 Lawyers are the coolest people that I know. 100%. I'm also completely biased because I am a lawyer. Aren't all lawyers the same? Keep watching to find out more. Okay so today we are going to talk about lawyers, one of my favorite subjects. I love lawyer so much that I created a podcast called you are a lawyer where I talk to a law school graduate and share their story every two weeks. In April 2020 I officially launched the you are lawyer podcast. This was after a couple of years of deliberating because I really wanted to create a blog. I knew that I thought lawyers were exciting and I was going to interview them, record their stories, and then write them all out on a blog. And like I said I'd spent about three years thinking about this, wondering when I was going to do it, and by the time I was finally ready my husband said you know that'll probably play better as a podcast. Podcasts are really big right now. I wanted to try that. So okay I'll try that and I'll create a podcast. I said okay I can do that I'll start a podcast and at that time the you are lawyer podcast was created. So to give a little bit of background I saved all of the social media accounts for the podcast in March 2019 because there was some little piece of me that was like you have to do this this is going to be huge if you can just do it. So I would take baby steps. I mean I would literally do one thing to propel and push myself and my plan forward every year. 2019 I grabbed the social media accounts, 2020 I started to record and I was like okay let's record let's get comfortable you don't got to go too far right we're just gonna do baby steps and I chickened out again. So what happened when I chickened out I created a social media test for myself to say okay Kyla do you like sales? Do you like marketing? Are you sure you can push this? So I took one of my favorite things which is a fortune cookie and decided that I was going to create fortune cookie social media posts. I created this Instagram page and just another way for me to test the waters you know see if I could talk about something silly and ridiculous for 40 days and if I could do that when those 40 days were up I had to get started right. I would scour twitter and instagram with hashtag fortune cookies or fortune cookie day or all the stuff and I found all these things about fortune cookies. It was difficult to remain disciplined for 30 days and do it but I did it for 30 days I posted about fortune cookies and when those days were up I was like you can do it you could find something to say about fortune cookies every single day for 30 days. You can do this right? So when that time ended I was like all right here we go so then I started putting up you know the countdown something's coming something's coming wait and see and then we got started. So April 16th was the initial episode of You Are Lawyer that was my episode where I was talking about who I am. That episode was initially called How to Create a Scene at the Table. I've since changed it to Kyla Denonio podcast host and lawyer because that's what I do and I am a lawyer. Also that fits in with the title of every other episode. Every other episode is the name of the guest their current job title and lawyer because they are all lawyers. So I did change that but the initial episode was about me creating a scene for myself at the table and so today I'm going to talk to you about why I created the podcast how I created that seat at the table and what's going on on You Are Lawyer. So You Are Lawyer is a podcast that shares the experiences and successes of law school graduates. The tagline of the podcast is promote what you've done with your JD and that is so important to me because there's very few places that are available for all law graduates right? You have your ABA mixers which are the American Bar Association. They have their events they have conferences they have all these things and they're for licensed attorneys. If you are a member of a bar association you have passed a bar exam and so that excludes people who have not passed a bar exam. A lot of these conferences and organizations are starting to expand to include paralegals however I'm not a paralegal. I'm a lawyer I went to law school I graduated from law school. Lexico dictionary says a lawyer is one who studies or practices law that's that's me I studied law I'm a law school graduate I'm a lawyer right and so the whole point of the podcast is just to bring on guests to promote what they've done with their law degree because I truly believe that you cannot separate the education that you received in law school with anything that you're doing right now I'm a mother of a toddler and I even see myself making sense of things that she's doing processing them through my legal mind. Everything I do I see the law through it because I'm a lawyer I was trained to think about things that way I was trained to process things that way and it's still with me and I think that's a benefit right and that's why I created you are a lawyer so people can come on the show they can talk about what they've done with their degree and they can just enjoy being in a community of other law school graduates because we're all accepted we're all law school graduates so on the podcast I talked to two types of lawyers lawyers who have been admitted to a bar association and lawyers whom by choice or chance are not licensed attorneys okay so lawyers who've been admitted to a bar association are considered attorneys they are licensed to practice law in their state or in their district or another organization and then there are those who by choice or chance have not been admitted to a bar association and those two distinctions are important because by choice that means you did not sit for a bar exam you decided not to take a bar exam by chance that means you did not pass a bar exam right and I think those distinctions are important because everyone doesn't go to law school to become a licensed attorney I went to law school to become a licensed attorney I know a lot of other people who went to law school to become licensed attorneys and sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't and I say that in a casual way because I spent years learning about how to say that in a casual way I don't mean it in a casual manner right there so even if you decide by choice that you do not want to take a bar exam and become a licensed attorney you are still a lawyer and there's strength in being a lawyer and there's strength in knowing that there are other people who've made similar decisions to yours right a lot of times what happens is when you're not a licensed attorney you have to think about other things you want to do if you didn't go into law school with that in mind right I know people who went to law school intending to be school administrators they graduated they became school administrators that was what they wanted there's also people in the legislature people in the senate who go to law school have no intention on practicing right they had a goal in mind and they followed through on it but if you intended to become an attorney or if you did not have a well thought out plan after law school then you have to pivot and that pivot will look different for everyone but it typically ends up being in a non-traditional role right non-traditional being you go to law school to become an attorney anything outside of that is non-traditional because the tradition is to go to law school to become an attorney so you are a lawyer is special because the niche is that every guest has to be a law school graduate and that's it you are a lawyer is not a podcast for black lawyers or white lawyers only it's podcasts for every lawyer it's not a podcast for only female lawyers it's not a podcast where i only speak to first-generation law school graduates i'm a first-generation law school graduate but i talk to people who have come from long lines of being lawyers i talk to first i talk to everybody right there's the only niche is that or niche whatever your preference is that each guest has to be a law school graduate that is the one thing and i find that i love that part so far i've spoken to lawyers who used to be registered nurses i've spoken to lawyers who create beauty brand companies lawyers who are authors lawyers do all kinds of things and i love to promote what they've done with their jd and share it on the you are lawyer podcast one of the things that i think makes you our lawyer so special is that it is not a podcast to bash the bar exam right the bar exam got the best of me but i don't hate the bar exam it's an exam the days that i took the bar exam i did not perform to the point where i would pass the exam i don't hate the actual test it's paper right um and it took me a while and it took me some therapy to get to the point where i became okay with the outcome of the exam the results that i received but i don't hate the bar exam and i love to talk to people who passed the bar exam practice law and decided no i'm gonna go open a restaurant no i'm gonna go do this or that right i think that's so cool because i love choice i love the fact that you can choose to do this you can choose to do that you can choose to go to law school you can choose to not practice you can choose to enjoy your non-traditional career and it doesn't have to be a terrible thing and it took me a while to get there and i'm happy that i can share that freedom of that choice and remove some of the shame of whatever your career is you know a lot of times people go to law school and they don't tell anyone that they went to law school because if you're in a non-traditional career people will say why are you here that's the question why are you with us and not up there with the fancy lawyers wherever you are i mean you could own a grocery store why are you here why are you just owning a grocery store as if it doesn't take all kinds of expertise and knowledge and experience to do that right it's just the fact that again non-traditional means you went to law school and you are not practicing law in the formal sense because that is the tradition um that's typically why people go to law school so if you're still watching this you may be wondering why share those heartbreaking tales of not passing the bar exam i took the bar exam in the state of louisiana i also took it in the state of ohio and i did not pass either of those exams and why share these horrible stories these awful stories these shame field stories because i had to i had to get it off my chest the experience felt so isolating even though i know that i was not the only person who did not pass the bar exam but to me you know i had a big l on my chest for loser everywhere i would go i'm in the line at the grocery store people were wondering how couldn't you why didn't you pass the bar exam right it was everywhere you go to get dinner man this would taste better if i passed the bar exam that was that was everything but i had to share the experiences because i knew that i wasn't alone even though the experience was isolating and i wanted to shout out my other classmates i wanted to shout out the friends that i had who went to different law schools i wanted to shout out the people i knew who weren't practicing who were enjoying the fact that they weren't practicing law i knew there had to be more stories and in true kyla fashion it could be just me it could be because i'm a type a personality or because i'm a lawyer it could be all of those things but i made sure that i recorded eight interviews before i launched the podcast yes eight because i had read a book and i'll pop that in here called so you want to start a podcast incredible incredible read and the author said that most people quit their podcast around the seventh episode and it's because you either get bored with podcasting you run out of topics you lose interest in it you just get overwhelmed so seven was the scary number so i said if you can find seven guests talk to them record it you can do this right if you can do all of that you know that you can do this and before you guys are clapping and shouting and cheering for me which i appreciate um i was also six months pregnant when i started the podcast and started recording with guests so preparing to be a new mom the baby could chill up at any time and i did not want to use the baby as a reason for me to not continue with the podcast you know whether once she arrived the stress of it all the fear of it all the newness of it all all of those things i didn't want them to be reasons why i had to stop the podcast so that's also why i made sure i started was recorded far in advance so that i could teach myself how to edit podcast audio how to include music how to write show notes how to do all of that stuff because it was a learning experience but i was up for the challenge because i'm a lawyer and i can research anything and i can write very well and i can figure it out so i started the podcast when i was six months pregnant i made sure i had recorded eight episodes before i launched and now heading into two years of having the ur lawyer podcast i am so excited and honestly i can't even see an end to it um i was a guest on a podcast a couple weeks ago and the host asked me where did i see the podcast in 10 years i was like i hope i'm still talking to lawyers because lawyers will still exist and they still will have a background story about why they went to law school and i hope they want to share it with me right because lawyers are the coolest um there are a lot of similarities that have been finding and talking to lawyers but there's also a fair amount of differences and i'm enjoying that and i'm enjoying sharing it with the podcast audience and this may seem a little off like this is your youtube channel why you talk about your podcast for one i'm a creative person i've remembered that i was a creative person i used to be creative and write and do all this stuff podcasting reminded me of how creative i used to be and all the things i used to love so i would dare to say i wouldn't even have this youtube channel if it wasn't for the podcast because it reminded me of how much i enjoy creating podcasting is a big part of me being a lawyer is a big part of me so that's why i'm telling you about the other big interest that i have which is the you are lawyer podcast so if you're still here watching i sincerely appreciate it thank you so much if you think what i have talked about today is exciting or interesting please listen to the you are lawyer podcast new episodes are released every other thursday you can listen to the podcast at you are a lawyer dot com and if you happen to find this youtube channel and you're not a lawyer you're not a law student you're not even thinking about law school please know that you can learn something from the you are lawyer podcast just as i hope you've been learning something from me right now and that's because truly anyone with a job can learn something from the experiences and successes of law school graduates why they stopped practicing law to become an art sculptor why they decided that it was better for them to become a yogi i mean that's even right now i know the story and i'm like yeah that's pretty good that's a pretty interesting thing i'm curious to hear about that too right so thank you so much for watching i sincerely appreciate it and if you have any questions for me or anything i discussed in this episode feel free to leave me a comment i'll make sure to answer you talk to you later this is kyla denigna bye