EducationSelf-Improvement

Lawyers Who Learn

David Schnurman

Lawyers Who Learn, explores how attorneys’ engagement in lifelong learning fuels their growth. Join us to uncover these journeys and gain insights for your legal career.

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#168
Yesterday · 49 min
#168 From the Playground to the Boeing Case: An Aviation Lawyer's Unlikely Flight Path
Erin Applebaum was set on becoming a Brooklyn prosecutor until the 2010 recession froze hiring at the Kings County DA's office. Suddenly she was temping and working as a nanny for twenty dollars an hour. Then the family she nannied for introduced her to a solo aviation lawyer, and a stopgap job became a calling. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Erin, an aviation attorney at Kreindler & Kreindler whose Lawline course on proving PTSD in aviation cases holds a perfect five-star rating across more than a thousand completions. Her caseload reads like the headlines, from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes to the Delta jet that flipped on landing in Toronto. Erin takes listeners inside the first days after a disaster, when grieving families need guidance long before litigation, and explains how the Boeing investigation exposed far more than early claims of pilot error. She breaks down the Montreal Convention, why invisible injuries are so hard to prove to a jury, and why the law on PTSD claims from international flights is overdue for an update. And she shares why turbulence cases have surged in her practice. Erin reflects on the mentor who taught her how to be a lawyer, why she teaches for attorneys who never had one, and the lessons she draws from Supercommunicators and a children's book her mother once read to her. For personal injury and litigation attorneys, her story proves the career you never planned can become the one you were built for. Browse Erin Applebaum’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/erin-applebaum Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Erin Applebaum (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-r-applebaum-149b4b6/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#167
Thursday · 44 min
#167 From Nashville Songwriter to Global Trademark Strategist
Matthew Asbell spent his first two years of medical school putting recording studio time on credit cards, cutting an album one session a month. When the national boards and the record launch collided, he chose the music. He got his songs on radio across the country, then spent roughly a decade managing other artists before realizing the contracts and copyright questions he kept running into belonged to lawyers. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Matthew, an international intellectual property attorney who has taught at Cardozo and Fordham law schools for about a decade and whose Lawline series so far covers global, Canadian, and Mexican trademark practice. Matthew explains how law school revealed that IP connected everything he loved, from science to technology to the arts, and how his science education qualified him to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He breaks down the costly assumption U.S. companies often carry abroad: that trademark rights require use. Most of the world rewards whoever files first, so brands that wait until launch often find themselves blocked. Matthew also describes clients running his advice through AI and coming back with tangential questions, and why he rebuilt his podcast, Intangify, from a business development tool into an authentic personal brand that goes far beyond the world of IP into the various intangible aspects of success. Along the way, he shares how Jack Canfield's The Success Principles reshaped his ambitions, and how his daughter finished a song he started 35 years ago. For IP practitioners advising clients with global ambitions, Matthew's story is a reminder that thinking beyond borders, and beyond a single career path, is often the real strategic advantage. Browse Matthew Asbell’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/matthew-asbell Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Matthew Asbell (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/masbell Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#166
October 19 · 40 min
#166 Solo by Design: Building a Business-First Law Practice
Jordan Fischer graduated law school in 2013, back when privacy wasn't even a course offering. Four years later, she left a stable litigation practice to co-found a data privacy and cybersecurity firm, a move people told her was crazy, since the field barely existed. Today it's one of the fastest-growing areas of legal practice, and Jordan built her career on spotting it early. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Jordan, whose three active Lawline courses on cybersecurity, data privacy, and AI contracting have earned over 5,000 completions and nearly a five-star rating. Her latest course, "Contracting in the Age of AI and Emerging Technologies," anchors much of this conversation. Jordan traces her path from clerking at the European Court of Justice pre-GDPR to launching her own firm in 2017, joining a larger national practice, and ultimately returning to solo work in 2024. She unpacks why vendor due diligence has become non-negotiable in AI contracts, how she decides what data clients will let vendors train on, and why fixed-fee billing 75% of her practice has become her cash-flow safety net as a solo attorney. She also credits her attorney father's advice to study business, not just law, as the foundation for reading industry shifts before they happen. For solo and small-firm attorneys weighing AI vendor risk, billing models, or when to bet on an emerging practice area, Jordan's journey offers a practical playbook grounded in a decade of getting there first. Browse Jordan Fischer's Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/jordan-l-fischer Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Jordan Fischer (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-fischer-esq/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#165
October 15 · 39 min
#165 Welcome to the Wild, Wild West of Frozen Embryos
An estimated one million embryos are frozen in labs across the country, and the law is only beginning to catch up with what happens when the people who created them cannot agree on their fate. SJ Chapman has built their trust and estates practice at that intersection, tracking court decisions that are redefining what an embryo legally is. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with SJ, a trust and estates attorney, law firm owner, and Lawline faculty member, about the wild west of assisted reproductive technology law. SJ walks through Safranski v. Dunstan, the Illinois case that first asked who controls a disputed embryo, and a 2025 Alabama ruling that treated lost embryos as people for a wrongful death claim, a shift with real implications for estate planners and probate attorneys handling assisted reproduction cases. Their path to law was anything but conventional. Before law school, SJ worked at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, then arrived at Northwestern Law in 2009 with pink hair and no interest in Big Law. They built their own practice by knocking on Chicago law offices and working for almost nothing, and today lead their firm around four core values, Strive, Thrive, Archive, and Alive, a philosophy they trace to their father's advice to build a career worth waking up for. Browse SJ Chapman’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/sj-chapman-2 Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with SJ Chapman (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjchapman/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#164
October 12 · 40 min
#164 What Two Thousand Heart Surgeries Taught Him About Lawyer Burnout
Mark Brezzell spent ten years keeping patients alive during open heart surgery, managing over two thousand procedures as the bypass specialist who becomes, in his words, the patient's heart and lungs. Now he brings that same vascular expertise to a different kind of crisis, the chronic stress quietly wearing down lawyers' bodies from the inside. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Mark, founder of MDB Live Connect and instructor of the Lawline course Thriving Under Pressure: The Vascular Cognitive Impact of Chronic Stress on Legal Professionals. Mark breaks down the biology behind chronic stress, how prolonged cortisol and adrenaline production can damage blood vessels, how an overtaxed liver leaks glucose into the bloodstream, and how both processes can pave the way toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes. He also shares his three minute transition protocol, a simple breathing and movement routine lawyers can use between tasks to keep stress from becoming lasting damage. Mark also traces his own path, from studying cardiac perfusion at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he became the first African American to earn that specialized certificate there, through a decade in the operating room and years in medical device, drug and therapy development, to founding MDB Live Connect after a friend's diabetes diagnosis nearly turned fatal. Managing his own type 1 diabetes shaped his focus on prevention over crisis intervention. For attorneys navigating relentless deadlines and billable hour pressure, Mark's conversation offers a grounded case for treating recovery as a professional necessity, not an indulgence. Browse Mark Brezzell’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/mark-brezzell Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Mark Brezzell (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-brezzell-590a541b/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#163
October 8 · 43 min
#163 Boards, Boatlifts, and Watergate: One Lawyer's Improbable Story
Arlety crossed from Cuba to Miami as a young child during the Mariel boatlift, then built the kind of resume most lawyers only dream of: Yale Law School, seven years as a trusts and estates associate at Cravath, and now seats on four nonprofit boards. But her latest project may be her most unexpected yet, teaching Law students the one skill she says law school never covered: how to manage people. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Arlety, a Lawline faculty member who teaches AI in legal practice, about the professors who pushed her toward Cornell and then Yale, the family history she kept quiet for decades, and how "board work begets board work." After stepping back from full time practice to raise a family, Arlety built deep experience in nonprofit governance, from the Brooklyn Public Library to her children's schools to the Horizons and Mercy Learning Center boards. Now, with her business partner Reagan Cucinell, she's launching a management skills workshop for first year law students set to debut in spring 2027, aimed at closing a gap she and her peers felt acutely as young associates. Along the way, she shares the remarkable story of an uncle who was one of the Watergate burglars, and one of only two people, alongside Richard Nixon, ever pardoned in connection with the scandal. For attorneys considering a career pivot, nonprofit board service, or simply better management skills their firms never taught them, Arlety's journey offers a candid, encouraging blueprint. Browse Arlety Campos Bowman’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/faculty/arlety-campos-bowman Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Arlety Campos Bowman (Guest) → www.linkedin.com/in/arlety-campos-bowman-2a3b73207 Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#162
October 5 · 26 min
#162 From the FBI's Counterterrorism Unit to Quantum Computing's Biggest Threat
Brett Tanferani spent 21 years at the FBI chasing espionage and counterterrorism threats. Now he's sounding the alarm on something bigger: Q Day, the moment quantum computing renders modern encryption obsolete, may have just arrived. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Tanferani, a former FBI assistant special agent in charge now working in cybersecurity incident response, ransomware, and digital forensics. Tanferani breaks down what quantum computing actually does, why it accelerates AI learning exponentially, and how Japan's August 2025 announcement of a fully operational quantum computing stack may mark the threshold moment the security world feared. He explains "AI harvesting," the practice of nation-state actors stockpiling encrypted data today with the expectation that quantum computing will eventually crack it open, exposing everything from stolen medical records to defense secrets thought safely locked away for years. Tanferani also traces his own path from a rejected federal job applicant to a two-decade FBI career spanning counterintelligence, post-9/11 counterterrorism, and cyber operations against nation-states, along with lessons on decentralized leadership drawn from General Stanley McChrystal's Team of Teams. For attorneys advising clients on data security, incident response, or regulatory compliance, Tanferani's warning is a call to rethink what "safely encrypted" really means going forward. Browse Brett Tanferani’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/brett-tanferani Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Brett Tanferani (Guest) → http://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-tanferani-2081309 Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#161
October 1 · 40 min
#161 Grand Juries Gone Wild: A White Collar Lawyer Tells All
Jennifer McCoy just watched a federal investigation into her client vanish without explanation, the second one this year. It's a small mercy in an unusually turbulent moment for white collar law, one she says she's never seen in her career. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with McCoy, a partner at Troutman Pepper Locke in Dallas whose four Lawline courses with co-instructor Paul Coggins, the firm's former U.S. Attorney, have reached more than three thousand attorneys. McCoy focuses on white collar government investigations and antitrust, work she stumbled into after turning down a summer associate offer and nearly abandoning big law altogether. She traces her path from a Dallas courtroom's seven-week healthcare fraud trial to Jindal, the first criminal prosecution of wage-fixing as an antitrust violation, and into her latest Lawline course, "Increased Scrutiny of Grand Jury Proceedings." There, she breaks down how subpoenas tied to Jerome Powell, James Comey, and Letitia James have been quashed or dismissed, and why so-called "no bills" have surged this year, evidence, she argues, of a grand jury process increasingly bent toward political ends rather than genuine investigation. McCoy also shares what drew her to teaching, the niche lessons her students bring back to her, and the books, from Atomic Habits to Everything's Tuberculosis, shaping how she thinks. Her insights offer legal professionals a rare, practitioner's view of how prosecutorial discretion and public pressure now collide inside the grand jury room. Browse Jennifer McCoy’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/jennifer-mccoy Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Jennifer McCoy (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifermccoy2/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#160
September 28 · 40 min
#160 Diagnosed at 54: Rewiring How Lawyers Work After Burnout
Somewhere in his 40s, Doug Brown made a deliberate decision. He was not going to be the version of himself at 60 who wondered whether he'd ever gotten where he wanted to go. He's 60 now, and the work he does with clients is the work he had to do for himself first. The questioning started much earlier. As an associate under 30, Brown looked at the partners twenty and thirty years ahead of him — tired, overworked, quietly unhappy — and asked whether that was really the goal. His answer drove three decades of deliberate change: corporate counsel, executive director of the Connecticut Bar Association, MBA program chair at the Baldrige School of Business, and eventually South Carolina, where he built a coaching practice helping law firm owners get past what stopped him — grinding harder instead of asking for help — and build firms that don't depend on them.. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Brown, whose nine Lawline courses have logged over ten thousand completions with a 4.9-star average. Brown unpacks the "upper limit problem," the phenomenon where success triggers a cortisol response that pushes high achievers to unconsciously sabotage their own progress. He traces it back to his own diagnosis of high-functioning ADHD at 54, an experience that reframed decades of self-imposed grinding and burnout. Rather than teaching lawyers more information, Brown focuses on what actually keeps them stuck: permission, not knowledge. It's also why he now works almost exclusively with law firm owners on succession, firm transitions, and what comes next — the people who built successful firms and are now asking what happens to them. His approach is deliberately unconventional for a coach. He doesn't reflect questions back and ask what you think. He tells clients which plays will work for them and gives them a two-week playbook — and is on-call if they get stuck. Brown's candor about mental health, reinvention, and redefining success in the second half of a legal career offers listeners a rare, practical roadmap. For attorneys feeling stuck, burned out, or quietly wondering if there's a different way to build a sustainable career, Brown's journey shows what's possible on the other side. BrowseDoug Brown’s Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/lawyer/doug-brown-2 Browse All Lawline CLE Courses → https://www.lawline.com/cle/courses Lawyers Who Learn Podcast → https://linktr.ee/lawyerswholearn Connect with Doug Brown (Guest) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasbrown/ Connect with David Schnurman (Host) → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/ Lawyers Who Learn explores how lifelong learning powers attorneys' growth. New episodes weekly.
#159
September 24 · 34 min
#159 Wrongful Convictions and the Making of "Pink Crime"
Valena Beety spent her early career as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.—until a single funeral changed everything. Meeting an exoneree whose mother had just passed after fighting eighteen years for his freedom, Beety realized she wanted to be part of that grace, not the system that had denied it. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Beety, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law and a Lawline faculty member since 2024, whose course tackles the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people. Beety traces her path from federal prosecutor to Mississippi Innocence Project attorney, founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project, and now educator and author. She unpacks devastating case studies—including a daycare worker sentenced to over a century in prison on flawed child pornography charges tied to her queer identity, and the San Antonio Four, women wrongly convicted amid satanic-panic hysteria. These stories ground the term Beety coined herself: "pink crime," charges rooted fundamentally in gender bias, from stillbirths prosecuted as murder to drag performances treated as criminal acts. Drawing on her books Manifesting Justice and the newly released Pink Crime, Beety shows how identity-based prosecution persists across decades and how litigators, students, and communities chip away at injustice case by case. For defense attorneys, civil rights practitioners, and anyone representing vulnerable clients, Beety's work offers a framework for recognizing bias hiding in plain sight within the criminal legal system.
#158
September 21 · 42 min
#158 From a White House Internship to Partner in Political Law
Rebecca Moll Freed knew she wanted to be a lawyer in high school, the moment mock trial replaced a childhood plan to become a pediatrician. A college internship in the Clinton White House sealed the deal, showing her that law, politics, and business could actually intersect for a living. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Freed, a Lawline faculty member since 2016 whose courses have reached more than 6,000 attorneys, about the deliberate path that took her from Georgetown Law to partner at CSG Law. Freed breaks down "pay-to-play" laws in plain English: rules meant to stop government contracts from going to the highest campaign donor instead of the most qualified bidder, and the murky, high-stakes gray area companies navigate around lobbying, gifts, and procurement to protect their eligibility for that work. She traces her break into the field to a chance pairing with a partner on a New Jersey gubernatorial election and transition, as her first assignment out of law school, and reflects on building a specialized practice while raising two kids who later followed her to Georgetown themselves. Along the way, she pushes back on the idea that getting ahead requires an edge, arguing that kindness and good manners are entirely compatible with ambition.
#157
September 17 · 35 min
#157 The "I Don't Know" Answer That Landed Her a 15-Year Legal Career
When a hiring partner warned Gina Nicotera he wouldn't take on someone who didn't know what ERISA stood for, she admitted she'd never heard the term and won the job anyway. Fifteen years later, that willingness to learn on the fly has carried her from a biomedical engineering dropout to a senior labor and employment attorney, where she now helps employers navigate an entirely new set of risks: workplace harassment fueled by AI. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Nicotera about a career shaped by trial, error, and curiosity, from switching majors after a rough semester of multivariable calculus to building a practice representing restaurants, hospitality groups, and manufacturers in employer-side disputes. Nicotera unpacks how AI is reshaping her caseload: employees weaponizing deepfakes against coworkers, HR screening tools that can inadvertently filter out candidates by race, and the discovery risks of feeding confidential data into open AI systems. Much of her work, she says, amounts to therapy, coaching anxious HR professionals through difficult conversations before they escalate into litigation. She credits her growth to treating every detour, including an abandoned engineering major, as data rather than defeat, and to building a network of mentors along the way.
#156
September 14 · 47 min
#156 10,000 Changes, No Surprises: A Martial Artist's Rulebook for AI Law
Eran Kahana uses AI carefully and sparingly, having watched it produce polished text that passes for insight until it doesn’t. An eighteen-year Stanford Law fellow and AI governance partner at Maslon LLP, he treats AI less like a ghostwriter and more like a sparring partner he interrogates and never fully trusts. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Kahana, whose ten Lawline courses on AI governance, copyright, and privacy have logged nearly ten thousand completions, about a career built on "staying hungry." One rejected conference proposal in the late 2000s led, through a chance introduction, to an eighteen-year Stanford fellowship shaping how the law thinks about AI. Kahana unpacks the money question underneath every AI copyright fight, how ordinary shopping data becomes health data once AI starts inferring from it, and why he juggles five AI models like a conductor rather than one assistant. His current project, a 37-principle "restatement" of AI's life cycle, exists because he talks to his own framework daily, pushing it to critique him back, guided by a martial arts philosophy: ten thousand changes, no surprises. For lawyers unsettled by AI's pace, his point isn't mastering one tool. It's staying disciplined, curious, and willing to be wrong, a distinction that will only matter more as AI redefines legal expertise.
#155
September 10 · 35 min
#155 How a Thesis Written in College Became a Career 15 Years Later
Beth wrote a college thesis on affordable housing and voucher programs, then watched her legal career zigzag in the opposite direction—straight into Big Law real estate finance. It took one transaction involving Boston's inclusionary housing rules to reconnect her with the mission she'd nearly left behind, sending her from corporate associate to city government attorney to partner at a firm representing lenders who finance affordable housing across New York City. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Beth to trace that career arc and unpack what's shaping New York's affordable housing landscape today. Beth breaks down how the city is creatively repurposing public land, speeding up the notoriously slow ULURP approval process, and even mismatching income bands to rent bands so units stay genuinely affordable. She also explains the pressure developers face under proposed rent freezes, why she took a steep pay cut to join NYC's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and how that hands-on government experience became the foundation for the CLE courses she now teaches on Lawline. The conversation moves beyond policy into what fueled Beth's willingness to take risks: writing down her goals, seeking out mentors willing to teach her, and paying that mentorship forward through teaching. Beth and David also trade book recommendations, from parenting strategies to Barbara Kingsolver novels, rounding out a portrait of a lawyer whose winding career path led her exactly where her college thesis once predicted.
#154
September 8 · 38 min
#154 - Divorce, Disability, and the Pension Clock Ticking on 9/11 Claims
Erin Colgan was a 25 year old new prosecutor and seven months pregnant with her first child when she watched the horrific events of 9/11 on a small television from the Richmond County Criminal Courhouse. She explains this as completely surreal, and repeatedly paged her father, a Port Authority Police Inspector and commander of the World Trade Center who had survived the collapse. That morning would eventually shape a career built around representing police officers and firefighters and their spouses equally, with Erin in a unique position to understand the culture and the issues affecting these families in divorce. Later, she came to understand the importance of their retirement benefits and how best to address them professionally. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Erin Colgan about a wave of NYPD and FDNY retirements now colliding with rising divorce rates among first responders in their 40s and 50s. Erin describes representing these members and their spouses as a calling. As Tier 2 hires from the late 1990s reach retirement, their pensions, often the family's largest asset, become the center of emotionally fraught divorces, especially when disability or line of duty injury is involved. She sees it as imperative that both sides of these cases get precise, complete information about what is actually at stake with regard to their retirement benefits, not just a passing reference to the pension. Erin also breaks down the approaching September 11th certification deadline tied to the 25th anniversary of the attacks, and the stigma that has kept officers and firefighters from calling themselves disabled even as new conditions surface decades later. Ten years ago, she co-founded Northstar QDRO to help attorneys draft the QDROs and DROs courts require. Erin's path, from assistant DA to solo practitioner to firm partner and entrepreneur, shows how personal history can sharpen professional purpose. She credits a book about forgiveness after tragedy with shaping how she handles even the most contentious negotiations. For family law attorneys, Erin's story is a reminder that deep expertise grows from lived experience, and that teaching what you know multiplies its impact far beyond the courtroom.
#153
August 31 · 43 min
#153 Building a Practice He Wasn't Hired to Build: From Generalist to Political Law Expert
Venable didn't have a political law practice when Ron Jacobs started there. Growing up in a blue-collar family in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jacobs once dreamed of public service before law school pulled him toward a career in the law instead. His early years as an associate bounced him between FTC, FCC, international trade work, and nonprofit associations, with campaign finance creeping in little by little t. By the time Jacobs made senior associate, colleagues were already routing anything political his way. The firm noticed, and let him build a practice around it, a rare move in Big Law. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Jacobs, now at Venable for 25 years, about how that practice came together and everything that's grown out of it since. Citizens United sits at the center of the conversation: how it reshaped campaign finance law, and why contribution limits keep getting worked around rather than enforced, in Jacobs's view. AI tools like ChatGPT and Harvey are already changing his day-to-day work, a shift Jacobs discusses candidly alongside his years teaching political law courses for Lawline, work rooted in lessons from mentors earlier in his career. Raising three kids while making partner comes up too, along with the books, including White Shoe and The Man to See, that shaped how he thinks about building something that lasts. Twenty-five years in, Jacobs's path shows what happens when a practice area gets built by one person's persistence rather than handed down.
#152
August 24 · 44 min
#152 How a Broken Partnership Sparked a Legal Podcast Empire
Dennis Meador, known to everyone as DM, learned to sell before he learned much else. By 14 he was running his own hustle, subcontracting neighborhood yard work and keeping half the profit. That instinct for building things from scratch carried into his career, including an SEO agency for attorneys he helped scale to $5 million before a five-year partnership ended just months before his wedding. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with DM to trace how that setback launched his current venture: the Legal Podcast Network, or LPN. Starting from zero in May 2024, DM built LPN into a seven-figure business with 250 attorney clients within a year, providing hosts, production, and distribution so solo and small-firm lawyers can build authority without becoming content creators themselves. He breaks down his "revenue first, then simplify, then delegate" philosophy, his pricing model built around jurisdictional exclusivity, and how he's leaning into intent-based algorithms and LLM-driven SEO to help clients get discovered. DM also shares what it's like running a fast-growing company remotely from Mexico, balancing rapid growth with a baby on the way, and his goal of reaching 2,500 clients and $30 million in revenue within seven years. His story is a grounded look at how resilience and systems-building turned a broken partnership into something bigger.
#151
August 17 · 23 min
#151 - She Left a Senior Associate Position at a Law Firm to Care for Her Parent. It Built Her Career.
More than twenty-five years ago, Lindsay A. Curcio wasn't chasing entrepreneurship or independence—she was an only child whose father had recently passed away, whose mother needed help, and who realized the only way to be there was to build a practice she could run on her own terms. That decision, made out of necessity rather than ambition, quietly shaped the next two decades of her life. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Lindsay about the career built around that pivot—and everything it made possible. Approaching her 36th year of practice as an immigration attorney, she traces her path from a formative U.S. Department of Justice internship at a Louisiana detention center during law school in 1989, through a decade working at immigration law firms in Chicago and New York City, to running her own practice while splitting time between New York and Chicago to care for her mother. She unpacks why immigration law resists simple explanations, from decades-long immigrant visa waits to the 2003 creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with USCIS, ICE, and CBP taking the place of Legacy INS, and reflects on how teaching at Lawline, a law school, and a university has kept her sharp. Beyond the courtroom, Lindsay writes mystery fiction, performs and teaches improv and applied improv, and credits years with the Tibetan Buddhist community for shaping how she treats clients and adversaries alike—she believes kindness is possible and necessary, even in high-stakes work. Her story is a reminder that the most defining career choices aren't always the ones we plan—and that they can still lead somewhere extraordinary.
#150
August 10 · 29 min
#150 - The Futurist Patent Attorney Bringing AI to Market
What if you could say "build me a spaceship" and watch it happen within the hour? Ben Dach, a partner at Pierson Ferdinand, believes that the future isn't as distant as it sounds. A self-described "futurist patent attorney," Ben has spent his career turning ambitious ideas into real products—from surgical robotics that have saved thousands of lives to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, aerospace, and defense. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Ben to unpack his recent Lawline course, AI and the Future of Patent Law. They discuss why patent approvals have nearly doubled under new USPTO leadership, why AI-related filings keep climbing even as approval standards stay strict, and what quantum computing actually means for the future of innovation, from superposition to real-world use cases already reshaping entire industries. Ben also traces his own winding path—from biomedical engineering and a chemistry PhD to pharmaceutical patent litigation and law school at night—showing how a "zigzag" career can build genuine expertise. Beyond the science, he shares what teaching means to him: not lecturing from a distance, but building real dialogue with the professionals he trains, treating every course as a two-way conversation rather than a one-sided lecture. For attorneys navigating an AI-driven legal landscape, Ben's conversation offers a grounded perspective on where patent law is headed, and why staying human matters most as the tools around us get smarter.
#149
August 3 · 45 min
#149 The Rewritten Playbook: Money, Power, and the New Rules of Sports
About one week before every Lawline update, Mark Conrad checks his slides and makes changes, because the law hasn't stopped moving. A 38-year veteran of Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, Conrad has spent the last decade turning the chaos of sports law into some of Lawline's most-watched courses, with nearly 10,000 completions and near-perfect ratings. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Conrad about the collapse of the old "student athlete" model. The $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement cracked open a system built on amateurism, ushering in NIL payouts, deregulated transfers, and a de facto free agency for college stars. Conrad explains monopsony power in pro leagues, the murky legality of prop betting and prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, and why private equity is rushing into franchises now worth exponentially more than they were five years ago. Conrad also traces his own unlikely path—a detour into journalism, and an accidental teaching gig that turned into a career reinventing itself every year. He shares a sharp lesson on where CLE teaching ends and legal advice begins, plus a book recommendation, Mary Cain's memoir on abuse in elite athletics, that exposes the human cost behind sports' biggest brands. For any attorney trying to keep pace with an industry being rewritten in real time, this conversation is a fast, sharp briefing on where the money, the power, and the legal fights are headed next.

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