, and improve decision-making under pressure.

We also unpack the “1% reality” idea: most workplace drama is noise, and progress speeds up when you identify the real issue and coach people toward solutions. Stan explains why accountability structures and mentorship make change stick, and why recognition is more than “nice,” it is a performance multiplier. 

Reach Stan here:
Doubt Detox Worksheet Value Add for your audience: https://links.nwardjourney.com/widget/form/9Yzt26GcgQP2LwrdcCwR?notrack=true 
https://www.stanlewis.net/home 
Get his book and bonuses: https://go.nwardjourney.com/starter-bundle-page-page 

Season 4 Episode 179

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E179 Building a Collaborative, Happy, Multi-Location Firm with Tara Jalali Malek

If your law firm feels busy but brittle, like one missed deadline or one tough personality could tip the whole place into stress, you’re not alone. I’m joined by Tara Jalali Malek, co-owner at Malek + Malek, and a former federal and state prosecutor, to talk about what actually makes a firm strong: culture you can feel, leadership you can measure, and systems that turn talented attorneys into a real team.

We dig into why mentorship matters so much in the legal profession, especially when the billable hour makes “unbillable time” feel impossible to justify. Tara shares how new lawyers often experience overwhelm and imposter syndrome, and why psychological safety is not a soft concept; it directly impacts thinking, problem-solving, and client work product. We also talk compensation and the hidden damage of the eat what you kill model, plus what changes when you design incentives for collaboration instead of internal competition.

You’ll hear how Tara’s firm keeps four offices aligned using practical legal practice management tools: internal messaging, case-based channels, an attorney-wide space to brainstorm hard issues, and a weekly all-hands meeting that starts with kudos and gratitude. We also get specific about measuring culture through anonymous internal surveys and using the data to improve morale, retention, and performance. Finally, Tara shares what she hopes young lawyers experience differently, including stronger parental leave policies and a more supportive, sustainable model for law firm leadership.

Reach Tara here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-jalali-malek-14491820/
https://www.malekattorneys.com/
https://www.instagram.com/malekattorneys/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/malekat

Season 4 Episode 179

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E178 Why Great Engineering Teams Slow Down and How to Fix It with Thanos Diacakis

Your product roadmap can look perfect on paper while your engineering team quietly grinds to a halt. When that happens, the issue is rarely “lazy developers” or “bad attitudes”; it’s usually overload, unclear priorities, and a business-engineering communication gap that makes every request feel like an emergency. 

We sit down with Thanos Diacakis, a software leader with nearly 30 years of experience across startups and tech giants, to unpack what actually helps teams ship high-quality software faster. We talk about why business leaders and engineers often lack a shared language, how to create healthy conflict instead of feature-factory pressure, and why the fastest teams often win by doing less at once. Thanos shares a clear four-step framework for aligning product goals with engineering practices: shorten the path to production, build quality into the system, manage complexity as you scale, then earn planning and predictability. 

We also challenge common myths around Agile, speed vs quality, and technical debt. You’ll hear why manual “quality gates” can backfire, how automation and CI/CD tighten feedback loops, and why technical debt is better understood as compounding investment. Thanos explains when ditching sprints for Kanban can reduce meeting overhead, how a simple 10% investment rule can produce dramatic improvements, and what leadership habits prevent burnout in high-performing engineering teams.

He also shares where to find him on LinkedIn, his site cosmicteacups.com, and his Team Metrics tool for visualizing features, bugs, and investment work over time.

Reach Thanos here: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thanosd/ 
https://www.cosmicteacups.com/ 
https://Team-metrics.dev 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E177 The Reality of Governmento Overreach & Your First Amendment Rights with Evan Turk

Your divorce, your business, and your online life are not separate anymore and pretending they are can cost you real money. We sit down with Evan Turk, a family law attorney known for complex, high-stakes divorce and asset protection work, to talk about the decisions that quietly wreck settlements and the habits that keep entrepreneurs exposed when relationships break down.

We unpack the biggest financial mistakes people make before and during divorce, why “being reasonable” can turn into negotiating against your own future, and how a good lawyer often has to translate both law and finance under intense emotion. Evan also shares how he helps business owners reduce risk with proactive planning, from operating agreements and bylaws to employment contracts, partner disputes, and key person considerations. If you have equity, cash flow, or a brand to protect, this is a practical look at wealth preservation through clear documents and better decisions.

Then the conversation widens to civil liberties and the First Amendment through Evan’s nonprofit, the American Rights Alliance. We talk polarization, government overreach, and why selective prosecution and disproportionate sentencing worry him, even when the defendant is unpopular. You will also hear why social media surveillance and digital evidence have reshaped family law litigation, turning “highlight reels” into courtroom contradictions.

Reach Evan here: 
https://www.americanrightsalliance.org/ 
https://www.turklawgroup.com 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E176 Preparing Your Business for Investment or Exit with Albert Lin

Scaling a business is hard enough. Scaling it with the wrong partners, a messy cap table, and handshake governance can quietly set you up for a blowup later. We talk with Albert Lin, Chief Investment Officer at Northview Law and founder of dCarbon VC, about what he learned moving from corporate M&A to private equity and then into the operator seat building a growing firm designed to serve secondary and tertiary markets where quality professional services are in short supply.

Albert shares a clear framework for evaluating opportunities and risk using both legal and investor discipline: how to spot when your team structure no longer matches your stage, why many founders hire the wrong financial leadership too early, and how to think about runway and fundraising timing. From vesting schedules to good leaver and bad leaver clauses, we get specific about the tools that keep incentives aligned as the business evolves. 

We also dig into the most expensive early mistakes founders make: skipping a real shareholder agreement, relying on “tribal council” decision making, and ignoring dispute resolution, liquidity terms, and life-event scenarios like death, divorce, or disability. If you are thinking about an eventual exit, Albert lays out three practical levers that drive business valuation: professionalizing operations so the company runs without you, building credible growth wedges with proof points, and starting tax planning years in advance.

Reach Albert here:
https://www.northviewlaw.com/contact 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E175 HybridHero to Manage Real Estate Costs with Chris Burke

Your office might be costing you far more than rent, and not because it’s “too big” in a simple way. The real leak is uncertainty: partners and leadership teams making high-stakes decisions about space, staffing, and hybrid policies without reliable workplace utilization data. I sit down with Australian entrepreneur and advisor Christopher Burke, founder of Brickendon Consulting and the workplace platform HybridHero, to unpack what law firm leaders are missing and how to fix it.

We dig into the hidden cost of underused desks, meeting rooms, and floors, plus the operational drag that shows up when people waste time hunting for a workspace or routing every request through an EA. Chris explains how most firms are still guessing, why that breaks down fast as you scale across multiple locations, and how a single view of your real estate footprint can reveal quick wins. We also talk through what “good” hybrid management looks like in practice: clear goals, consistent one-to-ones, mentorship for junior attorneys, and policies you can actually measure rather than assume.

Chris shares concrete examples like heat maps, “no data” black holes, and how swipe-card signals can connect to workplace planning without turning the firm into a time clock. We even zoom out to the next five years, including a sharp reality check on AI, training, and why culture still needs intentional in-person time.

Reach Chris here:  

https://hybridhero.com/podcasts/

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E174 The Mental Fitness Advantage: How Lawyers Perform at Their Best With Emily Heird

Your law brain is your livelihood, yet most of us treat it like it can run on fumes forever. Marilyn Jenkins sits down with Emily Heird, a licensed therapist and certified mental performance coach, to reframe attorney stress through a sharper lens: lawyers are cognitive athletes, and the pressure-cooker realities of law firm ownership demand mental training, not shame and labels.

We dig into what Emily sees most with high performers in law, finance, and healthcare: overwork without recovery, chronic sleep loss, and perfectionism that quietly turns into a fear-based mindset. You’ll hear why burnout is rarely just “too many hours” and more often the result of chronic unmanaged stress paired with coping strategies that numb instead of restore. Emily shares practical, athlete-inspired tools for mental shutdown at the end of the day, mindfulness for rumination, process-over-outcome thinking, and “controlling the controllables” when the stakes feel nonstop.

We also talk about the inner critic that drives achievement while draining energy, plus simple ways to build an inner coach voice that keeps standards high without breaking your health or relationships. If you want better focus, stronger decision-making, and a more sustainable legal career, this conversation gives you a clean starting point.

Reach Emily here:
http://vantageviewcoaching.com/ 
YouTube.com/@EmilyHeird
Search Emily Heird 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E173 Improve Client Intake with MyPartnerLab.co with Dr. Merideth Thompson

A packed calendar can still hide a serious revenue leak: consults that never convert because the client is deeply undecided.

We sit down with Dr. Merideth Thompson, a negotiation professor, work-life researcher, and the founder of Partner Lab, to name that leak and measure its impact. She calls it the “ambivalence tax” and for family law firms it shows up as wasted consultations, retainer reversals, emotional labor, and rising burnout across attorneys and intake teams. 

We get practical about what ambivalence looks like in real life: intense emotional dysregulation, unclear post-divorce plans, attorney shopping for validation, and the impossible demand for “emotional justice” through a legal process. Then we shift to solutions, including Retensio, a research-driven divorce readiness assessment that can be embedded into your law firm intake workflow. The goal is not to pressure people, but to bring structure and behavioral data into a moment that usually runs on chaos and gut feel. 

We also tackle ethical gatekeeping, why lawyers should not be the ones deciding “should you divorce,” and how better qualification protects client agency while freeing attorneys from playing therapist. Dr. Merideth shares why highly intelligent people can overthink emotionally charged choices, how personality dynamics can shape negotiation strategy, and why firms that help clients get clarity build a stronger reputation and a long-term referral engine. Subscribe, share this with a firm owner who needs it, and leave a review so more lawyers can find smarter ways to grow.

Reach Merideth here: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/merideth-j-thompson/ 
https://mypartnerlab.co 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E172 AI Powered Systems & Senior Level Legal Judgement with Brian Elliott

The billable hour wasn’t designed for the way businesses buy legal help today, and clients feel it every time a routine request turns into an expensive, slow, hard to implement deliverable. We sit down with Brian Elliott, a longtime general counsel and legal tech founder, to map what’s breaking in the traditional law firm model and what replaces it when legal services start looking more like infrastructure: scalable, reliable, and quietly embedded in day to day operations.

We dig into why so much legal work is repeatable and measurable, from contract review to standard negotiations, and how that reality supports pricing and delivery models built around outcomes. Brian explains what “embedded legal services” look like in practice, including how playbooks, templates, and fallback positions can be packaged so business teams can execute without stopping everything to call outside counsel. The goal is not just simpler advice, but guidance that is ready to implement.

Then we get practical about legal AI. Instead of only building tools that help lawyers do what they already do, Brian argues for tools that help clients do some of that work safely while escalating the right issues to human experts. We explore “judgment layers” that sit on top of systems like ChatGPT or Claude, plus the decision ledger habit that turns senior level legal judgment into structured data, checklists, and heuristics an AI can follow. We also talk proactive agents like dispute sentinels and regulatory monitoring that can surface risk before it becomes a legal fire drill.

Reach Brian here: 
https://www.elliott.law/ 
https://www.calefirm.com/ 
https://www.5point4.com/ 
@lawasinfrastructure on Substack 

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins

S04E171 Hidden Fees That Are Hurting Your 401(k) with Paul Sippil

Your law firm may be bleeding retirement dollars without a single obvious warning sign. No invoice. No line item in your operating expenses. Just quiet, recurring 401(k) fees pulled from participant accounts month after month, year after year. I’m joined by forensic 401(k) consultant Paul Sippil, who has spent 17 years analyzing public retirement plan filings and documenting what he believes are widespread excessive charges hiding in plain sight.

We dig into the “irony problem” that hits professional services especially hard: partners often hold the biggest balances, and many plans allocate fees in proportion to assets, meaning the people running the plan can end up paying the most, personally, using non-deductible dollars inside tax-advantaged accounts. Paul explains why standard fee disclosures (including 408(b)(2) and 404a-5) still leave sponsors confused, how the lack of a true invoice kills normal price pressure, and what services you’re actually paying for across recordkeeping, administration, custody, and advisory fees.

We also get concrete about what to do next: where to look on Form 5500 for aggregated plan charges, how and when fees are negotiable, why asset-based pricing can become brutal as plan assets grow, and how certain structures including the American Bar Association retirement program options may help firms reduce revenue sharing and recurring service costs.

Reach Paul here:
https://www.paulsippil.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-sippil-5141a47
https://youtube.com/@paulsippil

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins