blog: behind the scenes.
You’re Not Bad at Networking. You Were Only Taught One Way! (Minis with Megan)
Listen Now:
If networking feels awkward, even at a senior level, you’re not the problem. Most lawyers and legal marketers have been taught a version that actually makes real connection harder.
In this mini episode of So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, Megan Senese challenges the way networking is typically framed in the legal industry. The version that says you need to work the room, prove your value, and leave with something to show for it.
That version doesn’t just feel uncomfortable. It makes real connections harder.
This episode offers a different approach. One rooted in curiosity, generosity, and the understanding that networking isn’t about what you get. It’s about how you show up and how you make people feel.
Who this is for:
Lawyers and legal marketers who feel awkward or drained at networking events
Professionals who leave conferences feeling like they didn’t “do enough.”
Anyone who believes they’re bad at networking
People are under pressure to turn every interaction into ROI
What you’ll take away:
You’re not bad at networking. You’ve been taught a version that doesn’t work
Why even experienced professionals still feel uncomfortable at events
How the pressure to “get something” undermines connection
What shifts when you approach networking with curiosity instead of expectation
Why people remember how you made them feel, not what you said
A different way to approach your next event:
Reach out to people you know will be there before you arrive
Let people know you’re attending and invite connection in advance
Focus on meeting people, not making something happen
Want more tips and insights? Connect with us!
You don’t need to be someone else to be good at networking. You just need to connect.
stage helps lawyers and legal teams rethink business development through a relationship-first approach: one that feels natural, sustainable, and effective over time.
Learn more about stage
Connect with Megan Senese
Connect with Jennifer Ramsey
Love So Much To Say? Let us know! Drop a review, give us 5 stars in your favorite podcast app, and tell us what made you laugh, think, or just go “yep, that’s me.” Every review helps us reach more awesome humans who want to make legal…well, human.
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SeneseRedefining 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.
Stay Connected:
Love So Much To Say? Let us know! Drop a review, give us 5 stars in your favorite podcast app, and tell us what made you laugh, think, or just go “yep, that’s me.” Every review helps us reach more awesome humans who want to make legal…well, human.
Want to go deeper? Curious about 1:1 coaching with Megan or Jen? Or want the inside scoop on stage? Hit us up below, we’d love to chat!
Learn more about stage
Connect with Megan Senese
Connect with Jennifer Ramsey
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SeneseWhy Legal Professionals Struggle to Fully Power Down (minis with Megan)
Listen here
If your workday keeps you mentally “on” long after you close your laptop, this mini episode offers a moment to reset.
Most lawyers or legal marketers never allow themselves to come out of “on mode.”
They’ve only been trained how to push through it.
This episode of So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, Minis with Megan is intentionally different. It creates space to step out of constant responsiveness and notice what is happening in your body while you work.
Many lawyers and legal marketing professionals move through their days holding everything. Shoulders stay tight. Breathing becomes shallow. The nervous system remains quietly activated, and mistakes increase.
This episode is permission for a brief pause. A chance to slow down, take a breath, and experience what even a few intentional minutes of reset can feel like, so you can go back to your work refreshed and recharged and with a moment to catch your breath.
If this moment resonates, a longer guided session is available on 4/16 for those who want to go deeper.
Join us for Off the Mat on 4/16 at 1pm ET / 10 am PT
A 30-minute guided breathing session led by a certified yoga instructor, our very own Jen Ramsey!
No camera required
No experience needed
Join directly from your desk
Email us at info@stage.guide or register here
Leaving Big Law: How I Rethought Business Development, Burnout, and Building Something Sustainable
For a long time, I followed the path that was supposed to make sense. I built a successful career in Big Law, worked my way up, and checked the boxes. From the outside, it looked like everything was working.
But at a certain point, it stopped feeling sustainable.
The pressure wasn’t new, but it became harder to ignore, especially during COVID, when workloads intensified and the lines between work and life disappeared. I found myself doing more, carrying more, and questioning how long I could realistically keep going at that pace. It wasn’t just about working hard. I’ve always worked hard. It was about whether the structure itself still worked for me.
That’s when I started thinking differently. Not just about my next role, but about whether I wanted to stay on the same path at all.
Leaving wasn’t a clean or easy decision. It meant walking away from financial stability and a career I had spent years building. But it also gave me the opportunity to rethink how I wanted to work, and what I actually valued in the process.
When we launched Stage, I knew I didn’t want to replicate the same business development strategies I had seen for years. So much of it felt transactional or built around environments that didn’t resonate with me. I don’t golf. I didn’t want to rely on traditional networking channels that felt forced or outdated.
Instead, I focused on something simpler: building real relationships.
I started writing on LinkedIn. I reached out to people directly. I shared perspectives that felt honest and relevant to the legal industry. At the time, I didn’t have a big network or a built-in client base. I was starting from scratch, which meant I had to figure out what actually worked, not just what we had always been told worked.
What I found is that authenticity scales in a way traditional tactics don’t. When you show up consistently, when you’re thoughtful in how you connect with people, and when you focus on relationships over transactions, opportunities start to build over time.
One of the biggest shifts for me was understanding the importance of building a book of business. In professional services, that’s where so much of your leverage comes from. Without it, you’re often supporting someone else’s clients, someone else’s revenue, someone else’s priorities. When you build your own, you create more control over your career, your time, and your future.
And there isn’t one right way to do that.
For some people, it might still be traditional networking. For others, it’s creating content, connecting one-on-one, or finding shared interests outside of work. The key is finding an approach that feels natural enough that you’ll actually stick with it.
Because that’s the other part people don’t always talk about, this is a long game. Relationships take time. Trust takes time. There’s no shortcut to that. But when you invest in it consistently, it becomes a much more sustainable way to grow.
Looking back, leaving Big Law felt like a huge risk. And it was. But it also created the space to build something that aligns much more closely with how I want to work and live.
If you want to hear more about my experience and how I approached that transition, you can listen to me on the The Femme Factor Podcast: Leaving Big Law to Start Something New
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SeneseWhy Most Lawyers Struggle After Parental Leave: What a ‘Mindful Return’ Looks Like (with Lori Mihalich-Levin)
Listen Now:
NOTE: This episode contains language around infant loss and miscarriage. Take care while you listen.
Most law firms treat returning from parental leave as a routine transition. For many lawyers, it’s one of the most destabilizing periods of their careers.
In this episode of So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, Megan Senese and Jennifer Ramsey are joined by Lori Mihalich-Levin, CEO and Founder of Mindful Return, author of Back to Work After Baby, co-host of the Parents at Work podcast, and a healthcare lawyer at The GME Group. Lori shares why returning to work after having a child is one of the most professionally disruptive transitions lawyers face—and what a more sustainable, intentional transition can look like.
What began as a moment of desperation, crying while washing bottles and caring for two young children, led to a critical realization: most workplaces treat return-to-work as a logistical event, not a human transition. In response, she built Mindful Return, a national platform supporting working parents through this exact inflection point. Lori shares what’s often left unspoken: postpartum anxiety, identity disruption, the invisible labor of reentry, and the pressure to perform as if nothing has changed. She also breaks down what a “mindful return” requires from both individuals and organizations and why community plays a central role in recovery and retention.
This episode is essential for anyone navigating parenthood and career and for leaders responsible for whether working parents thrive, struggle, or leave.
You’ll hear about:
Why Lori created Mindful Return after her own painful return-to-work experience
The personal and professional identity crisis that can come after parental leave
What working parents actually need during the transition back to work
How Mindful Return’s cohort model helps moms AND dads feel less alone
Why parenthood builds leadership skills we still don’t talk about enough
The case for better workplace support around miscarriage, infant loss, and mental health
How mindfulness, yoga, and community have helped Lori navigate both work and family life
About Lori Mihalich-Levin:
Lori Mihalich-Levinis the CEO & Founder of Mindful Return, a nationally recognized platform supporting working parents through parental leave and the transition back to work. She is the author of Back to Work After Baby, co-host (with her husband) of the Parents at Work podcast, and a healthcare lawyer at The GME Group. Her work has been featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Parenting, and more.
This episode is brought to you by: Latitude Legal
In partnership with Latitude Legal, stage offers four free business development sessions for any lawyer returning from parental leave. We call it Corduroy. It is open to any lawyer. We know how challenging it can be to be a working parent, and this is our way of giving back to the legal community through business development support. If you are interested in learning more about Corduroy for yourself or your team, you can email us at info@stage.guide.
Thank you to Latitude Legal and Kyle Robisch for being the sole partner supporting our Corduroy initiative. They recognize the importance of supporting working parents in the legal industry and are generously underwriting this program. To learn more, visit www.latitudelegal.com or contact Kyle directly.
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SeneseWhat Constant Responsiveness Is Doing to Legal Professionals (Minis with Megan)
Listen Now:
If your workday keeps you mentally “on” long after you close your laptop, this mini episode offers a moment to reset.
Most lawyers or legal marketers never allow themselves to come out of “on mode.” They’ve only been trained how to push through it.
This episode of So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, Minis with Megan is intentionally different. It creates space to step out of constant responsiveness and notice what is happening in your body while you work.
Many lawyers and legal marketing professionals move through their days holding everything. Shoulders stay tight. Breathing becomes shallow. The nervous system remains quietly activated and mistakes increase.
This episode is permission for a brief pause. A chance to slow down, take a breath, and experience what even a few intentional minutes of reset can feel like so you can go back to your work refreshed and recharged and with a moment to catch your breath.
If this moment resonates, a longer guided session is available on 4/16 for those who want to go deeper. Details for registration are below.
Who this episode is for:
Lawyers and professionals who feel constantly “on” during the workday
Anyone overwhelmed by email, notifications, and nonstop screen time
People noticing physical stress (tight shoulders, shallow breathing, fatigue)
High performers who struggle to give themselves permission to take a break
Episode takeaways:
“Email apnea” and “screen apnea” are real: Holding your breath while working is more common than you think
Constant screen time and stress can physically impact your breathing, focus, and energy
You cannot do your best work (legal, strategic, or creative) if your body is in a state of tension
Taking a break isn’t indulgent; it’s necessary for sustainable performance
Even small, intentional pauses (like breathing) can reset your entire system
Small steps you can take to invite awareness:
Notice your body: Are you holding your breath, clenching, or bracing?
Pause and take a breath: Even one intentional inhale and exhale can interrupt the stress cycle
Give yourself permission to step away: You don’t need to “earn” a break. You deserve a break.
Create space for reset: Short, structured breaks can help you return more focused
Prioritize sustainability: Your performance depends on your ability to regulate, not just push through
Join us for Off the Mat:
A 30-minute guided breathing session led by a certified yoga instructor, our very own Jen Ramsey!
*No camera required
*No experience needed
*Join directly from your desk
* April 16 @ 1pm ET / 10 am PT
Email us at info@stage.guide or register here
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SeneseHow to Reset
Breathe In. Breathe Out.
Long hours of analysis. Constant decision-making.
Little space to recalibrate, reset, and breathe.
30 minutes. Cameras off. No preparation needed.
Over time, the nervous system stays in quiet overdrive.
Breathwork is one of the simplest ways to reset it.
Join Jennifer Ramsey, stage co-founder and certified yoga teacher, for Off the Mat on (4/16/26) — a 30-minute guided virtual breathing session designed for lawyers and legal marketing professionals to reset their nervous system and refocus their energy.
No yoga experience required. No preparation. No cameras. Join quietly from your desk.
Why Business Development Feels So Hard (And What to Do Instead)
If the idea of “doing marketing” makes you cringe, you are not alone.
Over the years, I have worked with countless lawyers who feel like business development is awkward, performative, or disconnected from the work they actually enjoy. It often feels like you are being asked to step into a version of yourself that does not quite fit. Someone more sales focused, more polished, more “on.”
That is usually where things start to break down.
Because the most effective business development does not look like selling at all. It looks like connection.
The Problem with Traditional Advice
A lot of the advice lawyers receive about networking and marketing is rooted in outdated assumptions. Go to the big event. Work the room. Follow the same playbook everyone else is using.
The problem is that one size does not fit all.
Not everyone wants to build relationships on the golf course or over cocktails. And more importantly, not everyone should. When you force yourself into strategies that do not align with who you are, it shows. It also makes the entire process feel harder than it needs to be.
What Actually Works
Sustainable business development starts with a simple shift.
From selling to serving.
That means focusing less on how to get work from someone and more on how to build a real relationship.
Sometimes that looks like:
Asking thoughtful questions and actually listening
Following up with something relevant and specific
Remembering what matters to someone and acknowledging it later
It is often the smallest gestures that have the biggest impact. A handwritten note. A quick check in. Sending something that shows you were paying attention.
These are not grand strategies. They are human ones.
Why Relationships Take Time
One of the biggest misconceptions is how quickly results should happen.
In reality, building a strong professional relationship takes time. It is not one meeting or one email. It is consistency. It is showing up and being thoughtful over time without becoming transactional.
That is where many people fall off. Not because they cannot do it, but because they expect it to move faster.
Staying Top of Mind Without Feeling Sales Focused
You do not need a large budget or an elaborate system to stay in touch.
You need intention.
Instead of sending generic updates, think about why something made you think of a specific person. That context is what makes the outreach meaningful.
And when it comes time to talk about work, the best approach is often the simplest one. Ask what they need.
Not what you think they need. Not what your firm offers.
Just ask and listen.
From there, you can respond in a way that is actually helpful, which is what builds trust.
A Different Way to Think About Growth
You do not have to become someone else to be effective at business development.
You do not need to follow every trend or copy what other firms are doing.
You need an approach that aligns with how you naturally build relationships and the discipline to stay consistent.
In a crowded legal market, authenticity is what makes people remember you.
By Jennifer Ramsey and Megan SenseCold Calls, Courage, and the Big Law Pivot Redefining Lawyer Growth
In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn (#111), Megan Senese reflects on her journey from Big Law business development to co-founding stage, and how that transition reshaped her understanding of what attorneys actually need to grow.
For years, Megan worked in business development roles at major firms including Pillsbury, Shearman & Sterling (now A&O Shearman), and McDermott Will & Emery. From the outside, it appeared that lawyers had access to every tool for success. After leaving Big Law and building stage, a different reality became clear. Attorneys began sharing the real challenges they were facing, including persistent pressure, unclear paths for growth, and a lack of individualized support. In many cases, these were the same struggles Megan had experienced herself but had not fully recognized at the time.
That insight became the foundation for stage, a model built to deliver fractional marketing and business development support tailored to how individual lawyers actually work. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, stage adapts strategy to the attorney. This might mean leaning into conferences for a client-facing energy lawyer or building a content strategy for someone who prefers to avoid traditional networking environments.
Megan also shares practical frameworks that have shaped her approach to both business development and communication. One is “the most generous interpretation,” a concept borrowed from Dr. Becky Kennedy, which reframes how attorneys respond to silence, rejection, or unanswered emails. Another comes from Dan Pink’s work on motivation, emphasizing that moving people, helping them see and feel something, is more effective than traditional selling.
Her own outreach stories reinforce this philosophy. A cold message to LinkedIn’s CMO resulted in an immediate yes. A direct pitch led to her conversation with host David Schnurman. Her approach is consistent: slow down, understand what someone actually needs, and connect in a way that serves their interests first.
The episode also highlights Megan’s personal evolution. Once unsure she would ever leave a traditional legal career path, she ultimately stepped into entrepreneurship and co-founded a growing firm. A small but meaningful moment, a calendar reminder from her partner reading “IDEA - don’t be nervous,” became a turning point in that transition.
At its core, Megan’s story is about redefining success in law, building a career that is both sustainable and aligned with how you actually want to work, rather than how you are expected to.
By Jennifer Ramsey & Megan Senese