After almost a year away from the mic, Owen comes back with Megan Senese—co-founder of Stage, host of So Much to Say, and one of the most honest voices in the legal community. Brilliant, kind, utterly and indelibly herself.

Megan spent her career as a business development professional inside big firms, which meant being, in her words, “non-old, non-man, non-partner, non-lawyer, and so therefore you don’t know anything.” She and two colleagues planned their exit in stealth for a year, lived on one salary to test the downside, resigned the same morning, and launched with zero clients. The first thing she discovered was that all the advice she’d been giving lawyers actually works.

The conversation moves from there into the parts of the job nobody puts in a recruiting brochure: why business development is a fear problem rather than a tactics problem, why she hid both of her pregnancies and helped other women hide theirs, how Corduroy came to be, and what changes—and what doesn’t—when the person you’re overworking for is finally you.

Owen has been on the other side of the same trap, and neither of them pretends they’ve solved it.

Brad Miller is a solo practice attorney and franchise law specialist who formerly co-hosted Walking a Spiritual Path with Jason Medford. He started his firm out of necessity after graduating law school during the housing crisis, and has since shaped it — along with a move to rural hill country — into something that fits his life rather than the other way around.

Owen and Brad talk about why the legal profession is failing younger lawyers, what happens when the promise of the gold watch no longer fills the cup, and why so many attorneys find themselves running on empty despite doing everything they were told to do. The conversation moves into Brad's growing spiritual practice, the fear of stepping into the unknown without a clear destination, and what it looks like to just stop chasing more. Recorded in August, released fashionably late.

Amy lost Roy two weeks before we recorded this. Roy was her cat for seventeen years—what she calls her "heart animal." If you've ever had one, you know what that means. If you haven't, you probably think we're being dramatic about a pet, and you can go to hell.

We talked about grief, but also about mortality and meaning and why our culture is so fucking terrible at dealing with death. Amy's been wrestling with the big questions lately—what happens when we die, how to build a coherent worldview without traditional religion, why some people treat relationships like transactions.

She's also gotten really good at telling people no. There's a story in here about someone who kept pestering her for career advice while she was dealing with Roy's death, and her response is pretty much perfect.

_________

Amy Volas is the founder of Avenue Talent Partners and one of the most authentic voices on LinkedIn about leadership, relationships, and what it means to show up as a whole human in professional spaces. She's currently finishing her first book and believes in calling people on their bullshit—not to be mean, but to hold them to the standards they set for themselves.

Connect with Amy: LinkedIn Profile

Learn more: Avenue Talent Partners

In this wide-ranging conversation, Owen sits down with fellow "reluctant lawyer" Pat Patino to explore the tension between intensity and minimalism, the challenge of getting past the 90% threshold, and what it means to live an impractical life.

Topics discussed:

The realization that intensity might be a feature, not a bug

Why both hosts stopped identifying closely with being attorneys

The Chinese literati and the lost art of being multiple things

Pat's decision to stop practicing law and embrace uncertainty

The coloring book approach to life and work

How Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness" captures a moment of transition

The spiritual nature of legal practice and dealing with various forms of "death"

Why most legal work is just "Control A, Control C, Control V"

The crumble cookie-ification of professional services

How AI will reshape the legal profession

The importance of human connection in an increasingly digital world

The challenge of proving you're "real" in an age of deep fakes

Guest info: Pat Patino can be found on LinkedIn and at newfangled.legal. Check out his podcast "The Newfangled Lawyer" on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Have you ever noticed that when leaders of organizations talk very loudly about making change, almost nothing meaningful changes?

Anastasia Boyko is a rare true changemaker and she was gracious enough to take a beat and talk with us about a whole bevy of topics from her unique vantage. Anastasia was born in Soviet Ukraine, made her way to Utah with her mother before the wall fell, worked her way to Yale Law and Manhattan Biglaw, into the world of legal tech, back to Yale to create an innovative leadership program, before moving to home/not-home Utah to find some new trouble to cause.

She's even more interesting than that recitation of things suggests.

You can find Anastasia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasiaboyko/

Tony Albrecht joins us for a master class in trolling me on TSwift before we inevitably jump into a long discourse on creativity and the lunacy of creatives.

No more need be said. Enjoy.

Find Tony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-albrecht/

Visit CONTENDER: https://contenderllc.com/

Robb Gilbear messaged me several weeks back and remarked how we were living on opposite ends of the child-rearing spectrum. I knew immediately that I had to have him join Sonder Union to talk through all the feels. I can't tell you how soothing it is speaking with Robb, although I suspect you'll get a sense from listening to this episode.

You can find Robb here:

1. LinkedIn
2. GrowthHabit
3. Die Before They Do

Some episodes of Sonder Union are a little serious and dour. I love those episodes, but this one certainly isn't one of them. Chris Sellers joins me, in his Trilby, to talk all about creativity, the way we torture and forgive ourselves, and the way we interact with the stories other people want to write for us.

Check out Chris at all of these places:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-s-sellers/

https://www.cssellers.com