Beyond Hourly Podcast

Read the transcript below:

Jim Batson:

Hello, and thank you for tuning into the Beyond Hourly podcast, hosted by Omni Bridgeway, one of the world's most experienced dispute funders and enforcement specialists. Our podcast focuses on commercial disputes around the globe and innovative ways to maximize value for clients and law firms. Episodes of this podcast can be found on our website, omnibridgeway.com, iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast networks. We welcome you to subscribe to the podcast and leave us reviews. My name is Jim Batson, and I'm your host for today's podcast. I'm a Senior Investment Manager and Head of Omni Bridgeway's New York office. Prior to joining Omni Bridgeway, I was a commercial litigator and partner at a boutique law firm. My role at Omni Bridgeway involves assessing investment opportunities and serving as a strategic resource for the parties we fund throughout the funding relationship. I'm delighted to host the second episode in our two-part podcast series, featuring Ariana Tadler, founding partner of Tadler Law.

Jim Batson:

Among other things, Ariana is an incredibly accomplished litigator in the complex litigation and class action arena, as well as a world-renowned authority in the field of e-Discovery. She is also a founding principle of Meta-e Discovery, a data hosting management and consulting company. Today's episode focuses on impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the silver linings that have come about as a result of operating in a more virtual world. Ariana, I've known for years and years that you've been an advocate for consumers and investors against corporate fraud. Can you tell us about how it came to be that, that became your client base and what special needs your clients have within that client base? Just tell us more about that.

Ariana Tadler:

Certainly, there's been some content out there about me, about how I wanted to be a lawyer since the time I was 13, which is true. I was still a young teen. My parents had taken us on this trip to Haiti, and that was really so eye opening for me and the rest of my family. When I came back, I decided whatever I do, I want to make sure that I have an impact. I, again, knowing that I wanted to be a lawyer from such a young age, which is extremely unusual. I think, it's probably even more unusual today to be so committed to that. I took upon myself a commitment throughout college and even the latter part of high school to work in the legal industry. I worked from the time I was 13. That was the expectation in my family.

Ariana Tadler:

I worked for a variety of firms and companies. I even interned for a judge while I was in college and wrote draft opinions. I began to slowly refine what it was I wanted to do. Yet, of course, we went to law school at the same time. The market was tough when we were in law school. I think, people were really focused on getting jobs. I wanted to get a job. I had this crazy experience where my first-year summer associate position was for the now Honorable Denny Chin. He and two other colleagues had Campbell, Patrick & Chin. Judge Chin was my legal writing professor. The top student in the class was given the summer associate position, which for a first year back then in the '90s was unheard of. Then that morphed into... That firm decided to break up because each one of them had been given a really great opportunity.

       The good news was they had each been given a great opportunity. The bad news was that although they wanted to hire me, the firm wasn't going to exist anymore. Susan Campbell took me with her to Mudge Rose. I worked my entire second year in law school with her, going to law school full-time and then working part-time for that firm, that firm imploded. She then was making a move, which she wasn't in a position to take me along with her. She had her full-time team that she was focused on. I had to go back into the pool to really interview and participate in that on-campus interviewing process and had this opportunity to join a small plaintiff's firm. What I was really interested in was what they were doing with environmental work, because I was really fixated on what was happening with the environment and wanting to help protect those who were suffering because of spills and other toxins, et cetera.

       That firm had a major case that was doing that kind of work. I actually went to trial in South Bend the first week of classes. You probably didn’t even realize I wasn't there. I was worried. I was worried about missing class. I thought, "How do you do that in your third year of law school," and the partner asked, “What do you think is going to be the better experience, going to trial, or going to class that first week?” He was right. By the time that case was over, they then realized that I had been a math minor and that I was really interested in the markets. I started doing securities fraud cases. What was so interesting was that it made me realize whether it was an environmental case or a securities fraud case, these were clients, consumers, investors, people who because of the wrong that was an issue, any one of those individuals likely wouldn't be able to bring a case with the best lawyer because the costs associated with litigation are so high.

       On the other hand, you could do it in this class context. That sort of made me reflect on, "Okay, so who are the underrepresented? Who are the underprivileged? What is the area of law? How is our legal system supposed to work?" Our legal systems supposed to work for everybody, not just for the rich, not just for the privileged. If there are laws on the books, there's supposed to be an opportunity for you to either defend your rights, protect your rights, or pursue your rights. I continue to gravitate towards that kind of work. What was particularly special about that was the cases were so large and also moved so intensely because of their size, that I was regularly being given an opportunity to engage in aspects, procedurally of litigation, that my colleagues, our mutual colleagues, were not getting that experience.

       I think, you were getting that experience because of the kind of shop that you were working at, but most of our colleagues went into bigger firms and it was sort of lockstep year-by-year. What kind of skill set might you be able to incur or improve? In our instance, we were able to just touch upon pretty much everything and just get cases ready towards trial. That's really, I think, why I gravitated towards that. Now, I certainly continue to do that work, and I love that work. I especially love the data breach work on behalf of consumers. We do a lot of that.

       We do other consumer type work. We do contract negotiation, and we're also doing complex litigation. What's really been beneficial is the fact that we have a deep bench of talent. Everybody on the team has all of those skillsets plus the specialization of discovery, which, I think, a lot of people would tell you, "Oh yeah, I know how to do discovery or e-Discovery." There's a baseline, I'll give you that. There really is a unique group of people who really know how to drill down into data and mine data. One of the things that I'm very proud of is that I am the only plaintiff's lawyer in the country historically to have repeatedly been ranked by Chambers and Partners as a Band 1 practitioner in the e-Discovery space. Every one of our lawyers at the firm is specially trained in e-Discovery.

Jim Batson:

It's phenomenal. A couple of things you just said really resonated with me. Talking about how good it feels to help somebody have access to the courts. As litigation finance companies, people view us sometimes as pure investors in litigation and very money focused and numbers focused, all of which is accurate, but what people often don't appreciate is how good it feels when we're able to provide financing and funding to somebody who would not have otherwise been able to pursue her case, or if she was able to do that, there would have been no level playing field whatsoever being so underfunded compared to your adversary. It's just an insurmountable disadvantage in many litigations. It shouldn't be that way, in my opinion, but it is. It's funny how there's different ways to help people in a similar situation in the class action context that you just described, or in a litigation finance context. It really resonates with me, and you're right.

       We were both fortunate to have litigation opportunities, experience opportunities, that many people that took the more traditional lockstep, big firm approach didn't have. I remember, not quite as impressive as having your own trial, but I did work on an appeal over my summer associate time, and the partner was arguing that appeal before the second circuit during law school. I took one day off, not the full week, but one day off to go to the oral argument. He was kind enough to let me sit at the counsel table. One of the judges asked a question. I actually found the page and was able to show it to him during the argument. Those are the little things that can really impact your career decisions going forward and what you love. That's cool.

Ariana Tadler:

Absolutely. Validating, right? To know that you put in a good day's work or in that case, I'm sure it was many, many weeks’ worth of work. To know that when somebody asked a question, you have the answer right there. I think, one of the things that is a driving force for people who are successful is knowing that their work is valued in some way. I think, some people focus on it exclusively being valued from an economic standpoint. Look, I can't run a law firm if we don't make money, but one of the things that's come out through my personal executive coaching is that I don't actually completely shine if my exclusive way of being valued is monetary. I have to feel that the work is vindicating. I have to feel that others value my contribution. I have now turned that around to reciprocate for our entire team to say, if this is a core value of mine, then I need to make sure that I'm not only receiving it to satisfy myself, but that I'm serving it to others.

       We make a point at the firm of focusing on paying people well and recognizing their contributions but recognizing their contributions by vocalizing that. We have team huddles at least twice a week, we had one today. It was great. We had a couple of shout-outs today because some people did some pretty phenomenal things. We just recently did something very special. I posted about it on LinkedIn the other day. We brought Kwame Christian in from the American Negotiation Institute to talk about inclusion and diversity. We did that just for our firm. We didn't go out and put it out there on the web, like a video for everybody to participate or watch. We did that because we wanted to have the benefit of speaking with a professional to talk to us about how to have difficult conversations about race, diversity, and inclusion. Those are things that are important to our entire team as a team, as individuals, and it also resonates directly with our practice, right? Representing the underrepresented, the underprivileged, making sure that we know how to have conversations with people in valuing them as individuals.

Jim Batson:

Well, let's switch over to the topic that you can't seem to avoid these days. It is so critical, and you could devote hours to talking about it alone, but how has COVID changed your practice? You started out talking about how critical your technology decisions were, and, I think, everyone can relate to that, but in your... Starting a new firm. Oh, my gosh. It must've just been, I don't know, scary at least. How has COVID changed your practice, if it has, but from a client standpoint, the courts, risk, anything?

Ariana Tadler:

Sure. COVID has obviously affected everybody now. For us, it affected us in, I think, more positive ways than negative, which probably sounds odd. It forced us to really be checking in with one another. I mentioned earlier that before the pandemic, I really was on the road 200 days out of the year and I also commuted. There were oftentimes that yes, I was running the firm, and litigating cases, and talking to my people, but a lot of it was through email. Now, we've taken advantage of connecting through whatever platform we choose. Sometimes we change up the platform for video conferencing, but I also made a point very early on checking in with each individual person on the team, calling them, writing handwritten notes, wanting to make sure that people were okay, checking in with other people to make sure that others were okay because maybe I wasn't getting the full Hollywood story and wanting to make sure that I was being a good steward, a good employer, a good human.

       The truth of the matter is, many of us throughout the course of COVID had sadness and grief. I personally had sadness and grief. Others did too, and we're continuing to have it. Things are happening even now. What we also recognize is sometimes any person on the team may just have to take a day or take a half a day just to get re-grounded or get some rest. I call it the COVID fatigue, right? You wake up, you think your day is going to look like X, you've planned out... I write out the night before, what am I going to try and do tomorrow? Hopefully I'll get through most of it. I don't know.

Jim Batson:

Sometimes that list is longer the next morning than it was the previous morning. I understand.

Ariana Tadler:

The list of the list of the list, you know? There are days with not listing the best of intentions that you have. You get to noon or two o'clock and you just want to crawl out of your chair, and lay down, and curl up, and take a nap, or just close your eyes and be left alone. We pay a lot of attention to that. In terms of how it's affected our practice, in terms of courts and cases, we've been very, very busy. Our cases, thankfully, are in places where people need our services. Some of the cases happen to be in that discovery phase where okay, discovery slowed down a little bit because depending on who you were dealing with, they needed to get their systems in place on the other side before they could attend to the litigation that was happening, but for the most part, that aspect procedurally has continued.

       I had a major final approval hearing, a fairness hearing, before a very renowned federal judge. It was a four-and-a half-hour hearing in June. It was supposed to happen in March. The judge put it over twice and finally came to the conclusion that this hearing was going to have to happen, otherwise, who knows when we were going to get to it, which I love because justice delayed is justice denied.

Jim Batson:

Hear, hear.

Ariana Tadler:

Four-and-a-half hours to do a Zoom hearing when you've never done one before like that, interesting. We had one break. We had one break in that time, and I thought to myself, "Wow, this is in many ways a game changer," because in the past, that hearing would have included a lot of people traveling. There would have been costs incurred with that travel. We were able to avoid spending that money because we were doing it virtually. There ended up having to be some follow-up with the court.

       The court had some additional expectations of information, and that was fine. We were able to do that all through submitting information to the court, but it made you realize that there are a lot of things that can happen more efficiently and effectively. Depositions. Depositions are happening every day now by Zoom. We had to change the process because you don't have everybody around the table. You can't necessarily see everybody's body language. There are new protocols in place, but we've seen a lot of creative thinking. That's really important, I think, with respect to cases moving ultimately towards trial... I track a lot of this. I haven't really watched, particularly for the state courts, but in the federal courts, there are certain federal courts, for example, that will only allow one trial a week in the entire courthouse because of what their needs are.

       They have to have the actual courtroom in which the trial will occur, and they have to spread the jury out. They have another courtroom sometimes for the public to the extent the public wants to still try to come in. They also have another courtroom for further breakout if necessary. You can imagine that a particular courthouse that has a very high volume of trials, if you're on that kind of structure, things are really being delayed across the full docket of any particular judge. We need to be creative. One of the things also, I think, people don't realize that are outside the scope of what you and I do, is that the criminal docket for most federal judges is the busiest docket for them. For good reason, they are prioritizing that docket. You're talking about somebody’s personal rights, et cetera.

       They do make that a priority. That is understandable. What we want to make sure is that to the extent we have things happening in our cases, and we are not in any way impinging upon those rights relating to the criminal justice system, that we still keep things moving. We're finding that some judges, because they have fewer trials, at least at this time, they are focusing on the motion practice. They are encouraging us to actively engage in discovery and get that going. They're keeping us on tight schedules, but things are slowed. Things are definitely slowed.

Jim Batson:

Ariana. One of the things that I'm incredibly impressed with is that you've founded your own firm and it is a woman-run, women-led organization, although I know you have men and women as part of the firm itself. I was raised by a single mom for most of my life. I saw my mom go back to school, get her MBA, ultimately get her law degree. I watched her experience discrimination and the challenges that women in a male dominated world, especially then, and now in different ways, I really was brought up; I grew up through that. Seeing what you've accomplished is really powerful for me and impressive. It's terrific. Tell us, for people that haven't really necessarily come to a law firm that's run by a woman and led by women, what advantages do you offer clients in that circumstance?

Ariana Tadler:

We bring a very unique perspective to litigation. We look at things with a different lens. I think, we bring a level of empathy, which in today's world is absolutely critical. It's not just about the law, or the case, or what the specific factual allegations are, but the whole package and being attentive to one's clients. We also, I'm very proud that unbelievably during COVID, we started the process and completed the process to apply for our WBENC qualification certificate, which recognizes us as a women-owned business. The application process is extremely challenging. It's extremely time consuming. The standards are very, very high. In going through that process, because we realized that certification would open doors for us, right? There are Taft-Hartley funds, small, medium, and large sized businesses that have made a commitment to diversity and inclusion, including women, people of color, really making sure that we are being as inclusive as possible.

       That was certainly important for us to get that certification, but in going through the application process, it made me realize, because of the questions that were being asked and the information that we had to provide, how specially situated we are to look at issues and recognize some unique facet or something that differentiates that particular case or that particular client, or to dig a little bit deeper because of our own personal experiences. Our own personal experiences as women have given us an opportunity, especially when we're talking about products that affect women, that affect children. Those are things that we are really attuned to. I'm not suggesting to you that men aren't attuned to them, but again, we are bringing something that is part of who we are naturally and applying it to what we do every day. It also brings up that level of empathy.

       I know one of the things that was very important for us was when COVID really kind of locked our country down, and again, I said this earlier, connecting with people, right? Connecting with our own people at the firm, our colleagues in cases that we were working with, of course our clients, even I connected with some judges whom I know from e-Discovery circuits, et cetera. I might not be appearing before them, but to check in. Retired judges. “How are you doing?” I think, that's one of the things that has been telling to me, especially with my partners, is that's who we are naturally. COVID gave us this platform to naturally apply it, to just go out and pick up the phone and say, as the start of a conversation, "How are you?" Not, "Hey, let's get down to business." We cannot always get down to business, but this pandemic, I think, has changed the perspective for most people, and starting a conversation with asking somebody how they are, how they're feeling, how are they really doing makes you closer to that client.

       It makes you closer to that colleague who in this case is your colleague, but in the next case might've been your competitor. Now, they're not going to be your competitor. They're going to be your colleague again because they say, "Oh, my gosh, you know what? She checked in on me several times." It also gives us the opportunity to open a door, stick our foot in a door that, perhaps, historically was more of a boy’s club because people are recognizing how important it is to have women at the table. Not just in a seat, but with a voice. I am speaking, please hear me.

Jim Batson:

Hear, hear. While you were speaking, I thought, "Oh, I've got to check in with those people today." This is great, great reminders for all of us. As a parting last thought, you've accomplished all that you've accomplished in what you're doing. Do you have any advice to women on how they can build their careers and legal practices in a way that will fuel their success and happiness?

Ariana Tadler:

Absolutely. First of all, you have to have faith in yourself. I certainly have come to realize that I really do have faith in myself after all these years. I also am a faithful person. I have faith in God and that I am well positioned to move forward and take positive steps. You have to also reach out to people and be willing to be a little vulnerable. I don't mean weak. I mean, vulnerable in acknowledging things that you don't know, but that you'd like to know and ask people whom you can trust. One of the things that I've really come to learn over this period, because for the first time, I've actually had time to really read and listen to books, audio books. Women network differently. Women connect differently. Women should have mentors, sponsors, agents. Those are different things. The other thing I have found is that when I make myself available to people, especially women, especially people of color, especially people who are younger and say, "How can I help you?" It ends up, by paying it forward, reciprocating back. I keep seeing these amazing opportunities that open up because I've reached out and offered my help, and suddenly that person is going to go help somebody else. I encourage women to help others. I think, you're going to find it so rewarding. You're going to be really surprised how validating it's going to be about your skill, who you are as a human being and your ability to make great strides in your professional life, but also in your personal life. You're going to realize you have relationships with people that you thought were exclusively one or the other, and there's not necessarily that exclusivity. There's this opportunity to really nurture those relationships and build upon them in a way that we never really understood before.

Jim Batson:

Well, I can't imagine a better place to conclude. It's been a wonderful theme in the whole conversation about relationships and networking and how important that's become today with all that's going on with the pandemic. I could go on and on, but thank you so much, Ariana, for sharing your words of wisdom with us and our listeners. Thank you for being our guest on Omni Bridgeway's Beyond Hourly podcast, and sharing your knowledge with our listeners.

Ariana Tadler:

Thank you so much for the opportunity. This was great fun. It's always great to talk with you, and I look forward to seeing you in person again soon.

Jim Batson:

Same here, Arianna. As I mentioned at the outset, this is the second episode in a two-part series featuring Ariana. We welcome you to tune in for part one of the series, if you haven't already done so, to hear about Ariana's focus on advocating for consumers and investors against corporate fraud, her insights about running a woman-owned, woman-led law firm, and how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting access to justice. Episodes of the Beyond Hourly podcast can be found on our website, omnibridgeway.com, iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast networks. I invite you to subscribe and leave us reviews. You can also access a transcript of this podcast on our website blog page. Please feel free to follow up with me, Jim Batson, at [email protected] for any feedback, ideas, or insights you have on topics we should cover on the podcast. We'll be back soon with another episode. Until then, thank you for listening.