Episode 170: How to use (and Not to Use) AI in a Legal Job Search | Shauna Bryce

Stephen Seckler (00:03.488)
Welcome back everybody. Just a reminder that if you are listening to cancel to cancel on one of the audio podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple podcasts, you can also find us now on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, it's nice to have you here. Today we're talking about a topic that I've been thinking about a lot and talking about a lot, how to use AI in a job search and just as importantly, how not to use it. My guest today is Shauna Bryce.

founder of Bryce Legal. Shauna has more than 20 years of experience helping lawyers to build successful careers. She's a former chief legal talent officer, chief diversity officer and practicing attorney. And today she works with lawyers across all stages of their careers on strategy, positioning and career transitions. Shauna and I sit on the board of the ABA's Career Center and we recently had a great conversation about why human decision makers still matter.

in the age of AI and that's what we're diving into today. Shawna, welcome to Council to Council.

Shauna Bryce (01:09.432)
Thank you for having me.

Stephen Seckler (01:12.384)
I always like to start by giving my guests a quick chronology.

Stephen Seckler (01:22.324)
I always like to start by allowing my guests to give a quick chronology of their careers. You've done a lot in the legal profession. Why don't you first tell us about what you did as a practicing lawyer?

Shauna Bryce (01:33.454)
Sure. I started my legal career in an Amla 100 farm based in Manhattan and went to also an Amla 200 farm, a regional farm in New Jersey. And then I was in-house in a utility company in New Jersey as well. did mostly litigation, but there was obviously the advisory and other things that went along with that, particularly once I went in-house. It was more transactional and advisory. And then,

Stephen Seckler (02:02.186)
and you slot.

Shauna Bryce (02:03.47)
Go ahead.

Stephen Seckler (02:05.94)
And you slowly work your way south, right? You came to law school up here in my neck of the woods in Boston at Harvard, ended up in New York, and you're now back and have been for a long time in DC where I believe you grew up, right?

Shauna Bryce (02:19.79)
Yes, so I am one of those rare people who was actually born in DC. So you're exactly right. I went to law school at Harvard and I have been slowly working my way down, 95, back to get home ever since. So I've been in DC area now for more than 15 years back in this area.

Stephen Seckler (02:43.85)
Why don't we talk about how you pivoted into coaching? When did that happen and what made you decide to do that?

Shauna Bryce (02:51.086)
So interestingly enough, that pivot started when I was in the Amar 200 farm. I was one of those folks that even as an associate, I was kind of the office therapist where I had even quite senior partners come into my office, shut the door, talk to me about what was happening in their careers and ask my opinion about it. And then they would say, this is great. You should do this for a living. And so when I decided I didn't want to be a partner,

I thought about what I should do and I said, you know what, maybe I should be listening to these people who are seeing something that I wasn't seeing, I hadn't seen in myself. And so that's how I got into it. It really started when I was...

And then I formalized into my own business shortly there.

Stephen Seckler (03:44.032)
How did you make the jump?

Shauna Bryce (03:47.746)
Can you clarify? Sorry, you say the jump part.

Stephen Seckler (03:49.758)
Okay, I'm sorry, I'll ask the question again. What did you actually do to set yourself up for success as a coach? was there some, did you do a certification program? What was it that got you from just being the office therapist to actually having a thriving coaching business?

Shauna Bryce (04:09.038)
So when I started in coaching and careers with my own business, there really weren't that many people doing it. There were not a lot of coaching programs. There were not a lot of resume writing programs and all of these other things. I really did a lot of research and then grinding and then started out on my own. There were very few folks I could find. The internet was very early then because we're talking about 2003, 2004 at the time.

So I had to do a lot of research, a lot of soul searching about what I wanted to do. And then that's actually how I started writing my first book. I started a book called, to Get a Legal Job. And I used that as a research tool to talk to a lot of lawyers that I knew about their own careers, about what they looked for as employers, since they were all then on the hiring side and they were in charge of hiring people.

development and I talked to them quite a bit about what they looked for in that process, how they mentored, how they developed lawyers, what they wish had been done differently for them. So that's how I got started really in making the lead. It was a lot of grit and research and then just taking the chance and doing it.

Stephen Seckler (05:30.196)
What made you decide you didn't really want to become a partner or practice?

Shauna Bryce (05:35.896)
That's an interesting question. I find that there was a lot that I loved about the law. And I did a lot of work at the time that was pharmaceutical to defense. So it was a lot of science and law, where science and law interacted in policy. I really liked that from a theoretical standpoint and from an intellectual standpoint, I found that to be a fascinating area. What I didn't quite like was the actual

practice of it. I found that just didn't suit my personality. I often felt that I was just pushing a lot of paper around without any actual results that helped people or made a difference or changed anything. And so for me, that was part of the frustration. Then also the law partnership, I think one of the things that often surprises people is how much of being a law firm partner

is business development and marketing and sales. And that really just didn't interest me enough.

Stephen Seckler (06:40.392)
A few years ago, you took a slight detour. You kept your business going, you told me, but you took on the role of Chief Talent Officer at an AmLaw100 firm. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Shauna Bryce (06:57.784)
Sure. Sorry, Steve, do you mean to tell you about how I got the role or tell you what work I was doing? Or when you say, tell me about that, what are you looking

Shauna Bryce (07:10.527)
you

Stephen Seckler (07:12.638)
Now let's not get into how you got the role. Okay, so let me ask the question again. Just talking about what the role involved.

few years ago, after you had built up a strong coaching business, you took on a role as Chief Talent Officer of an Hamla 100 firm. While you kept your business running, can you tell us a little bit about what you were doing?

Shauna Bryce (07:43.362)
Right, so as Chief Legal Talent Officer, I was doing a lot of work that I had been doing at an individual level and as an outside consultant level and moved it towards an institutional level. So the work involved hiring, recruiting, attorney development. So there was a strong overlap there with HR as well, but also thinking about

What are the needs of an institution? How do we bring in lawyers and train them and develop them to meet institutional and client needs? But then also thinking about the lawyer's perspective about how do we keep them happy? How do we develop them the way they want to be developed? One of the things that we were really excited about doing was bringing and creating an internal coaching program where I hired

an attorney coach who had been a lawyer herself and was an experienced coach to come in and build a lawyer coaching program within the firm, which I see a lot of firms have done since then. And we also created a bunch of different types of training programs to think about how can we best deliver the information to lawyers to help them grow and be the lawyers that the firm needs and their clients.

Stephen Seckler (09:11.252)
I do this for another AmLaw100 firm as part of the work that I do. And the rationale for the program is that the firm wants associates or partners who leave to be happy. It's usually lawyers who are going to leave. And it's justified as a business development vehicle. Is that what happened at Steptoe?

Shauna Bryce (09:36.846)
Well, there was some element of it that was that as well. Certainly, M.L. 100 law firms have significant lawyer turnover rates and they do want to think ahead of how can we help lawyers who are leaving, lawyers who don't want, maybe don't want to be partner or for whatever reason aren't a great fit long term for the firm. How do we help them move on to things that they want to do? And that's an important thing for the firm.

generally to have a strong alumni base. It does become a business development measure to the extent that some of those lawyers are going to go in-house, either into existing clients or go in-house into organizations that the firm would love to have the chance to represent. So having an employee, strong alumni base is very helpful. So we did do some coaching.

with the understanding that some of those people were going to be leaving and some of those people did come into our coaching program with the explicit intent of asking for help to transition out. A lot of other people were still focused on doing the best they could during the time they were at the firm and that was really their focus. How can I be the best lawyer at the firm?

Stephen Seckler (10:57.652)
Let's pivot back to your own coaching business. Now you're doing that full time again and you have a whole staff or a whole team of coaches, right?

Shauna Bryce (11:10.294)
Yeah, so we're very fortunate to have a really great group of coaches and writers and they like.

Stephen Seckler (11:16.31)
Who are the clients that your company serves? Typically.

Shauna Bryce (11:21.848)
So we do both B2C and B2B work. our B2C clients are lawyers in the US. They're almost exclusively lawyers in the US or looking to come into the US market. They can be at all levels. I've worked personally with partners at Amla 25 Brooms, Fortune 100.

CLOs and GCs all the way, go all the way down to law school. So we really run the gamut in seniority and across practice areas and across environments. So I already mentioned law firms and in-house. We also have individual clients who are in nonprofits, government, small law firms, all of that sort of thing.

They often come to us either at a pivot or decision-making point in their careers. It may be that they have an immediate job search need. It may be that they are thinking more long-term about where they want their career to go. And we work with them on both coaching and resume writing, written profiles, et cetera. So that's what our B2C looks like in a nutshell. Our B2B work, our clients are mostly

law firms and we do both outplacement work with them as well as development work with them. So we can do a one-on-one coaching with some of their lawyers and sometimes we've been asked to do training programs, et cetera, or to consult on.

Stephen Seckler (13:05.12)
How long are your engagements typically?

Shauna Bryce (13:08.888)
That's a very interesting question and hard to answer because it sort of depends on what the person means. For our engagements that are acute, like outplacement or somebody is in an immediate job search and comes to us, that engagement may be a month or two months over time. Our long-term clients are not surprisingly longer term. So I have coaching clients that I meet with.

once a month or a year or two years. We are also very fortunate that a lot of our lawyers come back to us at different points in their careers when their needs change. So we have clients that we've worked with for 10 years, 15 years.

Stephen Seckler (13:56.79)
Can you give some examples of what you've done with some of the clients that you've worked with on a much longer timeframe?

Shauna Bryce (14:05.966)
Sure. So an example of that may be a client who comes to us as maybe they're a law firm associate and they want to move in-house at an individual contributor level. So we would coach them on how to do that process, how to figure out what employers they want to work for, what their value add is going to be, creating a resume, coaching them through a job search. That same person may then

come back and say, I don't want to be an individual contributor anymore. I really want to be on the executive track because I decided I want to be a CLO one day. So we would then say, okay, this is how you need to position yourself so that you can be an executive. That same person may come back and say, okay, I need to get my first GC role. So we do the coaching, reposition them for their first GC role. That may be in a private company and then they want to go in the

public company. So I have a particular client in mind that I'm thinking as I'm walking through this process, but just to give you a sense of how we might work with a client over a very, very long horizon over a multi-year horizon. On a one-year horizon, most of those are people who are either wanting to be successful in the job they're in.

And so are looking at maybe a 30, 60, 90 day plan. They may have need a confidant to talk about difficult conversations or things that are happening. How do they build their leadership skillsets with the idea of having a long-term plan of my five-year goal is this, my 10-year goal is that. What should I be doing now so that I'm increasing my odds of hitting that five-year goal on a long-term scale.

Stephen Seckler (16:02.506)
I like to say that like a good therapist, we try to create codependency. Just kidding.

Shauna Bryce (16:14.136)
Yeah, I...

Stephen Seckler (16:14.154)
What I find, don't know if you find this, but what I find is, a lot of my clients I work with on a four to six month basis, I don't do much in the way of short term. It's just what I've decided to do.

But what I find really interesting and fun is if you get past the six month period, you can really have a big impact on people's lives and you know each other. I just find that I like the longer term engagements actually. Do you feel that way too? Aside from the obvious business advantage of not having to keep filling your pipeline, which we all have to do anyway.

Shauna Bryce (17:00.716)
It is one of the things that I like about being in career services generally is that you have that opportunity to have very real and immediate impact on an individual, but also that person's family, that person's organization, that sort of thing. So one of the things that I've been really excited and proud about is how many

Folks who are in demographics of historically excluded folks, Lawyers, so women, lawyers of color, folks who are LGBTQ2 +, first generation folks that we have helped advance in their legal careers. Some of these people really have moved from an associate at a law firm to being in a public company.

the chief legal officer where they're controlling legal spend or controlling outside counsel. And some of those folks are now on corporate boards as well, where they have a lot more influence and say, or they become, you know, income partners or equity partners. And so that has been really a wonderful thing about having, as you said, long term relationships with clients to be able to see them advance in whatever their goals may be. And then have

know that you've had that impact on them and their families. I've always been super appreciative of some of my clients who, because their branding is better and their job search is better, they've gotten significantly improved title and pay that is more in line with what their goals are and what they wanted to do. So it's a great thing when somebody comes back and says,

You know, they have a new job where their salary has been doubled. And you you know that you've had an impact on

Stephen Seckler (19:02.452)
Okay, I'm breaking the fourth wall for a second. Jelco, you'll edit this out. I'd love to talk to you just for a few minutes at some point about corporate boards, because I've had a couple of clients, one in particular that came back who is interested in corporate boards. it's just, I've been told that it's quite challenging for lawyers to end up on corporate boards, but they can, and obviously.

not just play the role of the lawyer who has lawyerly thoughts. So anyway, I'd love to get to a little conversation with you about that. Okay.

Shauna Bryce (19:35.694)
I will tell you the 10 second answer is that they need to not position themselves as

Stephen Seckler (19:42.484)
Right, yeah.

Shauna Bryce (19:43.82)
Yeah, and that becomes the pivot point about how well they can credibly position themselves that way and get beyond the lawyer because you're right, their boards aren't looking for a lawyer.

Stephen Seckler (19:57.506)
Again, Jelco, this is just chit chat. Do you think that nonprofit board experience has any relevance?

Shauna Bryce (20:07.598)
It can. It sort of depends on the size of the organization. I find the larger the organization, the more relevant it can be. It is a good starter place, but it's not. I have found that people don't really see it as a qualification. They see it as, at least you've had some exposure to the idea.

Stephen Seckler (20:09.267)
Okay.

Stephen Seckler (20:28.862)
Okay. All right, let's get back to the interview.

Stephen Seckler (20:36.34)
Let's turn back to AI because that's really the big topic that I'm really interested in. What do you think lawyers are getting right about the use of AI in the job search?

Shauna Bryce (20:56.866)
I think the lawyers who are using it as a research tool are doing it the right way right now, at least with the capabilities that I've seen AI have today. Its highest value for lawyers is actually in a job search in particular. So I'll give you an example of how it might be used in this job search. So back in the day,

If somebody had said, I need to work with an employer within a 20 minute mile radius of my house and I am trying to find any law firm that has a trust in the state's practice in it where the firm has more than 50 lawyers. That's something that would have been a little bit challenging for research.

And now that's something you could plug into AI and have an instant answer that would shorten your job search tremendously because it gives you a starter set of potential employers to look at. So another much more complicated job search idea that we had that was working with the client. I'll anonymize this a little bit, but this is a client who had

who was multicultural and multilingual was looking at potentially leaving the US and using her language skills in another country in a similar in-house role. And in that case, we basically said, okay, well, have AI run a search that says something like, I want to find all German-based companies that

have a significant corporate presence in Singapore. And that's something that would be very, very difficult to do on your own. But finding just sort of that tiny intersection where you have a Venn diagram where you have, want this factor and this factor and this factor and this factor, it would be really hard to do by hand. And with AI,

Shauna Bryce (23:20.152)
do it really.

Stephen Seckler (23:22.976)
Did that work actually? Did you actually get some hits on that? I don't know if you changed the names of the countries or whatever, but.

Shauna Bryce (23:29.934)
Yeah, well, I changed the name of the countries for this specific example, but I'll happily tell you more specific about the search, the actual search that this lawyer ran. So if go off record for a minute, I will tell you that this was a lawyer who split jacket.

Stephen Seckler (23:41.056)
Yeah, that's great.

Stephen Seckler (23:46.934)
Jelko, this is not to be included.

Shauna Bryce (23:50.954)
Yeah. So this was a lawyer who spoke Japanese and she was thinking about going to Panama and she was specifically interested in construction. So we looked for Japan based companies that were involved in shipping and construction that had an office in Panama. That was a Panamanian office or that was served as their Latin American hub because of

Stephen Seckler (24:13.792)
Wow.

Shauna Bryce (24:19.096)
Panama is very often the Latin American hub for a lot of companies. So there are a lot of global 1,000 companies that have a presence there. And so we knew that wasn't gonna be a huge pool, but it's such a narrow slot. She would never have been able to find that on her own. And there again, you can run that through AI very quickly. So yes, that is a real example. I just changed the... But anyway, go ahead.

Stephen Seckler (24:41.238)
Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I love doing that changing, like you giving examples, but changing the gender, the location. It's kind of like coming up with a fact pattern for a law school exam, right? Okay. All right. We're getting back to the interview now, Zylko. What do you think lawyers are getting wrong about AI?

Shauna Bryce (25:06.018)
think the things that I'm seeing in my realm that lawyers are getting wrong with AI is that they are trying to use it to actually write their resumes and career documents. And that's the problem. It's a wonderful research tool. It can even be a good internet prep tool. I have not seen it be successful as a good writing tool for a lawyer's

Stephen Seckler (25:31.862)
Okay, I will, you know, I do use, I'm a heavy user of AI and I will just say this that sure, you wouldn't want to ask ChatGPT to just spit out a resume and then send that off. But I do find sometimes when I'm trying to help lawyers with their resumes, that if there's a section that they're trying to figure out how to say something or what to include in that section, that it is good for identifying or.

giving you ideas or even language and sometimes specific language. Can you comment on that?

Shauna Bryce (26:06.99)
Sure, so I think if you give it a very discreet task, like I have this bullet in my draft resume, can you help me draft this bullet so that it's more strategic and less task-oriented? It can sometimes give you good ideas around that. think the challenge with using AI is that it's only as good as the information that it has to pull from and as good as the query that it works.

And so therefore what we see is a lot of like resume language that comes back is either this sort of meaningless resume speak, so often see, or it comes back like very task-based instead of value-add based. So we'll tell you as lawyers come to us at Breit Legal to work on their resumes, we talk to them about

having a document that really answers three questions. You start with a strategy around three questions, which is what is the profile of your target employer? What is the target role that you want to use this resume for? And what are the top three to five reasons those employers should hire you to fill that role? And then building resumes that are around that.

rather than around resumes that just are focused on what you did the most of or most recently, even if that's not what you want to do or not related to your target. But when you think about who your target audience is and the purpose of the resume is, it allows you to create actual strategy in building the resume. And I think as people use AI as a writing tool,

A major thing that they are excluding is actual strategy about what this resume is designed to do, how it's supposed to market you and to whom and for what purposes. That tends to be lost. And as I said, you end up then with resumes that are very, very centered on generics and tasks, but you can't compete on tasks really. You really want to be competing on impact.

Shauna Bryce (28:29.902)
context and all of those things. And it's like if you're a litigator and you say, write briefs, it's very hard to stand out from competition because every litigator writes briefs, right? Like that doesn't make you different. It doesn't create a document that's true to you and your value add, or that shines out in a stack.

Stephen Seckler (28:53.878)
What about cover letters? Anything you would add on cover letters?

Shauna Bryce (29:00.758)
Yeah, well, I guess a couple things that I would say about cover letters, although I see that they have the similar problems, is that one is a cover letter should do more than just rehash your resume in narrative form. If that's all it's doing, it's not very helpful. And that's why a lot of interviewers and folks don't read them. And then the other thing is that I will say that some people come and say the exact opposite about a cover letter. I'm including all of this information.

letter because I don't know how to include it in the resume. And so my thought there and my experience there is that if the information is important to the decision maker, then it needs to appear in some form in the resume itself. You may expand it in a paper letter, but it needs to appear in the resume itself. I think that that's another thing that you see as people are trying to work with AI on resumes is they don't know and it doesn't know.

how to include information like that so that it appears in the body of the rat.

Stephen Seckler (30:05.642)
I want to ask you a little bit about interview preparation, but before we get to that, I wanted to pivot back to human relationships and really the sort of overarching theme of our conversation, which we haven't talked about that much. Say something about the role of building your network and whatnot in terms of actually applying for jobs and why that's so important.

Shauna Bryce (30:35.128)
Sure. something that we've been seeing with the advent of job boards and online applications and even applying on LinkedIn is that a lot of lawyers are tempted to just apply online, apply online, apply online and feel that that is a job search. And there are a lot of challenges with doing that. I liken that to the...

Stephen Seckler (30:59.624)
Actually, can I I interrupt for a second? Are you seeing any glare on my on my screen on your screen when you're looking at me about me? know, OK, I'm sorry, because I've got sun shining in my face. I just realized.

Shauna Bryce (31:07.288)
I am not. No.

Shauna Bryce (31:12.886)
if you tilt up, I see it a little bit, but I'm not seeing it. When you asked, was not seeing it.

Stephen Seckler (31:19.474)
Okay, good. I'm sorry I totally interrupted you. Can you go back, roll back the tape and start over?

Shauna Bryce (31:22.638)
Yeah, no. What was I saying? Where was I?

Stephen Seckler (31:27.986)
I know I shouldn't have interrupted at that point, but I was like, shit. you got to edit that out. Jelco.

Shauna Bryce (31:32.75)
Oh, we were talking about online. We were talking about online job search, right?

Stephen Seckler (31:38.728)
Okay, so let me let's go back to the beginning of that question. Sorry. So.

Shauna Bryce (31:44.866)
Okay, I can just restart my answer. I remember the question now. So can just pause and then restart my answer.

Stephen Seckler (31:47.794)
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Shauna Bryce (31:54.456)
So one of the things that we've been seeing with the advent of online job boards and even like the ability to apply for jobs through LinkedIn is that a lot of lawyers and other job seekers, they are just applying online. They're just hitting apply, apply and feeling like that is a job search. And I had spoken to a lawyer who was upset because he had applied to more than 5,000 jobs this way and was not getting any hits.

And you can see why when you think more about how those online job searches work, right? I think of it as more like the old New York Lotto slogan where it said you gotta be in it to win it, right? And that there's somebody, somebody's a winner, why not you? The thing is, you would never say buying lottery tickets is good financial programming. And so I think the job search,

through online applications is very similar to the lottery, right? There are tons and tons of people applying who may be terrible fits for the job, who may be good fits for the job. So you're wading into this pool. You then don't know what tool the screener is using on the other end, how they're screening, what criteria they're using. The last time I had done research, there was something like...

you know, more than 100 applicant tracking systems that were in use. So you have no idea what system that person is using. And then the person who is screening is very often like a specialist or coordinator level HR person, right? Where their expertise is HR. They don't know the law, right? Like they can't possibly know and appreciate.

the resumes that they're seeing for all of these different disciplines, right? And so you're putting your entire faith then at the hands of this process, right? With huge volumes of resumes, unknown software screening, unknown criteria for the screening process, and then upset that you're not getting the job. And then you also haven't positioned your resume for that type of employer role either, right? So...

Shauna Bryce (34:17.038)
It remains that the most effective way to do a job search is to really think about that human element. And I often tell candidates, like your job as a job seeker, the job candidate is to get yourself in front of decision makers. And you do that by thinking about who those decision makers are, who the influencers of the process are, using your network, right? So if you decide you want to...

work at a particular company, you say, do I know anybody who works at this company? Do I know anybody who knows somebody who works at this company or who recently worked at that company? Did anybody at that company go to my college or law school? Right. You think about ways to find an into the decision maker, right? Because the best ways of getting enrolled, especially higher level roles where there's a deep amount of trust that has to go into the hiring.

Stephen Seckler (35:05.824)
you

Shauna Bryce (35:12.204)
Right? Like it's not common for somebody who is like a general counselor or a chief legal officer to be hired off the internet through a process like this. Right? Those people are hired through relationships of trust. It's a position that requires a lot of trust. So I tell people, you know, you are much better off investing your time in going through that process that we talked about to develop your value add.

practice, and then thinking strategically about using your network and expanding your network so that you can be at least seen by decision makers, right? You may not get the job, but you does at least make sure that you get seen. And another major reason to do that, frankly, is that

The HR people who are doing the screening process only know what's in the job ad. They don't know anything broader about what the needs of the legal department are or what that team are or what the employer are. They really just know the four corners of the job description that they were given. But the decision maker does know. So the decision maker knows that maybe they're considering them.

in a year from now, or maybe they're considering expanding into Japan or California or wherever it may be, right? Those decision makers have all sorts of information that a screener doesn't know that can help them see value in a resume and in the lawyer's background where a screener just

Stephen Seckler (36:57.526)
Okay, just a minute. I still got the sun. Come. my God, I was like waiting for you to finish so that I could do this. It's like, please end before I end up with glare in my face. Okay.

Shauna Bryce (36:59.8)
Is that like bothering you still?

Shauna Bryce (37:11.374)
So I don't know if this is my monitor or what.

Stephen Seckler (37:14.334)
Well, it was no, it was there was like a streak of sunlight on my on my sweaters, but I'm like, I spent like the entire month of December kind of working with with my producer, Michelle Coe, who's great and just trying to get everything right. And I finally realized with the audio piece of it that my voice is greeny. That's why the sound sounds greeny. So anyway, yeah.

Shauna Bryce (37:21.154)
we have added that option.

Shauna Bryce (37:41.484)
Like, it sounded so sweet.

Stephen Seckler (37:43.798)
Anyway, okay, getting back to the interview.

What about lawyers who feel like I don't really have a network? What do you say to them?

Shauna Bryce (37:59.032)
say that they're wrong, they do have a network. They may not think about it that way, right? But your network can be anybody from your immediate family to your neighbors to your childhood friends and classmates all the way up, people you used to work with. So that's one thing is there is a network. It may be a smaller network than other people, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And then the other thing is it doesn't mean you can't broaden it, right? It's never too late to broaden out.

network. I know that you and I meet new people, you know, every month we meet another person more frequently, could be every week, but there are opportunities then to say, I need to build a targeted network, I need to think about more about my network. Get involved in an organization, it's one of the easiest ways to start building a network, whether it's an alumni organization, or a professional organization, just start to get involved.

I also realized that people have different levels of how they like to be involved. Some people are much more introverted, some people are much more extroverted. Find something that's true to you and authentic to you and your nature and start. It's never too late to start. It does mean though that you will likely want to be again more strategic and thoughtful about how you build your network, especially if you're an introverted person so that you don't burn yourself out.

you don't find it exhausting or just not have the time to do it. So spending a little bit of time asking yourself what your goals are in building an org and the types of people that you need to meet or reintroduce yourself should help.

Stephen Seckler (39:45.034)
want to flip back just very, very quickly to AI and hear what you have to say about using AI tools to help you with interview prep. And then also just say a quick something about confidential information and client information.

Shauna Bryce (40:06.286)
Sure, so internet tools to help you prepare for interviews, they can be helpful. I do find that there can be some challenges in using AI for interview prep because you do have to be careful of confidences and things as you're putting into the AI. However, you can ask it for more about general strategies. You can have it critique and answer.

You can sometimes find that it's helpful in critiquing even emails, like if you're sending a follow-up email from an interview, but having it critique tone, right? That can be a helpful way to use AI. In thinking about confidences though, so something that we're seeing a lot of this last couple of weeks are thoughts about...

AI and needing to be careful around information that is privileged or confidential or competitive, just more generally. think most lawyers tend to have a heightened sensitivity around that than other types of people, just from our nature being more risk-diverse, but then also our experiences around privilege. It is something that you want to think about, though, that as you are preparing your resume, as you're preparing your LinkedIn

as you're thinking about putting information into this document online or into AI is, is this broached information? Is it confidential? Is it competitive? And then being sure that you're treating that information appropriately and being careful where you put it. So, you you do want to think about what you put into AI, but you also think about

you know, how LinkedIn is different from a resume and how you may have a lot more control over your resume and who sees it, whereas LinkedIn is gonna work best for you if it's public. And if it's public, it means there are all sorts of audiences there, right? It's your boss, your board, your teammates, but also, you know, your competitors, regulators, prosecutors, plaintiffs' counsel. There are all sorts of other people that have.

Shauna Bryce (42:31.476)
to that and so you do want to be sensitive about how you use information and where you are putting it or platforms you're entering that information in.

Stephen Seckler (42:45.302)
Okay, so we're right near the end here and really this is just great information. I love the way you framed the balance between AI but not forgetting how very important it is to consider relationships and make that part of your job search and getting in the door.

So to close us out, what's one smart use of AI in a job search, one dangerous misuse of AI, and one thing lawyers should never outsource to technology?

Shauna Bryce (43:27.362)
Yeah, we'd have to think about that first idea. You said what's one misuse?

Stephen Seckler (43:33.182)
Okay, let me re ask the question because that was just way too that was like a compound question. That's just okay. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm Jackson.

Shauna Bryce (43:38.286)
Suggestion compound question.

Stephen Seckler (43:47.126)
Okay, we're just about at the end here. This has really been a great conversation. You know, I really love the way you frame balancing the use of AI against sort of more traditional relationship building and how important that still remains. What's one smart use of an AI? What's one smart use of AI in a job search?

Shauna Bryce (44:09.934)
I'll give you two, if I can. One is kind of what we were doing before about using it in exercises to find target employers that are going to meet your individual search criteria. Another great way to use it ties into what we were saying about networking and using AI to identify key employees at that employer.

So for example, you might use it to help you identify who that you see is, who board members are, things like that that may be a little bit more challenging for you to find, even though the information.

Stephen Seckler (44:50.834)
One dangerous misuse of AI.

Shauna Bryce (44:54.894)
think a dangerous misuse of AI involves not knowing when AI is wrong because you're using it as your primary source in an area that you are not really that familiar with. And so you don't know when AI is giving you wrong information. You don't know when AI is giving you incorrect or incomplete information based on an assumption that it's making that you don't even know.

So as you use AI, including like in the examples that I gave with job searches, you might also ask it to provide citations for all of the information that it's giving you so that you can double check its work and be confident that it is giving you good information. It'll also help you understand better where AI may be going off the rails in terms of making assumptions you don't want it to be making and where you may need to correct it in your search.

Stephen Seckler (45:56.82)
And finally, the last question that I ask all my guests, what's one podcast, streaming, television series or book you'd recommend? And I'm talking about something purely for enjoyment.

Shauna Bryce (46:11.182)
I recently was watching Severance. The first season I really liked. I don't know that I'm thrilled about the second season, but the first season was really good. And then other than that, I absolutely adore Star Trek Lower Death.

Stephen Seckler (46:28.702)
Okay great for all you dystopic lovers or science fiction lovers two recommendations for you.

Stephen Seckler (46:41.014)
Shauna, this has been a great conversation and I look forward to continuing to get to know you through our work on the board. And thank you so much for joining us. If anyone in our audience has follow up questions, how can they reach you?

Shauna Bryce (46:56.258)
They can reach out to us at pricelegal.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Stephen Seckler (47:03.328)
Okay, great.

Sean, I'm going to close out. Don't go anywhere. I'm going to close it out. But is there anything that I didn't ask that burning question that you really want me to ask or anything that you're uncomfortable with?

Shauna Bryce (47:20.174)
What's that?

Stephen Seckler (47:24.502)
I'm sorry. Oh, we're good. Oh, OK. No, I was I was I was blocking your face so I couldn't see you. OK. OK. All right.

Shauna Bryce (47:24.718)
We're good. We're good. Yeah, sorry. I can't stop we.

Shauna Bryce (47:32.001)
Okay.

Stephen Seckler (47:37.024)
I hope you enjoyed this episode. you did, please tell others and rate us on iTunes, your favorite podcast app or like us on YouTube.

I say that right?

Stephen Seckler (47:51.708)
I I did. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please tell others and rate us on iTunes, your favorite podcast. That's redundant.

Stephen Seckler (48:09.088)
were your favorite. Okay, sorry about that. I'm just when I read them like

I hope you enjoyed this episode. you did, please tell others and rate us on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you'd to continue the conversation with me, I welcome your inquiries and invite you to set up a time to speak with me about your own career or marketing concerns. I've been coaching lawyers for over 25 years and I'm happy to do a free 30 minute consultation. You could sign up on my website at secler.com. That's S-E-C-K-L-E-R dot com.

On my website, you can also find links to many more episodes of Council to Council and get access to many free career marketing and leadership resources. In the meantime, thanks for listening.