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Sonia Lakhany never really wanted the traditional attorney lifestyle. Eventually, she stopped trying to make herself fit into it.

After four jobs in her first four years of practice, Sonia left firm life and began building a trademark practice around something she valued from the beginning: autonomy.

Today, she has built not only a successful trademark practice but Formal Education, where she teaches other attorneys how to develop trademark practices of their own.

Sonia joins Niraj Chhabra to discuss how she built a career that allows her to work from virtually anywhere, why she deliberately chose not to keep scaling her law firm simply because she could, personal branding, networking, and how teaching other attorneys unexpectedly became a second business.

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BigLaw is making more money than ever, but the traditional career path inside it is becoming much less predictable.

Joe Patrice, senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like a Lawyer, joins Niraj Chhabra to take a broader look at how the legal profession is changing and what those shifts could mean for attorneys building their careers today.

They discuss the rise of non-equity partnership, an increasingly aggressive lateral market, changing relationships between firms and clients, and why developing a portable book of business has become more complicated. Joe also shares his perspective on AI, including why its biggest long-term impact may not simply be replacing work, but changing how the profession trains its next generation of lawyers.

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What if rainmaking isn’t something attorneys are born knowing how to do?

Elise Holtzman, founder and CEO of The Lawyer’s Edge, joins Niraj to discuss why business development is a learnable skill, how introverts can build business without changing who they are, and why law firms should teach attorneys about leadership, client development and firm economics much earlier in their careers.