Allison Stewart is what you call a podcast junkie.
When she’s not practicing commercial litigation at Greenberg Traurig, you can find the Dallas associate recharging by listening to podcasts – particularly podcasts about the law or women in business, such as Hillary Kerr’s “Second Life,” which profiles women in their second careers, or the Wall Street Journal’s “Secrets of Wealthy Women.”
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there – more than 500,000 on Apple’s podcast platform alone – Stewart did not find a single one that focused on women in the law last year when she looked for one.
So, she took matters into her own hands.
In the fall, Stewart launched “Women In Law On The Record,” a weekly podcast that tells the tales of successful women in the legal field.
In the nearly four months since she launched the podcast, Stewart, a third-year associate, has hosted quite the group of highly-powered women lawyers on her podcast: some at law firms, others on the bench, and many who are in-house lawyers at some of the biggest companies or sports teams in the U.S. – David Yurman, Gold’s Gym, the Dallas Stars, the Oakland A’s and Fannie Mae, to name a few.
“When I started thinking about what I want to accomplish with the podcast, my goal is to show as many examples as possible of what it looks like to be successful,” Stewart told The Texas Lawbook. “I want to see a woman three years ahead of me… maybe one 10 years ahead of me on the partnership track. I think there are points in everybody’s journey that people can identify with.”
The feedback on the podcast, she says, has already been really strong. Her podcast has already hit 2,000 downloads. And while she sought out her first few guests on her own, her recent and upcoming episodes feature women lawyers who were mostly recommended to her by listeners.
“I’ve been very lucky by the reception to the concept,” Stewart said. “Of the 15 episodes I have up as of today, I only knew three beforehand.”
Stewart said listening to other podcasts has been a useful tool in fine-tuning her own interviewing skills.
“Listening to many podcasts myself, I know what types of questions I want to hear answered, how quickly I want the conversation to move and where I want it to flesh out more,” she said.
Of course, the deposition experience she has already obtained at work helps, too.
“It’s funny, I’ve taken depos since I started this podcast, and those have gotten better for me; they’ve been mutually beneficial,” she said.
When she first launched the podcast, Stewart said she was worried that the podcast would create a perception that she was “distracted” from her practice, but she said the feedback she’s received has proven quite the opposite. For example, she received great support from her law firm.
“The partners have been super encouraging, or they say they listened to an episode on the way to work,” Stewart said. “All around they’ve been extremely supportive.”
Stewart said she releases one episode per week and plans to start adding one solo episode per month where Stewart answers listener questions or provides updates on how she’s personally implemented some of the advice she’s learned from her guests.
Her process includes a brief pre-interview phone conference with each guest, and then she either goes to the guest’s office to record the podcast (if they’re local) or they record over the phone.
Once the episode is recorded, she replays it, records an intro and outro, and writes any editing notes needed before sending the file to the audio editor she works with, who then cleans the file up. The audio editor then schedules the episode to post on a platform that will disburse it to iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. Stewart said her podcast will soon be available on iHeartRadio as well.
She said the process for her podcast to get approved on all the platforms has been easy for the most part – it took about three days for Apple’s iTunes to approve her podcast.
She spends about 45 minutes with each guest, and the post-production process takes about an hour of her time.
This week, Stewart published her episode on Andrea Scofield, corporate counsel of Interstate Batteries. A couple of upcoming episodes will feature Chief Judge Diane Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Texas Capital Bank General Counsel Kelly Rentzel.
Here are a few clips from the podcast:
Cara Martin, legal counsel for the Dallas Stars
Brittany DeGan, general counsel of RewardStyle
Shelby Angel, counsel for Gold’s Gym
D’Lonra Ellis, asst. general counsel for the Oakland A’s