Leveraging Latitude | From Lawyer to Novelist: Building a Career that Evolves with You

Transcript

Candice Reed 00:00

So, you were writing your first novel while you were working at a Big Law firm?

Pamela Samuels Young 00:07

Absolutely. Finding time where I could find it. It took three years to finish that first novel and I was just so thrilled. I just knew Oprah was going to call me the next day. That did not happen, but that’s okay.

Candice Reed 00:20

It hasn’t happened yet.

Tori Keith 00:22

You’d gone from O’Melveny to Toyota. You had a very wonderful position there, and you went in to quit so that you could write full-time. Your manager said, “Don’t quit. Just work part-time.”

Pamela Samuels Young 00:36

I thought, “I can do that?” I didn’t even think to ask because I didn’t think it was a possibility. I was willing to do the work. Despite all the fear and rejection, I really wanted to be a published author, and I was not giving up.

Candice Reed 00:53

This is Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law. Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer, to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Leveraging Latitude podcast. I have a couple of guests with me today and I’m really excited to introduce both of them to you. I think this is really going to be a fun conversation. We’ll be talking to Pamela Samuels Young, who is an attorney turned very successful author. But first, I’d like to introduce my Latitude partner, Tori Keith, who brought Pamela to us. Tori is the partner in charge of our Austin, Texas, office and is about to celebrate her second anniversary with Latitude. We’re really glad that you’re here at Latitude, Tori, and also with us here today on the podcast. Welcome.

Tori Keith 02:05

Well, thank you, Candice. It’s so much fun to be here and I’m really excited to have our guest, Pamela Samuels Young. I had the good fortune of attending the Center for Women in Law Power Conference back in April, which was held in Austin, Texas. Pamela was on a panel that discussed career pivots and transitions. She has a great story. I loved how practical her story and her advice was because, obviously, we talk to people in various career transitions and how to make it happen. She’s got some really great insight on that. I knew immediately that our Latitude audience would love hearing from her as well. Thank you both, and thank you, Pamela, for joining us today.

Pamela Samuels Young 03:00

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Candice Reed 03:02

Pamela, it is a real treat to talk to you. I’m sure you know that a lot of us lawyers, or those of us who used to be lawyers or those of us who went to law school are big readers. So, to kick off our conversation, I’m curious what book you would recommend today for all of the attorneys who may be listening to this conversation?

Pamela Samuels Young 03:32

You know what? This book everybody should be reading, it’s called Journey to the Heart by Melody Beattie. I discovered this book probably seven or eight years ago, and there’s a passage for every day. I’ve read it every year since. It’s amazing how many times I’ll pick it up and some particular passage will relate to what I’m going through, and it’s just encouragement.

Candice Reed 04:00

Okay, that goes into the shopping cart.

Tori Keith 04:03

For sure.

Candice Reed 04:04

I have said before, and I may have even said it on this particular podcast, that book recommendations are my love language, so I appreciate you indulging me in that icebreaker. For our listeners who may not be familiar with you or your books, your work, your life’s work, do you mind introducing yourself to the audience and telling us a little bit about how you transitioned? Not just from the law, but you had a career as a journalist even before you went to law school. Tell us about your professional journey and some of the pivots that you made along the way.

Pamela Samuels Young 04:48

I majored in journalism at the University of Southern California with a plan to be a newspaper reporter. The summer after my sophomore year, I was supposed to spend the summer at the LA Times Washington Bureau, but the internship fell through. Instead, they sent me to the ABC Station, WJLA in Washington, DC. Now I’m discovering broadcasting. I’m like, “Oh, forget about the newspaper.” I got into Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, their broadcasting program. From there, I got a job at the ABC station in Detroit, got tired of freezing, went back home and worked at CBS in LA. I’m writing for the 5, 6, 7, and 11 o’clock news.

Pamela Samuels Young 05:35

Everything you write is under the gun. It’s very fast-paced. But after about a few years, I was just burned out, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. But I thought about law school as an undergrad, but law school was just scary to me. It’s like I didn’t know any lawyers. But here I am, I’m 29, and I’m tired of the fast pace and I’m just burnt out. I had a real bad day in the newsroom. Tape didn’t come up. A producer yelled at me. It was just like a bad day. I just said, “I’m going to law school.” Took the test, applied to various law schools and got into UC Berkeley among many. Finished at UC Berkeley. I go directly to O’Melveny & Myers, which is a major law firm in Los Angeles.

Pamela Samuels Young 06:25

My stress reliever was reading and reading legal thrillers. I’m reading, reading, reading. Then it’s like one morning it just hit me, why aren’t there anybody in these books who looks like me? They were all women lawyers. It just hit me, I should write a novel and I should write somebody in the books who looks like me. Then I had an interesting sexual harassment case and that hit me, this would make a good legal thriller. I got up early one morning, like 4 o’clock in the morning because I had really intense hours, and I decided to try to put this case into a novel. That’s how I became a novelist.

Candice Reed 07:09

You were writing your first novel while you were working at a Big Law firm?

Pamela Samuels Young 07:18

Absolutely. Finding time where I could find it. It took three years to finish that first novel, and I was just so thrilled. I just knew Oprah was going to call me the next day. It did not happen, but that’s okay.

Candice Reed 07:31

Yet. It hasn’t happened yet. You mentioned that you primarily write legal thrillers. One thing that I’ve noticed in looking at your work as a whole is that certain themes continue to be present in each of your books or over the span of multiple books. Is that intentional?

Pamela Samuels Young 07:56

Yeah.

Candice Reed 07:56

And what are some of the themes that you like to carry throughout or address throughout your work?

Pamela Samuels Young 08:02

I’d like to make sure I’m starting with an issue. Not necessarily just a case, but an issue. The bookshelf, I’ve dealt with sexual harassment. I’ve dealt with child sex trafficking. I’ve dealt with child suicide and bullying. I’m always looking for something I can wrap a legal scenario around. But it’s always my hope that when you finish one of my books, you learn something that you didn’t know before.

Tori Keith 08:25

I think that’s really appealing to lawyers who like to read. We’re curious, we’re intellectual. You talk about current events, you talk about issues. What is one book of yours, Pamela, that you would recommend as a starting place for people who may be listening and just say, “What book should I choose first?”

Pamela Samuels Young 08:49

My biggest seller was a book Anybody’s Daughter, about child sex trafficking. That’s my favorite. It won the NAACP Image Award. It’s just my most awarded book. But for anybody else, it’s a series book, so people who like series and don’t like to read out of order, I would recommend my very first book, Every Reasonable Doubt.

Candice Reed 09:15

I’d like to put in another plug for Anybody’s Daughter. As the mother of an almost 13-year-old myself, I felt like it was, yes, entertaining, but also educational, and so thank you for writing it. It will stick with me.

Candice Reed 09:36

In your brief description of your career, you seemed to be someone who makes decisions. You’re very decisive and maybe goal-oriented, I would assume. Those are qualities that a lot of lawyers seem to have in their professional lives or in the work that they do, but that doesn’t always translate to their personal lives or the decisions that they make about their own careers. Can you talk about the mindset that you have or you have had at various points in your careers that propelled you past that fear or anxiety of change?

Pamela Samuels Young 10:21

Oh, I’ve definitely had the fear and the anxiety about change. But also, I’m the kind of person that I think about something and I want to do it and I’m afraid. Then I hit the wall. The day when the newsroom, where everything just went bad, okay, now’s the time. Yeah, I’m scared, but I’ll figure it out. Then I go forward. Just like trying to get published, people look at me now like, “Oh, you have all these books, so it’s easy.” No, I still remember how I felt to get that first rejection letter and more and more and more, but to keep going. You have to push past the fear.

Candice Reed 11:00

I appreciate what you’re saying about, yeah, change is scary. Maybe there are some people who really want to change and who feel a sense of excitement around change, but a lot of times it is scary, but you push past the fear and you do it anyway.

Pamela Samuels Young 11:18

Then you have to remember to look back to other things that you thought were difficult and you got past them. You’ll get past this change.

Candice Reed 11:24

Yeah. Good point.

Tori Keith 11:26

Well, that reminds me of one thing you said in the panel presentation, was that you had this career and I think maybe you had one published when you decided to quit. You’d gone from O’Melveny to Toyota. You had a very wonderful position there, a very impressive, high position. You went in to quit so that you could write full-time. Your manager said, “Don’t quit, just work part-time” and you were shocked about that. I would imagine that going in to quit such a high power job was also a scary change, even if it’s something that you wanted to do.

Pamela Samuels Young 12:09

It was scary. I think maybe I had, I don’t know, four or five books then and I was just getting out there. I was spending every weekend – I was getting more and more notice. I was flying to book conferences and festivals, so I would be away all weekend and I’d drag myself into work. Then I would still write early in the morning or write at night. I was just physically exhausted. I decided, okay, we’re going to take the leap and write full time. When I went to discuss it with my then assistant general counsel, she says, “Well, why don’t you consider working part-time?” I thought, “I can do that?” I didn’t even think to ask because I didn’t think it was a possibility.

Pamela Samuels Young 12:46

This is an important point. It’s important to people that have a side passion, don’t blow off your day job. Because if I had been blowing off work, they would have been glad to get me out of there. But I was still coming in, giving 100% at work. They viewed me as valuable obviously, or they wouldn’t have tried to give me a part-time schedule.

Tori Keith 13:08

Love that.

Candice Reed 13:08

I think that’s an interesting point and one worth repeating about, it was ultimately the good work that you were doing that then gave you the flexibility or the latitude, if you will, the opportunity because you were valuable to your team and to your company, for them to work with you and give you the opportunity to cut back on hours or what have you. We see that a lot with some of the attorneys that we work with, not necessarily part-time within a particular company, but who are coming to us because they want some flexibility, some more hours. They don’t want to give up practicing law completely, But they would like to scale back so that they can continue to work on their passion project. It’s because they’ve done such good work previously that they’re able to continue to work at a high level, earn good money, but maybe scale back on the hours. I think that that is an interesting point and one that is well taken.

Candice Reed 14:32

What would you say? Because I feel like lots of us, a lot of us attorneys are readers and a lot of us think that we have a book in us, right? But then life happens, work happens, and it just feels like we may have missed that boat, missed that opportunity to check that box off of our bucket list or that dream was a dream deferred for too long and so now it’s unattainable. What would you say to those of us who are late bloomers?

Pamela Samuels Young 15:11

I don’t believe that age should be restrictive. I was one of the oldest in my class at UC Berkeley. Most were coming directly from undergrad or had a couple years in between. I had been out of school for seven years. I published my first book a month before my 48th birthday. Now, I believe it is 20 years later, I’m 68. I still have a lot more books in me. Okay? I just don’t believe that age is a limitation. We’re living in this age with this internet and AI. Anything you want to know, it’s at your fingertips. This information age is so incredible. I just say, get past your own doubts and go for it. I don’t care if you’re 70 and you still want to publish that first book. You can do it. Why not?

Candice Reed 16:19

Do you have any tips for how to get past that fear?

Pamela Samuels Young 16:25

I’m very good with pros and cons lists, and I’m a planner. Before I decided to make various leaps, I sit down and I plan, what’s the best case scenario? What’s the worst case scenario? Just be practical about it. Two, you got to have a support system. I have the best girlfriends in the world who we encourage each other, we support each other. We celebrate each other’s accomplishments. So, who’s the person you can go to when you have this crazy fear and they can talk you off the ledge and tell you why you should be doing what you think you can’t do? Those things are important.

Tori Keith 17:08

Well, speaking of support systems at critical junctures, I’ve used a coach, like an executive coach at times, a group, a class at different times. I’ve found outside support groups, maybe people that don’t know you or rely on you in a day-to-day can give you a fresh perspective and encouragement also to tiptoe into whatever it is that you want to pursue.

Pamela Samuels Young 17:40

I’ve done all of those things. I had a writing coach. I was in writing groups. I didn’t go it alone. I was an early member of, I’m now a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. That organization and going to those monthly meetings and hearing from other writers and talking and discussing their online resources was very, very crucial to my career as a young writer who didn’t really know a lot. I made a lot of mistakes early on. I took a one-day writing program at the UCLA writer’s program and the instructor said something that had never crossed my mind. He said, “Take a book that’s like yours and outline it.” I had never thought about outlining a novel. I outlined John Grisham’s The Firm, and it was like a light bulb moment. I was able to understand plotting and pacing better when I technically looked at how The Firm was put together. I would tell people, don’t put any time limits on it. When you’re first starting out, don’t put any deadline on it. Just go for it.

Candice Reed 18:46

Pamela, do you mind talking a little bit about failure? Excuse me, because I think that a lot of us fear failing. I even see this in law school students. I teach a class in law school and everybody wants to get it right. They want to get the right answer, or new associates at firms. I was this way too, so afraid of making a mistake. You’ve mentioned a couple of times now that you had some setbacks or you had to readjust, or maybe I’m assuming rewrite passages and that type of thing.

Pamela Samuels Young 19:34

Oh my God. Yes.

Candice Reed 19:37

What is your relationship with failure, and how do you look at it?

Pamela Samuels Young 19:41

I’ve had my share, but they were such valuable learning experiences. Because this three-year process, when I finished this book and I had those 365 page manuscripts, I was like, “This is it. This is wonderful.” I made copies of it and I gave it to all my friends so they can come back and tell me Oprah was going to be calling me. It was dead silence. Nobody said a word. I started sending it out to agents. I probably got a couple dozen rejection letters. I read somewhere that John Grisham did not have success with his first book, so he wrote another one. People don’t realize he wrote Time to Kill first. It was published by a small publishing house. It didn’t do a thing. Then he wrote The Firm. The Firm took off and then they reissued A Time to Kill.

Pamela Samuels Young 20:28

I was like, “Well, if John Grisham can write two books, so can I.” I started working in a second book, which took me a year. I found five friends who said they would tell me the truth no matter what. I’ll never forget this moment because this was the exact moment I knew I was going to be a published author. I had taken the books to the Office Depot in my neighborhood to go get them copied. When the woman was bringing the box of manuscripts of the book back to me, and she took the box of books and she put it on the desk and she leaned over and she whispered to me, “We could get fired for reading our customer’s work, but I started reading this and I couldn’t stop. Is it going to be a movie?” I must have skipped out of that store.

Tori Keith 21:07

That’s awesome.

Pamela Samuels Young 21:12

I floated back to my car. What if I had stopped writing after those 24 rejection letters? If you want to dream – I have a sign on my desk that says, “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” I was willing to do the work. Despite all the fear and rejection, I really wanted to be a published author and I was not giving up.

Candice Reed 21:41

What you’re describing reminds me of another book that I recently read, Think Again by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, the Wharton School at Penn. He talks about the joy of failing. If we can make a shift, a paradigm shift or a mind shift into thinking of failing as a learning experience. Because I failed, I now know more than I did before I failed.

Pamela Samuels Young 22:18

Exactly. Exactly. The failure was important. It taught me what to do and what mistakes not to make.

Tori Keith 22:27

Well, Pamela, this has been such a great conversation. Where can we continue to keep up with you and follow that next book, and follow what you’re doing?

Pamela Samuels Young 22:40

You can find me at pamelasamuelsyoung.com. It’ll list all of my books. It’ll also reference my podcast and forthcoming book, Stop Waiting, Start Writing: The No Excuses Guide to Finally Finishing Your Book. It’s really just some practical tips about the fear. How do you find the time? You find time because you plan it. Lots of other tips that I think will be helpful and things I wish I had known when I was a new writer. I’m on all social media platforms. Just put in Pamela Samuels Young or author Pamela Samuel Young, and you will find me. My books are in eBook, print, and audiobook.

Candice Reed 23:20

Pamela, thank you so much for your time, for the books that you’ve written, and also for the tips that you shared today. We appreciate you spending time with us and look forward to seeing what’s next from you.

Pamela Samuels Young 23:41

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.