The road to success isn’t always linear. In this episode of SPARKS, Lekha Menon ’18 reflects on her journey through law school, big law, and a judicial clerkship before landing her current role as senior litigation attorney at GIFFORDS Law Center. She discusses how she found her love for litigation and the lessons that shaped her as a student and professional.
In this episode of SPARKS, Senior Litigation Attorney at GIFFORDS Law Center Lekha Menon ’18 joins Dean Melanie Leslie and Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant for a conversation about overcoming imposter syndrome and finding one’s passion, even if the path to it is not linear.
With a start in big law, Lekha talks about how she took the opportunity to explore various practice areas before landing a role in litigation. The foundational skills she learned at Cardozo guided her throughout her career in big law, a judicial clerkship and ultimately her role in advocacy.
Lekha also touches on the important lessons she learned throughout law school and her professional career that shaped her as the professional she is today.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Hi, I'm Melanie Leslie, Dean of Cardozo Law School.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
And I'm Carey Bertolet Grant. I'm the Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success.
Dean Melanie Leslie
And we're happy to welcome you to Sparks, where we ignite your passion for the practice of law.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
I have been looking forward to this all day because we get to chat with one of our favorite graduates, Lekha Menon, a 2018 grad, who is currently the senior litigation attorney at the Giffords Law Center. And let's talk a little bit about the Giffords Law Center because many of us are familiar with what happened to Gabby Gifford and being injured in an assassination attempt. I think it was about 15 years ago, 12 or 15 years ago. Can you give us just a little background on the organization and how it came to be?
Lekha Menon
That's right. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you. I love talking about Giffords. So the Giffords Law Center, as you mentioned, was founded by Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt back in 2011 and has then since become a really fierce advocate for gun safety.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Can you just say just who she was? Because our audience may not know.
Lekha Menon
Gabby Giffords was a former congresswoman who represented her district in Arizona. She is currently married to Mark Kelly, who filled her seat for a little while and now is currently a senator from Arizona. She survived the assassination attempt while she was meeting with constituents in her district. And after going through a long time of recovery, she started a gun violence prevention organization. It's a nonprofit that focuses on policy and advocacy for common sense gun safety laws and reform. Within that larger organization, there sits the Giffords Law Center and there we do a mix of both policy work and litigation work and Second Amendment amicus work and I work on our affirmative litigation team so that's bringing litigation against bad actors in the gun industry and holding them accountable. It could also be defending what we think are really good common sense gun safety laws or representing survivors of gun violence.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
Thank you for the background. Did you think when you were thinking about going to law school that this, is was this even on your radar screen? Was this something you could have imagined you would be doing?
Lekha Menon
No, not not at all. I didn't even know that this kind of job existed. I was somewhat familiar with gun violence prevention organizations, but I didn't know lawyers worked there. I didn't know that litigators worked there at all. I came into law school with like negative amounts of information about law school and the law and what I wanted to do. I had no idea what I was doing. so I definitely did not see this coming.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Did you did you have things you thought you would be interested in and how did that turn out? Did it match up with what you already thought about yourself? Because in my case it didn't, so I'm curious. Like did you think that you had certain interests and then what happened?
Lekha Menon
Yeah, so I came to law school with about five years of work experience and most of that was in the public interest sector. I taught, I worked in public health and then I worked in consulting for a little bit. And I thought I was gonna go to law school to change the world and make a really big impact. And so I thought I was gonna do public interest work, but I thought that was probably gonna be in like a public health or education type world because that's what I had known, that's where I'd come from. I ended at match up with where I am now. No, not not really, because I ended up working in the private sector for a long time. That's never anything that I thought I was going to do. But I'm really grateful for that experience because I don't think I would have I would be where I am now had I not had that experience. In fact, I know that I wouldn't have had the job I have now had I not had that private sector experience. So I think to me it was surprising to myself that I, you know, worked at a big law firm. That was never my plan, but I had the opportunity to do it.
And it's just like one of those little detours that you have to take to get to where you're going. And it's funny, Dean Leslie, I remember you saying something to our class at some event. It might have been like the welcome speech that you give at the beginning. And I'm not gonna be as eloquent as you were, but basically what you said to us was like your path is not gonna be a straight line and you have to get comfortable with that and you're gonna like meet people and interact with people and learn different things and you might think you know where you're going, but it's gonna take you in all these different ways. And I think about that all the time because that has been so true for my experience.
Dean Melanie Leslie
I guess I better put that back in my orientation speech.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
So you had an idea of maybe that you would be a lawyer drawing on some of the public health or work that you had done before. Public interest maybe more broadly, but how was it that you started to, you didn't just wake up one day and you were in the private sector? Like what were the first things that happened where you said, like, these are some of the jobs I could consider as a law student?
Lekha Menon
I think when I was entering law school, I was like, okay, well, I've seen some really bad laws that don't make a lot of sense. And so I want to change the laws. But that's not really how it works. You don't just get to change laws. And I think so part of what I had to understand was like they're different, there's so many different ways you can be a lawyer, right? You can be a litigator, you can be a corporate lawyer, you know, the even just between those two, there's so many, so much variety between those two things. And so I think part of what I had to learn was like, what does being a lawyer actually mean? And what are what does it look like? And I think for me that was a ton of learning that I had to do. And after my 1L year, I had the opportunity to interview with firms. And that was again, like I don't think I could have named a law a law firm when I started law school. It just was not something I was really smart about. I was kind of naive about that. And so I think kind of taking Dean Leslie's advice, I was like, okay, I'm gonna be open to anything. I should just try things.
So I went through the interview process and realized in my mind, I was thought, you know, I thought, like all corporate lawyers are these evil people and they're all, you know, trying to like defend really terrible corporations that are doing terrible things. And I went through the interview process and was pleasantly surprised that people were really great and really smart and really thoughtful and really cared about the work that they were doing. and it wasn't just the evil corporations doing all kinds of terrible things. There's a lot of really good work that corporate lawyers do. And so I think once I realized like, I actually have a lot in common with some of these people, and there are these really interesting pro bono opportunities that I could that I could learn and and take on, I decided to kind of throw my hat in the ring and see if I could kind of get a 2L summer placement. And I did. And even then I was kind of prepared to not love it and not be super interested in it and intrigued by it. But I spent my summer at a law firm and I really liked it. And I was really surprised not only by how much I liked it, but by how like how thoughtful people were in the lawyering that they did, the kind of exposure that I would get, the learning that I would get, like the amount that was invested into me as a really junior and a summer associate, but then eventually a lawyer. So I think I kind of had to let go of a lot of preconceived notions that I had and kind of give in a little bit and then think about what I what I was getting out of the experience, which was like so much.
Dean Melanie Leslie
What I love about what you're saying is I think a lot of students or a lot of people think that if they w hope to one day do something in the public service, they have to start there. And that the fear I think is that if you practice in a private firm for a while and then you apply, people will say, “Well, you haven't been committed. You haven't been committed to the cause or you haven't been committed to public service. So why would I hire you?” And the point you're making, I think, is really critical, which is all skills are transferable. Everything you learn leads you to the next thing.
You can take no matter what you do, you take what you learned in the first experience and then go to the next. You were at Kirkland, right? Was the firm? And what made you decide to take the leap? Were you at Kirkland the entire time? What happened then? And when did you leap into something new?
Lekha Menon
I was at Kirkland for I think about three years. And then so I had a little bit of a transition even there. I started my summer summer time at Kirkland thinking that I wanted to be an M&A lawyer, but I had no idea what M&A was. But I just had it in my head that I wasn't good at legal writing and I wasn't good at research, and so at that, I had to do something else. Then I had my entire 2L experience and realized that that's not at all what I wanted to do. And I did a clinic and I had some great hands-on experience and got a lot of learning, of like actual learning about like writing and drafting and just how cases work. And I was so excited by that. So I showed up at Kirkland and I said, “Just kidding, I actually really want to do litigation. So you've placed me here on this corporate floor and I have an M&A partner as my mentor, but I want nothing to do with them.” And so I spent a lot of time with the litigators.
But funnily enough, and again to your point, Dean Leslie, I was introduced to a bunch of restructuring folks, and they are really interesting people. And again, I had no idea what restructuring was. And at the end of the summer, I had to make this choice about what I wanted to do. And I ended up choosing restructuring. So I actually practiced restructuring for about two years. And then the more and more I thought about like long-term what I wanted to do, I think I always saw myself kind of leaving the firm and doing something in the public sector. And to me that meant that I really wanted to I really wanted litigation skills because that's what I actually wanted to do. And that's even within restructuring, that was the stuff that I really liked doing. I liked being in court and I liked writing and drafting.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Can you just a plug to interrupt you, just a plug for restructuring. Our audience, especially we have some people who are considering going to law school now that listen to this podcast, may not know what you mean when you say restructuring and may not think about that as a place to develop litigation skills. So could you just elaborate before you get to your answer to my question?
Lekha Menon
Yeah. And it's a really good point because some law firms refer to it as restructuring and others it's bankruptcy. And so it's organizations when they file for bankruptcy, there's a whole process that they have to go through and it's this interesting split where you're in bankruptcy court and so you're having filings and pleadings and other arguments and you're before a judge. But there's also kind of this whole like business plan side of it too, where you're we're working kind of in a more corporate type of world, but it it blends those two together in a really interesting way, which is not something I knew at all before I started, but I really, really would like that. So I had exposure to both sides of that. And eventually I realized I really, really was liking the in court stuff, the drafting, the research. My peers would say, “I don't want to do any research.” And I would throw my hand up all the time and say, “I'll research that. That sounds really cool.”
So I asked, and Kirkland was really great and facilitated my shift to the litigation group. So then I packed practiced in the litigation group and then I sent out applications for clerkships because it was something that in law school I thought that I always wanted to do, but never really knew when was the right time or if I was a good fit for it. And then I was doing restructuring and okay, well then should I should I clerk for a bankruptcy judge or should I you know what should I do? I was really lucky and was able to get a clerkship in New York, which is where I live. I clerked for a year. And then at that point, at the end of my clerkship, I was thinking, like, okay, is this the time to leave the firm? But like what do I want to do? And I had so many conversations with so many different types of lawyers who were doing all kinds of different work. And I realized that I didn't know what I wanted to do yet. And I think I was like I need to figure out I need to really figure that out and put more time into that. I don't want to just take a job or switch careers now without really knowing that. So I went back to Kirkland and practiced for I think about two more years. And then you know, as the kind of partnership discussions come up, I realized like if I wanted to make partner, I had to really want it. Like that had to be what I wanted to spend my time doing. And I think I knew that it it wasn't. And I think around that time I was what I realized that I really wanted to think more about what I wanted to do and had more of these conversations. And I think then it's when I realized like I wanted I wanted to do litigation. I wanted to stay a litigator and and I wanted to litigate on issues that I really cared about and that were really meaningful to me. And so I had a few ideas of what those were. And honestly my commitment to litigation really narrowed that field down for me to a small amount. And yeah, there were some places when I applied that, you know, were like, you don't have the substantive knowledge of X area. So no, that's not gonna work. You don't have 10 years of experience on our issue.
That wasn't a problem for Giffords. Giffords was like, “You are a litigator, you've gotten trained up, we can teach you the stuff on our issue.” That's not exactly how it happened, but basically, it didn't matter to them. I think my time at Kirkland really prepared me for the role that I have now. And I know that I wouldn't have been hired had I not had all of that training and all the experience there.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
So I wanna talk about the work you're doing now, but before we we go there, you know, there were a couple of moments as you were talking where you said, “I was lucky enough to get a clerkship and I didn't think I was a great writer.” And I want to explore that a little bit because I will say from my point of view, you are and always have been an exceptional law student and lawyer. Did you have some things to overcome in terms of confidence? Did you feel good and confident at home at the firm or did that take a little while?
Lekha Menon
That definitely took a long time. I think I think I have always had, and I think everybody does to some extent. I've always kind of battled some version of imposter syndrome. I had that in law school constantly. At the firm, I just I felt like everybody had some piece of information that I didn't have. And so I just felt like I was at a deficit. And it wasn't, it wasn't anything concrete, but I just felt like I was constantly behind. It's like, how do people know to do this or how do they know what someone is talking about? And I think on some level people just kind of fake it. And I didn't realize that. When I would get praised by a partner or an associate, I would copy and paste whatever if it was an email or like a Skype chat or something and I would save it in this email. So that every time I felt really down on myself, I'd go and like look at this document. And I remember my husband saying to me at one point, he was like, “This is crazy. Like you don't need to do this all the time. Like, yeah, you know, you're gonna make mistakes and you're not gonna know everything, but like you don't need this like external validation all the time.” But I think that's one thing that's part of the legal sector, I think, sometimes is that it's really easy to fall into that trap to just need constant external validation. I still feel that even in my current role. I think and I think that's partly a personality trait. Like I like I like to be told I'm doing a good job. And that's how I kind of derive my own sense of self. But yeah, it took me a while to really kind of get settled in. And I think part of that was because I jumped around a little bit too. When I came back to my clerkship, I was actually a pretty senior associate. But people much junior than me had had more reps of things than I did. And so that was definitely something that I really struggled with where I would be like, you know, one of the senior associates on a on a team and kind of running a case. But I felt like, this person has like prepared more deposition practice binders than I ever have. And so you know, how does that dynamic work? But yes, I think whether it's like confidence, whether if it's like feeling like you don't belong or feeling like like you got lucky rather than you earned something, I think that's something that I experienced a ton of.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Well, you said everybody makes mistakes. So let's talk about that. I know that to be true in my own career, my own life every day. Can you talk about a time when you felt like perhaps you had a challenge that you're not happy about, how you dealt with it or you made a downright mistake? And how did it change you? And how did you handle it?
Lekha Menon
Yeah, When I was gosh, I think it was a that was a 2L maybe, maybe a 3L, I was a research assistant for Professor Shaw, Professor Kate Shaw. And I was so excited about this opportunity because I really thought she was an incredible person and looked up to her. I had taken her class, and she had given me an assignment and I was so like ready to do it. I was wanted to like throw myself into it. But I was I had a lot of questions and I was really confused about a lot of things that I was supposed to do. I don't think I fully understood the assignment. I don't think I fully understood how I should go about it, but I didn't want to ask questions because I didn't want to come across like I didn't know what I was doing. And I think this kind of builds into this imposter syndrome thing. Like I think I felt like, I had kind of fooled her into thinking that I was really great. And yet here I am. And I can't let her know that. And so I, you know, did my best with the assignment, but it turns out I missed a lot. And it was something that she was using to publish on. So later we had a conversation and she was like, “I don't fully understand how missed all these things. How did that happen?” I had to kind of go through this whole thing. And she was, you know, really lovely and very understanding. But also I think I really recognized it messed stuff up for her. She then couldn't do what she needed to do with that information. She was then behind on her deadlines. And that just gutted me. I felt so terrible and I just felt so stupid. Like I should have just asked her the questions and she would have explained it to me and it would have been so much better. So I learned a lot from that. I think the most important thing, like, yes, you don't want to, you want to try to come up with solutions by yourself and you want to try to find answers for yourself. But at a certain point, you just have to admit that you don't know something and ask the question. And they should be smart, thoughtful questions. It does no one any good to kind of go around in circles and then just not do a good job. So I have learned that and I've passed that on as advice to people all the time.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
Everybody's entitled to guidance, no matter how good they are, right?
Lekha Menon
Yeah, absolutely. I think the second thing, and this is I think something that could happen to anyone at any time, I was reviewing documents for a case when I was at Kirkland, and I was in charge of kind of managing the discovery. There was a certain set of documents that were super privileged and that we didn't want to send out to the opposing council, and then there were a bunch of documents that we were willing to do it. And in talking to our internal e-discovery person, I gave the wrong number, like the wrong set, to them. And I realized it before it went out. And I called him and was like, please don't do that.
Dean Melanie Leslie
My god. How long did it take you to figure that out?
Lekha Menon
Yeah. Yeah, it was terrible.
Dean Melanie Leslie
What was the time period between telling her to push send and realizing what was happening?
Lekha Menon
Not that long. I want to say like probably like maybe like thirty minutes or something. It wasn't really that long at all. And this person was such a professional and like confirmed with me multiple times, but I had this huge panic and luckily it didn't go out. The mistake didn't actually end up happening, but it could have, and I got so close to that. And then I had to think about like, okay, do I raise this with the partners? I solved it and I handled it and the bad thing didn't happen, but I, you know, I felt like I owed it to myself and to them to tell them and I wanted them to hear it from me. But you know, nobody loves admitting that they were wrong or that they made a mistake, especially something that's just like attention to detail. Like it was such a small mistake, but it would have been really, really bad. I think part of what happened there was that I felt like I had to do everything quickly. Like I was rushing. I didn't take time. I didn't slow down. And so I think part of what I learned there is just like take a break. It's better to take a little bit longer and do it correctly than to just rush and get it all wrong.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Did exhaustion play into that?
Lekha Menon
Probably. But I don't know if it's fair for me to blame it on that. I do think it was like the sense of if I can be fast, then that's a good thing. And yeah, I think there's a space for that. I think it's good to be efficient and be responsive and not take forever. But I also think I needed to just like slow down and focus on what I was doing.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
All right, so now you're doing incredibly important work. What's hard about your job now? What's great about your job now?
Lekha Menon
What's great about it is that I just I really love the people that I work with. It's a bunch of people who are really committed to this common cause, which I think is incredible. I work on these issues that are really interesting, and I get to be really creative in my lawyering, which is not something I really got to do before. Now as you know, in the kind of more on the plaintiff side, it's bringing cases, thinking of creative legal theories, kind of trying to work around difficult statutes that make bringing cases hard and kind of flexing that creative muscle that I didn't really get to do in private practice as much. I really like that. What's hard about it, you know, it's a difficult subject matter. And I think sometimes you know, it can be hard to kind of face that over and over again. Both from like you know, you meet you hear the stories, you meet the people, you hear what you know, what people are going through, but also when laws that I would categorize as not great laws keep getting passed, it makes the job so much harder. But then we have our victories and that kind of keeps you going, is like, great, we can we can still win on certain issues and and that's really helpful and it makes me hopeful that that things can keep changing and that even people who I might disagree with on a lot of other issues, it there is a lot of common ground on the issue of of gun violence. That gives me hope for the future that like regardless of where we stand on other things, this is something that I think a lot of people actually really do agree on, and so there can be movement in the right direction.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Can you just talk a little bit about the kinds of cases that you're working on? So what do you do exactly? Either by giving us an example, if you can, of you know, whatever's publicly filed, of a case, or just more broadly, what's the objective of having a litigation arm of an entity like this and what are you trying to accomplish?
Lekha Menon
I'll give you an example of a case that I'm working on now where we are co-counsel and representing survivors of gun violence from a mass shooting that took place in Buffalo at the Topps Grocery Store several years ago. And this is it's you know it's a complicated case and we're working with a lot of different partners. And there's a social media aspect to it that we're partnering with other organizations on. And then there are members of the gun industry that we are trying to hold accountable. This is a case that started long before I joined Giffords, and so I joined a little bit later in it. That's a case where there are you know actual people that we are representing and they went through a horrific tragedy. And so we are literally trying to just hold people accountable for decisions that they made at the organizations. So that's organizations that might have manufactured or sold or designed items or firearms that allowed the shooter to perpetrate the massacre. Or businesses, that's not necessarily individuals that were looking to hold accountable. So in something like that, that part of that is like going through and doing the briefing and doing the pleadings, supporting people as they go forward to oral argument. The idea there is using laws that states have passed to hold actors accountable for the basically where either they're flaunting laws or they're kind of trying to work through a loophole. And that might look like injunctive relief. So it's like you no longer can do this thing anymore, and a court has said so. But it also might look like financial relief that then gets to go to a family. And obviously there's no amount of money that can bring a person back or can then heal something like that. But it's something that can help a family kind of move forward and work through loss like that. I think that's, you know, what's been really interesting is the objectives of our litigation can change. Sometimes it's to defend a law that someone is challenging as unconstitutional. But other times it's to say, you know, we have a statute on the books that we want to use to bring this case and we want to stop action from happening. And this like the secondary aspect of that case might be we want really good decisions on this law. We want to be able to create precedent here, which is cool. That's not something I really did in private practice ever, which because I was more on the defense side, but that's been an interesting kind of layer to the work that we do is being really thoughtful and strategic about where do we want to bring this case? Where do we think we're going to get good decisions? How is that going look moving forward?
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
So you have a nationwide practice, I assume. You could be anywhere.
Lekha Menon
Yeah. Yeah. We're mostly in state courts, but not but not always.
Dean Melanie Leslie
How does that work in terms of where you're barred?
Lekha Menon
Yeah, so usually we'll do what's called the the pro hac VJ, so we'll kind of get temporarily barred in in the state and when that we'll have work either with local council. Often our partners tend to be government entities. So whether that's like an attorney general's office or a DA's office or the city council, and so they either we work with them and so maybe they will kind of be our sponsor as it were when you kind of submit your application there. Our organization has people all over. So we have litigators based in New York and California. So we have like with the organization, we have a lot of people that can that's often sometimes someone is barred there, but sometimes sometimes not. So then you just, you know, pro hac.
Dean Melanie Leslie
How big is the organization?
Lekha Menon
I would say that in total we're sub 100 people. I think probably between like 70 and 90 people total. The law center also consists of our policy team, but of the litigation team itself, we're actually fairly small. We're about like five or six lawyers. So we're a pretty small group. And that includes lawyers that are also doing our amicus work too, and not necessarily doing the affirmative litigation.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
So less than one percent of the size of the organization you left.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Well, thank you so much. I wish we could go on forever. Thank you for the work that you're doing on behalf of people who need it. That matters a lot. And it's really, I just have to say on a personal note, it’s amazing to see you. You entered Cardozo the same time I started becoming dean. I was thinking as I was reading about you before this, my gosh, how much did you pack into the two years since I last saw you? And then I had to face the fact that it was not two years. It's amazing to see you just to have so many wonderful experiences and so much success. So thank you for sharing it with us. We really do appreciate it.
Associate Dean for the Office of Career Success Carey Bertolet Grant
And next time you need to go into your Rolodex of affirmation, just remember that we said that you're an absolute rock star. You're doing everything right. That's right.
Lekha Menon
Thank you. I have to say I'm so happy to be here and I attribute so much of what I've been able to do to Cardozo. I had an incredible experience there and just the extent that I want to give back, I just don't feel like I can put into words. But I am incredibly grateful to both of you, particularly, but the school in general as well.
Dean Melanie Leslie
Thank you. Come to the 50th Gala. Look for the invitation. Going out soon.