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Deep conversations with underrated lawyers.
This is Horam with Horam's Quoram. My guest today is Moez Kaba, the managing partner of the elite trial firm Houston Hennigan. Moez's father drove a cab, and now Moez is one of the most sought after trial lawyers in the country, and he's only 42. We went deep into his trial techniques and the principles that have shaped his career. Here's Moiz.
Khurram Naik:It's great to continue this conversation. I've really enjoyed getting to know you, and I think this episode is it's gonna be a banger. I just I have to say that.
Moez Kaba:Well, you have a lot of confidence in me, so I I hope to be able to live up to at least 25% of your expectation.
Khurram Naik:Okay. So we started you you shared an answer last time, and it's I think of all the things we talked about, I think that's the answer that I keep coming back to because I think it's such a fascinating pivotal moment in your career, and I imagine you would have had a lot of success in some other version of it. But this version and and the the path that this one took is really fascinating. So you made a decision about which firm to join in law school based on a conversation you had on the subway. So can you tell that story?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. Sure. It's it's an interesting anecdote about the role that serendipity plays in one's life even, perhaps in some respects, even more than than talent and or skill or just plain hard work. So when I was in law school, I was studying at Columbia Law School, and I was a a fresh faced law student. And no one in my family had ever gone to college, much less law school.
Moez Kaba:I I didn't know any lawyers. I didn't I had no relationships upon which to rely as one kinda navigates the the law school and post law school world. And I recall I was born and raised in Chicago, and I had an offer from a law firm for the summer in Chicago, a firm that I thought was great for exactly one reason, which is they paid more money than I'd ever seen in my life before per week. And I thought, my God, why would they want They wanna give me money and I can just go back to Chicago. I guess that's what I'm going to do.
Moez Kaba:I also happened to have had an interview and an offer from another firm. That firm was in New York. And I had not heard anything about this firm. I didn't know anything about this firm. But I was talking to a friend when I was going down.
Moez Kaba:I was taking the train from A Hundred And Sixteenth Street downtown, and I was saying, oh, yeah. I think I'm gonna go to this Chicago firm. I I I did just get an offer from this other firm. It's a New York firm. And, you know, I they pay a little bit more than the Chicago firm, but, like, what's the difference?
Moez Kaba:And I said to this my friends, oh, what is that firm? And I said, oh, they're they're called Wachtell Lipton, and I I think they're in Midtown. And this other law student, no idea who he was. I I don't think I caught his name. He says to me at that subway stop, he's like, if you have an offer from Wachtell Lifton to go work there for the summer, that is the firm you need to go work at.
Moez Kaba:And then he gave me a little bit of information about what the firm was and kinda their claim to fame. And entirely on that basis, 100% on the basis of this stranger who seemed to know something about the law firm world, and certainly more than I did, said, That's where I should go work. And that's in fact where I wanted to work. So I I summered there. I ultimately I I had a clerkship.
Moez Kaba:I ultimately went back and began my legal career at that firm, and, you know, the rest is history, as they say.
Khurram Naik:Are you so you you don't know who that student was?
Moez Kaba:No idea. He was I I do I know he was a three l.
Khurram Naik:Sure. That makes sense. That'd really weird if it's a one l. I'll tell you, hey. Yeah.
Khurram Naik:Well, okay. So let's say you run into this guy. You're, like, you're a Columbia alumni event, and this is Diamond Plaza. We run into the guy. What are you gonna say to him today?
Moez Kaba:First of all, I'm gonna say he looks great despite the passage of time, because that's a nice thing to say to Yep. Always good It's always good to start by saying something nice about people that feels validating for them. You know, I actually the interesting thing about it is I think it's a lesson in being bold in some ways. He didn't know who I was, and I could have had a very negative reaction to some guy giving me unsolicited career advice. But in doing that, I thought in him doing that, he really unknowingly, in in many respects, kinda changed the trajectory of my post law school career.
Moez Kaba:I mean, I I very well could be sitting in Chicago today, working at a law firm in Chicago. Many wonderful law firms in Chicago, by the way. Many, many, many qualifications. Somebody Brett's in Chicago. Yes.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. Exactly. I bet you if I named the firm that I was thinking about going, you would not be able to recognize it because it's not one of the the kind of the premier firms that we often associate with the great city of Chicago. But my point being, like, that one kind of unsolicited little piece of advice he offered me for what he had which he had no reason to do, really, I think, had had such a great impact on me. And so I I would probably just tell him the story, and I I don't think he would realize realize what he did.
Moez Kaba:And I my my suspicion, a strong one at that, is he would probably look at me and say, who are you, and why are you talking to me?
Khurram Naik:Right. Okay. So you mentioned serendipity, mentioned boldness. How do you feel like you've incorporated that premise of boldness? What over time, you know, you're so new and and still trying to figure things out, and then over time, I'm assuming you got bolder and bolder over time.
Khurram Naik:So tell me about that virtue over time for you.
Moez Kaba:Oh, sure. I think that a large part kind of going A large part of of my success has been traversing kind of uncharted terrain, at least uncharted for me personally. I have said this before. You know, I my dad was a cab driver. My parents were undocumented for a large part of my early life.
Moez Kaba:They they came they came over here from Pakistan and and overstayed their visa and then ultimately got amnesty in 1986. So I I didn't really have an obvious pathway to get from basically high school through like a professional career. And I think that I think you have to really you have to be bold in so many different steps of your life as you're trying to achieve something worthy of South Asian. So like one of the things you often think about is worthy of your family's name or your father and grandfather's legacy, which sounds more patriarchal than I intended to be. But look.
Moez Kaba:Whether it was even the decision to go to college was something that was could be perceived as bold. In fact, it was by my high school college counselor who told me that I shouldn't go to college. I should go to a vocational school. And then to go on to law school, I picked New York. I picked a law school in New York City, because it's a city that I'd always admired, never been to.
Moez Kaba:To go do a clerkship, which was something that I'd not really understood the value of until I did it. I just somebody you know, people were said in law school, if you can get a clerkship, you should go clerk. And I thought, okay. That's what I should do then. Obviously, coming back to New York going to Wachtell.
Moez Kaba:But even ultimately starting the firm that we started now almost ten years ago, Houston Hennigan, was a bold move. I mean, we had we were a group of partners at a well established firm. And I I just made partner, you know, the a year earlier. But there was a group of really outstanding lawyers and mentors and people I admired who wanted us kind of go off on our own and see if we could create something new, which is what we did when we launched our firm. So I tried to incorporate in my own personal development just this being bold, taking risks, believing in yourself, and believing in people around you.
Moez Kaba:And I think that's worked out so far so good. But of course there's aspects of being bold that are incredibly important as a trial lawyer. Finding your voice in front of a judge or a jury is probably one of the most important things that you can have as a trial lawyer. And then using that voice to compellingly tell your client's story in ways that are simple and understandable and, to some extent, relatable regardless of how complex the case may be, I think comes from being bold and confident in your skills.
Khurram Naik:So I wonder if I don't know if you see it this way, but is the fact that, you know, none of this was ever gonna be fee from the path you're on, you know, this is a land of opportunity, so this is where this can happen. But can doesn't mean it's feasible. So nothing about this path that you've obtained that you've gone on and and achieved was likely to happen given this the constraints you're operating under. So do you feel like there's a possibility that the fact that you didn't even know what wasn't possible made you bolder? Like, I didn't even know that I couldn't do that.
Moez Kaba:Oh, for sure. I mean, I just there's this really interesting phenomenon where I think you can think to yourself like, I don't see anyone that looks like me in this position. And you can think to yourself, maybe I don't belong in that position. Or
Khurram Naik:you can
Moez Kaba:think to yourself, wow, that means there's room for me in that position. And I have tended to be the latter rather than the former. And yeah, I mean, it's been perhaps like a foolish level of confidence. But from my perspective, I I've always thought it it's important that, you know, we as as lawyers, we as people, we as first generation Americans or the children of immigrants or whatever whatever we may be, have a lot of confidence in creating the space for us, for ourselves, and then in occupying that space. Never believing that there are only a certain number of seats at the table, and you have to displace the other person that's at that table.
Moez Kaba:You just pull up your chair, but just add something of value. I think that's just really I think it's really important, and I think that it's what I view as part of my job in my role as managing partner at my law firm, and just as kind of a someone who's now practiced law for for a while, is to to continue bring adding seats to that table and filling it with other people who are worthy and who are diverse and who bring their own perspective and life experiences to the practice.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Could we go back to, you know, I think part of that story on the subway, an obvious part is the serendipity aspect. What do you see as another serendipitous, but inflection point in your career?
Moez Kaba:I guess the way I got to this group of lawyers that that where we launched our firm with whom I I launched our firm, Houston Hennigan, was itself in some respects serendipitous. So let me be clear, like, despite my feeling like, oh, I can fill that space because I don't see anybody else there. I'm fully, fully aware that luck has played a huge part in my career. There are so many, many talented lawyers out there. There are many, many talented trial lawyers out there.
Moez Kaba:There are many, many talented South Asian lawyers out there. But a little bit of the right place at the right time, I think, has always kind of been in my favor. And I remember back when when I was at my old firm as an associate, one of one of my partners today called me and said, hey. I'm working on this case with another partner here. And the partner that called me, his name is Marshall Camp, and the other partner he was working with, his name is John Houston, who's one of the main partners at our firm.
Moez Kaba:And Marshall said to me, like, you've never worked with John, but like, is an interesting case. You should work on it. And I said, oh, okay. Yeah. That sounds great.
Moez Kaba:I'll make time to work on it. John then called me and said, oh, I'm like looking forward to working with you. By the way, there's a deposition on Thursday of the key expert of the other side. Can you fly out and do that? And I did it.
Moez Kaba:That case went to trial. I got trial witness I did trial witnesses at that trial. We won that trial. It was a very profile trial, and kind of all of those pieces all fit together. I continued working with that group a lot more.
Moez Kaba:We continue taking cases to trial together. All of that worked out for me because of two things. Because Marshall decided to give me a call that one that day, I happened to pick up the phone that day, and I happened to decide, yeah, I'll make time to do this despite working on, you know, some other matters at that time. And so in part, right, that's that's being at the right place at the right time. In part, it's a product of being willing to just say yes and do the work.
Moez Kaba:And again, making yourself available to say, I can handle this along with all of the other things I'm doing. And that, I really believe that trial, it was a federal jury trial, a month long federal jury jury trial in the Southern District Of New York that we that we won. It was sort of in a a a kind of a key anchor of my kind of growth and development as a trial lawyer. And working with the people that I worked with in that case who I continue to work with today, now almost fifteen years later.
Khurram Naik:What was different about that work environment compared to your previous work environments?
Moez Kaba:We there was a lot of there was a lot of friendship in in in that trial team. So trials are the just these incredibly intense and testing environments. It is so important when you go to trial, that you go to trial with people that you trust, and that you, I believe, that you like. And that is part of what makes our firm really special, because we go to trial a lot, and we also like each other a lot, and we trust each other, and we know that we're gonna have each other's backs, and we know that, if examining a key witness, I can talk to my colleagues, and they'll give me great ideas to make that examination go really well. Like you're all rowing on the same boat in the same direction, and you're taking turns kinda putting in the hardest work.
Moez Kaba:And that environment, that trial was just like a wonderful example of that. And I was an associate. Like, at that time, I wasn't a partner. There were multiple partners on that case. I was an associate.
Moez Kaba:But every every key witness, every key decision, every key motion, we talked about it together, and I was just entrusted to handle, you know, multiple trial witnesses. I started off that case with three trial witnesses, and ultimately, during the trial, got two more added. You know, they would just became this really wonderful thing where you prove yourself, you get to prove yourself some more. But it was in an environment not where I felt like I was, constantly being kind of put into tough spots. It was an environment where I felt like the team is with me and they're gonna help me and they're gonna support me.
Moez Kaba:And they're gonna make my examinations the best examination spots. They're gonna make my arguments. They're gonna push me on my arguments and make sure I really crystallize the legal and factual issues I wanna present to the court. So that was just a really wonderful trial experience, and it was a really wonderful way for me to learn about these new people who, like I said, I've now been working with for fifteen years.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. And so how many trials and things you've had at this point?
Moez Kaba:I think a dozen or so, give or give or take.
Khurram Naik:And how many of them have been lead trial counsel?
Moez Kaba:Just in the last two years, it's been like six or seven, actually, in the last two and a half years. But the the vast majority of them. And the way we practice is we typically have two lead trial counsels in our cases. Cases. And so all of the the trials that I've had in the last, you know, two, three, four years, I've been me and another one of our partners have been the lead trial council.
Khurram Naik:Wait. So let me make sure I got this right. So the practice total number of trials that you've been to have been about 12. And so, like, basically, half of all the trials you've ever done have been in the past few years. Yes.
Khurram Naik:That seems remarkable.
Moez Kaba:If you ask my husband, it certainly does since he I also happen to have a five year old son, and so he has done a lot of the heavy lifting on the parenting front. But yeah. So one thing to keep in mind is when we launched Houston Hennigan, we launched it because we wanted to take on those cases that have a higher yield to trial. And so that, a product of that is going to trial a lot more. I mean, year, we're in March.
Moez Kaba:I have trials scheduled for May, July, September, October, November, and December. That's for this year, and we'll see. And trials are being scheduled already for next year. And so that's kind of our practice, and that's what we We love that. We thrive on that.
Moez Kaba:And that's the kind of people we attract to practice at our firm, is those people who want to be in that environment working kinda shoulder to shoulder at 2AM, trying to come up with that last, the last key cross examination question that's gonna be the mic drop moment.
Khurram Naik:Well, you know, I could tell that you get very just from your bio age, could tell you're very energized. Somebody else, another trial another lawyer, you may be even a trial lawyer if they call themselves that, might just kind of have some sort of, you know, some dejection or something like that in describing that trajectory, but but I I can tell you're excited about it. And you mentioned cross examination. Do you feel like that's the focal point? Do you feel like that's
Moez Kaba:the thing you really hold in
Khurram Naik:on a trial? Like, is that where you feel like you really show your your merit? Like, just or is that just a random example, or is that really what you kinda hone in on in the trial?
Moez Kaba:No. It's it it is it is kinda random, but it's one of, like, my favorite things to do. So there are I I I like all of the aspects of trial. Right? I I love I love giving the opening.
Moez Kaba:You know? I love having my witnesses putting on my witnesses so that they can kind of really give it give life to the case, and give life to our position. I love closings, but I also, I think cross examinations are really fun. And you really are It is your moment to really show the jury that even the other side's witnesses are supporting your part of the case. I feel like with a great cross examination, you can win or lose a case with a great cross examination.
Moez Kaba:And I think that's just a fun, and it's challenging. It's the thing you have the least control over, right? Like, when I do when I deliver an opening, I know what the opening's gonna be. I've put it together with my like, my team and I have put it together. When I do a closing or when any of us that does a closing at a trial, we know more or less, it's in a more compressed timeframe, but you know what you're gonna say, no one is interrupting you.
Moez Kaba:When you're doing your direct examination of a witness, like any trial lawyer worth their salt knows exactly what's gonna be happening. Cross examinations, you don't have any of that. There is no safety net. Your safety net is like your wit, how quickly you can turn, you know, maybe an unexpected answer in your favor, and how good and tight your impeachment is. And so that yeah.
Moez Kaba:I mean, that's that's really that that's fun. And some of my kind of fondest memories of my trials have been have been cross examinations.
Khurram Naik:Which trial that you've been a part of do you find yourself revisiting again and again? What's the trial that you keep on thinking about again
Moez Kaba:and again over the years? I think about all of them, really. I mean, feel like I learn something in every trial and I learn it from the jury, or I learn something from my colleagues or from the judge. We've had some really great judges that we've been really lucky to try cases in front of. But the one of the ones that comes to mind a lot, though, is a a side case that we did for a pharmaceutical company that was accused of fueling, not my words, but fueling the opioid epidemic.
Moez Kaba:And we the plaintiffs, which were various municipalities in the state of California, were suing for in the neighborhood of $50,000,000,000, with a B. And it was our client, and then three other pharmaceutical companies, and each pharmaceutical company had its own council, and we were representing our client in a case that essentially everyone said the pharmaceutical companies are gonna lose, because all of the defendants were losing these cases all over the country. And we took our case to trial. We had a client who really believed in us, and believed in our ability to kinda reveal the truth, the factual truth, but also the legal framework that was appropriate for considering these sorts of cases. And we won that trial, that was a three month trial.
Moez Kaba:And at the end of it, we won, and I think it's still the only, or one of the only defense side verdicts for pharmaceutical companies in the sprawling, many thousands of opioid addiction cases that were filed. And that was a very challenging case, and it was a tough trial. It was taxing because of its length. It was the number of witnesses, the amount of paper, the significance of the issues. But as a trial lawyer, the way we got to put on that case was really, I thought was a a great lesson in winning a particularly tough case.
Moez Kaba:Tough on the facts and tough on the law.
Khurram Naik:What's, like, the moment though that you keep on replaying? Like, is there some maybe it's not from that trial, but a trial. Like, is there a
Moez Kaba:Oh, yeah. There was yeah. I cross examined the government's the plaintiffs, the people of the state of California, that is, their key witness, who was an expert on on addiction. And I did her I I crossed her. She had been on the stand for quite a long time and kind of, you know, repeating and emphasizing and substantiating the points that the government had been making throughout this month's long trial.
Moez Kaba:She was a very highly regarded expert, a very highly regarded addiction specialist. And I sort of methodically, at least with respect to my client, we kind of methodically undermined all of her opinions about our client. And we ended that cross examination. And I get credit for it because I'm the guy who got to ask the questions, but it was really a team of wonderful lawyers that I work with who kind of put it all together. But I ended that cross examination by asking her whether she would agree with me that everything she has just described about the ills of opioid medications, we should take with a grain of salt because she's an addiction specialist.
Moez Kaba:And so her opinions are necessarily biased. Because she only sees the people that have the problems, but not people who have the benefits Mhmm. Of opioids. And you can imagine that her, like any expert, would would be totally taken aback by that and say, how are you talking about? I'm not biased.
Moez Kaba:I'm presenting the fact. I'm presenting the science. Which was her response? She said, I'm not biased at all. At which point, what we had done is we had unearthed a clip of her on another podcast actually, Fresh Air, where she was interviewed by Terry Gross while she was promoting a book.
Moez Kaba:And Terry Gross had asked her this very question, which is, because you are an addiction specialist and you only see people who are addicted and not people who benefit, wouldn't you agree that you are biased? And her response to that was, I'm totally biased. And that, I I replay that because there are so many lessons from that one exchange, including the fact that it it was kind of the cherry on top of a cross examination that completely undermined her opinions. It it was, It's not just substantively helpful, but it's also helpful just because it's such obvious impeachment of something that she just said. But there are other lessons about that from the perspective of being a trial lawyer, which is you have to know when to sit down.
Moez Kaba:And after I said, please play the clip, that was it. I smiled. I said, thank you for your time. I have no further questions. And I sat down.
Moez Kaba:And that was the lasting impression of that exam. And then the other lesson in all of that is also you have to know, when you are thinking of cases like a trial lawyer, you are not planning for summary judgment, right? Obviously, if you can get summary judgment, you should try to get it. But you're always thinking about the trial. What am I gonna say when I'm in front of the fact finder?
Moez Kaba:And how am I gonna have the most impact? And that was an example of something that we deliberately held back from deposition so that no one would be prepared for it. Even my client wasn't prepared for it. My client, after we got off, the client was obviously very happy, but the client was like, I was so nervous. I was like, where is he going?
Moez Kaba:Of course, she's not gonna answer this question. But then they say, but we had so much trust that we knew that you knew exactly where you were going. But it's an example of kind of the way the perspective you bring to cases is a little bit different when you're thinking about, like, at the end of the day, you know, I'm standing in front of somebody and that person's under oath, there's a there's somebody or some group of people that are gonna be making a decision live about that person's credibility.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I love the example. And I love the technique because by definition, it's not somebody opposing counsel can plan for. If there's something you're holding back, just you just can't know what they're holding back.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. That's exactly right. And it was interesting because in that in that case, we had great know, very, very, very good, very talented opposing counsel. And they they were. I mean, were grasping.
Moez Kaba:They got up and they said, well, they say it to the expert, well, mister Kaba didn't play the rest of that clip, did he? That was the response. Of course, I know I love the rest of the clip. I wanted to play the rest of the clip, but it wasn't as punchy as I well, I wanted to end with a punch. Right?
Moez Kaba:I didn't wanna end with the monologue. And so they said, your honor, we wanna play the rest of the clip. And I got up and smiled. I said, no objection. And the rest of the clip was her saying, yes, for many people, opioid medications are incredibly helpful.
Moez Kaba:Like, it was literally the point we were making. And so it is. Don't look, it doesn't happen in every case, but you try to find these opportunities in your cases to kind of outwit, out lawyer, out persuade the other side. And that was an example in that case, which, like I said, everybody was essentially writing the kind of everybody's writing the story about how they lost it.
Khurram Naik:Right. Right.
Moez Kaba:That everybody turned around and had to write the story of how they won it.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. Did you have any impression that opposing counsel is already familiar with that interview?
Moez Kaba:Not at all.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. So they just totally winged it and thought, I'll roll the dice and maybe there's something favorable here. Okay.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. I I I'm sure they quickly tried to listen to it. Sure. And said, oh, they it was cut off because a lot of people's natural instinct on things and I I see this a fair bit at trial too where, you'll read an excerpt of a Q and A from a deposition to impeach the witness, and a lot of people's natural excerpts like, Your Honor, they should read the full response, because it's like instinctive. You feel like, I've gotta say something.
Moez Kaba:And sometimes you it's better you're better off saying nothing. You're you're better off just letting it be, because sometimes the full response is worse for you than just the part that was excerpted.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. How about have you been on the other side of that equation where you've had somebody, you know, had posed a challenging question on cross, and then you had to redirect, and you feel like you resuscitated the point?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. I think so one of the things that we try to do, another this is, like, turning into kind of trying cases, the Houston Henningen style, I guess. But one of the things we really try to do with our direct witnesses is we try to cross them harder than they will ever be crossed at trial. So that takes a lot of work and it requires, you know, the best I always tell people, the best compliment that our team gets after preparing a witness for trial is when they get off the sand and they're like, wow, you guys were much tougher. We love that.
Moez Kaba:And so a part of that is you try to predict where the other side is gonna go, and then you have redirect ready for when the other side goes there. And sometimes, lucky for us, we worked very hard at that to make it work. And look, sometimes it does. Sometimes you just have something bad that you just have to take. You have to own it as witness.
Moez Kaba:You have to accept it, but then you have to explain why it doesn't matter for the purposes of this case. And that's the better approach. It's the better approach is not you don't wanna seem evasive and you don't wanna lack you don't wanna lose credibility in front of the jury. So sometimes you just you take it in the chin, but you help the jury see, but it's not a knockout.
Khurram Naik:You know, it's funny. I'm just realizing somebody on LinkedIn had posed questions lately. What's something what's something you you you've learned as a lawyer that you use in everyday life? And just just as you say there are now, I didn't have a good answer then. Like, I couldn't think of a good exam.
Khurram Naik:I know there's gonna be several things, but now I realize what I do is I say, you know, just in everyday life, I just say, let's assume that's true. Even if that's true, and then you proceed. It's just Yeah. Whatever. Yeah.
Khurram Naik:So that's a cool technique.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. I also just think I think it goes the other way too. Right? Like, what's something that that you you hold true to for everyday life that applies
Khurram Naik:Oh, that's a good one.
Moez Kaba:More force as a lawyer. And I think, like, having integrity and credibility really matters. And one of the things that I often think about and we talk about here is there are basically three people that the jury sees throughout an entire trial. It's the judge, it's you, and it's the lawyer on the other side. And as much as the credibility for the witness matters, the witnesses may be on the stand for a day, right, in month long trial.
Moez Kaba:The jury sees you every day. And so you've got, every day, you've got to earn and maintain your credibility. And by you stretching too far, or trying to get your witness to stretch too far, or being unfair to a witness on cross examination, you're eating into that credibility. So you wanna keep it high from your opening on forward. You wanna keep your credibility to maximum.
Moez Kaba:Not because juries just be like, I like that lawyer more, I believe that lawyer more, therefore they win no matter what the evidence is, but because you can only hurt your client's case by stretching your credibility. And I just think that's a that's you know, you always try to be that that person in real life, but that's how you should be in the courtroom too. I think it's really important.
Khurram Naik:You mentioned earlier this concept of of finding your own voice through trial and finding your own style. And, you know, for whatever reason, what popped my head was, you know, with the Beatles, John Lennon, if I remember right, said, you know, when I first started, you know, you know, as a musician, I I really just wanna be like Chuck Berry. I just so I was just, like, singing like Chuck Berry, and then he worked with this really skilled producer who just really said, like, go in that booth and, like, I want you to sing this song like you would and just really train him to find his own voice in that way. What's the process like for you as a trial owner? Like, do you feel like has there been some consistent practice that you've used that have steered you in the right direction?
Khurram Naik:Is there some moment you recall, or some trial where you feel like, hey, I just made a breakthrough in discovering my approach, my style? Tell me about that.
Moez Kaba:It's it's really it's it's really been a process of working on it and refining it trial after trial. And there's I've I've been really lucky. I I mentioned this earlier. I've seen some just wonderful lawyers, and I've seen the way they work, I've seen their style, I've seen their approach, I've seen what works and what hasn't worked for them. And I try to embody some of those principles into kind of my approach.
Moez Kaba:But then every trial, it gets better. Your voice gets sharper, your personality, like your approach to things gets a little bit stronger. And so for me, it's been kind of looking at other people and then saying like, who am I? Who is my personality? What is my real personality?
Moez Kaba:And look, everybody tempers their personality a bit for trial. But trials are long and they're arduous, and you cannot hide who you are in that. The true you is going to come out in some way. So there are lawyers on our team that are super effective because they are very, they're methodical. It's very militaristic in some way.
Moez Kaba:Like, one, two, three, four. Their tone is pretty flat. Their back and forth is like a game, is like Pong. Right? It works really well.
Moez Kaba:If everybody on the team did that, it's not gonna work really well. Yeah. That's great point. So I'm you could probably tell just based on this conversation. There's a little bit more flavor, a little bit, like, because we're since we're this is Spondy Blur, I guess, like, there's a little more spice in in my in my presentation style.
Moez Kaba:You have to know when to moderate that. Like, you have to know when to pull that back and you have to know when to turn it up. And, you know, my voice changes a little bit more. My I I tend to smile more when I feel like there's a there's a good point that we just made. Not because I'm, like, happy about it, which I am, but because I want the jury to see you.
Moez Kaba:Sometimes the jury doesn't know there's been a great point made. Right? They're like, wait. I wanna go back and listen to that. Why was Mr.
Moez Kaba:Cabo smiling? Right. Right? So there's there's a little bit more of that flavor in my style. I'll tell you that that first jury trial that we had, had four, when I was this is when I was an associate, and I had had these witnesses.
Moez Kaba:And the forewoman came to me after the trial, and she said to me again, this is nothing something. She said, I just I just loved when you were up there. And I said, oh, that's so nice of you. And she said, yeah. She said, you were just so you're so sharp and spicy.
Moez Kaba:And I it's not all it doesn't always work, and you definitely don't wanna always be spicy, but I just I just took that because I was like, you know, I think I was a little bit spicy at some moments during that trial. But you can't start off that way. That's my point. You have to build the credibility to get there. Right?
Moez Kaba:At the beginning, you just have to be the kind of be perceived as the truthful teller of the facts to the jury. But then, yeah, you're like, who you are comes through. And I think everybody would say that there's a little bit more flare in in my style, but it's it's been okay so far.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I I I was in trial opposite of Bill Lee at Wilmer, and he had that more, like, that flat style you're describing and more like Pong has such a great description for it. I didn't get it. I just had to believe that everyone said this is a really effective style. So I was so glad you said that, you know, hey.
Khurram Naik:Like, there's there's different styles at work. There's not any one. And I think that's really good advice. I mean, you know, I don't know if you consider Wok To A Big Firm. Of course, it it punches outside of its class.
Khurram Naik:But in a truly big firm, I think, you know, the process is a lot more about standardization and having, you know, kind of formulas. And, like, you know, everyone's expected to do, hey. You know, you're supposed to be equally good at discovery as you are at, you know you know, in fact, discovery and expert discovery and briefing and and and, you know, all these different aspects of of of where to be good at all of them. And and kind of, like, you know, more of a standardized, you know, presentation side thing. And so, yeah, it's interesting to hear that, you know, hey.
Khurram Naik:Really just you you gotta you gotta mix it up and and do your own thing. And sounds like very early on, you got some feedback that, hey. Doing your own thing, you know, backed by substance like you were saying and and earning it, it pays off.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. And I you know, it's a really good point that we've kind of navigated to at this point, right, which is when you don't see people like you doing the things that you want to do, you kind of just pick someone else, and you're like, maybe that's the way it ought to be done. And you can have a tendency to want to lose a bit of who you are to match who you think you ought to be. And it takes some I'll park it back to something we were talking about. It takes some boldness to say, no, I think I'm gonna be who I am.
Moez Kaba:I'm gonna deploy my personality in the right way, but I'm not gonna be a lesser version of me. If I have some tonal flares, I need to make them work for my client and for what I'm saying to the jury. So like, yeah, we're all professionals. You have to come into things with the right approach, and you have to know what environment you're in, what context you're in. But think it's really important to be true to who you are, and your background, and your perspective, and that our juries reflect a true rich diversity of the communities in which we're living.
Moez Kaba:And their experiences and what they bring to the table and how they react to things, right, is very important. And if everybody's, you know, if everybody's singing the same song in the same tune at the same time, there's not there's nothing for people to latch onto that might be like, oh, that that's an interesting point. I might be wanna pay more attention to that. So I I I think, like, a the best analogy I can think for for, like, a really effective trial team is an orchestra where there are different instruments, but they all kinda come together in harmony. And each of us is our instruments.
Moez Kaba:And I guess my point being, if you play the violin, like, if that's your thing, just play the violin. Just do it really, really well. You don't have to play the trombone because everybody else is playing the trombone. Right? And I think that for people like us and for South Asian lawyers, kind of we may have our own styles, we may have things that we bring to our approach and delivery from our backgrounds or upbringings, whatever it may be.
Moez Kaba:Like, I would just urge people not to lose that. Just make that work for you in in the context in in in a trial context.
Khurram Naik:You know, you mentioned so, of course, you've had this relationship with John Huston and, you know, so now you are the managing partner at at, you know, the firm where he's a named partner. And, you know, I I can imagine if if he wanted to keep the firm in his vision, you know, and just run it the way that he wants you, he would just remain matching partners. There's a reason why you're a managing partner. So clearly, are adding some you're you're playing some instrument or something too indifferent than John. You know, you've kind of emphasized the ways that you guys have come up together and trained together.
Khurram Naik:What are the departures or or different styles, either to trial work or or managing a firm from from John?
Moez Kaba:So interestingly, so John has never been our managing partner. Brian Hennigan, the other part of Houston Hennigan, was our managing partner for our first eight years. I like to describe our partnership as like the US Senate, in that everyone has the same boat. We try to do a lot of things by consensus in terms of our approach to the firm. And the managing partner basically is like one among many, but, you know, yes, you, in some respects, can set the agenda, and yes, you have a level of influence perhaps that other because the partners elect the managing partner.
Moez Kaba:Right? And so they entrust you with making key decisions for the firm and opining on things that will that matter to the practice, that matter to the people, that matter to our contributions to the profession. And, you know, John, Brian, so many of the partners so many of my partners here, I can name name all of them because they all add something pretty unique to our practice, and they add something I think that is really helpful for our clients. They've all been mentors for me, even the ones that are more junior to me in many ways. Like, try to go into every case with them, and I've worked with all of them, with an open mind to learn something about how they wanna do things or what they think works.
Moez Kaba:John in particular has been just a wonderful example of being a successful trial lawyer. He's been doing it for longer than I've had, and he's had really wild success. And he has, in so many instances, created, you know, what I told you earlier about bringing a seat to the table, he has brought that seat to the table for me. And so I just We're not just partners, not just, you know, is he the name partner, I'm the managing partner of this firm. Not just have we been at the firm from our founding and growing it together, but we are also really close friends.
Moez Kaba:And that's what makes the practice so much fun. Like I always tell him like, I wanna do every trial. Like, let's do every trial together. It's not possible just because we have so many cases and so many clients, and I gotta do some, he's gotta do some, Marshall and Allison and Doug and Vicky, all of Christy and Joe, they all have to do some on their own. But it's fun.
Moez Kaba:It's it's really fun to practice law when you're doing it with people that you considered friends and and and mentors and just good people. And so that that's I think I think that's part of it. But, yeah, I I anybody anybody who's seen us in in action, I think, will tell you we have different styles. They just happen to complement and work well together.
Khurram Naik:So, yeah, I I've heard a lot about the, you know, the the successes you've had at trial, but tell me about some of the the more challenging moments. So tell me about, you know, was there and didn't hear maybe it was in the first trial, maybe it's another trial. What what's the moment that you had the most fear, or anxiety, or you had your heart in your throat? What's the moment in which you felt that at a trial? Or have you never felt that?
Moez Kaba:I think, well, no, I mean, I certainly have felt that. And I don't know if it's I don't think it's fear, but I think it's concern. And if you are not concerned or kind of spun up before you're going to trial, then we should be really thinking about what you're doing. Because I have that feeling in every trial. I have that feeling every day.
Moez Kaba:Every day I walk into that courtroom, I have like a knot in my stomach, because I'm like, oh my God, I want like, this is what's gonna drive me to make sure this day goes really, really well. Right? And so that happens every single time. I have I I was talking to one of my associates the other day who was like, oh my god, you seem so comfortable in court. You seem so comfortable, you know, doing this, arguing this, or taking this witness or whatever.
Moez Kaba:And I said, wow. Like, that's like, I'm I'm putting on a good show because every every day, every time you know, I took a deposition two days ago of the key witness for for the other side in a case. And I had a knot in my stomach throughout the entire deposition because I was like, I gotta get this. I I, like, I really need these clean admissions, which we got. But, you know, it's it's a part of what drives at least me.
Moez Kaba:And yes, it is probably unnecessarily stressful because I do not have it in me to turn it off and say, whatever happens will happen. Right? Like, I just don't have that skill. I don't and my husband says I don't have that setting on my dial. But I think it's what makes I think it's what made me, at least in some respects, So driven, I guess, is this desire constantly be like, okay, these 10 things gonna go wrong, so let's make sure we're prepared for none of those 10 things to go wrong.
Moez Kaba:I had a I I mean, just going back to that first trial, I had my very first witness of that trial, who was the first witness of the trial, was not a witness we controlled. It was a a third party witness. And he said something that was completely unexpected and not very good for us. And I in that moment, it was, like, my first trial witness, right, as an associate with, like, all these people watching. You know, I had a knot in my stomach, but I had thought through, like, okay.
Moez Kaba:I'm gonna move to the next thing. I'm not gonna dwell on it. Why am I not dwelling on it? Because nobody else probably noticed Mhmm.
Khurram Naik:What
Moez Kaba:happened there, what he said. And I can't I have no control over him. He's gonna say whatever he thinks he wants to say. Mhmm. But I learned two lessons.
Moez Kaba:One of them is that you just as important as it is to know what questions to ask is to know what questions not to ask of a witness at trial. And that was a lesson I learned in that moment where I got out as a young associate, a little ahead of my skis. But the other one is, there's nothing so fatal that happens. And if you move on, everybody else moves on too. And, you know, the part like, the people I was working with, my team knew what happened, but their reaction to it was like, that's great.
Moez Kaba:We handled that really well. Like, nobody even I don't even remember the question and answer anymore. Right? Like, that's how insignificant it end up being in the grand scheme of things. But, you know, you use every one of these opportunities to learn something.
Moez Kaba:And you learn from your colleagues. You learn from your client. You you learn from the other lawyers. That's that's what I
Khurram Naik:I try to do still. I think it's true that you've never lost a trial, least as lead trial counsel, but I think that aside, think maybe never lost a trial, period.
Moez Kaba:Knock on wood. Yes. That's that is correct. But but, you know, I think every great trial lawyer, you can't be afraid of losing. Have to give it your all to win, but you can't be afraid of the loss, because then you're never gonna It is actually something I talk to John about a lot, and we talk about amongst our partnership a lot.
Moez Kaba:We take on really, really tough cases. That's kind of the point. That's our practice. So if you're gonna take on the tough cases, your willingness to take them on means that you have to be prepared, that it's not gonna all go your way, but you gotta fight every day, every single day to make it go your way. So the real lesson for me, I think the real lesson for folks who are maybe listening is you can't be afraid to lose because then you're not gonna take on the hard cases and really challenge yourself.
Moez Kaba:And some losses are inevitable, but let's put them off for as long as possible.
Khurram Naik:Well, okay. So I've never broken a bone. Right? And so, you know, it's really common for kids to break bones. And so now at this point, the idea of breaking a bone sounds like terrifying to me.
Khurram Naik:I'm just like, I can't wrap my head around what they'll look like. And to your point, I think, you know, you can't the wrong reaction should be, well, now I just have to stay in my bedroom for the rest of my life. Like, obviously, I have to expose myself to stressors, consistent stressors to challenge my body, strengthen my bones, all that stuff. But I guess I don't particularly have a very good game plan for what would I break my shin. Like, how am I gonna react to that?
Khurram Naik:You know? Because I'm sure it'd be, like, an emotional thing. Like, is my leg ruined and and whatever variety of things. How do you you're a preparer, and it seems to me one of the preparer things you prepare for is losing a trial. So how do you like, what is your mindset or how you frame that?
Khurram Naik:Like, you know, how how are you prepared for that?
Moez Kaba:Because you have to accept that not everything is in your control, and a judge How
Khurram Naik:are you doing it? Like, how how are we Look.
Moez Kaba:The most important thing is feeling good about what you've done in that courtroom. Mhmm. Right? So the most important thing is every single day is never getting never finding yourself content with just having had a good day. Mhmm.
Moez Kaba:You want you don't wanna just have a good day. You wanna have a good week, and you wanna have a good month. Right? One of the things we talk about here is we wanna win every day. We wanna try to go in and win every day.
Moez Kaba:And and that's why, you know, even after some of the hardest parts of trial are in the middle of it, where you feel like, man, we killed it for the last two weeks. And okay, we can see, you know, by the time you get towards the end, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it's that middle part where you're like, wow, we really killed it for the last two weeks. But then you're like, we cannot rest on that. We gotta kill it this week too, right?
Moez Kaba:We cannot let go when you get into kind of the drudgery of the trial. You know, lot of lawyers kind of put witnesses into the middle that could go up, down, left, or right, you know, sideways. But you can't can't get lazy in a trial intellectually, creatively, strategically, analytically, and and kinda continuing to push through that. And at the end of the day, what we talk about with our trial teams, like what we look, you know, we get around and we talk together. We talk, every night we talk, at the of a trial, we'll talk and we say, Did we feel like we put on our best case?
Moez Kaba:If you feel that way, then you you can be more prepared for it. It it hurts and it stings, and it's something that you never wanna repeat again, but you can be prepared for it because you feel like I we put on our best case. What we cannot do and what we cannot be prepared for is if we made self goals, if there were footfalls, if there were errors that were within our control, like unforced errors, then you don't feel good about it. And so what I like to think about is put everything you can in putting on the best case, and then a jury may not agree with you, and a judge may not agree with you. But what you've gotta think about is, but did I do the best?
Moez Kaba:Did we do the best that we could do? And then if you don't win something, I think you have to, you sort of have to, yes, you salt and you're sad and you're unhappy for a while, and that's natural. But then I think you have to turn around and think to yourself, okay, what might we learn from this experience? Like, how do we avoid this? How do we avoid this again?
Moez Kaba:So I don't know if there's a playbook for how to deal with that, but I think part of what we do and part of what we do with our associates here is think about how did we perform in the things that we control? And by the way, one of the things we do at our firm is even when we lose When you win a trial, we all get the whole firm. We do these firm wide talks where people talk about like, what did I learn from this trial? Like what's a great thing that we saw? What's a great event that happened?
Moez Kaba:Like, so everybody can learn from that experience. But we do that when, if we lose a trial too. We we get together and we talk about what did we learn, and we congratulate the trial team. And we talk about their personal sacrifices, and we talk about, you know, what if we had done this thing or what if we had done it that way? We use every opportunity to just become better lawyers, which I think is, like, just important to continue growing at least our our firm and our practice.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Yeah. The trial work is just it's just so damn hard. And like you said, there's lots of talented trial lawyers. And you mentioned this concept of winning every day, and and, you know, in a previous conversation, you mentioned this concept about working other lawyers.
Khurram Naik:How do you do that? I mean, like, you know, the universe, the people that are are, you know, operating at your level, it it's a small universe, and they're all people worked really hard, you know, went to grade schools or or I mean, they didn't go to grade school, but they they worked really hard, and they think really they they think as creative as they can. What is the edge that you have? I mean, among people that are working comparably hard and comparably talented, how do you find your edge?
Moez Kaba:Yep. It has nothing to do with me, and it's the people that I work with. Like, all day, every day, seven days a week, I will tell you that it is our it is the other partners I work with, the associates I work with, the staff that I work with who are relentless when we are in trial, relentless about uncovering that last nugget, figuring out that last little thing that's gonna set us apart from the other side. And I do think, and this kinda goes back to things that I was talking about earlier, trials are a team sport. Like you have to all be working together and you have to be able to rely on each other.
Moez Kaba:And yes, you often think about it like, yeah, but there's like the one person talking, that you're the person that did the examination. You're the person that did the opening or the closing. But it's like this whole group of people that we work with. And I've just been really, really lucky at my firm that I work with just exceptional people from the partnership to the attorneys and to the staff. And then you have to take that work and you kinda make it your own, and you use it and you kind of add your perspective, and and you you do a lot of editing and a lot of kind of organizing around that.
Moez Kaba:But I think it's in many respects, the edge is the other lawyers and staff at Houston Hennigan. And I think in in some respects, at least, it is it is a bit of luck.
Khurram Naik:So okay. You've you we we kinda talked about this a little bit earlier, but so there's there's this running theme on boldness now. And and some of it was tied to the things that you didn't know that were possible. And I think boldness is very related to ambition. And so tell me, what's the story of ambition until today?
Khurram Naik:Like, you know, like, what you know, I think it kinda maybe begins in law school when you first really got motivated to really understand, okay. Well, here's really my potential. I'm starting to grasp my potential in a way I had to expose before. You know, your your high school counselor said, hey. You know, you should, you know, work in the trades or something like that, which would be fine, but, you know, maybe wouldn't have realized your potential.
Khurram Naik:What's the story about, you know, ambition and maybe if there's, like, a y and x axis, the y axis is level ambition and x axis is time. Like, what what does that chart look like until from, say, from law school till today?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. I guess I I I think you have to go back a little bit before law school, and I I I don't know that I would describe it as ambition as much as necessity, which perhaps is is a more primal form of ambition.
Khurram Naik:But Is a mother of ambition, sounds like.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. There you go. Necessity is the is the mother of ambition. Exactly. Or at least, like, the the the friendly aunt.
Moez Kaba:The so I I think we we've talked about it a little bit. You know, I'm really proud of of of my roots and and my upbringing. But, growing up in Chicago and not having a lot of resources to rely on, but being a part of a community really made me feel like I've got to do more than, you know, whatever my my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles did. And for me, I I I I really I remember when I was deciding when I was, like, looking at college and then deciding to go to law school, I had a singular goal, and it was not to be some famous successful person or even to be like a trial lawyer or a winning lawyer. I had one goal, and my one goal was to buy my dad a jaguar.
Moez Kaba:Because all growing up, my dad drove taxi cabs. Everywhere we went, he drove a taxi cab. When I was dropped off to Cornell, we did not have the money to buy me a plane ticket. My dad drove his taxi from Chicago to Ithaca, New York to drop me off. And I just always remember, like, I've gotta do something for my dad and, like, I'm not what am I gonna do?
Moez Kaba:I and it just seemed to make sense to me that you could go to law school. And could I if I could get into a law school, I was gonna go. And then one day, I'm gonna buy my dad a jaguar. And I'm gonna buy my dad and my mom tickets to go back to Pakistan where they could go back and they could do nice things for their family. It had it had really nothing to do with, like, any ambition other than I didn't want to grow up with the limited resources that I had growing up.
Moez Kaba:I didn't that is I didn't want my future to be restricted in that way, and I wanted my parents to be able to enjoy at least some of the incidents of having been in America for twenty plus years at that point. And so that is really what was driving me. And it's so, in some respects, like you look back on it, it's so unfulfilling that there was no greater altruistic or professional purpose, but there really wasn't. And then I just kinda like, I fell into these things in some respects. And it's so weird to talk about, like the guy on the subway told me, Go work at this firm.
Moez Kaba:So I went and worked at that firm. Somebody said, You should go clerk if you can clerk. And I thought, Okay, Let me go clerk. Where should I clerk? And I thought, hey.
Moez Kaba:I've never been to LA. I never live in LA. I'm definitely not a Californian. So I was like, I'll try to go clerk in Pasadena. Flew out, clerked in the Ninth Circuit.
Moez Kaba:Then I was like, alright. I'm gonna go back to New York and work at this law firm because that's what one does. And and and, like, throughout this and then I got put on cases, and I got to work with people, and I was like, wow. My first time I'm sorry, the first thing I did when I got to Wachtell after my clerkship was go to trial. It just it which is a very rare thing in the New York legal market to go to trial.
Moez Kaba:And I went to trial in Delaware before, at the time, vice chancellor Strine, who has since left the bench. And I got to you know, one of the trial witnesses was the witness that I got to depose. And I was just like, wow. This is exciting. This is fun.
Moez Kaba:Like, let's do more of this. Right? Then despite my earlier protestations, my then boyfriend, now husband was like, let's move to California. That was a great year that we had when you were in LA. So I was like, alright, let's move to California.
Moez Kaba:I went to IRL. I started working with people, got to go to more trials. And then I thought like, I really love doing this. I really love the feeling of working with people so closely. And I wanna be like that.
Moez Kaba:I wanna be a great trial lawyer. I want clients to call with their hardest cases, their most intellectually challenging or factually complex cases. And I wanna represent them, and I wanna figure out how to tell their stories to judges and juries. And so that's been like a real a huge part of the career has just been that. Right?
Moez Kaba:It's like working with the group of people that decided to start their own law firm. Like, does that happen? When does that happen? And we did it. And we've just been really lucky and really, hopefully hard work and a little bit of skill plays a part in that.
Moez Kaba:But all of that has really you know, I don't need I don't have that same need I do anymore to get the jaguar or to send my parents to Pakistan for vacation. But now it is really about continuing to just do really great work and work with really great people and kind of help other people here have those experiences. Like, get them there's something so rewarding for us who have been partners at this firm for a while about seeing kind of our younger, more junior lawyers have that light bulb moment in trial where they're like, wow, This is awesome. Like, I wanna do this. You know, when they get to cross examine or direct examine their first witness, and they're like, this was amazing.
Moez Kaba:I want more. That is just incredibly rewarding.
Khurram Naik:So I I think there's two possibilities, and maybe both can be true. At this stage okay. So you've accomplished so many things by now, and now you're the managing partner of this, you know, 10 year old, you know, travel boutique and with, you know, with with this this this this string of wins, there's two possibilities from here. One is and both can be true. One is your response is, I've done so much, and so this is gonna make me a little more conservative in some sense because how much higher like, how much higher can I go?
Khurram Naik:I'm the managing partner. I'm working with, you know, all the people that I ever care about, and we're growing, and I'm I'm I'm, you know, adding new partners to my team and and training up these associates like you're saying. I have know, like, how much better can we get from here is one way to look at it. So there's there's a risk of loss. On the other hand, at this point, you're playing with house money.
Khurram Naik:Like, hey. You know what? I've accomplished beyond what I could even conceive of. You know? My my greatest ambitions was to get this jaguar, which, you know, you can by now.
Khurram Naik:So are both true? Is one true? Tell me about how you see it.
Moez Kaba:I well, I certainly do not believe I've accomplished everything that is accomplishable. I I I feel like, another feature
Khurram Naik:I mean, you've done so much. By any reasonable stretch, you've done so much.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. But look, there's a thing. It's been written about extensively, this whole impostor syndrome idea where you just and I catch myself in this all the time where I'm like, is this all just serendipity and luck or is this something real? Like, there a skill that underlies all this or have I really just consistently been in the right place at the right time? So there is this constant, like, you gotta prove yourself.
Moez Kaba:You gotta win. Right? There's no having won in this profession. There is always winning, I think. Perhaps I need to I need, like, deep and long therapy for that, but that's the way I think about it.
Moez Kaba:I'll tell you the two I'll tell you two things that that really motivate me today. One of them is, you know, we're we're now at 80 lawyers. We'll probably be at 90 lawyers this year at our firm with offices in in Southern California and New York. And I just think it's so important for us to build a firm worthy of a legacy. And that is not something you do in ten years, and that's not something you do with just having, you know, done what we have done as a group here.
Moez Kaba:There are 90 lawyers and many staff members who have entrusted us with their future, professional future at least. Right? Their career. We we we still are getting incredibly interesting cases from our clients that we wanna deliver on. And so for me, I just like there there is no like, it it it's neither being conservative nor being like, I've got house money.
Moez Kaba:It's like, no. We're con we're actually still in the process of building this building. And so let's make sure all of the the floors that go above are just as good, if not better than the floors that are below. And it not just for us, but for everybody else who's occupying the space. And so that I think about that a lot, and that's a big part of what motivates me even today professionally, the clients and the people that I'm working with.
Moez Kaba:But the other thing we did as a law firm, which I I know, Gurum, you and I have talked about before, is we decided to start this foundation, this kind of public interest foundation called the Social Justice Legal Foundation. And the Social Justice Legal Foundation is attempts to do for public interest issues what we do for kind of private clients, which is take on cases and try to create good precedent. And so what the Social Justice Legal Foundation does, which is entirely funded by our law firm. Right? So it doesn't seek any outside funders.
Moez Kaba:It's a group of really great recent law school graduates from a handful of schools that are fellows. It's led by a wonderful wonderful lawyer, South Asian lawyer. Her name is Sara Haji and a group of professional full time attorneys. And they take on right now, they've got, you know, three or four, to be more accurate, cases where they are pursuing criminal justice reform or the protection of immigrants being held in tension, for example. So there's just, like, some really interesting cases that they're taking on.
Moez Kaba:And that's another that's, like, kind of like a fun new dimension of the practice, right, which is working on cases that may have some lasting social impact beyond kind of wrapping up, getting your bill paid, and moving to the next matter. So those are the two things that I I I sort of think about. And, like, look. By the way, I'm, you know, I'm forty two. Like, there's no resting at forty two.
Moez Kaba:Like, there's there's at least some time left on this runway where, you know, I've got more things to do.
Khurram Naik:Well, do you have any sense for you know, when you talk about the future trajectory of the firm and the impact that you wanna make, what do you picture when you picture? Like, is there some predecessor you look to say that firm had an impact, a lasting impact, that's a trial of fatigue? Like, how do you think about that?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. I I think there I think there are a number of firms that have just been really, you know, become real cornerstones of the legal community. Right? I mean, that are not 200 years old. Right?
Moez Kaba:I mean, talked about one. I mean, Wachtell Lipton is not that old of a law firm, but, you know, they they came onto the market. They they filled a need, and they're they're remarkable in in how they in how they did that. And Quinn Emanuel is another example. It's not the same model that we have.
Moez Kaba:They're much larger than I think we would ever wanna be. But, you know, that's that's a firm of a relatively recent vintage that has accomplished great things. I mean, there there are men there are other examples of this. Sussman Godfrey, you know, Kecker Van Ness, Bartlett Back. I mean, there are some of these firms that I think are just they've just done really great things over a long period of time, and I think really added a lot of breadth to like the availability of law firms out there and great law firms.
Moez Kaba:And so for me, I think like, yeah, we're 10 years old. I like to think we play in the big leagues. And, you know, we wanna keep doing that so that twenty, thirty, forty years from now, when they're when like the leadership of the firm looks entirely different than it does now, people are still like, oh my god, that's a Houston Hennigan lawyer. Like, we better watch out. Like, we better bring our A game when we're going up against the Houston Hennigan lawyer.
Moez Kaba:And then look at a more personal level, there are some just there there are really some extraordinary South Asian lawyers out there. I mean, we've talked about some of them, you know, Neil Kochul or Judge Srinivasan or Paul Grewal. I mean, there are just some really fantastic accomplished legal luminaries out there. You know, US Attorney Hamdani, like, you're talking about people who have accomplished great things and will leave a legacy just because of having done that and because of their contributions in the spaces in which they operate. And so for me, I, you know, I look up by the way, I know none of them personally, but, I look up to them and I feel like having built such respect for themselves in the spaces that they occupy is something that I would like to do in kind of the little space that I occupy.
Moez Kaba:Mhmm.
Khurram Naik:So in interview, Paul, and I interviewed Alumnar, so you can listen to those another time. I'll send them those link points too. But so okay. With I wanna pick up on the South Asian part part soon. But, you know, when you talk about legacy, you know, you're already making headlines today.
Khurram Naik:And, you know, I think the thing about impact is that you think
Moez Kaba:society perceives you in a certain way.
Khurram Naik:And so I wanna make this a venue and a format for you to react to some of the headlines, because you have some most you have maybe the most colorful or unique headlines that I've written about you that I've ever seen about any trial lawyer. So maybe two sets of headlines. I want your reaction to them. Okay. So the first one, there's an article about you.
Khurram Naik:Moiz Kaba, a first generation Pakistani Muslim, reps class from the LGBT community to from the LGBT community to Akash brother.
Moez Kaba:Yeah. Well, it's accurate. It's it is an it is an accurate headline. And, you know, I I think it's that headline, it speaks a bit to my to my practice, but at least my practice at that time. But I think it also speaks a little bit to the uniqueness of who I am.
Moez Kaba:And I think people wanna write stories about unique things. That that headline was pretty early in my career, though. So I I feel like I didn't have too much else that I could I could say the headline should be about.
Khurram Naik:Okay. Alright. So I think a more recent one. Houston, how did he get his first South Asian Muslim openly gay chief?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. It's also true. So factually accurate headline. That's a more recent one. And look, I respect the framing of it, right, because it's a, I think for many, a historical thing for for our firm at least.
Moez Kaba:And there aren't there aren't that many South Asian managing partners. There are not that many gay managing partners. You know, a a dear a dear friend of mine, somebody who I just think is a fantastic, fantastic accomplished lawyer, Kalpana Srinivasan, who's the co managing partner at Susman Godfrey, is is one of the South Asian managing partners out there, but you don't hear about a ton of them. And and so I think there's there is meaning to highlighting the unique demography of someone. Right?
Moez Kaba:And for people who are reading that to say, wow. Like, I'm an openly gay person who's entering the law. I'm a South Asian person who's entering the law. Like, I'm both of those things. I'm I'm a Muslim.
Moez Kaba:I'm, you know, whatever. I I I come from a modest background, etcetera. I think there is a lot of power that comes from perception, basically. That is I can see myself in you. So in that respect, I think it's really important.
Moez Kaba:My other reaction to that and kinda some of the similar, like very demography oriented headlines is that it can be a it can sort of take you beat to understand why that is the only framing as opposed to just one of the framings. Right? So for me, all of those things are very much a part of who I am, and have contributed to who I am today. But I've also gone to trial a lot. I'm also a trial lawyer, and not just like I went to a trial.
Moez Kaba:By the time I became manager partner, I'd done many trials. And so that could just as easily have been a headline about being a trial lawyer. You know, Houston Hannigan elects its next trial lawyer as managing partner or whatever. And that feels a bit more tied to the merits of your accomplishments as relevant to the role than the newness of who you are as relevant to the role. And so I think that we have to embrace, and I do, and I think most people do, embrace who we are in terms of our perspective, what we bring to the table in terms of our life experiences.
Moez Kaba:But I think it's also important to not allow us to be defined first and foremost by my my ethnic background, my sexual orientation, etcetera. Right? Like, you don't you don't read that. I mean, I I looked at some other articles where I I I saw the headlines, and it was like such and such. You know, blanks lawyer, new managing partner, or whatever.
Moez Kaba:Like, don't really see that unless there's like something new about the person who's gotten the role. Namely, like, they're of a different race, they're of a different sexual orientation, etcetera. So that's my very long answer to say. I'm very appreciative for the attention, and I just hope that as we kind of progress as a society, the merit is given as much attention as the novelty.
Khurram Naik:Do you feel that so with the first headlines, he's pulling out, you know, LGBT, you know, representation as well as, and sorry if I'm not pronouncing right. I think it's pronounced Koch. Maybe I'm wrong. Is there something novel about that about that you know, those are are are two fairly different my understanding is those are two fairly different groups of politics. And so is there something novelty about some novelty about that?
Khurram Naik:And and and maybe the bottom line is I'm a trial lawyer. I like trials. I like complex cases, difficult cases. Maybe that's the end of the story. Or, hey.
Khurram Naik:You know what? Honestly, we get paid. And so, you know, that's the answer. What's your what's your what's your take on that?
Moez Kaba:Yeah. It's Coke. It's one of the Coke brothers. And it wasn't a it wasn't a it wasn't a particularly political case, actually. It was a it was a that was the case that I was talking about the trial that I did in New York that that early on early on case.
Moez Kaba:It it was for it was for Bill Coke, one of the Coke brothers. And it wasn't it it certainly is not like, you know, we're we get paid. We do the work. That's that's never been our approach. Frankly, our law firm turns down cases all the time.
Moez Kaba:We turn down clients who are willing to pay whatever the rates are all the time, partly because we're busy and partly because we may not wanna do that. That doesn't feel like the kind of fulfilling work that we're doing, that we would like to do. But I think the purpose of that article was a little bit about explaining the kind of the breadth of the type of clients. So the LGBT interests, I have for basically my entire career chosen pro bono matters that are close to me in some way. Right?
Moez Kaba:So I'm an openly gay man, so I've done pro bono work that is connected to LGBT rights and and equality. I'm the son of immigrants, so I've done pro bono work connected to getting and establishing and protecting the rights of immigrants in America. I'm a Muslim, so I've done pro bono work designed to help protect Muslims. So I've, in that range, you know, I have fought for and argued legally for marriage equality and employment non discrimination for LGBTQIA people in the middle ground. I had a pro bono case where we sued the US Department of Justice because they had turned they had shut down an immigration hotline that people that were being held in immigrant detention could call for free to get legal services, and that had gotten shut down.
Moez Kaba:Because people in immigration detention actually have less rights in some respects than people that are in in prison. Mhmm. They didn't get that they didn't get that phone call, that free phone call, which is case that we we filed in one here in in the Central District. And then on on the Muslim front, I have fought for to and and frankly, to defend an anti bullying initiative. There was a an initiative passed in the San Diego school district that that basically said, like, there's a real problem with bullying Muslim kids.
Moez Kaba:Mhmm. And so we want to make sure that we're paying special attention to to that problem, and we want to educate our students about, for example, Eid. Right? So if people or people fasting, that's not something you
Khurram Naik:should be bullied about because a lot of
Moez Kaba:times you would hope that educating people will help make them less bigoted. One can hope. And so there was a group that challenged that initiative. And so the school district had a timid response to that challenge, And we were retained pro bono, and we fought to protect that initiative, to to say that initiative was not only constitutional, but actually entirely consistent with the California constitution. And we won that case.
Moez Kaba:So in that respect, a lot of my work, my pro bono work has been tied to these very specific personal identity things. And I think that's what that article was kind of touching at on on the one end. And then I'm I'm sure there was a little bit of an attempt to kinda make the Coke representation seem like the other, but it it wasn't in that case. That was a representation about it was a it was a fraud case. It was a fraud and and contract case, which actually the longer story about that representation is very interesting.
Moez Kaba:It's been written about in books, and it's been Netflix's and documentaries. There's a book called Billionaire's Vinegar that was about this. It was about fraud in the high end wine market. Yes. And I understand my father, if you were still alive today, thinking that his son is talking about the real scourge of counterfeit wines in that $25,000 plus per bottle market would be shocked, but it was a real problem, and our client's case, and really that win that we had at that trial, and then some appellate wins that we had really helped turn and clean up that market quite a bit.
Khurram Naik:So in the Netflix documentary or or the biopic, who do you want to play you?
Moez Kaba:Oh my god. Who do I wanna play? Me? I don't like, hopefully, some South Asian actor. But here's the problem.
Moez Kaba:They're not that many to pick from, are there? So someone who who am I thinking of?
Khurram Naik:You're my answer is you played yourself.
Moez Kaba:I played myself. Yeah. Let's let me let me let me fit that into the schedule. Let me play myself. I I actually Riz Ahmed.
Moez Kaba:How about that? He he's he's a great talented Pakistani actor. Yeah. He's good. Yeah.
Khurram Naik:So okay. So this this theme of, you know, not enough South Asian represent representation keeps coming up. And, you know, we certainly have, you know, some forebears to our generation. You you mentioned a bunch of them. You know, very impressive, and they were kind of the pioneers.
Khurram Naik:And now, you know, we're in a different boat now, and and we're still up and coming. And so but but there's still another generation coming up behind us. But maybe I'll start with maybe not enough you know, we talk about people that are ahead of us. We talk people that we mentor, but maybe not enough if we talk about peers. What is it that you want your peers to know about the practice or raising our ambitions as a community or or come together?
Khurram Naik:Like, What what do you want? What message do you have for your peers?
Moez Kaba:What what a good question. Not something I think about often enough, I'm I'm sure. But, you know, I think there's a a lot of power in acting collectively and and thinking about how do we support one another and how do we support younger lawyers that are that are coming up through the system and through through, you know, law schools and clerkships and whatnot. And so what I should be doing more of is connecting with my South Asian peers and talking about how do we make meaningful differences and just keep these connections. They will ignore to our benefit, I'm sure, in in ways that we we don't yet know.
Moez Kaba:I I find it like it it's always interesting to me because there's so many communities in which like, even even my my my colleagues, like, here where they're like, oh, yeah. You know, I know this person from, like, high school. We went to high school together. Now this is what they're doing. And, like, yeah, I I can call that client up.
Moez Kaba:I gotta I've got a connection there because, you know, we were in the federalist society together or whatever the case may be. Right? And and you have these connections, and it used to be like it was like, yeah, I know this person because we golf together or we're in the country club together or whatever. And I I look. I I think that has been the model for to for some lawyers to great success, to great client generation success.
Moez Kaba:And I think that something that South Asian lawyers should be doing even more of, I think what you're doing is a great model of this. I think what what Saba and other organizations are doing is great model of this, is is creating that community and and understanding that there are ways that we can and should help each other and help others. And so, yeah, I I guess that would be my my primary message is like, let's let's seek out opportunities to work with each other. And for for for things that we towards things that we care about, and they don't always have to be structured. But as I say that, I fully acknowledge and understand that, you know, I am part of the problem because I'm not doing enough of that myself with that old, like, the call is coming from within the house or whatever.
Moez Kaba:So I I get that.
Khurram Naik:It's something I see the flip side of that, the glass half full, which is you are contributing to the solution by being part of the if my podcast is part of the solution, well, you're on the podcast, then you are Yeah.
Moez Kaba:There we go. See see how you just turned that around? I I can
Khurram Naik:I've see learned from you that, you know, you just that's when you stop talking, so I'll just stop right there. This is great, man. I'm so glad we did this.
Moez Kaba:I am too. Thank you for having me on. I really I I really appreciate it. And really, I'm I'm I'm very impressed with what you're doing. So keep doing it.
Khurram Naik:Thanks, man.