When the Feds Knock: Big Stakes in White-Collar Cases

Kyle McEntee:

We're joined today by Jamie Nawaday, a partner and head of her firm's government enforcement and internal investigations practice. In the simplest terms, you help people and companies who are or may be in trouble with the government. At a high level, what are the types of scenarios where you're involved?

Jaimie Nawaday:

The most common scenario when someone reaches out is they get a grand jury subpoena from the Department of Justice. So it might be a company, and it could be that the company gets it, and the company is not necessarily the target of the investigation. Maybe they're kind of on the periphery, what we call a subject. Maybe they're just really a witness to the investigation, but information is needed from them. But typically, as soon as a company gets a grand jury subpoena from DOJ, they're going to reach out to a white-collar defense attorney.

The other common situations would be really any interaction with the feds. So you wake up in the morning, there's a knock at the door. There are two FBI agents saying, we just wanna talk to you, just have a few simple questions. This won't take much time. Is it okay if we come in? What often happens in those scenarios is the person invites the FBI agents in, talks to them for an hour, then has a moment of panic after they leave, and then they call me.

Kyle McEntee:

So what makes something white-collar versus not?

Jaimie Nawaday:

White-collar defense versus sort of standard criminal defense just means you're dealing typically with, it's a non-drugs, non-violence case. The simplest form just means you're dealing with some sort of fraud case.

Kyle McEntee:

So you mentioned that sometimes the companies will receive the subpoena, but the target actually maybe someone who's working there, an executive, or maybe even a lower-level employee. How do you untangle the difference between someone who is acting on behalf of a company and someone who is maybe outside the scope of what they were supposed to be doing?

Jaimie Nawaday:

Really, it just requires an internal investigation, right? And to see what is the culture at the company, what instructions was this individual given, what are the policies and procedures and training at the company that the individual who's being looked at will likely have his or her own counsel, and you just sort it out through the fact-finding of an internal investigation.

Kyle McEntee:

So what's your role in that investigation? What's the first thing you're doing?

Jaimie Nawaday:

It really depends. A lot of times the internal investigation will follow a grand jury subpoena, and so you have initial calls, you figure out who would be kind of the stakeholders who would have relevant information. You do maybe a quick interview with them to just find out kind of what documents they have that are relevant, what messages might need to be collected from them, make sure that they preserve everything that they should be preserving, and then you would proceed to interview a number of people, collect the interview memos, figure out where there are weaknesses, where there are vulnerabilities, what the pitch to the government might be, and you're talking to the government in the meantime, and sometimes you're saying, hey, do you wanna hold off on some of this? We're gonna do our own internal investigation, and we'll come back to you and present our findings. Or not, sometimes you don't wanna have that transparent conversation with the government upfront, but you certainly wanna know what they're working with because they are most likely further along than you are in the facts, and so you wanna get your arms around them very quickly.

That's true for a subpoena, it's certainly true when you have a business search warrant. 30 agents show up at the door of a business one day, and they swoop in, they're taking out boxes and computers, they're interviewing all of the employees on site, and then sometimes I get the call when that hits, and then obviously we're at a huge disadvantage, and you have to get on site as quickly as possible, talk to everybody the agents talk to, and figure out what has the government been looking at for the last year or more, because you reach out to the government and ask all these questions, but they don't really have to tell you anything.

Kyle McEntee:

So I'm imagining the CEO has you on speed dial, they see the FBI come crashing in, and they hit five and it calls Jamie. But that's probably not what's actually happening. How do they know to call you in particular?

Jaimie Nawaday:

It really depends, maybe there was a prior relationship, and so they already have my information if something comes up with the government. Maybe they had a very simple witness subpoena in the past, but I'm the person who they just think of when there's any kind of interaction with the feds, and so they call me. Or maybe there's some other kind of relationship with the firm, maybe the firm has done employment work for the company in the past, and so they call the employment lawyer, the employment lawyer calls me.

Kyle McEntee:

So the employees, they're on notice, right? The FBI is looking into something. And here you come ready to conduct this internal investigation so you can get your arms around the facts. Do they look at you skeptically? Or do they look at you as a friend? How are they viewing that relationship with you? Is it positive, negative, neutral?

Jaimie Nawaday:

Definitely not as a friend. And there's certainly some skepticism, I would say, especially for the senior folks at the company. Maybe some of the junior employees, they're just answering questions, they maybe know less about the situation, or maybe they have concerns about management. So sometimes they're excited to talk to a lawyer, even though I'm obviously not their lawyer, and say, I knew something was wrong with this company, I knew something was up, and they wanna tell me their side of things. Usually mid-level to senior people will be a bit skeptical, because they understand, I have to talk to this person. And we run through what are called the upjohn warnings, where we make clear that I represent the company, I don't represent you, what you tell me is privilege, but the privilege belongs to the company, and so the company can choose to waive that privilege.

So they're in a little bit of a powerless position, right? Here comes this lawyer, and I'm supposed to tell her all of these things, and she might share it with the government, but if I don't talk to her, maybe I lose my job. So that obviously creates some tension, when you first sit down to talk with them. But my approach is typically to proceed in baby steps, with somebody who I think has critical information, but is hesitant to talk to me. Sometimes I'll say, well, maybe we just talk for 15 minutes today. I get some background, I try to put them a little bit more at ease, and start to build a little bit of trust. And then once they start talking to me, and get to know me a little bit better, maybe they trust me more, and they extend the interview on their own. But I've definitely had people say, okay, I'll talk to you, but I need to leave, or they have some reason to cut it short. And I say, okay, that's fine, let's just talk for as long as you're comfortable. And then people in that position have ended up like talking to me literally for days, and been very key witnesses for the company.

Kyle McEntee:

So you get your arms around the facts, and you can figure out, okay, now there's something here, the government is not just on some witch hunt. How do you decide what the next steps are? And who are you talking to, in terms of making the decision about those next steps?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I'm talking with the point of contact at the company, certainly. I mean, usually the big decision point is whether to do some sort of, let's say you find something that creates real exposure, maybe serious criminal liability for the company. But you don't know whether the government knows that, because sometimes the government knows that there's problem A at the company, and you think problem A isn't really that bad, but you find on your own problem B, which is quite serious, that you have reason to believe the government does not yet know about. And then you need to make the determination, do we voluntarily disclose, and try to get cooperation credit from the government, or do we sit on it, because maybe we don't trust the government, we don't think that we're going to get the cooperation that the DOJ manual always promises to companies. This has been a recurring issue over the past few years, is the government really encourages cooperation, but are companies really seeing the benefit of that? And so that's usually the most critical thing to decide. You do go back and forth with the government, they're usually wanting to interview people, you're talking to them about document productions and things like that, but the big decision point is always how much to voluntarily share.

Kyle McEntee:

It's amazing how much of being a lawyer is really about risk management.

Jaimie Nawaday:

Absolutely.

Kyle McEntee:

So how did you learn to advise on risk management? Is it something you get better at with experience, but were there a lot of mistakes along the way, or is it something else that's really helping you get good at what you're doing?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I do think some of it is just reps. The more reps you have, the better you get at anticipating the government's moves. I would say when I first left the government, when I was new to private practice, I think it's very common, and I had this as well, the instinct is to share more because these were your colleagues five minutes ago, you have a lot of trust in them to treat you fairly. So you think we'll disclose, we'll cooperate. The company is usually a little more reluctant to do that.

Now I'm much more likely to tread lightly in that area. I wouldn't rush for any sort of self-disclosure, and I think that's true for most defense attorneys who have been practicing for a while, because all it takes is one case where you disclose and you feel like you got burned, or you see it happen to someone else, where you think, man, they did everything right in terms of showing them the books and bringing in witnesses, and they just got hammered at the end, and everybody sort of watches those cases and says, okay, well, we will take note of that.

Kyle McEntee:

How well did you understand this when you were on the prosecution side?

Jaimie Nawaday:

Certainly not as well as I understand it on the defense side. I think I usually assumed that companies were holding back a bit, because, and it wasn't even that they didn't trust me or something like that, but that sort of call in terms of how much cooperation credit to give someone or the type of resolution to recommend is not gonna be in the hands of any single line assistant at the U.S. Attorney's Office. So you could have a very difficult supervisor or very difficult administration and main justice, and maybe it's just that the company wouldn't trust the system in place at the time or the decision makers in place at the time, even if they trusted me.

Kyle McEntee:

So you found that a bit surprising. Anything else kind of jump out at you once you made the transition from prosecution to defense?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I think for anyone who leaves the U.S. Attorney's Office in particular, your experience of prosecutors and of government attorneys is you and the people that you worked with. So you tend to think all government attorneys or all prosecutors are like those in the office that you just left. And then you practice in another district or you deal with state government attorneys. And I think just how differently they do things. Sometimes the comments they would make or when they seemed just wildly unreasonable when I was trying to advocate for my client using the same playbook that defense attorneys would use when they are advocating to the Southern District of New York. And it just didn't work. Like they would take my cooperation and try to use it against the client or something like that. Which again, that's why the cooperation decision is so important.

So I can't think of a situation where that went sideways at the federal level. But I can think of some state and other areas where we started to go down a cooperation road and it seemed like it was just not gonna benefit the client at all. And that was an enormous surprise because I thought we had the same understanding that basically when someone comes forward, they should be rewarded for that. That everybody operates in accordance with kind of the DOJ manual and DOJ policies. That's obviously not the case. And I think everybody has a rude awakening when they leave, especially DOJ and enter the defense side.

Kyle McEntee:

It's interesting. This just feels a little bit like pinball and you're kind of just like all over the place based on incentives. You don't know what else someone else is experiencing that's causing to behave in some way. So you have to have this tremendous amount of confidence to operate within that system of unknowns. And I know you had a federal appellate clerkship right out of law school. Did that experience affect your confidence afterwards and build towards where you are today to deal with all these unknowns?

Jaimie Nawaday:

It definitely helped my confidence at the appellate level. I think it didn't, and I really enjoyed that experience, I think I really would have benefited from a district court clerkship as well. Because what I saw, especially at the U.S. Attorney's Office was those attorneys who had clerked at the district court level, they were so comfortable in the courtroom in a way that I was not when I started. Because to them, the courtroom was basically an extension of their office. And so they knew where to sit, where the court reporter was, who the deputy was. They could kind of just roam around sort of exuding physical confidence in that space. Whereas I remember being very concerned that I would look like the rookie by sitting at the wrong table or something like that, or just being a little too tentative. So I think clerkships definitely build confidence in a particular area. But if you do an appellate clerkship, that confidence is limited to the appellate arena.

Kyle McEntee:

So where do you get your confidence today for the arena that you do play in mostly?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I think it's, again, it's just reps. So probably after my first trial when I was a government attorney, because it was such a long trial. It was a month long, long trial days, nine to five every day, five days a week. We had a very challenging judge who held everybody accountable every day if they didn't know the rules or really for everything. And sometimes we had to show up before 9 a.m. because there were motions that had to be argued and that sort of thing. But it was really a grueling first trial. But every day I thought I became a better lawyer today. And by the end of that month, I remember thinking I could be comfortable anywhere now in any meeting, conference room, courtroom, because I was so scared at the beginning of that. And by the end, I realized, okay, I can figure it out. I can learn it and I have now the basic skills.

Kyle McEntee:

I think it's really great and interesting that it's just like one experience, even if it's a really long experience that can kind of unlock you for the rest of your career. So I don't think the practice area you're in now is on a lot of people's radar right out of law school. Although maybe if you watch Suits, you're kind of used to white collar defense. Was this practice something you had in mind?

Jaimie Nawaday:

Not criminal work. And when I first joined the U.S. Attorney's Office, I joined on the civil side. And then later I moved to the criminal side. But I didn't have any experience in criminal law at my prior law firms. It was sort of just a big unknown, whether I would enjoy it, whether I would be good at it. I didn't know if just emotionally it would be very difficult, right? If you're doing child porn cases or just sort of a lot of violence cases, things like that, that would be upsetting in a way that would be hard to shake off in the evenings. It was just, I just had a lot of questions about it. So I started on the civil side and what I realized was that because I was doing affirmative civil fraud cases, they were really just like criminal cases, except they were civil instead of criminal. So the civil side of the U.S. Attorney's Office does both affirmative or plaintiff side work and defensive cases. So they defend FOIA cases, they defend, right, if you get hit by a postal truck and you sue the government, they defend those. They defend all kinds of suits against the government. But the affirmative fraud cases are, you build a case with agents and then you file suit. It's just a civil case instead of a criminal indictment. And I enjoyed building a case so much. I enjoyed working with agents. I enjoyed interviewing witnesses. I loved that kind of fact development and getting people to talk to me. So ultimately that's what propelled me into criminal work.

Kyle McEntee:

So building up a case is very different than defense work where you're trying to tear a case down. Do you like tearing down a case even more?

Jaimie Nawaday:

There's so many other things I guess that go into whether you favor one side or the other. So now it's very satisfying to be on the defense side because the odds are always stacked against you, right? The government wins most of the cases it brings.

So when you're on the defense side, the big battle is to stop charges from being filed because once charges are filed, if you have a criminal indictment against somebody, that person's reputation is ruined, there are enormous financial consequences, their bank accounts are probably closed, right? Just the relationship and reputational impact is very severe. And because the odds favor the government, especially if the case goes to trial, DOJ wins whatever 95, 98% of the cases that go to trial. It's just a different calculus. You feel like on the defense side, the odds are so against you but any little win is so meaningful because the odds are against you. And your client is so enormously grateful because their life is on the line as opposed to I'm doing justice for the taxpayers. You feel good because you feel like you did justice when you're a prosecutor, you're on the plaintiff side, but there's also a very personal connection on the defense side that's very, very rewarding.

Kyle McEntee:

So reflecting back on the prosecution side, were there any cultural things that were different at the U.S. Attorney's Office compared to your prior experience in private practice? Because you went from your clerkship to private practice to the U.S. Attorney's Office and then now where you are today.

Jaimie Nawaday:

Yes, I mean, I would say the dynamic is different because you don't have a billable hour, right? Your employer is not looking to make money from you. You have a unified mission, right? The whole office has a unified mission of doing justice. That sense of shared mission leads to a lot of camaraderie. And especially in the Southern District of New York, I think it can be a competitive place, but you still are supporting each other.

But it's an intense place because it's a busy office, it's a prestigious office, and you have just an enormous docket. So when private practice, especially as a junior mid-level associate like I was before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, you have maybe a handful of cases at the most because you tend to be working such large cases, right? You might work a single case for years or a few cases for years.

Then you get to the U.S. Attorney's Office and depending on the unit you're in, you might have 50 cases, 100 cases, 200 cases. And just the sheer volume that's handed to you when you are, especially brand new, all of this is new. You're learning the ropes for the first time, how to work with agents, what is the criminal procedure that you have to follow, and the consequences of getting it wrong and violating someone's rights are so terrifying that you could be called out by the judge or have a professional responsibility complaint against you or whatever. Defense attorney calling you out in court, it's very nerve wracking and you feel like there's no way I can manage all of these cases responsibly at the same time. So it can be very overwhelming when you start.

Kyle McEntee:

So how do people manage that volume of cases and that level of stress?

Jaimie Nawaday:

There is that camaraderie. They sort of bond and tell war stories together, but there's also a fair amount of drinking. I would say definitely on average more drinking than you see in private practice. Not just at the U.S. Attorney's Office or in federal prosecutor's offices, but I hear this about DA's offices, public defender's offices. I think this is true in criminal work, in government work generally. You have such a high volume of cases, you're in court all the time, maybe getting blasted by judges. I mean, the judges always hold the government attorneys to a very high standard. And there can be a tendency or a desire at the end of the day to just wanna shut it all down and decompress. And the easiest way to do that is alcohol. There's the image of the whiskey drinking prosecutor and we see it on TV from Law and Order to Suits to any show you see about lawyers, really in private practice or the government, you see them drinking. And at the U.S. Attorney's Office, we had whiskey bottles, scotch in our offices. That was not an unusual thing. That would typically be an unusual move at the firm, but you could break out the whiskey at the end of the day at the U.S. Attorney's Office and that was not terribly unusual.

Kyle McEntee:

So what was your relationship with alcohol before you went to the U.S. Attorney's Office?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I was, I mean, I was a wine drinker. I really wasn't a drinker much at all. I was a very occasional drinker before law school. And then when I was a summer associate, I really got the message that drinking was something that lawyers do. I was a summer associate in 2002 and those were kind of big drinking years, I think, for the legal industry, large summer classes. They would be taken out for shots and things like that. And I think it was sort of expected that if you were a summer associate, you were gonna be partaking and you were gonna be drinking and partying. And so I did start drinking more after that, I think. I kind of saw that that was the expectation.

And so I started drinking more regularly, but not really hard liquor and not in huge amounts, although with much more regularity. But once I joined the U.S. Attorney's Office, that's when I made the move into hard liquor. It seemed more compatible with the culture. And I also noticed that even though I didn't particularly like hard liquor, that people sort of seemed to view me differently or treat me differently as if it was more badass for a female prosecutor to be drinking bourbon. And of course, I had imposter syndrome. I was nervous about all the work. And it was a way of kind of putting on a uniform of sorts to play the part of the whiskey-drinking prosecutor and be hitting the bourbon. But I think it just kind of helped your image a little bit, or at least I thought it did, if you kind of embraced sports and hard liquor. It was kind of seen overall as a little bit more toughness.

Kyle McEntee:

So that's, I think, changed maybe a little bit, but not necessarily a lot. Even in law school, I know my experience was drinking was a big part of networking events. We had bar review on Thursday night, which was a funny play on words. But when you look at the problems with alcoholism in the legal profession, it kind of makes you think twice about those glib terms.

Jaimie Nawaday:

Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, and I remember in law school, and I think a lot of people had this, we had a legal ethics class or something like that. And we were all told statistics about problem drinking in the legal industry. And it was like one in four or something at the time. And I've seen recent statistics that are worse. And I'm sure it's higher than what is being reported anyway, because you're counting on lawyers to accurately self-report their drinking. And I think most people tend to undercount it a little bit as, oh, a glass of wine with dinner, and oh, but I don't drink that much. But you hang out with them and you see that it seems they drink a lot more than a glass of wine at dinner. But we were given these statistics, but we weren't really given any roadmap as to, and here's how to avoid it, or here are these mentors who do something, who talk about not drinking and still succeeding in law. It was just like, you were given the numbers and then it was, okay, good luck. But all of the networking and all of the events in law school seemed to center around alcohol.

Kyle McEntee:

So looking now forward from law school to your career, at what point did you start to question the place that alcohol was playing in your professional identity and start to say, maybe I'm not where I wanna be?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I think it was very gradual. I know that there were different points that I would resolve to drink less or take a break from drinking, right? It was a common New Year's resolution or whenever I was on a new health kick, I might scale back for a period of weeks. I would put a weekly limit, no more than three drinks a week, and I would stick to it for a week or two. And then I would say, see, I'm good, I can control it. And then I would reward myself with a drink or three at the end of the day. And then very quickly, I'd be right back to where I was. And I was working out a lot during that period of time. And I remember some friends who were doing like a bootcamp where they had a strict diet for the month and they couldn't drink for the month. And I just, that seemed to me like an impossibility. And I realized it didn't seem like an impossibility to other people, even people who I thought drank a lot more than I did, because I didn't think that I was drinking so much. It was just that I drank very regularly or more or less nightly. But I guess at that point, I realized whenever I was out of bourbon at home, I would always stop on the way home and pick it up. And at the same time, I was acting as if it was the most casual thought in the world. It was this kind of make-believe moderation, right?

Where wherever we'd go, I'd make sure that there was alcohol, or if we'd arrive somewhere on vacation, I might say to my husband, you want me to pick up a little something as if it just occurred to me, right? To maybe pick up bourbon for the evening when internally it was kind of like an alarm going off. And that process, the sort of make-believe moderation just gets really exhausting where you realize inwardly, you're so committed to this end of the day drink or drinks, and outwardly you're trying to project everything's fine. I can drink like anyone else. I can take it or leave it, but I just always secretly managed to make sure it's very close to me when a certain hour hits.

Kyle McEntee:

So you ultimately quit drinking in 2020, shortly after you moved back into private practice. Did you notice a difference in the way you approached your work at that point?

Jaimie Nawaday:

Yes, I noticed a difference with respect to everything. I mean, I knew I would, I'd read other accounts of people who quit drinking and talked about the benefits. So I knew that I would sleep better, have more energy, things like that. I was surprised by how I felt so much more connected to the world. I felt friendlier, for instance, which seemed like an odd, or I guess, surprising benefit. But I think I was rested. I did feel more energetic, which made me feel happier, which made me just more pleasant to be around and more willing to look people in the eye and engage them on the way to work. So I just found that I was chattier and more outgoing. It really helped my confidence too. I think in part because I had done this thing that a lot of people considered hard, which was quitting drinking. So that gave me a boost of self-confidence. And also because drinking just increases your anxiety. So when you let that go, you realize you feel calmer, you feel more confident. And then these little benefits start to compound. You start to take on more and more and that boosts your self-esteem even more and you want to keep going. So I became more outgoing and I thought it made me more confident in court, in public speaking, pitching clients, just absolutely everything.

Kyle McEntee:

So the way we got in touch was actually on Reddit because you shared your story there and you did it under your name. Not a lot of people post on Reddit under their name. What compelled you to go public with your story?

Jaimie Nawaday:

I was thinking about going public but initially not under my name, maybe a year or so ago because I thought the story could help other people. Because when I was trying to quit, I was looking and looking and looking for stories of people who drank like me and quit to kind of give me hope. And it was very hard to find because so many of the stories are about drinking that seems so much more serious, especially if it's lawyers, right?

The only stories of lawyers that you really hear of people who quit drinking or maybe people who showed up drunk to court or something like that, like a real rock bottom. And then you can kind of use that to tell yourself that your own drinking is fine because you're not like that guy who's showing up drunk in court, right? You never drank in the morning and you never drank like this other guy at the firm who clearly has a drinking problem. There's so much rationalization that goes on. But at least at that time, there were fewer kind of gray area drinking stories of here's how I just sort of steadily numbed myself every night. And here's how much better my life got when I quit.

So I wanted to find somebody who drank like me and quit and sort of both give me the how-to and just help me really believe that it was possible. Because it was really scary for me when I was just trying on my own through pure willpower when I get a little run and then I'd fail again. It was so discouraging and I would just worry. Like, what if I can't do this on my own? What if I have to reach out for help? People find out, whatever. And then my mind was sort of spiraled because it was such a closely guarded secret for me. I thought there were all kinds of reputational risks. So I knew that my story, because I had gone through that, I knew that my story could help other people because if you see someone who is in your shoes exactly, right, and then they change, and then you say, okay, this person was like me. Now I can be like them, or I can do this thing that they did. And it just gives you that hope and motivation. And that's really what inspires people to change. But so I thought about, can I just sort of do things anonymously? But I do think it, I think it connects with people more if you can attach your name to it. And at some point I just decided there really shouldn't be this risk. I'm talking about something years in the rear-view mirror. We all know so many problem drinkers in law who suffer no professional consequences. And in fact, maybe still are engaged in some back slapping behavior and people laugh about it and whatever. So why should I suffer consequences for talking about something years ago when I've made this very healthy, positive change? And I guess I just, I thought I could manage the risk. And ultimately I decided whatever risk remained, it was just worth it.

I felt like it was absolutely something I had to do. If I looked ahead in life of what I wanted to accomplish besides whatever goals I had in law, it was, I wanna make sure my story gets out and that I try to help other people.

Kyle McEntee:

Does your status as a partner at a firm kinda help de-risk the situation a bit for you? Or did that feel like that was why it was such a threat? Because you are financially secure, you do have a great steady paycheck.

Jaimie Nawaday:

Yeah, it was probably a little bit of both. It was a little bit of a double-edged sword because on the one hand it feels like, okay, I didn't grow up with money. I now have a very good income, a stable job. Why on earth would you put that at risk? That's sort of the popular thinking. At the same time, if it's risky for us as partners, if I can't share my story, then who can? Do I have to wait until I'm retired to share the story? Because that's not gonna be as helpful. It's most helpful if I can say, I quit drinking and here's what my life is like now and here's how you can too, and you can still be a lawyer.

It's helpful but less helpful when people hear quitting drinking stories from people who have left the law, either because they've retired or because they've become life coaches or whatever they've done, something that seems less stressful to the people who are still in law. But I think it's best when you can give people that message and you can say, now I'm managing all of the same stress. I'm just doing it without alcohol and here's why it's so much better than you think and here's how you can do it too.

So I would say, I do feel like it's on maybe, I don't wanna say it's the responsibility of partners but I would love to see more people because more and more people are quitting drinking or are cutting back. More people are doing dry January than ever before. I would love to see more of those people, even if they're not sharing publicly, sharing within their firm, sharing with their team, something like that because I didn't have any mentors who did that. I didn't know any senior attorneys who didn't drink and I think it would have made an enormous difference to me and I hear from junior attorneys all the time that it makes such a difference to them to see what I'm doing and specifically to have a mentor who doesn't drink.

Kyle McEntee:

So what I think is interesting about the way you talk about this is you frame it in terms of shades of gray. So first it was the gray area between the sloppy drunk who shows up to court, completely wasted, right? But on the other end of the spectrum, you have someone who still has a problem but they're having their drinks after work in a nice glass with a pretty ice cube, right? And then dealing with the problem doesn't have to be all or nothing either. It could be, as you said, reducing your drinking, which is accordingly reducing your harm. And you'd expect to see a little bit more of that in the law, that kind of discussion, given we are a profession of nuance. Everything you've talked about from your practice of risk management, right? That factored into your own personal analysis but it also factored into just the way you approach the problem. I think it's an interesting way of talking about it. And I think it makes it more likely to resonate with someone because it's not just standing up on a high perch and lecturing. It's saying, hey, there's shades of gray here. This worked for me, it might work for you. And I think more people should talk about it.

Jaimie Nawaday:

It's surprising that it's not talked about more in firms because it's an enormous risk management issue. I mean, if you talk to any practicing lawyer and you ask that person about, say, instances of sexual harassment or negligence in the firm, whatever it is, almost every, certainly for sexual harassment, almost every instance involves alcohol at some point.

And we are talking so much more about wellness, right? Drawing boundaries, mental health, that kind of thing. But a lot of times, speakers on those topics don't even mention alcohol or they sort of mention it kind of in passing. And I think part of it is maybe people don't know what to say beyond the statistics because we don't have as many lawyers out there sharing their stories.

I think you really need that to fill out the wellness piece of it. But the other reason I think firms should be talking about it more is so many of the wellness goals, firm management might see as almost opposed to their productivity goals, right? Because a lot of the wellness goals are around drawing boundaries and things like that. But I mean, stopping drinking is both a wellness hack and a productivity hack. You will be more productive. You will also be healthier. So it's something that we should be able to big tent. Everybody should be on board with having this conversation and talking about the benefits to stopping or reducing.