028: Silpa Maruri on creativity, self-advocacy, and how to launch a law firm

Silpa Maruri graduated from law school in 2011, but she's already been partner at renowned trial firm Quinn Emanuel and is now founding partner at Elsberg Baker Maruri, an elite commercial litigation firm. How did she do it? 

In this episode, we discuss the techniques and principles Silpa used to practice creativity and self-advocacy. Launching a new firm can seem daunting, but Silpa breaks down some of the key components and the path that got her here. 

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Khurram Naik: 00:00

This is Horum with Horum's Quorum. My guest today is Silpa Maruri. Silpa is a founding partner at Ellsberg Baker Maruri, and she graduated from law school in only 2011, but now she's at the helm of an elite commercial litigation firm. So how did this happen? In this episode, we explore the creativity and self advocacy techniques Silpa developed that we can all apply.

Khurram Naik: 00:19

Here's Silpa. Silpa, I'm so glad that we're sitting down to talk today.

Silpa Maruri: 00:25

I'm very honored to be here.

Khurram Naik: 00:28

Okay. So, Silpa, we have a common experience growing up. So we both have immigrant parents and something that, I think I've heard from other immigrants, not just from South Asia but elsewhere, that a common experience is children as advocates for their parents and intermediaries and being asked to explain things or translate things beyond just literal words, but more of of kind of advocacy for your parents and parents relying on their children. So I think you have some stories in that way about growing up and your parents asking you to thrusting you into that role.

Silpa Maruri: 01:05

Yeah. Def I definitely do. And one of the stories I was telling you about is pretty straightforward. We were, you know, in we would be in a Caldor or, like, a Walmart, and we would need to ask a question about something. Just a really straightforward question like, do you have this in another size or another color or something like that?

Silpa Maruri: 01:30

And my mother would always ask me to do it. And sometimes I would push back on it because I was a young kid. And I'd say, you you should be the one asking. They're gonna look at me like I'm crazy because I have this little kid asking them questions about inventory. And she would always say that she didn't want to because she felt that they would be rude to her because of her accent.

Silpa Maruri: 01:54

So she would very frequently make me occupy that role instead of her. And she's very good at English, actually. She's very well educated and nobody would ever have a problem understanding her through her accent, but she was just worried that people would treat her differently. And she thought that me having an American accent would, I'd get very different treatment for her from her. So in a way it was good though, because what it did was it taught me to be very comfortable speaking with adults even as a child and even adults that I didn't know because I had to out of necessity.

Silpa Maruri: 02:34

So that was one of the ways in which, you know, I served as an advocate for her. And I think that happens a lot with children whose parents have accents or children of immigrants because sometimes there's a level of discomfort and the parent knows that the child's gonna be accepted in a way that the parent isn't. Mhmm. And it's it's been it's it was good for me, you know, in terms of gaining experience that I use later because even from a very young age, you learn to be that advocate for somebody else. And then when you get into a job that is pure advocacy, like being a lawyer, you know, is training from a very, very young age that I wouldn't give up for anything.

Khurram Naik: 03:19

You know, I think it's there's lots of career paths you could have had, and maybe you would have been, you know, a a doctor or a business owner or or some other path. So you have to be a lawyer right now. So I'll grant that it's easy to look back and and kind of, you know, cherry pick that the experiences that that impacts you later on, but that seems like a pretty reasonable one round, you know, that that that that would have a big impact on on your skills as an advocate later on. Are there anything else that you feel like from your childhood that looking back now, you say, you know, I'm sure that could have gone lots of ways, that skill set or experience, but it as a lawyer, this has I feel like that there's a legacy or an impact from from these early experiences.

Silpa Maruri: 03:59

Sure. I mean, I think another thing that I frequently had to do that I think a lot of people have to do is I had to translate things that were going on in my everyday life to my parents all the time because it wasn't a part of what they experienced when they were growing up. So the school system, for example, here is really different from the school system in India, which is where my parents grew up. And so there would be a lot of times where, you know, some some project was due or we had to do some particular thing, and they just had no context around why because they had never gone through a similar school system. So a lot of my childhood was spent translating what was going on and making it understandable to them, making it something that they could digest and get their arms around.

Silpa Maruri: 04:54

And I think that is something that we do as lawyers every day. Right? We have to take something complicated, something that seems foreign, something that seems outside the mainstream, outside the norm of what a regular everyday person has to deal with. And we have to translate that into something that your everyday juror can understand. And so that that frankly, that teaching that I had to do even as a young kid is something that I find very useful to me as a litigator today.

Silpa Maruri: 05:27

So, you know, today, if I go in front of a jury, even if I go in front of a judge, there's a lot of translating that happens in terms of taking something complex and distilling it to its core essence. And that's something that I've had to do all my life. And so it's something that comes pretty naturally to me.

Khurram Naik: 05:46

Mhmm. And did you have any early inclination that you were gonna go to law school? Like, any any inclination that that that was gonna happen for you?

Silpa Maruri: 05:56

Certainly not as a young child. I don't think that's something I thought I was gonna do. But by the time I was in high school, it was something that was of interest to me because I loved writing. I loved this sort of teaching translation role that I've described to you, and I loved the art of argument. So it was something that was always on my mind as a possibility.

Silpa Maruri: 06:23

I think that crystallized for me more once I went through college and saw a little bit more into what you could actually accomplish as a lawyer and understood a little bit more about the legal system than I did at a younger age.

Khurram Naik: 06:38

Mhmm. And when you went to law school, you didn't expect to be on the track you're on now. Right?

Silpa Maruri: 06:45

No. And we spoke about this. I actually went to law school thinking I was gonna be a public interest lawyer interestingly enough. I had done Teach for America and I had had a very significant body of nonprofit experience when I was in undergrad as well. I had done some, you know, tutoring for, underrepresented youth and that sort of thing.

Silpa Maruri: 07:13

And so I went with a real public interest focus when I went to law school, and it was actually by luck that I ended up in a law firm environment. So I went through OCI, and I thought, let me give this a chance and see what this looks like in real practice. And I wound up going to a firm thinking that I would really leave in a short period of time. And what I discovered while I was there was that I really loved complex corporate litigation, and I didn't think I was gonna have the same experience in a public interest environment. I think the work that public interest lawyers do is obviously extremely laudable and, you know, I have deep admiration for that.

Silpa Maruri: 08:02

But what I found when I was in a law firm environment was I loved the complexity of the problems. I loved looking at really complicated transactions and trying to figure out a creative angle. I loved the complexity of the the litigation itself, the subject matter, the legal problems that were presented to me in corporate transactions and that sort of thing. And I loved being around an environment that was filled with really intelligent, hardworking people that were really deeply engrossed and and trying very hard to wrestle with that sort of content. And I found that I was very good at it as well.

Silpa Maruri: 08:47

And the combination of those things really made me stay. And so strangely, I I'm not in this job because of the money. I'm not in this job because of the glory. I'm in this job because I am the bizarre person who really loves grappling with these thorny corporate questions.

Khurram Naik: 09:08

And so then what I mean, your trajectory is is pretty astonishing. So you, you know, you graduated law school in 2011, and you became partner at Quinn. And then now launched your own law firm. Like, just that does seem like a a remarkable ascent in a short period of time. So what do you attribute that to?

Khurram Naik: 09:28

Like, what differentiates you? You you know, from from there's lots of smart, hardworking lawyers, but you've had exceptional success. I think that's gonna be a core I know there's not gonna be a single answer to that, but I think that's something that I wanna explore here is, like, how did that happen? And so what do you think were some of the early experiences in practicing that set you on this pathway that you're on?

Silpa Maruri: 09:51

Yeah. I I appreciate that. I think it was a combination of things, like you said. My my early experiences in particular were that I found that the more I put myself out there to take up space, the more people wanted me to take up the space that I was taking up. So I proved myself to be very skilled very early on.

Silpa Maruri: 10:14

And I also always threw my hat into the ring in terms of volunteering for opportunities that I saw even when those opportunities would be difficult. So for example, I was on a case where there was a really restrictive budget. This was I was very junior at this point, and the client didn't wanna pay to have a partner take every single deposition or most of the depositions. And so I very willingly took essentially all of the depositions in the case, even the most important ones. And it was difficult to do that because there was a very restrictive budget.

Silpa Maruri: 10:50

I hadn't done it before. I was doing a lot of them back to back to back. But as a result of that case, I got tremendous experience taking high level depositions very early on in my career. And I found that my work ethic was really a big differentiator between me and other lawyers because I was always willing to do things to go beyond the ordinary, which was always resulted in me getting more experience earlier on. And I in addition to that, I was good.

Silpa Maruri: 11:24

You know, I was skilled, and I applied my intelligence in a direction that helped me. I wouldn't have been able to succeed on intelligence alone as we've been talking about. I don't think anybody enters a law firm environment and succeeds on intelligence alone because that's the price of entry. Right? But I think that combined with my willingness to really throw my hat into the ring every time and do a little bit of that self advocacy that I was talking about earlier on helped me get a lot of experiences early on.

Silpa Maruri: 11:58

And the the it was sort of a cyclical in that once I got one experience and did well with it, it lent itself to me getting a different experience later on down the road and so on and so forth. So it evolved very it felt very natural at the time. But in fact, I think looking back, the thing that really helped me was just being willing and being able to jump into spots that other people couldn't occupy.

Khurram Naik: 12:29

Say some more about that.

Silpa Maruri: 12:31

So for example, like I said, with the depositions in that one case, I I think a lot of a lot of younger attorneys will shy away from opportunities like that because they're a little bit worried about the amount of work it entails or the fact that they don't feel like they have enough time to do the thing they're being asked to do in the way that they wanna be able to do it. And I think I really embraced a little bit of risk in that way. So there were times where I didn't know if I was gonna be able to take a deposition, for example, for the first time and excel at it. But I did it because you have to do that in order to be a good lawyer. You have to force yourself to take the next step.

Silpa Maruri: 13:21

You have to force yourself to take the opportunities as they come. And so when I was a young lawyer, I was doing that a fair amount. And I think it really yielded dividends because in the end, all of these tiny doubts I had about whether I'd be able to do something well the first time I did it ended up being largely unfounded. So that was that was a piece of the puzzle. The other piece of the puzzle was obviously just putting in the work to excel.

Silpa Maruri: 13:50

Right? You're not gonna excel just because you want to excel. You're gonna excel because you really dig in, learn the facts, learn the law, and map a strategy every time you're doing something. So I was very intentional about always doing that for every big project that I was working on.

Khurram Naik: 14:08

And so I think that's something that a lot of, lawyers early in their career find challenging. Like, it's enough to learn about the substance of the work, how to communicate with partners and clients, and just that that that alone is plenty right there. But then advancing to a more strategic role to say, hey. You know, beyond the task, here's what I I have not only maybe the partner's big picture vision mind, but then also, potentially, I can offer my own vision of what should be done here. I think that's that was challenging for me as an associate, and I think that's challenging for other lawyers who are who are very good at doing the work, but then have a challenge around allowing them to say, hey.

Khurram Naik: 14:53

You know what? I I can be creative. I can be a creative legal reasoner. How did you make that leap?

Silpa Maruri: 15:03

It's a good question, and I think, you know, there are two components that have to be there to make it possible. One component is you have to be yourself willing to do it. The other component is you have to exist in a culture that allows for it. So for example, I just happened to be at a place where people really fostered that. So as you know, I came up at Quinn Emanuel, and people really invited a lot of creative thinking from their younger associates.

Silpa Maruri: 15:33

And for me, I think a lot of the folks that I worked with early on realized that I was this very good creative legal reasoner. And so that again fed itself. Once they saw that I was good at doing that, they would come back to me time and time and time again because they knew that I would be able to see things other lawyers didn't see. And that's something we also are trying to be very intentional about at our own firm. We're very interested in developing our young lawyers and not just treating them as functionaries or cogs.

Silpa Maruri: 16:14

So we always try to get input from the younger members of our team on even minor aspects of strategy, and that's really twofold. One reason is it benefits us because young fresh thinking is never a bad thing, particularly when you're dealing with, for example, financial products that change all the time. But the other piece of it is it also develops the lawyer. Right? The more that somebody is being asked to flex their legal reasoning muscles and to think hard about big important legal problems, the better that they're gonna be at it when they are in more of a leadership role.

Silpa Maruri: 16:54

So that's something we really try to foster here. And part of the reason is because each of us, even though we're coming from different places, did have people in our in our spheres who did that for us. And it yielded dividends for us, and it also yielded dividends frankly for them because oftentimes we would come up with a case breaking theory. So it's something that's very important to us culturally.

Khurram Naik: 17:22

You mentioned creativity, noticing creativity and stuff early on. Like, what's an inflection point, where you felt like, wow. Like, I I just realized, like, I I did something really creative here where you got some feedback in that way.

Silpa Maruri: 17:35

Yeah. That that actually happened to me fairly frequently. Like I said, that was something I was good at even early on because I like re legal reasoning, and I like complex problems. So I would frequently look at something and see an angle that somebody didn't see. An example that comes to mind of that was I was on this case where there was a contract dispute, and our client had one interpretation of the agreement and the adversary had another.

Silpa Maruri: 18:07

A lot of the adversary's documents about what they really thought the contract meant were behind the veil of privilege. And meanwhile, we knew that they didn't actually believe in their interpretation. And so we had to find a way to get at these other documents that they were hiding under the cloak of privilege. And so I looked at the communications that had gone back and forth and I realized that they had not drawn a real line about privilege. They had kind of woven in and out of privilege.

Silpa Maruri: 18:43

If you really looked at the documents in a way that suggested that they had treated us as if we were within the privilege and or waived the privilege. And so I came up with a very complex argument about why the privilege actually didn't apply. And the end result of it was that the court found that they had waived privilege. They had to produce all of their privileged communications so much so that at the end of the litigation, they didn't even have a privilege log because they had literally produced every single document that they had that they had called privilege that was responsive. And the end result was that we were right.

Silpa Maruri: 19:21

They didn't have the interpretation of the agreement that they said they had, and it was something that they came up with for litigation. The documents that we got from them showed that that was true. It was devastating to their case. And so that's an example where if if I hadn't been asked as an associate what I thought the strategy should be, that never would have happened. So that's why we value it so much here because we ourselves had so many experiences as associates where we came up with case breaking theories.

Khurram Naik: 19:54

So it sounds like you were taken seriously internally. Were you consistently treated seriously by counterparties?

Silpa Maruri: 20:02

No. And I don't think there's a lawyer in America who who will say that they have been, particularly as a young lawyer. As I as I said, I I had a lot of experience very early on, and I had a lot of responsibility early on. And sometimes that resulted in my adversary underestimating me because sometimes people say, oh, this is a younger lawyer. I can wrap them around my finger.

Silpa Maruri: 20:29

I can, you know, run circles around them and because I have so much more experience than them. And I would say the lesson from that is that the best gift your adversary can ever give you is underestimating you because if you don't think anybody's a threat, then you never see them coming. So I proved time and time again when those types of situations arose that actually I was up to the challenge, and usually, I think people ended up regretting it.

Khurram Naik: 21:03

And so is is being under underestimated something you've encountered elsewhere in your career?

Silpa Maruri: 21:10

I I I I'd say look. I'm not gonna say it doesn't happen, but I will say one thing that I really enjoy about practicing law is that ultimately it is a merits debate, right? You're arguing about whether the law and the facts conform to a set of rules. And for me, that experience has been really gratifying because, yes, you will encounter some amount of nonsense along the way. Everybody does in every single litigation.

Silpa Maruri: 21:42

But I think the beautiful thing about being a lawyer is that at the end of the day, you're debating about something that has a clear set of defined rules and a clear arbiter that is supposed to resolve those rules. You may not always love the result that you get in every litigation. Every litigator worth their salt has litigated a case that they've lost, that they felt like they should have won. If you're not doing that, then that means you're just not taking the hard cases. But I will say at the end of the day, for the most part, we've created a system foundation on impartiality and foundation on applying a set of rules.

Silpa Maruri: 22:25

And in my experience, that has largely been true, and it's been gratifying because that's not true in every walk of life.

Khurram Naik: 22:36

Yeah. I think that is a remarkable part of the practice is that sense of, that there you know, there's creativity, but there's also a set of roles, and that's just a really interesting nexus. And, yeah, like, the the ultimate that it it does, there is a merit component. But I I wonder how much you think there is I I mean, luck or understand or having an edge with understanding the the judicial system, like, much let's say, a judicial realist approach. Like, how much do you buy into that?

Khurram Naik: 23:10

Let's say this judge, maybe you had some inkling that this judge would find this nature of a of a procedural dispute to be persuasive. Maybe they're this judge is more willing to rule on things that are just, like, a little bit edgy. You know, there's just in any given district, there's, like, some judges that are have more of a risk tolerance, for for things that could be overturned or or not. How much is there a is is there a skill or an edge in in understanding judicial system in that way?

Silpa Maruri: 23:46

I think it's there. Right? I don't think anybody can really deny that it's not there, that these things make differences at the margins. But what I'd say is they make differences at the margins, right, because of the way the system is designed. And, you know, to those who say it's not a good system, I challenge you to define something better.

Silpa Maruri: 24:08

It's very hard to design a perfect system in an imperfect world. So it is not perfect. I will say that, right? Those things will matter. Those things will make a difference.

Silpa Maruri: 24:20

But I think fundamentally, it is an elegant system and a a very good one.

Khurram Naik: 24:27

Mhmm. And so going back to your your progress at Quince, and then so you're you're having all the success, and then you you make partner and, you know, you're, yeah, you know, young to make a partner, that that's impressive. Have you, at the point of making partner, identified what in particular you enjoyed the most, like, or or otherwise?

Silpa Maruri: 24:52

Yeah. For me, I I loved most of the things that you do as a lawyer. I obviously love the stand up work. I love doing arguments. Oral arguments were something I really thought were fun and I had a real skill at putting things in perspective, boiling things down to their core, simplifying complicated concepts.

Silpa Maruri: 25:17

That was something I was really good at. I also love doing depositions. I loved writing briefs. I I am a lawyer's lawyer. And what I found by the time I was going up for partners that I liked doing all of the core components of the job, what I would say to somebody who's about to do that is you really have to think about whether this is something you truly love because it's very easy to take the road of least resistance and say it's the easy path to try to continue to be a litigator, try to continue to be a lawyer.

Silpa Maruri: 25:54

But I think the people who really have the best experiences and frankly, who are the most successful tend to be the people who have a genuine affinity for the job. They like doing the strategizing. They like doing the legal thinking. They like doing the work. Because at the end of the day, you you work so much in this industry that you really have to love what you do or you can really make yourself miserable.

Khurram Naik: 26:21

And let's say by the time you were a partner at CoinManual, what's a part of the the job you didn't enjoy?

Silpa Maruri: 26:29

What's a part of the job that I didn't enjoy? That's that's a tougher question. I generally enjoyed everything. And by the time I was a partner, I was doing a lot less of the things that people don't like. So, you know, I can't say I loved every time I had to do some doc review.

Silpa Maruri: 26:49

I don't think anybody likes doing that. But by the time I was a partner, I obviously wasn't doing that sort of thing or even when I was close to being a partner, wasn't doing that sort of thing. And I think that's a good lesson for the the folks who are coming up is that some of the things that are less glamorous about the job become less of a core component of the job as you get more senior. I also think at our firm in particular, we're very intentional about making sure that the associates get to do the things that are more fun. Right?

Silpa Maruri: 27:23

We wanna make sure that the associates do get stand up experience. We wanna make sure the associates do get to do arguments. We wanna make sure the associates do get to do depositions. It's front of mind for us every time we're in the midst of a case. We think, what can this associate do?

Silpa Maruri: 27:41

What opportunities can we give this person? So as a younger lawyer, when you're thinking about the menu of options in terms of law firms that you're going to, that's a very important thing for a lawyer to think about is is this a place when I look back in ten years that I'm gonna be happy I went to from an experience point of view, experience gathering point of view. We try very hard to be that place. I tried very hard to be that person even when I was at Quinn, and I try even harder at it now because it yields dividends for the firm. It's impressive what young lawyers can do.

Silpa Maruri: 28:25

They come in with a set of skills. I think oftentimes young lawyers are underestimated in terms of what value they can bring to the table. And for us, we don't wanna make this mistake of underestimating them. So we really try to give them opportunities very early on.

Khurram Naik: 28:43

Mhmm. And then I guess another, it'd be hard to ignore this question. You know, what would it what what did it take for you to take the leap from I mean, partnership at Quinn, you know, it's one of the best litigation oriented firms in the nation, very strong litigation practice. And so in some sense, it was it was risky in the sense you had a lot to lose. Like, did you know at what point did you know that you'd be willing to even do something like that at any point in your career, or was it you know, did did just take you by surprise as a partner say, I can't somebody to do that?

Khurram Naik: 29:19

Like, how far back to the roots of that of that entrepreneurial venture and that risk taking go?

Silpa Maruri: 29:26

Yeah. I it's a good question. I let me start by saying I have deep respect for Quinn Emanuel, and I left there on very positive terms, and I have a lot of close friends who are still there. So it wasn't as if I was you know, I I liked it there. And the reason that I left was because I saw a real opportunity to be an entrepreneur and to build something that was a true reflection of me in a lot of the ways that I've described to you during this podcast about a culture of mentorship, about creating a firm that is trial focused, about creating a firm that has a certain type of culture that I really wanted to build from the ground up.

Silpa Maruri: 30:11

We've also talked a little bit about who I am and where I came from, And it's been really gratifying to now be able to serve as somebody, a mentor to people who are coming up now who look like me that, you know, weren't those types of folks weren't necessarily always around when I was coming up, you know, ten years ago. So it's nice to finally be in a position to help other people in that way. And those were a lot of the reasons why I decided to go in the direction that I did. And I'm very happy because the firm is doing exceptionally well. We've got really great recruits.

Silpa Maruri: 30:51

We've picked up some fantastic exemplary candidates, and we've got a number of trials that we're headed into this year. We have six trials in our first year, which is incredible for a firm that's only existed for four months. And we've created what already feels like a very positive culture around mentorship and giving opportunities to associates early on. So one of the trials that we just finished, associates played a huge role in examining witnesses at the hearing. And that's something we're very proud of.

Silpa Maruri: 31:27

It's something we openly tout. And it's also something that clients really like because, as I said, you know, often associates and younger lawyers are underestimated. But I think once people see them on their feet, they're really astonished by what they can do.

Khurram Naik: 31:45

Well, going back to the question of, like, how did you come to this idea of of, you know, taking this risk in departure? Maybe another lens on this is, you know, like you're saying, like, being South Asian, being a woman, you know, that's you know, there wasn't that's there just hasn't been a lot of influence in the legal industry from from that demographic. How did you come to realize it sounds like, you know, just there's, like, kind of this wedge that you started reshaping the firm in that, you know, you took up space is is the phrase you were saying. How did you feel like you could take up that space, you know, in in being this, you know, you know, this this minority in, you know, whatever sense you wanna use that, in in in in the law firm? Like, how did you feel like you could just start to take more and more in that space such that, you know, eventually, I think that seems to be part of the roots of departing and launching your own firm?

Silpa Maruri: 32:46

Yeah. I would say from early on, I adopted the mindset that the client was my client. You know, the client the client is, of course, a firm client, but the client is also somebody that every single lawyer on the team has a responsibility to. And I always felt the weight of that responsibility even as a very young lawyer. So I felt very much that my role was as an advocate for that client.

Silpa Maruri: 33:12

And so if I saw an angle, I saw an idea, I saw something that I felt would be valuable, I voiced it. You always have to find a way to voice things respectfully. Right? You don't want to go off on your own and run up a huge bill looking into something that the partner has already thought about or doesn't think is valuable. But I found ways to offer my ideas in a respectful manner and in a manner that didn't, you know, I didn't run off the reservation and just do a bunch of work myself.

Silpa Maruri: 33:48

I would say, I see this really interesting angle. We should take a look at it. And more often than not, the reception I got to that was, yeah, take a look at it. And the more I did it, the more comfortable I became doing it over and over again. And the more I did it, the more people trusted me and the more space I had.

Silpa Maruri: 34:07

So it was an iterative process that took time, and it took a little bit of initiative in the beginning to to get comfortable doing that. As I said before, you also have to exist in a culture. You have to occupy a culture that allows you the space to do that. And I happen to be at a place where people were receptive to me offering those ideas. Were there times, yes, when people said, no, we've already thought about that.

Silpa Maruri: 34:34

Thank you. Thank you very much. We don't we don't need you to look at that. Sure. And in those instances, I listened, but I always gave it a shot.

Khurram Naik: 34:44

And so taking a lead from, you know, the certainty of partnership in an established firm to launch your own firm, You know, there's plenty of reasons to think that it was derisked. It's not like you're just, like, winging it. It's like, dude, I have no idea whether I could, you know, launch a law firm. Like, yeah, you had lots of reasons to think that you could launch a law firm, but still there's a risk to I mean, there's the the comfort and status of of being quintessential versus launch your own boutique. So from a, let's say, a status perspective, from a financial perspective, like, how like, what was the the basis of taking this lead?

Silpa Maruri: 35:19

It was a a few different things. I think the folks that I was partnering with are people that I have the utmost respect and utmost faith in. So David Elfberg is a tremendous lawyer and a tremendous talent. And Ralo is also just an exceptional lawyer and an exceptional talent. And I've worked with both of those folks for years and years and years.

Silpa Maruri: 35:42

And I knew that the three of us together would be able to do the work and to bring in the business and to create something really exceptional. I had faith in the fact that, you know, I fundamentally have faith in the fact that great lawyers will get hired because, you know, fundamentally this is what we do. We sell our legal services and both of those lawyers are just too exceptional not to get hired. So that was a piece of the puzzle for me. And the other piece of the puzzle for me was I also had faith that they were gonna build something that was good for associates and that was good for lawyers to work at.

Silpa Maruri: 36:18

So not just some place where, you know, everybody's financially secure, but also a place where I could really be proud to come into work every day because I knew that we were creating the environment that we wanted to create from a mentorship perspective and from a cultural perspective in terms of giving associates great opportunities. And that it's borne itself out because the firm really is doing exceptionally well and more and more matters are coming in the door every day. And I think that is because the market really understands the value that each of us as individual lawyers have, and also the absolutely exceptional talent that exists at all different rungs of the firm even today at, you know, close to its inception. So every single partner we have is absolutely an exceptional stand up lawyer and absolutely an an absolute monster intellectual talent. And that is also true among the associate ranks.

Silpa Maruri: 37:23

I've been exceptionally impressed by every single person that I've worked with here. So and the market understands that. The market sees the work we're putting out. The market sees what we're doing, and I think the thesis is really bearing itself out.

Khurram Naik: 37:38

So if I remember right, your name partners were at Slendy Gay, and so they were and Slendy Gay is largely a number of ex quintessential lawyers. At the time that lawyers left to form Slendy Gay, had you thought about joining that firm?

Silpa Maruri: 37:53

I hadn't. I was at a very different point in my career and for a lot of different reasons that didn't make sense to me. This made a lot more sense to me in terms of the folks that were doing it. Right? So David and Rollo together were a different package to me than the folks at Selendi.

Silpa Maruri: 38:11

I I respect Selendi as a firm. They're a very good firm. I don't have anything negative to say about them, but for me, that wasn't really the right fit.

Khurram Naik: 38:19

And so so you, David, and Rollo are the name partners. Why are there three name partners instead of two or four? Like, what is it about the three of you that you know, what's the division of labor? Like, why is it the three of you?

Silpa Maruri: 38:33

You could ask that question at any firm except, you know, at some firms, everybody who's a named partner is deceased because they've existed for that long. The reason is because the three of us are senior, have the experience, have the book, and also bring the right maturity to bear on the direction of the firm. And that's not to say that every single partner isn't valuable. We have three other partners, and those three partners are Michael Duke, Vivek Tata, and Jared Rocco. And as I said, they're each in their own right absolutely exceptional talents, but they're a little bit earlier off in their careers.

Khurram Naik: 39:18

And so what is the division of labor between the three of you? Like, how do you function together? Like, what are your individual strengths as partners, like, either as firm administrators and managers or as litigators? Like, what's that division of labor like?

Silpa Maruri: 39:32

It's a good question. So right now, the partnership is small enough that a lot of the decision making is collective among the among the partners that are here. That might change, you know, if we're massively bigger because once you're massively bigger as a partnership, that becomes a less functional model. But for now, most of the decision making is actually collective among the six of us. There are pockets of areas that we've carved out for particular partners, to be in charge of.

Silpa Maruri: 40:03

So for example, we have a tax partner who deals with some of the management of tax related decisions. And those those offices are largely occupied by folks who expressed an interest in, you know, wanting to be in charge of a particular area and who have strengths related to that area. So that's generally how firm management works. We also have a CEO. Her name is Josette Winograd.

Silpa Maruri: 40:29

She's great. And what is wonderful about having a CEO is that the lawyers focus on the lawyering, and she does a lot of the the more business level decision making that she can do. Obviously, the partnership has a very heavy say in the high level things, but there's a lot you have to do to run a business on a day to day level, and fundamentally, a law firm is a business, and we would be lost without her.

Khurram Naik: 40:57

And so with the, the firm when you're forming the firm, were there any did you figure out how to structure all this from scratch, or did you have any blueprints from any other firms? Like, how did you come up with just even the most like, walk me through, like, even just the initial stages of forming a firm.

Silpa Maruri: 41:19

Yeah. It's a good question. So David had obviously a body of experience because he had done this in the Salendi Gay days. So he had worked on forming a firm in the first place. And Josette also had some experience because she came in to the selendy gay environment relatively early on in the early days.

Silpa Maruri: 41:40

So both of those things were very helpful because they had a wealth of experience that I didn't have. I when I started at Quinn, it was a very well established firm. And then there was a body of experience that we had just because we had already been partners at other law firms. So a lot of law firm administration is something that you see on a day to day basis as a partner. So you see, for example, how the accounting works, you see how, you know, the like some of the more functional aspects of the firm work.

Silpa Maruri: 42:12

So we had that body of experience to bear, and it didn't it frankly didn't hurt that, you know, a number of us, including myself, do a lot of breach of fiduciary duty and corporate governance related disputes because we also have kind of a little bit more of a business mindset in terms of how to set things up. So that was helpful. And then we also had advisers who helped us along the way in particular areas where we needed advice, and they were very helpful to us. So those were the different ways that we navigated it. And, you know, it's what has been surprising to me is not the complexity.

Silpa Maruri: 42:56

It's actually how in a lot of ways simple the model for a law firm really is because it's fundamentally you sell legal services, right? You're making anything, you're not producing anything, you're not extensively relying on any third party supplier or anything like that. So it's actually a much simpler business than a lot of other businesses. It's you hire the right people and then you sell their services. So, you know, we had to navigate recruiting.

Silpa Maruri: 43:28

We had to figure out how to bring the people whose services we would sell in the door. But that that value proposition actually turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. And I think a large part of that is going back to that question of why Rollo and David. Because of who we are and because of how people in the industry know us and because of all of the things that the market already knows about us, people were drawn in. And we didn't you know, we got a number of resumes that we never even solicited.

Silpa Maruri: 44:05

People saw the press that we were opening a firm, and they started launching resumes at us because they were so excited by the concept behind what we were founding and the people that were founding it that recruiting has been easier than I thought it would be.

Khurram Naik: 44:22

Mhmm. And then what is you know, as far what's novel about the structure firm, like, comparing to Quinn, comparing to Salendi, some of the predecessors that you are drawing on? Like, what's what's what's in terms of structure of the firm, what's a departure?

Silpa Maruri: 44:36

So a few things. Number one, we're obviously smaller than Quinn. Number two, though, we have a completely equity partnership. So there's no division between equity and non equity, or, you know, there aren't tiers of partnership. Everybody who becomes a partner is a partner once they become a partner, and there's no multi tiered status.

Silpa Maruri: 45:00

Beyond that differentiator between us and a lot of firms, I think there's also just a general culture of mentorship. And by the way, when I differentiate us from other firms, I'm not thinking of any particular firm. When I do that, I'm thinking about the market in general. So don't take this to be, you know, an indication of what is true at plan or what is true at Zalando or what is true at x other firm. But market wide, there's been a real trend towards a division between equity versus non equity partnership.

Silpa Maruri: 45:36

And we've really stepped completely in the other direction and said, we don't want that type of division. What we want is a one tier partnership. And there may be valuable and important reasons why the market a lot of firms in the market have gone in the other direction, but for us, it's very important to be a one tier partnership. So that's a big differentiator between us. And that differentiator is reflected in the overall values of the firm, which I've described to you earlier.

Silpa Maruri: 46:05

So we really wanna foster mentorship. We really wanna foster early participation in standup roles and strategy by younger lawyers. And we think a one tier partnership is a reflection of that. And so that is very important as a core ideal to us. And then another thing that differentiates us from a lot of other firms is that we are a trial focused litigation boutique.

Silpa Maruri: 46:32

So we are litigation only. A lot of firms that are out there are litigation in corporate practice, and you'll see that reflected in their cultural norms, around where lawyer sits and around how cases come in the door. We are more trial focused. We've actually been hired for a number of expedited trials, is which an area of particular specialization for us. We thrive on doing that.

Silpa Maruri: 46:58

Whereas a lot of big firms are clump can be clunky, can move slowly in in situations where you need to move quickly. We're nimble, we're lean, and we can move very, very fast in those situations. I would say another big differentiator between us and other firms is just the level of talent we have. So we've recruited exceptionally selectively. We are probably more selective than a lot of the big firms that you can think about because we're very intentional every single time we hire a lawyer.

Silpa Maruri: 47:34

So every single lawyer we've hired is somebody that we really think is a standup trial lawyer who will one day hopefully become a partner. Now, I guarantee that for every single person? Of course not. Because when you hire somebody, you are obviously hiring them based on the prospect of what they will do. But when we hired people, we do not hire people to fill a slot.

Silpa Maruri: 48:00

We hire people because we genuinely believe in the talent that they've showcased to us based on the things that we're able to learn about them before they come in the door. So we're very, very intentional about hiring and it's reflected in the quality of what we produce, which is really, really top tier excellent work. And it shows, you know, when we pitch against other firms, we've frequently gotten the comment that our, you know, our strategy and the level of thinking that we put into a pitch vastly exceeds anything they're seeing from the other firms that they're looking at.

Khurram Naik: 48:40

Has anything changed about you've talked about training for lawyers, associates. I guess I'm curious about, like, what's your approach to training lawyers, and then is there anything different about it now than than at Quinn?

Silpa Maruri: 48:54

So my my approach is really to try from the very beginning to make sure I'm asking people what they think about strategy. And so every single time we're doing something, I solicit input. And I think sometimes an associate coming from a different environment will will often be surprised by how often I do that. Say, what did you think of this argument? What did you think of that argument?

Silpa Maruri: 49:25

Because I really try to get people thinking early about the case in a holistic way rather than in a narrow way. I think there can be a tendency, especially in a big firm environment, for people to become the so called expert on a particular arcane corner of the case or to become the master of some minor area of the case. And there can be benefits to that in the right type of case, but I think oftentimes what ends up happening particularly with very young associates is they don't have a real picture of the big picture. And they've become sort of isolated from and also started to feel not responsible for the whole case. And so what I try to do is instill a level of responsibility for the whole case in an associate because I think that that really yields a lot better work product from people than if they're hived off in some corner and not really thinking about the case as their own.

Silpa Maruri: 50:33

So we as a firm and me in particular, we really try to foster ownership of cases, exercising ownership of cases from the ground up because it really does create much better work product in terms of quality. And I think beyond that, we also try to give people experiences early on, which I've said a few times. And the reason for that, as I've said, is because it develops them and it also increases their investment in a case. Right? How how much more invested are you in a case where you're gonna be the one who is actually deploying the work product you create?

Silpa Maruri: 51:15

Then that, you know, you're really gonna make sure that that work product is absolutely excellent. So there are a lot of reasons to give people opportunities early and, you know, I would pause it. There are more reasons to give them opportunities early than there are to not give them opportunities early. So these are the things that I try to think about in terms of mentorship. I think that I have recently tried to emphasize more to people that I hadn't in the past is also just trying to do business development from day one is something you'll never regret as a lawyer.

Silpa Maruri: 51:51

And it takes time. It takes additional effort. Nobody's really gonna pat you on the back for trying to do that networking when you're a young busy lawyer with competing demands, but you'll think yourself later on. Because the earlier you start it, the the more you're gonna realize the value of it more quickly.

Khurram Naik: 52:10

What are principles of business development that you use, and what are ones that you prescribe in others?

Silpa Maruri: 52:17

So what I'd say as a fundamental precept is that you can't reach out to people only in times of distress because then you're just a person that they're hearing from in a time of distress. And I think what you really need to do is foster a more rich long term relationship with any given client because then they're talking to you on an ongoing basis. They feel like you know them, they feel like they can trust you. They feel like you know their business. And so the real key, I think, to business development is continuity of contact.

Khurram Naik: 53:00

And so what what what has worked for you in that way? Like, what have you found and, like, what techniques to use for for sustaining that contact?

Silpa Maruri: 53:10

I think it's, you know, for me, it's pretty straightforward. It's just making sure that whenever I have an opportunity to reach out to somebody, let's say I see that there's an article about them in the paper or that there's some recognition that they got, you know, I send them a note. I try to have lunch with them. I try to check-in with them. I try to catch up with them.

Silpa Maruri: 53:30

And I think that means that you're staying top of mind with them when you're doing those things and you're exercising those muscles. When you're showing a person that you're paying attention to them, when you're showing a person that you're paying attention to the company and that they work for and you really care about it, I think that makes them remember you when they're thinking about who is a person who's gonna help me in this time of distress, really care about me, who's really gonna care about my company and navigating it through this litigation.

Khurram Naik: 54:03

This topic of this development is reminding me that you talked about ownership. I think that's a core principle that's in your career and what you are are training on. And then also creativity, you know, of course, those two things are related. But I guess what I'd be interested to hear a little more about is ambition. Because when you first came to the firm, you didn't necessarily expect to stay.

Khurram Naik: 54:28

You found yourself, wow. I really like these creative problems, and that really is my primary motivator here. Not necessarily the money. The money is certainly nice. But so what role did when did you discover your ambition?

Silpa Maruri: 54:43

I would say I was actually probably pretty ambitious from day one. That might contradict what I said about I didn't know if I was gonna stay there on a long term basis. But when I came in, I came in with an open mind, which is to say I came in open to the possibility that I would really love a law firm environment and open to the possibility that I would really thrive in one. And because I came in with that mindset, I also came in with a mindset of I'm going to do everything I can to really succeed in this environment and to really make the most of it. And for me, what ended up happening was I actually realized that working hard was very rewarding to me.

Silpa Maruri: 55:27

And at the same time, it was it also was supported by this ambition to get the best opportunities. Because the harder you work and the higher the quality of your work is, the more useful it is in terms of lobbying to get an opportunity to take a deposition or to pitch yourself to do an oral argument and the like. So that, you know, those things fed one another. I felt an ambition to get really quality experience and that ambition to get really quality experience forced me to do really quality work. Doing really quality work led to more opportunities, which fostered my enjoyment of my job, fostered my ambition certainly, and also fostered my development.

Silpa Maruri: 56:17

So these things are all interrelated to one another. And it's, you know, it's interesting because, and it may sound kind of cheesy, your attitude can really shape your experience of a space. And so having kind of a positive can do attitude on a lot of things actually made the work really, really rewarding for me.

Khurram Naik: 56:43

And now when you think about your new firm, I guess I'd be interested to hear, are there in terms of figuring out what's even possible for yourself, are you looking at other firms and saying, hey. Look. You can grow a firm as big as Quinimanual. Or, like, I guess one question I have is, are there other firms that you admire?

Silpa Maruri: 57:03

Of course. Of course, there are other firms that I admire. As I as I said, I admire quite a manual. I think it's a great firm having which is proven probably by the fact that I spent so much of my career there. But I I don't necessarily know that we're trying to exactly replicate one other firm.

Silpa Maruri: 57:22

I think we're trying to build something that's different here in a lot of different ways. You know, one way which I mentioned is this one tier partnership, which is a very important value to us. Another is creating a creating and fostering a real environment of mentorship is very important to us. So what we really wanna be is a firm that produces the highest caliber, highest quality work, truly premier, and also at the same time, does it in in the mode that I'm describing in terms of having this very equitable partnership in terms of really building a positive firm culture. And so that's why our hiring standards are very high because we really wanna be a truly elite law firm.

Silpa Maruri: 58:13

We don't ever wanna be so big that we are hiring people to fill a space. We will inevitably grow because the demand is there for the for our services and the the associate interest is also there. We we repeatedly get interest from the highest caliber attorneys, but we wanna fill we really wanna create something that's in a class of its own, both in terms of the quality of work product we produce and in terms of the quality of the services we provide and also in terms of just the culture. We wanna be second to none in terms of the culture that we create for our associates.

Khurram Naik: 58:54

And so when you think about, the kind of work know, you mentioned that you have you're you're you're finding that you have an edge in expedited trials because of the nimbleness of your firm. How do you think about the kinds of works you wanna bring in, whether it's, like, plaintiff defense, hybrid contingency? Like, how do you think about that portfolio work in terms of these other criteria you have about culture and and quality of work?

Silpa Maruri: 59:19

It's a good question. So the expedited trials have been great from a cultural perspective because every single lawyer we've hired is somebody who has expressed a genuine interest in trial work because that's what we do. So the expedited trials have been met with a lot of excitement from our associates because that's exactly what they wanna be spending their time doing. And it's a real chance, especially for the younger associates to get very, very quick experience in what a trial looks like. So for example, I just first shared a trial about two weeks ago that was an expedited arbitration that literally went from pleading to trial within about five weeks, which is absolutely rapid fire by anybody's standards.

Silpa Maruri: 01:00:08

I think every single person in the room said it was essentially the fastest that they'd ever gone. It was an exceptionally rewarding experience for me because I love trial work. I've done a lot of trial work. This was frankly the fastest I've gotten to trial in any case ever, but it was also a really great experience for the associate that was helping us on the matter because he got to do everything that you do in a normal litigation, but he got to do it over the span of six weeks. So he saw the life of an entire case over the course of, excuse me, five weeks.

Silpa Maruri: 01:00:48

And that was a very important learning experience for him and one I don't think he'd trade for anything. Because when things are happening that quickly, when you look back on it, you can really see how the joints fit together.

Khurram Naik: 01:01:03

Mhmm. And then on the topic of how you figure out mix of work of hybrid contingency, plaintiff defense, like, how do you think about that?

Silpa Maruri: 01:01:13

So we, right now, probably have more defense related work than we do plaintiff side work. We do have some plaintiff side work. We have a mix of both because both of those things are important both from a business standpoint for us and from a cultural standpoint for us. I think, you know, the the defense side work is it's great. The the contingency fee based work is also great.

Silpa Maruri: 01:01:39

It presents some real opportunities to get younger attorneys experience, which is very nice, but we honestly are able to do that even on the defense oriented cases. From from a firm practice standpoint, all of us as litigators have litigated on both sides of the v, so we're very nimble at doing both. I, for example, was the lead on the Dell class action, which was a billion dollar settlement that we got from Michael Dell in Silver Lake related to a stock for stock exchange that happened in 2018. And that was a contingency fee case. It was a great opportunity and it was really wonderful because the associates that worked on that case got a lot of really significant opportunities.

Silpa Maruri: 01:02:25

It also set really important precedent in the state of Delaware and Chancery Court, which is obviously the preeminent business court of today. So there are lots of reasons why we wanna support a contingency fee practice. It'll never be everything that we do. It'll always only be a piece of the puzzle.

Khurram Naik: 01:02:46

Mhmm. And so it sounds like a theme I was hearing about the launch of your firm is that, it's come together more easily than you expected. Like, you expected some challenges and some, but there's just been some great tailwinds there. Are there any tailwind like, what what are some of those tailwinds in terms of you know, you referenced the market. What are some market tailwinds that you think you're you're you're capturing?

Silpa Maruri: 01:03:15

I think no one can deny that this year has been the year of the litigation boutique. There have been so many litigation boutiques that have launched this year, and there have been so many litigation boutiques that have launched just recently. But I, you know, I think the the the real reason that you see so many litigation boutiques is because there's a demand for them. People, you know, aren't necessarily completely satisfied with the big firm model of here's a case, it's massive. We're gonna put a ton of associates on it.

Silpa Maruri: 01:03:52

And those associates are, you know, some of them are gonna be very high value. Others of them are gonna contribute less value. And then we turn the case. It's very expensive and we get to a result. A lot of people are turning to litigation boutiques because fundamentally, a, what you really hire when you're hiring for a matter is you hire a lawyer.

Silpa Maruri: 01:04:13

You don't hire a law firm. Right? Nobody really hires a law firm. And b, a lot of these litigation boutiques, they have a leaner model where they can create the same value, but they won't necessarily staff the case in a way that doesn't make sense. Because for us, we hire only people that we think are superlative.

Silpa Maruri: 01:04:37

A lot of times, we can do the same thing with three or four lawyers that might take eight lawyers at another firm. We have we have that brainpower. We have that talent to marshal.

Khurram Naik: 01:04:50

Mhmm. And then also in the, you know, the firm is it sounds like it's been even more successful than than you expected. With that in mind, you know, what what has changed about like, maybe you had some initial plans for yourself for the coming year. What's changed in terms of what you think you can get done or ambition or scope or what's changed for you in terms of outlook?

Silpa Maruri: 01:05:13

That's interesting. I think we're we're probably gonna hire a few more people than we thought we were gonna hire. Right now, we're at, I think, about 20 lawyers. We may hire a few more people because we like I said, there's, you know, both dimensions of that are met here. One is that we just have a steady stream of work.

Silpa Maruri: 01:05:34

A lot of people are hiring us for a lot of different matters. And the other piece of the puzzle is that we have a lot of interest on the associate side. There are just a lot of people who have really expressed genuine interest in coming and working here. And so those two things in concert with one another lend themselves to to hiring a few more people.

Khurram Naik: 01:05:52

Mhmm. And then what are you most excited about in the, say, year time horizon for your practice or the firm?

Silpa Maruri: 01:05:59

You know, it was really rewarding for me to first share that trial. I've had a lot of really, I'm grateful to have had a lot of really amazing experiences as a litigator. I've done a lot of trial work, especially over the last few years, including the trial that I just mentioned to you and a few other trials that I had while I was at Quinn. And so what I really look forward to is opportunity, getting the next opportunity to do more trial work because that's what I really love spending my day to day doing.

Khurram Naik: 01:06:33

Cool. Well, Silva, thanks for sharing your story. You know, it's super impressive, your rise, and I think it's been really helpful to to break down what are the components of that. And, I certainly have learned a lot about, practice, and I think other people have some great practice tips from here as well.

Silpa Maruri: 01:06:51

Thank you for having me.