Communication Matters More Than Credentials in Law | Interview on Lawyer Launcher – Behind the Bar with Susan Van Dyke (Crosspost)

In this episode of Studying Law Around the World, I'm doing something a bit different. I recently had the chance to sit down with Susan Van Dyke on her podcast, Lawyer Launcher: Behind the Bar, where we talked about building a legal career across borders, navigating the early years of practice, and what law school does not teach you. Today, I'm sharing part of that conversation with you. Susan brings a perspective that most law students and new lawyers rarely get access to. She has spent over 30 years working She works closely with law firms and their leadership teams, and she understands what firms expect from new hires and where many people struggle when they first start. Her podcast focuses on a simple idea: law school teaches you the law, but success inside a law firm is a different skill set. If you're thinking about your transition into practice or trying to find your footing in your first years as a lawyer, this conversation will give you a more honest look at what that process really looks like. This is just part of the interview. To hear the full conversation, make sure to check out career launcher behind the bar. Today I get to talk to Claudio Claus, who is a Brazilian-trained lawyer now articling in Ontario, and he has experience across Brazil, the US, and Canada in corporate and commercial real estate law. And he hosts a global legal podcast with over 120 episodes on legal careers worldwide. Beyond that, Claudio led a 75-lawyer interview project for the University of Toronto Faculty of Law's 5th anniversary, focused on advice for early career lawyers from alumni, later published as a booklet. Welcome to the Lawyer Launcher Podcast. Hello friends, I'm your host, Susan Van Dyke. If you're a law student or a new lawyer eager to launch a successful career, you're in the right place. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience, I'll demystify the business of law and help you understand just what it takes to We'll empower you, help build confidence, and reduce anxiety. Our experts will share tips and advice, and I can't wait for you to hear from them. Now, let's dive in. Claudio, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I'm very happy to be here, excited for our conversation. I am as well. Now, I first came upon you when you were meeting with 75 grads on this journey. It must have been a couple of years ago. Have I got that right? Yes, it actually just completed a year since I finished the project. So I started in 2024 and finished it up in 2025. It must have been in 2024. Saw you, I don't know if it was on LinkedIn or where it was. I thought that is the coolest thing. And now I get to talk to you. So, I'm super lit up about chatting with you and learning all about kind of behind the scenes and what inspired you to start that podcast or that project rather. I guess it wasn't a podcast really, was it? It was an interview that you later made into a booklet. I mean, just tell me what started the inspiration for that 75 interview or networking goal. Tell us Absolutely. So, there were a few things going on in my mind at the same time, right? So, I was starting my Master of Laws at the University of Toronto, and I had been semi-active, somewhat active on LinkedIn for a couple of years now. And something that I had noticed with quite a few of the American JD students that I had connected over the years is that there was some kind of a challenge for you to meet with 100 lawyers over your 3 years of law school. So, people would recommend doing that so that you'd have a better idea of what you want to do. what kind of law, you know, all these choices would really be more based on these conversations than just on the subject matter you studied at school. Because we could all agree that, you know, you can really like your contracts class or your constitutional law class, but once you start actually practicing something, that area of law might look very different. So, I had learned about that experience and I was semi-active on LinkedIn. So, all of these things were kind of cooking together. I also knew that the University of Toronto, specifically the Faculty of Law, had an incredible alumni base. And many of them were very willing to chat. So, I was trying to see, you know, how I could make a really interesting learning experience, how I could tap into that alumni network, but also how I could make something interesting to celebrate the university's anniversary. So, it was the 75th anniversary. I thought it was quite, you know, an important year and an exciting one to be a student there. So, I thought I would kind of put all of these things together and I ended up, you know, interviewing 75 of the Faculty of Law's alumni to ask them, you know, what kind of advice would you give to the next generation of lawyers for the next 75 years of both the school and that is upcoming? Is there one single greatest learning from talking to 75 alumni from the University of Toronto? Yeah, so, so I definitely learned a lot of things, but I think that 2 main topics definitely kept showing up again and again. And I think that one of them is that maximum that There's no single way to have a legal career. There's no single path to success. So, I talked with people who were, you know, on the bench, right, as judges. I talked with people who were working in another country, talked with people with, you can imagine how many different areas, you know, from corporate practice to solo to working in a not-for-profit. So, very, very many different kinds of lawyers, and they all basically said something similar. They were like, when I started my career, I had no idea this is where I was going to And I just really stayed, you know, open to the possibilities and it just, you know, things kept on happening and I kept pursuing my interests and I got to where I am. And I think that that was one of the main points. And then number 2 was definitely many of the lawyers would say again and again, networking. Keep on networking throughout your career. Don't stop, you know, meeting with your colleagues from law school. Don't stop keeping in touch with people that you've met throughout your professional life. You know, sometimes they'll bring you clients, but sometimes they will just be a sounding board. and someone that you can, you know, go to when you find a professional dilemma or when you want to be introduced to someone who could be either a client or somebody who could open the doors for another professional opportunity. So, I think that those are the 2 things that repeated over and over again and that I definitely, you know, am trying my best to keep in mind as I move forward. I love that, and that makes a lot of sense. You know, with the networking, you just never know where it's going to take you. You can never presuppose where it's going to take you. People are so interesting and people themselves end up in interesting dynamic environments that, you know, might intersect with where you are 5 years from now. You just, you just never know. I want to come back to networking because I think that's a really important topic, especially for the students listening and the audience that I have. I think that's something that it can be challenging for a lot of people. Let me come back to that though, and I want to just pivot for a second and talk to you a little bit about a decision that you made to move jurisdictions, which sounds exciting on one level, but I imagine it was incredibly difficult on another level, and you've done it a couple of times. And I wanted to ask you, you know, was there a moment when you thought, this is going to be harder than I expected? It's always interesting. I feel like when you are on one side of a problem, you always have a hard time, you know, imagining the magnitude of it. Sometimes you are too close to the problem that you see it too big. Sometimes you're too far away and you underestimate it. So, I think that there was definitely different phases. through navigating it. And now that I'm basically on the other side, I'm almost done with my articling and ready to be called to the bar in Ontario, you know, with bar exams. Congratulations. Thank you. It's definitely a time to kind of look back and see and understand all that happened in this period, right? It's such an intense period that I just went through basically doing a master's, writing the bar exams, doing articling, all of that. Somewhat at the same time, so it was quite quite intense. And I think there were moments that I thought, "Well, this is just taking a lot of time." And honestly, it was a process of about two years, so it's not even that long. But when you're living through it, right, it just feels like it's taking just so long. And then at times, I would have the positive attitude of thinking, "Man, I'm going to probably be you know healthy and and well and working until I'm eighty years old." So you know, two years is not a big deal. So it definitely you know went. I went through waves of being very excited with the process and waves of being maybe a little bit discouraged and, you know, tired of, you know, either studying for the bar exams or just having long hours that day. But it was just all like part of the process. And happily, I was, because of all these conversations and the connection, I was pretty well informed of what was going to happen, what were the next steps that I was going to have afterwards. So I wasn't in a way like blindsided by any of the steps that I would have to do. So I think that that helped me a lot in the sense that I had all the information. I knew what would happen. I had kind of like a clear timeline. You had an intended path, didn't you? You had— That is correct. Yeah. So take us through. You started in Brazil. You were born and raised in Brazil, right? That's right. Yes. And then from there, take us through quickly your journey. Yeah, not at all. Not at all. So I'll try to make it short here. So basically studied in Brazil, worked there, and just in about high school, my second year of high school, I had the opportunity to— in Brazil, you could do like a trade during high school. So I did IT during my second year of high school, and it was more related to software— to, sorry, to hardware, to actually the pieces of the computer, putting it together. Because I had done that, on my third year of high school, my mom worked at the real estate registry office or the land registry office, like We have across Canada as well. And the head of that land registry office needed somebody to do some IT work, to move some computers around and all of that. And I had the chance to go and work at the land registry office. It so happened that a lot of the people working there were lawyers, so they definitely influenced me to, to keep on studying law. I wasn't quite sure. I actually had considered environmental engineering as one of the undergrads that I wanted to take because I had a cousin that I really admired and that's what she studied. But I ended up choosing law school, and in Brazil, law school is a bachelor's degree. With all of that in context, I have the opportunity to go to the US for 2 years for volunteer work. I go to Arizona, I spend this awesome time, come back home, speak much better English at this point, and I want to have a very international career. So, I go back to law school that I had started, talk to the dean of law, and I ask, how can I make my career as international as possible? And she tells me, you should probably change professions if you want to do anything international. Don't, don't stick with law. And, you know, it was the best information she had at the time. And the world is constantly changing and being more connected and opportunities for lawyers are showing up more and more. But I was quite, you know, let down by that, by what she said. So I ended up going home. My parents were like, okay, you can't drop out of law school. But I found, found out that I could actually add another subject of study to my studies. So I started doing an undergrad in international relations at the same time. So, I would take both courses and with all of that happening at the same time, COVID showed up and the world shut and all that, you know, happened, but it gave me the opportunity to connect with a lot of lawyers online, a lot of lawyers who had careers that were interesting to me that spanned through different countries, and that's how I started my podcast. So, it gave me a lot of inspiration on international careers being possible. During this time, lots of opportunities to interact with different universities and all of that. Basically, all of these things kept happening and I had the chance to work with a judge in the US in 2020. And then by the end of 2020, I came to Canada as a researcher. I was researching specifically regulated fields, specifically on water and sanitation. So I was at Osgoode Hall at York University here in Toronto. And that's the time where I met The person who's now my wife. It's— hadn't planned to move careers to Canada specifically, but I ended up coming here to study and left Canada, you know, with a relationship. I was there clerking for a judge, so my wife joined me in Brazil. So we lived there together for a year and then decided to come back to Canada and continue my legal career here. I'm going to interrupt really quickly. Don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And while you're at it, Why don't you shoot this episode to somebody who could use it? Just send it off, send it off to 2 or 3 people. Let them know that you're thinking of them and you thought of them as you were listening to this episode because something in here is relevant for them and you're gonna do them a huge favor by sharing this episode with them. So while you're thinking of it right now, while I'm interrupting this episode, shoot them that share button and get it into somebody else's hands so they get the help that they need as well. Thank you. What's interesting about, I mean, there's so many interesting pieces about your story is that you were intentional from quite an early stage that you wanted to have this international experience. That's what kind of rises to the surface for me. That's quite interesting. Where did that come from? Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know if I can pinpoint it exactly. I don't know if it were, you know, the movies when I grew up, what specifically made me really want to do something international, but it was really a desire that I had from early on, you know, studying English, seeing all the possibilities that, that could happen for your career, for your life. I just really knew that, you know, the world was a lot bigger than my city. Claudio, you went from Brazil to Arizona to Toronto, met your wife, all the way back to Brazil, learning languages, well, learning English along the way, and then 2 degrees. I mean, it's just, it's not for the faint of heart, your journey, that's for sure. It was a fun one. And of course, I gave you kind of the summarized version here. Yes. You could probably spend a whole hour with me telling you all the details. Yes. Yes. And so now this spring, you are, you, you're articling now and you are called to the bar this spring? That is correct. Yes. So just in, in the summer, in June, that's when I will be called to the bar officially. Congratulations. What a journey. So if somebody was sitting in law school right now thinking, I have to follow a very specific path and I'm on this path and I've, it's been carved out for me. And I guess I'm just going to go on this path. What would you say to them? Yeah, I think there is— I have this advantage of having, you know, the compound knowledge of lots of people that I interviewed in my podcast and also in this U of T Law project. And then my personal experience as well, right? So drawing from both of these experiences together, I would say that, you know, sure, you know, go with the path, see if it makes you happy, reevaluate it, see if it, you know, it's If it aligns well with your values and if that makes sense to you, if it's making you happy, if it aligns with your values, that's perfect. Keep on keeping on. If at any point you realize that it doesn't align anymore with the person you want to be, with your values, with what you aspire for your life, you can start preparing a transition. And it's incredible what you can do with a law degree. There's so much that can be done. And keep on building your network, keep on, you know, working hard and really developing those skills that you can where you are. Mm-hmm. And prepare for that transition. You made an interesting comment earlier about, you know, I'm currently in this time right now. It's only going to be a couple more years. And yes, it's hard. Yes, I'm working through it and I'm tired and it's been quite a journey, but I plan to practice until I'm 80. So this is just 2 years out of my career's lifespan. And I think that's a really interesting perspective, Claudio, because I've worked with— I worked with a fellow who worked into his And this is 30 years ago. He worked into his 80s and I think his family, you know, eventually forced him to retire. I've worked with others that are well, you know, well into their late 70s. It just, it seems, it doesn't seem abnormal anymore and people, and as long as people can choose. So I love the point of you, you get to choose the path that you're on and don't be afraid to take risks, right? Don't feel too rigid and because you can always realign yourself on a new path if it's not fulfilling you anymore, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. At any step of your career, there is the opportunity to move around. You're never kind of bound by your choices. And it's quite interesting, you know, at points you might think, you know, there's all this sunk cost. I spent so much time learning or studying these, but really most skills are very transferable. So, even if you don't want to continue in a legal role, if you want to go, you know, in a marketing role or, you know, in a talent role, there's always a lot of skills that you can transfer. from the legal field. So, there's definitely a lot of things to learn, and it might be a steep, you know, learning curve, but absolutely there is, you know, a lot that you can draw from your legal career if you ever plan to move away. And even within the legal field, I mean, of course, there's so many fields you can take a law degree, but within the legal field, aside from practicing law, there's a lot of lawyers that are doing all kinds of different things. They're working, as you said, in marketing, business development. They're also certainly working in talent and professional development. That's an excellent space for, um, for a lawyer and, and many other areas. So, you know, it really is open to what you want to make your career look like. So I want to— you— we were talking about networking earlier, and I want to, you know, you, Claudio, are so exceptionally good at networking and building relationships, and I've seen it just in our interactions prior to this podcast. You know, you clearly see it on LinkedIn, you clearly see it in your podcasts and how you draw people out, and you're such a great communicator. And good communication skills is part of what networking is, certainly. And this So critically important for junior lawyers, the networking skills and communication skills, of course. But most people, and you kind of touched on it earlier, but most new lawyers or law students, they wait too long to start networking. I get the sense that they feel like a switch has to go off and they need to get permission, or maybe they have imposter syndrome, or they're waiting for the recruitment season to start, or feel like they have sufficient time to start networking. You didn't do any of those things. You just got on with it. You seem to just naturally— even with English as a second language, even though you, you maybe you were more proficient at the time, not such a new English language speaker, but you just got on with it. Tell us, did that take courage? Tell us a little bit about that. I think there was a lot to be considered, right? So, I would definitely, I would definitely say that I first needed to know more information. I definitely wanted to understand better the possibilities and career outcomes. So, I think that all of those things together motivated me a lot. When I talk with my peers, With some of the law students that studied with me that they don't either personally like networking or their work environments, they feel like it's not really seen as positive. If you're talking to other lawyers, it might give the bad impression that you're maybe, you know, trying to find another job or there's kind of like a bad stigma in the workplace that they are placed in. So it really depends on where you are and what kinds of incentives you would have to do that. I feel very fortunate to have this podcast project now for over 5 years, because carrying this over from law school doesn't carry any of this bad baggage. I feel like if, even if I go to, you know, a firm that doesn't maybe see as much of the value as talking to, you know, fellow people in the profession, which I find that very unlikely, I do have, you know, a person— a personally good reason to do that, a perfectly reasonable reason to continue on talking with lawyers. But I really, more and more, I see a profession that is united in many ways that does have this desire to pay forward. So it's so common for lawyers to, you know, even in their busy schedules, to schedule coffee chats, virtual coffee chats, lunches with other law students, you know, especially in this first years of the profession. So I see a lot of very big sense of wanting to pay back all of the generosity that they were offered and afforded when they were in that position. And especially when you're reaching out to, you know, fellow articling students, first, second, even third-year associates that, you know, very recently went through the recruitment process and still kind of remember the feeling, I really find very welcoming messages from those that are navigating, you know, just a few steps ahead. I think that's so true, and that's been my experience as well. Lawyers are so very generous, and they mean to be generous. And I think if ever a student were to reach out to somebody and they weren't granted time, probably it's a matter of they were just too busy in that moment and to try again. But I really believe, you know, truly, like, 95% of lawyers that I know mean to be generous and would like to you know, give the gift of time to a student or a junior, but it's just a matter of timing. And I really believe that to be true. So, was there ever a point where you felt uncomfortable reaching out to people or putting yourself out there? Did you, you know, I talked about imposter syndrome earlier. Did you ever have imposter syndrome? Yeah, I will be quite honest, you know, in all of these interactions, I feel like there's always people that you automatically match with or people that you really, you know, have a good connection that you somehow automatically feel good about talking to them. And it certainly has happened more than once where I went to talk with someone and they— I don't know if it was their body language or maybe just the way I felt about them, and they didn't mean to make this impression, but they definitely made me feel like I was wasting their time. So in a way, it made me, you know, be better prepared for future engagements. So I would know how to kind of get out of that weird, uncomfortable situation. But it also made me realize That, you know, there's so many personalities, so many kinds of lawyers and people in this profession. And it's really a gift that I can choose who I want to associate with, right? So it's always nice to know that there's people who have different personalities, they have different styles of communication, and sometimes their style is not, you know, the warm, fuzzy, happy smiles. And that's okay. There's not a problem with that. But you can just, you know, know that those exist. this so that when we are out in the profession, you know, really practicing law too, I'm sure that will be the case over and over again. So it's, if anything, I felt, you know, more prepared. I have the heads up now that there's all kinds of personalities and I might not always be welcomed with a hello friend on the other side of the line when I'm, you know, acting on a client file here. I think that was something that came to mind. Yeah. That's a great perspective, Claudio. I think you're turning it very positive that it's a learning opportunity. And that it does open our perspective that there's all kinds of characters in the world and some are going to connect better with and others maybe not so much. And that that's okay. And that we're not everybody's cup of tea all the time and that that's okay. Right. And it may not be us. We might've just, again, caught them at a bad time. And not everybody is so verbally communicative, right? Some people communicate better in other formats. So I appreciate that. And I think, and it's just learning how to get through what you need to get through if it's a, if it's some client file, just get what you get to get done, do what you need to get done, I should say, and, and move on. So, I appreciate that. I was just, I was just going to say, it's very interesting that those experiences happen. And as a matter of fact, I had offered to a few lawyers in the past to record a podcast so that when these very busy times would come around and they would say, you know, I can't talk to students now, there's too much going on, and 20 students flooded my inbox this week, you could, you know, maybe send that podcast link and say, hi, like here I tell my story. If you have any specific questions about my practice or anything that we didn't cover in this episode, you know, ask me specifically that. Don't misunderstand my, you know, lack of time for lack of interest, but this hopefully will help you for the time being. And actually quite a few lawyers took me up on that because they felt really bad about not being able to get back because it was something that they enjoyed doing. So I was very happy that, you know, some people in the profession felt that way. I think that's a brilliant idea. It's good for everyone. I think that's fantastic. I love that. I love that so much. And I want to bring this conversation back to something I see regularly in students and new lawyers, and that is when they come into firms, they're incredibly eager, but often not with a full understanding of how to build those relationships, how to communicate— while we're talking about communicating— how to position themselves well, and even fully understand what is expected of them. And that's the space that I'm interested in, in helping them understand what's expected. I think we can do a better better job of explaining that. From your experience seeing multiple systems across Brazil, the US, and Canada, what do you— are there any themes that have come up for you and what new lawyers need to know that's not taught in law schools? Absolutely. So, I think that one of the big things that I've found over and over again, and that I kind of reduced to a phrase, is that in law, in legal careers specifically, communication matters much more than your credentials. So, you could be, you know, having the bar of New York, Ontario, California, UK all together and still not be a great communicator. And that might not open as many doors for you. And that's not only about, you know, getting a job, but it's actually once you get into the workplace, there's so many things that this big box called communication involve. You know, it has to do with the way you portray yourself, the way you tell your story, the way you reach out to say, hey, I have capacity, can I help with anything? Yeah. But also the way you show up at work. And when you were there in person at 4:00 PM and you see a partner kind of wandering around and you kind of volunteer yourself, you talk over, you know, with them, or you go to get some water and you chat with people around you. So, there's so many ways that communication can be present in the day-to-day work that really can have all these fancy terms to talk about it, right? So, you can talk about mirroring, you can talk about, you know, managing up. There's all this very specific corporate lingo that was developed about how you can do better at work. work, and they're all related to communication. And I just think that, that, you know, hopefully improving that communication can really help you in your career, not only to advance in your career, but really to be, you know, someone who can clearly communicate. It's definitely something that can help you to enjoy your career better as well. You had just mentioned that sometimes as a profession, you can— we can do better in the sense of communicating what others should expect of us, be that clients, be that articling students who just starting. And sometimes we don't do a good job at telling them what's expected of them, but also on instructing them, on giving clear instructions of this is what you need to do, this is how you accomplish that. So I think that communication is really a key thing. And it's also something that it doesn't matter where in the world you are, even though communication styles change a little bit, whether you are in a high context country or in a low context environment, still communication makes a big difference. So I think that it's really one of these very know, transferable skills that regardless of what you work with, you're gonna need