Main Responsibilities of a Partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Josh, a Partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, dedicates approximately half of his time to "managing the day-to-day of litigation," including discovery and motion practice. Beyond litigation, a significant portion of his role involves client counseling on risk mitigation and employment law issues, along with a notable passion for publishing updates and mentoring junior associates.
Litigation, Client Counseling, Legal Publishing, Risk Mitigation, Mentoring
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
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Traits
Josh Rodine
Partner
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
University of California, Santa Barbara (1996)
University of Maryland, College Park (MA, Philosophy 1999); University of Illinois College of Law (JD, 2002)
Philosophy
Law
Legal
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Pell Grant Recipient, Took Out Loans
Video Highlights
1. Managing day-to-day litigation, including internal and external discovery, and motion filing.
2. Counseling clients on risk mitigation and avoiding lawsuits, addressing employee issues and policy implementation.
3. Contributing to the firm's publications by editing and writing updates on new laws and cases, and mentoring junior associates
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role?
As a partner, I have a few different responsibilities. The bulk of my time is spent managing the day-to-day of litigation. This is something that would be different for people involved in a transactional practice versus a litigation practice like mine.
What that really amounts to is making sure that cases are driven forward. This involves conducting internal discovery, which includes meeting with clients, interviewing witnesses, and finding the facts associated with the cases on which I'm working. I also conduct formal external discovery with the opposing party.
I make sure we are filing and responding to all of the motions involved in a matter that have to be handled. That really accounts for about 50% of my time.
Another large chunk of my time involves counseling clients in ways that are oriented towards mitigating risk and avoiding lawsuits. In the employment law arena, clients call me when they're concerned about an issue with an employee.
This might be that the individual needs to be disciplined, but they are concerned about taking that course of action for one reason or another. Or they have concerns about implementing some kind of policy and making sure people are applying their policies consistently. I counsel clients through those kinds of issues.
A smaller portion of my time is spent on editing publications for our firm's clients. We do quite a bit of external publishing, sending updates to our clients about new laws that have passed or new cases that have been decided. This is all within the labor and employment arena in which I'm writing, but I do quite a bit of that.
Lastly, I spend time mentoring our associates. There is a part of me that still really likes teaching, even though I never actually went into it. I spend as much time as I can, which is really to say as much time as the associates will let me, bending their ears about the ways we should and shouldn't do things and why.