#019: Kannon Shanmugam - Supreme Court Advocate

This transcript was generated by AI.

Kannon Shanmugam [00:00:00]:

actually think you have to get into a mindset where you welcome the hard questions. And that's kind of how I approach every oral argument is to kind of have the mental attitude of bringing on because I think the key to being a persuasive advocate is to recognize that there are hard questions for your side, but to embrace them and to come up with the very best reasons why you should win despite those hard questions.

Jonah Perlin [00:00:23]:

Welcome to How I Lawyer, a podcast where I talk to a turn from throughout the profession about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well. I'm your host, Jonah Perlin, a law professor in Washington DC, Now let's get started. Hello, and welcome back. I'm so excited to welcome Kannon Shannewegam to the How Eyelayer podcast. Kannon is an accomplished appellate advocate who's argued more than 30 cases before the United States Supreme Court. Kannon is a partner at Paul Weiss in Washington DC, where he's the chair of the Supreme Court in a Pellet Practice Group and managing partner of the DC office. Prior to joining Paul Weiss, Kannon spent a decade as a partner at My Old Law Firm, Williams and Connolly, and before that, more than 4 years is an assistant to the solicitor general at the Department of Justice where he represented the United States at the United States Supreme Court. Prior to entering private practice, Kannon clerk for Justice Kannon Scalia and Judge Jay Michael Lutig, on the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. He's a graduate of Harvard University And Harvard Law School, Go Crimson, and also completed an MLET in Classics, the University Oxford where he was a martial scholar. Kannon was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and remains one of its most faithful sports supporters

Jonah Perlin [00:01:31]:

even from his home in Washington, DC. Thanks for joining the podcast Kannon. Thank you, Jonah. It's great to be with you. So I wanna start by asking a little bit about your path to the law. Do you sort of remember when you decided, hey. I I'm gonna become a lawyer?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:01:45]:

Well, it was never really the grand plan, Jonah. When I was growing up, I first thought that I wanted to play either for the Jayhawks in basketball or for the royals in baseball, but it became clear pretty quickly from my little league days that was never gonna happen. And So after that, if anything, I think I probably thought it was more likely that I would be a journalist. I was a very serious college journalist. I worked for the Kansas City Star, basically, my hometown newspaper for 2 summers when I was in college. And I just really loved writing, and so that was in many ways, my first passion. But I think even then when I was in college, which was back in the 19 nineties, it was pretty clear that journalism was a really tough profession in which to make a living. And I've had always in the back of my mind thought that I was interested in the law and really interested in legal issues and in sort of the craft of being a lawyer. And I made the decision after I graduated from Harvard that I was going to pursue law school, and then I had the 2 year detour that you mentioned in England, which was a wonderful detour, not least, because I met my wife there. and then decided to come back and and go to law school. And that's a decision I've never regretted. I've really loved my time as a lawyer, but I do have moments of thinking what if I had become a sports writer? Because I think it's a great and very noble profession, and and I really enjoyed every minute I spent as an aspiring journalist.

Jonah Perlin [00:03:12]:

It's funny you say that I also had a dream in my past of becoming a sports writer and used to get all of the box scores and then try to write an article based on the box scores. So I'm very sympathetic to that story. One of the things I thought was interesting about your biography is you studied classics in college and then at Oxford. Did that path of study help you at all in the law besides knowing reciprocal or assuming argue I'd know? So I actually think they're both being a a sports writer in college and being a a classics major were good preparations

Kannon Shanmugam [00:03:43]:

for a career in the law. Being a sports writer is in many ways purist form of journalism because you have to write on deadline, and you have to learn to write really quickly and to synthesize what's going on around you very quickly, and that's a great skill they have as a lawyer. I think classics is a great undergraduate major for someone who's interested in the law. because it's really all about language and both the sort of science of language, grammar, and the like, and also just the art of good writing. And in particular, to be good at classics, I'm not sure I was was great at it. But to be good at classics, you have to be able to think really logically. You have to be able to decon dropped passages in Greek and Latin and to sort of understand the rules of the road, which for those languages are really complicated.

Jonah Perlin [00:04:30]:

And I think that's great preparation for being a lawyer as well because when you get down to it being a lawyer is really all about logic and being able to think logically. After Harvard, you went on to clerk both on the 4th Circuit and the supreme court. And I had my own clerkship experiences, but I love to hear about what people learned both substantively, but also about how to be a lawyer. So if you could just talk a little bit about those experiences, I'd appreciate it. I think Clerking is just such a great experience. I'm

Kannon Shanmugam [00:04:58]:

a ruthless advocate of clerking because I think regardless of what you wanna do in a career in the law, it's great both substantively and professionally. I think from a substantive perspective, it's just so wonderful to get an insight into how judges think. and to be on, you know, that side of the bench for a year or for 2 years as in my case. And to really sort of watch great judicial minds in action, and I was really fortunate in that I clerked for 2 of the very best in in Judge Lutig and then justice Scalia. And you learn a lot substantively during those 2 years because when you graduate from law school, you've been exposed only to a really limited array of subjects, and you're getting cases in, you know, virtually every area of the law, including some areas that you may have had no exposure to. So the substantive learning curve is really steep. But I think the principal value is in learning, you know, how to approach issues like judges do and also learning how to write. And, boy, there was no one better to learn how to write from than justice Scalia, one of the great legal writers of our time. And I think I I just picked up so many lessons about how to write persuasively and vividly from justice Scaliyah. And I think regardless of whether you clerk on the Supreme Court or a Court of Appeals or district court or a state court, all of the same value is a part of the experience. But I think professionally, I think one of the things that's just great about clerking is that you spend a year working really closely with the judge or adjust and then they become a mentor for the rest of your legal career. And certainly, both Judge Lutig and Justice Scalia played that role as I went on to be a practicing lawyer, and I think that's very important particularly when you're starting out in your career as well. I think law students even today

Jonah Perlin [00:06:45]:

really look to justice Scalia as one of the greatest judicial writers of the last century. Could you talk a little bit about sort of the writing process in chambers?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:06:55]:

Well, he worked really hard at it. I mean, I think that there is a temptation to think that when someone's a good writer, it just comes easily and naturally. And I wish I could say that Justin Scaglia would sit down and and 15 minutes later would have a perfectly formed twenty page opinion. But he really worked hard at the craft of writing, and that was one of the main lessons I took away from the clerkship was the image of justice Scalia kinda hunched over his computer just pouring over every single word to make sure that it it really sang. And that was his goal was to write opinions where every word sort of played its function and where the prose was elegant. And so but the process for justice Scalia was, I think, similar to that of most justices, he would typically not always, but typically ask the law clerks to do a first draft. But what was really amazing about justice Scalia is that he could take drafts written by other people and make them sort of completely his own through the editing process. And that's not an easy thing to do. I spend a lot of time doing exactly that as a partner at a law firm and getting drafts written by various people, and you really have to work at it, I think, to put it into your own voice. And he was really good at that. I mean, you could almost do a sort of blind taste test of supreme court opinions and just know when it was written by Justice Scalia even if it was in a really obscure case because he had such a a distinctive voice. And as law clerks, we didn't even really try to mimic it. I mean, I think we would try to write as as vividly and well as we could, but I think we all knew that only justice Scalia could really truly Scalia Eyes an opinion. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I have my my students who go off to clerkships often ask

Jonah Perlin [00:08:35]:

how do you learn to write in your judge's voice? And my advice, which I I think is now borne out by your story, is I just want you to write the best opinion you possibly can. It's their job ultimately just make it their own. Can you talk a little bit? I mean, you just mentioned that you do a lot of that now in your own writing. So your name's on the brief, but you work with great teams of junior lawyers. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about it now that you're on the other side of the desk?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:09:02]:

Yeah. I mean, I think look. I view the role of an associate on a case as being, 1st and foremost, to provide me with the raw material. right, to provide me with the arguments, to provide me with the authority, and that it's really sort of my job to put the the nuance and the finishing touches on the brief And that, I think, also takes a lot of time. I mean, for a big supreme court brief, I will try to carve out a few days to do that because I really wouldn't be adding value to a case if all I was doing was correcting the split infinitives. And, you know, I really take pride in the fact that when we file a brief in the Supreme Court or in an appellate court that I am intimately familiar with what's in every single footnote and with every single word. And so the way that I edit varies so sometimes I will edit on screen, but sometimes what I'll do is just open up a blank document and have the draft there and start writing because I actually find that the draft is still a very use full, but that sort of forces me to put everything into my own voice. And it just sort of depends on the case. Sometimes I I feel as if I can do that based on the draft and just entering a a word processing document. I mean, sometimes, I think it's better to sort of start with a new document.

Jonah Perlin [00:10:10]:

But either way, I think my goal is very much, as I think, Justice Scalia was, the brief to sort of sound in my voice by the time I'm done with it. And then after your clerkships, you had the opportunity to work at a private law firm, but then pretty soon thereafter hired at the solicitor general's office. And I think that's an office that law students hear about and young lawyers hear about, but it seems kinda like a black box. So I'm really curious about sort of how you got hired at the SG's office and what that office is like.

Kannon Shanmugam [00:10:35]:

So, Jenna, I really knew very little about the SG's office until I clicked at the Supreme Court, because at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I did go to law school in the nineties. And back then, the Internet was barely a thing, and there was just a lot less information about the legal profession and certainly a lot less information about the supreme court. There weren't websites where you could go to listen to old supreme court arguments in them. And so I had never heard a supreme court argument until I went to one for the first time, and I really had no idea what the solicitor general's office did until I clerked for a year at the court and saw the SG's office arguing in virtually every single case on behalf of the United States. And so it was not something that I immediately aspired to in part because it was really only after I started in practice that I made the judgment that I really wanted to focus on appellate work. But I think if you do focus on appellate work, it it sometimes feels as if all paths lead to the SG's office because so many of the top adult litigators have had the experience of serving there. And I was really fortunate. I mean, I was really fortunate. It's not even the right word. I was completely lucky because I went to the solicitor general's office in the summer of 2004, that was a summer in which fully a third of the SG's office turned over because for various reasons, there were 6 vacancies in the Officer General's office during that summer. And I think if there had not been so many vacancies, I never would have been hired because here I was thirty one years old. I was relatively junior, and there were some wonderful lawyers who got hired in that batch of lawyers. And I was by some distance, Louise experience. But I was very fortunate in that this solicitor general was Ted Olsen. I had gotten a note, Ted, when He interviewed me after I was coming out of law school and off my clerkships, and we had kind of kept in touch after he became solicitor general, and then we had been on opposite sides of McConnell versus FEC, the campaign finance case, and it was really sort of through working on that case that I think I probably Perlin came to the notice of people in the SG's office, and Ted took a chance on me and hired me as junior most person in that group. And I was just so fortunate lucky, whatever adjective you wanna use to to have that chance relatively early in my career, to argue cases on behalf of the United States and the Supreme Court.

Jonah Perlin [00:12:58]:

Yeah. And I've heard the solicitor general's office because they're such repeat players and they have so many cases in which they have their hand has a very particular way of sort of going about their business, how they write, how they prep. Are there any sort of tips or techniques that you picked up at the SG's office that you sort of continue to use to this day? I think the most important thing is that the SG's office thinks of itself as an officer of the court as having a very special relationship with the court because it's a repeat player. And, of course, you have a client, and that client often will have a very particular objective. The United States is the government, but it's also litigate. And so you have to make arguments

Kannon Shanmugam [00:13:36]:

to the best of your ability on behalf of your client, 1st and foremost, but I think that there is a real sense in the office of having a duty of candor to the court and having a real obligation to see that that that that the client doesn't just prevail, but the justice is done. And I've tried to sort of carry on that attitude in private practice as well. I mean, I just think that the best advocates are the ones who are able to characterize the law accurately and fairly and yet still convince court's to rule in their client's favor. And I think that there's really no reason why that should be any different when your client is a large corporation or an individual rather than the United States.

Jonah Perlin [00:14:17]:

And then after your time at the SG's office, you went back into private and you continued to be a supreme court advocate primarily or an appellate advocate primarily. Could you talk a little bit about the difference of what it was like to transition to private practice after having your client be the United States for several years?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:14:34]:

Well, I often say that the thing about being in the s g's office is that you have only one client, but it's exceptionally litigious one. I think that's true. You have a client who's gonna give you plenty of work. You don't have to worry where your next case is coming from one of the things I really like about private practice though is having a variety of clients. And and and not just big companies, which are are, of course, the typical clients for large law firms for big law, but also over the years, a lot of individual clients because when I was in the solicitor general's office, I spent a pretty healthy chunk of my time doing criminal cases. And so when I came back out into private practice, I made that a pretty significant focus of my practice, and it has been ever since. And those cases are as high stakes as cases ever get when someone's life or liberty is at stake. There's nothing more important than that. And they're also often substantively, incredibly interesting, and cutting edge. And so That's always been an important part of my practice as well. But, look, no one in law school gives you a manual that tells you how to be a law firm partner Perlin certainly, no one gives you a manual about how to build a practice or to lead a practice. And I think that was something that I learned on the job. And I never sort of made the progression from associate to partner. I was an associate at my first law firm, and then went to the government and then immediately became a partner at Williams and Connolly where we first got to know each other. And there were certainly times when on Monday mornings I would drive into the parking garage and just think, I really have no idea what I'm doing. No one's no one's taught me how to be a a a law firm partner or how to build a supreme court a pellet practice, and and you do very much learn through trial and error. Mhmm. And and now that's something that you're doing there as well at Paul Weiss, building a supreme court practice Kannon you talk a little bit more about how you think about that now that you've had multiple opportunities over time for somebody who maybe doesn't need a tech book but could use a little bit of advanced knowledge. Well, I think the best piece of advice for how to build a practice is a a piece of advice that the founder of our former firm Jonah Edward Bennett Williams, I think, often gave or at least allegedly often gave. And And I'm sure that this is true. He said, the best way to develop new clients is to do extraordinary work for your existing clients. And and I think that's really true. And I think above all, what I try to do when my own cases and as the head of the practice, is to to try to develop and maintain a reputation for excellence. And it just requires a lot of hard work. I was thinking about this the other day because I'm preparing for a supreme court argument later on this month. And I was driving in to the office on a Saturday morning at 7:30 in the morning and just sort of reflecting on the fact that being a Kannon partner, the head of a practice is really no different from being a second year associate. If if you really wanna be regarded as being very good at what you do, you have to put in a lot of hard work. And that does mean sometimes time away from your families. It means the weekend mornings when you're in the office and no one else is. And the mere fact that I've argued 37 Supreme Court cases doesn't help when I'm preparing for the 31st. The cases almost always involve totally different subject matter, and so you have to learn each case a new regardless of how often you've done it. And and maybe it helps you to prepare

Jonah Perlin [00:17:59]:

a little more efficiently when you've done it more often. But other than that, you can't stand up in the supreme court and say, you know, well, I'm not quite sure of the answer on that, but but just trust me. I've been here before. That doesn't tend to work too well. I I wanted to dig actually a little deeper onto your approach to oral argument. you probably wouldn't know this, but the first supreme court argument that I ever attended as a third year law student was a case that you argued Smith Versus Cain I was an intern at the DOJ, and I asked to get seats because of the other argument that was being argued that day, United States versus Jones, which is the big GPS case. if I'm not mistaken, I was actually sitting next to your family. I didn't know that until you got up to to the lectern, and there was, like, an audible gas from I think it was your parents who were sitting next to me, and they were just so in awe of you standing up to give the argument. And I remember it. like it was yesterday how calm you were at the lectern and how masterful you were with the record and the law, and it was a there were some hard parts of that case. the law wasn't really you were trying to expand the law a little bit as I remember, and you just kinda handled each each question and each argument in response just so calmly that it was impressive to me as a 3rd year lawsuit. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about your approach to preparing for oral argument of so many cases later.

Kannon Shanmugam [00:19:14]:

So first of all, Jonah, you're telling that story makes me feel old because I remember the first supreme court argument I went to was actually a a a fellow by the name of John Roberts who did the argument. He's now the chief justice of the United States. And and that was Smith versus Cain was a fair number of supreme court arguments ago. But, look, I mean, I think that the the key to preparation is to try to put yourself in the judge's shoes or the justice's shoes and to try to identify first what's going to be on their minds, what's going to trouble them about your position, what issues are they gonna be most focused on, second is try to figure out what they're gonna ask about. And I think that's often a really hard thing to do when you've been living with a case for a long time. But you've gotta kind of take yourself out of that and to take yourself out of the role of an advocate and to try to think that if somebody's picking up this case for the first time, what are their reactions be? What are they gonna think about the case? And so there's obviously a lot that you do in preparation that I think is gonna come as no surprise. You read all the briefs innumerable times. You read all the key cases. You read the statutes. You learn the record to the extent that's critical. But, really, what I try to do as I'm preparing is to try to figure out what the court's gonna ask me and to try to come up with the very best answers that I can to those questions. And that's where the process of going through new courts, trial runs for the actual argument becomes so important because it's really through that process that you get a sense of what smart people are gonna be wondering about. You you ask friends or or colleagues to come and pretend to be judges or justices in ask you all the hard questions, and it's almost pretty natural how often those questions will be identical to or very similar to the questions you got during the actual argument. And I think if you've done everything right, it's sort of like professional athletes say. It sort of feels as if time slows down during the oral argument. And even if you get what seems like a tough question, it's hopefully something that you've thought about and that you've come up with your best answer for. And one of the best pieces of advice I ever got about oral advocacy is that when the judges get heated, it's sort of your job to to take the temperature down. And I think that's actually a really good, very practical piece of advice for oral argument. is that when the judges are getting animated,

Jonah Perlin [00:21:31]:

it usually is not gonna help the cause if you're getting animated in response. And so I think it's very important to try to to keep an even keeled during an oral argument. And can you dig a little bit deeper on sort of the nuts and bolts of your prep, so to use the baseball metaphor? Like, what equivalent of going to the batting cage to sort of get your swings in.

Kannon Shanmugam [00:21:50]:

So it's usually going to a conference room where I won't be disturbed and talking to myself. I mean, what I do to prepare for an argument is really to usually jot down some notes about the best answers to to hard questions. And then to practice talking about the case, and I'm not at all shy about going into a conference room and and and just talking to myself, and I suspect people who walk by probably think that I'm losing my mind, but I've just found over the years that it's the best way to prepare. Public speaking is not something that has ever come naturally to me. I was not one of these people who is a serious high school or college debater like so many of the the lawyers in in the supreme court bar are so when I first started arguing cases, I think it was just challenging to me to kinda be in this very public very public form of public speaking, and it took a lot of practice. And it still does. And I think in many ways, the challenge now is obviously not so much that I'm not used to public speaking. It's more that when you have a really complicated case, it's one thing to figure out how to express your views on it in writing, and it's quite another to figure out how to express it orally, especially to someone who just hasn't spent as much time thinking about the cases you have, and therefore isn't going to think about it in the mental shorthand kinds of ways that that you might And that I think there's no substitute for practice for that. And to doing it orally, I when I do move courts, I typically record them and watch back over them. and I'm really listening both to the questions to to try to figure out if I could give better answers to them, but also listening to my own answers with a critical ear to make sure that they make sense and that they're understandable and that I'm putting things in a way that conveys the points quickly and powerfully because in a supreme court argument, you don't really have the luxury to give long answers. But the court is firing questions at you from all directions. You have 30 minutes at most. If you're in the government or arguing Perlin Amicus, you might only have 10 minutes. And so you've gotta figure out how to boil things down.

Jonah Perlin [00:23:55]:

And are there things you do differently now on argument 30 plus than you did sort of for your first view?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:24:02]:

I I do think I'm much more efficient at preparing. I I think I have a more tutored eye for what I need to really be focusing on. And so I'd say that's the major change. And I think everything else I do is pretty similar. I make very small notebooks that I take to the podium at oral argument. But the real purpose of the notebook is it's sort of my it's like Linus' security blanket. I carry it around with me. wherever I go for the 2 or 3 weeks leading up to the argument because I put all the key cases and statutes in it and then sort of my my reference guide. I I was cleaning my basement, and I came across a box. And and in the box was a bunch of my old argument binder. And I actually found one that was from one of the first supreme court cases I had ever argued, and it was kind of amazing to me, Jonah, how looked almost exactly like the argument binders that I made for arguments today. So so in terms of the materials I use, they're they're basically exactly the same. I really don't I don't tend to write out too much. I'll typically write out my first paragraph or 2 just so that in in case I get the oral equivalent of writer's block, I'll have something in front of me. But other than that, it's really more just having, you know, the key resources, the key sites, and the like at my fingertips in case I need them. One of the questions I get from students who are prepping for their first oral argument is sort of how to handle hard questions.

Jonah Perlin [00:25:21]:

They're comfortable with the idea that they know they need to prepare. What questions to to be ready for. But in any case, inevitably, there's a there's a question that's really not a good question for you. What are some of your tips and tricks on how to handle the hard questions?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:25:34]:

I think you have to embrace them. I mean, I actually think you have to get into a mindset where you welcome the hard questions. And that's kind of how I approach every oral argument is to kind of have the mental attitude of bring it on because I think the key to being a persuasive advocate is to recognize that there are hard questions for your side, but to embrace them and to come up with the very best reasons why you should win despite those hard questions. And look, by the time a case gets to the Supreme Court, they're gonna be hard questions for both sides in most cases because By definitions by definition, the cases that the Supreme Court hears are cases where at least 1 Court of Appeals gone one way, and at least one Court of Appeals has gone the other. And Court of Appeals judges are are pretty smart. And so if judges have come out against you, it's presumably because there are at least some pretty good arguments on the other side. And and it's very rare that you have a supreme court case where you know, every single indicia points in your client's favor. Typically, in a supreme court case, the text might point one way, but there may be contrary legislators of history or there may be contradictory cues within the statutory text, or there might be one line of cases that favors you and another line of cases that points in the opposite the direction, and you just have to recognize that as an advocate. You've gotta recognize that what you're really trying to do is to convince the court that the arguments for your side are better on balance than the arguments for the other side. And it's the on balance part that I think is the hard part. Anybody can say, look at the statutory language, it points in my favor. But the real art comes in saying to the court well, there are a couple of cases that might have seemed to point in the other direction, but here's why you shouldn't read them so broadly. And I think if you sort of go into the oral argument with that mindset, it's a lot easier to deal with hard questions because you know that they're coming and you've presumably thought of in advance the argument and, again, thought about what your best answers are. I I tend to think that typically when there's a really hard question for our side, it's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, whereas for the harder questions, in some sense, are just the random curve ball questions that you might not have expected. that you might not feel quite as confident about because you haven't spent as much time thinking about it. One of the things that people have been talking about recently is how

Jonah Perlin [00:27:51]:

siloed the appellate bar has become and how there's this established bar of repeat players. I mean, you've had almost 2 arguments a term for the last many years, and there are others sort of in that boat, whereas it used to be, I think, a little bit more, like, random for lack of a better word. More people had that opportunity. Kannon you talk a little bit about the supreme court bar and whether or not that's a good thing, a bad thing, and also sort of how can people break in given that it's such a small group of people?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:28:18]:

Yeah. It's a great question, Jonah. And it's a complex question, and I'm not sure that there's any sort of single explanation for it. I do think that perhaps the the best explanation for why we have a specialized Supreme Court bar is that it's just indicative of a greater degree of specialization across the profession. But I think about great lawyers in perhaps the generation right above mine and people like, Kannon Sullivan and Ted Wells. And and in the earlier generation, people like Edward Bennett Williams. And at this firm, Simon Rifkin, one of our named partners, and they were really truly generalists. And many of those folks like Mister Williams and Judge Rifkin were both trial litigators and pretty experienced and well regarded supreme court litigators because that's just what lawyers did. Now there were just a lot fewer lawyers back then. And there was just a lot more of a sense that you if you had a problem and you tried to get the best lawyer. Nowadays, I think the mentality of many clients is I want the person who's handled the most cases like this one. And so if you're gonna have a LawPods handle us securities case, it's gonna be somebody who specializes in securities cases. And so I I think it's not at all surprising that the supreme court and the ballot bar has been subject to that broader trend. Now I think what makes the supreme court bar a little bit different is that it's a specialty in a court and a type of advocacy rather than a subject area. But the supreme court in particular is different. I think in many ways, the supreme court is more different from appellate courts than courts of appeals are from trial courts in some respects because the supreme court is often dealing with questions of national importance. It's obviously not bound by any decisions of a higher court. And it tends to consider purely legal questions, and it doesn't tend to get into to factual issues in the way that, say, courts of appeals do. And so as a result, I think that the style of advocacy is specialized and stylized in a way where experience is valuable. And so that raises the question that you raised, which is how do you break into a bar where clients are looking for people with experience? And I think in many ways, again, that's no different than it is from any other specialized area of practice. You know? How do you become a criminal defense lawyer when no one will hire you to do the first case. And I I I think that is a challenge, and I think all you can do is to put yourself in a position to get those opportunities. And sometimes that may require going to the government or going to a public interest organization because often, it's very hard to get first chair opportunities at a large law firm. Though I I think you can do it, but I I just think that it's sometimes easier to do that in other places. But I think that the one thing that we've seen is it is possible to break into the Supreme Court bar because the bar changes and evolves from generation to generation, and we're we're kind of seeing that now where a number of great supreme court litigators are in their later years of practice, and there are a number of enormously talented, younger Supreme court litigators who are sort of stepping into their place. And so I I think it's possible, but it's because the Supreme Court hears so few cases, By definition, you're talking about a small number of people. And I think that's one of the things that that might be perceived to really sort of exacerbate the sense that it's somehow a really small club. And the supreme court is deciding only 50 cases a year. That's only maybe a 100 opportunities or slightly more for anyone to argue cases there. Yeah. And I guess that that ties into my other question, which is especially now in your firm management role. You get to work with a lot of different associates, not just associates, who do appellate work, but I assume associates from sort of across the across your firm. Can you talk a little bit about what, in your mind, makes a good associate or even better what a great associate sort of stand out? Well, I think all of the associates at top law firms are smart, and and smart enough to do the work. And so I sort of start from that baseline that that the people we have at Paul Weiss are all incredibly talented. They wouldn't have gotten here. These were all who have done exceptionally well in law school and done exceptionally well before law school. And so that's just assumed. And I think what differentiates the really top people is is attitude more than anything else. It's being willing to work hard and to put in the extra effort to make draft briefs, not just good, but absolutely perfect. And being willing to do the unglamorous work that comes with being the junior person on the totem pole. And we've all been there, and it's the the pride in your work to proofread the joint appendix the night before it's due. And those things really matter to me. And I think having an enthusiastic attitude goes a long way having an interest in not just the specific project that you've been given, but an interest in learning about the case as a whole in learning about the client, learning about the industry. I think all those things are really important, and I think they are genuine differentiators. I think there are just associates who sometimes you just think that's somebody who I would trust with my life because they sweat the details. They really care about every aspect of the cake. And that to me is really the principal differentiating

Jonah Perlin [00:33:33]:

factor. Yeah. One of the things that that people told me when I was a pretty junior associate was don't worry about quantity, worry about quality. That there's always more cases at a big law firm, and you're always gonna be pulled in lots of different directions And it's okay to get pulled in a lot of different directions, but not if your quality suffers. That at the end of the day is the best thing you can provide, and it sounds like that's pretty accurate advice from your view as well. Yeah. I mean, I can assure you having been a a partner now to law firms that that no one is looking down the list of associates and saying, Well, here are the 5 associates who build the most time. They must be the best associates. I think that the qualitatively

Kannon Shanmugam [00:34:09]:

best associates, you know, typically, they'll be busy because they're in demand. But it it it it's not something where the more you work, the better you're necessarily going to be.

Jonah Perlin [00:34:19]:

I think if anything, I think we all know that if you're you're too busy, that's when the quality of your work starts to suffer. And that's something that I personally think about sometimes when I'm really busy is just thinking that if I wanna be doing my best possible work, it's probably not gonna be the work I'm doing at 2:30 in the morning. A good night of sleep goes a long way. And I guess speaking of sleep, in addition to all your professional accolades, I know you have 3 sons, if I'm correct, and and a very busy and accomplished spouse as well. And one of the things I I like to ask people on this podcast is not just about their professional life, but about their sort of personal life and how they've not necessarily balanced. Balance, I think, is sometimes the wrong word for it. But how they manage being so dedicated to their work like you are, but also dedicated to your family.

Kannon Shanmugam [00:35:03]:

Yeah. Look. I think it's tough. for all the reasons that so many people have have spilled so much ink about. It it's really hard when you have a job that is both mentally demanding, but that just takes up a lot of time all those Saturday mornings that you have to spend when you're preparing for arguments and working on really difficult briefs. And but what I really try to do first and foremost is to be present when I'm at home and to be focused on my kids and not to be on my phone checking my email and carve out time for date night with my wife and -- Mhmm. -- to coordinate our Google Kannon so that we can do that. And and I think that's really the most important thing is to be present when you're there. I really try to do that. It's it's a challenge with 3 kids and 3 very active kids. it can be a little bit crazy at times. I think I've had good role models over the course of my career, and particularly Ken Star, who was, in a sense, my first boss in private practice. He was the head of the supreme court appellate practice at Kirkland and Ellis when I started out as a baby associate. And He was such a great role model in terms of the work life balance. He was somebody who would leave work to get home to the softball games or to the the kids' activities and would really sort of be a good role model in that regard. And and I try to do that too. I'm very proud of the fact that for each of our 3 kids, I took paternity leave, including about a time when I think that was much less common than it is now. And I'm really encouraging our associates to take the full parental leave when their children come along because, of course, that's a a once in a lifetime opportunity for child and parent both. And I think that as a a more senior partner, I really try to to model that behavior for our associates so that they know that it's okay. to do that and to try to as best I Kannon that we're really busy, permit people to draw boundaries around their personal lives.

Jonah Perlin [00:36:54]:

I think it's really important and just I'll say as someone where junior who did this, we do look up. And I think that matters and the culture matters, and especially that's true for all parents, it's something that needs a lot to be as a dad, and it sounds like it does to you as well that we live in a time where fathers can play a different role perhaps than they once in the profession, and the only way that's gonna happen is if people actually do it. And so being a role model matters. So I guess my last question is I always like to end the podcast by asking if there's one piece of advice that you either tend to give to young lawyers or law students or that you received as a young lawyer or law student that you'd wanna share, what would that advice be?

Kannon Shanmugam [00:37:29]:

I think careers in the law are not linear. That's a piece of advice that I'm fond of giving because I think that there is a temptation to think that there is one right path. And if it merely follow that path, you'll end up as a supreme court justice or the the head of a major law firm or the president of the ACLU or whatever. And and I just think that's not true. I think if anything, when you look at successful people in the law, their careers have often had detours, and detours that ended up proving to be valuable in ways that might not have been obvious at the time. And I really encourage associates to think about their careers that way and not to be afraid about pursuing opportunities that might be off the beaten path, particularly earlier in their careers because I I I think that can often be a great experience in ways that are not obvious at the time. And I've had a fairly linear career path, but I think maybe precisely because I did, I I think that it's a good idea not to always think that way and to really look for opportunities that are gonna challenge you and challenge you in different ways.

Jonah Perlin [00:38:43]:

Again, that was Kannon Shanmugam, Supreme Court advocate, and partner at Paul Weiss, Rifkin Worton, and Garrison in Washington DC. Kannon truly is one of the nation's preeminent appellate advocates, and I'm so grateful that he was willing to take the time to share so many concrete tips about both how to be a good advocate but also how to carve a niche in the profession. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you'll consider subscribing at howilearner.com or wherever you get your podcasts. and sharing the podcast with family, friends, or colleagues. As always, I can be reached at how ilawyer@gmail.com or at Jonah Perlin on Twitter. Thanks again, Kannon. Thanks for listening, and have a great week.