Redefining Success in Law: What a ‘Career Quilt’ Actually Looks Like (With Ashley Herd)
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“I am redefining what success means to me.” - Ashley Herd
What if the way we think about careers, leadership, and success is completely wrong?
In this episode of So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, Megan Senese and Jennifer Ramsey sit down with Ashley Herd, Founder of Manager Method, workplace expert, content creator, and author, to unpack what it actually means to lead, build a career, and show up as a human at work.
Ashley shares her journey from employment lawyer to in-house counsel to entrepreneur, and how a non-linear “career quilt” ultimately led her to building a platform that’s reshaping how people think about management. Along the way, she gets real about burnout, identity shifts, and the uncomfortable truth that many workplace norms still prioritize speed over thoughtfulness, and hierarchy over humanity.
This conversation is equal parts practical and perspective-shifting, especially for anyone working inside law firms, where influence often exists without authority.
You’ll hear about:
Why Ashley left law to build Manager Method
The concept of a “career quilt” vs. a traditional career path
How to lead and influence when you don’t have formal authority
The Pause, Consider, Act framework — and why it matters more than ever
What legal marketers and lawyers can learn from in-house client perspectives
Why asking your clients questions is still wildly underutilized (and powerful)
The reality of workplace culture — and how it shows up when people resign
“Luke” — the fictional (but very real) bad manager we’ve all worked with
How Ashley built her platform (and podcast) through simple, human outreach
Why redefining success might be the most important work you do
About Ashley Herd:
Ashley Herd is the founder of Manager Method, where she helps leaders become better managers through practical, human-centered approaches. A former employment lawyer and in-house counsel, Ashley now creates widely recognized workplace content across LinkedIn and social media, teaches leadership through her courses, and is the author of her recent book on modern management.
Learn More:
Check out Manager Method
Buy Ashley’s book, The Manager Method: A Practical Framework to Lead, Support, and Get Results
This episode is brought to you by HeyCounsel. Starting and running your own law firm can be scary, and honestly, pretty lonely. But it doesn’t have to be. After nine years in-house, Brian Scherer set out on his own and realized something: lawyers at big firms have access to resources, connections, and support systems that solo and small firm lawyers often don’t. So he built HeyCounsel to change that. When you join the HeyCounsel community, you get immediate access to an insane amount of resources, templates, free CLEs, masterminds, exclusive events and discounts to tech and tools to run your practice. It's like having big-firm power without having to join a big firm. You can join HeyCounsel for less than $65/mo with our discount code "SOMUCH". To learn more about HeyCounsel, visit them at heycounsel.com.
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By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan Senese