Addison DiSesa: From litigation associate at Reed Smith to counsel and legislative policy advisor at DoorDash

Transcript:

Lauren: Greetings, and welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints podcast. On Career Footprints, we explore stories and lessons from the careers of some of our most successful alumni with the goal of helping you find career success, whatever that means to you. I'm your host, Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. And today I'm excited to be speaking with Los Angeles office alumni Addison DiSesa. Addi currently serves as counsel and legislative policy advisor at DoorDash, a technology and logistics company that many of you will be familiar with from their on-demand delivery platform. Addi practiced as a litigator at Reed Smith for about two and a half years. Thanks so much for being here today, Addi. How's it going?

Addison: Hi Lauren. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Lauren: Awesome. Well, let's dive in because we've got a lot to cover. So I wanted to start by hearing more about your current role. Legislative policy advisor sounds super interesting. How do you contribute at DoorDash?

Addison: Sure. The simplest way that I can describe my work is I work closely with the government relations team and the legal team and other parts of the business to shape the business environment in the most favorable way for DoorDash, and that often means responding to proposals that we see introduced at the legislative level or regulations that we see introduced and making sure that our input, the company's input is received by the regulator or the legislator considering the legislation. That takes a lot of different forms, but on a day-to-day basis, I'm working closely with various parts of the company. And that's actually one of the things that I find most rewarding about this type of work is I am very much a part of a company, a business. Though the policy team, similar to the legal team, is probably a cost center for the company, we are very much a part of it.

Lauren: Hm, that sounds super interesting and really wide ranging at the company. I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit more from like on a day-to-day basis who you're kind of interacting with both in and outside the company?

Addison: Yeah, I mean my my the immediate team that I sit on, it's a little bit different at DoorDash than I think at a lot of other companies. I sit on the policy team. And though I am a lawyer and everyone on my immediate smaller team are lawyers, we do not sit on the legal team. We work closely with legal, but happily or you know, as the case may be, unhappily, usually it's quite happily, we are not the ones who are in the position of legal representing the company as lawyers of the company. So I work with the policy team primarily, but consulting as I mentioned with the rest of the company. The day-to-day, it it varies greatly. I have a sort of portfolio of issues that I work on that relate primarily to laws or regulations that affect dashers. Those are the couriers who deliver, who complete deliveries that are facilitated through the DoorDash marketplace platform. But that, while it may sound sort of straightforward and simple, there's a lot of different permutations for that. One of the specific issue areas that I work on is how DoorDash shows up on the streets and how that affects sort of transportation policy and street policy. The busy season for us, for me is in in particular, because my work focuses mostly on US state and local politics, is the beginning of the year when most state legislatures are in session and are introducing bills, having hearings, passing bills, taking meetings that are on the Capitol, in the Capitol in their respective cities, states, what what have you. And then in theory, the year gets a little bit more calm as, you know, as the calendar wears on; that tends to not happen anymore as as politics, which is really what my job is, has expanded beyond I think the parameters of of the legislative or regulatory process.

Lauren: That's really interesting. So you mentioned or something you mentioned about how you're thinking about issues and legislation that are affecting the company: it sounds to me like you really need to understand this very large business very deeply. And so I'm just interested, how how do you kind of balance understanding the law and policy and politics versus really knowing the business? What skill set have you developed in doing that?

Addison: Yeah, there there's there's a there's a lot actually, and a lot of this I think is familiar to any lawyer, but also I think traces back to my time at Reed Smith and, you know, the sort of training that you get there going to a a top-tier law firm, which is, you know, what is the audience that I'm speaking to and what is the information that I'm trying to convey to them? And so how do I get the bottom line across to various different audiences with various levels of sophistication? Some of them are lawyers themselves, and so, that is at once really exciting because they're speaking my language, but also, you know, the most nerve-wracking in some ways because they're also people with this with similar skill set, similar backgrounds, similar things to bring to bear. But also, you know, talking to company executives, like making sure that I'm, that I'm communicating in a way that respects the fact that they're across a bunch of different things and can only take in maybe less information, but still need to know the vital information. Lawyers are used to translating legalese into language that lay people can understand, but also making sure that we're being accurate and precise. And that's always the sort of like the devil on your shoulder kind of thing. It's like, am I am I providing enough information to be as precise as I need to be here without loading down or larding up the, you know, what's supposed to be a two-sentence description of something? So really being concise and succinct, but also clear and accurate. They sound simple, but they're some of the most valuable skills in all of corporate America, but especially when you're sort of teetering between a a legal role and like a business role. But also collaboration. And this is, I think, something where I stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know if you've seen that meme online that says, "another meeting that could have been an email". I'm the I'm the guy who's like, give me the, give me the meeting. Like, I want to be in the room with people. I want to ask the stupid questions. In law school, I was the person who was asking all the questions, not on purpose, but sort of because I was like, well, I think other people might want to know this, so let me go ahead and be the person to ask it because I, too, want to know the answer. And more than once in law school, people would pull me aside and say, Thank you for asking that question. And I too would do that when somebody else would ask the quote unquote stupid question. So being interested in people and trying to meet them where they are and to understand the piece of the puzzle that they are bringing to bear in a in a certain project is I think something that is really a hard-won skill, but also really rewarding and effective in showing up in these different spaces. It's almost like code switching, like knowing who I'm going to speak with. What are the things that they're expecting of me? How can I prepare for that sort of situation? And then how do I like show up to make sure that they trust me? Like, hey, is this a is this a good partner that I'm working with here? It may be their only choice because it's you know, it's a company with a limited number of people working at it, but like is this person going to show up for me? Like, are they going to screw up my work stream that I've and I'm running tightly, or are they going to be additive to it? So you know, I I I always try to to be like that person with a positive attitude, but also the person who's hyperaware of like my surroundings and the people that I'm working with and what they need and what I need to make a partnership work well.

Lauren: I love that. You said a lot of things there, but that quality of being almost like competent enough, right? To ask a question that you think might be a stupid question, but really you know, right, from empathizing with the people in the room, probably like in your law school class, a lot of people have that same question and being that person to speak up. And then also the competence to speak very plainly, right? I think as young lawyers sometimes we all felt that we had to speak in legalese to credentialize ourselves. But it's knowing that that can be counterproductive, is so important.

Addison: For sure. And it's also totally natural, right? Like, you know, I I'm far enough along in my career to know that there's more still that I don't know than I already know. Having sort of the humility to to know that you don't know everything, and also the sort of I don't know, chutzpah maybe to to to ask that question. But you know, I also would say I've benefited tremendously from, in many ways in my life, but also from really great mentors along the way, many of whom I'm still in touch with from 20 years hence. You can't overstate the value of other people and frankly good fortune. And part of that good fortune is being around other good people who want to bring you along, who want to make sure that you are succeeding in your role, who make it safe for you to ask the dumb questions without being reprimanded for basically trying to do your job. But you know, as much as we'd like to imagine that there aren't, we all know that there are plenty of workplaces that that is not the case. And I, throughout my career have benefited from, been able to grow because I've benefited from really great mentors and work environments and just support along the way.

Lauren: Yeah, no. And you talked about having the confidence to ask questions, but also you mentioned that you're very kind of socially aware of how you're making people in a room feel. So I feel like that those two things are linked, right? You're always asking the the question with like empathy and concern for how that will be received. So you started talking about mentors, and that's a really good segue. I want to rewind to the beginning of your career. You practiced here at Reed Smith and mentioned you really enjoyed your time here, and you were really successful. So, curious, what prompted you to think about making a move in-house?

Addison: Yeah, no, I I appreciate that. I think my career felt like it was veering off course, but at the same time, as I look back at it, it it was always right where it needed to be. And that's sort of the advice that I would give to to people who want to be in in my seat in the future is pause. Let it let it play out a little bit more. Your your your life and career you know, God willing, will be long. And everything doesn't need to happen, one, as necessarily at the time that you planned it or as you planned it happening. And so I think when I was a young law student, I applied to law school because I had been working in politics and because I wanted to be an expert at something. And I'd always thought about going to law school and being a lawyer, but never really like felt like taking the plunge. I don't know. Should I do it? Should I not do it? I'm sure that's a familiar story to lots of lawyers who ultimately made the decision to go to law school like I did. I'm glad that I did, even though I sort of went on what again felt like a detour in my legal career. I didn't go to law school aspiring to be an associate at a big law firm, but I did get kind of swept up in the competitive nature of law school and, you know, what's the next brass ring to go for once you've gone to a good law school? For me, it appeared to be going to work at a great law firm. And I was, again, fortunate enough to do that. But I went to law school to do, to be an expert and to work in politics and to be a policy expert, and so after a couple of years at Reed Smith, I realized that being a litigator, being a partner at Reed Smith, which is a very difficult thing to attain, wasn't something that I even necessarily wanted to attain. And so again, taking that pause and the pandemic was helpful in this regard. I hate to think of the pandemic as being helpful, but for me in this regard, it was helpful because it shipped away the rest of my life. And when I was looking at my career, I realized as grateful as I am for this opportunity and as beneficial as it has been for me in my career, it's ultimately not what I want to be doing. So I started to to look for more opportunities in politics and policy. And so I did some volunteer work during the 2020 election analyzing various state laws, which were both kind of new but also somewhat in flux and being complicated by the pandemic, where a lot of people were voting by mail and doing so for the first time, in some cases doing so in states where there wasn't an option to vote by mail before the 2020 election. So I was reviewing these state laws and state court cases, analyzing those state laws to help this organization help voters register to vote, cast their ballot by mail in some pretty high-profile states. And that work sort of relit my fire in or my interest in getting into politics. And so it took a little while, but I I I landed in this role, in this policy role, which is basically the amount of politics that I wanna be doing and the amount of legal work I wanna be doing. So it's very much like a happy, happy medium. Didn't always feel like I said, like a direct route, but it it feels in retrospect like the right one.

Lauren: That's a great plug for making time to do volunteer work, whether it was volunteer work on your own, like you did or pro bono work, right? Because you're kind of flexing a different part of your skill set. How'd you find your role at DoorDash?

Addison: Candidly, I I didn't know that this type of work specifically existed until a friend of mine, who was actually another associate at Reed Smith. She was - she had been a summer associate, and then after her summer, decided she actually didn't want to practice law. So she never practiced law anywhere. She became a consultant, and her consultancy was hired by Meta to actually work with their policy team to work on, I don't remember the specific issue. This was a couple of years ago now, to work on some X, Y, or Z issue. She reached out to me knowing that I was looking for my next role at this point, and said, hey, I think you might really like this. This is very much the thing you've described, which is policy and in a new area that's topical and political. And I I I again, like I said, have benefited so much from luck and privilege in my career. And this is one of one of the like clearest ways that I can think of it. Like I would not have met this woman had I not gone to UCLA, even from there, gone to work at Reed Smith. And frankly, we became friends because of summer programming in the Reed Smith LA office. Had we not done these things that feel in some ways, like, you know, this is great, but it's it's it's not gonna benefit my career. It's gonna benefit me meeting the people at this office, which is also important. It also benefited my career, going bowling in like the arts district or whatever the heck we did, which was was super fun, but also incredibly important moment in my career. It's just sort of like opened my eyes to this role as an opportunity. You know, from there, once she sort of put that bug in my ear, I went looking around and pretty quickly found that DoorDash was hiring for this role that I'm currently in and the rest is history.

Lauren: That's amazing. That point you made about talking to other people in your network who you know through school, through work, who you meet so socially, telling them what interests you and having just genuine conversations about, you know, career paths.

Addison: Yeah. And I mean and just another plug for that, for those summer associate events, it's like those events, we bonded over that and we talked outside of work, outside of the office, outside of the context of whatever matters we were working on when we were at Reed Smith. And like you said, we got to know each other because of that. And so it's it's a really beneficial thing.

Lauren: It's a sneaky secret about the associate programming we do at the firm is that it also benefits more senior people. And here was a great example of that.

Addison: Right. Yes, yes, yes. It it turns out that that you all know what you're talking about.

Lauren: All right. So I want to now focus on your experience of of landing at this new role that's very different from being a law firm associate. So can you talk a little bit about what you brought from your time at Reed Smith and from private practice in general that made you, you know, ready to contribute at the role? And then maybe also one or two things you had to unlearn or do differently.

Addison: Yeah. Being a professional. Like I I think that that's really underrated and that could mean a lot of different things. For me, it means having clients, and having an obligation to those clients, and being an advisor to those clients. Being a litigator, and this is I I'm stealing this from 80 million lawyers before me, it's like you tend to see your clients on a pretty bad day for them because they're talking to a lawyer, probably because they're being sued or they're going to sue somebody. Or, you know, I did civil law, so that was my, my world. And so how you're showing up for them really matters. And though it's a sort of personal thing, they want to see somebody on the other side of that call or that table who's being professional. And Reed Smith really, it's the cream of the crop. And so you showed up like that or you weren't there very long. And I think that it's an intense environment, but also that that intensity prepares you for pretty much anything that comes your way, interactions with the client, making sure that you're representing yourself, but also the firm well, that you're acknowledging when you don't know the answer to things, but also promising to get an answer, that you're not showing up with just problems, that you're showing up with problems and proposed solutions, and bonus points for solutions A, B, and C. But also you're knowing when to ask for help. And that's I think an important thing, too, is there's a tendency to panic. And this goes back to the humility thing, like, I'm supposed to know this, I'm supposed to figure this out. When sometimes you you're not, or sometimes somebody else has the answer and it's incumbent upon you to not waste your clients' time and money spinning your own wheels, but just to raise your hand and say, I do need some help. Or to also cultivate the relationships with people that you're working with so that they can become resources for you and you for them when you need help or vice versa. So I think like showing up as a professional is really important. And I I frankly, because I work with so many different parts of the DoorDash business today, I see all those different parts as yes, my team, but also my clients. How is the policy development team, that's my smaller team, showing up for the rest of the company? Are we getting them what they need? Are we giving them the information that they need? Are we making sure that they're aware of these flags? Are we making sure that if things aren't going according to plan, that we're keeping them apprised of that? And I think that those are all things that I take for granted because they are de rigueur at Reed Smith, but it's it's clear to me that not everyone has that experience. And and so I think that that that is one of the major things that I learned and and have taken with me from my very brief but very important time at Reed Smith.

Lauren: Thank you. That was an amazing definition of being a professional. And something that you definitely learn as a law firm associate. I mean, same for me, just it's it can be a bit of a crucible, right? But you when you come through it, you have the confidence that you could do things that that are sometimes very hard.

Addison: Yeah, absolutely. And I also have to say, like the again, the partners that I worked with at Reed Smith, mostly in the LA office, there was one or two partners in the New York office on some I forget what it's called, a multi-district litigation, maybe something. Is that is that a thing? Okay. Yeah, you know, but a couple of New York lawyers, but mostly in LA, who yeah, there were some tense moments, but you know, people kept their cool and kept their heads. And that's another thing that I sort of have grown to admire in leaders and in colleagues, is can you be calm? There's that Mike Tyson saying "everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face" or something like that. You're getting punched all the time in litigation. It's - and it's how are you reacting? Are you calm? It may be that you're freaking out, but you're on the phone with the client, and you're very calm and then you hang up the phone and then, then you have a momentary freakout and then you pick up the pieces. Again, how are you showing up? Are you sort of being level-headed? Are you the steady hand on the tiller? 'Cause that I think is core to being a good lawyer.

Lauren: Oh, absolutely. That's such a good point. And really, I think can be a tough thing to learn for for folks who are great students and always manage their calendar very carefully. Now you're in a situation as a lawyer at a big firm or in-house, right, where surprises are coming left, right, and center. And you've got to get up to speed on on managing that and managing yourself. So you can, as you said, show up as the calm person in the room.

Addison: Yeah, absolutely. You really can't say enough about how much not only you but the team benefits from - from that sort of calmness.

Lauren: All right. So we are reaching the end of our time, but I want to ask you our final question. And you've already given a lot of advice to to people who want to end up like you, right? So we we talked about taking a pause when things feel rough in your career or things aren't going the way that that perhaps you wanted to. And we talked about you know, just just finding work that you love, right? Taking a moment to to decide what that is and what that means for you. But what other advice would you give to maybe like a second or third year associate who is thinking about next steps and maybe is unsure what those would look like?

Addison: The main thing I would say is to be curious. Forgive me for older second year associates who have had entire careers and are lawyers now. But you know, especially for the younger folks who are maybe a couple years out of college or went straight through to law schools, be curious about your career, but also about your life. This is your first time living. It's all of our first time living. And though there are sort of templates, nobody's life is your own. It is your one wild and precious life. And it's your career. You're the one who has to show up every day and do that work. And I was so lucky to have found this role, and I I was gonna say I'm also so lucky that that pandemic pause happened for me or to me or to all of us. But in my career it ended up sort of forcing that conversation maybe earlier than I would have had it on my own. What is it that I like about this work? What is it that I like about being a lawyer? For me, it was I want to show up to work. This is when we went to the office, but this was an actual vignette that I created in my head because it's based on a real experience. Like when I show up to the office, I'm listening to like The Daily or something, you know, something topical about the news and politics. And then I would arrive at the office and take my AirPods out and sit at the computer and start propounding discovery requests about asbestos cases in Nebraska or something like that. And as important as that work is, it isn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to do work that was in the news and it was topical and it was related to politics. I wanted that. And I I I was honest with myself that I've got this coveted job in this incredible firm in this great city that so many people would want, but is it what I want? It's trite to say, but it's really important, I think, that people are honest with themselves. And the comparison that I think we tend to do especially earlier in our careers, between, well, Addison's here, I should be there too, or Tina is over here doing this great thing. I should be there. Or she's already done X, Y, and Z things, and I and I'm so far behind. That stuff, if if you let it, will fade away. And what remains will be you and your life and the people in your life that you care about. The sooner that you can sort of embrace that, even if it feels uncomfortable to let go of the comparison or let go of the sort of template that you've charted out for yourself, the better. So that would be my my advice, to be curious.

Lauren: Yeah. So on the one hand, you're grateful to be at a law firm developing these amazing professional skills and you're doing your best, right? As you always did, but also being honest with yourself about where you want to take it and and starting to think through that.

Addison: Yeah, and it's - these things don't always don't happen overnight. It's you know, few people have an epiphany. So it's like, what can you learn in the meantime? What challenges is the universe throwing in your way? It's like, I really hate propounding discovery. Why? Maybe it's because it's very challenging to make sure I've covered all the bases and that I'm asking for all the documents or all the different permutations of this thing. Long term, yeah, you want to focus on okay, what do I do to position myself to make the next move? But in the meantime, in the in the near term, maybe focus on getting those discovery requests propounded the best you can, becoming a master of that, and then moving on and gathering the next skill or learning the next thing. I think there's there's real value in sort of why am I here now and what can I learn from it? How can I make the best of the situation?

Lauren: Well, Addi, thank you so much for having this conversation. Your career is so interesting, and we hope to catch up again in the future to hear more about it. And thank you all for listening to this episode of Reed Smith's Career Footprints podcast. We hope you'll join us again for a future episode. Thanks, everyone.

Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith Production. Our producers are Shannon Ryan, Amanda Saunders, and Mason Kautz. You can find our podcast on podcast streaming platforms, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP. To learn more about Reed Smith's alumni network, or if you are an alumni of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact Laura Karmatz, Reed Smith's global senior director of alumni relations at [email protected].

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. 

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