Abby Remore is a member at Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi (CSG Law) in Roseland, New Jersey, where she leads the firm’s trademark and copyright practice group. Her practice focuses on protecting brands and creative works through litigation, enforcement, clearance, counseling, licensing, and prosecution of trademark and copyright applications. She has particular expertise litigating trademark and copyright disputes in federal courts and before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Abby is president-elect of the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association.
WHAT’S COVERED IN THIS EPISODE ABOUT BUILDING CAREER AUTONOMY AS A LAWYER
Saying yes to every opportunity, volunteering for committees, and being the person others can count on helps associates build strong reputations and advance toward partnership. Once lawyers make partner, the job description changes. They’re expected to continue producing excellent work while also developing business, leading teams, and contributing to firm management. Without recalibrating, the habits that earned the promotion can quickly become overwhelming.
The transition requires intentional choices about what work means and how time gets allocated. Business development stops being something that happens when there’s time left over and becomes a core responsibility. Delegation shifts from losing control to creating capacity for higher-value work. Stepping back from committees and saying no becomes necessary instead of optional.
In this episode of The Lawyer’s Edge, Elise talks with Abby Remore, an alumna of the inaugural Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator cohort, about making the partnership transition successfully. They discuss redefining what counts as work, learning when to say no, why business development requires the same intentionality as billable work, and how lawyers can build careers that reflect their own values instead of copying someone else’s blueprint.
2:52 – How Abby ended up in law without planning to be a private practice lawyer
7:11 – The challenge of transitioning from associate to leader and business generator
10:13 – How the job shifts when you make partner and why saying yes stops working
15:36 – What motivated Abby to join the Ignite program
18:01 – The biggest mindset shift: business development isn’t just networking events
21:28 – Why BD and leadership development are about mindset, not just tactics
22:30 – The apprenticeship model is dying: why outside programs matter
25:49 – Staying intentional as an emerging rainmaker and avoiding old habits
28:26 – Changing your job description to include business development
31:30 – The curse of knowledge: advice for lawyers building their own vision of success
Mentioned In Own Your Career: How Intentional Choices Create Autonomy for Lawyers
Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi (CSG Law) | LinkedIn
New Jersey Women Lawyers Association
Get connected with the coaching team: hello@thelawyersedge.com
SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, a 9-month business development program created BY women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers AND supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.
If you are interested in either participating in the program or sponsoring a woman in your firm to enroll, learn more about Ignite and sign up for our registration alerts by visiting www.thelawyersedge.com/ignite.
Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It’s Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer’s Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Building a thriving law practice takes more than technical skill. It takes the courage to grow, lead, and build authentic relationships.
In this episode, I’m going to talk with a lawyer who’s doing exactly that, rising through the ranks of a major law firm, leading its intellectual property practice, and learning how to balance excellence in client work with developing her own leadership and business development capabilities. She shares what is helping her evolve as a rainmaker and leader and why investing in your own professional growth can change your career trajectory.
Before we dive in, today’s episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of women in the profession. Registration is now open for the 2026 Ignite cohort, and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.
I am delighted to welcome my guest today, who I am proud to call a friend, Abby Remore, who is a member at the law firm of Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi in Roseland, New Jersey, also known as CSG Law. She is the practice group leader for the firm’s trademark and copyright group, where her practice is dedicated to helping people protect some of their most valuable assets, their distinctive brands, and their creative works.
She handles a wide range of intellectual property matters in that role, including litigation, enforcement, clearance, counseling, licensing, and prosecution of trademark and copyright applications. She has a particular expertise in litigation of trademark and copyright disputes in federal courts throughout the U.S. before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
When she’s not doing that work, Abby is also the president-elect of the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association and an alumna of the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, the one I just mentioned. She was actually a member of our inaugural class. Abby, it’s always wonderful to speak with you. Welcome to The Lawyer’s Edge.
Abby Remore: So happy to be here, Elise. Thank you for inviting me.
Elise Holtzman: I’m delighted to have you. As you know, I often talk to lawyers who are very, very senior, who are already full-blown leaders, rainmakers, managing partners of law firms, that sort of thing. You are very much a mid-career attorney who is achieving tremendous things in your career.
So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about your experience, what’s going on for you right now, where you’ve been, where you think you’re going, so that people who are in a similar situation can maybe hear your story and be inspired and get some ideas for their own growth and development as a lawyer and a leader.
So let’s start out with the beginning of your law practice, because I remember you telling me that you actually didn’t set out to be a private practice lawyer. You didn’t come from the womb, as I like to say, knowing that you wanted to be an IP lawyer. So tell me a little bit about how you got started, what you thought you wanted to do, and how you wound up where you are now.
Abby Remore: I actually had no interest in going to law school or being a lawyer. I was very interested in high school in science, and my major in undergraduate was kinesiology, which is exercise science. I went to college effectively with the idea that I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon or an athletic trainer or something like that.
I went to the University of Illinois for that. Your freshman year at U of I, when you are a kinesiology major, they make you take a class that talks about all the different careers that you could have in this role. While I was sitting in that room, I realized maybe I don’t see myself so much on the field or in the operating room. Maybe I see myself a little bit more on the business side of things.
I really, really loved sports and everything to do with it, but that class triggered me into thinking a little bit more about the business side of things. I met with my undergrad advisor and I said, “You know what, I think I want to be an agent or something like that on the business side.” My undergrad advisor said, “You have to go to law school for that.”
Well, it turns out you don’t actually have to go to law school to do that job, but here I am. Unlike me now, I didn’t really do that much digging to find out whether or not what he said was right. I’m glad he didn’t.
So when I went to look at law schools, I had no intention that I was going to be a private practice lawyer. I didn’t want to be a judge. I never wanted to see the inside of a courtroom. I looked very specifically for schools that had sports and entertainment law concentrations or specific courses or perhaps the opportunity for internships.
I wound up at Seton Hall in Newark, New Jersey, Seton Hall Law School. I’d never set foot in New Jersey in my entire life. Their sports law and sports entertainment law program at the time was housed within intellectual property. So I did get to take all of those intellectual property classes.
I worked for a little while in the summers of law school, then for a year or two outside of law school, actually for a very small sports agency. Turns out I really didn’t like it very much. I think you’re probably going to laugh at what I’m about to say, but I really hated the sales aspect of it.
I wasn’t representing LeBron James. I was making a million phone calls every week, hoping that somebody might call me back and offer my client a free pair of socks or a very small contract, that kind of thing. What I noticed when I was working in that role was that I really, really enjoyed the legal work that happened to come across my desk, which was not as often, but I loved negotiating contracts. I found the licensing agreements to be really interesting.
When I decided that it was time for me to make a move, I wanted to focus on somewhere where I could practice IP law. At this point, I did not have a traditional legal background. I did not summer anywhere. I didn’t clerk anywhere. I didn’t have any firm experience. So I was not the most attractive hire in the entire world when I looked into going into private practice.
I wound up at a very small boutique law firm that was an IP firm, but as most small firms are, they also take whatever comes in the door. I spent about three and a half years there cutting my teeth, learning how to be a lawyer, kind of teaching myself, in some cases, how to be a lawyer.
When you’re at a tiny firm like that, you don’t have the resources that a bigger firm has. Then I took the opportunity to look for a firm where I could do IP law, particularly soft IP, trademark and copyright work, full time. That’s when I wound up at the firm that I am at now, where I’ve been for over 11 years.
I started as a junior to mid-level associate and was promoted to counsel and then ultimately to member about five years ago.
Elise Holtzman: So here you are now, somebody who didn’t even plan to be in a private practice law firm, and you are running a practice group. For you, once you were in the door of a private practice law firm, what do you think has been the most challenging part of making the transition from somebody who was brand new and learning this world to someone who now is a leader and a business generator?
Abby Remore: I would not say that I have a handle on it. I’m still learning every day. The politics of working at a big company, and I don’t know if it’s just a law firm, and I don’t think it is, but it was something that was completely foreign to me.
I am one of those people that just goes in and wants to do good work and wants to help people as best I can. So I volunteered for everything. I offered to help. If I saw inefficiencies, I did my best to try to solve those problems, to the extent that people wanted to listen to me when I was an associate or a counsel.
Frankly, even when I joined the firm, I remember saying, “I never want to litigate ever again. I hate this.” I found people at my firm that I liked to work with. I found cases that I thought were interesting. I found matters that I thought were interesting.
Because I had to take everything that came in the door at my prior job, I had more litigation experience, even if it was outside of my substantive area of expertise, than other people did. So when someone was going out on parental leave, I took the opportunity to take on some of her IP litigation cases and got to work with some of the leaders in the firm and be taught how they run their cases and learn from them.
Also, I’m a little bit of a sponge. I’m very curious about the inner workings of really anything, but particularly law firms and businesses. “How do the decisions get made?” “How does it run?” “Why are we making these decisions?”
And so I happened to be lucky enough to be working with some people that were involved in those types of processes that were only too happy that somebody cared enough to ask the questions. That’s how it came about. It was never, “I want to be a partner, and I want to run this firm, and I want to do X, Y, and Z.” It was, “I’m just curious,” from my coworker who I like a lot, why this decision was made or how they go about making these decisions or what’s important.
When I learned about it, I wanted to keep learning more and eventually start to become the person that’s in the room helping to make those decisions.
Elise Holtzman: You and I have talked about this before in some ways, this idea that you were not really gunning for any particular position, but that you like to help people. You always said yes. You were intellectually curious, all the things that you just shared. It sounds like those are the things, in many ways, that propelled you into partnership and into leadership.
Then there’s a shift. You and I talked about that. So how have things shifted for you now that you’ve been in a role of partner and leader for a while and you are somebody who is working on growing your business? How have those things evolved? Are you still saying yes to everything? Are you still always intellectually curious? Because the job description is different.
So what does that evolution look like for you? And it sounds like, because you’ve said this, you don’t have it all figured out. By the way, I don’t think any of us do. But you’re in it right now. You are mid-career. You’re in it right now. So what are some of the things that have changed for you, whether naturally or intentionally?
Abby Remore: As you’ll recall from my experience in the Ignite program, saying yes to everything is one of my biggest weaknesses. It is a battle that I have to fight all the time with myself. I am a people pleaser at my core, but to a fault in some degree.
Once you become not just somebody that is expected to sit at your desk and put out substantive work, but someone who is supposed to be out there developing their own book of business and training people that come after them, you just don’t have time to say yes to everything. Really, I was teetering on the edge of burnout from that kind of transition.
So I had some great mentors in my firm that I spoke to when I said, “Look, I want to take this next step. I am ready to become a partner and be a little more involved in firm management.” I remember taking the member, and my still colleague who taught me how to litigate, out to lunch and having a conversation with him.
He said, “These next five to 10 years are going to be the most difficult, busiest years of your professional career because you are going to be in a position where you are still expected to be cranking out that substantive work and doing a lot of that substantive work.” When you’re a junior partner or a young member, you’re not just passing off work and going out there shaking hands and developing business, but you still want to be out there shaking hands and developing business and making sure that the leadership of the firm knows that you care about the firm and that you care about its success in addition to your own personal success. It’s just really hard.
What he didn’t say to me was, “You can say no to things.” I don’t know that any manager is going to tell their employee that they need to do that sometimes.
But one thing that you said to us during the Ignite program—and I have to imagine that you have said it to every cohort that came after me—and you actually said it when I sat on a panel that you were moderating before I joined Ignite, where it was talking about different stages of partnership, the two more senior female partners on that panel both pulled me aside after and were like, “You have to start to change your priorities here.
It cannot just be about everyone else and what they want from you because if people know they’ve got someone that’s going to do good work and that they’re going to do what they can to make the firm succeed, they’re just going to keep coming to you. If you can never say no to people, you’re going to run out of time.”
One of those women that sat on that panel, who I believe you’ve already spoken with, Randi, is the one that pulled me aside and said, “You’ve got to look into Elise’s program. You really need to.” Kirsten Branigan said the same thing to me, who I know you interviewed very recently.
What you said was, “What got you here is not going to get you there,” right? As soon as that changes for you, your priorities have to change. Because not only was I saying yes to the same things, you know, there’s a free ticket to XYZ event and you might get a chance to sit next to XYZ partner, but also now you’re on these committees involving management of the firm.
Also, since you’re a partner, the other partner in the group can funnel some of that administrative stuff down to you that he couldn’t before. There is just not enough time in the day.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I’m glad you’re raising this. I think it’s important to note, particularly for junior to mid-level partners, that this is something that almost every partner finally starts to get a handle on, whether they navigate it well or not.
I think part of that is because lawyers are just trained. We’re service people, right? And so we’re trained to say yes. We’re trained to say, “How high can I jump, and how far can I go, and how can I be helpful to you?” And we get good vibes out of that, right? We get paid for one thing, but we get good vibes out of it. People appreciate us, and people think we’re fabulous.
So then we do it over and over and over again until what used to be a strength for us starts to become a weakness.
As you know, I also think that because of the ways in which women are socialized, it’s challenging enough as it is for lawyers generally to do it. Then I think that there’s another level of challenge that comes along because we’re women and we have been socialized to be helpers and to say yes to everybody and to put ourselves last and all of that kind of thing.
Again, those can be fantastic qualities, particularly in young people who are trying to make their way, but there is that mindset shift.
So what initially motivated you to participate in Ignite? You had a couple of people tell you they thought this was a good idea, but what made you decide that it was a good idea for you?
Abby Remore: It was an inherent sense of frustration at what felt like not as many returns for as hard as I was working on business development, on making sure that I was valuable to the firm and that everybody knew I was valuable to the firm.
But I also think my inherent curiosity and the things that I learned on that panel that I sat on about, yeah, it’s really great if people share origination with you for their own clients. But also, if you ever wind up in a position where you are unhappy and want to make a move and you don’t have your own client, you don’t really have that much power to make a move. If you want to say, “I want to focus on something else,” that becomes really difficult when you don’t have your own clients.
I really wanted to start to build a sense of agency for myself, where I could try to build a life and a career that was mine, and that I could do what I wanted with it.
That’s not to say by any stretch of the imagination that I was unhappy at my firm or anything like that. I’m still here. I’m still really happy where I am. But I was also paying attention to what was going on with people that had been around a little longer than me, right?
“Who are the people that get the seats at the table when the decisions are being made?” It is not always the people that just say yes to everybody else’s stuff. Very often, it is the people that have big books of business.
I wanted to build that kind of agency for myself and something, candidly, that felt like my own and that I could be proud of, whether that’s a balance or a book of business or a little bit of a book.
Elise Holtzman: Looking back, because you were in the first cohort, which was 2023, and we’re now going into 2026, so there are three cohorts. The 2025, as we’re speaking here today, is about to graduate, if you will. Looking back, what was the biggest shift for you in terms of mindset or behavior that came out of that experience for you?
Abby Remore: The realization that business development is not just about shaking hands and going out to lunch and having follow-up emails and going to networking events and handing out a million business cards.
Nobody teaches you when you’re in law school or when you’re a baby attorney what business development looks like. It also wasn’t something that I recognized could be done in that many different ways.
I was really struggling, without necessarily realizing I was struggling, with how do I possibly do all of this? And to have you say to me, “You can’t,” right?
You have to shift your mindset in making sure that the people that are working for you, you trust to be able to delegate to. Freeing up time in your professional and personal life to really dedicate to it.
I often, to your face and behind your back, jokingly but not that jokingly, refer to you as my business therapist. I learned so many lessons about, “Why am I choosing to do X, Y, and Z?” And maybe I need to be a little—what is it in me that is making me want to say yes to this decision and not necessarily think about where it fits in the long term?
And I realized I was just saying yes to everything to say yes to everything and to be agreeable. It is still incredibly difficult to say, “Thank you so much for thinking of me for this opportunity, but I don’t have the time for it right now.”
I was in a situation where I had really no free time. I was struggling to get the substantive work done. As you’ve said, and your guests on this podcast have said a million times, if you’re not keeping your existing clients happy, it doesn’t matter how many new clients you have coming in the door.
I didn’t want to get to a point where I was not servicing my existing clients or my partner’s existing clients to the best of my ability. I’m still a people pleaser, right?
So I stepped aside during my Ignite program. Shortly after, I had conversations with the managing member of my firm, with one of the name members in the firm, and said, “Look, I am really overextended. I want you to know that this is something I’m worried about. I want to have a conversation with you about what is the most valuable to the firm, but how do I fit it into what’s valuable for me?”
And that made it more comfortable for me to be able to say, “Thank you so much for this opportunity, but I’m not available right now,” or, “I don’t have the time for this thing.”
I still feel like, hey, I let the people know what’s going on. And by the way, they were all incredibly receptive and wonderful about it.
But I think I went, when I was in the Ignite program, from being on like six or eight committees to being on four and doing a lot better at each of them. You helped me recognize in myself that I’m a person that cannot sit in a committee meeting with 15 other people and hope someone else is going to step up and offer to take notes or take that second step or follow up on things. I just became the person that was doing all of it. You can’t be everything to everyone at all times.
Elise Holtzman: To me, this is a really good example of how things like business development and leadership development, it’s not just about tactics, right? It’s not just about go to lunch with this person or write this article or be on this panel. A lot of it is about your mindset.
A lot of it is about identifying what it is that you want to do and what are the steps to get there, then identifying some of the things you are doing that are so fabulous and at the same time are able to create an obstacle for you.
I think in your case, that was what was going on. It was like everybody, anybody I’ve ever met, and you and I are both involved in the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association, so we cross paths quite a bit and we know a lot of people in common. It’s always been, “Abby Remore is amazing, and she’s doing all of these things.”
That is such a wonderful thing to be doing. It’s such an asset. Yet for you, and for many people, I think, who are really earnest and caring and care about their organizations, it can really become an obstacle as well.
I recently read an article that came into my email box written by Marcie Schunk of the Tilt Institute and a co-author that talks about this idea that apprenticeship, the apprenticeship model in law firms, is dying. I’m curious as to what you think about that, because as you pointed out, you were at the knee of other more senior lawyers, as we all have been.
Yet you made this decision to seek an outside program where you could be more formally trained on certain things. So how do you think outside programs, whether it’s the Ignite program or any other program where it’s not just apprenticeship, how do you think programs like that can support lawyers? And not just women, maybe especially women, but men as well, who are looking to grow their visibility or their confidence or the kinds of skills that they need in order to succeed?
Abby Remore: I think the most important part, in hindsight to me, was the ability to be truly candid and ask questions that you may not be comfortable asking of someone who might be making a decision about whether you’re getting promoted or what you’re getting paid at the end of the year. That kind of freedom is invaluable.
Whether or not you’re at a firm, and I’m very much at a firm where it’s kind of open door and I can ask questions if I want to ask questions, that’s all well and good. But there’s still going to be that hesitation in the back of your mind, even if you’re not at a place where that’s not a question you can ask.
I think everyone’s experience is a little bit different at their own firm. Every firm is structured a little bit differently. Even if you’re in-house, it can be structured a little bit differently. We also all have our own distinct personalities and distinct challenges.
So what I loved about the Ignite program, which was different from other panels or one-on-one sessions with coaches that I had, was I was growing with this group of women together. We were learning about each other’s different personalities, but also sharing our struggles and our triumphs together and learning from each other.
You just don’t really always have the time to do that if you’re out to lunch with a colleague or you’re at happy hour or whatever, because you’ve got to go back to the billable hour, right? At the end of the day, you’re both employees of the same firm.
I think the other part that helped me, and it is similar, I used to say this about joining a gym or paying for a yoga class, right? This is something that the firm has graciously agreed to spend money for me to attend. I am going to make the most of it.
I have committed to this. I thought about it in advance. I’m going to be at every single session and every single check-in call, and I’m going to make the most out of it. Really, that dedication to this is that separate external mindset, right? I need this commitment externally. Money has been spent on it. I’m going to be there, and I’m going to get everything I possibly can out of it.
Elise Holtzman: With a few years since the program under your belt, and again, being in mid-career, being in the prime of being able to figure out what you want to do and how to be intentional in your leadership role, in your role as an emerging rainmaker, what are some of the things that you’re doing to, let’s say, stretch yourself a little bit or make sure that you are staying intentional about these things? Because it can be easy to fall back into habits that don’t serve you well.
Abby Remore: Absolutely. This doesn’t sound like stretching myself, but I still think that the most important thing that I’ve learned and that I need to keep working on, and I get better at every day, is delegating better and looking for efficiencies so that you can have that time to build your book of business and be present for your family and be present for clients when they have crazy stuff going on.
And not overcommit yourself in a way that you are just set up to let someone down eventually, right? And being really intentional about rethinking how you think about work.
For example, I never thought of business development as part of work. I was only working if I was billing. I really needed to shift my mindset to when I’m going to an event, or I am helping to organize something for the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association, or I am out to lunch with someone that I’m building a relationship with, that’s still work.
To value that just as equally as the billable hour makes you feel less guilty about it and really allows you to fit it into your day-to-day priorities or your week-to-week priorities. This is a part of my job.
That’s not a thing that I thought about when I was a junior or just promoted partner. I just had a different title and I still needed to be billing hours. Then before you know it, a year went by and I haven’t done anything for business development.
Elise Holtzman: I love hearing you say that because obviously I’m a broken record when it comes to you. You’ve heard me say many times that lawyers are typically very reliable. They’re very responsible. They’re very productive. You can count on them.
So when we say, “Hey, my job is to be a lawyer and bill hours,” we do that in spades. We knock ourselves out to do it. What I’ve always encouraged everyone whether in coaching or through the Ignite program, to do is to actually change your job description.
That’s what it sounds like you’ve done. You’ve said, “No, no, I’m not just in the business of billing hours. I’m also in the business of deepening these relationships and developing new relationships and raising my profile in the legal and business communities and delivering value to them in the form of panel discussions or articles or whatever it may be.”
Also, let’s not forget that you’re running a practice group, and there’s work involved with that. So I think that when lawyers can make that mindset shift, it makes a big difference for them. Because to your point, then you don’t feel guilty.
It’s not like, “Oh, I’m not billing an hour.” I mean, yes, we still have to bill the hours, obviously. But you can say, “I’m delivering value to my firm in another way,” and also at the same time being able to create value in my own life.
Abby Remore: Absolutely. I think what is important to remember, for me at least, is some of the things I learned in Ignite and the things I’m talking about now, once I became aware of those concepts, I started to look at my colleagues and the leaders in my firm.
I paid attention to what they’re doing and what did their lives look like. What did their work lives look like? “Are they chained to their desk, billing hours all the time? Or are they making sure that their clients are cared for in a host of different ways?”
Does that mean I’m looking for associates to be taking good care of them and being in a position where they can run with projects? And I trust them to do that so that I can focus on the big picture.
If I’m worried about formatting a brief so it looks pretty the way I want it to look, I might not be focusing on the big picture of the argument. I might not be focusing on what the client’s other business needs might be. I might not be focusing on how I can benefit my colleagues and my associates in my group by bringing in more business.
I am an externally focused person. Again, not my favorite quality in myself, but here I am. I want my colleagues to succeed. I want the people that work in my practice group to succeed.
Part of that is me making sure that they have enough work to do. Yes, it’s great that I have my own book of business, but I also want to have them be able to learn and get some interesting clients and work with new members.
I’ve learned a lot from working with different partners when I was an associate and learning their different styles and taking what I liked from this person and what I liked from that person and meshing it into myself.
There’s a lot that I get out of seeing people that are where I was several years ago and hoping that I can make their experience a good one.
Elise Holtzman: So that’s a great segue into the next and last question that I have for you. So I’m going to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show, Abby. There’s a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. Now that you are in a position where for several years you’ve been working intentionally at growing into your leadership roles and into your role as an emerging rainmaker, “what’s a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for other lawyers who want to build their own vision of success to hear?”
Abby Remore: You get to decide what your life looks like, and you get to have control over it to a great degree, even when you’re an associate, even when you’re a junior partner. Be intentional with those decisions. You only get one life.
Just because a bigwig rainmaker at your firm lives their professional and personal life in a certain way doesn’t mean that you have to. I loved that you talked about being intentional throughout this process. Throughout the Ignite program and in the years since, I have really become quite intentional about what I want my life to look like.
If that doesn’t mean that I want to be, and for me it doesn’t mean that I want to be, out shaking people’s hands and at dinner and hobnobbing six nights a week. Because I need time to decompress, and I want to spend time with my family, and I want to have a life that is meaningful to me in a whole host of different ways.
I just was looking at people that were senior to me and saying, "Well, this is the way I have to do it, being really resistant to doing it, like it wasn’t a life I wanted." Saying no to things on a personal level or making life decisions that involve me making certain aspects of my personal life a little bit easier, or delegating more things at work, or saying, "I would love to be involved in this organization, but right now I’m in a really busy leadership role with the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association, and I just don’t have time to do the job that I would want to do," and still remain sane, that’s what I would say. You get to decide what your life looks like.
If you don’t want your life to look like the life that is identical to the senior partner that trained you, that’s okay. Build out a space. You got to pay your dues a little bit. I worked really hard to get to where I am.
As you know, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my personal life right now. I’m so grateful that I have worked really hard and that I have built that trust in my firm where I say, "I need to take a step back and deal with something that’s going on with a family member or what have you," and they know I’m going to come back and I’m going to do a good job. My clients know that I’m going to go back and I’m going to do a good job when I’m available. That means the world. I don’t think five years ago I would have been able to take that step back and say, "Something’s got to give here."
Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I’m hearing three things. One is, I think, giving yourself permission to do it your way. The second thing I’m hearing is being intentional about building your career out and not just expecting it to happen, right?
There are different ways of talking about that. There’s an author named Carol Frohlinger who wrote a book called Her Place at the Table. She mentions it in her book, although I don’t know that it came from her, but it’s this idea of tiara syndrome, right? “I’m going to work really hard and someone’s going to place the tiara on my head.”
So it’s about being intentional. Then as part of that, yes, developing that trust level with people so that you’re there for them. Then when things happen, they can be there for you as well. They know that they can rely on you, even if you need to take a step back for a little while.
So all such good advice. I love hearing the ways in which you’ve grown intentionally over the last few years. So Abby, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of this with me today and our listeners.
Abby Remore: Thank you so much for having me. Maybe in a few years, I can come back and tell you how to be the biggest rainmaker that CSG Law has ever seen, right?
Elise Holtzman: I hope that’s going to happen. All right, Abby.
Abby Remore: But what I’d love to do is come back and say, "I’m the happiest Abby that CSG Law has ever seen."
Elise Holtzman: That’s what we want to have happen for sure.
I’m also going to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We’ll see you next time.




