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Lawyers Who Learn

David Schnurman

Lawyers Who Learn, explores how attorneys’ engagement in lifelong learning fuels their growth. Join us to uncover these journeys and gain insights for your legal career.

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#158
Today · 42 min
#158 From a White House Internship to Partner in Political Law
Rebecca Moll Freed knew she wanted to be a lawyer in high school, the moment mock trial replaced a childhood plan to become a pediatrician. A college internship in the Clinton White House sealed the deal, showing her that law, politics, and business could actually intersect for a living. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Freed, a Lawline faculty member since 2016 whose courses have reached more than 6,000 attorneys, about the deliberate path that took her from Georgetown Law to partner at CSG Law. Freed breaks down "pay-to-play" laws in plain English: rules meant to stop government contracts from going to the highest campaign donor instead of the most qualified bidder, and the murky, high-stakes gray area companies navigate around lobbying, gifts, and procurement to protect their eligibility for that work. She traces her break into the field to a chance pairing with a partner on a New Jersey gubernatorial election and transition, as her first assignment out of law school, and reflects on building a specialized practice while raising two kids who later followed her to Georgetown themselves. Along the way, she pushes back on the idea that getting ahead requires an edge, arguing that kindness and good manners are entirely compatible with ambition.
#157
Thursday · 35 min
#157 The "I Don't Know" Answer That Landed Her a 15-Year Legal Career
When a hiring partner warned Gina Nicotera he wouldn't take on someone who didn't know what ERISA stood for, she admitted she'd never heard the term and won the job anyway. Fifteen years later, that willingness to learn on the fly has carried her from a biomedical engineering dropout to a senior labor and employment attorney, where she now helps employers navigate an entirely new set of risks: workplace harassment fueled by AI. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Nicotera about a career shaped by trial, error, and curiosity, from switching majors after a rough semester of multivariable calculus to building a practice representing restaurants, hospitality groups, and manufacturers in employer-side disputes. Nicotera unpacks how AI is reshaping her caseload: employees weaponizing deepfakes against coworkers, HR screening tools that can inadvertently filter out candidates by race, and the discovery risks of feeding confidential data into open AI systems. Much of her work, she says, amounts to therapy, coaching anxious HR professionals through difficult conversations before they escalate into litigation. She credits her growth to treating every detour, including an abandoned engineering major, as data rather than defeat, and to building a network of mentors along the way.
#156
September 14 · 47 min
#156 10,000 Changes, No Surprises: A Martial Artist's Rulebook for AI Law
Eran Kahana uses AI carefully and sparingly, having watched it produce polished text that passes for insight until it doesn’t. An eighteen-year Stanford Law fellow and AI governance partner at Maslon LLP, he treats AI less like a ghostwriter and more like a sparring partner he interrogates and never fully trusts. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Kahana, whose ten Lawline courses on AI governance, copyright, and privacy have logged nearly ten thousand completions, about a career built on "staying hungry." One rejected conference proposal in the late 2000s led, through a chance introduction, to an eighteen-year Stanford fellowship shaping how the law thinks about AI. Kahana unpacks the money question underneath every AI copyright fight, how ordinary shopping data becomes health data once AI starts inferring from it, and why he juggles five AI models like a conductor rather than one assistant. His current project, a 37-principle "restatement" of AI's life cycle, exists because he talks to his own framework daily, pushing it to critique him back, guided by a martial arts philosophy: ten thousand changes, no surprises. For lawyers unsettled by AI's pace, his point isn't mastering one tool. It's staying disciplined, curious, and willing to be wrong, a distinction that will only matter more as AI redefines legal expertise.
#155
September 10 · 35 min
#155 How a Thesis Written in College Became a Career 15 Years Later
Beth wrote a college thesis on affordable housing and voucher programs, then watched her legal career zigzag in the opposite direction—straight into Big Law real estate finance. It took one transaction involving Boston's inclusionary housing rules to reconnect her with the mission she'd nearly left behind, sending her from corporate associate to city government attorney to partner at a firm representing lenders who finance affordable housing across New York City. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Beth to trace that career arc and unpack what's shaping New York's affordable housing landscape today. Beth breaks down how the city is creatively repurposing public land, speeding up the notoriously slow ULURP approval process, and even mismatching income bands to rent bands so units stay genuinely affordable. She also explains the pressure developers face under proposed rent freezes, why she took a steep pay cut to join NYC's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and how that hands-on government experience became the foundation for the CLE courses she now teaches on Lawline. The conversation moves beyond policy into what fueled Beth's willingness to take risks: writing down her goals, seeking out mentors willing to teach her, and paying that mentorship forward through teaching. Beth and David also trade book recommendations, from parenting strategies to Barbara Kingsolver novels, rounding out a portrait of a lawyer whose winding career path led her exactly where her college thesis once predicted.
#154
September 8 · 38 min
#154 - Divorce, Disability, and the Pension Clock Ticking on 9/11 Claims
Erin Colgan was a 25 year old new prosecutor and seven months pregnant with her first child when she watched the horrific events of 9/11 on a small television from the Richmond County Criminal Courhouse. She explains this as completely surreal, and repeatedly paged her father, a Port Authority Police Inspector and commander of the World Trade Center who had survived the collapse. That morning would eventually shape a career built around representing police officers and firefighters and their spouses equally, with Erin in a unique position to understand the culture and the issues affecting these families in divorce. Later, she came to understand the importance of their retirement benefits and how best to address them professionally. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Erin Colgan about a wave of NYPD and FDNY retirements now colliding with rising divorce rates among first responders in their 40s and 50s. Erin describes representing these members and their spouses as a calling. As Tier 2 hires from the late 1990s reach retirement, their pensions, often the family's largest asset, become the center of emotionally fraught divorces, especially when disability or line of duty injury is involved. She sees it as imperative that both sides of these cases get precise, complete information about what is actually at stake with regard to their retirement benefits, not just a passing reference to the pension. Erin also breaks down the approaching September 11th certification deadline tied to the 25th anniversary of the attacks, and the stigma that has kept officers and firefighters from calling themselves disabled even as new conditions surface decades later. Ten years ago, she co-founded Northstar QDRO to help attorneys draft the QDROs and DROs courts require. Erin's path, from assistant DA to solo practitioner to firm partner and entrepreneur, shows how personal history can sharpen professional purpose. She credits a book about forgiveness after tragedy with shaping how she handles even the most contentious negotiations. For family law attorneys, Erin's story is a reminder that deep expertise grows from lived experience, and that teaching what you know multiplies its impact far beyond the courtroom.
#153
August 31 · 43 min
#153 Building a Practice He Wasn't Hired to Build: From Generalist to Political Law Expert
Venable didn't have a political law practice when Ron Jacobs started there. Growing up in a blue-collar family in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jacobs once dreamed of public service before law school pulled him toward a career in the law instead. His early years as an associate bounced him between FTC, FCC, international trade work, and nonprofit associations, with campaign finance creeping in little by little t. By the time Jacobs made senior associate, colleagues were already routing anything political his way. The firm noticed, and let him build a practice around it, a rare move in Big Law. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Jacobs, now at Venable for 25 years, about how that practice came together and everything that's grown out of it since. Citizens United sits at the center of the conversation: how it reshaped campaign finance law, and why contribution limits keep getting worked around rather than enforced, in Jacobs's view. AI tools like ChatGPT and Harvey are already changing his day-to-day work, a shift Jacobs discusses candidly alongside his years teaching political law courses for Lawline, work rooted in lessons from mentors earlier in his career. Raising three kids while making partner comes up too, along with the books, including White Shoe and The Man to See, that shaped how he thinks about building something that lasts. Twenty-five years in, Jacobs's path shows what happens when a practice area gets built by one person's persistence rather than handed down.
#152
August 24 · 44 min
#152 How a Broken Partnership Sparked a Legal Podcast Empire
Dennis Meador, known to everyone as DM, learned to sell before he learned much else. By 14 he was running his own hustle, subcontracting neighborhood yard work and keeping half the profit. That instinct for building things from scratch carried into his career, including an SEO agency for attorneys he helped scale to $5 million before a five-year partnership ended just months before his wedding. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with DM to trace how that setback launched his current venture: the Legal Podcast Network, or LPN. Starting from zero in May 2024, DM built LPN into a seven-figure business with 250 attorney clients within a year, providing hosts, production, and distribution so solo and small-firm lawyers can build authority without becoming content creators themselves. He breaks down his "revenue first, then simplify, then delegate" philosophy, his pricing model built around jurisdictional exclusivity, and how he's leaning into intent-based algorithms and LLM-driven SEO to help clients get discovered. DM also shares what it's like running a fast-growing company remotely from Mexico, balancing rapid growth with a baby on the way, and his goal of reaching 2,500 clients and $30 million in revenue within seven years. His story is a grounded look at how resilience and systems-building turned a broken partnership into something bigger.
#151
August 17 · 23 min
#151 - She Left a Senior Associate Position at a Law Firm to Care for Her Parent. It Built Her Career.
More than twenty-five years ago, Lindsay A. Curcio wasn't chasing entrepreneurship or independence—she was an only child whose father had recently passed away, whose mother needed help, and who realized the only way to be there was to build a practice she could run on her own terms. That decision, made out of necessity rather than ambition, quietly shaped the next two decades of her life. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Lindsay about the career built around that pivot—and everything it made possible. Approaching her 36th year of practice as an immigration attorney, she traces her path from a formative U.S. Department of Justice internship at a Louisiana detention center during law school in 1989, through a decade working at immigration law firms in Chicago and New York City, to running her own practice while splitting time between New York and Chicago to care for her mother. She unpacks why immigration law resists simple explanations, from decades-long immigrant visa waits to the 2003 creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with USCIS, ICE, and CBP taking the place of Legacy INS, and reflects on how teaching at Lawline, a law school, and a university has kept her sharp. Beyond the courtroom, Lindsay writes mystery fiction, performs and teaches improv and applied improv, and credits years with the Tibetan Buddhist community for shaping how she treats clients and adversaries alike—she believes kindness is possible and necessary, even in high-stakes work. Her story is a reminder that the most defining career choices aren't always the ones we plan—and that they can still lead somewhere extraordinary.
#150
August 10 · 29 min
#150 - The Futurist Patent Attorney Bringing AI to Market
What if you could say "build me a spaceship" and watch it happen within the hour? Ben Dach, a partner at Pierson Ferdinand, believes that the future isn't as distant as it sounds. A self-described "futurist patent attorney," Ben has spent his career turning ambitious ideas into real products—from surgical robotics that have saved thousands of lives to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, aerospace, and defense. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Ben to unpack his recent Lawline course, AI and the Future of Patent Law. They discuss why patent approvals have nearly doubled under new USPTO leadership, why AI-related filings keep climbing even as approval standards stay strict, and what quantum computing actually means for the future of innovation, from superposition to real-world use cases already reshaping entire industries. Ben also traces his own winding path—from biomedical engineering and a chemistry PhD to pharmaceutical patent litigation and law school at night—showing how a "zigzag" career can build genuine expertise. Beyond the science, he shares what teaching means to him: not lecturing from a distance, but building real dialogue with the professionals he trains, treating every course as a two-way conversation rather than a one-sided lecture. For attorneys navigating an AI-driven legal landscape, Ben's conversation offers a grounded perspective on where patent law is headed, and why staying human matters most as the tools around us get smarter.
#149
August 3 · 45 min
#149 The Rewritten Playbook: Money, Power, and the New Rules of Sports
About one week before every Lawline update, Mark Conrad checks his slides and makes changes, because the law hasn't stopped moving. A 38-year veteran of Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, Conrad has spent the last decade turning the chaos of sports law into some of Lawline's most-watched courses, with nearly 10,000 completions and near-perfect ratings. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Conrad about the collapse of the old "student athlete" model. The $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement cracked open a system built on amateurism, ushering in NIL payouts, deregulated transfers, and a de facto free agency for college stars. Conrad explains monopsony power in pro leagues, the murky legality of prop betting and prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, and why private equity is rushing into franchises now worth exponentially more than they were five years ago. Conrad also traces his own unlikely path—a detour into journalism, and an accidental teaching gig that turned into a career reinventing itself every year. He shares a sharp lesson on where CLE teaching ends and legal advice begins, plus a book recommendation, Mary Cain's memoir on abuse in elite athletics, that exposes the human cost behind sports' biggest brands. For any attorney trying to keep pace with an industry being rewritten in real time, this conversation is a fast, sharp briefing on where the money, the power, and the legal fights are headed next.
#148
July 30 · 59 min
#148 How Renaming Her DEI Firm Helped Her Survive the Backlash
When DEI became a political lightning rod, Natalie Holder didn't shut down her business — she renamed it. Quest Diversity Initiatives quietly became Quest Employment Initiatives, a small shift in language that let Holder keep doing the same work for clients suddenly nervous about the label, while the backlash swept through boardrooms around her. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Natalie Holder about the winding career that led to that decision. Holder traces her path from litigating discrimination claims for the New York City government to shooting scrappy, homemade YouTube videos like "Dinner at the Boss's House," a side project that eventually became her full-time business and led to consent decree and training work with organizations including Fox News, following the Bill O'Reilly harassment scandal, and the NYC Fire Department. She explains why she believes most organizations haven't actually abandoned DEI so much as rebranded it as "culture and belonging," citing data showing roughly 80% of companies remain quietly committed despite the public retreat — and why staying visible, through bar association events and CLE teaching, kept opening doors she never could have predicted. Holder's rebrand is a case study in surviving a hostile climate without abandoning the underlying mission. For attorneys navigating today's charged DEI landscape, her conversation offers a grounded, practical look at how compliance obligations, business strategy, and personal reinvention can move forward together, even as the language around them keeps shifting.
#147
July 27 · 49 min
#147 From Five Failed Bar Exams to a Thriving Career Teaching Lawyers
Angeli Raven Fitch failed the California bar exam five times before finally passing on her sixth attempt—collapsing on a sidewalk in tears when she saw the results. That resilience now fuels a career spanning criminal defense, AI ethics education, competitive storytelling, and caregiving for her mother with advanced dementia. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Angeli to trace the thread running through her many careers—attorney, faculty member, voice actor, children's book author—and finds it comes down to one thing: authentic self-expression. That instinct shows up in her legal work, where as co-founder of the Three Strikes Justice Center she's helped free clients serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses, once putting a vulnerable client on the stand against expert advice and watching the judge visibly soften. It shows up again on stage, where she's won storytelling competitions drawing on an acting background that taught her to live inside a story rather than recite it. Fitch also teaches Lawline courses on AI ethics, warning that lawyers who ignore confidentiality and competence rules are courting real risk. Just as striking is her reflection on caring for her mother, who no longer recognizes her: rather than grieve the parent she lost, Fitch has learned to join her mother's world, finding unexpected joy there. This conversation offers a model for embracing failure as fuel, treating storytelling as a skill, and approaching AI's ethical demands with curiosity rather than fear.
#146
July 23 · 54 min
#146 The Courtroom Storyteller Who Rewrote the Rules on Public Opinion
Hector Valle spent 11 years trying nearly 150 jury trials as a Dallas, Texas gang unit prosecutor, piecing together complex evidence and reluctant witnesses into stories that jurors could understand and trust. He had no idea those same skills would one day make him one of Texas's leading voices on college athletes' rights and a go-to communications strategist at the crossroads of law, public opinion, and sports. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman sits down with Hector to trace a career that refuses to stay in one lane: from the DA's office to the General Land Office under George P. Bush, from launching his own podcast to teaching strategic communications at Southern Methodist University to testifying before the Texas Legislature on NIL legislation and advising athletes and stakeholders before most attorneys and casual fans knew what NIL stood for. Hector's years prosecuting gangs, where witnesses didn't want to testify and cases had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, became the North Star for his later work helping state agencies communicate and exhibit transparency to the taxpayer during active litigation. While many attorneys respond with "no comment," Hector built a philosophy and methodology around educating and winning in the court of public opinion while achieving favorable results for clients. Now a Lawline faculty member with five-star ratings across more than 2,000 course completions, Hector also challenges attorneys to stop wrapping their identity around their job title, which frees them to pivot their career to other industries and advocacy that can be even more fulfilling. This conversation is essential for any lawyer questioning whether their skills translate beyond their current role, or ready to build a brand that outlasts any single position.
#145
July 20 · 59 min
#145 - How a Law School Nickname Became a Crypto Estate Planning Career
Kyle Shanon earned the nickname "Bitcoin Kid" in his first semester of law school, when he peppered professors with questions no one could answer: Can cryptocurrency go in a will? Is it a security? Years later, he's built a thriving niche answering exactly those questions for real clients. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, talks with Kyle about the unlikely path that took him from a directionless 3L—who put off the bar exam to chase other options—to an estate planning attorney at Crow Estate Planning and Probate, now deeply entrenched in the cryptocurrency and digital asset space. Kyle traces his fascination with Bitcoin to childhood in Tennessee, watching his father return from Iraq with foreign currency that turned out to be worthless—an early lesson in how fragile money can be. That instinct now shapes how he helps clients protect digital wealth, from securing crypto wallets to avoiding cautionary tales like the man who tossed a hard drive holding thousands of Bitcoin into a landfill. Kyle also unpacks where Bitcoin fits in a world eyeing digital currencies, translating complex financial ideas into plain-English estate planning guidance. His Lawline course, "Estate Planning and Probate for the Digital Age," has drawn over 1,000 attorneys and a 4.9-star rating. As digital assets go mainstream, Kyle's conversation offers a roadmap for attorneys who want to stay ahead of a fast-changing practice area—and proof that understanding the technology isn't optional anymore.
#144
July 16 · 51 min
#144 - The Slow Brand Strategy That Built a Legal Teaching Career
When Tracy Sanders Rucker began researching workplace appearance discrimination after her own hair loss experience, she uncovered a space where employment law, personal identity, and corporate culture collided. What started as personal curiosity became a book, then a brand, then a thriving CLE teaching platform — with a speaking calendar now booked through year's end, from Yale to major national law firms. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Tracy, a Syracuse Law graduate specializing in employment law and workforce development, to trace her decade-long journey from first-time author in 2016 to full-time legal educator and consultant. After stepping back from immigration practice during a turbulent political climate, Tracy settled into her South Carolina lake house and turned 10 years of quiet brand-building into a full-time teaching career. Tracy breaks down the post-DEI workplace through her employee handbook course, explaining why smart employers are now focusing on voluntary inclusion and risk management rather than checkbox compliance. She also shares the story behind her hair straightener MDL course — and how one honest student review pushed her to expand the topic beyond a single demographic into the broader world of carcinogens in beauty products. Throughout the conversation, Tracy reflects on how The Four Agreements, The Let Them Theory, and The Prophet shaped her core belief: character matters more than comfort. Her story is a reminder that the best time to build something meaningful is long before you think you need it.
#143
July 13 · 40 min
#143 - The Hidden Bottleneck Standing Between America and AI Dominance
Chip Cannon graduated from Tulane with a history and German degree, no burning desire to practice law, and a scholarship to study in West Berlin — where he'd find himself in a bar with friends the very night the wall fell. It took four years abroad, a near-expired LSAT, and a year and a half of temping to finally land at a small energy regulatory firm. He never looked back. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman speaks with Chip Cannon, partner at Hogan Lovells and adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, about a 30-year career that has tracked almost perfectly with the transformation of the American power sector — from regulated monopoly to competitive markets, and now to the AI-driven data center boom. Cannon brings rare clarity to one of the most urgent infrastructure challenges of our time. A data center can take six months to build but six years to get powered — and regulatory complexity across 50 states makes that gap hard to close. He describes a site in northern Louisiana nearly the size of Manhattan, currently nothing but land and worker camps, that will require three new gas-fired plants just to operate. Beyond the energy world, Cannon shares a personal lesson from a toxic workplace that forced him to examine not just what others had done wrong, but what he owed himself — including self-forgiveness. His message to law students: careers are not linear, scrappiness has real value, and the path forward rarely looks the way you planned.
#142
July 9 · 51 min
#142 No Job, No License: The Call That Accidentally Built a Legal Career
Christine Hummel walked into law school with one goal: become the compassionate estate planning attorney who helps families through their darkest moments — just like the attorneys who helped her mother after her father died suddenly when Christine was a child. What followed was anything but the plan. A cross-country move, no law license in a new state, and a single emergency phone call from a loyal colleague became the unlikely foundation of a 24-year consulting business she never saw coming. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Christine Hummel, founder of Hummel Consultation Services, to trace the winding road from grieving daughter to accidental entrepreneur — and how a niche she stumbled into became a career that may be helping far more people than estate planning ever could have. Christine shares how she launched her Medicare Secondary Payer compliance practice with almost no contacts and no clients — and how teaching became her secret weapon for growth. She unpacks why she insisted on delivering entire five-hour CLEs solo: one clear, authoritative voice in a notoriously gray-area field keeps attorneys from leaving more confused than when they arrived. It also turned out to be brilliant marketing. With over 15 courses and 5,000 completions on Lawline, Christine's teaching has become her most powerful business development tool — converting curious attorneys into consulting clients one CLE at a time.
#141
July 6 · 50 min
#141 The Web3 Lawyer Who Makes Blockchain Actually Make Sense
What if the reason you became a lawyer had nothing to do with money, prestige, or even a specific practice area — but with preparing for a geopolitical event that hasn't happened yet? That's Jeonghoon Ha's story. A former foreign policy scholar, he pursued law with one goal in mind: being ready to contribute to Korean reunification when the moment comes. That unusual origin shaped everything — including how he ended up as one of the clearest legal voices on blockchain, stablecoins, and digital asset regulation. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Jeonghoon, a solo practitioner and Lawline faculty member specializing in Web3 and digital asset law. Together they unpack why stablecoins exist, what the GENIUS Act actually does, and why the U.S. pivot away from a central bank digital currency may be a calculated move in the global currency war — all in language that doesn't require a finance degree to follow. But the conversation goes well beyond the law. Jeonghoon talks about leaving Big Law to build his own practice, how preparing CLE courses forced him to become a sharper thinker, and what surprised him about teaching on Lawline — including client referrals he never anticipated. He rounds it out with the book that shaped his twenties and the rap song he keeps returning to. A wide-ranging conversation about curiosity, preparation, and building a career around something you genuinely believe in.
#140
July 2 · 55 min
#140 - 58 Miles, One Formula, and a New Way to Think Like a Lawyer
Jonathan Cohen became a mental fitness expert the hard way. As a Bronx DA in the Special Victims Unit, he prosecuted trauma cases while training for ultramarathons and studying what separates elite performers from everyone else. When those worlds collided, he built something most attorneys have never been offered: a practical system for managing the mind under pressure. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Jonathan to trace that journey—from Bronx prosecutor to Director of Sales at PNY Technologies—and the mental fitness practice he built along the way. Jonathan now teaches the Lawline CLE course Mental Fitness for Lawyers, which has earned 1,000 completions and a 4.9 out of 5 rating. At the heart of his approach is one deceptively simple formula: Event + Response = Outcome. Lawyers default to reactive, undisciplined responses—and Jonathan argues the fix isn't therapy or yoga, but practical tools: intentional breathing, chasing perfect days, and treating recovery as something you actively build, not passively wait for. His most honest moment? Failing a sub-three-hour marathon twice and realizing the person he became in pursuit of that goal mattered more than the finish line. That mindset shift, he believes, is exactly what the legal profession needs right now.
#139
June 29 · 45 min
#139 From the Bronx to the Courtroom: Building a Brand Lawyers Can't Ignore
Most lawyers practice law. Gigio Koshy Ninan (‘Gio’) built a machine around it. State and Federal cases in three states, a thriving firm co-run with his wife, five Lawline courses with over 4,000 completions — and a brand strategy most law firms pay consultants to figure out. He just lived it. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, digs into how a kid from the Bronx — who almost became a high school history teacher — turned teaching into his sharpest competitive weapon. Gio breaks down how he uses AI tools like NotebookLM to craft courses people actually finish, why prompting well is now a core legal skill, and where AI will genuinely disrupt law practice — and where it simply won't touch it for decades. His take on the fractional GC world is particularly sharp: disruption isn't coming, it's already here. But immigration law? Litigation? Still human territory for the foreseeable future. Then there's his "R&R of lawyering" framework — reputation and relationships — the unglamorous system behind every major opportunity that's come his way, from Rutgers commencement speeches to federal court keynotes to clients who find him without a single cold call. The lesson he keeps coming back to: in a world where clients don't know who to trust, the lawyers who teach, show up, and build in public are the ones who win.

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