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What is authenticity? (It's gonna be fine? I'm an Adult Woman?)

40m 19s

What is authenticity? (It's gonna be fine? I'm an Adult Woman?)

In this episode of Bar Review, hosts Carrie and Anika explore the complex concept of authenticity within law firm and corporate culture. They identify a fundamental tension: while organizations demand "authenticity," they often define it within narrow, productive molds that stifle true self-expression. Anika critiques this as a forced performance, where individuals must "color within the lines" of corporate expectations, leading to self-deception and exhaustion. Carrie counters that authentic relationships and effective teamwork require showing up fully, including vulnerabilities like anxiety, especially in high-stress, human-centered legal work like criminal defense. However, she acknowledges the practical need to balance this with professional image to protect clients and careers. The hosts reveal a key difference: Anika consciously withholds certain aspects of herself (e.g., personal drama) from work, seeing it as a matter of appropriateness and boundaries, while Carrie struggles to compartmentalize and believes sharing struggles like anxiety can enhance team performance. They agree that true authenticity requires safe environments that allow for "coloring outside the lines" and that professional presentation can be adapted without sacrificing core identity. Ultimately, the discussion underscores the challenge of navigating authenticity in a political, image-driven profession, advocating for spaces where individuals can bring the parts of themselves needed to do their best work without fear of judgment or career sabotage.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to Bar Review, a space where we talk honestly about life and the legal profession. I'm Carrie, and I'm Anika. Welcome to the conversation. Just a quick note before we get started, we are not your lawyers, and this is not legal advice. - And to the extent either of us are employed by the time this airs, this is where we share our personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else, especially those kind enough to employ us. - And one more time for the people in the back? - We are not your lawyers. This is not legal advice. Thank you for listening. (upbeat music) - All right, you're gonna speak like an adult, and this is next to you. And so, hello, my name is Carrie. I'm an adult woman. - I'm talking to adult women. - I'm just an adult woman. - Okay. That's not how we're starting this back. (laughing) Although it does kind of play in. All right. - So, adult women, Anika. - Don't say that. It's annoying. (laughing) - You're annoying. - And you do that. - Did you rent a marathon this weekend? - I did, but that's not the point where we're starting. I'm leading you into this. Let me lead you into the episode. (laughing) - All right, I'm listening. I'm ready to be led. - You're ready to be introduced to this week's episode? - Okay. So, maybe I am moving. (laughing) Remember, yes, when you told me you worked with someone who's difficult to manage. (laughing) You are difficult. - Of course I'm difficult to manage. (laughing) - Speaking of this. (laughing) I want to talk this week about one of the big buzzwords in all of corporate culture, especially in law firm culture. And that's the word authenticity. - Oh. - Yeah, so you just groaned. Tell me where that groan comes from. What does the word authenticity invoke in you? - Invokes to diametrically opposite things. Specifically in the corporate culture buzzword. - Invokes to me, whether it's fair or not, that regardless of my actual feelings of safety, and regardless of what I would comfortably at my pace choose to be and reveal about myself in an organic fashion, I must do so. And now we must, I do so. I must do so in a way that conforms to that same corporate culture. I must do so in a way that is productive. I must do so in a way that is by definition impossible to actually be myself to such a level that I then have to convince myself that this version of me that is quote unquote being authentic within my corporate culture where they will provide me mel and balls as a reward. Like that is my authentic self. And you can convince yourself of that in a really, really fucked up way. You can convince yourself that who you are when you show up to your corporate spaces. In the mold that is defined for you to fill, you can therefore be yourself. Except you've lost me once you've defined the mold and here to fill. - Right, so you can color anywhere on the page as long as it's within the lines. - Yeah, but we've provided you and have had meetings about that you are an invited into the room to participate in and also by the way, you must color within the lines. You can't choose to not color. You must color. You have no choice but to be your quote unquote authentic self. But I said it evokes two diametrically opposite things to me. So what it also evokes to me simultaneously is what I think you and I actually, organically, build. When you build a real relationship, when you build a real friendship, when you build a real teammate shit, you do have no choice but to fully show up and to hold the other person accountable to fully show up or it doesn't work. There's no way to do this at 2AM. Who you are at 2AM has to actually be who you are when you are alone in your house and sweatpants. If you're gonna achieve the thing, that's how creative project works to me. And when you find that, it's beautiful. So I think you touched on something that is unique to jobs that don't fit within boundaries. So as we've talked about, this is not a nine to five job for better or worse. You are at work sometimes at 2 in the morning and there's simply no way to keep up some polished version of you on our 65 of your 80 hour week at 2 in the morning. So you have to be who you're going to be at 2AM at all points of this legal career. I hopefully you're more well-rested than the U.S. 2AM at the other points, but your fundamental personality here, I think you just have to show up as who you are or the RUZ is gonna come up really quick in this profession. - Well, in the first column, I do think that people convince themselves that they are that first version of their authentic selves 'cause that's what feels comfortable. And you're invited into that space. The other one you're not invited into. I'm a, as they like to say, narrow, spicy. I have major anxiety. I have major social anxiety. I have major imposter syndrome. I have major stress that I put on myself before I breathe through that and show up to the thing I'm doing. And you don't make it safe for me to go through that process. You will miss the creative output at the end of that process. If you truly make it safe for me to go through that creative process, I'm gonna blow it out of the water. You just gotta give me the time and space to do it. And we've talked about this before, that when you're building a team, it is unwise to build a team of soldiers that all have the same skill. The area of law that you and I practice in is very human. It requires sitting down with somebody mostly at their own kitchen table and talking to them about deep damage, deep pain. Any person who can sit with someone in their damage and in their pain and meet them there, in a way that is necessary to the job that we're then going to do. And I do think that that is one of the values that I bring to a team. But if that's not included in the coloring book and their downsides to that value too, like sometimes I cry it to An. If you judge me for it, I'm just gonna be embarrassed that I cried, but then I write the brief and the briefs damn good. Because I felt all the things I need to feel before I have put it into the language of the law that needs to follow logical argument. But there's a lot of that process that's not logical and it really is a space for human. And not everybody makes space for the human, not only in their teams that they're building, not only in the environments of the work culture that they're building, but also not in themselves. I have spent a significant period of my life convincing myself that those aspects of me are bad. And when you try to make those things go away, first of all, they don't. They don't go away, that's not a tool. Shout out to my incredible therapist. That's not a tool. That's not how you function. You don't just pretend that all the things that are a part of you just don't need to be there. But I don't know, you make it safe for me. I'll make it safe for you. We're gonna make magic together. That is what I think authenticity can also be. But that authenticity has to be a true authenticity. Something that does make space for coloring outside of the line. Something that's not always polished. I mean, you and I have set shit on fire, but you're just acting as like, okay, Carrie needs to do this. At no point did I feel judged? Did I enjoy the pizza and drinks? We got afterwards very much so. I gotta do weird shit sometimes. The coloring book does not work for me. I was not consulted in the creation of the coloring book. It's somebody else's picture that somebody else thought was cool. That somebody else has handed to me and then handed me a certain number of crayons. And sometimes I like to crack those crayons in half and combine them together and melt them into a weird fucking pile and make a tie-dye crayon and see what happens. (laughs) What was on the side of that? I don't even know. Exactly though. If you convince people that they're not allowed to be who they actually are, you will succeed. People buy into an image, so to speak, a polished image. I do think practicing in the law is a world of image and that carries weight. And especially as women in the law, there is power to the image you project. With I go to court, I always wear heels. I almost always wear a skirt or a dress. Part of that is a confidence thing. It's part of the armor that you put on before you go into court. But also part of it is an image projection. and knowing that there are sometimes judges who think women should be in heels, whose hair should be down and styled rather than up in a court hearing, who should have makeup on even if they don't wear it all the time. And as much as it's difficult to conform to some of those, the risk is that we're representing a client. And the client will bear the harm of that choice. So that's the tension to me in authenticity. There lies the rub. There's the issue. And both with a client but also with your own career, because this is a political profession, too. Law firms are political. You have to figure out a way to show up both as yourself in a way that rings authentic in quotes, because that's what people expect out of you in this culture they've created is this culture of quote unquote authenticity. But at the same time, you have to still be polished and put together enough and meeting enough external expectations that maybe don't align with your 100% authentic self, or else you risk sabotaging or harming a career or a client or some other metric. And so that's what I don't quite know what the answer is to balance in authenticity. You and I are in different places in our careers, too. I think I started conforming in law school. I convinced myself that being anything other than what a lawyer is supposed to look like as defined by somebody else was immature. It was not the life I was building. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that who I actually am and how I choose to express myself. It was not compatible with the work I wanted to do. Don't get me wrong, I might be sabotaging my career right now. But the other side of that coin is it's up to somebody else to decide that my ideas and my contributions are not valued because I'm in a sweatshirt or because I'm in converse sneakers or because I cried at 2am or insert literally anything here where if you create the environment where it's possible to sabotage your career, I mean I'm really good at that. You give me that rope, I will hang myself with it. Whereas, what if we just collectively realize that that's not working? And that means that those of us who entered this profession because there was something we deeply want to change about the way that the world works. And there is something that we deeply want to change about internal structures. But if we stopped adopting the structure and thinking within that structure about how to break that structure, why is that not on the table just as much as the fact that, yeah, if I show up in court in converse, I'm not going to win my case. It seems like you adopted a projection of what a lawyer should be and you forced yourself into that square peg in a round hole situation that never felt honest to you. I have curly hair. I have almost never gone to court without straighting my hair. I always wear earrings. I always wear a necklace. I always wear a suit jacket. Whatever that means. I am also always in heels because I'm a 5 foot 2 woman. But I am wearing a 2am as you have seen looks nothing like that. Right. But your 2am is never going to match a court and that's just a function of reality. But something that is interesting though to me is that it seems you were doing things just to fit the image and they never ring true to you. Whereas I've adapted things that both fit the image and ring true to me. So I'm working within bounds and I'm consciously making a choice to fit a certain image. But I'm choosing the pieces that fit that image that also fit me. That's beautiful. I think that's a distinction and the way you show up authentically. I think it's a huge distinction. I also think one is a lot less exhausting than the other. Yeah. I have spent 10 years building a life that did not account for my own needs and wants. That's a problem. It's a problem. And not only that, I've spent the past 10 years living a life where I so deeply lost track of the fact that I have needs and wants and didn't look up because there was a greater purpose that I was serving. Right. I was living out a different mission for my client, for the whatever insert greater good here. And then I still live by by the way. That might be my need to serve that greater good. But I have blocked out so deeply for so long the fact that I have needs and wants that I don't even have a vocabulary to talk about to myself with a journal about what I needed and want. Like it's fucking pathological. Like how deeply I just tuned out every part of my intuition and got so yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I'm not saying that quote unquote, who I am needs to be a swather and needs to be in conversation to define who we are as people by the clothes that we're wearing or the makeup we're wearing. But it's indicative on some level of relearning that vocabulary, right? If I'm not even getting dressed in the morning, the way that shows the world how I see myself on a daily basis, I just wear the same three navy blue, black, gray, lawyer colors in some variety of order, some uniform. Over time you can get lost in that. You can forget that that's not who you are. You can forget that's not who you authentically are. That's interesting because when I wake up and put on my lawyer outfit, it feels like me. I look in the mirror and I see who I want to see and it feels like it's an accurate reflection of who I am. I could never show up as my true self all the time. I curse way too much for a professional setting, probably when I'm my true self. There has to be some level of polish. When you and I are working together, do you ever feel like you are withholding cursing? Do you even notice when you curse when you and I are really hammering it out? No. I think there's this point, like there's levels to the authenticity. I'm not as authentic with every single coworker in my office as I am with you. And I think that's actually how it should be. There are levels to authenticity. Wait, levels. When you are talking about levels, is it possible that some of that is about the safety that's created by the environment? I think unsafe is not the word I would use. It would say it's just inappropriate. There's just a time and place for certain things. That's also not who you are. That actually is you. I've never seen you being appropriate. And I have seen you in every possible way. It's like you can see another human person. You've never been inappropriate. It just does feel like there is just certain behavior that doesn't belong in certain settings. I also do just think that's the way it should be. Why? I'm just not close to everyone. That's okay. Not everyone deserves to get that close look at me. Not everyone deserves to know me at that intimate level. And so I don't need to be that intimate, fully honest, self with them because that's just not the role that I play in their life. I could walk into my office and be exactly who I am and with no filter and not worry about polished speech or anything and not care and truly and not sabotage your career. Yes, I believe that. I think I could show up as 100% who I am and it would be fine and I would not sabotage anything and nothing negative would happen. But I don't because that space isn't where that me belongs. We're just not that close of friends. They don't deserve that side of me. You are comfortable? Yeah. You just choose to withhold? Yes. Interesting. That is a fundamental difference. I just actively choose not to because that isn't where I want to be that person. I think that that is a fundamental difference. My choice is to fully give myself in every possible aspect just away. I would love to just be a human all of the time. That is overwhelming to people. I'm a lot. Great. So this is an interesting point. Let's say I was still dating, whatever. I'm not married and I'm going on all these dates and it's getting a little messy and there's all this drama. I could walk into my office and with a colleague or a mentor and be that authentic self and tell those stories. I wouldn't feel uncomfortable being that but that is not the side of me that that space deserves. I don't want to be that open. I actively am choosing to to not be that open with a certain subset of people, whereas I will be texting my best friend, nonstop about those interactions. I don't want to go into this space and be 100% there. I wanna be 90% there, but I wanna have the ability to actively choose the 10%, I'm not gonna share because those people just aren't privy to that side of me. If somebody's not like you, and somebody does wanna show up with 100%, does it throw you? Does it feel inappropriate when somebody just doesn't withhold their 10%, I find it really difficult to withhold my 10%, I'm gonna say that this is a true fundamental difference, and I'm not alone. And either my entire person, or you are getting very fractured pieces of me, and I have not built the muscles in between. You are good at that. You have boundaries. You have the ability to say this is my 10%, my 10% that I would withhold from people, what I'm withholding is crushing anxiety. What I'm withholding is the fact that I almost didn't get up and come to work today because my anxiety tried to convince me that instead I should stay home and organize my closet, and that that was the most important thing to do, even though I have court. And probably because I have court, the most stressed out you can make me the more court is all that you make flow through me, the more adrenaline you make flow through me, you will shut me down. And therefore, that 10% that I'm asked by the appropriate police to keep to myself is also simultaneously that if you're running a business and you're running a team, you probably should, and I would argue, need to know about me in order to get my best work out of me. Whereas I actually don't think you need to tell people about your date on Friday night to get your best work out of you. Like I think you're good. Yeah, you can show up to work and do your job at its fullest, whether or not you have those conversations. So maybe that's the distinction, is creating a space at work where you can be the full self that you need to do the best work. And that might not be sharing all of you, but it's sharing the pieces of you that you need to have present in that space in order to do your best work. I have anxiety, I have gone to therapy for anxiety, and it would make my anxiety worse to walk into a room and admit that I'm anxious about something. So that is not something that I'm ever going to do except with very few people. But if someone came to me and was like, I'm super fucking anxious right now about whatever's coming up. - Cripplingly. - Yes, incredibly anxious. I would be like, yeah, I get anxiety too. Let's talk this out. How do we strategize? How do you get through that? - I'm not judging anyone for being that level of anxious, or being whatever they need to be in that moment. But at the same time, I am not going to open that door on my own end. I will validate to someone that this is normal and people experience this in this career. But I'm not necessarily waving the flag myself, but in the way that I do need to show up to work, especially on criminal defense work, is a recognition that art client is a human and a human with a life and family and people that care about them and that our responsibility as their attorney is not just to defend them, but to defend the community that they're a part of and the ripple effect that their absence will make and that weight is heavy to me. And I think about it constantly. I will lay awake at night thinking about their families and what will be impacted if I don't, quote, do my job well enough. And so I do need to be in a space where I can say that out loud and have some engagement with the people I'm working with about this is hard and this is heavy in order to do my best work. - Can we agree that one, we have different needs? - Yeah. - And two, probably everybody, the more people we would include in this conversation, we would just find out there's just a myriad of needs. - Yeah, it's complicated. - Human beings are complicated. I also just want to acknowledge you and I are both white. And I will never fully understand the level of what it feels like to stand in a courtroom and be judged for the thing that the United States government is telling you that you did by a group of people that look nothing, fucking like me, have not had the experiences that I've had. It is meant to be anxiety and do things. It is meant to make clear what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. It is literally meant to impose retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, that is what the design of the situation is. Spaces can be designed differently. - The law is designed to make people feel like outsiders. The first time I walked into a courtroom, I didn't know you were supposed to stand when the judge came in, but all of a sudden on an unspoken command, the whole room stands up and then you're looking around, what did I miss? Where's the instruction, ma'am, Flit? And so now I make a point to take this item before we go in to be like, this is how this is going to function, which actually is a product of my own anxiety. I am anxious about the mechanics of rooms and if I'm gonna make a misstep, that's something I need is an understanding of how the mechanics work. Spaces get designed by the people that are designing them. Spaces are designed to me certain goals. And if the goal is to create a team that comes forward with their best work and works the best together, it requires the ability to make space for what each individual person needs on your team to fully show up to do their best work. That's gonna be messy, that's gonna look different in different moments, that's gonna require something of every member on the team that's gonna require something of the leader. Quite frankly, the only thing going through my head right now is that there is no excuse for whoever was leading in guiding you to not make sure that you were equipped with the tool to know that you're supposed to stand for the judge. That's a failure of mentorship, supervision, training and teaching and that requires a conversation on the back end. Hey, here's a tool we missed. I think it was a law school observation thing, but it would have been super easy to put a PDF handout on the email with tips and tricks for your first time in court. You'll have to go through security, you can't bring in prohibited items, you'll have to stand the judge will tell you and to sit where should you sit in the courtroom to make that space a little bit more accessible. But I think it comes down to especially on showing up to work and showing up on teams because even though loyalty ring is a very solo career and I think a lot of people go into being a lawyer within a version for the group project. I also think there's a self-selecting group of us that all the way to just did the group project ourselves. I just shared it with the group on the back end. And that self-selecting group goes to law school. But at the end of the day though, I think loyalty ring is a team sport. Agreed. But we are brought up and inserted into this space of loyalty ring that treats it like it's a solo activity in a lot of ways and no one has ever taught skills for how to work on a team and how to balance these counterpoints. But at the same time, we have a lot of conversation about showing up as our authentic self. How many law firms use that as a marketing tool or use that as a recruiting tool? We are, we bring our full selves to work. We're authentic. We want to be who you are. We want diversity on our teams. But it seems to me like the execution of that is missing because it is a very deeply human endeavor and you can't separate the humanity. You can't just have these robots. The way that this entire industry is structured. It's welcome to our space. You are so lucky to be here. Here's our goal. Here's our expectations. You will now achieve these. Thank you very much. Also, your review will be people who are in a position of power to you who have been here longer than you, who typically assign you work, telling you what you can do better to better achieve the needs of the space. But what is wildly missing and would take 30 whole more seconds and result in better work, which would probably result in making more money and a half your clients, referrals, et cetera, and so forth, is what if there was a 360 review process? Were you truly had the space to say, here's what's not working for me? And it might be somebody else's dream, by the way. What's not working for me is working really well for somebody else on the team. But here's what I need. Yeah, and I'm fully on board with this culture you've created, with the space you've created. I want to be a part of this. I was excited to get that job offer. I want to be a part of this space, but I do need something back, something a little different. I'm not even something back, but something adjusted in order to thrive in this space. And that actually is the root of every conversation we've had so far. It's the root of. boundaries. It's the root of work-life balance. It's the root of making the bill of lour something that you don't hate. Finding a way to show up in the space as you, which is messy and in a way that does meet your needs, which maybe isn't in the cookie cutter way that has been prescribed. So having that ability to give that feedback to say, this is the little bit of difference that I would need to make a difference. And feel like you can honestly give that feedback and have it be received well and then have changes be made according to said feedback. I think is a key. That would solve all of the problems. I would look like my only edit maybe to what you just said is it's even more in order to achieve the goals on your fucking mission statement that you handed me. This is what I need. I just need this. I need a red wagon. You know, I need a red wagon. And to really be met with, okay, I trust you. We hired you for a reason. You bring value to the table. We want you on this team. So if you need a red wagon. Yeah, here's your red wagon. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm picking ridiculous for a reason because when you are struggling, it is so easy to convince yourself the thing that is making you struggle is your own fucking problem. And you are ridiculous for having it. And if you say it out loud, you will to use your words, sabotage your career, sabotage your place on the team. That to me is the definition of not feeling safe, where if I can't tell you what I need to not have crippling anxiety and to not deeply desire to get hit by a bus while I'm walking to work, then you are getting 40% of what I can give you. And whoa, if you saw what 100% would be. And I think that what blows my mind is that to make it not ridiculous, to make it really tangible, I think that asks that all of us would make are not big. No. Because really the asks that we would make is what we all spend hours in CLEs and workshops and small groups talking about boundaries. Because that really is basically the same thing. Safety should declare a boundary because I've sat in a table with women where the whole topic is how am I going to manage picking up my kids at 430. And if you just have the ability to say, hey, I need to log out every day from 430 to 6. Catch you at other hours, I'll still get the work done, but this is what I need. And you got the whole the sign off and the rubber stamp, and that's great. That would change your experience. Because instead of feeling like you're clawing out the space of boundaries, it's being understood that you just need this one thing to give your full self. I'd even seen LinkedIn posts of women who were at companies that gave them real maternity leaves. They had a ramp up. When they got back, they had a ramp down when they were leaving. They had five months of fully paid leave. They had healthcare bonuses or perks, resources that supported them. And their public declarations on the back end are undying loyalty to this company that gave them what they needed to succeed in this phase of life. It's at the end of the day bad business. Because people are asking for such little things to give you then on the back end undying loyalty. And there's a whole other TED Talk about whether or not we should be doing that. But that is the reality, is that I think loyalty and what I mean in loyalty is giving really good work, is recruiting good people, is showing up and marketing really well about your organization. That energy is one by giving really small things. And it seems like things that are so easily on the table that fit within all of these promises of authenticity and work-life balance and boundaries in these buzzwords that we like to throw around. The ad for that is I find it more injurious when people say the right things, when you do show up and set your boundaries. But then their behavior consistently shows you that you actually are not being heard. Authenticity goes to ways. I will show up authentically in your space or as authentically as whatever authentic work me is. I will show up as that how I choose to be. But I also do want the honesty and authenticity back. Just be blunt with me. I do just think there needs to be that direct communication about expectations and about what we can give and what we can't and where we're maybe willing to flex and where we're maybe willing not to. And that does mean that on the employer side they have to know those boundaries too. Boundaries aren't just for employees. There has to be a set for that employer to have this is what we can accommodate. These are our spectrums that we're willing to flex on so that they can tell an employee, okay you're asking for C. We can give you to B but we can't go all the way to C. For even on a smaller level, for example, if you are a person that does not work well in the last minutes, your brain doesn't work as well in the last minutes as it does, but there's just a little bit more time. You don't do fire drills well. And you've made the effort to say that if the response then is just okay, I hear you, but then there's just never an acknowledgement when you're in the fire drill, which probably is going to be unavoidable of I know this isn't how I get your best work. I wish it were different, but it's not. This is the constraints. This is what we're dealing with. But that acknowledgement goes huge. Yeah, an acknowledgement that I heard you. I heard you, I am not putting you in your ideal condition, so I'm not expecting your ideal work. Or I am. And I recognize that's unfair, but that's the situation. And I don't like it either. Yeah, just that honesty about it. Just the honesty about it. If you show up as you and you don't bullshit me, you will have my undying loyalty. And if I talk to you about my narrow spiciness and then you go off to lunch with a group of people and talk shit about it, I just won't talk to you about the shit I need anymore. And now, again, you're paying me my salary or my equity, but you're getting 40% of what I can do for you and you don't even know it. Because you like talking shit. Because diversity does make a workplace better. It does increase profits. It is good for business, but it has to be embraced in all sides of it. And I think that we do a really good job about talking about talking about not actually bringing to reality, but talking about diversity of race and gender and sexual identity. But what I don't think we talk about or implement well is that diversity of human in the legal profession. Because you can be any of these identities you want as long as you show up as the picture perfect human once you're there. Based on the coloring book that we handed to at your orientation, this is what we have decided to say, "Catch your perfect human. Please come to work and look like this." Okay? Can I have a red wagon? No. All right, so that was our authenticity episode. All right, all right. Take two. We made a podcast. You did make a podcast. Honestly, like listening, being able to listen to it on Spotify is kind of a mind-trip when we first launched our episode and I could find it on a legitimate source of media. It's like, "Oh, this is a real thing." It is also available anywhere else you get your podcast and on our website, which is barreviewlcc.com. Clearly we're still figuring out marketing. Yeah, we'll get there. I'm really proud of it. This was fun. Me too. I came out better than I expected. A lot better. A lot better. We can do better. We can definitely do better. Yeah, we can acquire better microphones. We can speak into the ones we have. But we've got some substantial listeners, which thank you so much, substantial listeners. Thanks for helping us prove this concept out. We got some questions too. Thank you for your questions. If you have questions or things that you want answered, you should send that to our email. [email protected]. Also, if you want us to come talk to your law school, we'll do that. We've now done that. We have now done that. Well, this was fun. We made a podcast. We did. What do you think? I'm a fan. I'm a fan. We did okay. We did. So, what do you think season two? I think we should give it a go. Let's give it a go. Give it the old college try. What do you think? Spring break. Think spring break. Let's give ourselves the holidays. A couple of months to figure out what we're doing next. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Let us know if you're listening or if you've got questions or if you miss us, you can send us an email and [email protected]. Otherwise, we'll see you in spring break. Cheers. That works for me. Thanks for joining the conversation. You can find BarReview wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe and share. You want to keep the conversation going. Follow us on social at BarReview LLC. Onica will see you there and she'll tell me all about it. Got a question you want us to tackle in a future episode? Send it our way. We try to read every email. And just a reminder, we are not your lawyer. This is not legal advice and these opinions are just our own. Cheers.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Authenticity in corporate and law firm culture is a buzzword that creates tension between forced conformity and genuine self-expression.
  2. The hosts distinguish between "coloring within the lines" (performative authenticity) and true authenticity that allows for vulnerability and creative freedom.
  3. In legal work, especially criminal defense, showing up authentically is crucial for connecting with clients and teams, but it must be balanced with professional image and client interests.
  4. Different levels of authenticity exist based on relationships and safety; withholding certain personal aspects can be a conscious choice, not inauthenticity.
  5. The hosts disagree on whether full transparency (including anxiety) is necessary for optimal work performance, with one advocating for selective disclosure and the other for complete openness.
  6. The conversation highlights the exhaustion of conforming to external expectations versus the empowerment of adapting professional presentation in a way that feels true to oneself.

Summary:

In this episode of Bar Review, hosts Carrie and Anika explore the complex concept of authenticity within law firm and corporate culture. They identify a fundamental tension: while organizations demand "authenticity," they often define it within narrow, productive molds that stifle true self-expression. Anika critiques this as a forced performance, where individuals must "color within the lines" of corporate expectations, leading to self-deception and exhaustion.

Carrie counters that authentic relationships and effective teamwork require showing up fully, including vulnerabilities like anxiety, especially in high-stress, human-centered legal work like criminal defense. However, she acknowledges the practical need to balance this with professional image to protect clients and careers. , personal drama) from work, seeing it as a matter of appropriateness and boundaries, while Carrie struggles to compartmentalize and believes sharing struggles like anxiety can enhance team performance.

They agree that true authenticity requires safe environments that allow for "coloring outside the lines" and that professional presentation can be adapted without sacrificing core identity. Ultimately, the discussion underscores the challenge of navigating authenticity in a political, image-driven profession, advocating for spaces where individuals can bring the parts of themselves needed to do their best work without fear of judgment or career sabotage.

FAQs

The main topic is the concept of authenticity in corporate and law firm culture, exploring the tension between being true to oneself and meeting professional expectations.

No, the hosts explicitly state that they are not the listener's lawyers and that this is not legal advice.

They describe it as a buzzword that often pressures individuals to conform to a defined mold, rather than allowing genuine self-expression, which can feel contradictory and exhausting.

One host consciously withholds parts of herself (e.g., anxiety) to maintain boundaries, while the other feels compelled to share her full self to do her best work, viewing withholding as a loss of authenticity.

She wears them as armor for confidence and to project an image that meets external expectations, such as judges' preferences, to avoid harming her client's case.

It suggests finding a balance by adapting professional expectations in ways that still feel true to oneself, while recognizing that not every space requires full vulnerability.

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