Kick off the New Year with a bonus episode of The Legal Department! This episode features a lively discussion with Allison Freedman and Hallie Ritzu, the hosts of the popular legal podcast, Personal Jurisdiction. They interview Stacy Bratcher, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for Cottage Health, to get her insights on succeeding as in-house counsel.
Stacy shares her unique career journey, from her early days in government to her current leadership role. She offers advice on cultivating curiosity, the importance of building strong relationships in the legal field, and why your first job doesn’t have to define your career path. Tune in for valuable perspectives and inspiration for lawyers at all stages of their careers.
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Listen to the podcast here
Bonus Episode: Personal Jurisdiction Replay With Allison Freedman And Hallie Ritzu
This is the first episode of the show 2025 and I’m doing something a little bit different. I’m sharing a conversation that I had with Allison Freedman and Hallie Ritzu on the Personal Jurisdiction Show. Before you run away, I want you to know it’s not a career journey show. Although, we do talk about how I got to my in-house job and how I was promoted but I view this episode as a mentoring conversation. I was able to reflect on my career and think about ways that I could have done things better and things I learned. I hope that you’ll find this inspiring for your own career.
I’m not going to do this very often where I do solo episodes or promote other shows. I’m proud of this conversation. I thought it would be helpful to many of you as your start your year. One other note about the show for 2025, I’m moving to a biweekly format. I’ve been doing it every week for a year now. I realized when people kept asking me, “I don’t know how you do it.” I realized I’ve been working myself pretty hard on it and I wanted to make sure that every episode I come with curiosity, joy and enthusiasm to share it with you. That’s why I’m changing the production schedule, but I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to leveling up with you in 2025.
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We welcome Stacy Bratcher to the show. Stacy, thank you so much for joining us. We are going to try something new and ask you to introduce yourself.
It’s so great to be here. I’m excited to be with co-podcasters. My name is Stacy Bratcher. I’m Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for Cottage Health, which is a health system headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. I am also the host of the Legal Department show, which is a show for lawyers who want to learn, connect, and grow their careers.
Why Stacy Decided To Go To Law School
Thank you so much for joining us, Stacy. We’re so excited, as you said, to be with a fellow podcaster. We are going to start with you in the same place that we start with all of our guests which is to ask, what brought you to law school? Why did you decide to take the leap and to want to become a lawyer?
There’s an interview answer and then there’s the legal answer. The interview answer is that I was working in State Government before going to law school. I had an internship in the Governor’s office in Missouri that I loved and that turned into a job. I was very young. Everybody around, all the lobbyists, the staff in the governor’s office, the electeds, had a law degree. I like to say I look young now but at 22, I looked like I was probably sixteen. It just seemed like a natural progression. I loved the political world.
I did health and social policy. It was taking those dinner table conversations and being frontline working on those. It was just amazing. I could have kept working in government but my fiancé at the time who’s now my husband, nudge me to go ahead and go to law school. The real answer and I shared this on the Portia Project Show when I was little and I don’t know if you guys remember the Game of Life.
How The Game Of Life & LA Law Influenced Stacy
In the game of life, you start out and you spin the wheel. One of the first things you do is get your job and there’s all different jobs there. The top job, salary-wise was to be a doctor and that that job made $100,000. I was like, “I don’t like to touch people. I don’t like blood.” The next highest paid job was lawyer at $70,000. As a little kid, I had been programmed that being a lawyer was the way to the big money.
That’s so interesting, Stacy. Not something I ever thought about because we played a lot of board games, including Game of Life and Monopoly when I was growing up. That was ingrained in what you knew about jobs.
I grew up watching LA Law, which by the way, I did give that. I did say that I watched LA Law in an interview like a OCI interview and guess what? I didn’t get a call back.
That means that they are no fun, so it worked out fine.
I was going to say I talked about the wire in my OCI interview and I did get that job. It can go both ways.
At the time that you were in law school, Stacy, did you have a sense of what health care law was or what it was like to work as counsel in the healthcare industry?
The school I went to, Saint Louis University has a very highly ranked health law program. That was the reason that I went there. As I mentioned, I had been working in health policy. This was a natural progression to specialize in this area. I could talk for a long time about health law and why it’s a great specialty for anybody. It’s enduring, recession proof, very interesting and complex. In law school, I got a very broad exposure to different aspects of health care law.
I’ll say that when I ultimately went to a firm my first year out of school, it did not aligned with what I was anticipating and that could have been just in terms of the firm I chose are the very niche work that we did there. I did intentionally build from my prior work experience, but as you know, you can have an idea of what something is and then you get into it and it’s way different. Certainly, learning about it. Being academic is one thing and then when you’re filling out that time sheet every day. You’re like, “What?”
Stacy’s Expectations Of Law School Vs. Reality
Can you tell us what that of match looked like in a little bit of a granular fashion? What was it in law school that you were expecting or because you had some experience in political side, you had some expectations? What did it look like in practice? I think you’re right, that’s something that is so common. In law school, we teach in a very specific way and teach this skill set that we seem to think is going to translate to every job, which as we know doesn’t. For you, what did that miss matched look like?
Again, drawing on the political experience. This is before the Affordable Care Act in Obamacare. We were working on a big policy initiative to extend health coverage to children throughout the State of Missouri and it was very innovative. I was working on reproductive rights. It’s amazing. You’re so energized and you’re making a difference. Big picture stuff. I didn’t mention this earlier, but I took on a lot of debt to go to law school like many of us did. I didn’t do the math.
I didn’t realize like, “If you go back and work in government, you will never pay these loans off.” Going to a law firm is what is, I don’t know if it’s expected, but it feels like it’s as a doctor. You do a residency. It feels like the practical training you get to be a lawyer is in a law firm. I just like got on that train. If you start out with thinking like I was going to change the world through health law. In law school, I am learning about all these different laws that affect and drive the healthcare system.
The firm I went to, I love the firm. I still work with them many years later. The work I did. was a very technical and very detailed in terms of how the Federal and State Health Care programs pay for services because guess what? Hospitals and healthcare providers hire lawyers so that they can get paid from the government. People don’t pay you to build new health coverage program for children. Outside of government, you’re not going to get that experience.
I had this real struggle where I had so much passion. It was like my first love was this job in the governor’s office. I invested all this time and all this money in this education, which I felt was like an imperative to keep doing that work I was doing and then getting into something. I’m like, “What the heck?” I was like reading the federal register every day and writing about the medicare fraction and disproportionate share. I’m like, “Blah, blah, blah. Why am I here?”
I fell. As I said, this was like I needed to be trained to be a real legit lawyer. I will say, it was very good training. They trained me so well. I am a very good lawyer because of that experience but going back to where I was like, it took me in a direction that I didn’t necessarily realize I wanted to go, if that makes sense.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Stacy, because there are so many people who have that pressure or that thought that they have to make a financial decision. They also have to make or they feel pressured to make the prestigious or the common decision to go to a law firm. A lot of us feel that dichotomy, too. I am very thankful for my time in big law.
I do not think I would have a successful solo practice without that and there were a lot of difficult things about that experience. I hope or wonder that as law schools continue to adapt the way that they teach students, whether we can change that a little bit but thanks for sharing your experience through law school and the choices that you made to go to affirm. That’s helpful for a lot of people to hear.
I got say, it was the financial that drove a lot of that because I’d interned in the US Attorney’s Office. I had interned in-house and done a judicial externship. The education I had at Saint Louis University was very good and you did get a lot of experience with these different areas. At the end of the day, it was a dollars and cents decision as much as it was, as I said, a decision to get more practical experience.
You didn’t ask me about my piece of advice but a piece of advice I would give Stacy many years ago was like, “Maybe don’t borrow so much money. Maybe live at home,” because my parents were in St. Louis. I could have lived with them and I instead got an apartment. You get not just the federal loans but you get the private loans on top. It’s funny, I remember financial aid.
I don’t know if they do this at University of New Mexico, Allison, but you had to go through the discussion during orientation about financial aid and how to manage your money and like, don’t live like a lawyer when you’re a student or you’ll live like a student when you’re a lawyer. I so wish I had listened to that because everyone wants to go to dinner and there’s spring break trip and all this, “We’re lawyers.” If I had a time machine, I could have had more flexibility in my choices if I hadn’t borrowed so much money.
Thanks for saying that because I do think, those two things like flexibility and money. Sometimes you have to make trade-offs with those two variables. Also, just to put it out there as your saying, it’s okay if you need to make a financial decision to go to a firm even if that’s not at the end of the day. It sounds like you knew maybe you wanted to get some practical training and things but that wasn’t necessarily going to be where you’re the most passionate. At the same time, it was a financial decision and that’s okay.
That also doesn’t mean that you have to be there forever. That’s the other thing. One of the huge things we want to talk about on this show is you can change jobs. Hallie and I were both given some messaging early on. I think that was like, “If you get on a track, you’re never going to get off of it.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if you are making a decision for financial reasons or to get practical training, but you decide, this is not the best fit for me. It’s not what aligns with my passions and my goals. You can make a change after some time.
That’s a great point because as lawyers, I don’t know if it’s the law school training but you do get locked in to thinking, “I have to do this thing.” It’s like as I was saying, getting caught up in the class like, “We go to dinner,” or, “We get to go to sushi tonight,” “This is what we do,” and, “We go to a firm and we’ve got to be partner.” I don’t know if it’s harder for us than it is for other professionals to add more flexibility and grace to ourselves to make a change.
Making The Move In-House To USC
After several years at a firm, you moved in-house to the University of Southern California. You had a few different roles there, associate GC, deputy GC, and then VP and managing general counsel. I would love to hear how you got that job. How did you decided to go in-house at USC? I got so many questions about those different roles.
I know we’re going to get to this topic later but in terms of how I got the job in the first place, it comes down to network. We’re going to talk about that, I know, but I had gone to lunch with a friend who had been at my firm and then was at a different firm. I will say, again, I got into a state of acceptance at the firm, were like, “I could do this thing.” I was at like a 5th to 6th year level where you’re just starting. It’s like you’ve got to go for it or get out.
I was doing some social searching about that because I still had this love affair with that job I had when I was 22. I could not move out of that and I was at lunch with a friend. I was telling her like, “I’m at this point where I’m either going to go for it or I’m going to need to think of something else.” She said, “I don’t know if this would be of interest but one of the partners I work with just run an email that USC is looking for a healthcare lawyer.” I was like, “Yes, please.”
She connected me to them and then I interviewed. Another friend who had been a partner at the firm I was working at had worked at a firm with the hiring manager at the University. She put in a good word for me, so that’s how I got the job. It was a great career and I got to say, it married those two things. It married the technical and legal like my expertise. I was able to use my specialty but also my passion from the government role. I’m happy to talk more about why I thought it was such a good fit for me but that’s how I landed there.
I would love to hear just more about why it was such a good fit and what your different responsibilities were in those roles.
Not to take you through every twist and turn, but when I was hired, we had a medical school, school social work, dentistry, pharmacy and a couple of adjacent allied health schools. I was primarily advising on academic issues and then there was a big professional services arrangement with the County of Los Angeles. That was my wheelhouse. I worked closely with the medical school. My office was in the medical school, which was cool.
There were two hospitals located on the Health Sciences Campus and they were owned by a for-profit company called Tenet Healthcare. The University’s relationship with Tenet deteriorated and I led strategic litigation to force Tenet to sell us the hospitals back. That was, as you can imagine, a huge opportunity because we were able to pivot them into a deal. I worked alongside the GC to get the deal done and then poof. Now we need a whole health care legal team because now we’re in the healthcare business.
If I think back on it, my favorite time at the University was when I was associate general counsel. I would say even from the litigation hostile like from 2006 to 2013, where it’s like my golden time there and then I just kept getting more and more responsibility. I was over risk management in insurance for a bit. When I was deputy general counsel, this was not my favorite role I have to tell you because the GC came to me. I was leading the healthcare team and I loved it. It was my little world.
I got to use my specialty and then I led a team. I was the general counsel for the health enterprise. I knew everything. I knew the school stuff and the hospital stuff. It was my happy place and she said, “I need someone to manage this office.” We had like eleven lawyers at the time. She was leading a lot of strategic work with the president and someone’s got to manage the shop. My alternative was that she was going to hire somebody else to be my boss and I didn’t want that. It was a shiny thing. It was a promotion with the title and more money.
I wanted to support her. I don’t want to come off as ungrateful or entitled or bratty because I got this promotion but it took me out of the day-to-day in the healthcare stuff. When I got that role and a piece of advice I would give to your audience is, I had accountability without responsibility. I was accountable for managing the office but higher Ed lawyers didn’t report to me. They reported to the GC. We would work very closely like, “This isn’t going well with this person or we need so and so to focus on this.” I would have to like nudge or persuade people to do things differently but they didn’t report to me. It would be like, “We’ll see what Carol says.” That was a bummer that made it harder.
You were at USC for quite a long time and you did so many different things there. I’m curious how you went about learning how to do all of those different things. Was it a skill set you feel like you developed in law school? Is it something that over time you’ve learned skills when you’re thrust into a new situation about like, how am I going to bring myself up to speed on this? Not only through managerial roles but also, as you said, you were doing technical work. You were all doing litigation. I know healthcare can involve like regulatory compliance, M&A, and government investigations. There are so many interesting different facets to it, which I’m guessing is one of the reasons why you like it so much. That also means that your expertise is very wide.
An inch deep and a mile wide.
There you go. How do you navigate having such a wide practice area?
The in-house role is about being a business partner. You are an issue spotter and a resource connector. Share on XFor you again for your audience that may be earlier in their career and I think my experience applies for most people who want to be in-house, especially law firm training. You have to be perfect. You have to know the answer. You have to have looked at every case and its derivatives. You have to know everything technically. You cannot do that in an in-house role. You are an issue spotter and a resource connector. It’s OJT, on the job training.
You learn. If I was doing with real estate issue. I have no real estate training but I know we work with this firm. I get so-and-so firm to help me get up to speed. I take their very technical work and I translated it to business people. I take a legal speak and I make get approachable. The piece of advice for your audience is, again the training encourages you to be married to knowing the answer. The in-house training is be curious, be a learner, and seek out other expertise.
You do not have to be the subject matter expert. You are the convener. You are the detective. For each role I had or each project, I would say like, “Do I know enough about this to ask them questions? Do I have a resource who can help me? Do I have a team member that can be the quarterback?” It’s a different skill set.
Allison, I talk to you here like because you’re influencing the in-house leaders of tomorrow there. It’s not about having the right answer. It’s about being able to identify those resources. Managerially, I got a coach in the 2011 or 2012. Even the general counsel, we would work very closely together and talk through things but nobody teaches lawyers how to manage people.
That’s so true. That circles back to the advice you were just giving, which is that you don’t know everything. You can rely on other people, so getting a coach makes sense. We’re not taught how to manage people. We don’t have MBAs. We don’t know what we’re doing, frankly. I think that’s awesome. I love that you call it issues spotting, connecting, or detective. That is so helpful. I’m going to translate some of those words to my class because I do think there is such an emphasis on, “This is your case. You figure it out. You are in this universe. You should know the answer.” In reality, Hallie and I talk about this all the time, we go to each other or friends or people in our networks to get help.
Constantly figuring it out.
Nobody can know everything. I think this advice applies to in-house and outside counsel. It’s good and appropriate to tell people you don’t know the answer. It’s appropriate to say like, “There’s something here. I don’t know. Let me look into it, or let me see if I can find another resource for you.” Again, it’s that first year paper chase. I watched I watched a Legally Blonde and it’s like, that environment where you were expected to be on stage with the answer and then feeling shame if you boggle it. It doesn’t set you up for success in a real job.
It's okay to tell people you don't know the answer. Be curious, be a learner, and seek out other expertise. Share on XI was thinking the same thing in the perfectionism not so many of us have. It can be debilitating, exercising, and curiosity and also saying you don’t know something. Most people and clients appreciate that. I’ve said I don’t know the answer that but I can figure it out and get back to you. It’s hard to say that the first few times but it gets more comfortable when you exercise that skill a little bit.
Advice For New Attorneys Who Want To Go In-House
Stacy, we’re so excited to talk to you about so many different things and because you have had all of this experience in-house. We wonder if you can share a little bit from your perspective as someone who has hired for a lot of different in-house counsel roles and particularly advice for newer attorneys who think they might want to go in-house. What advice would you give them?
I hope that this conversation helps people as their exploring their careers. The in-house role as I said is different from an outside counsel role. It’s not always clear how what the success metrics are. At a law firm, everyone knows points on the board, bill hours, bring in clients, and win. Those are the things and those things aren’t not relevant in-house. As a hiring manager, I think we were talking earlier about like do you have to have a certain number of years of experience? Do you have to have been at a certain type of firm?
Law school doesn't always prepare you for the real world. In-house is not about having all the answers, but about knowing where to find them. Share on XI don’t think those things are true. When I have done recruiting for in-house roles, I usually have a specific skill set I’m looking for or a particular part of what I call a portfolio because as a general counsel, it’s everything. It’s the specialty work that I do as a healthcare lawyer. Its board work, real estate work, and contracts. It’s everything. What is the substantive area where I need a lawyer to hire a lawyer? If you’re putting your resume together to be specific about things that you’ve done like if you were a commercial litigator. To the extent you can say, “I represented Facebook in a privacy case or something,” to give some keywords around nuggets of actual substantive areas that you have expertise in.
I don’t think there’s a number of years that’s required out of school. It is rare and I don’t know that I would hire somebody right out of law school unless maybe if they had interned but that’s just me. I think other GCs may feel differently, depends on the company you’re in. If somebody had worked in a business before because again, going back to what is the in-house role, it is being a business partner. If somebody had a prior career before going to law school in business, that would probably be something that would be attractive to me.
Matching what my needs are in-house against what the candidate’s experience is probably the biggest thing and looking for people who are curious, open, and interested. When I’m interviewing you, I want you to know about my company. I don’t want this to be just flat-footed. “I want an in-house job.” “I want you to ask me questions about what’s in our strategic plan, what are our goals in the next three years, what are the initiatives that the legal department is pushing.”
When interviewing for in-house roles, show genuine curiosity about the company. Ask questions about their strategic plan and goals. Share on XCandidates need to come with a level of their own curiosity to learn. One of the worst interview experiences, I try to let the other person asked a lot of questions. When I say, what questions do you have for me and there’s like 1 or 2. It shows that you’re not that interested. You should have a lot of questions, I think.
Students often ask me like, “Why do the law firms, in-house jobs, anyone who’s interviewing me ask me questions? Isn’t it their job to find out about me?” The curiosity answer is, that’s the thing. That is a skill in a sense because it translates to curiosity in the cases that you’re doing or in the regulatory work that you’re doing or whatever it is, which is something we just don’t talk about as much. That’s always what I tell them like, they want to know just as much as you want to know about them like they want to know about you and why you are interested in that specific job. The curiosity piece is so key.
Stacy, we met via LinkedIn. I had seen your legal department show posts and you were on the Portia Project show, which is something we have gotten to know as well. We connected over just our shared experiences in hosting legal related shows. We’re excited to talk about the Legal Department show that you started in 2023. Tell us about why you started the show.
I had been a guest on the Portia Project show and I know M.C. Sungaila. We were both on the board of women lawyers of Los Angeles for many years. It was so great and I know we’re going to feel so great after we finish this conversation. The experience of having a conversation was so energizing. It was such a deep connection. I’m somebody who likes connecting with people. When we moved from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, it was during COVID and restaurants were open. You didn’t go anywhere. You didn’t see people.
Don't come to an interview flat-footed. Research the company and come prepared with questions. It shows you're interested. Share on XI had that experience with the Portia Project and M.C made it sound easy. She’s like, “I have a company that helps me. It’s so great.” Again, I was dealing with this post-pandemic feeling of being isolated and I was like, “If she can do it, it’s not going to be that bad.” I started thinking about what would I as an in-house lawyer want to know about and what would I want to hear about.
I know all these people and I can start working on it. The goal was to connect with people, to learn something new or learn something either a technical area or a practice pointer to connect with other people, as I said, I felt pretty isolated and ultimately, to grow and to help others. I wanted to showcase. Part of this conversation is showcasing what’s an in-house role. I want to help people understand what that is before and during their careers.
Building Your Network & Why It’s Important
Sometimes, it seems like when you’re in an in-house role, you may be part of a small team. You may be the only one. I imagine that can be a little bit lonely. Not necessarily having someone to go to in your organization to chat about what the work is like or to walk through the legal problems. That’s such a resource for people. One thing that we were excited to talk about was something you’ve talked to a bunch of your guests on the show about building your networks. It sounds like you continue to be able to draw on your network for a gas on the legal department. I wonder what advice or things or reflections you have for our readers, especially newer attorneys in building their network and what that means.
First of all, it’s so important. Relationships are everything. I feel bad with Allison criticizing law school.
A lot of room for improvement. We’re working on it.
It’s set up as a competitive environment. Life isn’t like that. We need each other. We can’t get very far. There’s the saying, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Having a mindset that I want to be a resource for others and I want others to be a resource to me. First, just having a mindset that deprogram yourself from you’re 1L experience and being on stage and all that. My mom even said this, “You’re such a good networker.” First of all, I don’t like the word networker. That sounds gross, but I enjoy connecting with people.
I am very curious. I want to know about people. I want to know about their jobs. I am very bad at small talk. I like to go deep with people. You have to come from a place that you enjoy it. My husband doesn’t like people so I don’t push him into that. First, having a good mindset about it. The episode I did with Michael Melcher, the author of Your Invisible Network. That’s a great book. I would recommend that to everybody. There are amazing tips and very structured exercises for people to do.
One of his suggestions that I was doing and I didn’t realize it at the time, is this technique called a ping, where everybody knows people. You went to law school with people or you did summer with people or you went on vacation. Whatever. It’s to just do a soft touch. Something that you remember about somebody like, “I went by this food truck that we went to years ago and thought of you.”
It’s an gentle outreach. It’s just making a warm authentic connection with somebody and keeping that in your mind about people that you are interested in. I don’t connect with people that I am not genuinely interested in. I’m not like, “I need to know so-and-so, or whatever.” It’s something that is intentional and authentic.
The authentic piece is so key because that’s what makes us human, what makes us curious and what makes us want to connect with people. If you start to force it, that’s when it becomes something that is often not enjoyable, at least in my experience. If you find people that you genuinely want to connect with, that is something that’s not so bad. I am one of those people. Maybe more like your husband.
It took me a little while to realize that I can be my authentic self. I think that I used to be like, “I need to present myself as a lawyer or as someone that’s working in big law.” Something that wasn’t my authentic self. When I shed those layers and let myself be who I am. That’s when I was like, “I like this.” I don’t like pretending to be who I should be in the networking space.
I cringe, Allison sometimes when about our earliest episodes of this show, because we were both working through that feeling and thinking, “We have to be this very professional version of ourselves. We can’t say anything to offend. We can’t say anything outside of what is the accepted path for attorneys or law schools.” We’ve gotten away from that and our conversations are so much better. That’s been a good learning process for me doing this show and learning about that.
It is a way to network or build a network, which I enjoyed. We will certainly link to your entire show, Stacy and then the particular episode with Michael Melcher because in listening to that, I enjoyed how you all talked about building a network of people that aren’t just your friends or people who are the exact same thing as you. Whether that’s job or otherwise. I thought there was some good advice in there about doing that too, which is super important for all of us.
There’s a quote in the book, which we talked a little bit and you mentioned loneliness. I will say the general counsel job in particular can be a little bit lonely but his point is, people are lonelier than they need to be. There can be this fear and apprehension about reaching out or connecting with people. Allison, as you were saying, do I have to present in a certain way or are people are going to think I’m seeking out something or I’m selling something or whatever?
That apprehension is something is worth confronting because everybody feels a little bit lonely. We’re four years out but the pandemic had an effect on all of us. Relearning some of those social skills. We’re all a work in progress on it. I haven’t had an experience and I reach out through people I know like with you connecting directly on LinkedIn. I haven’t gotten a cold shoulder from anybody. People have been thrilled to be connected. People are hungry for connections. I’d encourage people to fight through some of that anxiety and realize, Allison, as you said, you don’t have to show up in a certain way.
That’s so true and that is certainly been such a pleasant surprise for us on the show, too. People genuinely want to connect and are happy to share their stories and their time, which is a cool thing to realize about the legal community.
They want to help.
Deep down, that is what we’re all trying to do as lawyers. That’s why we get into this profession, most of us. I’m curious, Stacy, if there are other things that you have learned from podcasting. We certainly have. As Hallie shared, it’s been a journey to come to where we are now. I’m sure it will still continue to shift and change. That’s one of the fun things about having a show. For you, what are the top things that you’ve learned in doing your show so far?
People have asked me to do like a solo reflections episode, which I’m very nervous about. I don’t know if I’m going to do that or not. I don’t know if this was your experience, but as I have been building the show and designing the show, it helps me be a better business partner to folks because you’re creating something. You’re trying to grow it much like your clients are trying to build or grow their actual business.
For example, you have to have a call to action, let’s say, which I’m terrible at. A call to action could have been for me, go on to my website and subscribe to whatever. Before I did that and I don’t have that as a feature, but I talked to a friend of mine that’s a privacy lawyer. She said, “If you start collecting people’s personal data, you’re going to be subject to all these privacy laws.” I don’t have a sponsor yet. If anyone’s interested and wants to sponsor the Legal Department, please contact me.
She was like, “Do you want to do that?” That question placed me back in my in my chair as an advisor, like, I can see how legals a real downer like when I tell people things. If I give them the legal advice, I can see like, it was not crushing but it was a real like, “That sucks. I don’t want to have to deal with some class action suit for this hobby I’m entertaining.” The learning, just be more down basic about it, the bottom line is, think about you want to give people the legal advice but in a way that is constructive and doesn’t yuck their yum, so to speak.
That’s a huge thing. I think that we can get wrapped up in our day-to-day and think, this is what our job is. We are oftentimes risk-averse people who are there but you’re so right. The messaging around it and how you do it and being cognizant of there’s a larger business here like that may have different goals than exactly what I am delivering in this space. That’s a interesting reflection.
It had nothing to do with the show. It was like, “I’m trying to build this thing.” I was so unexpected that I would have that an insight.
Stacy, you and your show in a much cooler way than we do and that is by asking your guest, what is your pump-up song and we love this so much. We would love to ask the same question of you before we move on to our much more serious wrap of questions. What is your pump-up song?
I have a couple but my work related like solid go-to pump-up song is Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake. I am that woman.
I love that. Speaking of legal things you can and can’t do, I so wish that we could splice in music. We’ve had several songs and I’m like, “It would be awesome if we could get.”
I don’t know if you’re already doing this, Stacy. Forgive me. We can cut this out, but you should make a Spotify playlist of everyone’s pump up song from the show and share it.
I might need some legal advice because I do have that playlist but I didn’t know if I can post it on my website. What can I do? To Allison’s point about the splicing, people have said, “It’d be so great if you could end the show with the clip of the song.” I’m like, “Am I going to infringe on their copyright? Am I going to pay to license?”
We looked into that and unfortunately, it’s such a downer. We also just don’t have the funds to do that. Maybe down the road when we are making show millions week.
It’s coming any day.
Any day now. We can splicing the songs. We could talk offline about the Spotify show but I just love that question. It’s such a fun note to end on.
What Success Means To You
Stacy, we like to ask everyone what success means to them, so we will shift to a slightly more serious question and ask you , what does success mean to you at this point or over time in your career?
That is a hard question.
I know. I’m sorry. We do often preface it by saying it’s not an easy question to end with. Maybe we need to rearrange the order of this but for now, that’s where it lands.
I think success is being happy with what you have.
Perfect answer.
I love that. It’s like also very grounded in the present. It’s easy. As lawyers, we are trained to think a million miles into the future. My husband who’s not aware often says, “How are you thinking so many weeks, months, or years ahead? This is happening now.
My husband, too.
He’s like, right here, right now. I love that. Very grounded in the present.
Stacy, thank you so much for joining us. This was such a fun and wonderful conversation. It’s been so fun to chat with you and to learn more about your show and for joining us on the show.
Thank you and I enjoyed getting to know you guys. It is fun to have brethren in the legal show space, so thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Thank you, Stacy.
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It is due diligence time. Forever and always, I’m going to think about starting a song and not do it but it is due diligence time for our episode with Stacy Bratcher. Allison, we both had similar thoughts about what stuck with us from this conversation with Stacy, so get us started.
We did. We were both just excited about the fact that we got to have a fellow podcaster on our show. We think what Stacy is doing with the Legal Department is so cool. It was fun for us to authentically and organically connect with someone who is also trying to help people in various ways in the legal field through podcasting.
I just love the way that you to connected on LinkedIn and chatted about not even necessarily show things, originally and it organically grew into having her as a guest. She had so much amazing advice in many different realms. Going to the conversation, we were having with Stacy about networking. This was just a very good example of the way that can play out in a super authentic way.
We gave you guys a great example of building your network and how it can happen through the great tool of LinkedIn, which you guys know we do not love social media just because it takes up so much time but I am a huge proponent of LinkedIn. We’ve met so many wonderful people through LinkedIn that we’ve had on the show or have helped us in different aspects of the show recommending guests.
That was how we got to know Stacy. She reached out. I saw that a mutual contact was posting about the Legal Department as a relatively new show and started following her and admiring what she was doing. None of us practice in the same area of law. It couldn’t be more different what we do day-to-day, but sharing the ups and downs of starting a show and the different things that we’ve learned through that process is so fun. It’s nice to be able to share that with someone, share resources, and asked her, how do you do this and what do you think about this? It’s one of the many great parts about having this show.
We are so thankful that Stacy was able to come on and share not only her career journey but also her reflections on what it is like to run a show and the lessons that she’s learned so far through doing that. Please be sure to check out the Legal Department. Even if you do not work in-house or you may be don’t think that’s the path for you. There’s a ton of great advice on there about being a lawyer and being a professional in general that can be helpful to anyone. Please check that out and we’ll see you next time.
See you next time.
Important Links
- Allison Freedman – LinkedIn
- Hallie Ritzu – LinkedIn
- Personal Jurisdiction Show
- Stacy Bratcher – LinkedIn
- Cottage Health
- Legal Department
- Portia Project Show
- Tenet Healthcare
- Network Building Is Essential In The Legal Department: Michael Melcher, Author, Your Invisible Network
- Your Invisible Network
- Spotify – The Legal Department
- Apple – The Legal Department
