Chrystal Mauro: How passion projects can help you stand out from the crowd

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. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today I'm excited to be speaking with New York office alumna, Chrystal Morrow. Since her time at Reed Smith, Chrystal has held a number of senior in-house legal positions, including serving as a solo GC at an asset-based lending firm, and most recently as senior counsel at IBM. She's also a co-founder of the Legal Mentor Network, a leading nonprofit that connects law students and early career lawyers with experienced practitioners who can guide and advise them. Chrystal, welcome. How are you today?

Chrystal: Great, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure reconnecting with you and Reed Smith.

Lauren: Awesome, well let's dive in because we've got a lot to cover. So you have held several roles over the years, which I'm going to ask you about later in the podcast. You've been a judicial clerk, a law firm associate, a GC, and a nonprofit founder. That's a big range of roles. And I'm curious, what are you focused on now?

Chrystal: Yeah, it's been an exciting and interesting career for about the last 20 years. My 20-year graduation from law school is coming up in May, and I'm taking all of my experience and transitioning to a new role at Citizens Bank, where I'll be an assistant general counsel in their corporate transactions and procurement group.

Lauren: Congratulations about the move. You also are a nonprofit founder, so I'd love to hear more about Legal Mentor Network. What prompted you amidst a really busy career to found it and how long has it been around?

Chrystal: Yeah, thank you so much for asking. The Legal Mentor Network is definitely a passion project of mine. It started in 2021 with my co-founder, Brian Potts, who had posted something on LinkedIn that went viral and was just overwhelmed with requests for mentorship from young lawyers. And what we found is that there is this great need for that, especially for first generation lawyers who are in law school and don't really have someone to turn to, but even young attorneys who may be at a law firm, but just want an outside opinion or someone to encourage them and bounce ideas off of. So the Legal Mentor Network started kind of in the COVID era when everyone was getting comfortable with Zoom and video networking as opposed to in-person networking, and we have now been around for five years. It's a nationwide organization that does in-person events and also has an online platform so that you can find mentors all over the country.

Lauren: That's awesome. It's such an interesting point about how it was founded during the pandemic because there was such a need for mentoring there, but there was also an opportunity for people to mentor folks like across the country from them in a way we wouldn't have had before.

Chrystal: Yeah, I mean, I think that is why it took off, but it's also just changed the way that we communicate. We've all changed the way that we communicate. And for mentoring, it was always so difficult to set up grabbing a cup of coffee or a lunch with your mentor because attorneys are busy people and their time is valuable. So the fact that you can spend a half hour, an hour a week mentoring or getting mentorship, just makes it so much easier because you don't have to leave your desk. And you can create really wonderful relationships.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. So a lot of law firms have internal mentoring programs, which are great. So can you talk a little bit about what is different and what's sort of the additional benefit of also maybe having an external mentor through the network?

Chrystal: Yeah, so one of the reasons we founded this is because not everyone is so lucky like myself to go to a firm, a big firm such as Reed Smith and get access to those mentoring programs that I know that Reed Smith has. And we wanted to bring that experience to everyone. And then for people who are at big firms who also want mentorship, it's nice to have someone outside of the firm, because there's always competing interests, having a mentor inside a firm, you might work for that person, it might be hard to say, I'm looking for a new job elsewhere, or I'm interested in exploring a different practice group, but just expanding your network outside the firm is good for your career in more than one way.

Lauren: Yeah, no, that's a powerful point. I mean, we all need, some people want to look for one mentor who has it all. But I think you've raised the point that there are so many different perspectives. And sometimes you do need someone who is outside of a firm, right? Particularly if you are looking to go in-house.

Chrystal: For sure. You know, the reason we named it the Legal Mentor Network is because it's 100% networking. If you want to be successful in the practice of law, if you want to be in private practice and getting clients, if you want to be in-house and working with the business, you need to learn how to network and speak to people that you're not familiar with. Ask for advice, ask for guidance. It's definitely, you know, we all have to get outside our comfort zone to get to the next level.

Lauren: Yeah, lots of benefits for the more junior person to the relationship. But why are you finding that the senior lawyers are volunteering to mentor junior folks?

Chrystal: Yeah, you know, I find that it's a pretty easy sell to get mentors. There are definitely recruiting benefits that large firms and small firms have seen in terms of getting to know candidates on a personal level and then bring them in outside of a formal interview process. But in general, most lawyers just want to help out, right? Like that is what the practice of law is, is helping you solve your problems and it's very much an apprenticeship model of a profession. So being a mentor comes naturally to senior lawyers. And I think it's a great way to give back to the legal community.

Lauren: Yeah, so just before we move on to your career, if anyone listening wants to sign up, how do they do it?

Chrystal: Thank you for asking. It's very easy. Go to legalmentornetwork.org. Go to the sign up button and you can sign up for emails and also create a profile to get matched with a mentor mentee.

Lauren: That's awesome. All right, so let's rewind to like the beginning of your career. And I saw that early in your career, you clerked in the bankruptcy court in the Eastern District of New York. And I'm curious, how did you decide that you wanted to become a bankruptcy lawyer?

Chrystal: Yeah, that was such a wonderful experience. I had wanted to be a law clerk, so I will be honest in saying that I wasn't tailored in on the bankruptcy courts. I, like many of us, set out a mass mailing to all the judges in the Tri-State area to try to get a clerkship. And where I landed was in the Eastern District of New York in the bankruptcy courthouse with Judge Melton, who was probably one of my first mentors, was a great person to learn from professionally and personally. And it was a really exciting time in bankruptcy. I started my clerkship in the Eastern District of New York on the same day that Lehman Brothers had filed bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, which kicked off two to four years of bankruptcy filings. So it was a very interesting time to be in bankruptcy. The laws were being tested. It was accelerated. And I learned a lot. It was a wonderful job.

Lauren: I can imagine there was so much going on. Those years you spent must have been like double in terms of the experience you got.

Chrystal: Yeah, I definitely think so. There was a large caseload in New York as in across the country and that piggybacked on to the need for bankruptcy associates at Reed Smith, which is how I came to find Reed Smith.

Lauren: Yeah, so you were here, you practiced in our financial industry group, which we call FIG, for about eight years. So tell us about your work and how you transitioned from clerking to practicing here at Reed Smith.

Chrystal: Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty easy transition mostly because I was brought in to do bankruptcy work that was ongoing. As the bankruptcy work slowed down, I started picking up more transactional matters for our FIG clients. And as someone who's landing at a FIG client, I would say that banks, financial service industry clients are great people to work with and work for.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. When you landed at a law firm, right, we all know that there are so many benefits to practicing at a law firm, but it's also a tough job. So can you talk a little bit about what was the best part and what was the most challenging part of it?

Chrystal: Yeah, the best part is definitely the people. The firm creates an environment of teams. I would say bankruptcy law in particular lends itself to teamwork and we would be staffed on large cases and you really had a nice relationship with the people that you were working with. But in general, the hours at a law firm doing bankruptcy work are a little bit chaotic. I remember I was sitting at an auction. They were auctioning off buses that our client had a lien on. And it was like 11 o'clock at night. And you're like, don't miss that bus. Like you missed that VIN number. So between the chaos of the bankruptcy court and the chaos of a large firm having international clients, I would say that the hours are a little unpredictable.

Lauren: So after your time practicing here at Reed Smith, you were obviously very successful here for eight years, taking on additional responsibility. And eventually you decided to take your first in-house role. So can you talk about how you did that?

Chrystal: Yeah, I was really excited to try something new on the in-house side, which I think many lawyers are always kind of interested, like what's it like on the other side. And it was a little risky. I left to go to a small asset-based lender. I was very comfortable at Reed Smith. I was there for eight or nine years, and I knew how it worked. So definitely leaving something that is comfortable and you're familiar with is risky. This was also the company's first legal hire. So it was going to kind of create a legal department for them and grow the role. And unfortunately the company wound up not doing that well in the 2020 financial environment. But I still learned so much about being in-house, working with the business, sitting in on senior management meetings, and also just being as a GC, being responsible for outside counsel litigation and outside counsel fees and managing that relationship too.

Lauren: I would imagine it's what I find so interesting about bankruptcy law practices. It seems like a combination of litigation and transactional skills. So do you feel like that played a role in your ability to be the first GC of a company?

Chrystal: For sure. I always say like hire the bankruptcy lawyer because many people are not familiar with bankruptcy law and maybe they don't understand their practice. But if someone has practiced bankruptcy law at a large firm or was a law clerk, then they are essentially this mix of corporate transactional and litigation where they have taken a company, torn that company apart, contract by contract and asset and liability, scheduled it and then sold it and probably also commenced lawsuits to get some of the assets back. So I really feel like the bankruptcy practitioners are general practitioners that can transition easily into in-house.

Lauren: Yeah, no, that's so interesting. And especially like having clerked, right? And seeing like the culmination, right? I mean, not a good one necessarily, but you must have learned so much just about, you know, financing and also litigation, right? At the same time.

Chrystal: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it helped me see the business side of things, which definitely helped when I went in-house to see how, you know, maybe a lawsuit, someone is really emotional or passionate about it. But if there's no money in it, then it's just bleeding the company. So really about the value of legal risks, the value of litigation and when to curtail those expenses and those risks.

Lauren: Yeah, like really commercial thinking about decisions.

Chrystal: Yeah.

Lauren: All right, so you then did something that I think sounds really cool. You became a fractional GC. Can you explain what that means and how you transitioned into that role?

Chrystal: Sure, I'm not sure who penned that name, but I think it is really appropriate for what I was doing and what a lot of lawyers are doing. And it's a really interesting practice where you are mostly working with startups and small companies that do not have any in-house lawyers. And you come in and you're their in-house lawyer. So you're looking at all of their contracts and litigation normally. You help them set up their vendor agreements. In my experience, I was also doing some finance and lending agreements because I had that background, but you might also be looking at real estate contracts and employment issues, any open and pending litigation. And I think it's a great way to grow with, get to know a company and then grow with a company. And you know, I was really enjoying that. So I will say I would recommend that for people that are maybe in between positions. It's a really great type of work that can be very interesting and lead to future roles. And that's basically what it did for me is as I was doing the fractional GC work, I wound up going over to IBM.

Lauren: So it sounds like that was finding clients for yourself as a fractional GC and then also finding your next job, right? We're all about networking, right? I mean, you must have had to pull on a big contact of people you'd formed over the last like 10, 15 years of your career.

Chrystal: Yeah, I am lucky to have had a number of jobs that I liked very well. And that has created a wonderful network of attorneys for me to turn to.

Lauren: That's amazing. And I love what you said about really, again, like this theme of it's a role, like almost in a bankruptcy where you're really getting to know the company, like from the beginning of its life cycle, forming all of its financing, all its contracts, and getting to know, I would imagine really getting to know the founders.

Chrystal: Yeah, I think that's how a lot of attorneys wind up in a GC position is that they might have started doing that work for the client, either in this freelance fractional GC work or, you know, with a law firm. But it's nice to build a relationship with a client through work and you build trust and you get to know the business. And that's probably like the number one takeaway from being an in-house lawyer is that the more you know the business and you understand what they're building, what they're selling, why they're selling it, where they can take risks and where they can't, then the better in-house lawyer you will be.

Lauren: All right, so I want to tie it all together between your own career path and also Legal Mentor Network. So talking to a lot of our alums, they talk about how they love their in-house role, right? And love being close to the business and working directly with business people every day. But the one thing that they often say they miss about Big Law is something you touched on too, which is just that camaraderie and these teams of people supporting each other. So for our listeners who are earlier career in-house lawyers, what advice would you give them about cultivating that network of mentors and contacts when they've made the jump in-house pretty early?

Chrystal: Yeah, I think that can be hard. I think sometimes people who start off in-house may feel like they are lacking what their friends or colleagues in Big Law have. And I think that hopefully the right in-house job has a sense of camaraderie and mentorship as well. But in general, I would encourage all young attorneys to be forming networks. There are so many networks. Obviously, you can join the Legal Mentor Network. We would love to have you come and check us out. But you can also find networks through your law school, through your town or city, through your practice area. Some of the networks that I like the best are definitely the Fordham Alumni, Reed Smith Alumni. The New York Bar Association has great events and those can be made smaller or focused. The New York Bar Association has focused networking opportunities depending on your practice area, like one for litigation, one for IP, and even dig down into your specialty too. Like if you're a privacy attorney, there's a whole bunch of networking for privacy attorneys. Also, for in-house attorneys, I'm a big fan of ACC, which is the Association of Corporate Counsel. They put on great events locally and nationwide.

Lauren: That's great advice, growing your network through membership and service to other organizations like the Mentor Network. All right, and I have to let you go, but sort of my last question for you, because you've had such a busy career and balancing that with your life, but also balancing that with founding a nonprofit that's helping so many people, what advice would you give to someone who has a passion like you did and is struggling to make time to pursue it?

Chrystal: Yeah, I think that the Legal Mentor Network as a passion project for me works because it is valuable to my career as well. So it's an easy segue. I meet people that I work with. I bring people that I work with to the Legal Mentor Network and it very much aligns with the work that I'm doing day to day that I get paid for. But I think that there's always time for passion projects and when I meet people and they look at my resume, it's a Legal Mentor Network that always stands out, the job that I don't get paid for. So I would say that anything that you're interested in, if it's growing a mentoring community locally or if it's something in your neighborhood or community that you want to grow, I would say go for it, because I think that's what makes you happy and also what makes you stand out. And that would be advice to law students as well. I know it can be hard to interview when your resume looks like everyone else's. So if you have something on there that you're passionate about, it helps you to stand out.

Lauren: Well, thank you. That is great advice. And I love that point that it's almost a mindset shift. Like instead of seeing it as something that's taking away from your time, it's something that's like recharging you and also like kind of showing the world your key strengths, which in your case obviously has been this amazing network that you've built professionally.

Chrystal: Yeah, thank you. And it's so funny because your network is more than the people you work with. It's the guy that you see on the soccer field every weekend.

Lauren: Yes.

Chrystal: Yeah, it's your neighbors, it's your friends. So I think that following your passion projects to grow your network is a natural fit.

Lauren: Well, Chrystal, thank you so much. We could continue this conversation, but I think that that's a great place to stop. Once again, congratulations on the new role that you're taking on. We're looking forward to keeping in touch with you. And thank you so much to our listeners for joining us for this episode of Career Footprints Podcast. We hope to see you on a future episode. Thanks so much.

Chrystal: Thanks for having me.

Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith Production. Our producer is Shannon Ryan. 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 alum 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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