In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Ginger Appleberry discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Texas Lawbook: What do you look for in hiring outside counsel?
Ginger Appleberry: I am really practical. I think part of this goes back to the way that my brain has to operate and work. Given my background and my math lane, I want someone to give me practical advice. I can have academic discussions with people all day long. That doesn’t do any good. I need to know, and I need to know quickly, because I have too much stuff going on. When I ask you a question, what’s the answer and will it get me to where I need to go? I know more about this than most of the outside counsel, just because the space is pretty niche. So I need to know your depth of knowledge pretty quickly. We go to experts in specific subject matter, versus using one firm for everything.
Lawbook: What are your pet peeves with outside counsel?
Appleberry: What I don’t like are people who waste time, who try to tell me they know how to do something when they actually don’t. I respect that we all can’t know everything about everything, and that’s okay — just let’s be open about it. Let’s say this is not something that I have familiarity with. I’m good with that, and I respect you more as a lawyer if you’re open. And I may come back to you and say, “You’re still my best shot. Let’s go.” Or I could say, “Thank you, understood. I’ll find somebody else for this one.”
Litigators are spending less and less time in court and in front of judges and in front of juries. And it’s also really important to me that our lawyers, whom I’m taking to court, have trial experience. I’m not going to tell you what state — it wasn’t Texas — but there was an out-of-state case that I had to deal with. We got all the way to the end, and it was an employment-related case, and none of the lawyers on the team had ever been to a trial. None other than me. I was just like, “Are you kidding me?” We have six weeks to put together this entire trial. Please don’t ask me to hire you as a litigator if you’ve never been to court.
Click here to read the Lawbook profile of Ginger Appleberry.