Great careers are made with good people, and better questions.
This week we spoke with Logan Breed, 1999 UVA grad and 2002 UVA Law grad who’s now a Partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells.
The Rundown:
COLD OPEN: Foreign Affairs, law school dilemma, Elzinga’s antitrust class
TURNING POINT: The challenges of working at a big law firm early on
STEAL THIS: What brings you joy?
INDUSTRY INSIDER: Work life balance in big law: what to expect and how to navigate it
IF I WERE YOU: Use your brain for AI, not the other way around
COLD OPEN
How Did You Get Your Start?
When I came to UVA, I tried to find classes that would teach me to be a better thinker, not necessarily learn facts that I would apply in a job somewhere. I found that the professors in the Foreign Affairs major really helped me do that, so I continued taking classes with them and ended up with the major.
When I went to UVA, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Over the course of my 4 years, I slowly learned that maybe law school was what I was supposed to do. The class that put me over the top was Kenneth Elzinga's Econ 4200 class. It focused on antitrust law and was taught like a law school class with case-based readings and Socratic dialogue. I thought that if that's what law school was like, maybe that's what I should do.
I ended up going to law school at UVA, got a job as a summer associate between my 2nd and 3rd years of law school at a firm, Hogan Lovells, with a good antitrust practice, and ended up working there for the last 23 years.
I stayed for several reasons. First, I love the work that I get to do at the firm. Second, I love the people I get to do it with. Third, it's been a very good work environment and a stable one in an industry where there could be a lot of ups and downs.
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TURNING POINT
What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?
There are a lot of challenges working in a big law firm early in your career. Figuring out how to balance work and life is extraordinarily difficult.
Particularly when you start to have children and want to spend time with your family while also being really good at what you're doing professionally.
The odds of staying at a big law firm for as many years as I have is fairly low. If you just do the math, it's a fairly low percentage and so I didn't expect to stay. I wanted to get the opportunity to learn from really smart, good people and develop skills that would help me wherever I ended up. I stayed open to other opportunities while also doing the best I could every day in my job.
And that's also difficult, but it has worked out for me.
STEAL THIS
What’s A Question You Love To Be Asked (Or Asking)?
I love learning about the person underneath the story so I love to ask things like, “What’s brought you joy this week?”
We learn a lot more about a person by getting under the hood and seeing what makes them tick, motivates them, what they care about than you can by just asking the stock questions that most people expect to hear.
INDUSTRY INSIDER
What Do People Misunderstand About Working At A Large Law Firm?
One misconception that a lot of people have is that it is impossible to have an effective work life balance in a big law firm. It is difficult, but not impossible.
It's not possible every single day. If that's your time horizon for monitoring work-life balance, it is impossible and you will fail, but over seasons, there can be balance.
Finding the ability to invest in work as a top priority when that's necessary, but also invest in your family when the space exists to do so is a skill over the longer term that is possible to develop.
IF I WERE YOU
Do You Have Any Advice For Students?
I think that over the next 5 or so years, there will be dramatic change in the way the legal profession (among others) uses technology, particularly AI. It will have huge impacts on everything from the way we provide services to our clients, the way that we charge our clients for those services, who we are looking to hire, and the number of people that we are looking to hire.
I don't know exactly how it will work, but what I do know is that the traditional model of having lots of junior people spend hours upon hours reviewing contracts and other documents is over. If you have a database with 1000 different contracts and the due diligence process requires you to look at each of them, AI will be able to do that in minutes.
No one really knows exactly how that will shake out, but I do believe the changes will be significant.
Becoming really facile at using AI is imperative, whether you're going into the legal profession or any other, because if you don't know how to use AI, you'll be very behind the curve. However, if all you're doing is using AI instead of your brain, you won't be adding any value to the company and there won't be any reason for them to hire you.
If you can use AI effectively and build on top of it to add value, I think that will be extraordinarily important and will open a lot of doors over the next 5 to 10 years.
CLOSING TIME
What To Do Next
Reading is great — but putting yourself out there, meeting new people, and finding opportunities is what this is all about.
4 things to do right now:
Find a UVA alum and send them a cold message.
Follow up in a week if they don’t respond.
Prepare for the meeting, and talk to them
Explore a new industry:
Want us to cover a new industry? Reply to this email and let us know which one.
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