Shirish Gupta - JAMS

Louis Goodman / Shirish Gupta – Transcript

Louis Goodman 00:03 
Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we talk with attorneys about their lives and careers. I'm Louis Goodman. Today, we welcome Shirish Gupta to the podcast. He currently works with the legendary Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service known as JAMS. Sought out by Fortune 500 companies and Silicon Valley startups, Mr. Gupta is an active hands-on mediator who works with parties until the matter is fully settled. His legal background includes commercial securities, class action, and IP litigation. He serves as a lecturer at UC Berkeley Law School, and an adjunct professor at UC Law School, San Francisco. He has numerous professional awards and honors.

Shirish Gupta, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer. 

Shirish Gupta 00:53 

Thank you so much for having me, Louis. 

Louis Goodman 00:55 

Pleasure to have you. Where are you speaking to us from right now? 

Shirish Gupta 00:59 

I'm speaking from our home in San Mateo. It's a full house. My son is home for the summer from college and it's wonderful to have everyone home. 

Louis Goodman 01:11 

Can you tell us a little bit about the type of work that you're doing with JAMS right now?

Shirish Gupta 01:18 

Sure. My role is twofold. One is when I'm serving as a mediator, another is when I'm serving as an arbitrator. Those are related, but two distinct fields of practice. So when I'm serving as a mediator, I'm trying to help the parties get to a resolution. It's a voluntary process, so it's not so much me dictating what happens, but finding out what it is the parties need, what can be achieved and charting a path to getting there. 

But when I'm serving as the arbitrator, I'm taking in evidence, I'm listening to the testimony, reading the documents very, very thoroughly and coming up with a decision as to have the claims been satisfied or not. 

Louis Goodman 02:03 

How long have you been working with JAMS?

Shirish Gupta 02:07 

I think it's been, we're coming up on the ninth anniversary. So starting year 10 soon. Yeah, it goes by so ridiculously fast. It's pretty scary. 

Louis Goodman 02:17 

Where are you from originally? 

Shirish Gupta 02:19 

So I grew up in Southern California, out in the Inland Empire. The joke we used to make is I come from Corona, but not the beer and not Del Mar.

So small town, but it was very popular in the early eighties. You had kind of a dearth of medical professionals. So you had Indian American doctors, actually at that time, there were Indian doctors coming in and settling in the Inland Empire in Orange County. So that's where my family settled, grew up there, went to college at Berkeley, law school at the University of Chicago.

While I was there, I knew that I wanted to come back to the Bay Area. It was the hot place to be. I don't know if, I'm not sure about what your audience is, but for the folks that were in the Bay around in the late 90s, they may remember the dot com boom, the webvan.com, the pets.com days. That's when I was finishing up in law school, and there was just the buzz in the Bay. And I couldn't wait to get back here fast enough. 

Louis Goodman 03:27 

When you went from UC Berkeley to Chicago for law school, did you take some time off between college and law school? Or did you go straight through? 

Shirish Gupta 03:38 

I finished in four and a half. Back in those days, it was a feat if you finished in four years. In fairness, though, I did a double major and a minor, so I had to take a fair number of classes.

So I had a little bit of time off, but not much. The fun part was I taught, I taught Kaplan in Princeton Review. So I taught the SAT, the LSAT, the GRE, and it was, it was fun working with students. It was a, it didn't pay that well, but it was something to do. And I enjoyed working with students. Plus, I, one of the things about the LSAT was I loved logic games and I think, I'm not sure if they still have that on the LSAT anymore.

Louis Goodman 04:20 

I don't know. I haven't taken it in a while. Do you think that doing all that teaching helped you once you got to law school in terms of kind of understanding what it was that they were looking for and how to present yourself in law school examinations? 

Shirish Gupta 04:37 

I wish. The taking standardized tests is so different from sitting in a law school class and actually taking those exams, especially when 100 percent of your grade is the final.

And it's about spotting issues, writing coherently at the time. I don't remember any classes where I had to bubble, fill in scantrons. And I had choices between A through E. We had blue books and it was just writing furiously for the full three hours. 

Louis Goodman 05:08 

When did you first decide to be a lawyer or know that you wanted to be a lawyer?

Shirish Gupta 05:14 

I don't have a specific recollection of remembering, but I think for the longest time I always knew I was law or some type of analytical type of Industry is where I would be ending up. Medicine and engineering didn't appeal to me. Business did, but not as much. I thought about a career in management consulting to some degree, though I think of myself as a businessman now. 

After I finished law school, I started practicing, but I think it was about eight years out, I went solo. I know I'm jumping ahead, but I've been in essence a businessman for myself for I'd say 17 years now. 

Louis Goodman 05:57 

Tell us a little bit about your background in working for large firms and what sort of work that you did before you went out on your own.

Shirish Gupta 06:07 

Straight out of law school, I joined a firm in San Francisco called Howard Rice. The firm no longer exists. It was absorbed by Arnold and Porter years ago. I was only there for about a couple of years. It was a great experience. Super, super smart lawyers. And I learned a lot from them. The mentorship I had, it was one of those places where they expect you coming in to just go take a deposition.

There's no, like you watch five depositions and then you take your first one. Instead, here you go. I did my first mediation, I defended my first mediation without ever having been to mediation before. 

Louis Goodman 06:47 

What sort of cases were you working on there? 

Shirish Gupta 06:50 

Litigation focused, or at least that was my, my area. I did a lot of IP commercial cases, did some work for the Oakland Raiders when I started.

Eventually, Howard Rice was selected to represent PG&E during their bankruptcy. At least that bankruptcy there's been another bankruptcy. And at the time we all became kind of bankruptcy lawyers or dealing with the ancillary matters related to bankruptcy. So claims that were being made that we're now in bankruptcy court.

So that was a fair amount of work that I did there. And then I decided that it was time to make a move. And I joined the firm of Mayer Brown. So I was there for six and a half years. The beauty was they had just opened up an outpost in Palo Alto. There was one litigation partner and I was the one litigation associate.

The amazing thing is as a second or third year, I think I was a third year by then, I got staffed on any litigation matter in Northern California. So if there was a case in Northern California, I got it. If it was securities, antitrust, employment, breach of contract, real estate, you name it, it's in a court, federal or state, I was doing it.

Louis Goodman 08:06 

What prompted you to go out on your own? And what sort of practice did you open up when you did? 

Shirish Gupta 08:10 

So I'd been at big law for, I think it was eight and a half years. I saw the kind of life that it was, and I realized that I didn't want that. I didn't want to be a junior partner in a big law firm. I wanted to be responsible for my own fate.

So I decided to leave, took a few months to figure out what I was going to be doing. Eventually met up with a old acquaintance. He said, I have space in my office, so I can rent you out an office in my suite. And I said, great. And then I focused on litigation primarily, but then eventually developed a corporate practice as well, doing such a wide array of matters.

It's kind of like what they say is anything that comes in the door to do within reason. I didn't know how to do family law. I'm not a criminal lawyer. It was in the civil space. It was odd, but I was still getting to do patent cases. And you would think that you'd need a big firm to do a patent case, but I was a solo doing patent cases.

And through my network, I got selected to do a Series A financing. I'd never done a Series A financing, but my network helped guide me through the process. So it opened up a wide array of opportunities for me. 

Louis Goodman 09:29 

How did you get involved with JAMS? 

Shirish Gupta 09:32 

So I'd been practicing as a neutral for several years, and I realized that there were some matters that I would not be selected for as a solo.

I thought back to the days when I was at the firms and typically we would, when we needed to mediate a dispute, we would go to JAMS. And within JAMS, we'd go to like five people and I talked to big firm lawyers that I'd co counseled with or had been opposing me and I said, Hey, like, why aren't you using me?

And they said, look, we need you to be affiliated with JAMS in order to be able to recommend using you. So, I thought, I can take care of that. So, I reached out to JAMS, we had a great conversation, and realized that it was a great fit all around. 

Louis Goodman 10:19 

You've had a very varied career as an attorney, but everything you've done is as an attorney. You've been practicing law. What is it that keeps you as a lawyer and keeps you practicing? 

Shirish Gupta 10:34 

Technically speaking, although I am admitted to the bar, I have not practiced law in the last nine years. I have not had clients. What keeps me in the law, or more specifically, what keeps me in the ADR space, is getting to work with people, helping people resolve problems. I really like working with lawyers. 

Louis Goodman 10:54 

What is it about working with lawyers that you like? I like working with lawyers too, but what is it that you like about working with lawyers? 

Shirish Gupta 11:01 

I like getting to know lawyers, just not just what makes them tick, but you know, what's going on in your life. How can I make your life better?

There's a lot of drudgery in the law. I still remember when I was at the big firms, there were some times where you're, you're sent to Columbus, Ohio in January to a document, repository to review boxes and boxes of documents for a week that wasn't fun that practice of the law might be gone now because people are just doing it all on their computers, but back to, you know, why do I like lawyers?

I think like a lawyer. They think like a lawyer. It makes it easier to communicate. We realize that we're, we have common goals. We can talk in terms of, all right, what's your claim or the elements of the claim? How are you going to satisfy them? What evidence do you have? Do you think that evidence is really that strong? What evidence do you think the other side has? Things like that. 

Louis Goodman 12:00 

If a young person were coming out of college thinking about a career, would you recommend going into law? 

Shirish Gupta 12:06 

Absolutely. Yeah, I would tell them not to think about ADR. I tell, uh, law students the same thing of ADR is something you don't think about coming out of law school or coming out of college. That's something much later in your practice. Law, I think is a great profession. Getting trained as a lawyer, going to law school, I think has valuable benefits. Whether you actually practice law is entirely up to you because the practice of law is so varied. 

What I did going into kind of more complex commercial IP securities types disputes is very different than what you'd be doing, say, as a criminal lawyer or advising companies in house or, you know, helping mom and pop companies doing immigration work, doing family law. There's such a variety there within the law. 

Louis Goodman 13:02 

You touched on this earlier. What about the business of practicing law? You know, for those of us who are not working for a big firm or for the government, as you said, we're business people. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the business of practicing law and how that's gone for you?

Shirish Gupta 13:22 

So when I went on my own, One of the first things I did was I went to a state bar convention and I learned about the state bar solo and small firm section. Now it's the California Lawyers Association, I believe. I got involved, got to know some mentors, people that showed me like, how is it that you run a practice?

How do you send out bills? How do you do collections? And people were very generous in sharing information. Eventually I became the chair of the section and then the co chair of the council of sections. So I was involved at the state bar level and I got to write a chapter or two for a couple of practice guides about opening your own law office, growing your practice. And then I started blogging about it. So on my blog, I have an article about whether to incorporate or be a sole proprietor. And I sometimes check the Google rankings and it's like number one year after year after year. I get no money from this. So let me be clear. I don't have any advertising. I have it there because I was trying to answer those questions.

And I thought if I don't know the answer to these, maybe others don't either. You're welcome to read my articles. And then I, at the end of it, I have one about how to close your practice because there weren't good resources on that. 

Louis Goodman 14:43 

How do we find these articles, Shirish? 

Shirish Gupta 14:46 

So they're on my website, shirishgupta.com, S H I R I S H G U P T A dot com. Yeah. So they're all there. 

Louis Goodman 14:55 

Great. Thank you. What mistakes do you think that lawyers make when they go into an arbitration or a mediation in front of you? And how could they make better presentations? 

Shirish Gupta 15:10 

The mistakes are that I'm going to, that they have to have the last word there many times where I tell lawyers, Hey, you know, I understand the point.

I don't need your help. I'm already going to rule for you so we can stop the argument there. I mean, what, what I really appreciate is when I see the, the, the people that are real trialers, they know what things matter, what things they don't need to fight about. Clean questions. I can't tell you how often I just hear these meandering questions that I don't entirely know what the point of them is.

I don't see the connection with the claims. The witness seems to be confused. It's one of those of the longer your question, the more confusing it may be. So just the short, straightforward questions. I think are much more helpful and people that think that, you know, I need, I need two weeks for this arbitration.

So often we can do this in a week. We can do this in three days. We can streamline this dramatically. 

Louis Goodman 16:15 

What, if anything, would you change about the way the legal system works? 

Shirish Gupta 16:19 

I've been on several soap boxes. I often think we don't need a bar exam. I think we could get rid of that. Beyond that, I don't have specific recommendations.

Louis Goodman 16:31 

Let me shift gears here a little bit. What's your family life been like and how has practicing law fit into that and your family life fit into your practice and your JAMS work? 

Shirish Gupta 16:42 

The law has been good to my family. The legal practice has been good to my family. It was, well, let me say it this way. Financially, it's been good to my family. It has definitely taken time. 

Louis Goodman 16:55 

What about recreational pursuits? Any sort of things that you enjoy doing when you're not working? 

Shirish Gupta 17:01 

When my kids were younger, I used to coach youth soccer, did that for several years, even did it even after my kids stopped playing because it was something that I love to do. At the same time I was a referee and still am, and it's fun being out there on Saturdays, refereeing games, and these are all for AYSO. So it's none of the bits for pay. It's just to help out our community and the kids. And so I really enjoy doing that. 

Louis Goodman 17:31 

You touched a little bit on your teaching work. How did you get into teaching and what sort of teaching do you do?

Shirish Gupta 17:39 

I have to say I'm very blessed with people that have taken an interest in me. So, I took a role in the South Asian Bar Association because there was a lawyer who took me out to lunch and said, Hey, you should join the board. I was like, Oh, I hadn't even thought about that. Similarly, years ago, I had applied to the San Mateo County Superior Court's mediation panel. I was not accepted. Because they said you have to have five mediations, I think it was five or ten. I didn't have that many. I stayed in touch with the executive director. Eventually, when I did get the five or ten, I let her know. I was on the panel. The ED left to take over what was then UC Hastings Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution.

Her name was Sheila. And Sheila reached out to me one day and said, Hey, do you think you might want to teach one day? And I said, I'd never thought about it. But I'd be open to it. And so UC Hastings is now UC Law SF. And what was required, and I believe still is that you actually have to take the class that you're about to teach.

So I spent a full semester attending a class, doing the roles, doing the role plays, doing the readings and doing all the exercises. And then the next semester you get to teach it. So it was somebody taking an interest in me and saying, Hey, I think you'd be good at this. Since then, I've expanded to teaching. I've taught at Santa Clara. I currently still teach at Berkeley. Initially, I was teaching negotiation for many years, and then moved over to teaching mediation now. Probably, eventually, we'll move over to teaching arbitration, just to keep it fresh. 

Louis Goodman 19:23 

Let's say you came into some real money, several billion dollars, three, four billion dollars.

What, if anything, would you do differently in your life? 

Shirish Gupta 19:32 

I'd probably fly private. So that's one. Honestly, I'd give it pretty much away. Yeah. Other than the fly private. I will tell you like right now, YouTube is serving me all these videos of like private jets. So number one, I can't afford to go private. I'm pretty much a basic economy kind of guy, but it's kind of neat to see how the other half lives. 

Louis Goodman 19:53 

Let's say you had a magic wand that was one thing in the world, the legal world, or otherwise that you could change. What would that be? 

Shirish Gupta 20:00 

It's too much power for me. Yeah. I, I'd be very hesitant to, to wave a wand like that because of the ancillary effects. We're in such an ecosystem. And if you change one thing, It affects so many others. I'll give you an example. People talk about, say, the high speed rail in California. Why is it so expensive? Well, once you start diving into it, you could say, well, labor is expensive. Does that mean you don't want union labor? You don't want these wages and the families that are being supported by them? Well, labor is expensive. What about the steel? There's requirements that you buy American steel. So then you're saying, okay, you're hurting American jobs and shipping those, the steel purchases overseas. So these are complicated issues and there's no one magic bullet as far as I can see. And that's why in mediations, we need to have serious conversations about what really is going on. It's the proverbial Gordian knot. 

Louis Goodman 21:02 

Let's say you had a Super Bowl ad. Someone gave you 60 seconds on the Super Bowl and you could have this really big audience. What would you want to say to that big audience?

Shirish Gupta 21:14 

I would give that ad to a charity that I support. 

Louis Goodman 21:18 

How do you define success for yourself? 

Shirish Gupta 21:21 

I struggle with that. So I don't have one definition for It's not like I say, okay, the mediation settled today. That's a success. It's a partial success. It's on the way. You could say I issued an arbitration award. That's a success because that, but at the same time, that's my job. I didn't lose money this year. That's always good. But so much of life is outside of our hands. I guess one thing I would say is the success is if overall people are happy with my service are coming back to me or referring me to others. That means that the work I'm doing is successful. 

Louis Goodman 22:02 

If someone wanted to get in touch with you for a mediation or an arbitration, what's the best way to do that? 

Shirish Gupta 22:10 

Yeah, so the best thing is don't contact me directly if it's an arbitration. The last thing we want to do is have an ex parte communication that I then have to disclose as part of the disclosure process and thus could get me kicked off the matter.

It's best if you reach out to my case manager at JAMS. So go to jamsadr.com, J A M S A D R. com, and just search for me in there. You can find me many ways on Google as well. So that'll get you to JAMS. 

Louis Goodman 22:42 

Shirish, is there anything that we haven't touched on that you'd like to talk about? Anything at all that you'd like to discuss?

Shirish Gupta 22:50 

I feel very blessed for what I've gotten to do. And I recognize that I'm no longer held up captive by the billable hour. I do bill my time and, but I don't have to do the 250 hours a month anymore. And it's thanks to attorneys and parties that continue to use me and have put their faith and trust in me. So I try not to take that for granted. And for example, being here today is because I got to know someone that you'd interviewed or, you know, Louis. And he said, you know, I think I, you might be a good guest for this program. So it goes back to the thing of people have looked out for me and I appreciate that and when they say, Hey, you might be good for this, I generally don't say no, because why not? It's an opportunity. And then I got to hear some of your podcasts and I was like, yeah, definitely. I want to be on this. So thank you for inviting me, Louis. 

Louis Goodman 23:46 

Well, thank you. Shirish Gupta. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. 

That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com, where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs and information.

Thanks to my guests, and to Joel Katz for music, Bryan Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

Shirish Gupta 24:36 

Whether or not you, sorry, let me take it back. I don't think I can really answer that. It's just too, too generalized and special. I'm not getting into that. I don't think I even answered your question.