Jennifer Gardner - Mastering Legal Strategy and Emotional Intelligence

Louis Goodman / Jennifer Gardner - Transcript

[00:00:03] Louis Goodman: Welcome to Love by Lawyer, where we talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. I'm your host Louis Goodman. Today we welcome Jennifer Gardner to the podcast. Ms. Gardner is a Los Angeles based trial lawyer, communications educator, and strategic marketing consultant. Her practice includes entertainment litigation, criminal cases, and business law.

Jennifer Gardner, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer. 

[00:00:34] Jennifer Gardner: Thank you. Happy to be here. 

[00:00:37] Louis Goodman: It's so nice to have you. I enjoyed talking to you before we started recording a little bit. Where are you talking to us from right now? 

[00:00:45] Jennifer Gardner: I am talking to you from Old Hollywood, which is in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Yeah.

[00:00:53] Louis Goodman: How long have you been practicing from that area? 

[00:00:57] Jennifer Gardner: Well, I've lived here my whole life, so I mean, I've done a lot of traveling. I lived part-time in Berlin, but I never left Los Angeles, and I grew up here, and I still live here. 

[00:01:09] Louis Goodman: Can you describe your practice to us? 

[00:01:15] Jennifer Gardner: My practice involves human conflict and solving human conflict, whether through arbitration, mediation, negotiation, or trial.

It's that simple. It's about human conflict. 

[00:01:31] Louis Goodman: Well, to some extent, I think law is all about human conflict. 

[00:01:35] Jennifer Gardner: Yes, I totally agree. 

[00:01:38] Louis Goodman: Where'd you go to high school in Los Angeles? 

[00:01:40] Jennifer Gardner: Beverly Hills High School. 9 0 2 1 0. 

[00:01:44] Louis Goodman: Oh classic. And when you graduated from 9 0 2 1 0 high, you went to college, where'd you go? 

[00:01:51] Jennifer Gardner: UCLA.

I tell you, I never left. 

[00:01:55] Louis Goodman: I'm just trying to do a little cross examination as to that point, Ms. Gardner.

[00:01:59] Jennifer Gardner: I understand. 

[00:02:00] Louis Goodman: Okay. How was UCLA, how was that experience for you compared to being at Beverly Hills High? 

[00:02:08] Jennifer Gardner: I loved UCLA. I loved it. They had to kick me off the campus to get me to leave.

Like seriously. The computer was like spitting out the dunning notices, like, you've got too many units, you must leave, you can't take any more courses. So I loved it. I loved the size of it, you know, the fact that there were so many students there. I think at the time there was over 40,000 people on campus every day, which is like a small city.

And I just, I loved the anonymity, yet I had my small, tiny communities of friends and I just loved being there and I loved learning. It was great. And I haven't changed very much. I haven't left LA and I still love to learn. So there you go. 

[00:02:52] Louis Goodman: Now, between the time you graduated from UCLA and the time you went to law school, did you take any time off or did you just go straight through?

[00:03:00] Jennifer Gardner: Straight through. 

[00:03:01] Louis Goodman: And did, did you go to law school at UCLA as well? 

[00:03:04] Jennifer Gardner: No, I went to Southwestern University School of Law, which is the, I think the oldest law school in California or Los Angeles. I'm not exactly sure, but one of the originals. 

[00:03:17] Louis Goodman: But it's not too far away from Westwood. 

[00:03:19] Jennifer Gardner: No. 

[00:03:20] Louis Goodman: Mm-hmm. When did you.

Kind of decide that you really wanted to be a lawyer. When did you know, Jennifer's a lawyer? And then when did you decide you were actually gonna apply to law school? Go to law school, take the LSAT, pay the fees, fill out the application. 

[00:03:41] Jennifer Gardner: So I was raised to believe that I could be any lawyer I wanted to be, and that was like really the only career choice.

I didn't wanna be a lawyer. I really didn't. I had other ideas. I was very creative. I was very curious. I wanted to be a journalist initially. I did an internship in Washington DC at the ABC affiliate station there. I didn't wanna come home. I wanted to stay on the East Coast and study journalism and continue to work in the media.

And we had some family issues, which made that very difficult. I had to come home and then my parents were pushing me and pushing me to go to law school, and I guess they figured I was such a good, argumentative child. I may as well get paid for it. So. They pushed me, they directed me, and I figured I was applying for jobs in broadcasting here in Los Angeles, and the interviews kept getting postponed, and so I decided I would apply to law school.

I would take the LSAT. I got accepted into a few schools. I relied on the advice of one person when, when, who was the dean of some, some school somewhere here in LA that my parents knew. They recommended that I go to Southwestern, so I chose it. I got in there. I was waitlisted on a couple other campuses and I just let them go and I figured I'll just get the education and I can always use it in whatever it is I do next.

And it turns out I, I got into law school and I got really. Once I was in there, something happened to me. I, it tapped into something competitive in me that I didn't know I had, and then I just was like a pit bull. I couldn't let go. I just had to keep going. 

[00:05:18] Louis Goodman: I assume that your friends and family were really thrilled that you decided to, in fact go to law school and gave you some support around that.

[00:05:28] Jennifer Gardner: Of course that's what they wanted me to do. That's what they wanted me to do. That wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do, and I spent a lot of years extremely dissatisfied as a lawyer, and that's one of the reasons why I started my own practice. One of the reasons why I started my own practice was so that I could have the flexibility to explore other things that interested me because I felt like that part of my life experience was really truncated by the commitment to go to law school.

And then once I was out, there was a part of me, like I take full responsibility for it. I was into achieving some degree of mastery. Right. Some degree of competence and yeah, so I kept at it, but I did it on my own terms. 

[00:06:09] Louis Goodman: Kinda walk us through that from the time you got outta law school, got some sort of legal job, and then what your career path has been to the point where your practice is where it is now.

[00:06:24] Jennifer Gardner: Sure. I mean, I'll try to make it the Reader's Digest version. I came outta law school, the firm where I was clerking hired me. I had been clerking in the personal injury department. They decided I would be best suited for business litigation. I had no idea what business litigation was because I was a kid, right?

I had gone straight through college, straight through law school. I really didn't know anything about business, and less about life, perhaps, maybe more about life and less about business. I don't know, maybe I'm being too critical, but they said, you need to be doing business litigation. And so they pushed me in that direction and if they were paying me, and I said, okay, that's fine. I'll do that and see if I like it. And it turned out it wasn't that I didn't like the business litigation, I just didn't like working in that firm. The senior partner and I didn't quite get along. Let's just put it that way. And yeah, so I ended up having a very difficult time in my first couple of years.

And then I went to another law firm where I was much, much happier. But the law firm imploded soon after I got there, because one of the partners, like was waiting for his bypass surgery and he had a massive heart attack in his hospital bed, and he died and another one was appointed to the bench, and then the third one was ready to retire anyway.

And so the firm disbanded. Nobody knew where they were going, and so I had to get a job. So someone that I had been litigating against recommended me to this outstanding entertainment litigation firm, and I worked there for a little over a year or so, and then I decided I wanted to go out on my own. So I went out on my own.

[00:08:01] Louis Goodman: And how long have you been on your own? 

[00:08:03] Jennifer Gardner: I think it's been 30 something years. It's been a really long time. 

[00:08:07] Louis Goodman: Wow. Wow. 

[00:08:08] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah. 

[00:08:10] Louis Goodman: Tell me a little bit about the art of Influence and the Power Lab. 

[00:08:15] Jennifer Gardner: Okay. I love to talk about this. The Art of Influence is a curriculum that I have been working on and developing.

It's still a work in progress because I continue to learn and educate myself on these topics, and it's all about what it takes to be powerful, influential, persuasive, magnetic communicator, which we all are doing all the time as much as we can, but how to optimize that. Like what are the elements, how can we improve our executive presence?

How can we lead? So we explore issues related to leadership and power and influence. And then in the power lab, we actually get to practice and work through whatever limiting beliefs or upper limits issues we have on those topics. 

[00:09:04] Louis Goodman: Can you kind of give us a little Reader's Digest version of the kinds of things that you talk about and work on in your seminars.

[00:09:13] Jennifer Gardner: I had very little and not enough training, formal training as a lawyer to do what I suddenly found myself doing when I started my own practice in 1990, I think it was one or two. Okay, so we're talking a long time ago, and when I look back over my career, I realize that my results. Have been due to personal qualities I have more than having great facts or great law.

Okay? So I feel that my success is due to these intangible qualities. Yes, I'm resilient. Yes, I'm smart, right? Not, I don't know if I'm a genius, but in fact, I was told I wasn't a legal genius when I was first starting out. That was drilled into me. But I have extremely high levels of EQ, emotional intelligence, and there are all kinds of intangible qualities that successful people have and that leaders have.

And so we go through those in the art of influence. This is, this is what I'm teaching. All of these skills can be learned. 

[00:10:27] Louis Goodman: They can 

[00:10:28] Jennifer Gardner: Oh yeah, absolutely. 

[00:10:30] Louis Goodman: You have something called a foam brain. Can, can you show us that and kind of tell how that fits in with the things you've been just talking about?

[00:10:39] Jennifer Gardner: Absolutely. This is my foam brain. It's an actual, it's the actual size of a human brain. You can open it up and it, and it's made out 

[00:10:50] Louis Goodman: and it's made of foam, FOAM foam. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's a 

[00:10:54] Jennifer Gardner: foam brain. Seriously. And. It has all the ridges, I think they call 'em, that's why I bought it. I bought it because I'm trying to study these parts of the brain and I'm absolutely fascinated by how the brain works.

And so I'm actively, I'm actually in school right now learning neuroscience, and so I bought a foam brain to help me learn that. So that's what that is. 

[00:11:19] Louis Goodman: If you're just listening to the audio feed on here, Jennifer's holding this pink, foam brain and it opens up and on the inside it, it shows you the different areas of the brain and what they do.

Is that right? 

[00:11:37] Jennifer Gardner: Exactly right. 

[00:11:38] Louis Goodman: Wow. Yeah. 

[00:11:38] Jennifer Gardner: Well, you have to study what they do. 

[00:11:40] Louis Goodman: I see. 

[00:11:41] Jennifer Gardner: It will, like for example, it illustrates where the hypothalamus is, where the amygdala is, where the pituitary gland is, where the cerebellum is, where the occipital lobe is, parietal lobe is, the cerebrum, the frontal lobe and the corpus callosum.

They identify it slightly differently on this side. So yeah, I mean, the brain is a complex thing, as you can imagine. 

[00:12:02] Louis Goodman: I've been so told. 

[00:12:03] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah. It's helping. This is a great learning tool. Let me tell you it's helping, because I was very, very challenged in learning the actual parts, like I know basically left and right and we cover that with my students, but I'm digging deeper and trying to get even more expertise in these areas.

[00:12:18] Louis Goodman: Well, you've been practicing law for a long time in a number of different ways, but especially in a practice that you've managed to make your own. Would you recommend law to a young person who is just coming outta college trying to make some kind of a career choice? 

[00:12:35] Jennifer Gardner: I actually would. I actually would.

[00:12:37] Louis Goodman: Why? 

[00:12:38] Jennifer Gardner: Because I think that it gives you an outstanding opportunity to actually help people, to influence policy, to influence law, and it gives you a really great set of analytical skills. So yes, I would say that if you wanna make a difference, the law is one way to do it. 

[00:12:59] Louis Goodman: How is actually practicing law met or different from your expectations about it?

[00:13:05] Jennifer Gardner: Okay. That's such an interesting question. I wanted to be a trial lawyer from like the very beginning, but I had no idea what that really entailed. So there was a huge gap in what I thought it entailed, what my fantasy was, of what it entailed and what it actually entails. Right. 

[00:13:23] Louis Goodman: Did your fantasy about what it entailed come from like a television show of some sort or a movie of some sort? 

[00:13:31] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah, sure. 

[00:13:32] Louis Goodman: Which one? 

[00:13:33] Jennifer Gardner: That influenced me. LA Law. LA Law Law was big at the time that I was just entering the profession and starting to take cases where I would wind up actually going to trial. 

[00:13:47] Louis Goodman: And then when you got practicing law, you found out that even though you were an LA lawyer, it wasn't exactly LA Law.

[00:13:53] Jennifer Gardner: No, it wasn't exactly. I mean, you know, yes, I worked late 'cause they always had those night scenes in the office, right? Yes. I wore beautiful clothes and I worked a lot harder than the lawyers on that TV show. I didn't just step into court and magically appear to be this eloquent advocate. Right. It didn't happen.

Not at all. Far from it. In fact. 

[00:14:16] Louis Goodman: Talk to me a little bit about the business of practicing law. You know, as attorneys and, and I talk about this all the time on this podcast, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but it bothers me that law schools don't teach us anything about the business of practicing law.

And on some level, all of us are business people. And you know, maybe if you're working for the big government for your whole life, or you're working for a big corporation or a big firm your whole life, maybe you don't have to worry too much about business. But for most of us on somewhere along the line, we need to be business people.

And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the business of practicing law for Yeah. Jennifer Gardner. 

[00:15:04] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah. It's all about relationships for me. And by that I mean relationships with my vendors, relationships with my team. Relationships with my clients and building those and nurturing those so that we're able to do ultimately a really great job for the client.

And you're right, they don't teach any of that in law school. There's so much that they don't teach lawyers in law school that lawyers really need to know, which is one of the reasons why I now teach lawyers and, and other people what I think they need to know. What's, what's been incredibly valuable for me.

[00:15:40] Louis Goodman: Can you talk a little bit about your team and the way you've built that team? 

[00:15:44] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have remote workers, which is challenging. I have remote assistants that are, I've had one in the Philippines for like seven years. I have another one in South Africa. She's a recent person. I have another one here locally in SoCal, two actually here in SoCal, who are supporting me, and then I'm of counsel to a law firm.

Where on the more complex cases I can access their teams. So when cases are bigger and I need more backup, I have access to more back backup, when and if I need it. 

[00:16:23] Louis Goodman: What do you think's the best advice you've ever received and what advice would you give to a young attorney just starting out? And you could answer that one or both ways.

Yeah, 

[00:16:36] Jennifer Gardner: I would tell a young attorney that's just starting out that you need to be well-rounded to really do this job well. You can't expect to go through high school, college, law school and be a genius litigator. The more life experience and the more varied your life experience is, the better you're going to be at relating to other people and understanding other people.

And I would also tell them that their sensitivity, if they’re sensitive, is a superpower. It's not a weakness, it's a strength. And I would teach them and tell them about the importance of tapping into that so that they can use that in the way that they relate to everybody in the case, whether it's the courtroom clerk, their adversary, their client, of course, all the witnesses, the judge, the jury, if you're trying cases, that's what I would tell them.

I would tell them to work on themselves, to get to know themselves and to look into their own pain so that they can then have more empathy for the pain of other people. People are never in a courtroom because things went well. Louis, you know that as well as I do. They're in a courtroom because something really bad has happened whether over a long period of time or in an instant. 

[00:17:47] Louis Goodman: you know, people don't go to lawyers when their life is going perfectly.

[00:17:51] Jennifer Gardner: Exactly. And the only way to really be able to untangle what happened in the emotional dynamics of what happened takes a little bit of emotional maturity. And you know, like coming back to my brain here again, you know, our brains are not really even fully developed when we're just starting law school if we go straight through. Our judgment, making ability continues to mature, especially in males. No shade intended, but it's just females, their prefrontal cortexes develop a little bit faster than the males. And that's all about judgment and decision making. And you need to have that, the emotional part of the brain.

The right brain is really where decisions are made, and so you need to be able to influence that to do a really good job as a lawyer. And my personal belief and my professional belief based on everything I study and my own personal experience is that the more you understand yourself, the more you're in touch with your own emotions, the better shot you have at succeeding in this profession because you are going to be influencing other people with every word you write and every word you speak.

[00:19:01] Louis Goodman: Do you think the legal system's fair? 

[00:19:03] Jennifer Gardner: Not always, no. But life isn't fair. It's a microcosm of the real world, right? Is life always fair? I don't think so. Sadly. I wish it was. 

[00:19:12] Louis Goodman: I wanna shift gears here a little bit, Jennifer. What has your family life been like and how has your practice of law fit into your family life, your family life fit into the practice of law? I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the work life balance for you.

[00:19:26] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah. Well, I'm married, I have step kids, they're adults, and I have a dog and a horse. And a very small nuclear family that's left. Without getting into too much of the details, I have my mother, I have my aunt, I have a nephew, and that's it pretty much.

Okay. So it's very, we're very small, but we're very tight and I've always been very family oriented and when I was a younger lawyer, I had a lot of different romantic relationships. I've been married a couple of times. I don't think that family really fit in prominently as far as growing my own nuclear family when I was a younger lawyer. I was very consumed with doing an excellent job for my clients, running a business and experiencing the world and life, and that didn't leave time for me to have babies. Right. So I don't regret that choice. I don't think it's the right path for everybody, but, and that's, so that's the way it went.

And I'm, and I have no regrets. So, but family as a concept and as a, a thing that I actually have is extremely, extremely important to me. Absolutely. 

[00:20:41] Louis Goodman: What sort of things do you like to do recreationally when you wanna kind of get your mind off of the practice of law? 

[00:20:48] Jennifer Gardner: I ride my horse, hang out with my dog, with my friends, with my family, pretty regularly actually.

All of that. All of that. And I and I exercise and online shop sometimes. Okay. Guilty 

[00:21:03] Louis Goodman: Retail therapy? 

[00:21:05] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes. There's something very satisfying about that. I don't know what it is. I don't, I don't know. Maybe it's like I'm getting some kind of a dopamine rush from the instant gratification.

Then it shows up a few days later. It's kind of exciting, you know? But I'm not like a compulsive shopper or anything, but just like, you know, I have a well-rounded normal life. 

[00:21:23] Louis Goodman: Well, well, why work if you can't take some of that money and go spend it on things? 

[00:21:27] Jennifer Gardner: Exactly. Well, my horse is, is. A big expenditure.

Right? He's a lot of maintenance. They always are, but worth every penny because what I get back from him and from the experience of being around him and with him in nature, you can't put a number on that. Right? I just love the way, the whole experience of being with him as an you know him and just like doing horse things, the dimension that it brings to my life is really super special.

And necessary to de-stress, I might add. Really super necessary for me. 

[00:22:04] Louis Goodman: Is there someone living or from the historical past that you'd like to meet? 

[00:22:10] Jennifer Gardner: Yes. 

[00:22:11] Louis Goodman: Who would that be? 

[00:22:13] Jennifer Gardner: An Nais Nin and her friend, Henry Miller. 

[00:22:18] Louis Goodman: Tell us a little bit about why those are two people you'd like to meet 

[00:22:22] Jennifer Gardner: Because they were so expert at excavating their personal lives and using that to make art, and there's very little disconnect between who they were as humans and what they expressed in the world.

I just think, you know, Henry Miller is like profound. I have one of his, like, I have a thick book behind me over there about with, with like interview transcripts of interviews that he gave and writings of his, and then Aai N is just, you know, she's a fascinating woman. She was a trailblazer, she was very liberated, and then the way she wrote about it was so profound and so beautiful.

So yeah, I would love to meet them. 

[00:23:07] Louis Goodman: What mistakes do you think lawyers make? 

[00:23:10] Jennifer Gardner: I think they make a lot of mistakes that focus primarily around what they think it takes to be good at their job. I think many times they're thinking too linearly and they think that all they need is the data in order to persuade and influence and win their cases, and I think they're missing out on the most important part of being persuasive, which is the emotional side of themselves and the people that they're trying to influence. So I would say that like if I had to narrow it down to one thing, I would say it's that. 

[00:23:52] Louis Goodman: What sort of things keep you up at night? 

[00:23:54] Jennifer Gardner: The robots. The robots. I just have to say the robots kind of keep me up a little bit at night, but not too much.

[00:23:59] Louis Goodman: The robots, what do you mean by that? 

[00:24:01] Jennifer Gardner: Yeah, artificial intelligence and what it means. Oh. Mm-hmm. And what I don't know. I don't know about what it means that I know the experts know and understand. It actually got, does keep me up at night. Like I think a lot about that. I think that our humanity is even more required now in this age of AI and robotics, than, than it ever was before, than it was a year or two ago. It's always been important, but it's even more important now I think. 

[00:24:29] Louis Goodman: Have you, you played around at all with ChatGPT in your practice or 

[00:24:34] Jennifer Gardner: Oh yeah. All the time. 

[00:24:34] Louis Goodman: Yeah. 

[00:24:35] Jennifer Gardner: Not in my practice so much. I mean, 'cause I do a lot of things, but for example, here, let me give you an example.

Yeah. I'm writing a curriculum. I'm pitching an educational institution on a curriculum about, you know, relating to these topics that we've been talking about, like influence and persuasion. And I have this massive volume of writing and I gave it to an AI platform. I gave it to Claude and I asked Claude to summarize it for me.

And it did an okay job. I wasn't thrilled. I think I would do a better job. I would have to rewrite most of it, and I think it left out a lot of things, but it was pretty good. So that's one example. I may say, I might feed them a project that's, I would say 95% finished and say, my brain is exhausted. Please write the concluding paragraph.

And that it can do very well. And I'm learning how to give it prompts. I think that the, it's a little dangerous because the tendency is to want to get a little lazy and rely on it. Unfortunately, I still don't think it's quite as good as something original written from the heart by me. Louis, do you, do you experiment with AI in your practice?

[00:25:49] Louis Goodman: A little bit. I mean, I've kind of fooled around with a little bit. I think it's a really interesting technology. And I've used it more in sort of personal communications than I have in, you know, like in in than I have in sort of drafting legal documents or anything. I'm a little, a little afraid of it in terms of drafting legal documents.

I mean, some lawyers have gotten in some real trouble with that kind of thing, and I have had it sort of draft up some legal documents for me and, and then when I went through it, I, I just looked at it and I went. This is just all wrong, you know? Yeah. So I, so I don't think it's quite there yet. I'm not quite worried about being pushed out of being a lawyer by AI just at this point.

But where I have used it is, you know, if someone has sent me like a long text message about some personal thing or about some social event, and I've asked it to write a response to that, and it gave me something to work with, you know? Yeah. It probably sounded a little more nice than I would've said it if I'd come to, you know, just write it myself or just give it a thumbs up or something on the, the text message.

So, yeah. I think it's really interesting. I think it's kind of fun, but I've tried like most technology to make it work for me rather than, you know. Get really freaked out by it or, or, or let it run me. Let's say you came into some real money. Let's say you came into three or four billion dollars. What, if anything, would you do differently in your own life?

If anything? 

[00:27:31] Jennifer Gardner: I am thinking I saw that on my prep sheet. I didn't have an answer then. I think I wouldn't do very much differently from what it is I'm already doing. I might take fewer cases so that I could focus more on the educational work that I'm doing, because I think that's big picture even more important than working on the cases.

[00:28:00] Louis Goodman: Let's see. You had a magic wand. There was one thing in the world you could do the legal world or otherwise. One thing that you could change with that magic wand, what would that be? 

[00:28:09] Jennifer Gardner: That's another good one. I would abolish war as a concept and as a human byproduct, I would just get rid of the whole concept.

It wouldn't exist. It would cease to exist in my world. If I had a magic wand, it just would not exist. People would not kill each other. 

[00:28:27] Louis Goodman: Jennifer is, how do we get in touch with you. If someone wants to contact you about your work, about your educational projects, about being represented as an attorney, what's the best way to contact you?

[00:28:43] Jennifer Gardner: The best way to contact me is to go to my website, my main website, which is jenniferbgardner.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Jennifer B. Gardner and on Instagram at I am Jennifer B. Gardner. On Facebook at Jennifer B. Gardner 

and I put the B in there strategically so that I could just repeat it and use it.

And when I found that the URL jenniferbgardner.com was available and like under $20, right? I had to have it even though I had no plans right at the time. So now I have plans and I use it and it's really, really great 'cause it makes me getting out my coordinates very easy. 

[00:29:27] Louis Goodman: And you spell Gardner, G-A-R-D-N-E-R, is that correct?

[00:29:31] Jennifer Gardner: That's right, exactly right. 

[00:29:33] Louis Goodman: Great. Jennifer, is there anything that you wanna talk about that we haven't discussed? Anything at all that you'd like to bring up? 

[00:29:41] Jennifer Gardner: Hmm. I think we've covered a lot of ground and I just, you know, if there are any younger attorneys out there listening to this and we're mature attorneys too. Certainly. I would just tell them to persevere and get in touch with their humanity, because that's really what it's all about. And when they walk into those difficult negotiations or those stressful boardrooms or high stakes courtrooms, I would just tell them to bring their humanity with them, not leave it at the door and not be afraid to be real.

As real as they can be in the way that they express themselves. And to get rid of the fancy language and just speak plain English to whoever it is they're speaking to, whether it's the court clerk or jurors or a judge or their adversaries. Just let's get rid of the pretentiousness and let's just be real with each other and roll up our sleeves and solve these problems, because that's what it's all about.

And in the courtroom, it's usually we're solving problems that are, some of the disputes can affect the macro, but mostly it's on the micro, and I think that's a really good place to begin. 

[00:30:54] Louis Goodman: Jennifer Gardner, thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer Podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. 

[00:31:02] Jennifer Gardner: Louis, thank you so much for having me here. It's been great talking to you as well, and I'm really happy for the opportunity to share my ideas with your listeners, so thanks again. 

[00:31:14] Louis Goodman: That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com, where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs and information.

Thanks to my guests, and to Joel Katz for music, Bryan Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

[00:31:52] Jennifer Gardner: Oh, don't ask me. I'm learning all of that now. Like all of the different parts, right? So that's here and then on this side. This side I haven't even started to dig into yet, but, so there's, there's a lot more to learn here.