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Deep conversations with underrated lawyers.
Khurram Naik (00:00)
Rakesh, I'm really excited to record with you.
I've really enjoyed getting to know you. It's been kind of a whirlwind of a couple, only a couple of conversations, but I feel like we could talk for a really long time. So, but I know you're very busy. So we're squeezing what we can here. And one of the things we talked about, you've worked on a number of landmark matters in recent years. And one of the ones that's more remarkable is your work for the NCAA as lead counsel on a proposed class action.
And so this litigation's been going on for something like 40 years. And so you worked on a novel settlement for that. And we can definitely talk some more about ⁓ the mechanics of that. But I think what was interesting about that is that seems to be such a departure from other kinds of traditional litigation. It's just a really unusual matter to take on an unusual resolution of it.
And in discussing that, we talked about how the experiences you had at the White House's council there built the skillset that you used in this and other matters. So I thought that could be an interesting starting point is to talk about how you came to the White House and the skills you picked up there. you mentioned when you came to the White House, you spent way too much time thinking about the job. Can you talk about that?
Rakesh Kilaru (01:22)
For sure. ⁓ Thanks very much for having me on. As you said, ⁓ love talking to you and we could talk for a long time, so I'm excited to get to do it. ⁓ I think when I first got the opportunity to go to the White House, as you said, I spent way too much time thinking about it. And what I mean by that is I had built up in my head this idea of exactly what I thought my practice was going to be like.
And for a long time, it had been focused on appellate law and kind of pursuing the things you typically pursue in appellate law. So clerking and then working at a firm for a little while and then maybe going into the government and really focusing on appeals. And I always thought I would go into the government and it turned out that the first real opportunity that presented itself was this White House opportunity, which was a totally different thing. You know, instead of doing all litigation in appeals courts, I would be doing almost no litigation in any court. And
Khurram Naik (01:46)
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (02:15)
I spent a lot of time thinking about whether that was a huge diversion, whether that would set me off on some different path. ⁓ And I think ultimately, frankly, thanks to a lot of help from my wife who sort of cuts through through things really well when I'm agonizing over them a little bit too much, it really came down to a couple questions. The first is, are you happy on your current trajectory, which was this very appellate focused trajectory. And as I spent time thinking on it, I sort of realized that I wasn't in part because you spend a lot of time in appellate law sitting at your
Khurram Naik (02:18)
to set me off on some different path.
Thank
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (02:45)
to writing and thinking. And it's not that I don't enjoy doing that, but it felt for me a little isolating, a little cloistered, and not as dynamic as maybe an environment in which you could pull different levers. You could change how the factual record is developed, or you could think of a business solution outside of a courtroom. So that was one piece of it. And then the second piece she encouraged me to think of is just, do you think it'd be fun? And when I actually thought about it that way, instead of in this very instrumental, like what's the next step and the step after that and the step after that,
it became a lot easier because it did seem like it would be a lot of fun to go into the White House to work for President Obama and to tackle some pretty challenging issues in areas I feel pretty strongly about, including labor and education and healthcare. So yeah, I spent too much time thinking about it, but then I ultimately made the decision to do it. And ⁓ so really it's changed my life and I'm really happy I did.
Khurram Naik (03:35)
Do you find that you are, so that was an early experience in decision making, you know, where there's a lot of ambiguity here. What's the right answer here? ⁓ Do you find that you've refined decision making for either key career aspects or just otherwise? Like, what is it that you've honed in on? Is it a matter of just outsourcing like for myself?
When comes to things like travel arrangements, I always spin my wheels. just like, these are the three hotels and I can look at these again and again. then now I've learned to say to my wife, okay, just your little step, can you please step in and just cut through this? And then she does. So ⁓ is that still a tool that you use or is it ⁓ something changed in how you just decide challenging and ambiguous issues like this?
Rakesh Kilaru (04:21)
So it was a good entry point because the thing that I think I learned the most from my experience in the White House is actually how to make decisions better. When I had spent most of my career as an appellate lawyer and in law school, you're really encouraged to spend kind of as much time as you need to thinking about every side of a problem. And particularly as an appellate lawyer, one of the skills that I think you're called on to develop is really thinking through every possible angle of an issue, every possible outcome.
before you commit to a particular decision. And that's particularly true in briefing. Obviously, in argument, you have to be a little more spontaneous. But in the real world, you rarely get to make decisions that way. It's rarely the case that when someone asks you to make a decision, you say, OK, well, let me sit down with the other side's argument for four weeks and think really hard about it and think through all the potential things we could say and all the outcomes and downsides and benefits of that.
Khurram Naik (04:51)
you.
.
Okay,
Rakesh Kilaru (05:15)
And then I'll get back to you in, six weeks with my own perfectly formed set of ideas and, you know, written out arguments that happens in appellate law. And it's a great thing that it does. It's just not how most decisions work in the real world. And what the white house taught me
is really how to make decisions in volume and with imperfect information, and then to really constantly evaluate your process after you make the decision to try to make sure you got it right, or at least that you were thinking about it in the right way. And what I mean by that is on any given day in that job,
there were probably 15 to 20 different scenarios that came up, unlike in my previous job where there was one or two that I was really, really drilled in on. And on every one of those 15 issues, there would either be some media imposed deadline because someone was going to report on something or there was a policy deadline. We had to meet some specific deadline set in legislation, or there was just a desire in the building to get something done on a particular issue and resolve something that had been unresolved.
And so constantly people would say, hey, I need an answer on this by 5 p.m. Here's the background. I need the best advice you can give me. And when you do that again and again and again, I'll say for the first few months, you're probably going to get a lot of stuff wrong. And I really leaned on my colleagues to help me figure out how to do them in the right way. But only by doing it again and again and again do you get better at it. And that's where I think the White House has been super valuable to me in all aspects of my life, which is it.
Khurram Naik (06:37)
We have a things that we losing it.
Rakesh Kilaru (06:41)
really taught me how to make decisions quicker and better, to live with a little bit of uncertainty, but then to take that time afterwards
Khurram Naik (06:41)
And we talk about that in a couple So, I'm going to turn it over to Matt.
Rakesh Kilaru (06:48)
and not, you know, like second guess yourself like crazy, but think, you know, now that I've gone through that, is there something I wish I had had that I didn't have? Is there an input I wanted that I didn't have that I could try to get next time? And doing that again and again and again in this kind of refined process, I wouldn't say it makes me make perfect decisions. I make mistakes all the time, but I feel more confident in making decisions than I used to.
Khurram Naik (07:11)
So two questions I have. One is that skills that you said as an appellate lawyer of doing a deep dive and really thinking through all the angles, does that show up in your practice at all anymore?
Rakesh Kilaru (07:23)
For sure. mean, first of all, we still do some appeals and I've actually been fortunate enough to argue a couple of appeals this last year that I was pretty excited about. And when you're doing that type of work, it still is hugely beneficial to be able to take that time and exercise those muscles of really thinking through in a long and deep way what the issues are. On the other hand, I also think that I'm better at that than I used to be.
because there's, for me at least, a little bit less wheel spinning in terms of how I think about things. You you think about an argument, you think about your counter response, and you think about what the other side's gonna say about that. And at least for me, I feel like I can process through that a little quicker and a little better than before when you can kind of just sit at a blank page and sort of not know where it's gonna go for quite some time.
Khurram Naik (08:03)
Thank you.
Yeah, and I think I'm curious about how those two types of thinking relate. it, do you feel like the two of them have kind of merged a little more? Like, we're like, hey, I'm capable of taking the best of this and the best of this and kind of combine the two or the two different modes of thought that you have. Like, hey, like right now I'm in like lightning decision mode or hey, you know, I'm in deep dive mode.
Rakesh Kilaru (08:32)
I like to think they've merged. You know, I'm not sure it's true that they have sort of merged into something that's better than the sum of the parts, but I think they've merged in the sense that I feel much more confident as a writer because I have spent more time in trial courts and in atmospheres where you have to make a quick decision because a lot of traditional appellate writing teaches you to take your time to make the point you want to make and
you know, to build up to an argument. And that's a lot of how we think sometimes, right? We talk ourselves into the solution by starting somewhere and discussing it, and then you get to the answer. And really good appellate writers and really good appellate advocates are very good at cutting through that. But for me, the process of litigating in trial courts where judges just want an answer, and they want the best answer, and they want you to be efficient, and they don't want to waste a lot of time because they have a million other cases, it's forced me to get to the point a lot quicker. And that aspect of oral advocacy
Khurram Naik (09:02)
Thank
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (09:29)
has, in my view, immensely improved my writing because
now when I come to a brief, I try to think, what does the judge actually need? What do they want? What do they need to get to the right decision? And how can I get to that more quickly than I did before? And then on the flip side, when you're arguing, when you're doing stuff that's more spur of the moment, think having spent so much time typically in advance thinking through these issues in detail in a structured way, like I used to a little more from like an appellate perspective.
Khurram Naik (09:36)
That's
Rakesh Kilaru (09:58)
It actually helps because I feel like I have more to draw on when you have to make that snap decision because I still try on the front end to go through that more studious process of really thinking through everything.
Khurram Naik (10:09)
So let's go back to when you're in the White House and early on you discover, wow, like I need to make decisions really quickly here. And so like, how am I going to do that? I guess you probably came up with some system for making a decision quickly.
then as you say, you got lots of reps in, in a short period of time and really refined that. Tell me about the earliest structure you had around decision making and then how did it change by the time you exit the White House?
Rakesh Kilaru (10:37)
A really good advice I got on my first day was that the way to make good decisions in that space are to focus on people and process. People is pretty simple. I had a lot of clients in the White House. There were lot of folks who worked on different aspects of policy. So there were people in the Domestic Policy Council who worked on labor issues. And then there were people in the Labor Department who worked on labor issues. And then there were people at other agencies who would have issues that occasionally touched labor.
And that was just labor, same thing for education, same thing for health care, so on. And developing meaningful relationships with that group of clients, sitting down with them, chatting with them, not really having an agenda, just trying to understand what was on their mind was really helpful. First, to just educate myself, because there were a million things that were going on in the White House, more than a million that I just did not really know about before I started the job that I was all of a sudden responsible for helping make decisions in.
Khurram Naik (11:16)
Please.
Rakesh Kilaru (11:33)
So getting to know the people really well and building good relationships with them was really critical because they, I think, could look at me as someone who was kind of an honest broker, didn't come into it with any particular agenda and understood what their concerns were. And when both people who you're trying to mediate between think that, I think it can really be helpful. And then process, a large part of it was figuring out is everyone who needs to weigh in on this decision part of the decision.
Khurram Naik (11:39)
I'm to have to come into it with a particular tentative and a about their concerns. And I that's to be really helpful. That's a good point. I'm out.
Rakesh Kilaru (12:01)
Coming from a law firm, had a little bit of this attitude of, well, the email that I receive has the right people on it. And in the White House, there is this thing where you would get these email threads, and there would just be like, the text of the email would just be the plus symbol, but like four people would have been added to the CC line or the two line. And the first time I got one of those, like, what is this? Why are there all these plus symbols in an email? But the point was, this issue, whatever it is, whether it's a labor issue, whether it's a tribal issue, whether it's a healthcare issue,
Khurram Naik (12:04)
Well, I that's a good time to get back to slides.
I'm asking. ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (12:30)
it's gonna touch a lot of other people's equities, so to speak. There might be some aspect of Treasury having to make payments as a result of something being done under the healthcare bill. And so making sure those people are at the table in the first place is really important
to making sure you have all the perspectives that feed into the ultimate decision. So a lot of what I did for the first few months was actually not make decisions myself, and my bosses were great about this. They were sort of able to help me with.
I was able to work with them to figure out what those decisions needed to be. But their attitude was very much spend a couple weeks, spend a month just meeting the people, understanding the general processes people follow. And then once you feel like you have that understanding, it'll be a lot easier for you to confront situations when they come up. And that proved to be true. I think by the time I left, I would get an email or someone would stop me in the hall about an issue. And I could pretty quickly figure out, who else needs to weigh in on this?
Khurram Naik (13:11)
I'm not if you can find the tree or if you can come up with an answer to the tree. I'm not sure many people are mail or if someone is not being involved in that issue. And if you can think about the people who are in the And
if you can of the link that you're going to send to the person. If you can think of the information that you're going personally make sure that they're both in the If can think of someone else who's not in the mail, you have a different view of the person who's involved in the issue.
Rakesh Kilaru (13:24)
What's the right way to bring those people together? Is it a meeting? Is it an email where I make a proposal and people react to it? Is it for someone else to send out that email? There's a lot of different tools you can use to try to resolve an issue.
just having seen a lot of it, there's no substitute for that. And that's true in my work now. There's no substitute for seeing what something looks like before you do it yourself and then actually doing it yourself. People can talk about this stuff all they want, but at the end of the day, you have to get in the courtroom or you have to get in the arena and do it.
Khurram Naik (13:53)
So fast forwarding from the skills that you picked up on decision making and people in process, how do you apply people in process today and can you just talk us through a couple of examples?
Rakesh Kilaru (14:06)
don't think it's that different. In some senses, we have the benefit of, in my practice, being able to get a lot deeper into an individual issue. Because we're a smaller firm, we'll typically have somewhere between 10 and 20 active matters at any given time. And we have about 40 to 50 attorneys. So each of us, at any given time, will probably have somewhere between two and five cases or issues that are really taking up a lot of our time.
And because of that, you can spend more time on each of those, just getting more familiar with them. And so from a process perspective, and frankly, from a people perspective, everyone working on one of our teams gets super invested and super deep into the matter early on. And that can be really helpful because you don't have to have meetings where you're trying to explain the really basic issues to people who are new to it. You have a group of people who are really invested and really understand the issues pretty well.
But beyond that, when it comes to making decisions, when it comes to writing a brief, when it comes to figuring out how to argue something, it ends up being somewhat similar in that from my perspective, I want to get a lot of really smart, thoughtful people to give me as much advice as I can get before I have to actually do it. And then after I do it, I really want those people to help me critique myself and think, did you do that well? Did you do that poorly? What went well? What went wrong? And that involves getting all the people on
Khurram Naik (15:05)
Now.
you
Rakesh Kilaru (15:28)
my team, which is to say the people who are literally on the case team, to weigh in and to encourage folks who typically don't speak up sometimes to say, hey, I know you haven't really said anything yet, but I really want to get every perspective I can on this. So what did you think? know, what, when I said that, what sounded good, what sounded bad, what worked for you, what didn't. Another piece of it, and this is a real luxury of our firm, we don't bill hours. And so it's pretty easy to get people who aren't on our team to listen into things and give us a real fresh perspective.
Khurram Naik (15:45)
We'll now. ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (15:58)
You work on a case for so long, I think you sort of can very easily lose the forest for the trees and get super into the weeds. And I'm lucky that pretty much any one of my colleagues, you can pull in and say, hey, I know you know nothing about this, but let us pitch to you how we're thinking about arguing it. And let's get your reaction to someone who isn't coming to this super deep invested in it, because that's probably going to be the case for your jury or judge. And I think the same thing is true with clients. You want to...
get there by an early and often and every client is different in terms of how much they want to be involved in a particular decision or how you make a particular argument or even the particular words you use in a brief. But trying to figure out early on how your client in a particular manner operates, what their processes, how they think about it as people is really helpful to making sure that you're giving them the time they need on the back end.
Khurram Naik (16:39)
And
so you've talked about a couple of times about what you've learned after the fact. So what's the hardest lesson that you've learned in a post-mortem? ⁓ How did it change your process?
Rakesh Kilaru (17:00)
That's a great question. I would say more often than not, the hardest lesson I've learned is that the things you thought were important just really are not. And this comes up often. You work on a case for a while, and particularly, I think so much of legal training encourages you to run through the tape on every issue. If you think back to taking a law school exam,
One of the things that's rewarded is seeing every possible aspect of the problem and saying, if this issue were presented, here would be the answer. If this issue were presented, here would be the answer. And more often than not, I say pretty much all the time when it comes to a jury trial or an argument in front of a judge or pretty much anything in front of a judge, they really want to get to the bottom line and they want to figure out what actually matters. And it doesn't work to say,
Hey, I have five different arguments. Let me show you all five of them. You really have to have the discipline to figure out like what's the one, maybe two, maybe three things that are the core of your case. What are they? Are you diagnosing them correctly? And then are you driving those themes and not preserving every little issue along the way or, you know, checking every little asterisk or apostrophe or whatever in the argument that you might want to make. And so often,
Khurram Naik (18:20)
I thought.
Rakesh Kilaru (18:26)
to more concrete, I'll do a jury exercise or maybe I'll even argue something to a jury and there will have been beforehand one or two points that I thought like this is the key to the case.
And sometimes you're just wrong on those and that's why you do it. You know, it turns out you thought that these were the two things and jurors just didn't agree those were the two things. You evaluate that I get those two things right. But more often than not, I find when I've learned a harsh lesson, it's that I thought I had two things and then
I argued and I made five or six different points and the two things got lost because they were like these little letter things. Then in the moment I was like, I want to chase that thread or I want to chase this thread or I want to chase that thread. And so having the discipline to boil it down and the courage to cut stuff that isn't ultimately going to move the needle, it's the hardest skill I think for any lawyer to develop. It's to me what makes trial work so fun and exciting and so different from everything else is that so much of skill comes from.
Khurram Naik (19:11)
I'll
Rakesh Kilaru (19:24)
correctly identifying the important issues and then being ruthless in not getting bogged down in rabbit holes. And those are two things that I think, again, law school and most traditional education and frankly, like even my background as an appellate lawyer kind of pushes you away from, pushes you more towards be cautious, present
everything, know, don't be in a position where they can't say you haven't argued this. And so that's a long answer, but I would say more often than not, when I've learned a hard lesson, it was when I came out of something.
And the person was like, listen, I know you thought you had two points, but five came across. so none of them came across as a result of that. So, you know, the way you thought you were subtly working in points four and five actually just distracted from your, from your key narrative. And that's, that's a constant skill to get better at.
Khurram Naik (20:09)
Yeah, it's interesting to you say that because I feel like a lay person's sense of what's persuasive, and we've all, I think everyone's run into something like this, is when someone's trying to take a position of some kind, it's a kitchen sink thing where they just throw everything at you, here's a bunch of things. And then in law school, you learn like,
this counterintuitive version of it, which is arguing the alternative. I think that's one of the core concepts you learn in law school that's not intuitive at all, arguing the alternative. We don't really do that. I ⁓ was in the room and even if I was, ⁓ I didn't drop the vase. That's not how we have any, when I'm at a party, it's nothing I would ever say to another human, right? But I feel like what you're saying is the level beyond that is it's kind of this U-turn or U-curve back to
Rakesh Kilaru (20:44)
Yeah, totally.
Khurram Naik (20:57)
some of this even more fundamental, is one argument. so that necessarily means trade-offs. It necessarily means it's taking a risk and calling a shot. It's funny because we have this conception of lawyers as being risk-averse and I think it is broadly very true. But in this way, I think this is an opportunity to take on a risk. It's a risk to say, this is it. This is the Soronis position. So you talk a little about what it feels like to be
calling a shot that way and when you're in trial, it's in such a public way and there's a record of it. So what is it like to just call your shot?
Rakesh Kilaru (21:34)
⁓ It's, it's fun, but it's frightening, you know, and that's, that's, those are the two sides of it. And that's sort of why love it. You know, they're like, what you said is so spot on, right? In law school, you really are taught to make these alternative arguments and say exactly as you said, if a if not a then B, if not B, then C, if not C, then D. And when you talk to real people in that way, they're just like, so which is it?
And why are you giving me all four? And it's probably like the fact that you're giving me all four makes me really think you don't believe in any of them. And so there's an art to figuring out, okay, well, I had that chain and it was real and it is still really important to work out that chain. Like what are all the potential arguments? You know, what are all the different paths to victory? And so we might even map that out on a board and say, you know, in an antitrust case here, all the different elements, here's all the different arguments we can make. But then you have to like, you have to build that out.
to be making good decisions, but then you have to winnow it down. And I think early in my career, even a few years ago, I just wasn't very good at it, you know, and I had, I had the good fortune to spend a lot of time trying cases with my partners, Beth and Brian, who have many, many skills, but I would say one of their most profound skills that I learned from every day is this skill. It's figuring out what to cut and having the courage to cut it and say, listen, I know you think that's a good issue.
And it may be a good issue in front of a judge that, you know, product X is in the market and product Y is out of the market and antitrust case. But that just feels like that's going to seem really technical and like a technicality and it's not common sense or intuitive to a juror. so either improve your process for explaining it or cut it. And you probably have a couple other arguments that are better. So why don't you focus on those? And I would say, I think I've gotten better at it by watching them and I've gotten more comfortable in, um,
making those decisions, not just by watching them, but by thinking, you whenever those moments come up in a case, how would I do it if I were them? And then I see the decision they make and you know, sometimes it's the same one I would have made, sometimes it isn't and trying to learn from that. It's like, okay, well they, they approach that issue differently on this cross examination. For example, I thought these five points were the ones that were really important. They thought these two were the ones and
you they were right. So how do they pick them? And so you sit down, you talk with them. Why did you think those
Khurram Naik (24:00)
I'm
Rakesh Kilaru (24:01)
were the two as opposed to the five? Um, and just doing it more and more, I think helps a lot, but I guess to answer your first question, how do you do it? The way to do it is to do it. You know, I think it's one of those things where the longer you put it off and the more you avoid it, the worse it gets. At some point you just have to commit and say, in this exercise, I'm going to try, you know, one and two, and I'm going to be completely committed to it.
Khurram Naik (24:04)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (24:25)
And at this trial, I'm going to try one and two, and I'm going to be completely committed to it. And maybe I'll be wrong, but I'd rather be wrong pushing a consistent narrative that people can understand, and they just may not like it, than trying to give them a bunch of different arguments that makes it seem like we don't know what we're really talking about, or we don't know what we actually care about.
Khurram Naik (24:47)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think in the context of, you know, I'm a legal recruiter and a lot of times lawyers understand the reason why they would make a change is because they want to change the kind of work they're doing. And in doing so,
people are curious and so people are curious about different practice areas and interest in different practice areas. So a number of times people say, like, I want to explore a couple of things at once. And so yeah, my council is let's focus on one for a dual purpose because there's two audience here. One is the partners of this firm. So they understand, hey, what is it that you're trying to do here? So that narrative doesn't vary. And then also for the client, so that they have a singular narrative that they're not trying to.
balance multiple narratives and what was what I say in this one, what I say in this one and then, you know, then it just gives clarity for everyone. And so it's not easy. It's not profitable. People want options. They want to preserve options. But the trade off of all options is noise. And so the benefit of of taking the risk of a single narrative is clarity.
Rakesh Kilaru (25:53)
I totally agree with that. I will say I started out thinking about this as a jury trial skill and it is very much a jury trial skill. It's really important to, even if you have a trial that's going to last a couple of weeks, it's going to last a month. There's a lot of information that people are being asked to process. They're in this environment that most of them probably don't want to be in where they're away from their jobs or their families and they're in this courtroom listening.
to people talk at them for a bunch of hours a day. So in that format, it's really important. But I've started to find that it's hugely important everywhere else too. So when writing a brief to a judge, yes, we ultimately may make three arguments, but do we know which is the best one? And are we leading with that? And are we developing that and spending as much time as we can on that and signaling that that's the one they should focus on and how much we talk about it and how we talk about it?
Khurram Naik (26:21)
in
I did it everywhere else.
Thank
and I'll see you all later.
Rakesh Kilaru (26:46)
even when it comes to like a meeting with a client or a meeting with opposing counsel to think through a mediation strategy. There's three issues, there's four issues we could talk about. What are the ones that really, really matter? And what are the ones that you can give on? What are the ones that are less important? Like being able to prioritize and figure out where the best argument is, where the stuff you can cut is, or in the settlement context is a little different, like where are the issues you can give on and where you can't give on?
Khurram Naik (26:46)
I some of the things that we've doing in the last of days, we've a of things.
I'm ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (27:13)
I think they're all variants of that same skill of figuring out what really matters and having the courage to prioritize it and sometimes tell people even on your side, like, hey, listen, I know you think that these five issues are all equally important. Like, that's just not, that's not gonna happen. Like, we're not gonna get a judge to rule for us on all five. The other side's not gonna agree with us on all five. So let's pick the two that we really
wanna drill down on, make those home base, you know, like really defend that territory. ⁓
And then the others, if we make them, we make them because sometimes totally early in cases you want to preserve arguments for later on. But let's try to signal a little bit and make the judge's life easier because at the end of the day, they have to make decisions too. Judges have to make decisions, juries have to make decisions, clients have to make decisions. And the more you can do to make those lives easier, the better you are no matter the context.
Khurram Naik (28:03)
Going back to what saying, what you at the White House, the key part was just listening to stakeholders, right? So you're just, you're spending time with these different people, getting them to understand how they see an issue.
and then your position is synthesized. there's a lot of importance to listening. And then something you also referenced was in this flat female you have, it permits you to have a large team, whatever size team you want on an issue, listening and really going ⁓ deeper into understanding a client or perspective. So on one hand,
Your process, you're very focused on process. Your process involves a lot of listening. But then on the other hand, your process is about honing in on one issue. And so you talk about the importance of flexibility with clients or just really anyone, because I think probably there's flexibility that's involved with judges. One judge may really be interested in hearing one type of perspective or issue or lens on a matter versus another judge. How do you balance adapting to
client, opposing counsel, a judge with your focus on process and making sure that you're executing your process with excellence and refining that. How do you balance this too?
Rakesh Kilaru (29:24)
They go hand in hand at the end of the day.
I think what I, one of the, would say if I were to self-diagnose one of my bigger weaknesses, it's actually for a long time, it was being way too analytical about things and spending way too much time thinking about them as we talked about at the very beginning. And I would say over the last few years, it's become a lot more sometimes doing things a little bit too quickly and thinking, you know, I've seen this scenario before because I've seen a lot of things, whether in the government or in litigation. And so I know exactly how to approach it. And.
late, I think my whole life, and I think this is true of everyone, like you're gonna ultimately be between two poles on this stuff and sometimes you're gonna err too far on one side and sometimes you're gonna err on the others. And so that kind of goes back and forth over time. But the listening helps because to me, being in a meeting and not being the person who talks as much and listening to others talk has become an increasingly important skill. And I know that sounds terrible because like
early in my life I really like to talk and it's sort of true to some point, we all do. But I think listening to what other people say and how they talk about it has become more and more valuable to me and it's sort of a reminder of what life was like when I started in the White House because a lot of folks are going to approach these cases differently. So in a team meeting, even if we had a team meeting yesterday and we were reacting to some briefs the other side filed and six or seven people spoke up and they all had slightly different
Khurram Naik (30:34)
They talked about it. ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (30:53)
takes on what they thought was the most important thing.
But at the end of it, if you reflected on it, there were a couple common threads that the group thought were really resonant. And some of those jibed with what I had thought were the key points, and some of them didn't. But there was something to that. When you hear a lot of people talk, what are the common threads you're hearing? What are the common concerns you're hearing? What are the things that stand out as, we think this is a real strength for us, we think this is a real weakness for us? I think gathering more information on that, not just from my teammates, but also from our clients, is super helpful.
And knowing what guardrails are is the other big benefit that comes from listening. So this is particularly true with clients. It may be that there's some stuff where they say, listen, this is just an argument we can't make. Like, I know you want to make it, but we cannot make it for this business reason. Like, we can't say we would never do X or we can't say we will do Y. Like, we're just not going to do those things. And so hearing what they say can really set guardrails. Listening to others can help you kind of sift out and
Khurram Naik (31:25)
It's really extraordinary to see a journey of benefit to come through.
Thanks for watching.
Rakesh Kilaru (31:52)
hear what's rising to the surface from your team in terms of what do they think the key points are. And then at the end of the day, I think the art and what I love about my job is trying to synthesize that with my own gut instincts and common sense into what the right decision is, making it, and then kind of living with the consequences and evaluating if you got it right. Because the fun thing about this job, which I think both Beth and Brian have said to me at varying points are,
Khurram Naik (31:53)
See.
Rakesh Kilaru (32:22)
There's going to be another set of decisions tomorrow. And so if you get them wrong today, you're to have another chance to do it tomorrow. And particularly in trials, it's the same thing. Our trials typically last for a long time. So if you have a day that didn't go well, guess what? You got another one coming tomorrow. So you better be ready for it. And you better be ready to kind of rise to the occasion the next day and the day after that and the day after that.
Khurram Naik (32:44)
Let's go back to how you came to join the firm because you were in the White House. You had really bad experience there. I'm sure you had a number of options. What made you ultimately decide on this boutique that was at the time quite young, ⁓ successful, but young? Like what led you to say this is the right fit?
Rakesh Kilaru (33:04)
lot of things that came together that fortunately have all turned out to be true. So I feel very lucky in that regard. When I looked at what I loved about my time in the government, it was being able to help people solve problems creatively, as opposed to approaching everything through one particular narrow lens, which I think was largely the case when I was in a Pella lawyer. I loved working in big teams. I loved being able to talk to people.
with the focus being the results as opposed to time. I mean, that was one of the biggest huge shifts, paradigm shifts from when I was in private practice the first time to going into the government is no one was looking at their watch. They were looking at their watch because they might have another meeting, but they weren't looking at their watch because they were trying to figure out either how much money I was spending of theirs or how much money they were losing of theirs by talking to me. And the last piece was just this kind of feeling of camaraderie that came from being in
unit and the White House is a very big place but you end up having this group of people that you work with pretty consistently and I always felt like a real sense of team with all of them whether it was my fellow lawyers in the council's office or the policy clients I worked with. So I was kind of looking for something that felt like that and it seemed to me like that was going to be impossible because most big firms a lot of what I said is not really possible in the main. You're billing for your time so you have to be thoughtful about how much time you're spending on a task.
Khurram Naik (34:02)
we have them prepared in place, and then I'm going to go the presentation.
Rakesh Kilaru (34:32)
your colleagues are billing for their time. So you have to be cognizant of how often you walk into their office and just try to say, Hey, I need to spitball something with you for a couple hours. The time billing aspect of things to me can distort decisions and process. may spend more time on something that you don't need to spend time on, or you may spend less time on something than you want, just based on the pressures that come from that. And so I was thinking, like, if I could get a place that
Minimize some of these issues. It would be pretty amazing because that's an environment. I love being in and I also love Working on kind of big complex issues. It was one of the things that was most fun about the White House is every day there was some issue that was really important and Sometimes it was super technical and sometimes it was super headlining, but either way it felt like it really mattered and kind of through fortuitousness or for you whatever the word is my wife had worked with Beth at
Khurram Naik (35:02)
Okay. ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (35:29)
Paul Weiss before my wife went on to be a prosecutor. So I knew Beth from that. And one of the other founding partners was someone I had worked with a long time before. And I had read some articles about their firm and I'd sort of just thought, trial boutique, you not for me. But because when it opened two years ago, I just was very focused on being in the White House and doing that. And I started to think, well, maybe this would be kind of perfect. You know, it's a boutique. It's small. There's a real sense of team.
They handle really big, challenging cases and I love handling big, challenging stuff. Their model has eliminated the billable hour entirely. We don't bill hours for anything and so we charge clients for basically for a month of our services at different rates and so we can at any given time devote as much or as little resources to solving a problem as we need to with the ultimate goal being getting the right result for the client. And the one thing I was a little hung up on was
Khurram Naik (36:09)
I think ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (36:25)
well, will I actually like trial work or not? And this time I didn't spend as much time thinking about that because I thought there's a lot of, like I've never done it before. Maybe it would be really fun. know, trial work is this thing
Khurram Naik (36:38)
They
Rakesh Kilaru (36:38)
that seems to combine a lot of skills that I find enjoyable, whether I'll be good at it or not is another question. But I also looked at the docket and thought, but there's also a lot of other stuff they have going on. And if I go there for a couple of years and I turn out to not love trial work,
I'll probably still have worked on some really
interesting stuff and then I can figure out what the right next step is. And so I joined the firm. man, like sort of like with the White House, it has been such a home run in that it turns out I really do love trying cases. But we also have this really robust docket of cases before trial because clients are hiring us earlier and earlier. So I feel like on the one hand, I've been able to develop.
some skills at trying cases, which is a really hard thing to do because cases don't go to trial very often and you don't get to work with the best trial lawyers very often. And here I get to do both of those things. But we also have cases where there'll be really complex legal briefing, or you'll have to think about other resolutions of the case, like in our NCA settlement, or ⁓ there'll be appeals that come out of our cases that we get to work on. And so
Khurram Naik (37:43)
Thank
⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (37:45)
It's just been a lot richer of an experience and environment than I could have hoped for in the sense that we still, we do and very much focus on trials and I happen to love them. But there's so much other stuff we do that's also really interesting. And so I feel like I get the best of all worlds. Like I get to be part of helping clients make some business decisions sometimes. I get to still do appellate work. I get to still do really complex legal work. And then there's all this aspects of trial strategy and how to position a case that are really, really fun.
Khurram Naik (38:04)
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (38:13)
and putting all that together is pretty special.
Khurram Naik (38:17)
And then in coming over, sounds like the work you've focused on has shifted over time. And so I think early on, there's a lot of focus on product liability litigation. Can you chart out what was the trajectory of types of work that you've taken on at the firm? How has the firm evolved in that way of the kinds of work that you take on?
Rakesh Kilaru (38:37)
Yeah, one thing I'm super proud of, think we're all proud of, is that we have stayed true to our mission of not ever becoming a subject matter firm and really remaining a trial firm. And the distinction between that is maybe a little subtle, but I think it's important. think if you're thought of as a subject matter area firm, products liability is a great example. We had a bunch of product trials when the firm started. I think we had something like five or six.
cases in the same product bellwether pool over that five year, over a year and a half period maybe. And those were pretty much all the trials we were doing. We had a couple other ones, but there's only so many trials you can do when you're a firm of 20 to 30 people. And so we had products trial after products trial after products trial. And one thing that could have happened is that clients and others started to think of us as a products liability firm.
And so we would only ever get pitched for those cases or we'd only ever get outreach on those cases and we wouldn't get to do other interesting stuff. And we never wanted that to happen because another feature that I didn't mention earlier but that I should have mentioned is what I loved about the firm is it was one of the few places where they welcomed being a generalist. At almost any big firm I talked to, it was like,
Khurram Naik (39:41)
it
Rakesh Kilaru (39:53)
Which subject matter area are you going to become? Are you going to become an antitrust person? Are you going to become a congressional person? Are you going to become a white collar person? Are you going to become an appellate person? There was, understandably so, there was a desire to put yourself in some particular vertical. And we thought we're going to be generalists. And the success of the firm, one of the big successes has been that we still get calls on all kinds of different cases. So yes, we did a bunch of products trials in our first few years and they were awesome trials.
Khurram Naik (40:02)
In time.
Rakesh Kilaru (40:22)
I think we got a lot of good experiences, we got good results, our clients were really happy. But then there was a period of time where there just weren't as many products trials. There were a couple big verdicts and COVID happened and all sorts of different, there are many different reasons why I think there are fewer products cases now than there were recently, but there aren't as many. There are some, but there's not as many. And we started to get calls on antitrust cases. And that was a totally different area.
Khurram Naik (40:45)
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (40:47)
You know, it's not something we had tried to case in before, at least many of us, some of us had, but most of us had not tried big antitrust
cases before. And so to get calls on those cases was exciting and was kind of a proof of concept because it showed clients are thinking of you as a trial firm, not a subject matter firm. And so now we have a lot of antitrust cases. You know, I think most of the last two years, three years, our big trials have predominantly been antitrust trials. But what we love and we hope continues to happen is that
Khurram Naik (40:55)
Thank you sir.
Rakesh Kilaru (41:16)
You then get a call for something else, whether it's a business dispute, whether it's another products case, whether it's some completely different kinds of case like trade secrets or IP. There are areas we haven't been able to work in yet that we hope to, but the goal is to always stay at that level of being a generalist and being able to take on any trial because I think it's good for our brand and it's just a lot more interesting.
Khurram Naik (41:38)
Can you make a comparison between the nature of liability litigation and the interest litigation? Tell me about commonalities differences, how the training you had in privacy liability, you built on that foundation for the interest litigation.
Rakesh Kilaru (41:52)
Yeah, I would say, you know, on products, there are people at my firm, know, Beth, Brian, Carrie, Moir, others, a lot of my partners who have done a lot of products trials. And so they have such an amazing wealth of experience of how to try those cases that when I started at the firm, I felt like I was really just trying to learn from them more than anything else. You occasionally I would say, hey, what about this idea? What about that idea? But they had seen a lot.
and they had the flexibility to approach every case differently and to think about what the unique themes are of that case. But they knew the law cold. They knew the types of arguments you can make to a jury and how they fit with the law. And I think they were very good at figuring out the kind of core themes of those cases. So I felt like I was really playing a lot of catch up on that. ⁓ Antitrust has been a newer thing for us, just to be perfectly candid. We've done a lot of work lately.
Khurram Naik (42:32)
It is time to say
Thank you.
So,
Rakesh Kilaru (42:45)
in that area, and I think we have become expert in it in a lot of ways. But when we started working on those cases, it was relatively few of us, I probably just Beth, who had tried complex antitrust cases
Khurram Naik (42:48)
I'm going to leave you with quick summary
Rakesh Kilaru (42:56)
before. And so figuring out, you know, how do you marry the law to the facts? You know, you can develop a really good narrative, but how do you match that narrative to the questions the jury has to actually answer on the form? That's something we're still working on. You know, I think in products cases, we have a really good sense of that.
of how an argument you're going to make to a jury matches with a question that they need to decide so you can tie those two things together. We're telling you something that's immediately useful for you when you fill out that verdict form. I think it's a little more challenging in antitrust cases because the jury instructions can be really, really long. know, typically a set of jury instructions in a product case when I was working on them, maybe 20 to 25 pages and an antitrust case, a class action.
Khurram Naik (43:29)
I'm ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (43:41)
pretty common for them to be 70 pages plus. It's a lot of information for people to distill. The verdict forms can be more complex. I think a typical product's verdict form that we used to work with had three or four, maybe five questions. It's not uncommon. In fact, I would say it's somewhat common for antitrust verdict forms
to have 12, 13 questions. So it's really fun, but it's a challenge. It's figuring out, OK, well, the common theme in both cases is figuring out a common sense narrative.
Khurram Naik (44:02)
I'm hearing that something is We've not seen the real thing. We've seen it on the internet.
Rakesh Kilaru (44:10)
that a jury can understand as to why what your client did is right. Because at a very high level, products cases and antitrust cases, and a lot of cases, are about what's reasonable and whether something that someone did is reasonable or not.
Khurram Naik (44:12)
We've seen internet. We've seen it on the We've the it on the the We've We've We've it We've the We've We've it the We've it the internet. We've
Rakesh Kilaru (44:26)
But the process that think jurors have to go through in antitrust cases to fill out a form, it just is a little longer. It is a little more complex. I think the jury instructions maybe ask a little more of them.
So figuring out the right way to marry all those things together, the story, the law, the facts, that's something we're still working on. And I think there's a lot of common skills in them, ⁓ but ⁓ it's just a fun process to keep thinking about and developing.
Khurram Naik (44:53)
And so the challenge in insurance cases is sustaining jury's focus because there's so many aspects that have to touch on.
Rakesh Kilaru (45:00)
Yeah, it can be that. mean, I do think jurors work really, really hard, and they take their responsibilities very seriously. But if you give someone, read someone really, 80 pages of instructions on how to do something, just think about it like Legos, right? Like when my kid has Legos that have like a 300 page instruction book, you start and you're like, whoa, this is going to be a really daunting task. Whereas when the instruction book has 20 pages, you think, OK, maybe this is a little more easy to digest.
to make it a little more realistic of analogy than my Lego analogy, it's our job as lawyers to help them figure out in that 80 pages, like what are the anchors for making a decision? Because yes, there's 80 pages of instructions, but in every case, there's probably gonna be one or two issues that for the defense or for the plaintiff are what the case hinges on. And usually there's agreement on that. Both sides will say, is a case where defining the market is what matters, or this is a case where
Khurram Naik (45:41)
We shouldn't
Rakesh Kilaru (45:58)
Figuring out if anyone was actually harmed economically is what matters. There'll be these areas of clear dispute that are the clear heartlands of the battlefield. And figuring out how to direct the jurors to the right pages of the instruction, the right questions on the verdict form, and building credibility and helping them walk through that process of saying, here's how you answer questions one, five, 10, 15, so on and so forth. That's an art. That's a skill. And that's the part that we're, I think, still trying to figure out a little bit.
doing pretty well at it, I would say.
Khurram Naik (46:30)
What would make a lawyer enjoy process by bloody work more than antitrust or vice versa?
Rakesh Kilaru (46:36)
I'll fight your premise a little bit because I think we really enjoy both and I think one of the things that I love about our firm is we're able to find joy in both. ⁓ I think at a simpler level or maybe not simpler levels not to write about it. There are different subject matter areas that are often touched on in the different cases. So for example, in a products case, you're much more likely to have kind of hard science, right? You'll have medical doctors testifying or you'll have
you know, the way a medical device or a pharmaceutical works and you'll be explaining how that works in terms of biomechanics or what have you. Antitrust cases, that's probably a little rarer. You'll probably have a little more focus on economics and how economic principles apply. So in some senses, I do think some people gravitate to products work because they really love kind of hard science and they find that more appealing. And some people gravitate more towards antitrust because they find economics and that mode of thinking a little more interesting. I think for us,
Khurram Naik (47:04)
in the way that installation performance people work. So, thank you for your time. appreciate it. And with that, I'll presentation.
Rakesh Kilaru (47:34)
And frankly, there are people at our firm who would say the same thing. They would say, like, I like product cases because I love getting in the science. And there are people who would say, I love antitrust cases because I think the economics are really interesting. ⁓ But from a firm perspective, from my perspective, I hope that I always have the ability to say, hey, this case is like, there's something in this case that's really interesting. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And then we're going to make that a core thing. And I'm not going to say,
Man, this type of case, I'm not as excited for that. I'm happy to have the work, but I'd rather be working on this other type of case. ⁓ I think we're at our best when we can figure out a way to make all of our cases really interesting and enjoyable.
Khurram Naik (48:11)
And apart from how much there is to help a jury wait through, how else to describe it as what else you say is the big difference between litigating interest cases versus products cases.
Rakesh Kilaru (48:29)
that really is to me one of the main ones. I would say one of the big similarities that's I think a little bit underappreciated is the importance of non-expert witness testimony in some of these cases. So this is true in both sets of cases. So in products cases you'll have, in some of the products cases I've worked on, I don't want to over generalize, but in some of the product cases I've worked on, each side will have their retained and paid experts.
right? There'll be some doctors you retain to say, hey, you know, the standard of care is X and it was reasonable for this person to do this. And in antitrust cases, you'll have these retained economists. It's kind of impossible to imagine an antitrust case without them. Each side will have some economists who says the market is X or I think this is anti-competitive conduct from an economic perspective. This is not economic, ⁓ anti-competitive conduct from an economic perspective. And so experts are present in both cases.
But I would say a common theme of both cases is decision makers often, not always, but often view those paid experts as kind of coming out to a draw. Now both sides have them. Maybe they'll find one more credible than the other. And one of the things we try to do is figure out how to cross the other side's experts in a way that makes them appear less trustworthy than ours and present our experts in a way that is very trustworthy, so acknowledging weaknesses.
Khurram Naik (49:46)
I'm going here and I'm stop here I'm I'm here and here and I'm going stop
Rakesh Kilaru (49:55)
not ⁓ fronting bad points, all that sort of stuff. So the experts are important in both sets of cases. But one thing I have seen is that jurors and judges often are just as persuaded, if not more persuaded, by the non-experts. So in products cases, it'll be the testimony of the individual plaintiff. What mattered to them in the end? Would they have made different decisions if confronted with different information? ⁓
prescribing doctors so often in a products case, the doctor will have prescribed the medicine to the patient and there will be a question about whether the product was safe or not. And the testimony of that doctor and how they thought about it, they're an expert in a sense, you know, they're trained doctor, but they're not a paid expert. They're a person who made a decision. And I think jurors really like hearing from that person and what they were thinking. And similarly in antitrust cases, I think often it's really important for jurors to hear from the business people.
and hear what they're thinking in the real world. Because I think they know, you can probably find an economist who will say, the market is X or the market is Y. But when you hear executives, and more importantly, see them saying in real time outside of the courtroom, like in their emails, we view X as a competitor and we really got to figure out how to deal with that. Or when you view third parties in the industry, so not your client, but other people who compete with your clients saying we view competition in this very broad way.
Khurram Naik (50:59)
Keep the verdict on track.
Rakesh Kilaru (51:22)
That can be super persuasive to a jury because again, you know, the economists are going to do their job. The experts are going to do their job. Each side is going to have one, but there's something about seeing how things play out in the real world with real people that to me always seems more appealing and intuitive from what I think is interesting. And I think jurors often have that reaction too. So I know this is the opposite of what you asked for, but I would say one of the more interesting commonalities of the two is how much.
Khurram Naik (51:24)
Thank you. ⁓
and we will go through.
Yeah.
Rakesh Kilaru (51:51)
non-expert testimony can often drive the outcome and how important it is. And I would say frankly how underappreciated it is because a lot of times when we'll come into a case, one of the first things we'll hear is, we have the best experts, we're in a great position. And I sort of view that as like, okay, that's table stakes, I really wanna have good experts, but that's just like the starting point, it's by no means the finishing point.
Khurram Naik (52:11)
This might answer, maybe you just answered my question, but in the arc of an entire case, what is the part of the case you think you pay attention to that your peers or other skilled litigators don't pay as much attention to?
Rakesh Kilaru (52:28)
think one of the lessons I've really learned from working with others is to consider the source. And so it's not enough to just have people on your side saying something. It's people who will be perceived as credible because they don't have as much to lose. And so whatever the case is, yes, if your expert agrees with your point of view, that's helpful, but.
they're your expert and so presumably you're putting them on the stand because they agree with your side of the case. Your own witnesses, like witnesses at your company, are important because jurors need to evaluate whether they think they're credible in explaining what they were thinking and when they were thinking it. But often what I found is super valuable and what we found is super valuable is what other people say. So rivals, competitors, ⁓ even the other side, what are the plaintiffs saying?
When you get the other side to agree with you, or when people who are more dispassionate, I would say, are agreeing with you, that to me is something that really can drive home to a juror. It's not just the lawyers getting up here. It's not just the paid defense that they're presenting in court. This is what people actually think in the day to day, and that should matter to you. ⁓ So I think focusing on that is really important, and we do try to do that.
And then another piece beyond the idea of considering the source is it's sort of, so I won't repeat it, but it is simplifying and cutting. I think often in cases and often working with other attorneys, there is an innate impulse to preserve every argument, present every argument and run through the tape on every argument so that later on you can't be second guests for leaving argument on the cutting room floor. ⁓ but one thing I think we specialize in
that I've learned a lot about from my partners frankly is if you're leaving all your options open, you're not giving the jury any real option. Like at some point you have to make your decisions, we talked about this earlier, and have the courage to say here's what actually matters. So those are the two things I would say. think focusing on who's presenting things and where evidence is coming from is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. And then simplifying and cutting and having the courage to do that is another thing that I think we try to be unique at. And some of us are better at it than others.
Khurram Naik (54:21)
And I'm going to go ahead and take a to get to end of the presentation. I'm going take few minutes to get to presentation. I'm going take a more minutes to get to end of the
Yeah, I mean, going back to your point about what is the opposing, what is the counterpart is saying, know, what have other industries said? I think one of my favorite techniques I've learned for persuasion from litigation is starting sentence with there is no dispute that, you know, because, you know, honing in on the commonalities, I think it makes you look very reasonable.
Rakesh Kilaru (55:11)
Mm.
Khurram Naik (55:16)
It shows you're taking control of the situation. I think it helps. Then you get to say, this isn't at issue. So this is, and then just, it goes back to that, you know, clarifying that narrative of what there is to focus on. So, yeah, that seems to be a really powerful technique.
Rakesh Kilaru (55:32)
I think if you, this is like, this is really not a secret, because every brief I file is pretty much public. I think if you looked at reply briefs that I've filed in particular, probably 60 to 70 % of them start with what you just said, which is there's no dispute that X, Y, and Z, and then it's like, here's what actually matters. And I do think it's a useful tool. I think it's helpful for judges. And, ⁓ you know, I think it's helpful for juries and, and it makes everyone's life easier. Of course, you have to be right about that. And sometimes people don't agree that
We agree on things, but.
Khurram Naik (56:03)
Right.
Yeah, that's important part of the credibility is in it. I think the next time I interview a litigator, should read some of their briefs. You're giving me really good idea.
Rakesh Kilaru (56:11)
Yeah
Khurram Naik (56:14)
So let's talk, you know, you've mentioned over times what you've learned from Beth, what you learned from Brian. Let's talk about, can we start with what you think those two litigators do that is exceptional?
Rakesh Kilaru (56:28)
⁓ It would be hard to give you an exhaustive list of that, but I would say if I had to pick kind of three things that I think are really exceptional about them among many, ⁓ one we've talked about, but it's really important. It's that ability to make tough calls and figure out what matters and have the courage to stick with it. I won't belabor the point, but it's a really, really, it's a skill that they have that I'm consistently impressed with.
You come into a case, figure out, yeah, there's 10 arguments. Typically, we come into a case, some other side will, not other side, other lawyers who've been working on the case will very graciously present to us for an hour, hour and a half, or two hours, how the case has been worked up, what they think about it, what they think the keys are. And usually those two, at the end of that call, can say, here's the three things that I think we really need to focus on. And more often than not, far more often than not, those are the three things that we end up.
actually driving a trial. I think a second thing that they're really, really good at is listening. I think most people think of great trial lawyers as speakers and people who talk, and they are very good at that. But I think the skill that really sets them apart is their ability to listen to what witnesses are saying, to what clients are saying, and to react to that, and to come into a meeting and a cross or whatever and say, I have a plan, and I want to
Khurram Naik (57:51)
.
Rakesh Kilaru (57:57)
Like I have a plan for how I want to approach this and I have a goal I want to achieve, but it'll be better for me if I can get the witness to say it than if I say it and they disagree with me. It'll be better for me if people in the room agree with that point of view. So how can I use what they're saying to help? Right. And I think in cross, that's very much how it is. Like, how can I get this witness to say what I want them to say? And that typically involves listening really carefully to what they say.
Khurram Naik (58:01)
It'll be interesting.
Thanks.
Rakesh Kilaru (58:26)
and kind of using as many of their words back at them as you can. It's less adversarial in meetings, obviously, but ⁓ there is a little bit of just listening to the perspectives of other people and having a point of view, but letting the discussion kind of happen as opposed to just trying to shut down discussion before it happens. And then third, I would say is committing to creating opportunities for other people. And that in some ways has very little to do with their
you know, defined courtroom skill, which I think is super elite, but it's also the thing that sets the firm apart and I think sets them apart. There are so many fabulous trial lawyers who are super skilled and super impressive, but want to stay in the limelight, you know, and want to have every opportunity at all times. Are you every motion cross-examiner, direct examine every witness?
Khurram Naik (59:01)
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Rakesh Kilaru (59:26)
And both of them are really good at figuring out what they really need to do as a first chair, and then using everything else as an opportunity for other people and advocating for them and putting them in front of clients. speaking from my own experience, like that is what has, if anything's enabled me to have success in private practice, it's probably watching them do the first two things and trying to learn from osmosis and talking to them and understanding their process.
Khurram Naik (59:26)
Yeah.
Thanks for
Rakesh Kilaru (59:54)
But frankly, it's a direct outgrowth of the third thing, which is in every one of the cases I've worked on with them, them sitting down and saying, OK, look, at the end of the day, there's a couple of things that I really need to do. I want to do some, and also I really need to do them because this is going to be a make or break moment in the case. And as the first chair, the client's going to kind of expect me to do this. But then on a lot of other stuff, thinking, where can I create opportunities for Rakesh or for anyone else? And that comes earlier in cases, too. I think often they'll say, hey,
Khurram Naik (1:00:20)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:00:24)
you're going to be in charge of working
up this case. And use me as a sounding board. Come to me whenever you want. Come to me too often. But we want to put you in the position with the client of being the person who knows the real record, has developed the real record. And that'll suit you well when it comes to trial, because they'll know that they can trust your judgment. And so we can promote you for a trial role. that's been proven out. ⁓
Khurram Naik (1:00:28)
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (1:00:48)
But that last piece, I think, can't be overstated because it's what sets our firm apart and I think has allowed us to have a lot of success as a firm. We've had a lot of different people get up in of judges and juries. We've had a lot of people handle witnesses. I'd say more so than any other firm, kind of person for person. Like if you look through the partnership, if you look through senior associate ranks, even if you look at associates, I think people have gotten great opportunities very early in their career. And that starts with the two of them.
Khurram Naik (1:01:17)
So you mentioned before in the process that you've learned from the White House, the value of getting different perspectives. You mentioned that ⁓ a key benefit of the fixed fee model is that there's no disincentive to walk down the hall asking a colleague or getting a lot of people in a room with a client. So variety perspective is really valuable. So what are the...
Rakesh Kilaru (1:01:27)
you
Khurram Naik (1:01:43)
biggest departures between your approach and Beth and Brian's and what ways are you cultivating that difference as an asset for these different perspectives.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:01:55)
That's a really good question. I don't think I try to cultivate difference from them, given their success, so it would sort of be a little, it's kind of foolhardy to say, well, I'm gonna not do what those guys do. I think a large part of it is figuring out, which I'm much earlier in the process of than they are, obviously, but figuring out a way to do things similarly to them, but kind of in my own way and in my own voice. Which is to say,
It could be tempting to say, well, I watched Beth do voir dire and I saw the question she asked of jurors. So I'm going to try to do the exact same thing when it's my turn. And I've watched Brian argue to a judge and I've seen him be incredibly successful, like in our Sunday ticket case. So I'm going to try to do exactly what it is that he did, but that's not going to work because I'm not them. And they...
They are drawing on their experiences, their backgrounds, and I think what really makes them so successful is they're always really true to themselves. Like they're not trying to be someone else. They're coming to a case and they're trying to do it their way and the way that they see best and getting perspectives along the way and filtering those. But at the end of the day, speaking with their voice and their personality to a jury or to a judge. And so to me, it's how do I cultivate that? Like how do I avoid just trying to copy the last thing I saw?
Khurram Naik (1:03:07)
Yeah, it's pretty good.
gauge on these lists.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:03:20)
But also how do I learn
from them? You know, because I do probably come to most issues from much more of the baseline appellate view of like, let's think through all the sides. Let's think through all the angles. Let's walk through all of them and then let's make a decision at the end of them. ⁓ I think both of them are very good at doing that, but probably approach things a little bit more from, I can pretty quickly figure out, you know, what the two or three through lines of this are and kind of drive the conversation in that direction.
Khurram Naik (1:03:33)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:03:49)
So I'd like to be more like them in their ability to do that. But I think there's some value in the way I think about things myself. And so it's really kind of just marrying those two. And one of the great things about the firm is that over the last three years in particular, I've gotten to work with both of them super closely on a lot of really big cases. And so being up close with them, being at the table with them, watching how they approach things, thinking about them myself. ⁓
Khurram Naik (1:03:59)
Tweet.
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (1:04:16)
has been really valuable. I one of the things Beth always says to younger lawyers, she said it to me a million times and she said it to others is, when you're writing an outline for me, when you're writing an exam for me, an argument, whatever, you should be thinking about what if I had to do it? Because probably you're not gonna do it. But there could be some day when, for whatever reason, I can't be there and then you have to step up.
Khurram Naik (1:04:18)
me.
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:04:44)
And so if you are approaching the argument from the perspective of, I'm just going to give inputs to this person and let them run with it, you're not doing your job. Because first of all, you're not giving me what I need, which is synthesizing that and giving me a little bit of your vision. And then I'll probably go in a different direction on it, but I want to hear what your best thoughts are. But you're also not developing your own skill set. Like, if you don't put out to me what you think the right answer is,
Khurram Naik (1:04:57)
Any sense of what you mean by that?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:05:11)
you're never going to get my views on whether that was in fact the right answer, which can be very useful for you in figuring out what the right answer is going forward. So a lot of it has just been being at the table with them, not being afraid to say, Hey, I think we should do X. And then, you know, when they say that is a terrible reason, that's a terrible decision for the following three reasons thinking, okay, that's helpful. You know, just, you know, let me think about it. Let's talk about it. And more often than not, they're right. But just like going through that process.
Khurram Naik (1:05:11)
Thanks.
and funding.
and the way through to college.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:05:40)
of not being afraid to say, I think we should do X and being wrong. That to me
has been the most valuable frankly thing in the last few years is the ability to do that with those two and use that as a way to continue to develop my judgment.
Khurram Naik (1:05:52)
You know what I really like about that technique you just described is that it is also, at the end of the day, you let it with, it's a prudent thing to do in that if for whatever reason Beth or someone else can't make the argument that you can step in. And so that seems to be a very, that's like a process-oriented, you're building some redundancies that are beneficial because who knows what might happen and then just you need, in the case be, ⁓
resilient enough and robust from any one point of fault. So are there other things that you think that you do institutionally that de-risk what is ultimately like a people business and very much personality driven, you know, the law firm has two name partners in it and that's, you know, very centric to the business. So what else do you think? You mentioned before that, you know, other lawyers
get arguments or getting those reps in, is there anything else process-wise that you do that creates these kinds of backstops and ways of making everything you're doing more robust?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:07:11)
Yeah, I guess I would say a couple. mean, one is just continually creating more opportunities to test out our ideas, which is useful for a few reasons. One reason it's useful is it gives you an opportunity to test your ideas. So the more chances you have to present an argument or an idea to people who aren't familiar with it and to get their reactions and to think like, hey, would this matter to you? Would this matter to you?
That's just a useful thing to do to make our ultimate decisions better, which is to try to figure out the argument to persuade a judge we may not know well or jurors we don't know at all how to get to the right place. But I think the other thing is using those opportunities as a way for people to take risks, make judgments, and be wrong. Like, if I think about
Khurram Naik (1:08:05)
Go.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:08:06)
what was really valuable about being in the government for so long. There were a lot of things, but one of the things is we, I confronted so many different scenarios and made so many decisions and many of which probably I got wrong, but you just make so many of them. You learn how to do it. And I think Brian would say the same thing. He tried a bunch of cases as a public defender, think, you know, 20, 30, something like that. And I think if you asked him, he'd say in most of those, there were things that I wish, you know, in retrospect I had done differently.
But the fact that I did 20 or 30 of them and I got the chance to get my feet wet and to try and to succeed or fail, that helped me the 31st time and the 32nd time. And the more you do something, actually do it and take the risk of being wrong, the better you are. And so we try to push that in every way with younger lawyers because we get a lot of really fantastic law students and law clerks who come to the firm.
And many of them, and I was this when I started, are folks who typically have never been told they're just like flat out wrong on something in their lives. Um, you know, you're always the, you know, a good student and you get the clerkship and you work really closely with the judge and all that sort of stuff. And one thing that can come of that sometimes is being a little bit afraid to do something you don't know how to do for fear that people will say you are not doing it right. And if I have to say one thing that I think I did well when I started, it was.
Khurram Naik (1:09:20)
I think you know what I'm gonna do.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:09:31)
boy, I do not know anything, so I'm going to be wrong, but I'm going to try and, you know, I'm okay being wrong a hundred times because as long as I start getting it right around time, 101, you're getting it wrong after a hundred, you're probably in trouble. But it's a long way of saying we really try to encourage people to do that and push people out of their comfort zone. And that's another way to think of what I said earlier, which is imagine you had to do it instead of me. That is to your point, useful because maybe you'll have to do it.
Khurram Naik (1:09:52)
Thank you.
Good luck.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:09:59)
But it also is really important because if you don't ever try as a younger person to craft the final product and get critique of it, you're going have a lot of trouble doing it when people actually ask you to do it.
Khurram Naik (1:10:11)
Yeah, and the key part, as you're saying, there's the emotional aspect where you're afraid to because like, I've never been wrong before. I can't risk being wrong now. I'm years into practice and people are going to assume I know things. So I'm also interested in how you came to the firm because you phrase, well, here's the things that I saw in the opportunity. But if you invert that,
a two-year-old firm that's getting traction, but my impression of a two-year-old litigation boutique is they're to hire other trial lawyers. You had appellate experience before, then you've been at the White House, which is this unusual bird. What would make a two-year-old trial shop say, that's who I got to hire?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:10:54)
You know, I wonder that often. I'm really lucky that, Beth and Brian, think in particular were able to convince others who may have been a little bit more skeptical. I mean, to take your question on zone terms, think when I interviewed, there were at least a couple of folks who were senior partners at the time who said, are you doing here? Like what makes you think this would be interesting? And, a little bit of like, and what makes me think you can do it? I mean, most people who come to the firm.
as more senior lawyers have tried cases in literally any capacity at any point ever. ⁓ But I think when I reached out to Beth and to Alex and to Brian when I was first thinking about coming to the firm, you know, I like to think that they thought like, hey, this is someone who's talented, who succeeded in some different environments and maybe would be really good at this trial thing. But even if he's not,
he'll be really valuable in other ways. We're going to have a lot of, the simplest version of it is, or the easiest version is, we're going to have a lot of really complex legal briefing. We know that's something he can do. So worst case, we bring him in. He does that, and it's fine.
Khurram Naik (1:11:54)
you know ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (1:12:03)
I think it was probably a little more than that. And I think that probably more than that was this is someone who's been around clients for the last two years. And no, they're not traditional clients of a firm like ours. They're not executives at a business or general counsels of a business. But they are clients. Every person I worked with in the policy councils, every person I worked with at an agency, every lawyer I worked with who worked at HHS or Treasury, what have you, is in a sense a client. Because they're people who are coming to you and asking for your advice.
Khurram Naik (1:12:04)
I'm going to it there.
Thank you.
You can see here we have a new grid. And it does not look like it's a new grid.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:12:32)
trying to figure out how to solve
a problem. And that is something that I think I developed a little bit of skill at in the White House, is helping clients, figuring how to talk to clients effectively and how to help solve their problems. And it wasn't in the specific context of litigation, but it's a skill that I think is generally translatable. I think if you look at really successful corporate lawyers, trial lawyers, appellate lawyers, you name it, they're probably at some level very good at
Khurram Naik (1:12:37)
I just think that we have to.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:13:01)
communicating effectively with clients and understanding what their concerns are and factoring those into their decision-making process. So I suspect that part of what made them think we should bring this person on is, you know, I'd been in that environment. And again, different environment because the government's not quite like a private business, but an environment where you're constantly accountable to clients and clients are asking you to explain things to them in non-legal terms because they're non-lawyers and helping them make good decisions and steer to good outcomes.
If I had to guess, I would guess that they thought that's a skill set, you know, the appellate background, the litigation background is a skill set and we'll see what happens on the trial stuff. Like maybe he'll really like it. Maybe he'll be good at it. Maybe he won't like it. Maybe he won't be good at it. And I don't know if I'm good at it, but I know I like it and I've been able to do it a lot. And I think that the more you do it, I think the easier it is to keep getting to do it.
Khurram Naik (1:13:34)
Thank
I think that's a to sure that we're all connected. And I just want to say a few about the community that we're a part of.
Well, something I was really struck with when I first reviewed your firm bio was the high-stakes settlements that you have been lead counsel for. And the timing of when we spoke was interesting because by coincidence, Paul Graywall had made a comment on LinkedIn and Paul Graywall's background. before he's a chief legal officer at Coinbase. Before that, he was an Article 1 Mastery Judge in North District of California.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:14:20)
Yeah. ⁓
Khurram Naik (1:14:23)
And so he made the observation as a former litigator, now chief legal officer, is that a lot of litigators, when they're pitching corporate clients like theirs, lead with their trial wins when he says, hey, point of fact, what we're really interested in is how do you nip this in the bud, through settlement, through its positive motion. And so it's an interesting question. And I don't know if he has a point of view on whether
the skills of being a trial counselor associated with the skills of being able to resolve disputes ahead of trial. But I'm curious, how do you think, what's the relationship between those two skills? Are those two different of skills? Is there one common set of skill? ⁓ How did you come to these ⁓ high-stakes elements with the confidence that you could execute on them and what were the skills you used in executing them?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:15:19)
Yeah, I would say it's an interesting perspective of Paul's because he's a really smart guy and he comes from the greatest city in the world, which is Cleveland, Ohio, like me. So we have that in common. I think by and large, they can be different skill sets, which is to say, you know, many great trial lawyers are focused on winning at trial. so to Paul's point, like they'll come in and say, you know, here, like
you are going to win, here's how you're going to win, trust me, trust us, like we're the cowboys, cowgirls who are going to make that happen. I think he's right that really good trial lawyers have a good sense of also understanding the strength of their case. And I don't think anyone wants a lead trial counsel who's going to come in and constantly say like, pay the other side X, pay the other side Y. At some point they want you to, they want to believe that they have someone who can actually take the case to trial.
And it's important even in settlement negotiations to have a trial lawyer who's credible threat to take the case to trial because otherwise this other side might just not take you seriously. But there is a certain credibility that comes from saying, hey, I've tried a lot of these cases and look, this is a challenging one. So we'll present the best possible arguments we can, but there's big risk here. And you guys should factor that in, in terms of how you're thinking about it and whether that lawyer ends up being the person who negotiates a settlement or not, maybe a different answer.
Khurram Naik (1:16:28)
Ethan.
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:16:45)
But I think Paul is right that just coming in and being a chess thumper who says we will win for you a trial is probably not as valuable to clients as saying, we have shown we can win really, really hard cases at trial, but we'll also be honest with you about the strength of the case and whether some particular settlement offer may or may not be a reasonable one. As to the kind of separate part of your question about how I ended up playing a role in some settlements, ⁓ you know,
Khurram Naik (1:16:55)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:17:13)
If you would ask me 10 years ago, will one of the main achievements on your website bio be a big settlement? I would have said no freaking way. And that's in part because it's just not something I had really thought of. And frankly, in a lot of our earlier cases at the firm, there was someone else who was designated with the task of being settlement counsel and thinking about the case very much from that lens where we would focus on the case very much from a trial lens. And I think that can be very good. You know, I think it can be very good if you're a client to maybe have
different people focusing on different things and not have your trial counsel try ⁓ to do both at the same time. The NCAA example was just a of a particularly unique one for a couple of reasons. One reason it was unique is that that was a settlement where for our side to even put terms on the table, you had to get a bunch of voices to agree because you had the NCAA and you had these five athletic conferences who
Khurram Naik (1:17:52)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:18:10)
have somewhat similar interests, but not entirely the same interests, right?
Khurram Naik (1:18:12)
.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:18:14)
And so we had to figure out a process for getting us on the same page. And in that context, I was someone who had spent really the last seven plus years working with that group of lawyers and helping that process in the litigation context. Like as a joint defense group, how are we going to approach issue X? How are we going to approach issue Y? And for whatever reason, I think I'd been
Khurram Naik (1:18:16)
Good night.
Bye.
You heard us.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:18:37)
I'd shown myself to be pretty effective at working with that group and bringing that group to consensus. And then over time, I just developed through the litigation really, some relationships with the other side. And the settlement just presented a little bit of a chance to kind of bring those two together. Like I was someone who understood all of the equities on the defense side and how to try to synthesize those voices into one perspective, but also had a fair amount of credibility with the other side because
Khurram Naik (1:18:54)
Please.
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:19:05)
I think, unlike a lot of other lawyers, one of the things I really try to do and others that are, this is something I think we pride ourselves on as a firm
generally, we are not the people who think the way through litigation is to just take the most extreme positions on every issue at all times and then hope that the compromise is somewhere in the middle. Like I really try to be someone who's like, no, I'm not gonna ask for a hundred interrogatories or RFPs in the hope we get 20. Like we both realize that 20 is probably the right number. So maybe we go through a few rounds of back and forth, but like,
Khurram Naik (1:19:19)
.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:19:34)
let's not fight the stupid stuff, let's fight about stuff we actually need to fight about. So in the NCA context, think the plaintiff lawyers knew that I was someone who was good at not fighting every dumb little battle and would be pretty thoughtful about what and when we raised with them as like the issues that really mattered as opposed to a lot of posturing. And I think with our group, I was someone who had spent a lot of time working with those people and trying to help bring them together. And I shouldn't say, like there were a lot of other people.
Khurram Naik (1:19:39)
Thank you.
each.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:20:02)
commissioners, Charlie Baker and others who had way more to do with the settlement getting across the finish line than I did. But in terms of how my role came about, I think that had more to do with it than anything else.
Khurram Naik (1:20:12)
You've taught a lot about, on one hand, having a plan. Like professionally, you've had plans. Here's a plan for when I join this firm, what I think I can get out of it, and then you lie or still be pleasantly surprised. You know, didn't have, there's things that are not in the plan. So there's things like you didn't have a settlement on your own. 10 years ago, you hey, like if settlement is one of my marquee matters, I'll be very surprised to hear that. So inherently, of course, you're going to be surprised by definition. But sitting here now with
You had significant accomplishments by now. So now, how do you think about this next phase of your career? Over the next two or three years, what is it that's going to grow your craft? Like, what is it that, how do you want to level up?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:20:55)
That's a great question. think there's two things. I think there's three things that would, to me, feel like I had reached another level three or four or five years from now. ⁓ One is pretty simple. It's to continue to be in these really exciting cases. think part of the reason I've enjoyed my practice so much and why I think it's been somewhat successful is we've been in the middle of a lot of really interesting issues in a lot of interesting industries.
Sort of think the more you end up in those positions, the more you keep ending up in those positions. Like you look at some of the folks who keep getting the top trial opportunities or the top, you know, the top sports cases or the top antitrust cases or whatever. It's just people who have been in a lot of the more recent ones. So part of it is just kind of staying in the mix in these really interesting cases. And luckily for at least the next couple of years, we have a bunch of really interesting cases ⁓ that I'm going to be involved in. that, box has been checked, but that never stops, as you know, you know.
two years from now, three years from now, tomorrow a case could go away and so you want to be positioned well for the next one. A second thing would be frankly stepping a little bit more into the lead role and learning how to do that well. I've been able to do that a little bit more over the last few years and a common thread of my time at the firm has been probably a cross matter stepping into a role before I was fully ready for it and I give Beth and Brian a lot of credit for that.
Khurram Naik (1:21:56)
Next one.
Okay.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:22:22)
You know, a role that I'm, I still have a lot to learn in frankly, is that kind of first chair role of being the person in the center of, know, center of the firestorm or what have you. ⁓ In the NFL case, in the Microsoft case, know, Beth was the lead counsel in the Microsoft case, so I got amazing opportunities there. She was the lead counsel in the NFL case, same thing. ⁓ I think I now have a set of matters where I'm going to be more of the person who's, you know, the kind of ultimate decision maker. And so growing into that, showing I can do it and doing it well.
Khurram Naik (1:22:24)
in frankly, that's a new first person.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:22:51)
I'll feel really good if that happens. ⁓ And then a third part that comes along with that is emulating Beth and Brian very much in the sense of accepting a responsibility that comes with being a first chair, which is not doing everything yourself. I sort of said this earlier, but when you're early in your career and you really want to prove yourself, there could be this tendency to
Khurram Naik (1:22:52)
Thank you.
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (1:23:18)
be always on and always responsive and being the first person to jump on an email you think and I have thought in the past is a sign. It's a sign that I'm that guy. I'm always gonna answer the phone first. And the more I do this, the more I think that that's a pretty bad and toxic attitude to have. Not only because it can make my life a lot worse if I'm constantly looking at my phone, even though I probably still do that more than I should.
Khurram Naik (1:23:38)
think that is something that we do. is something I think that something that we can
Rakesh Kilaru (1:23:44)
But also everyone else around me worse, because
Khurram Naik (1:23:44)
I that something that we we
Rakesh Kilaru (1:23:46)
if I'm always the first person to respond when the client emails our team, it's what we said earlier, like others on the team are not getting the opportunity to show the client that they can do it. They're not getting the opportunity to form their judgment. They're just having to be reactive. So it's sort of silly. I feel like in a sense it feels a little silly and frankly pretentious to say this. I'm still pretty young, but I do think a lot about.
Like when I should not be the person responding to stuff and creating space for other people, because I've only been able to achieve stuff by the age I'm at, 41, by other people letting me have those opportunities and like letting me kind of cut my teeth and, frankly be wrong a little bit, but also develop my judgment and put my judgment out there. So if a few years from now, I'm still responding to the same portion of emails in the first instance as I am today, I'll feel like I actually did a
Khurram Naik (1:24:18)
that.
in protecting the movement of the population. Happy.
.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:24:39)
you know, of a bad job of developing myself
and developing the folks around me.
Khurram Naik (1:24:43)
It sounds like what's been the orientation for you, it really has been people in process, even going back to your wife's counseling of how to go to the White House. It sounds like what I'm not hearing from you is something that's a little more tactical around things like, here's the ... I want to litigate this kind of case in the next couple of years. want to do this kind of ... My understanding is that you've done largely or all defense cases. Have you done ... Is it
jumped to the other side of the V, like, I'm not hearing those. Is that how you think about it? Do you think in terms of tactics, like, hey, do this kind of work and this kind of work? Or how do you think about that dimension? Or is it just, you you've had an orientation towards fun and novelty, and so maybe it's just as simple as that, just let me just see what comes to me. But at the same time, you're also saying, hey, you know, it's important that there's a momentum aspect to, if you're getting these kinds of cases, you get more of them. So you're aware of
patterns of how you get kinds of work. How are you thinking about this?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:25:46)
I think it's probably somewhere in between of the two ways you laid it out, which I think is probably where I like to be. I don't think about it tactically in the very descriptive sense of there's case X I really want to do. It's like a white whale, whether it's like a plaintiff case or it's a trade secret case or it's an IP case or what have you. I don't think about it in the sense of there's specific areas I really, really want to litigate in that I haven't litigated in yet.
I think about it more in the sense of tactically, are we still being thought of? Am I being thought of? Are we as a firm being thought of as a firm of first resort for clients who have a big trial, whatever the industry is. And in a sense, I feel like I and we have to be cautious because the more and more antitrust and entertainment and sports cases we do, maybe to some degree, the more and more of those cases we get.
And if we keep getting those cases, I'm not going to be mad. I love the areas of work I've gotten to work in. You know, I'm a sports fan. You know, I I like video games. So I feel like super lucky that I've had a lot of cases that come at the intersection of those things. ⁓ but for us as a firm, I think we will be better off and more successful if we're not thought of as the firm you go to for type of case X as the firm you go to for a big trial.
And that's an area where I need to keep growing, like get more trial reps, get more trial opportunities. I think a lot of us need to do that. You know, I think Beth and Brian obviously are there. I think the rest of us need to keep working to put ourselves in the position of I have a big trial and that's someone I'm thinking of. But that would be the success, right? I think the success would be if three, four years from now we can look at new clients in maybe different, maybe not, but just new clients who said, I have a really big complex problem.
Khurram Naik (1:27:26)
Thank you.
Thank
Rakesh Kilaru (1:27:36)
that involves litigation and probably a trial. And I'm gonna, like, I called those guys up because they were the right people for the job. And if it's in the same industries, I won't lose as much sleep over it. But if we're not getting those calls, then I will start to lose some sleep.
Khurram Naik (1:27:45)
Thank
So in larger firms, general practice firms, for better or worse, you have lot of laterals. so laterals bring different ideas. And so you've got this tight knit team that you all are kind of honing on the same ideas and patterning around that. How do you get ideas from other lawyers? Is there a lawyer you admire, a firm you admire? How are you getting
new ideas, different perspectives.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:28:23)
One of the luxuries that we've had lately, and actually I wouldn't say lately, one of the luxuries we've had is that because we are a small firm, we typically end up working with some other firm or set of firms on our big cases. And sometimes that happens because the client will literally set up a virtual firm. So on those products liability cases I mentioned early on, we were one of about four or five different law firms who were representing the common client bear.
And there was a firm that really focused on legal briefing and legal issues. And I worked really closely with some of those folks and had the great fortune to do so. ⁓ And others were more focused on expert development. Others were more focused on expert identification. And that's not an uncommon setup for us. In our Microsoft case, for example, we came in as trial counsel. But there was another firm, Weil, who was handling all the worldwide regulatory work. There was another firm.
that we work closely with on a lot of cases, Lee, who came in to help us with the legal appellate work. ⁓ So when our clients assemble virtual firms, it's an easy way to learn from other people and to get to be in the trenches with them and understand things. And I'll call out a lawyer, Lindsay Boney. He's a guy who works at Bradley Errant. I worked with him on some of those products liability cases early on where I was our firm's legal issues person. And Lindsay had been spearheading the legal strategy.
Khurram Naik (1:29:36)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:29:47)
And, you know, I came in and the client wanted me to like argue a lot of motions in the trial. And it could have been one of these situations where someone who was fundamentally different from Lindsay, who was a great person, would have said, who is this new guy coming in? Like, I've done all the work. Like, I'm not going to try to help that guy look good. And instead Lindsay was the most thoughtful and kind friend that I could have hoped for. still a really good friend of mine.
Khurram Naik (1:29:48)
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:30:11)
And he said, like, let's work on this together. Like, let me tell you how I think about it. And you tell me how you think about it. And we would just kind of jam on this stuff, like late at night, you know, the night before an argument, we'd sit down in the hotel and just try to figure out how we were going to present the issues the next day. So I've learned a lot in that way. And then another way we've learned a lot often is that we're in these joint defense groups. And so in the NCA cases, just to give another example, we've been in a joint defense group with a lot of other lawyers representing the conferences for some time.
Khurram Naik (1:30:35)
Thanks.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:30:39)
And I've had the chance to work with just a phenomenal group of lawyers. And I won't name names because inevitably I'll forget someone and I don't want to offend anyone. But there have been really great lawyers who have represented the conferences. And I do not always come to an issue the same way they do. And so the chance to talk through the issue, talk through the tactics, talk through the strategy, share briefs with them, send something out, have them send something back, send my own edits back.
Khurram Naik (1:30:56)
but.
Thank you.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:31:07)
and go through that process is just another way to get better.
that is a hidden awesome feature of our practice is the frequency with which we get to work with other lawyers and law firms and learn from them. Whereas I think at big firms, there can be this tendency to want to take all the work for the client. And so you never really work as often with other firms because it's just other people in your firm you're trying to get the work for, which can be great to be clear. But to me, I learn a lot from folks in that respect.
Khurram Naik (1:31:27)
really work. ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (1:31:36)
And then would say, just sorry not to go on, we go up against really good lawyers. So we went up against the assessment team in our NFL case. I've litigated against the plaintiff's attorneys in the House case, Steve Berman and Jeff Kessler for a long time. And you learn a lot from those guys, especially when you win, you sort of think, OK, well, I got one today. And when they win, you think, OK, I have something to learn from. But you learn a lot that way too.
Khurram Naik (1:32:03)
You know, you mentioned ⁓ what was unsustainable about being the first person to respond to emails and yeah, I think that's ⁓
I think a really important premise and use the word toxic, that's a helpful way. Because I think what's toxic is that you're being so reactive, you're training everyone to be reactive. And a key thing that you talked about is the skill set of rapid decision making. And I'm a big believer that I responsiveness is probably the most valuable skill that somebody in the service industry can have. Responsiveness isn't just, here's the answer anyway, but just I am aware and you've been heard.
because I think responsiveness can cure just about any other deficiency if someone is able to respond and be responsive and iterate. with that toxicity dimension, I think you're highlighting burnout. so, somebody else who talked about it previously is you're spending a lot of time on the road with the nature of the work that you do. You're on the road for a couple of months. And my parting question for you is for somebody who is so driven and on right now,
If you're spending about two months on the road every year, what routines are keeping you effective and helping you avoid burnout?
Rakesh Kilaru (1:33:22)
It's a great question. I know you deal with this a lot too. You know, in a lot of ways for me, having kids and having young kids, this is going to sound really weird, but it was like such a great disciplining force from a work perspective because, my wife was working really, before we had kids, both of us would just be working like crazy at all times and you know, we're both successful people. And so we would obviously make time to spend with each other.
but you could just work a lot and that was just what we both did. And then you have kids and for me this is something that was obviously very exciting. And you're just like, look, I gotta spend time with my kids. It's non-negotiable. And so just like the fact of having kids around, I felt like has really helped avoid that burnout aspect of things and that always needing to be responsive to things because...
Man, I will tell you, there is like no more demanding client in the world than a three-year-old or a six-year-old at certain times of the day. But beyond that...
I guess I'll give an answer, but I'll spread me acknowledge something. I think the answer is to just build more and more time where you're not kind of looking at your phone at all times and responding at all times and emailing at all times. And whether that's like dinner time when I'm not on the road, whether that's making sure that when I'm on the road, usually on the West coast, I carve out four to 5 PM so I can FaceTime home. ⁓
whether that's on the weekends, just generally not sending as many freaking emails as I used to. I think these are all things I really try to do. And I'll just confess, it's like a lot harder than I wish it were. You I think a lot of people will say like, I do this thing where I put my phone away on the weekends, or I put my phone away from the hours of five to seven every night. And if they actually do that, then I give them all the credit in the world. I'm not as good as doing that. So like, I have to acknowledge my own weakness in that. But I think
Khurram Naik (1:35:00)
Because ⁓
Rakesh Kilaru (1:35:25)
having the aspiration to do that and being intentional about like
when you're on vacation, when you're with your kids, when you're, you know, when it's a weekend, not forcing yourself almost. And it sounds weird to say that, but like forcing yourself to put the phone down and be a little more present. It's good. It's very good for my family. I think it's also good for me personally. And frankly, I think it's really good for everyone who we work with because one of the things that I'll give them credit for this again, like
Khurram Naik (1:35:29)
Thank you.
President, take your seat.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:35:53)
Beth and Brian do a great job of that. If something is really an emergency on the weekend, they will answer it. But they really try to be present with their families when they're with them. And when I started, there was a little part of me that's like, ⁓ great. You guys have achieved so much. You can afford to do that. But I actually now realize wisdom comes late. It's really setting an example for other people that this is a better way to live life in this very high stakes profession.
Khurram Naik (1:35:54)
Something.
I it's important to understand these things. I've seen many things in your life that I hope you don't forget to do and I think that you'll see that in your You can talk about that.
and the next to get a place to work. that's
Rakesh Kilaru (1:36:22)
And there are going to be these times when that's not possible, like when you're in trial and you're in LA or wherever for a month.
Khurram Naik (1:36:22)
I is going happen. And I'm not going to be that on my own. So thank you for listening.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:36:27)
And so you're just going to see folks less. But that makes it all the more important than when you're not in those moments, you carve out more time for it.
Khurram Naik (1:36:35)
That's the aspiration. Rekresh, this was really great. We're already out of time. I could easily keep going. But I know you have a life, as you're saying, outside of this. So thanks for getting on. This is definitely one I'm going to revisit. So this is great.
Rakesh Kilaru (1:36:55)
Thank you very much. This was a real cool opportunity for me, and I'm glad we got to meet each other and know each other through this.