Episode 19: Finding your superpower with Chad Aboud

Inspiring Legal

Today we're talking to Chad Aboud - the lawyer on a journey to make Legal more enjoyable and fulfilling. You might have seen him across social media, or you might not know him (yet), but one thing is for certain: after listening, you'll have a new perspective on your career and hands-on tips on how to find your superpower as a lawyer.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:17] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. So today we are joined by a person that is all about making life the most enjoyable that
[00:17 - 00:34] you can possibly get out of it. He is amazing. He is motivating. He is energetic. And he is all about combining happiness with lowering. So welcome, Chad.
[00:34 - 00:54] Thank you so much for having me and for that warm welcome. We will today talk about being happy and working in-house or at a law firm and how you can combine that if it's even doable. But before we start talking about that, maybe Chad, you can just tell people a little bit
[00:54 - 01:09] about your background and what you do today. Sure. Thank you. So I'm in Toronto, Canada, and I started my career about 12 years ago in a big law firm in Toronto, and I was helping public companies acquire other companies and raise money.
[01:09 - 01:25] And so I was doing that for about five years. And the training was amazing. I think any young professional services training skills are great. It forces you to learn how to think quickly, how to analyze, how to do a ton of work in a very short amount of time.
[01:25 - 01:41] And I valued that and I appreciated that and worked with some wonderful people. But I think at the same time, I really noticed that I was drawn to two elements that probably weren't the core of that job. One was I really liked training students and other lawyers as they started their career.
[01:41 - 01:58] I love being part of the student committee and the hiring committee loved that. And I also was looking at deal structures as I was doing them and saying, well, there's like 25% of the deal structure that seems irrelevant to the value to the client, but takes a lot of time and it's very painful for the lawyers and nobody cares.
[01:58 - 02:14] So let's wipe that out and then just do 75% of the work, still charge the same rate. Bottom line is amazing. Less work. Isn't this beautiful? And I think, in retrospect, as a young lawyer at a major law firm, suggesting how important it is about training the students and changing deal structures, I think a lot of folks were
[02:14 - 02:33] a little bit confused and I think that made me confused. And so what I realized was this probably wasn't going to be the future for me because I could tell my nature and energy was drawn elsewhere. And so I actually resigned from big law without necessarily knowing what I was going to do next and traveled around the world with my partner for six months and a personal professional
[02:33 - 02:49] journey. And then when I came back, went into industry, one of Canada's largest brands. And so retail, e-tail, expansion into the US with a retail footprint. And it was amazing because I'm a pretty curious cat. So I really like to like, what's a marketing team up to? What's the privacy team up to? I love that.
[02:49 - 03:05] And I love learning different types of law. And so that actually, it made a lot more sense to me for the first time because it was less about the law. Of course, I stole a lawyer, but it was a lot more around, well, we've got an operation to run. And so how do we find the right kind of law plus business, create relationships?
[03:05 - 03:23] It just felt more natural to me. And so I love that. Love learning how to be an in-house lawyer. But then after three years, I kind of had this same drive again about like, but I want to create the brand or the way or the relationships in my way. And so for the last three and a half years until recently, I became general counsel of
[03:23 - 03:39] this international tech company where we created the legal function and built out the team and brought in legal tech and it was part of the leadership team and it's an incredible journey, right? You get to build it the way you want to build it, with the parameters of the company's goals. But that was very motivating for me.
[03:39 - 03:54] But even then I realized I care the most about two things. One, helping people find the most that's in themselves and two, making their way forward easier. And while those things are very helpful for me as a general counsel, it wasn't the core
[03:54 - 04:09] of the job. And so I resigned in September because I knew I needed to follow that nature. And at the beginning of this year, I launched my own consulting and coaching business for the legal industry because through my journey, I just know that we can be successful and
[04:09 - 04:27] happy and fulfilled. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And so that's the journey I'm on now, coaching lawyers, doing consulting to law firms, helping their lawyers realize how to make real relationships with their clients in a way that generates business and is fun because it's doable. And this is what I care about. So this is where I'm at now.
[04:27 - 04:45] So you have really taken a leap, so to speak, not just a leap of faith, but just in terms of your career development, which is super inspiring. I think what I'm sitting with, maybe the listeners are too, is how do you do that?
[04:45 - 05:02] Like not the leap, but more just saying, okay, I think this is doable. This is something everybody should be able to feel, to have in their daily work because you use too much time working.
[05:02 - 05:18] You spend more time at work than you do at home. So how do you then go about coaching people to become happier? Yeah. And that is the most important question. And this wasn't like when I was saying I was a second year and I saw these things, it wasn't
[05:18 - 05:34] fully formed in my mind at this time that this was going to be my journey. It was just these little like flashes through my mind. And I wasn't always capturing them and knowing what to do with them, but I felt them deeply. And so what I tell people and what, you know, maybe I don't, I mean, my journey was my journey.
[05:34 - 05:50] It was the way it was meant to go. But what I would tell my younger self is those things that you think about when you're not thinking for me, it was like, how do I help this person? How do I help them make their way easier? Like this is your superpower. And do you know why?
[05:50 - 06:08] Because you think about it without trying. This is not effort for you. It is not hard or painful or annoying for me to spend lots of time with people, helping them find their own superpower, making their way easier for other people. It is. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm saying it's right for me. And so that journey, that reflection journey of uncovering that, and that's what I do with
[06:08 - 06:24] lawyers now. It's like lots of exercises like, okay, for the next week, every time you catch your brain, just going into some space where you're not trying, just write that thing down. And I don't care if you think it's silly. I don't care if you think it doesn't relate to law. It doesn't matter.
[06:24 - 06:41] Because what I know is if you...