RS - Robert Stenson

R- Riya Sharma

R: Hi!

RS: Hi. Sorry I was on the other line when you called, and then when I called back, it was the
main number for the school, so I couldn't get through to you.

R: Oh, that's alright.

RS: How are you?

R: I'm good, how are you?

RS: Well, thanks. So how can I help you with the project you have?

R: Yeah, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about business law. Do you have a few
minutes to spare?

RS: Yeah, yeah.

R: Alright, thank you so much. Alright, so could you just give me a quick... Synopsis of what
your average day looks like as a business lawyer?

RS: Sure. I have a company, Nationwide Incorporators, which is not a law firm. But what we do
is we set up corporations and Limited liability companies, I don't know, LLCs, for small
businesses that are starting out.

You know, often it's just one or two people, you know, it could be anything, you know, like
starting up a sub shop, or, you know, a consulting business, or, you know. Marketing, you
name it, it covers every industry. And so, what we do is a lot of times we get people referred to
us by accountants or other professionals because we didn't set up a company.

And then, what we try to do is answer their questions about, like, what they're trying to
do and what is the best, uh, legal entity to protect them in their business. And then What we'll
do is file all the paperwork for them with the state government where they want to fill up their
business, and then draft all the documents and you govern how the business will be run. So
like if you, if you took American history and you're thinking of like the Constitution and you know,
the laws that are done. We kind of do that for the business. It's a corporation that will have
bylaws that kind of dictate how the corporation will be managed and what the rights should be.
 Owners or shareholders have things like that. It's a limited liability company. That's
similar to a partnership between people. So it's like what they call an operating agreement.
Which is like a partnership agreement. And that governs how, you know, what the rights and
obligations of the different members are, and how it will be managed. And so, that's how I spend
a lot of my day. It's setting up entities for people, drafting documents, a lot of these clients also
become legal clients of mine that, you know, if they have questions or there's a legal issue that
comes up, or, you know, there's a contract that somebody wants to enter into, or, you know, that
I'll advise them on that,

R: Okay. How would you describe your path or what path did you take to get into business law?

RS: Sure. I mean, I went to college at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. and I

studied accounting in the business school there, at an undergraduate business school.

And so, it was a good mix of liberal arts, you know, general, like, education, but also
business and accounting. And then I worked for a couple of years with one of the national,
actually international, accounting firms at the time that's no longer in business at a company
called Arthur Anderson. And so I worked there for a couple of years, working with small
businesses more, Based on the, you know, financial side of accounting.

And then I decided to go to law school and applied to law school and ended up going to
UCLA out in Los Angeles. And after I graduated, I got a job at a law firm out here, so I've
stayed out. I was back in, I came out to Los Angeles in 1988 for law school, graduated in 1991,
and stayed out here ever since.

And so my practice, I started with a law firm, which is kind of a conventional thing that
most graduates out of law school do. I started in what they call litigation, which is, you know,
those little lawyers who go to court, argue cases and things like that. And I determined after a
couple of years of doing that that I didn't want to.

I didn't, I wasn't, I thought I would like litigation because I thought I liked arguing things,
but I just decided that that was not really what I wanted to do. Seems unproductive to me. So
then I started moving more towards what they call a transactional practice. That's what got me
into business law, and my special emphasis is actually in real estate law. Representing, you
know, investors in real estate and developers and things like that. You know, helping them find
projects and acquire projects and sell projects… develop projects and get them financed and all
of that. So, that's kind of what I've been doing probably for the last 25 years.

R- Oh, wow. You said you did business litigation. That's actually what I want to go into when I'm
older. Could you please give me your most memorable story or favorite story from business
litigation?

RS: Well, the funny thing is I thought I wanted to be a litigator 'cause I went to law school.
'cause I thought I wanted to be a criminal prosecutor and I thought I wanted to do criminal law.
And through a series of accidents that I had an opportunity during, between the summer of my
first and second year in law school, I had an opportunity to work in the appellate division of the
Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, where I'm from Boston originally, and Suffolk County is
where Boston is located.
And so I got an offer to work in the appellate division that summer. And so there's the
trial division that does the trials and the actual cases. And then the appellate division is the one
that if, you know, the criminal defendant's appealing the decision, the appellate division is the
one that handles the, you know, Representing the state on appeal and I thought, ‘Oh my God,
I'm not going to like that’ because you're not in court and it's boring research and writing briefs
and things like that.

And so then I got a job and an internship, I'd say in summer with a small law firm out here in Los
Angeles doing more, you know, commercial stuff. And it also paid a lot more money… So I was
talking to the person in the DA's office. He said, take that job because you can always come
back to the DA's office if you want later.
And so I did that and then by the time I graduated, jobs in the district attorney's offices
were getting hard to get because the thing is in law, law firm practice, if you become a litigator
and you work for a firm, it could be 7, 8, 10 years before you get to try your first case.

R: Oh wow.

RS: You're writing, you're writing motions, you're, you might be arguing pre-trial motions and
stuff, but, you know, you're not, you're not usually going to get to handle a trial. I mean, there
are some partners of big law firms who might have only had one or two trials that they've gotten
to trial.

Because a lot of litigation also settles before it goes to trial. And so what happened was
a lot of, a lot of lawyers, seasoned attorneys, you know, people who've been practicing for
years, decided, I'm never... I wanted to get inside a courtroom. So they started, like, looking for
jobs in D. A. Because they're always in court.

And they're always trying stuff. So, it was just kind of a weird shift. It's not so much a story as
much as it's just an interesting fork in the road.

R: Yeah.

RS: It impacted my career. You know, and the other thing too is in retrospect when I look back
on it and I, and why I left litigation is because the litigation is a lot of your, it's, I mean, what you
see on TV is a highly dramatized version of it, much more succinct and entertaining and things
like that.
But, a lot of litigation at the trial level, particularly civil litigation, more so than criminal, but
particularly civil litigation, there's a lot of games play, game playing, gamesmanship going on,
and how you, you know, either obstruct things or try and find, you know, that’s the part that got
frustrating for me, too, because particularly, like, if one side has a lot of resources and things like
that, part of their litigation strategy can be to just drag everything out and make it super painful
and super expensive. And the courts are already incredibly slow and inefficient and so,
sometimes, you know it could be a plaintiff. I mean, it varies from case to case. Sometimes the
plaintiffs have really good cases and it's really hard for them to get, because it's just too long
and too expensive and then they end up just settling for something because it just becomes too
difficult.
Other times it's like the plaintiffs have lousy cases but it's a real pain in the neck and
things and so they end up getting some payoff to go away. That's part of why I got out of

it. Oh, okay. It's not so much a justice system as much as it's a dispute resolution system. It may
not be a good resolution for the dispute, but at the end of the day, the dispute will be resolved.

R: I didn't realize it was more on the paperwork.

RS: Yeah, a very small percentage of cases that are filed actually go to trial.

R: Oh, wow.

RS: Both civilly, which are commercial disputes, and criminally. A lot of criminal cases get
pleaded out, too. Prosecutors will typically. overcharged for things and then, you know,
defendants, you know, and that leaves them room to negotiate.

R: Yeah.

RS: Which area if you're thinking of litigation, were you thinking of criminal or civil law?
R: I was thinking of business litigation.

RS: Yeah. I mean, business litigation is, I mean… a lot of people love it. Yeah. I find it really
exciting. It's, it's competition. Like, I don't know if you're an athlete or not, but if you're an athlete
and you like competition, you'll like this. You'll like litigation because it's very competitive
because there's a clear winner and a clear loser.

But, I will say this. One thing, One thing about successful litigators is they have to be very smart
because they have to become experts in fields that they may know nothing about when they
start. You know, because you get the case that comes to you. And, you know, one day it may be
a real estate dispute.

Another day, it may be a dispute over some high-tech process or something like that. You know,
it's all kinds of different than a contract dispute. And so, a lot of times what you have to do is you
have to become an expert in a particular field. You have to kind of learn it from scratch. And a lot
of times, you know, you might, depending on the complexity of it, you may be bringing in expert
witnesses and things like that, but part of what you have to do as the attorney is learn from them
and understand this stuff and then figure out a way to translate it, if it's a jury trial, to a jury or to
a judge who's, you know, dealing with all kinds of different things.
 He or she has a limited amount of time to spend on your case. So you have to, so you
have to be a really good storyteller too.

R: Is there anything that you have learned over the course of your career that you think has
impacted the way you approach your job or any advice you want to give me going into litigation?

RS: Sure. A couple of things, By the way, do you have any lawyers in your family or relatives?

R: No, I would be the first one.

RS: Okay Two things, I would recommend if you want to, regardless of what area of practice
you want,

is, so when you go to college, don't worry about doing it. You know, people say, Oh, I'm doing
pre-law. There's no such thing as pre-law. Everything's pre-law. But if you really feel that getting
into the practice of law is what you want to do, what I would suggest is get a good, broad-based
liberal arts education. Learn. Read a lot. Do literature, philosophy, you know, political science,
some economics, whatever. Take as broad a view as you can, because, like I said, if you want
to be a litigator, you need to be able to learn a lot of subjects quickly and become an expert at
them. And you want a broad breadth of knowledge and you want to be able to integrate that.

And, like I said, a lot of success comes from the ability to write really well, to write in a
clear and coherent way that's easy to understand. And to be, and then to be really good at
orally presenting. And so the more you read, the more you practice writing, the more you take
subjects where you're forced to do a lot of writing, the better you'll be.

And, and the broader your knowledge base, you will find, as you get older, a lot of your
life and your career, as you're learning things, will be, Drawing on past experience, drawing on
analogies, and, and it doesn't always have to be a personal lived experience, but through your
readings, understanding what happened in history, what people did in history, understanding
fictional stories and what they mean, you know, what the underlying theme of these things are,
this stuff all becomes a wealth of knowledge that you can draw on as you're integrating new
knowledge and thinking about, like, how to make arguments and how to convince people and be
an advocate.

R: Okay well I don't want to take up too much of your time. Is there anything you'd like to ask
me?

RS: Yeah, what year are you?

R: I'm currently a junior.

RS: You're a junior? Okay. So where, where would you like to go to college? Where are you
thinking of?
R: I really want to go to UT Austin, it's very competitive here in Texas but definitely UT Austin or
I'm also looking at UCLA.You went there, right? How was UCLA?

RS: I went there for law school, which was an entirely different experience because the law
school is very small. The law school only had like, at the time I was there, only about 200
students. Oh, wow. The undergraduate university, I think it's like 30,000. I think UT has 40,000
students under there.
What I would recommend too is if you're applying at UT and, and depending on what
your grades are, like, I know it's very competitive. But I would consider applying to the honors
college program there because they're always, the honors college program is like a grade books
program, and that's kind of what I'm talking about, is a broad-based liberal arts education that
exposes you to a lot of different things.

R: All right. Would you be okay if I had any questions in the future for me to contact you again?

RS:Sure. Let me give you my email address. You can send me an email if you need anything.

Are you ready? Let me know when you're ready.

R: Yeah, I'm ready.

RS: It's Robert, R O B E R T, at N W, for nationwide, incorp, I N C O R P, dot com. I N C O R P.

Dot com. I N T O R P. N W N C O R P dot com.
R: Thank you so much. You have been very helpful.
RS: My pleasure. I'm always happy to help an aspiring student. It's good that you have that
much direction already.
Oh, here's the last question. Did you go out for Halloween last night? What'd you dress up as?

R: Unfortunately I had too much homework so I couldn't. But I did pass out candy to little kids. It
was very fun seeing them all in their outfits.

RS: Well, good for you. Yeah, keep studying and good luck on your college applications
It's, you know, getting to UT, it's a great school, and also a really good value if you're a Texas
resident. Tuition is reasonably affordable. So I wish you all luck in the future, and if, if I can be
of any assistance, don't hesitate to reach out.

R: Thank you so much. Have a good day.

RS: Thank you, too. Take care.

R: Bye.