The power of taking a sabbatical with Tina Saunders
A full transcript follows.
Tina Saunders ticked all the boxes as she moved through her career as a lawyer, but when she was offered partner track, she hesitated. Listen and hear what happened next when Tina asked for a one year sabbatical from her firm.
In this episode you’ll hear:
The importance of education for Tina and how she became a highly valued attorney at her firm
What happened on the day of her partner interview?
How she took a one year sabbatical and found herself in Japan
The transition from law firm to professor and finding the perfect dream position
Her favourite books and other fun facts
About Tina
Tina is Director, Beasley School of Law, at Temple University Japan Campus (TUJ). Tina joined the TUJ faculty in 2013, teaching Civil Procedure and Torts and since 2016 has been managing the TUJ Beasley School of Law programs: That is their Master of Laws (LL.M.), Juris Doctor (J.D.) semester abroad and non-degree Certificate programs in U.S. and International Law.
Tina received her law degree from the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science with a minor in Business Administration from Howard University.
Tina served as a law clerk for Judge Lynne A. Battaglia at the Maryland Court of Appeals and then entered private practice at Venable LLP in Baltimore, Maryland.
Tina took a one year sabbatical, traveling in Japan and other countries and ultimately saw Tina leaving her law firm career to start a new adventure and work as an educator.
Outside of work, Tina loves making cocktails, hiking, jogging and for her mindfulness, she has taken up adult coloring.
Connect with Tina
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-saunders-64067015a/
Links
Bar Trench: https://small-axe.net/bar-trench/
Michelle Obama’s book: The light we carry.
Toni Morrison: Recitatif
Connect with Catherine
Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/oconnellcatherine/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawyeronair
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catherine.oconnell.148
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oconnelllawyer
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@lawyeronair
Transcript
Catherine: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode in the Lawyer on Air Podcast. I'm the host of the show, Catherine O'Connell. Today I am joined by Professor Tina Saunders. Tina is Director Beasley School of Law at Temple University Japan Campus, or TUJ for short. Tina joined the TUJ faculty in 2013 teaching Civil Procedure and Torts, and since 2016 has been managing the T U J Beasley School of Law Programs. That is their Master of Laws, LLM, Juris Doctor, J D, semester abroad, and non-degree certificate programs in US and international law. She also oversees enrollment management, academic advising, and student support, as well as ensuring program compliance with the University and American Bar Association standards.
Tina is also looking after TUJ Beasley School of Law's Budget and Resource Investment that involves many activities including faculty hiring. Supporting teacher development, monitoring quality control of teaching methods, and student learning outcomes and assessments. Tina received her law degree from the University of Maryland, Carey School of Law, and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a minor in business administration from Howard University.
She has a range of international experience practising law in the US and working in Japan. Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Lynne A. Battaglia at the Maryland Court of Appeals until 2005. She then entered private practice working at Venable Law LLP in Baltimore, Maryland from 2002 through to 2011, where she focused on commercial and product liability litigation.
In Tina's life journey, she came to Japan in August, 2011 on what was intended to be a one year sabbatical from her law firm, and that sabbatical turned into a year of travelling in Japan and other countries, and ultimately saw Tina leaving her law firm career to start a new adventure and work as an educator.
During 2011 to 13, she was able to have an opportunity to travel and worked as a part-time consultant at Kyodo Television, working with the production and technical staff to prepare them for English related contracts and media content. When she's not doing law, Tina is very much into her, what she calls her human side, and I love that expression.
She likes to call herself an amateur bartender. She has a fancy home bar and she loves making all kinds of cocktails. In addition, Tina loves hiking and jogging. And for her mindfulness, she has taken up adult colouring and she loves watching YouTube videos, including one of my favourites too, which is Living Big in a Tiny House, hosted by New Zealander, Bryce Langston.
Well, let's get started. Tina, welcome to the show.
Tina: Thank you so much, Catherine, for that kind introduction and giving me the opportunity to come and chat about all things law careers and what we can do to improve ourselves in legal education.
Catherine: Oh, thank you. I'm so excited. And actually, I'm gonna ask you a slightly different first question, which is, if we were meeting up at your fancy home bar, what would you be recommending to me to whip up as a cocktail so that I could enjoy that?
Tina: This is a great question, and it's actually a lovely time of the year because we are approaching the holiday season and I am currently curating my menu for our holiday party that we're going to have. For the New Year's holiday. And so for myself, I am rather much of a gin connoisseur, but I suggest that if you're going to have a holiday party, it would be great to make a wonderful starting champagne mimosa that is based in winter holiday fruits like cranberries or pears and other types of citrus fruits that are really great and they're a nice way to celebrate and to get started when you are having a New Year's party.
Catherine: Wow, it's early in the morning, but you've already got me thinking about having a cocktail. Champagne mimosa. That sounds so beautiful. And also, I suppose you go around town from time to time and have a favourite wine bar or restaurant that you go to.
Tina: Oh yes, I definitely think you'll spot me around town going to all of the different high quality bars that are here in Tokyo and the bar scene here, it's quite nice. It's well known and the Omotenashi of the bartenders, it's just remarkable.
And my favourite bar, actually, it's a quiet little neighbourhood bar. It's well known, but it's a bar in Ebisu, and it's called a Bar Trench. And it's a wonderful little bar that hosts neighbourhood people coming in to drop in for a cocktail. And you can meet the owner of the bar who is quite famous. So, I definitely recommend that if you're going to have a night out, that is absolutely the place to start.
Catherine: Mm, you had me at famous, I love famous people. Funnily enough, you mentioned a word Omotenashi there. What does that mean to you?
Tina: So to me, I actually learned this concept when I came to Japan. I didn't realise that we could have such attention to detail in the level of service that's provided to us. And I think that this concept is very much a part of Japanese culture that I think those visiting here to Japan, living here in Japan, come to very much appreciate and welcome this idea that service is first and that you always want to think about how you can put the other person in the best position possible. So when I think of Omotenashi, I think it comes in all different aspects of life here in Japan when you're going to the grocery store and the staff clerks will greet you, when you're in the train station and the staff will say hello to you.
Or when they are beautifully packaging the things that we're buying in Mitsukoshi department store, things like that, that is Omotenashi because they give such attention to detail and care to the customers that I think it's something that's unmatched around the world.
Catherine: Oh, I love that description. It's so true, isn't it? That it is unmatched and it's, I think it's almost part of, I'm not sure how it is for you, but it keeps me here that way that Japan will take care of you. It doesn't matter who you are. It just seems that they really put that focus on detail and attention and looking after people.
Tina: I definitely think that's true, and when you come here you definitely get a sense that you are receiving just a bit of love and care, even in the smallest details. And to me, that's something that the world needs more of, just a bit more empathy, a bit more love and care in how we treat each other. So you can learn a lot, I think, from Japanese culture.
Catherine: Thank you for that. I'm glad I asked you that question. I'm going to ask you now, going back a little bit further into your career. Do you remember what you wanted to be? Or when people asked you, what do you wanna be when you grow up?
And that can be a good or not so good question, but for you, what were you thinking about then in those early days?
Tina: I actually get asked this question quite often from my students. And of course, because you're in school, you're thinking about, well, what do you want to do with yourself? What kind of things do you want to accomplish? And for myself, I actually grew up in a single family home. My mum raised me and her family as well.
She was a hardworking single parent. And funny enough, she worked in a law firm as a paralegal, and she had done this career for many, many years. So oftentimes if she was coming from work to pick me up from school or if I was getting dropped off at her job, she would take me to her office and introduce me to the legal professionals there. The lawyers there.
And this was from a fairly young age, maybe I was in junior high school or so, and I had my first look at what it means to be a professional. At that time, I didn't think of the word professional, but I thought, these seem like important people. These seem like people that are doing things that are important to others.
And I also had a sense that lawyers, now that I know and legal professionals were so hardworking because I could see how hard my mother worked and I could take from that this feeling that I want to work hard to provide for myself, to provide for my future family, and I got onto this idea that I'm going to be a lawyer.
That's what I'm going to be when I grow up. I had that idea in my mind fairly early on. I've always sort of flirted with this idea of what could I do in the legal space? And that carried me through high school as well as into university. I was a pre-law political science major, so for myself, this idea of becoming a lawyer meant that I could dream of a way to make a living for myself, to take care of myself, to be independent, and to know that I'm doing what I feel is something important.
Catherine: So out of those things there, you know, taking care of yourself, making a living, doing something that's important. What's now the most important thing out of those for you as you live your life now as a lawyer?
Tina: It's quite interesting because over time I think that my life focus has shifted. So when you're starting out in college or university, for example, in a new environment, you're meeting new people. For myself, I was raised in Los Angeles, but I actually went across the country to attend Howard University, which is located in Washington DC. It's a historically black college.
And from myself, I had a very real sense of discovery, of learning my history, of learning a lot more about where I came from. And I think that type of discovery shaped my perspective to really work, to identify how I wanted to exist in the world. But as time went on, life happened. I met my husband in college, we were college sweethearts, and I decided that I wanted to think about, how can I work? What can I do?
I had some self-doubt after university of whether I could actually go to law school. So for myself, my journey to law school started later. I worked for several years prior to actually beginning law school. And it was during that time I was working at the United States Tax Court, which is located in Washington DC But that particular job was quite interesting because you spent most of your time travelling all over the United States hearing cases about why people don't want to pay their taxes essentially.
And that was one of my first legal jobs after university, but prior to law school. It was during that time that everyone kept saying, well, if you don't go directly into law school, you'll never become a lawyer. You'll quit. You'll end up just taking some other job that was not on the path that you set for yourself.
But I was fairly undeterred by that kind of advice. And for myself, I thought I can take the time to travel. And that's what gave me my first travel bug. And it taught me the ways to be independent. So for myself I could think that with being independent and seeing other people go to law school, I thought, I can do this.
I can actually try to return to the goals that I had when I was young. So for me it was a bit of a self realisation of the ideas that I had in mind for myself and then moving toward those goals. So getting to law school was a very important step for me because I am a first generation to attend a four year university.
I'm the first generation to attend law school. And certainly, the backbone of my success, even at that early stage of education, was due to my family because I could see how hard they worked to help propel me to something more than how they saw themselves.
Catherine: Wow, Tina, I'm hanging on every word.
Tina: Yeah. So it's a bit of a long-winded way of saying that, you know, it's a journey that you start on and the way that you think about yourself, it will change over time. And so from myself I think that being able to accomplish these sorts of firsts in my life first in my family, those things were, the biggest starting points as far as myself becoming a lawyer.
So certainly the first lawyer in my family as well.
Catherine: Fantastic. And congratulations on that. And it is a triumph. It really is. And I loved how you talked about not going directly to law school, you know, and people telling you you won't get a job, but you were undeterred, that was the word you use, and you said that it was family that propelled you. What else helped you then though, know that you could go further forward and do law school after having worked a while, what was it inside you that let you know that that was okay to do?
Tina: I've always felt that my upbringing, you know, I come from a working class family, a single parent home, I honestly could see so many of the struggles that my mother had in trying to make a safe environment for me in trying to make it a nurturing environment. And she always said that no matter what, you must focus on education because that is what's going to help get you to reach the goals that you wanna have for yourself.
So I feel that looking at the way that my mother raised me, it helped me to understand that only I can chart my own course. I'm the only one that can decide what I want to do and frankly have enough confidence to set myself on a path and go and achieve it.
So I've always been the kind of person that I want to try to do everything that I can, to better my own position, to better my family's position. And to do that, it takes things like moving across the country away from your family, or it takes jumping into the deep end, even if you don't necessarily know what the outcome will be. But it's only by that level of risk taking that you can see what your life could become.
And for me, that potential to see what life could become propelled me quite, quite deeply. It gave me a lot of energy to always stay on the path that I'm trying to set for myself.
Catherine: Mm. The risk taking, that's such a difficult thing for people to do, but somehow you've been possessed with the ability to do that. And now I feel with you being in education, you've found the destiny you're meant to be in as a lawyer, as a person, because I think you are also through these words, you're saying now, helping your students see the possibilities, even if they left say T U J and went and did something else before they went and took the study that they had done at T U J further. Is that the kind of atmosphere or abilities that you are creating with the students that you are with right now?
Tina: I hope so. and I'm often asked, what do I get out of being an educator and interacting with students? And what I've found is that over time I've seen certain patterns emerge in the students that are coming to study with us. When they come, they are a little bit nervous, they're highly motivated, and they are needing a boost of confidence to know that they can achieve whatever is the goal that they want to achieve.
And so when students are first coming to study with us at Temple Law Japan, we are always talking most deeply with each student. What is it that you want to accomplish? How do you see yourself? What are the things that you want to gain in this learning environment?
And I often find that a lot of students will need a boost in their confidence in knowing that they are quite capable of achieving the things that they want to achieve, which includes getting a higher degree. And so our students, what we found particularly since the pandemic started, is that there is a stronger need for support.
I think everyone has struggled during this time. And that certainly is the case in the educational environment as well. So we always have to give a lot more love and attention to mental health and wellbeing in addition to giving students the tools that they need to become global legal practitioners.
Catherine: Mm. Yeah, that's good. It's confidence, and I think that sort of counteracts that risk taking adverse feelings we might have as well. So I think you've combined those absolutely amazingly there. And you talked about travelling around the US with the US tax court, which I didn't know you would do in the tax court kind of role.
I've got a thousand questions, but the first one is, what did that work teach you about people? And the second point I wanted to ask you is from there, What happened when you started to go back then into your law path? So two questions there.
Tina: Yes, it's quite interesting because most people are not aware of the US Tax Court and the system that's created in the United States is that we have a federal or national tax system, and then we also have a state by state system. and at the federal level, rather than having citizens travelling to the Washington DC area to have their cases heard, we would go, myself, a judge and a court reporter would go around to all of the cities within the United States and allow citizens to come and be heard.
And one of the things that I felt I learned as a part of that experience is, I travelled for the first time, essentially by myself because the work was primarily in court, you know, working nine to five hours. But outside of that, I was a solo traveller. And I think that, some people will say that it's quite lonely when you are travelling by yourself.
But what it taught me is that when I first started, I was in my early twenties and when I first started this type of travelling, I was afraid to have dinner by myself. So I would often just take dinner in my hotel room and I would be afraid to go out because I was so self-conscious that I was alone and not with others.
But over time I felt that I could gain a level of independence and I felt a lot more competent to go out by myself. And that taught me a very big lesson about how to just be within myself and to be comfortable with myself and to be comfortable with being silent or quiet and not having to be engaged with people all the time.
So I feel that that gave me such a big grounding to be able to have more confidence, which helped me to move toward law school. Without that experience, honestly, I think that I probably would've gone into government service. I think I was looking at the time at getting a master's in public administration so that I could get a government job, something completely different than moving toward the law.
I loved law school. It was the most rewarding educational experience that I had, it helped me to understand the types of law that I wanted to go into, what I could be good at, and what I did not like.
And that experience really helped me to thrive, to move me forward and toward this goal of becoming a lawyer.
Catherine: Wow. Okay. And then, so you did actually become a lawyer. So how was it in your first few years out of law school? Was it what you thought it would be? Did you feel fulfilled, challenged? What came up for you then?
Tina: So this is such an interesting track that I was on in law school. And a lot of people will say that when you're graduating from law school, especially in the US, you'll take a certain type of job. You'll either work for a law firm or you'll go toward public service government work or doing a clerkship.
I decided to do a clerkship on Maryland's high court, and the judge that I worked for, Judge Batagglia, she was quite a renowned judge obviously having attained a judgeship at the highest court of Maryland. In her prior career, she was a criminal defence attorney, and also spent time as a prosecutor, and then she went into private practice.
So my judge, she was an amazing, amazing judge and as a woman, she was tough as nails, if I must say. And I felt that going into my clerkship, I thought it was just sort of a cushy job. Oh, I won't have to do much. It's the type of filler gap job that you take before you take your real job. And I learned very quickly that, uh, no, it's a real job.
There are high expectations set for you when you are essentially hearing cases that will have such a wide impact on the citizens of Maryland. And so for me that was the first job that I had where it was in a small working environment. Our team was small, just the judge and myself and another law clerk, and we had to work quite closely together.
I learned in that experience that to do work, but you have to learn to self-generate your own confidence in a way because most of the time, in my experience, senior attorneys, they won't necessarily shower you with praise and tell you how wonderful you are and create that kind of nurturing learning environment.
Once you move into your first jobs, there's a lot more involved in the expectations that are placed upon you. And so for me I had a sort of crash course in the school of hard knocks, learning how to be a professional person, learning how to meet deadlines, for example, understanding my judge's needs.
That was very helpful to set me on a path to being a more professional person once I started working at my law firm, which was a year later.
Catherine: So you've talked about confidence a lot. I feel like this is really significant for you and it's absolutely why you are now helping your students at Temple discover their confidence, is that right?
Tina: I think it's a funny thing because when you are a teacher and educator, you think, well, we must focus on the substantive theory of law and teaching my students the practicalities of being legal practitioners. But there is a lot more involved when you are nurturing future talent, and that certainly involves helping students to understand their value, their worth and that they can achieve the goals that they want to have, that they can learn the content that we are teaching them, and that they can succeed at trying to better themselves.
And so I feel that being an educator on a level, there's a bit of psychology involved there. There's a bit of nurturing in a sense. We always say that when you come to Temple, you're joining our family. And that idea of family necessarily involves making a whole person, not just a person that's proficient in understanding the doctrinal law.
Catherine: Yeah, I don't know that there are many universities that would say that they are a place where it's really about family nurturing, but also doing the hard stuff, right? We do chores around the house, so they're doing the hard work as well as knowing that they're going to be looked after in their cycle of study.
Tina: That's exactly right. And the funny thing is most of my students will, I think, would say, oh, professor Saunders, she's so kind and she's so nice, but she is so tough when it comes to giving her exams. So I do feel that yes, it's important that you nurture and create a safe and a good learning environment, but the students also need to be armed with the tools to face the real world, to get out there and problem solve, to help think critically about the ills and sort of problems or issues that are coming up in various aspects of society and to be able to perform. So in a way, we are creating a nurturing learning environment that teaches you the practicalities of the real world.
Catherine: Fantastic. And I'm gonna jump back a little bit because you started to talk about joining the law firm that you joined. Right? You must have found it very hard, I think, to leave your clerkship, and take up a law firm role. But tell us about that time.
Tina: It's quite interesting because at the time I was doing my clerkship, I actually strongly promote clerkships because one, your judge will help you find your next job. And that's exactly what happened. So in a sense, I feel that my judge nurtured me and helped me. She was very tough, but she was tough in the ways to show me how to be successful.
And she helped me to create my network and to present me to the Lawyers Bar of Maryland. One little detail that a lot of students coming out of law school don't realise, but when you are completing a clerkship, a high level clerkship, then when you go into your law firm, you actually start out as a second or third year attorney, not as a first year.
And so for myself, I actually went into my firm as a second year. That put me on a path to become a mid-level associate faster. That, in turn, put me on a path to take on more responsibilities and to help partner attorneys to generate business and to do the litigation work. So for myself, I was quite grateful that I had the opportunity to come into my firm as an experienced junior attorney.
In that time I would say that some of the struggles that I experienced in first going there is that I was used to getting assignments. Someone like my judge, for example, gives me my assignment. I do my task, I do my work to the best of my ability, and then I move to the next assignment. I was quite used to working in this way, kind of like a worker bee type of person.
And what I didn't realise as a junior attorney is that you have to build your brand, your self brand. When you work in a law firm people don't just come and give you assignments. You have to create your network. You have to show your value. You have to be able to go out and be proactive about getting work.
So I always say it's beyond just saying yes to work. It's actually being proactive to go out and get the work. And that is something I wish I could have learned prior to starting my work as an attorney at a law firm.
Catherine: But you fast tracked yourself there. I didn't even realise, you know, you're talking about it could have been a cushy job. You thought it was a filler, but in fact it ended up being the role that got you sort of a head start, right? You had a headstart in your law firm and then had to go and do all the other things.
But didn't you start learning all of those, you know, showing yourself up and proactively going and finding work? Wasn't there a good timing for that? How could you have learned that before?
Tina: I think that one of the areas of improvement in legal education is that I loved law school, I learned a lot, but I don't think that I was as well prepared to go into practice as I could have been. I think that the onus becomes more on law schools and those in legal education to teach students the practicalities of going into practice.
So for myself, I feel that I wish my law school had given us even seminars or some understanding of what it actually meant to start to practice. So for ourselves at Temple Law, the ways that we try to work on the professional development of the students is that we hold seminars and lectures all the time, in these different areas of professional development.
We hold networking gatherings and we start to build this idea that you are learning more than just the law. You're learning how to be proficient in your work environment, and that is the professional development component that I think law schools are going to be forced to incorporate more of as we are moving forward.
Catherine: Yeah, I think they will be forced because they've been hesitant or resistant in some way to do that. And certainly the same for me, Tina, when I was at law school, there was no way that we got introduced to other lawyers who were practising, heaven forbid that it would ever be somebody from in-house legal, I don't even know if it existed, but we didn't know about, you know, the types of roles that you could have once you graduated, and about the real day-to-day of being a lawyer.
No one talked about time recording or about empathy for our clients, your clients who are going through divorces or landing up in court. Nothing about that. And I dunno why law schools don't do that. Why they think it's really for the real world and why they keep that quiet. Because all of the professors must know that because they've been lawyers themselves and come into then education.
Why is it hidden away and do you really think they're going to be forced or that we can actually see some difference coming through in the schools?
And I know you are doing that obviously at Temple. What do you think?
Tina: I definitely think that it has a lot to do with one, the changes in legal services that are being required from companies, from individual clients, legal services are changing. Those demands are changing. And if the very idea of law school or legal education is to prepare students to meet those demands, then we must adapt.
We must change. And nowadays, this idea that there is a demand for students to be in a sense ready made practitioners when they're coming out of law school, we are seeing a lot more of this in the ability of students to get jobs, for example. And when you have this demand that's increasing for students to have more skills training, a much better understanding of the legal environments that they're working in, then that necessarily forces law schools to adapt and integrate more about the legal profession.
And it also speaks to this idea of our ethical duty as practitioners, as educators, to ensure that our students are well prepared to go out into the world and to meet the demands that are being created nowadays.
Maybe, you know, a hundred years ago law schools were more of a practice in theory and philosophy and the idea of the development of the rule of law. But nowadays, we have to take those fundamental ideas and apply them to the real world. And so because of that, we see a lot of schools that are introducing more experiential learning, more clinical practice.
Temple Law has always had those types of components because we are a commuter school, we were created with working professionals in mind. And so for us, it's something we've been doing all along. But I do think that, for example, the top 25 law schools, the Yales and Stanfords of legal education, will also start incorporating more clinical practice and more professional development into their curriculums.
Catherine: Hmm. That's great. I mean, I'm sure the law firms could also put pressure on those law schools because if they're not being taught this, was it experiential learning?
Tina: Experiential learning.
Catherine: Yeah, experiential learning and clinical practice at law school then it's loaded onto the law firms to have to do that.
So you'd think they'd want to, rather than spend time trying to do all of that, that if the law school shared some of that burden, it would be a much better place for the law firms as well. Right?
Tina: Yes. And I also think that it adds value to legal education. And so there, it's no secret that nowadays young generations are questioning the value of higher education. And that certainly includes going to law school, graduate school, or programs like that.
But if we can meet the demands of the actual economic sector, the job sector, then we can increase our value to show this is the reason why you invest in your education, because we are helping you to be prepared to go out into the world to have a wider impact, but also to be prepared from a skills point of view and not just learning the law. That's a skill that all lawyers at a minimum you must have.
But this idea of learning other skill sets that job markets are demanding, such as project management, such as crisis management, having other hard skills, such as combining being an engineer with being a lawyer, these kinds of concepts are the types of burdens that I think we as law schools should take on so that we can help to prepare young generations to have a greater impact and to add value from the very beginning of when they are starting their careers.
Catherine: Mm. Yes to all of that. Wow. Okay. Tina, around 2011, I think it was, you came to Japan for what I think was a sabbatical for about a year, but here you are in Japan more than 20 years later, I think. What happened, you came to Japan on a sabbatical, but something happened. Tell us about that.
Tina: Everyone always asks this basic question, I think, most people that live long term in Japan. Why did you come to Japan? And the why did I come to Japan actually started from my work at my law firm. I would say this, my law firm is amazing. I, to this day, have a good relationship with my partners and those that work at Venable.
And for myself, I felt that I was taking on a lot of work working in a large law firm. I think everyone knows the grueling hours that you have to work. And I do not have children, I don't have an expanded family, just my husband and myself. And I felt that at the time there was always this idea that you are available because you don't have children, you can be here all the time.
We can call on you and you can work obscene hours, to be fair. And I do feel that I was experiencing a bit of burnout particularly in the areas of litigation and dispute resolution. They were putting me on a partner track and I had my recent evaluation and at that time they were asking to confirm, are you interested in pursuing a partner track?
And I internally felt myself hesitate. I hesitated and that scared me a little bit. and I thought, you know, I've been working at this firm for years. I love the work I'm doing. I love the people that I'm working with. But I felt myself hesitate on the idea of being somewhere long term. So I actually did something, that is risk taking.
It's again, this idea of confidence and risk taking. I went to my senior partners in my practice group and I said, I wanna think about it. I want to think about whether I want to continue on this track or if I want to do something else. So I asked them if I could take a one year sabbatical and take the time to deeply consider if I wanted to stay and work toward partnership or not.
And miraculously they said, yes, you could do that. I thought they said yes, because they valued me. I understood my own value to the firm, and I believed that they also recognised my value. And they said, okay, it's alright if you take a year. So I decided that I would take a year. I went home, I told my husband, I'm going to stop working for a year to think about it.
And my husband is also a lawyer. We don't work at the same firm. But he said, well, if you're going to take a year, then I'm going to take a year. And he promptly notified his law firm that he was going to leave. And so I talked with him like, well, what? What should we do, you know, during this time? And he said, Let's go to Japan.
I said, okay. I didn't know anything about Japan at the time, but he had always had this affinity for Japan from university. And he had also lightly studied Japanese from university. So for him, he's like, oh, let's go travel and see a new part of the world. And I thought, you know what? That's exactly what I need. So we made plans to do that, and that's how we crash landed here in Japan.
Catherine: It's so amazing. I love it. I mean, you know, something that you never imagined, even with your husband having that interest in Japan. It's like it was such a gift that you could come here, but knowing and trusting your gut with that hesitation, you just can't overlook that kind of thing when it comes up.
But knowing in yourself that travel was really what you needed, and maybe that harks back to the days where you were travelling around the States with the tax job, but knowing what you needed, knowing your hesitation was a sign to you, but also knowing what your husband said was right, that that was what you needed, and knowing that travel was for you.
That's really amazing. What happened then?
Tina: I had felt that I had gone through, you know, university, law school, taking my first law job, going to law school, and then working at my law firm, that I spent so much time just sort of ticking off these boxes of how I envisioned my life. And that moment of hesitation that I had helped me to realise that I could dream bigger or I could dream differently than just ticking off the boxes of my life.
So when we got here to Japan, it was quite an adventure. I could not speak Japanese at all. And everything, mind you, and I think, you know, Catherine, that even a decade ago we did not have many things in English. And it was a little bit more difficult to get around in Japan. But nonetheless I feel that having that experience travelling, that helped me to think I can do anything.
So we travelled all over the country. We travelled to neighbouring countries and just, I had the space to breathe and to refresh my mental and physical wellbeing. So during that time, I did nothing, absolutely nothing, related to work, and it was the most amazing experience of my life.
I tell anyone now, don't wait to take those moments in your life. Don't wait until you think, well, after I retire, then I'll do something. Do it when you feel compelled to. So for me, that moment of hesitation is what compelled me to do it. And whatever is your moment, whatever is that sort of dawning realisation that you have, if you feel compelled to do something, then just do it.
And that's okay. Kind of like the Nike commercial. Just do it.
Catherine: So what happened then? You did the travel. Where did that lead you after that?
Tina: So this is just such a strange and crazy story. One day my husband and I were in some train station here in Tokyo and we were confused and I think we must have looked confused because this older Japanese man walked up to us and said in English, do you need help? And lo and behold, a little moment of kindness turned into a job for my husband and myself.
It turns out that that gentleman was the chairman of Kyodo Television and he was very nice and I think a little bit enamoured with us, myself and my husband. And we were explaining that, you know, we're here in Japan for a year. This was about 10 months after we had been here. And we were already talking about, okay, what are we going to do next?
Are we going to go back and resume, you know, our legal careers or not? And the chairman said, don't leave, stay here. Come and work for my company and start a new life. And my husband and I felt that it was right for us. So that's what we did. And we both promptly called our respective jobs. I called my law firm and I said, it's been great, but I'm gonna stay, to their shock.
Catherine: Oh my goodness.
Tina: He started working. First we worked in different offices of this TV production company and they have offices in Odaiba as well as in Tsukiji. And so I was in one office, my husband was in the other office, and we got to do so many interesting things.
So for example, do you recall Malala? She gave this wonderful speech at one of the UN assemblies, and they wanted to introduce that speech to junior high schools across Japan and Kyodo Television had the contract to do that, so I helped to negotiate that contract to have the rights to air that speech here in Japan.
So there were very cool little projects like that and I thought that gave me a very good experience and a different experience because this was my first time working in a company. My first experience was with the government, second experience with the judge, and then next with a law firm in private practice.
So this was my first chance to actually work within a company and it was just an amazing experience.
Catherine: Wow. Sorry, I never knew you had done that, nor that you enjoyed it so much. And I can tell by the way you were speaking that it was just such fun. And ringing the firms, ringing the law firms and saying, see you later. Oh my goodness. I dunno how you dealt with that, but there you go. You're just following, you know, what your gut is telling you and what you wanted to do.
And not being restricted by, well, by those restraints, I guess, of going back and you made your own decision. So what happened then? I'm so excited to hear your next step of from there, what happened?
Tina: So, I was always still thinking about, well, what do I want to do with myself? You know, I've always been on this very clear trajectory and I had already accomplished all of the things that I wanted to accomplish, but I always had in the back of my mind, well, what's next?
And at the time I started just doing a little soft checking, what kind of jobs, legal jobs are available here? So I was looking at law firms, both domestic and international firms. I was looking at companies, in-house, not at Kyodo, but you know, other companies. And I thought that, well, I think that I was doing pretty amazing work at my firm in DC in Baltimore, and I didn't want to have the same experience.
So I came across this advertisement that they were looking for an adjunct teacher at Temple Law, Japan. So I thought, huh, that looks interesting. I've always been interested in educational things.
So at my firm, I ran the summer associate program, you know, to help the law students during their equivalent of an internship. And always kept in contact with the mock trial team to help coach that law school team. So I always had this connection, this sort of light connection to education, but I hadn't actually gone all the way in. So when I applied, the then director who was in my current position said, you know what? We just happen to have a need for a teacher that's proficient in tort law, which covers product liability as well as court procedure, which covers simple procedure. And I thought, well, that's just fate.
Only fate could make this possible that they just happened to need a teacher in my areas of expertise. So I joined the faculty in 2013 and I taught my first class, which was one of the most thrilling and terrifying experiences of my life.
Catherine: That's amazing. How many students were in the class, and goodness were they from different countries all sitting there listening, waiting for you to hear about torts and civil procedure?
Tina: That's exactly right. So in my first class, it was simple procedure and that class had around 20 something students. And one of the things about the demographic makeup of our students at Temple is that in our LLM programs, they are mainly working professionals. Mainly professionals that are already legal practitioners working in companies and some law firms.
So I had students, and even to this day it's true, many of the students are actually mid-level managers in their departments and they're coming to Temple because they want to gain additional skills in order to be promoted or to take different jobs. So I'm staring at these professionals that are actually my counterparts.
You know, we're on par as far as our legal experience, and they're looking to me to teach them something about US court procedure. So, that was one of the more nerve wracking times of my career. But it taught me that I could take on new things. Also being a teacher has taught me to be a much better communicator, and it's taught me how to be more patient.
I think just being in Japan, being in a country where it's not your home country, you learn a level of patience and you learn how to be a better communicator. So for me, it's not that I only give to my students. They give to me too. There's such fulfilment and joy in seeing students learn something new and having that sort of aha moment that they got something that I said to them and they could understand exactly what I was saying.
It was such a, to use the word again, such a confidence boost to try something new and to develop the skill set to be good at it.
Catherine: Yeah, I wrote down confidence again in my notes. I actually wrote confidence again, exclamation mark, because that's what you're doing. And I mean, you could have been turned away by having those people who are your equals, shall we say, in front of you, sitting in front of you there. But there you were learning from them.
And of course they're learning from you. They haven't been around the countryside doing tax audits and tax interviews, and they haven't maybe clerked with the same judge that you had. You've got a completely different skill set and experience to them and they to you. So of course you're gonna naturally be learning off each other.
So, I can say that in retrospect, of course, but at the time it must have been quite daunting. But again, confidence has won you through. So Tina, if you could turn back and look at that 18 year old self, 20 year old self, and even that person who came through to Japan, what would you tell her?
Tina: I would say this; one of my favourite places to visit is Santorini, Greece. It's a beautiful island. I was married there and one of the experiences that I had while there is that the island of Santorini actually sits on a Caldera, which is a sort of depressed volcano and the water surrounding this island in Greece, it's quite deep.
It's quite black because there's a volcano underneath it. And we had this experience where we went on a little boat excursion and they asked us, they wanted to have everyone jump into the water. And it's like jumping into this black abyss. It's completely thrilling, but terrifying at the same time.
And I thought, I can do this because I want to have the experience. So I held my breath, I took a leap, and I jumped not being able to see the bottom, not knowing, uh, what's in the water. But I jumped anyway. And that is what I would tell my 18 year old self. It's okay to be a caldera jumper. You can do it.
It's all right to take risks, to go on a path that you feel compelled to do. It's okay to. Deviate from ticking off your boxes. It's all right to allow yourself to breathe and think about what kind of life experiences you want to have. Not just career experiences, but what kind of life do you want to have.
So if I had to say to any young person, including myself, I would say dream bigger and be a caldera jumper.
Catherine: Oh, you just went into the scariest story for me. That is one of my massive fears is like deep sea cave diving and you made me actually shudder. Oh. There goes my secret revealed to the world. But I also feel like maybe I've gotta do something like that.
You've inspired me to think about maybe I need to jump into that black abyss and it may be, as you said, thrilling and terrifying at the same time and to, you know, have the life experience that I may not ever have if I don't do it.
Tina: When I asked my law firm for a sabbatical, it was unheard of. And that was me being a caldera jumper. When I decided to move here to Japan without having a job, that's me being a caldera jumper. So to me I think it's all right to take risks. I think the most successful people, they have some level of risk taking because that is how you can have a greater reward in your life.
Catherine: Yes, exactly. I love it. I love it. Alright, I'm gonna move on then to just, you know, about a little bit more about T U J and your programs and internships and things that you offer there, because I think this is a really prime opportunity from what people can hear you've just been talking about, your journey and your real devotion and excitement about working where you are and you are inspiring other students as they come through and other people who are working and taking on additional study.
What kinds of programs are there? And how do you get into the programs? And also Tina, about the possibility I would say for law firms or organisations to have people, have students come and work with them for a period of time.
Tina: Our programs are quite unique and they actually reflect the mantra that Temple University has taken on, which is to create international or global educational experiences. And for our program, Temple Law School actually has quite a few programs in other countries, but the program here in Japan is the longest standing law school program of Temple University.
So the law school was established here almost 30 years ago, about 28 years ago. We've been here a very long time, and the idea has always been to help prepare students that are studying in our programs to be legal practitioners on a global scale. So you're taking the fundamentals of learning common law as well as international and comparative law, and you're applying that in a practical way to help address societal needs.
And so for us, we've been having year round programs for the Masters of Law, which is the LLM for almost that entire time that the campus was created. And our LLM programs are quite unique because they one, service the local community here in Japan. Many of our students are, like I said, coming from companies, they are already working professionals usually in their mid-career.
And they are coming to take the LLM in US law, which is the LLM for foreign, we say foreign meaning foreign to the US, trained lawyers. And the interesting point and why I believe this particular LLM is so popular and also attractive to our local students is because Japan is a civil code country.
Whereas they're learning primarily common law and it's the combination of receiving education in civil law, usually they are obtaining that education through their first law degree in university, through an L L B or Bachelor's of Law, and they are combining that with learning common law. So you get a very high level and highly skilled individual once they have matriculated or completed our program.
Our programs are so good particularly on the US law side because you can have eligibility to sit for a license in certain US states like California, Washington State, Washington, DC, which have the largest legal markets in addition to New York. And for our students, they might have a goal toward sitting for usually either the DC or the California bars. This gives them an opportunity to increase their network and it helps them to practise on a global scale. Our students are working in either domestic companies that are looking to do more cross-border transactions, or they're working at large scale international companies, like pharmaceutical companies that have subsidiaries here in Japan.
And so this is the reason why we focus so deeply on practical learning and practical skill building in addition to doctrinal law because most of our students are working professionals and we are essentially having them fit education and improving themselves into their existing life. So they can keep their families, they can work and they can study, which I think is sort of the best of all worlds for students.
Catherine: So how long is the program? Is it just a year or is it a little bit longer than that?
Tina: So the nice thing about our program is that it's actually a part-time program because most of our students are full-time working professionals. So you can study at your own pace and most students will take about two years to study. They're usually taking maybe one class per term and also continuing to work full-time, have families and things like that.
So being on a part-time schedule, it's about two years, and then usually they will take the degree and this allows them to become heads of their departments or to become higher level senior attorneys within a law firm for example.
Catherine: Perfect. So it's exactly what they want, they want to gain those additional skills to be promoted or to move and get a new position, and so you're really setting them up well for that.
Tina: I think that's true. And one other area is that our program, because in a sense we're an American law school in Japan, we're the only ABA approved school that has year-round programs in Japan. So that does attract a lot of international students. And we have students that are primarily domestic students, meaning they're either Japanese or they've lived here a long time, or they're coming from other countries, they're coming from Europe or South America, and wanting to work toward getting into the legal market here in Japan.
Catherine: Right, and I remember seeing some emails come around in the past looking for law firms or organisations that could bring in, I believe, your summer semester students, is that right? Is that still available, that people from Temple who are studying can come and do some work experience with people in Japan?
Tina: So it's quite interesting because one of the other major programs that we have is the JD Study Abroad program. That program is actually in the spring semester. Our spring term starts or runs from January to April, and in the spring we always have students from US Law schools coming to spend a semester here in Tokyo.
This is the most exciting time of our program because all of these American Law school students, they crash land into our environment and we have all of our students take their classes together. So we don't separate our local students from our study abroad students. And this is such a wonderful, wonderful learning environment because the local students are able to bring a level of professionalism that many of our JD US law school students don't have. They don't have a lot of work experience.
And our JD students can bring their knowledge of the common law as well as their proficiency in researching and writing on legal issues related to the common law. So you get this sort of melting pot of learning and it's just the most exciting environment. So one of the things that we believe deeply in at Temple is professional development of our students.
And to do that, we ask that our employers here in Tokyo will create internship and professional development opportunities for our students. And this is quite good because on the employer's side, or from the employer's perspective, employers are always looking to develop fresh talent. identify new talent, you want to help and nurture and bring up those young legal practitioners.
And on the students' side, they add so much value, particularly to companies and law firms here in Japan because one of their proficiency in common law, it's unmatched frankly. You find a US law student and they are going to be the most proficient in US common law. And this gives companies as well as law firms, the ability to research and do large compilations of laws particularly in the US and in other countries.
We ask our students who are interning to help companies or law firms to write white papers, write client alerts, and to help with legal communications. And so they do add a lot of value because of their backgrounds, their experiences, and their ability to work in these different environments that they might not have the opportunity to work in if they were still in the United States.
Catherine: Wow, fantastic. I don't think many people would've known that had you not explained. Sometimes you see the materials and you think, oh yeah. But when you actually see and hear what you've just said, I think that gives it a lot more flavour as to what you're offering.
Tina: It's so true. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Catherine: What about future of law then? What are you seeing in thoughts, ideas, visions for this field that you are in, this academic field in the next five years or so?
Tina: I think this sort of brings us back to when we were talking about what is going to be the demand and the ways that law schools need to adapt to the demands of the legal market. And I foresee that legal education will continue to change and adapt to the needs of the market and it seems as though we are moving more toward skills-based training and specialised training in certain areas.
So for example one of the areas that Temple Law has been working in is to develop training programming around compliance law. We are so grateful to have Alexander Dmitrenko, he's a partner at Ashurst and he runs the compliance advisory board for Temple Law, as well as teaches our compliance course.
And this is just a plug, which will be offered in the spring semester coming in 2023. What we are seeing is that as the demand for legal services changes, then we will move more toward critical areas such as compliance, corporate governance, and areas of cybersecurity and tech.
Those kinds of areas are the sort of hot topics that we will focus on in terms of legal education. So it's actually an exciting time, you know, to be in legal education because I think we can have such a great impact to help train our students to be ready to go into the workforce right from the beginning.
Catherine: Yeah. Are you looking at sustainability and ESGs as well? I know you talked about corporate governance, so is that something else on your radar?
Tina: Certainly. And some of the classes, for example, that we are offering, that our students will take would be advising multinational companies on global legal issues. That is essentially a seminar style class that teaches students how to interact and deal with in-house counsel, or dealing with international contract drafting and certainly we are seeing a lot more development in supply chain contracts and how human rights and ESGs should be incorporated. So our students do receive a lot of practical training that I feel are addressing the issues particularly related to business law.
Catherine: Wow. It's amazing. I know Alexander and I know that his compliance law class is very popular. So you, that is still available to join in the January and the spring of 2023?
Tina: Yes it is. And we always try to promote our skills-based classes like this because even if you are not wanting to commit to a full Master's of Law degree, we also have a non-degree certificate programs that are about half the length of an LLM, and they give you the chance to take classes that are all elective toward the skills that you want to build.
So if you were joining, even lawyers will join our certificate program because all of the same classes are still available to you. And if you have a need to learn a new area such as compliance law, maybe your company transferred you to another department and you need to learn the skill set and doctrinal or fundamental learning of some specialised area, then you can do that.
And that's what I think is so great about Temple Law. You know, of course I work there, so I'm going to be a big promoter, but I really do believe that the programs provide so much value to your life and flexibility so that you can do things like, oh, they're offering compliance law in the spring. I can just join and take that class, and that's perfectly okay.
Catherine: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing all the information there on the choices that are available at Temple for Future Study. I think it's really amazing. Thank you so much for that.
Tina: Thank you. This is great. I love the chance to talk about how we can improve ourselves and really work toward making highly skilled professionals that can enter the market and have such a deep impact, even from the very beginning or if you are in mid-career or senior career. Our demographic, our student demographic, is so interesting in that regard because a lot of people are wanting to think about what's going to be their next step and using legal education to do that.
For me, I had to learn trial by fire, you know, sort of jumping in and starting something new. But I do think that going to school and studying, having lifelong learning, those opportunities will help you set yourself on a new path or to have future goals in a very structured environment. So if you're not a caldera jumper, that's okay.
You can be in a well supported nurturing instruction environment.
Catherine: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And Tina, I'm gonna ask you one further question, which is, is there something that we covered today that you wanted to re emphasise or indeed something that we haven't talked about that you would like to mention?
Tina: I think that if we were talking about what can you do, as a young professional, or as a woman legal practitioner, I think that a couple of things I would say are important. One is to develop your plus factor, develop that one thing that makes you valuable and indispensable so that people will always need to rely on you for whatever it is.
And the other is to build your personal brand. It's quite important that you do this from the beginning because if you can build your network and show who you are, then you become very valuable and like I said, indispensable. So those are the two things that I would say to young people. think about what's your plus factor and build your personal brand.
Catherine: Love it. They are brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Tina winding down now, I know you've listened to previous podcasts, so you know I have a few lighter, shall we say, lighter touch questions, the quickfire round. Are you ready to go on those?
Tina: Yes, let's do it. I'm competitive, so I wanna, I wanna rock this.
Catherine: Alright. This is interesting because you've done the whole gamut of government work through to working in a private practice, and you know, doing the study that you did, you’re a judge.
You are now in education. How about if you could start a totally different business tomorrow or a different occupation, what would that be?
Tina: This is a great question. I have always had, in a sense, a creative brain, and I would want to do something in that space or something with my hands. So as you mentioned at the beginning of our lovely conversation, I absolutely adore watching Living Big in a tiny house. I would absolutely build tiny houses, if I could.
I love DIY, I completely helped to do the interior redesign of my home in LA and I would, I would just build houses all day long that, that's what I would do.
Catherine: That is absolutely fantastic. I wondered if there was a tie in there that is just so good. I love it. I love it. If you were going to write a book, then, tomorrow start writing it, what would you write about?
Tina: Hmm. That's such a good question. I think that if I could write a book, I might consider writing a children's book, writing a children's book to my wonderful little nephews and niece to encourage them to follow their dreams and to know that the sky's the limit.
Catherine: Wow. Maybe that's it. The next question, well, if you had a billboard with anything on it, perhaps it says the sky's the limit.
Tina: Oh, that would be nice.
Catherine: Yeah. What else would you write on a billboard? If you could write anything on it?
Tina: So in my Spotify playlist right now I am currently obsessing over Beyonce. So I think I would probably write a billboard that says Girls Ruled the World.
Catherine: Fantastic. Love it.
Tina: Nice.
Catherine: And the 2022 release has just come out, hasn't it? Wrapped addition of your total.
Tina: And I have just been every single day listening to all of that girl power. It's just amazing.
Catherine: Well, good one. And is there something else there then, have you listened to your Spotify, are you listening to any podcasts on Spotify or any books that you would recommend that you've listened to recently or read?
Tina: So you know what's on my list that just came out is Michelle Obama's new book. I think it was released last month. Just last month, and it's called The Light We Carry. That is on my winter break to-read list. I am looking forward to curling up with a cocktail and reading about the next adventures that she has.
Catherine: Yes. Yes. I've read her first. Have you read her first book too?
Tina: Yes, I read Becoming, and it was amazing and so inspiring. And I definitely look forward to seeing more about her journey in the current book. One other book that I read recently, I think maybe back in September, Tony Morrison, the late Tony Morrison wrote a wonderful little short story.
She only wrote one short story in her entire life. And she actually wrote that short story back in the 1980s and it was just published recently. It's called Recitatif. It's a hard word to pronounce, Recitatif. And it's essentially a story about two orphan girls. One is black and one is white, and we don't know the race of the two characters. We don't know which one is which. It's quite a brilliant writing technique that she employs in this book. It's a very short story and it challenges these ideas of stereotypes and I am encouraging everyone to read this book, read this short story because it is quite amazing.
You find yourself wanting to attribute a race to one character or the other character, even though those characters are never specifically identified by their race. But you see their challenges, their triumphs, and the ways that they're interacting with each other, around this idea of race.
So I think it shows that we don't need to see things in black and white and that we shouldn't assume anything about who people are just simply based upon, you know, the colour of their skin. So I would say go cop that. It's amazing and it was just published, I think, maybe earlier this summer.
Catherine: Wow. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so intrigued. I'll have to get the spelling right later. I've written it down.
Tina: Oh yes. It was very difficult to pronounce for me too.
Catherine: Thank you so much. Wow. Your favourite saying, what would that be?
Tina: My favourite saying. So not to sound corny, but I actually believe that Temple's motto, which is perseverance conquers, is one of my most favourite sayings. I think it's always apropos to my life. And I think it's extremely encouraging that it tells students to have tenacity and to always have drive and motivation to do what you want to do in life, regardless of what's happening.
So perseverance conquers, that's my favourite thing.
Catherine: Cool. famous person, celebrity you'd love to meet. I've got Beyonce coming up for me, and I've also got, of course, Michelle Obama. But who would it be? Anyone living or dead that you would love to meet?
Tina: So, you know who I really would love to meet. I would love to meet Serena Williams. So she is just my absolute superstar. I love her. I've actually been able to see her play. I've been to the Australian Open a few times, and I've been able to see her play. So I also went to university with one of her sisters.
So I would love, love, love to actually sit down and have a nice chat with Serena.
Catherine: Fantastic. Hey, so there's more than two sisters.
Tina: Yes. She has quite a large family in fact, and Venus, you know, is her older sister that plays tennis, but she also has another sister. Her name is Isha and she is a lawyer, actually, we were in political science together, and she went to law school, went to undergrad with me and then law school with my husband, which was at Georgetown.
Catherine: Oh, there you go. And that almost is like, what is something about you that a lot of people don't know, which is my last question, but is there something else? Cause I know you're a mixologist, you do your cocktails, we've just heard something interesting. Is there something else there that you'd like to tell us that others may not know about you?
Tina: So I thought I would get into the holiday spirit, and I have a ritual of sorts that I like to do every single year. So right after the Thanksgiving holiday, I have a tree cocktail party where I invite my friends to come and we decorate. I actually have them working a little bit for their cocktails, but we decorate my Christmas tree in my apartment and we watch my favourite Christmas movie of all time, which is Elf the movie.
Catherine: That's so cute. That is really cute. I saw something today too, about the ritual of chocolate eating while doing the Christmas tree decorating and that came up for one family and they've done it for 30 years. So now the grandkids are doing it too. And you cannot decorate the tree without having chocolate.
So it sounds like that's the thing for you is the cocktails plus watching Elf. How cool. That's so lovely.
Tina: Yeah. It's so nice.
Catherine: Wow. Thank you so much, Tina. Well, unfortunately we've come to the end of our chat today. I just could carry on with you forever, to be honest. Thank you so much for being somebody who's come on, who's done amazing things all through your career, taken so many different opportunities, challenged, bringing your confidence, challenging the risk, bringing that community together, the family and your education surroundings right now, you know, encouraging other lawyers to do further study.
Be lifetime, longtime learners. And giving back to the community with the opportunities that you're doing right with interns and all kinds of things there. Thank you again for showing us you can have a portfolio of careers. You can take a risk, you can jump into the abyss, you can do that all through your life and look, survive and thrive, as you've been doing. Thank you so much to show us that everything is very, very possible and so absolutely doable.
Tina: This has been such an amazing opportunity and as I said when we were sort of talking offline, is that you never get the chance to talk about yourself and to self-reflect on all of the life experiences that you've had. So I am so grateful and honoured to be a part of this wonderful podcast.
And frankly, I don't listen to any other podcast except for yours.
Catherine: Woohoo. There we go.
Tina: I feel that you're doing such amazing things and you’re absolutely amplifying women leaders, women lawyers, and doing such amazing work. So thank you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.
Catherine: That's lovely. Thank you so much. It's always my pleasure. And I'm glad I've been able to give you and many others the chance to do self-reflection because that's what it is. It's not so much talking about yourself, but reflecting on your life and your career and your journey and how that can actually inspire others.
And we are already finding so many who are inspired and I know that this will be an inspiring episode for people who are listening. If someone wants to get hold of you, Tina, can they do that through social media or LinkedIn, or website? What's the best way of getting in touch with you to talk more?
Tina: So you can always find me of course on Temple's website, which you can just do a search for Temple Law, Japan, or you can also find me on both LinkedIn and Facebook. Tina Saunders, that's who I am. And as well as our school, which is Temple Law, Japan, on LinkedIn, Facebook, as well as Instagram.
So if you want to get a hold of me, check us out. We're here. And I would love to connect with the people. That's just a great part of being an educator.
Catherine: Thank you so much. We'll put all of that in the show notes so anyone can get hold of you and we'll finish it up here, Tina. To my listeners, please do like this episode, subscribe to Lawyer on Air and do drop us a short review, that really does help lawyer on air be seen and heard by many, many more people.
And you can actually jump over to my webpage as well and leave me a voicemail. I do love people actually telling me in their own voice about the guest that they've listened to and what they liked about the episode. Thanks very much everyone. Do go ahead and share this episode with someone who you think will enjoy listening and be inspired to live and lead a lovely, wonderful lawyer extraordinaire life. That's all from me. See you on the next episode. Cheers, kampai and bye for now.
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Lawyer on Air was the winner of the Bronze Award in the “Best Podcast by a Kiwi Abroad Category” in the New Zealand Podcast Awards 2021.
Lawyer on Air has been nominated for “Best Business Podcast” in the Quill Podcast Awards, 2022! Thank you to all our supporters who voted for the podcast!