Episode 003: Legal Drama 1 – Getting to Know Amanda & Lawyer Stuff

On this episode, I chat with Amanda Montgomery about the legal profession, and we kick off our series on legal drama in pop culture.

Check out the episode and the show notes.

Read the Transcript

Braden: (00:00)
Hello and welcome to episode three of the unfuck your biz podcast. I'm your host, Brayden, and today I am with my good friend Amanda. Hi Amanda. Hi. How's it going? Thank you for having me. Yeah, super excited to hopefully the audio is good for all of you. Amanda just went and got her snowball microphone. So we are all set up and profesh and this shit. I invested, I invested for Brayden and I love it. Make sure that you save that receipt for your tax deductions. Okay. Thank you for reminding me. You're welcome. All right, so the idea of this podcast episode is, well, this podcast episode series I should say is pretty straight forward. Amanda is another fellow small business attorney in Dallas, Texas. So we do a lot of the same types of things or the same types of clients. Um, you guys are gonna like Amanda though.

Braden: (00:55)
She's super legit, used to work at a law firm, knows her shit, and also is just much more up to date on trending areas of the law than I am. So I thought it would be fun if I had her on the podcast every now and again to talk about some super hot scalding tea and legal legal drama in pop culture. So that's what we're doing. Doesn't that sound fun? Okay. So this episode is going to be relatively short. We're going to talk about some silly stuff at the end, but first we're just going to get some background and information. I feel like I'm doing some reconnaissance here that sounded way more serious than I meant for it to have some background and information on Amanda. But you'll get to know Amanda. And then my goal is, uh, every like 10 episodes or so, we're going to do these podcasts episodes on trending legal topics. So if you all have any that you think would be interesting to hear a legal take on from Amanda and I, you can send articles to us through Instagram DM, Amanda [inaudible]. What's your Instagram? A Montgomery lawyer. Beautiful Montgomery. Perfect. So a Montgomery lawyer, and I'll put that in the show notes, but let's just get started. Amanda, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about your background, where you're from, your hopes, dreams and ambitions and all of the important information we need to know about you?

Amanda: (02:21)
Uh, I'm, I'm just a small town girl. Um, I, we're, we're the same. We both were raised in Indiana, um, which I feel like we just need to podcast just about that. But anyway, I'm a, I own my own law practice, but my background has been commercial litigation for the past three or four years. Um, before that I did medical malpractice defense, which is still litigation. Um, I've started doing transactional work about five years ago, which is contracts, drafting, negotiating, all of that, which is very different from litigation, which is running to court, handling discovery, arguing with the other side, taking depositions, all of those things. So I feel like I've seen a lot of the law. I've seen how it all seems to work. Um, so that's a horrible summary of myself.

Braden: (03:17)
That's fine. I feel like it was a quick synopsis. I never knew that you did mend Melba fence or maybe I didn't know and I just forgot cause that's what I did all my internships in law school.

Amanda: (03:26)
Yeah, it's heavy. Um, I just represented typically yen baby doctors. It'd be and, and so those were really tough cases and I'm glad I don't do them now cause I'm a parent. [inaudible]

Braden: (03:37)
yes, makes sense. Yeah. I interned at a law firm that did a lot of medical malpractice defense here in San Diego. Some very serious scary cases. Let's talk a little bit about different areas of the law because I think this'll be a good primer. And my idea is, is any time someone is like, well, what's the difference between what you do? And while the litigation attorney does, I can send this back to this five minute chat we're going to have, and I'm doing the same type of episode. Um, this is more for the audience listening on financial professionals. So you guys can get a sense of what all of us do and when you need to hire each one of us. So Amanda, you did litigation for a while, right?

Amanda: (04:18)
Yes, I did for geez, like almost 10 years.

Braden: (04:22)
Okay. So I, the way I usually explain it is like when you want to Sue someone, like you go talk to a litigation attorney and transactional attorneys are basically all the other stuff.

Amanda: (04:34)
Yeah. If you want a we'll go to a transactional attorney if you want a contract drafted. Yeah, don't go to a litigator because they're really not going to be all that concerned about your contract. They're just, I mean they'll talk to you about some problem areas and where you could probably end up in court but they don't really have the mindset for revising drafts and handling that part of it. Um, yeah it's, it's a different area completely but they still both require like such an eye for detail. I think that's like one of the biggest skills you develop as an attorney

Braden: (05:07)
when a lot of people view litigation attorneys, they think of their favorite legal drama and all the hot scenes they're having in court. Can you give a sense of what the actual day to day is like for an, for most attorneys mostly

Amanda: (05:21)
that was like 0.0001% of the job. Um, you rarely make it to trial. I've only been, I only worked like a handful of trials. Um, and that was just luck. Honestly. I think that for the most part they'd get results beforehand and beforehand is just months and months and months of paper or you know, electronically, just tons of documents that you're shifting through. It's getting into fights about handing over certain records and documents is really sometimes very tedious and it will kill your vision because you will be reading so much. I'm reading emails, you know, just all kinds of really like kind of Dole content. It's not that exciting. It can be exciting, um, depending on the kind of work you do. But if it's not for someone that really wants to show off in the courtroom and like win over juries, I think if you love the idea of that, maybe go to a DA's office and, and start your legal career there because I, those people get to go to court. I'm all the time. Uh, but if you do regular like civil litigation, I think you're going to be sitting in a room in an office pod for 12 hours a day, just reading over documents and trying to draft up a brief or emotion. Um, it's, there's not a lot of glamour to it.

Braden: (06:43)
Yeah. My, so my husband, everyone is a district attorney and he's in court probably once a week. So I'm actually want to have him on the podcast on time just to talk about day in the life of Mr. Leonard Tran, I think you would enjoy, yeah, it would be interesting. I'll do like a question collection ahead of time. But I always thought it was interesting because most of my friends were surprised that I went into transactional law because I'm so chatty and they're like, Oh, I picture you in a courtroom. And then I'm like, okay, well that's not actually what the job is. As a transactional lawyer I get had meetings with clients every day and talk to them and educate them and that's

Amanda: (07:20)
part of the job. Definitely. I think so. Do you agree? Yeah, no I really liked that. My practice is a lot of just educating, explaining I'm going through things that clients maybe don't know to ask or didn't realize or that big of a deal. I really like making them feel more confident or at least I hope that's what I'm doing. I've by explaining these like key provisions to them. I think it's like, it feels good to me to do that.

Braden: (07:50)
Okay. My next question is, are you wearing your best like a hotel employee couture at the office?

Amanda: (07:58)
Yes. That's what I was wearing the other day cause I had a parent teacher conference and I wanted the teacher to like me and things. I was, you know, an upstanding citizen. But no, now I'm wearing it Shiv Roy from succession, like her look like I'm wearing great trousers and a black turtleneck, which if you watch the session is like 90% of that character's wardrobe.

Braden: (08:17)
I have no idea what that is. But everyone, you should all go follow up a goofball Amanda. Cause her Instagram stories are so funny. She posted a photo of herself in her office. It's like, did he say your meeting got canceled so then you were worried about for that reason?

Amanda: (08:32)
Yes. So I was dressed like a hotel waitress. I think I said, or server. I'm looking definitively not cool. Um, yeah.

Braden: (08:42)
And then, and then you guys, she DMZ and said, I think with my post I may have just turned off an entire client base of hotel workers. I was like, no, I think you're fine.

Amanda: (08:52)
I, yeah, I wasn't being, you know, mean about the job that I wasn't being more mean about the wardrobe in the uniform, which I think we can all say 100% is not acceptable as a uniform.

Braden: (09:07)
I've worked at an Applebee's or I had to wear all black. I've worked at Calvin Klein where I had to wear all black. Sometimes the uniform just comes with the territory, whatever job you're doing. And honestly, in my opinion, being a litigation attorney requires the worst work wardrobe cause I having to wear a suit every day is the least appealing.

Amanda: (09:23)
You get real creative, uh, as a woman in litigation where you're like, okay I can wear a dress with a blazer, I can wear this dress alone in court. Cause some courts they don't care if you just wear like a very nice dress, they're like that's a suit. Who cares? Other times it's like, yeah, you have to wear the full suit. That doesn't quite fit right cause you're a woman and your body doesn't really fit that well into suits. Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's quite annoying.

Speaker 3: (09:48)
Okay.

Braden: (09:49)
Totally. Okay. So everyone's should go check you out on Instagram and then if they also want to get to know your business a little bit better, what's your website?

Amanda: (09:57)
It's a Montgomery law.com. Perfect.

Braden: (10:01)
Perfect. So I'll put that in the show notes as well. Just so you all know, I'm, when it comes to legal issues, there are a handful of things that we can do for you regardless of the state that you're in. Probably more so in my business because I handle more tax stuff. But Amanda also does some trademark work. That's a federal issue, but when it comes to forming businesses, contracts, those are state specific. So if you're in California, come talk to me. If you're in Texas, go talk to Amanda. If you're in any other state DM, either one of us cause we likely know an attorney in your state.

Speaker 3: (10:34)
[inaudible]

Braden: (10:38)
cool. All right, so that's all for this episode. Thanks for tuning in everyone. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe and I'm going to be back with Amanda on the podcast in 12 episodes. So just a few short weeks and if you have anything you would love for us to chat about, send us a message, have a good day.