Welcome to the Groth Gets It! I’m here with one of our clerks for the summer. It’s at the end of the summer already. It’s kind of shocking. We start the podcast like we start depositions. Please say your name and spell your last name. For the record, my name is Olivia. My last name is Zaluckj z a l u c k y j. And you are a toowell at Marquette Law. Yes. Why Marquette law? I went far away for undergrad, and so when I was applying to law school, my mom was really persistent on having me apply somewhere near home, which is in Illinois. So Marquette was the only school in the Midwest I applied to. And then my brother got into UW Madison vet school, and then I was kind of getting a little homesick, so I toured it. Fell in love with the building and the professors that I met and decided on Marquette. There we go. Yeah. Okay. So you’re halfway through your legal journey? Yeah. Well, almost law school in December. Yeah. Okay. In December is halfway through. Yeah. Okay. That’s exciting. Okay. All right, let’s go. We’re gonna talk about clerkships, careers, and the practice of law. So those are our general topics. I have my agenda here. I’ve not been good about staying on the agenda, so I apologize in advance. Let’s talk about, things that you haven’t done here, which is international law and real estate law. Yeah. I know you’re interested. We’re a personal injury firm, so it’s a little bit different, world as it relates to those laws. And these are our practice areas. All right, let’s, Man, there’s so much I want to talk about with the international law. We off the record. We have you. Or we had you talk, in Ukrainian. And remind me. Hello. Is “pryvit”? “pryvit”? Yes, “pryvit”. So, “pryvit”. Olivia. There we go. Now I can speak Ukrainian. Okay. So first, I think you’re going to ask me questions. What questions do you have of me? As someone exploring real estate or international law, what types of early legal experience help build clarity around a long term career path? Yeah, so I wanted to be an international lawyer. Oh, really? Really. It didn’t last very long. I took Latin in high school, so I didn’t have the language skills that you do. So that’s why it’s interesting to, know somebody who can say private. I certainly can’t, in Latin. I don’t even know what hello would be. Man, I could spend the next five minutes thinking about it, or I could just maybe Google it, but, I never got that good at my languages that I, that I was gonna go or that I could go into international. My recommendation is if you can use the program at Marquette and go overseas somewhere, I, I know back in the day when I was there, they had a really strong program with Australia where a lot of students went down to Australia. I went to Japan, which was awesome. Oh that’s cool. Yeah, it was through. New Orleans, it was Loyola New Orleans. Oh, yeah. Professor Rosen was the professor. Professor port was the professor. I think he recently passed. He was a professor at Marquette who had a friend who was , at Loyola. And in conjunction, they sent a bunch of us over to Japan.
And we studied at Doshisha University in Kyoto. It was awesome. It was lots of fun, very informative. But that’s what I would say is you use those, people that just the connections really, that Marquette‘s going to provide to get you somewhere else, to have that in your back pocket and put it on your rese. That’s international or real estate. Good luck with real estate. I’m not sure what to tell you. I did some real estate law right out of law school. I worked for a general practice law firm. I was not a big fan of it, just simply because I’m not the kind of person that can sit in an office looking at docents all day and now knowing where AI is going. Yeah. I really don’t know. And that’s a question. It would be a fantastic question for real estate lawyer what they believe AI is going to do to their practice. And whether, you know, for common real estate needs, if you’re even gonna need. Yeah. You know, I’m not quite sure more of the complex stuff. I think it’s certainly a thing where you’re gonna have to have lawyers deal with the complex, reads or whatever kind of what, reads as a real estate investment trust. You know, those kind of very complex, vehicles, financial vehicles. But. Yeah. So good question. Thank you. So the point behind that is go overseas, use the opportunities the market gave you, and then, yeah, experience getting a job where you can have good experience doing that stuff. Cool. All right. Next question. Have you seen clerks or young attorneys use experiences outside their intended field to grow their skills in surprising ways, in surprising ways? I think you don’t know what you like until you try it. So I think the surprising way is there is some clerks that have come here and clerked and they’re like, I never want to do this ever in my life. And I think that that surprised them, that they don’t want to do personal injury law, which I’m glad they understood that. I mean, my personal experience was like I just said, I went into a general practice firm and I got to dip my toe in the water of all these different kind of practice areas and some practice areas I did not want to do. You know, it was fun for me to do small claims collection work because you’re literally, thrown into the Wolf den or the Tiger pits or whatever you want to call it, of small claims court, and you have to think on your feet and figure out what’s happening. Are people coming? When they’re screaming at you, how do you react? You know, who are your friends? Who are your enemies? You know who will be helpful? You know, all those kinds of things. So that. That’s good to know. Have I seen clerks, succeed in surprising ways kind of thing? I, I’ve seen because we’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve seen clerks who have clerked for me and are now partners in relatively large firms that have nothing to do with personal injury, and that’s fantastic. Hopefully they got a sense of what they didn’t want to do when they were here, and they went on to well, they, in my mind, are very successful and are doing great things. So I think that’s the that’s the fun of law is you’re literally practicing law along the way from day one until the last day you practice law. And you can change, really at almost any given time, depending on whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. Right. Whether you, you’re willing to be a lifelong learner or not. And being a lifelong learner is so important no matter where you are in your legal practice, you could pivot and go on. Yeah. Well, I think like, personal injury has a lot of like I know that like from working at a firm in Florida and like here, I think it’s also just equipped me with some like basic life skills on like being in an accident and stuff like that. Like there’s things that I know about my insurance that I didn’t know. And same with like learning about insurance. I think that’s something that like from working at a personal injury firm, looking back at like torts or like any class really, like insurance is a big part of like all aspects of law. So, I feel like whether or not I want to do personal injury, I feel like there’s a lot of things you can. And plus, there’s always car accidents. That’s true, that’s true. , in theory, until the robots take over the world and we’re just like Wally sitting in our chairs and getting fed by robots. I think, it it is important to understand that that that even, let’s say, real estate, you know, we do a lot of premises liability. And so, when you’re advising your clients who own real estate about what their risk might be, you know, well, then what structure are you going to have? You know, for this building, is that going to be a separate LLC? Who’s the insurance, what kind of insurance? When you have a landscape management company that’s cutting the lawn or removing the snow? What are those contracts say about, you know, their responsibility? Do they have insurance? All those things are, things that you can learn. And that’s why it’s practicing law, because you’re practicing and understanding how everything is really complex. And that’s why we have jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Next. What’s your advice to law students who are still narrowing down their legal interest during a clerkship? Try everything. I think that it really simply. Try everything. Go. Well, this is a a a secret. No one really knows this. But lawyers like to talk about themselves. Yeah, lawyers like to give advice and like to hear themselves talk. Most lawyers do. I think it might. It might be I’m breaking the rules here by saying that. But, so ask just, go out to lunch with different people. If it’s and people, lawyers at big firms, small firms may not get back to you. But now with LinkedIn being so, so prevalent, I think you could contact an attorney who’s, very experienced in some area that you might want to get experience experience in, and they’d be happy to share their knowledge with you. And then again, use the professors that are out there and their experience because, I mean, my professors taught lawyers who are now, judges and appellate judges. I ran into a appellate judge at State Fair the other day. Oh, yeah. Jim was saying that he just just walked in. Here he is. And he was a couple grades behind me in law school. But, you know, you’re going to have people in your class that are going to quit law. Some are going to work at, at Barnes and Noble selling books and others are going to be professors and judges. So , use that, that their connections and their experience to kind of help you understand what you want to do. Yeah. Hopefully that answered your question on a tangent there. What skills or habits do you think help young attorneys thrive no matter what area they end up in? Young attorneys have something that other attorneys don’t, and that’s time. So, using your time wisely and taking full advantage of that time is what’s going to help you really succeed. Because of attorneys and this is from personal experience. Right now, I’m dealing with vendors for the law firm. We’re dealing with I have a deposition today, marketing, which is this podcast right now, and I have a phone call with clients this afternoon. I’ve all those different things, and I’m getting ready for a trial that’s going to take place in a month and a half. Yeah. So that’s a lot going on. Whereas if I was a young attorney, I wouldn’t have most of those responsibilities. I could just get ready for the trial. Right. So it’s something where if you’re using your time wisely and taking full advantage of what, your firm or your employer offers you, that I think is going to help you succeed. Yeah, that’s a good answer. Do you think entrepreneurship plays a role even in more traditional areas of law? In more traditional areas of law. Well, so this was the way that I always thought of my practice if I was an associate or an owner, that I had my own silo, I had my own practice. So, I would go to these CLS or I’d go to talks about, you know, business owners or entrepreneurs or such. And I would look at that knowing that I didn’t own the business, but my mindset was okay, I may not know all the numbers of the business, but if, I look at my caseload and what I’m doing, if this was my business, how could I grow it? And then you grow that within somebody else’s practice, and then hopefully your employer recognizes that and says, oh man, okay. This attorney is has that, that that growth mindset, which I like saying because my last name is Groth but growth mindset. So you have that and then your, really indispensable because you’re somebody that the firm can rely on to build business and that’s , well and it has the knowledge and acknowledges. Right. What it takes to help run a business. So, I think that’s, that’s important, no matter if you’re doing real estate, international law or whatever you’re doing. I mean, if you’re working at a big firm in downtown Chicago, Milwaukee or what have you. And you have, Harley Davidson as your clients, you still have to schmooze. Yeah, you still have to talk to the powers that be at Harley to maintain that, you know, that relationship and then expand that relationship. And maybe you’ll get Harley and a part of Milwaukee Tool or whatever business is. And when you’re doing that, that’s going to help you succeed if it’s intellectual property, international law or whatever.
Now I have some fun questions. Okay. Fun questions. Yeah. If you choose not to answer the fun questions, I don’t know what they are. No, these are good. If you weren’t running a law firm, what would you be doing instead? What would I be doing instead? I think I’d do sales today; I think I do sales. You’d be a good salesperson. I’m not quite sure. Like used cars or, boats. Boats would be good. Boats. Maybe. Boats? No, I I, I always thought that there’s a lot, a lot of similarities between owning a business, starting a business and sales. Yeah. Because you’re, in essence, I’m selling the brand of Groth. I’m selling my or early on, I was selling myself, my time and talents, you know, the. And now you’re you’re selling the brand of Groth Law, which is the same as selling a product so I think. Right. Sales. Yeah. My dad owns a company so it’s. And I feel like this might be similar, like wherever we go, even if it’s like the bank, it’s still like you’re still basically selling yourself. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you want to have a good reputation wherever you go. You know, where it’s like, for me, if I’m, like, in a bad mood and maybe I don’t say which I don’t do say thank you or something like that, no one’s going to think anything of it. But it’s like if you’re a known business owner in the area, if I’m working at Starbucks and you don’t say thank you, I’d be like, who’s that guy? Yeah. I’d be like, who is that? You know, why are you know why? Well, gosh. Yeah. Why is that person. Yeah. So rude. Well, so there’s a story. There’s an attorney who talks about. Gosh, what was it? It was going out on, like, the week before Christmas. So, it was December, and, he was getting I think it was, he was getting, maybe breakfast. I think it was some, like, small meal and he gave a hundred dollar tip and didn’t write his name. Didn’t give a card, just it was him. But he was an attorney who advertised. Yeah, and gave a hundred dollar tip, because it was the holiday and years later, that waiter or waitress, I don’t recall which, that person who got the tip remembered him and the kindness. And when that person was, had a relative, I think, who was involved in a really horrible crash. They called him just because of that one act of kindness. Yeah, right. So, you never know. And people are watching, right? If you’re, if you do any kind of mass marketing, like we do people sadly, are watching what you. Yeah. How do you react and, what you give as a tip or who you say hi to or yeah, or whether you have a smile on your face or not? Yeah. Cool. All right. Okay.
What’s your go to coffee order? Oh, well, I mean, this is the typical. Every single day. It’s a Stone Creek coffee. Love Stone Creek coffee. Local Milwaukee business. Just their light roast. With a ounce of half and half and honey. Oh, and I don’t recall if it’s, like, fourteen. Am I in trouble? No, I’m just saying. Do you want some coffee? Is that what you’re saying? No. I thought you were raising your hand saying I have a coffee order to flip. You ask me questions. Okay. Yeah, yeah, but we’re having fun with these. Yeah, these are fun questions. So. And it’s something like fourteen millilitres or something, I don’t recall what they put in is the honey, but, so honey half and half honey light roast and light roast go to. And that’s what I like about Stone Creek is you can ask them for light roast. And every day it’s a different kind of light roast. Oh, I didn’t know that. It’s horrible because it does not I don’t I don’t like it, but today’s roast was great. I don’t know what it is, but it’s great. And then some days it’s like, so good that I’ll actually walk back and say, what kind is this? And I’ll order a pound because it’s. Yeah, Stone Creek is good. There’s one downtown, too. I know during finals. That’s my treat. Stone Creek coffee in the mornings and sometimes at lunch. Which one? Downtown by the Amtrak station. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. So that has the fireplace. Yeah, that one’s cool. It’s a good place to study, too. If I want to get out of the law school and stuff. And they have good food. Yeah, and I think they do lessons there, like barista. Yeah. Classes. Yeah. They do. Yeah, it’s kind of cool. All right. I have to ask you questions now. Yes. Boy, you’re getting ordered around. We’re just having fun. And then we have to stop. And now I’m go back to our script. All right. Good questions. Hopefully this resonates with law students and young lawyers alike. Let’s see, some questions for you. What surprised you most about clerking at Groth Law so far? Well, I think my prior experience in personal injury was that like a really, really small law firm with maybe like seven people and two attorneys. So I think while this is still like a mid-sized, smaller firm, like coming here with way more people than seven people and seeing how everyone kind of like, works together, like we have intake, we have the medical records department, we have the paralegals, the attorneys, and like Nancy and like Jackie and everyone just like working together. And everyone’s like, eager to help each other. So kind of seeing how all the moving parts come together to make it run so that everyone can still do their assigned job. I think it’s cool to see, especially being able to compare it to a way smaller firm was probably the coolest part. Okay, cool. Good. So something’s working. So that’s good news. Yeah. Okay. So, I know that you’ve been given a lot of discovery and litigation help, so thank you for all that help. What things did you learn? Doing discovery, interrogatories and case reviews and things like that. I think the craziest part of, like, doing discovery was learning that, like the script that we have to answer how it’s like very like objection, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink and that kind of stuff. And then also figuring out what to respond to certain questions was really interesting. I remember, like the first one that Morgan, the other law clerk, and I did, we were like, what do we respond to this? Like, I have no idea. But now if we get assigned to do discovery or interrogatories, I can read a question and be like, I know that it’s going to have, you know, an attorney work product response or premature response and that kind of stuff. So figuring out what kind of questions like maybe defense asks and how we respond and putting those two and two together. So you’re practicing. You’re getting better and better and better. Yeah. Fantastic. And it it’s really issue spotting. Right. Yeah. As a law. Right. As a law student, we’re from day one. I think they they discussed issue spotting. This is what you have to figure out. Yeah. Cool. All right. What do you think was, the most challenging assignment you’ve had so far? One of the other law clerks and I had to write a brief, which was we’ve done in legal writing and stuff like that. But I think the format that we do in legal writing, we’re kind of assigned a prompt that has a yes or no kind of response. And then we’re kind of given cases. So I think that like writing a brief here, it’s our first time kind of doing it super hands off. And you know, the whole research assignment is up to us. We have to formulate an argent like we’re not getting help from our professor in class or other classmates. So I think that was the hardest part. But working with someone who’s also in law school, who’s, you know, had a different professor and has a different like outlook on approaching questions and stuff, we were able to get it done. But I remember the first day we were like, how are we going to do this? But we got it done. So, the power of collaboration. Yes. That key word there. Cool. All right. Okay. We use Filevine. We’re big fans of Filevine. What are your thoughts on, that case management system? And, I guess your experience at the other firm with case management systems? Yeah, I think Filevine is amazing. The other firm I worked at. So hopefully we will get a discount from Filevine. But if you’re listening because we’re shouting it out because I think that every firm should use it. Because at the other firm I was working at, the demands that you can whip out and Filevine in a couple of seconds were ones that took weeks to write, like handwriting. And then same with the medical itemization report, like being able to cull through medical records and the cost of each visit that was done by hand in an Excel spreadsheet where we had to, like, formulate tables and stuff. So I think seeing that you can just plug in all the records and generate it in a couple of seconds, you have a full medical itemization report versus hand adding and subtracting and doing all of that stuff. Was definitely huge. And then also to just how much you can put in Filevine and how organized you can make it is was really cool too, because I know that the other, I guess, software that the firm I was at was using, it was very old school where all docents were just in one page, and you kind of had to, like, sort through and be really mindful about what you were naming everything because that mattered. You know, when I need a medical bill, I need to know that it’s going to be titled this so that I can find it out of the, you know, thousands of docents that are in a client’s file. And we also were like we also had paper docents at the other firm. So I think going paperless is huge because, I mean, we had it’s a whole room of files where, you know, that space that could be used for another person to be sitting in there where it was for files. So you don’t have much paper, but by your, desk? No, I mean, there’s not much paper at all. No, I think maybe I’ll print something off if it’s something I’m reading and I. Yeah. And I yeah. And I don’t want to read it on the screen or like the discovery responses for interrogatories and requests to produce like I have those printed because those are something I’m using all the time. But other than that, I don’t think I’ve really printed out much. So yeah. Cool, cool. Yeah. And it’s interesting that you’re in this time because, you know, artificial intelligence has really came about in the past couple of years. So, right, as you entered law school. It’s here. Yeah. It’s really and really used and and that’s what, you know, with Filevine, we have AI and sidebar, and, you know, you can kind of talk with the case. Yeah. Which I think is interesting. So hopefully you’re using that. Yeah. Of course. Cool. All right. I think this is my last question. Let’s try and make it my last question. How has how has this clerkship, helped you think about what kind of legal environment you want to go off and work in? I think coming into, like, the summer, I knew I didn’t really want to work in like, big law. And I think that this kind of reaffirmed just because I feel like I enjoy, like talking to someone and getting to know someone, where I feel like I have friends that are working at big Law, where it’s kind of just like, you know, you’re a number and you’re assigned this and that. And so that’s like one thing that I think I’ve appreciated about having an experience here is that I’ve kind of had an idea that I didn’t want to go into, like super big law. And I think that this kind of reaffirmed because I know everyone’s name here and everyone knows my name, and I know stuff about everyone, and I’ve been able to, like, not only get to know people here on like a work level, but also on like a personal level. And, you know, I can talk to them and ask them how their day is going or I know what they’re doing on the weekends and like, can engage in more of like that interpersonal kind of level, which I think is really important. And that’s something that I don’t that I don’t want to let go of because that’s something that I think makes a work environment a place that you want to be in versus like coming into work and being like, Hi, Jon. And then just, you know, doing my own thing versus like, we can have a conversation aside from work, but can also, you know, turn that off and have like a serious conversation regarding an assignment and stuff like that, that like, I don’t know, that’s something for me that I like, really appreciate. Yeah. Awesome. While we’re playing Hacky Sack, we can have a conversation while we’re playing hacky Sack. It’s an inside joke. Cool. So. Boy, we are way over time. I know podcast. All right, let’s do one of these. Okay. You’re handed an assignment you’ve never seen before with a tight deadline. How do you get started? Ask questions to the person that assigned it to you. Figure out if anyone else has done the assignment. Not recreate the wheel in the firm. Ask them about it. I, I love asking questions. I would rather ask a question than do it incorrectly. So that would be my first thing. If you handed me an assignment and I had no idea what to do, I would ask you. Yeah. Where do you recommend starting? What outlook should I have on this? What? Which way should I look at this and that kind of stuff? Okay, Cool. If you could study a law in any country, where would you go? The UK. Really? Yeah. Have you been to. Yeah. Okay. I love it. Why? Why do you love it? I don’t know, I just feel like it’s it’s similar to, like, the United States, like London and stuff like that. Like, you have the city, but I’m not. I don’t like the city. I need to be like. I like the slow life. Like. So I would probably want to live, like, a little bit outside of London. But I just think that people are kids in the city of Milwaukee. I know the city school. I know, I wish I would have thought of that before I came, but that’s the only part I don’t like about Milwaukee is I just like, I would like to live, like, out in the suburbs. Okay. I like the small things for like, I can drive to the grocery store and I don’t have to worry about parking and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I would want to live, like, a couple minutes outside of London. Okay. Good food. What’s a couple minutes outside of London? I don’t even know what the cities are. I’m trying to think only places I’ve been, like outside of London are like Manchester. Okay. Which I liked because London is just so huge. It is huge. Yeah, it’s kind of like New York in that way. Okay, if you open your own law firm someday, what would you name it? Groth two point O. No. I’m kidding. I don’t know, I would want to do something with my last name, but I don’t know if anyone could pronounce it. Yeah. What would it be? Maybe I would do, like the phonetic spelling of my last name. So th. Well, yeah. What are your initials? O o z o g z. Is it ohgeesy? Yeah. Ohgeesy. , okay. I was thinking if it was o a o o Jeezy OG’s OG’s OG’s lore. , no, it doesn’t really work. I know, yeah. Shoot. It’s really unfortunate. But. Oz. Oz. Oz. Lore is good. I like that, okay. All right. Thanks again. Thank you for all you’ve done this summer. It’s been a pleasure having you here. You’ve really worked hard, and it’s been a nice to have the smiling face of the law clerks bringing some extra, just personality to the firm, so that’s always, always nice to see that. All right. Hopefully. And I know you will. You’ll take this energy wherever you go off in your in your legal world, whether it’s real estate, international law or something completely unexpected. We appreciate everything you’ve done. And I should have asked you this before. How do you say goodbye in Ukrainian? It’s like the same. I’m trying to think. It’s not goodbye, is it? No, I don’t know, I can’t remember. Goodbye. Ciao. No. I’m kidding. All right. Good stuff. Thanks for listening. Remember, Groth Gets It! Groth Gets You. Thanks.
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