Leaving Biglaw for a "Portfolio" Career

Katya Valasek:

We're joined today by Cece Xie: lawyer, author, digital creator, adjunct professor, and maybe more that I don't know about. Your career coach calls this a portfolio career. I think this portfolio concept will resonate with a lot of people imagining their own career path and wondering whether they could or should do more than one thing. I led the list with lawyer, but is that where you start when describing what you do today?

Cece Xie:

Usually not, unless I'm speaking with an audience that really would resonate with being called a lawyer first. Lawyer is one of those job titles that carries some idea for a lot of people, a lot of meaning outside of just what the job is. Sometimes I don't like to start with that just because I think it can color and dilute the perception of what I do do. I'm still trying to get away from this idea of being a one-dimensional person who's very, very good at one thing, which was just lawyering in the past.

Katya Valasek:

So, how do you talk about your job?

Cece Xie:

Nowadays, I start with writer because even behind the law, that was what really drew me to being a lawyer. It's a lot of writing. It's a lot of thinking. The writing part of legal practice was what really got me out of bed in the morning, what really gave me life when I was doing it. So I think it's more like I am a writer at heart. Now I try to find various ways to write. And sometimes it's through being a lawyer. Sometimes it's through writing a book. Sometimes it's through writing scripts for a podcast episode.

Katya Valasek:

I know you're a teacher too. Do you feel like that connects to that love of writing by the work you get to do with your students and the writing that they do?

Cece Xie:

Absolutely. I think writing is just another way of communicating in a more perpetual form that lasts the test of time. What really drew me to teaching was, again, being able to distill everything I do know and communicate it to others. It's what I love about creating digital content. It's what I love, really, even about being a lawyer is my favorite clients are the ones who aren't actually lawyers, and they appreciate that I am able to take these legal concepts and translate it into something that they can understand, someone with no legal background.

Katya Valasek:

With this portfolio, how many hours a week are you really working?

Cece Xie:

Being any sort of creative, it's that weird thing where you can only work maybe three to four hours a day in terms of creative work, but you're always thinking about it. There's this wonderful interview with Mike White who created The White Lotus. He's staring at a wall and he's just like, “yeah, sometimes people think that I'm not working, but I'm staring at a wall and I am working.” So it's hard to quantify in the same way that in big law you had billable hours, but I would say I probably spend more time thinking about work, but probably less time at my actual computer.

Katya Valasek:

Behind the scenes stuff is really what makes the final product of anything you're creating, everything you're writing, what everyone sees when they read your book, when they view your content, when you present to them what you've learned about their case.

We're going to go back and we're going to think back to when you were just starting to think about taking that step of going to law school. Is having this type of portfolio career what you saw for your future when you graduated law school?

Cece Xie:

When I graduated law school, not really because I'd really drunk the Kool-Aid in terms of being told that there was a right way to have a career. At many schools, there is a constant push to enter big law firms upon you. Career Services has a vested interest in getting you to interview for Biglaw. The Biglaw firms obviously have a vested interest in getting you to interview as well. It became quite clear to me that there was one path that I was supposed to embark on. At that time in life, I was pretty happy to just go on the blueprint path. You think to yourself, “oh, well, if there's a yellow brick road that everyone's telling me to follow, shouldn't I follow it? This yellow brick road cannot be wrong.”

Katya Valasek:

Do you feel like you started on that yellow brick road all the way back in undergrad?

Cece Xie:

I don't think I started on the yellow brick road necessarily. I had a lot of aspirations going into college that didn't really necessarily align with a more traditional career. When I was thinking about what to do after law school, I even considered things like applying for nanny positions or becoming a go-go dancer in Ibiza. There were just a lot of things I wanted to experience and do in life. But the same time, my parents were immigrants, so they had a very set idea of what was an acceptable career, what it meant for me to be acceptable to them. And because they did pay for part of my college, I felt indebted to them to major in what they wanted me to major in and to, kind of, pursue the types of careers that they thought were acceptable and would garner the predictable salary that would, I think in their eyes, make me a success in America.

Katya Valasek:

I've gone back and forth in my head about this next question because I was going to ask, was it difficult for you to diverge from what was expected of you? But I will admit, I was thrown when you mentioned go-go dancing because that implies that you have this ability to look beyond what is being presented as a logical next step and really explore the world around you. But as you said, you drank the Kool-Aid in law school. So, what was it that eventually sort of shook you loose and helped you take that first step to diverge from the path?

Cece Xie:

Really, it was the pandemic. I feel like the pandemic caused a lot of people to look at their lives again and reconsider their lives. And I actually just met up with a former colleague, and we both talked about how absent the pandemic, we probably would have both been really happy to stay at the firm, become Of Counsel, potentially Partner, and just live that life. But the pandemic really gave me a lot of time stuck in a room by myself. I got to a point where I was so depressed, I just knew that I had to do something else in my life. I had to channel this energy that I had in me that wasn't being fulfilled in that moment. That's when I uploaded my first TikTok, and that did change the trajectory of my life.

It'd been so long since I'd been able to even do something that was a little bit non-traditional that when I did manage to post on social media, which I know people listening might be like, oh, that's not controversial at all. But for Biglaw lawyers especially, posting on social media is actually quite controversial. And there are firms that now make associates sign forms and agreements essentially saying that they can post on social media, but it can't be related to the law, and it can't be about their life as a lawyer, or you'll just get a talking to. And that was the first of many things that led to the floodgate then of me realizing that, all along, I had wanted to do something that was a little bit more bespoke to who I was.

Katya Valasek:

Before we explore what happened after you opened those floodgates, I want to talk about what your job experiences were like out of law school. As you've said, these firms all had shiny names. On this show, we often talk about Biglaw as if it's a monolith, but there are differences within the large firms that mean something to some people. What drew you in?

Cece Xie:

I think part of it was just the salary for junior associates. There is no employer that would pay that much for a brand new spanking lawyer, and that's really appealing, especially for someone who did have student loans and for someone who was really trying to escape the financial trauma of childhood and parents who placed a lot of importance on money, but also used money as a means of control. Financial independence was a big thing for me.

The second part was just it was really what everyone at school told you to do. It was either that or apply for a clerkship, but there were only a few things that were seen as appropriate things to do from Harvard Law School. Looking back on it, the sad thing is if you had wanted to do something else like family law or traffic law or personal injury, the school would not have helped you do that.

I think they had a very particular vision of lawyering, and they very much pushed their students to enter that particular vision. So as between public interest fellowship, clerking, and Biglaw, Biglaw had the highest salary, so it made sense for me to go that route. And it's also the easiest. Most people funnel into big law, and it's considered easier to do than clerking or getting the public interest fellowship.

Katya Valasek:

Did that funneling happen with your summer experiences as well?

Cece Xie:

Less so for 1L because for 1L summer, they actually have this thing called a summer public interest fund, SPIF. They give you a stipend to offset any expenses you might have to do something in public interest. A lot of 1Ls take advantage of that because you might be interested in government work or you just want something that's more public-facing, and then you come back from your 1L summer to interview then for Biglaw.

Katya Valasek:

What did you do your first summer?

Cece Xie:

I was an intern at the DOJ.

Katya Valasek:

Then your second summer, you jumped into that Biglaw funnel?

Cece Xie:

Yep. I was a summer associate at a Biglaw firm.

Katya Valasek:

And is that where you started?

Cece Xie:

I went back. I thought the summer was really a lot of fun. Different firms have different attitudes towards summers, but a lot of firms, and I mean a lot of firms, they treat their summers basically like glorified country club members where you just do a lot of socializing, you do a lot of fun events. You are supposed to do some work, but the work is a little bit secondary to the social element of the summer program.

Katya Valasek:

When you started as a new, fresh associate out of law school, was there a shock as you moved away from that country club feel to the real work?

Cece Xie:

It wasn't so much the work that was a shock. I think I was prepared to work. I mean, even during the summer, you hear the associates talk about how much they work, and you talk to them about how much they work. I think the thing that was more of a shock is the partners go from trying to woo you and give you all these promises about how they'll help you and mentor your career, introduce you to so-and-so. And then once you get there, they're trying to recruit the next summer class and you're already there. So there is a little bit less assuring of you throughout the systems of the law firm when in fact, probably at that moment and for the full-time associates, that is when you need the partners to help you navigate the systems the most and not when you're a summer associate and just trying to figure out what practice group do I even want to join.

Katya Valasek: So how long did you remain at the firm after you started?

Cece Xie:

This first firm I remained for two years, and then I lateraled and went to another firm for four years.

Katya Valasek:

There is a lot of lore around Biglaw when you're in law school. You've alluded to this. Was Biglaw what you expected?

Cece Xie:

Part of me is like, yeah, it kind of was what I expected. Everyone talked about how much you had to work. In many ways, I actually thought it was better than what the lore was because the lore made it sound like you had no agency at all, that you would just be chained to your desk.

People had all these horror stories about missing weddings, missing funerals, and things like that. And while some of those things certainly did happen, or you may have gotten snide comments about having gone to a wedding or not being available during a funeral, you had a little bit more agency, I think, to push back on things. And if you were savvy enough about not so much managing work, but managing the personalities around you, I actually felt like I had a really good time in terms of taking all my vacations, learning a lot, and really figuring out who in the firm would actually be my protectors and who had the power to protect me.

And I think that's something that's hard to suss out in the summer is that, there are some people who want to protect you who just can't protect you. And there are some people who can protect you and have the power to do so, but won't. So finding that sweet spot is kind of the name of the game when you're a junior associate.

Katya Valasek:

That can be really stressful. What was it that pushed you after two years to lateral to a different firm?

Cece Xie:

I think this was the moment when I really saw that sometimes the people that want to protect you may not necessarily have the power within the firm to do so. Going into the firm, I always knew I had an interest in law and technology, so I really wanted to do intellectual property stuff, maybe some privacy. I really wanted to do things that focused on the forefront of law and technology, what is really more of a wild, wild west legally. I think that's what interests me about the law is that there are areas, I think right now it's generative AI, that are just so unsettled that it's fun to be a young lawyer in because it's not like the seasoned partners can say, “oh, I have 20 years' experience in this.” You're much more of a collaborator in the lawyering of all these situations.

So that's what really drew me to becoming a lawyer and law school in the first place and to this firm where I was told that if I just wanted to do intellectual property stuff, I could do as much as I could. However, if you do really well at a firm, if you get good reviews, I learned that there ends up being a market for good associates. So, the partners will then start trying to staff the good associates with good reviews on their cases. And I ended up getting staffed on a massive class action securities litigation.

And when I tell you that a class action securities litigation is not very much like intellectual property, that was less fun, and the work was fine. The team was wonderful, but I just didn't want to be a securities litigator. There was nothing that made me interested about litigating securities class actions.

So, I tried to get out of it. I tried to ask the partners I did want to work with if they could get me out of this case. I tried to backchannel my way around and kind of say, “it's not that I don't want to be here. I want to be here, and I want to do this amount of work. I just don't want to do it on this case.”

After enough backchanneling and politicking, it became clear to me that it didn't really matter for the firm at large. They didn't really care what I wanted. They wanted me to be on this major case. And I got a call from the staffing partner essentially telling me that. He asked me what my time allocation was like. And I said it was 60% on this case and then the rest of my time on the other things I wanted to do. And he said, "I see no problem with this allocation. Maybe if you get to 90% then we can talk.”

So I just had this moment where I saw that if I wanted to do intellectual property work or technology work, I would have to do at least 60% of my work on something I didn't want to do that would lead to a future probably just becoming an in-house counsel at a bank. And it just didn't make sense to me. It was like one of those moments again, where I was like, well, I think I'm a pretty rational person and this does not lead to the path that I want in life.

So that's when I started looking around and applying to lateral positions, contacting recruiters, because there just wasn't really a path forward for me at this firm to even do the type of work that I wanted to do, at least no more than like 30% of my time.

Katya Valasek:

As you were looking for these other opportunities, what were you doing to ensure that this move would give you the ability to do the work that really interested you?

Cece Xie:

The nice thing about lateraling is that you usually lateral into a particular group. So, you don't really go in as just as a general litigation associate or general corporate associate the same way that you kind of do as a summer. So, I just told the recruiters, I am only interested in intellectual property groups or privacy groups, and that's it. And if they say something else, then I'm not applying.

Katya Valasek:

So you started at the second firm. What kind of work were you able to do there?

Cece Xie:

At this firm, it was a privacy group and then I just did 100% privacy work mostly. There was some kind of investigation stuff for data breaches, which was vaguely litigation-oriented, but it was a good mix I think of transactional work, compliance work, and litigation-oriented work all around privacy. So it was much more subject matter-oriented, which is why I wanted to get to law school in the first place. I just wanted this one subject matter.

Katya Valasek:

So you had two years of experience at your first firm. Were you surprised by anything in the culture when you lateraled to the new firm?

Cece Xie:

I was. I think especially in law school, Career Services told me this, that there was not really a functional difference between many of the firms. And back when I was trying to choose between firms, the career services advisor essentially told me to go for the highest ranked one.

At that time, I thought maybe there was a reason to do that. In retrospect, it was probably just so that their numbers for the higher ranked firms can be higher in the same way that colleges love it when their employment stats or their graduate school stats are these like shiny names again. So I went into my second firm expecting it to be very similar to the first, but it was much more relaxed. Work from home was much more common.

I think the biggest anecdote of difference I'll tell you is at my first firm when I was talking to female partners about when they decided to have kids because it was kind of a concern. It's like how do you balance a career and kids, especially a career in Biglaw? And at the first firm, a partner told me she waited to have kids until she was a ninth year and reasonably assured that she would be making partner. And at my second firm, when I mentioned this, the partner I worked with said, "Why would you do that? That's crazy. Why would you arrange your work around your life? You don't know how long it'll take you to get pregnant. There are so many unknowns in this. You should just do it when you want to do it.”

And that was just really refreshing because I'd never heard a female partner have that attitude towards work and life. I feel like a lot of the people I talked to very much had a work first attitude, and then life falls around it. Whereas at my second firm, there was more of a sense that, yes, work is important, but it shouldn't really interfere with your life.

Katya Valasek:

So you've already alluded to this a bit, but it sounds like things are going great. You're doing the work you love. You're happy with the firm culture. So the pandemic hits, you post that first TikTok. What was it ultimately that persuaded you that it was time to leave and try something else?

Cece Xie:

Part of it was just getting a lot more opportunities in conjunction with content creation. Through it I made other friends. One of them was a Biglaw partner who actually left her firm to become a content creator. And when I was thinking about leaving, I actually had a conversation with her and was like, these are the reasons that I want to potentially stay and make partner. And I had this whole list of cultural changes I wanted to affect. I wanted to change so many things about the associate experience, give associates the ability to take sabbaticals so that you could take a step back from the treadmill and think about your life. And all the partners, including the partners at my then-firm, kind of laughed at me. They were like, “oh no, you can't do that. Even I can't do that and I'm pretty high up here in the food chain.” So, I think realizing that whatever I was hoping to find at the end of the rainbow was not going to be there impacted my disillusionment, perhaps, with the path, unless it was what day-to-day I really, really loved doing for work. And for work, it was fine. But I was only really doing it because I had all these highfalutin aspirations for cultural changes and things I could do later on to help people. And it didn't seem like that was going to happen.

And at the same time, I had been introduced to a literary agent who said, “all right, I like you. I like your ideas. The next step is to write a book proposal.” However, because I was so busy billing hours at the firm, each month I would send him an email essentially saying, “I'm so sorry. I did not get a chance to write this proposal.” After enough months of that, I realized it was kind of silly to put off this thing I had always wanted to do and thought about doing.

And back in college, I wanted to actually major in English and maybe do something with writing. I've always just liked to write. But back then in college, my parents were just like, English is for people who want to be poor forever. So I was like, okay, well, I have this opportunity right now to write something potentially. And I keep on putting it off because of my job.

By this time, I'm also a sixth year. So it's about the time where if I were to try and go for partner, I should start really thinking about it, lining up my support within the firm. I should start business development, really making the case. So it just felt like a natural inflection point to figure out, do I want to go for it? Or do I want to take a step back and try to pursue this kind of crazy thing that might mean I'm poor, but at least I'm kind of given the chance to do it. And I already knew that it was a rarity to be able to pitch a book. That was a blessing. So I was like, okay, I've done the straight and narrow for so long. Maybe this year, I will just take a step back and try this like crazy route that has no predictable return.

Katya Valasek:

When you were connected with a literary agent, were you actively pursuing trying to make that connection? Or was it one of those happy circumstances that give you an opportunity that you either grab it or you don't?

Cece Xie:

It wasn't intentional. And it wasn't even along the yellow brick road. It was more like along the tangent of a path I found that diverged from the yellow brick road. And then I went down it long enough and then I looked around and I was like, oh, look, like a beautiful clearing. So again, through the friends I made through content creation, one of them was like, “oh, I have a literary agent and I feel like he would like to meet you. So why don't you meet him?” And that was how I got connected to him.

Katya Valasek:

How did you decide the idea you're going to pitch? Because you said it yourself, it's a rare opportunity for many people. So what did you do to make sure you had the best possible idea to pitch when you had that conversation?

Cece Xie:

The book I pitched is actually very different from the book I'm about to publish. So it's really been a journey, I think, of self-discovery and figuring out what you want to say. For the proposal itself, I took a very business-minded attitude towards it. The plus side of being a lawyer for so many years is that having been involved in things like pitches and stuff, you kind of know that you need to make a business case for publishers and editors to acquire your book. When I talk about book publishing, it's very similar to VC investing. So if you ever become a startup lawyer or something, the process is very similar.

But for the book proposal itself, I actually just looked at the history of books about lawyers and law firms that had been published by actual lawyers. And the last nonfiction book was in the 90s. The rest have all been a lot of fiction. Some were self-published. It just seemed like since the late 90s, there's just been a dearth of frank discussion about the world of Biglaw. And that was when I was like, oh, well, that's clearly a gap in the market because I would have wanted to know all these things that I learned along the way. And if there had been a book about it, I definitely would have read it.

So I was like, this is the time to kind of talk about it. I think so much has changed. E-discovery is prevalent. We have emails. We have phones all the time. And the structure of partnerships have also changed a lot. I think one of the things that also drew me to large law firms was that you have this idea that once you make partner, that's it. You've made it in life. You're going to make so much money for the rest of your life. And that used to be the way for partnerships, maybe like 10, 20 years ago, where a lot of compensation was lockstep and everyone shared the spoils and the profits.

But the modern partnership actually is a little bit more ruthless and capitalistic. And the same capitalistic forces that have infected finance, tech, they have now come from law firm partnerships as well. So there are a lot of situations where people do lateral or get poached, or you find out that you're making one-tenth amount as one of your peers because they're friends with the CEO of a major corporation. So there's all these other things that became increasingly clear to me that people should know before they embark on this very long journey to become a law firm partner.

Katya Valasek:

So here you are, you're in Biglaw, which means you're making Biglaw salary. You are about to step away to explore something creative. What did that look like in terms of evaluating your finances, evaluating possibility of this not being as successful as you had hoped, the possibility of your parents being able to say, I told you so? What was that thought process like to get you to take that step and really walk away and try these creative endeavors?

Cece Xie:

I kind of had to delude myself a little bit about what was going to happen. So I had to tell myself things like, all right, it's just for a year. People take a year off for a variety of reasons. How different is it than going on maternity leave, six months off potentially. You haven't taken any time. I went straight through from undergrad. So it's just kind of been a series of go, go, go, study, study, work, work, work. And I had two days off, I think, between my firm, my first firm and my second firm. So there had just not really been a lot of time to take a step back.

So I was like, all right, just for a year, let's just call it a sabbatical even. And taking a look at my finances, I do think the nice thing about Biglaw is that you kind of know what you're going to get paid for your bonuses and for your salary. So I took a look at that and I was like, all right, this is like roughly around one year of expenses. So I just kind of held out until bonuses got paid.

And then finally, I think the fear of failure was probably the hardest part. And the part that led to a lot of crying and therapy. I think people had to pin me down to stop me from applying to jobs immediately after I left. Because you just feel so identity-tied to this job in a way that you don't realize until it's gone. And that part, I don't think I did really prepare for it. And when I did leave, my parents were like, “how do you feel about being less prestigious? You have a less prestigious life now.” And this was also reinforced really by social media commenters. Some people felt very negatively about me having left Biglaw, but it was helpful to have a good support system in my friends and my partner.

And probably without them, I wouldn't have been able to withstand the fears. I was like, you know what, right now I don't believe in myself, but I can count on at least one hand, a number of people who believe in me to do something else. And maybe for now, their belief in me will keep me going, even if I don't believe in myself right now.

Katya Valasek:

Chosen family, right? No one cuts you down faster than someone in your immediate family.

Cece Xie:

Oh, I know. It's like they're so talented at it. That should be their job.

Katya Valasek:

Okay. So you said you used your savings to drop the golden handcuffs and pursue these creative passions. And now you're a few years in. Are you finding your experiences more challenging? There's a big difference between a regular paycheck and an all-but-guaranteed bonus that you can plan for and having three or four different sources of income.

Cece Xie:

It was really challenging for probably like the first eight months, 1.5 years. There's a lot of mistakes that you kind of make, not even like large catastrophic financial mistakes, but even things like last year, I miscalculated self-employment taxes. I wasn't aware that there was this other element of self-employment taxes. And I felt so stupid. And I was just like, oh my God, I have totally underestimated this. And now I have to dip into this emergency fund that I never wanted to touch. And I had to kind of really go through the psychology of what it meant to me to tap into an emergency fund to make a financial mistake.

The end result is very good because I think I am much less traumatized by money now. I'm able to look at it in a much more clear-eyed way. Whereas in the first year, I hated looking at my bank account. I have to do monthly accounting. I hated that. It was like torture each time. But through that, it was incidental, accidental exposure therapy. I just had to look at money in a way that I didn't have when I worked in Biglaw.

And through that series of exposure therapy, you really do become more okay with thinking through what it is you really need now and where really the cliff is. I feel like I've lived my life probably like 10 feet away from the edge of the Grand Canyon. But to me, it feels like I'm right on the edge. And this whole process has been trying to really see that, even though I can see over the edge of the Grand Canyon, I'm still far away from it. But it feels like I'm right there on the cliff.

Katya Valasek:

When I introduced you at the top of the episode, I started with the word lawyer. And we've now had this whole conversation about how you stepped away from being a lawyer to do other pursuits. But you do still spend some time representing clients still. How much time do you devote to those clients?

Cece Xie:

It probably is like 30 to 40 hours a month. I mean, that's like what you would bill in a portion of a week in Biglaw. So the percentage of time is a lot less. But now I have my own arts and entertainment boutique with one of my former colleagues. He was also reaching that point where he was like, “I don't think I want to do this for the rest of my life. And I actually want to help people do more creative endeavors.” So we kind of connected again and launched our own firm together, Studio Legal. And through this, we've really been able to just practice as much as we want to, and also sometimes not practice as much as we want to.

A lot of it has just been helping our friends with their issues. When I meet content creators, learning about their legal needs and trying to help them out through this thing that I know from both the legal side, and also the creative side. Even I think if I had stayed in a Biglaw, you kind of have to carve out a book of business that really reflects on you. And trying to find this gap in the market between what you know and what other people aren't serving is really important.

Content creators were such an underserved population in the time when I was a content creator. I looked at some contracts and I was like, man, there's no sophistication here. I realized that being able to combine my interests in that way and kind of apply my legal skills to this new cohort that didn't know how to navigate in the legal spaces, that that would be a way for me to learn more both about the industries I was curious about, but also be able to help out using the skills that I had that weren't as common in the creator space.

Katya Valasek:

When you were approached about dipping more than just a baby toe into the pool of practicing law, after you took your break, what was it that excited you about stepping a little more fully back into that experience?

Cece Xie:

I was at a friend's, a creator friend's birthday, and I saw this other creator that I had followed for a while, and I knew she was having some copyright and intellectual property disputes. And I commented on actually her post, and I like went up to her to ask her about it, how it was going. And throughout that conversation, we were just talking very academically about it, just talking from a practical standpoint.

And again, I do love talking about intellectual property disputes. I just think it's one of the most fascinating areas of law. So after talking about it for a while at the end, she was like, “well, I do actually hire a Biglaw firm, but I really like that you understand this from a creator side. Would you be my lawyer?”

And it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, I wasn't planning on going back to practicing at all. But you come out of retirement for the people that you care about. And I was like, well, I really enjoyed this conversation. I really want to help her navigate this space. And I know how confusing it is sometimes to be told by a lot of Biglaw lawyers what they're doing when you might not otherwise understand. So I was like, all right, I'll just come out of retirement and I'll just help her only. That'll just be it. It'll be like a part-time thing.

Katya Valasek:

You stepped into it understanding it was going to be a part-time thing. Were there people in your life who were like, “oh, Cece's back to being a lawyer again?” Did you have to explain to people that law isn't all or nothing?

Cece Xie:

Some people certainly did think that when I had my own firm, they're like, “oh, you're back to being a full-time lawyer.” And I did get some DMs being like, the only thing you're good for is being a lawyer. So you just get all this pigeonholing. But I took a break from social media and that helped me see my life in more clear-eyed terms. And the break from lawyering was really helpful in helping me see the law in a more clear-eyed term. So it was more like, yes, you know, I do law part-time, but I don't know if I've so much as explained it, as come to the realization that I just need to stop explaining myself to people who want to see me a certain way.

Katya Valasek:

You've shared the story of your three tattoos, which you call your other side tattoos. One for overcoming heartbreak, one for getting your target score on your LSAT, and the last for getting your book deal. And what I absolutely love about the framing of these tattoos is that so many people celebrate the success, but few people celebrate the work or acknowledge the struggle that led to those success. And by framing it as the other side, you're also paying homage to what you had to do to get there. How has reflection on getting on the other side of these experiences influenced how you think about your future?

Cece Xie:

I think it helps me understand that there are moments in life where, as you're going through them, you think to yourself, how will I ever get past this? And I vividly remember studying for the LSAT and being like, I cannot get my target score. It is just impossible. I've tried so much, and there's just nothing more I can do. But being able to push through that and getting really a permanent reminder that that happened, it helps me see bit by bit every day on my body that there are good examples of being able to do things that you yourself, right now, can never even imagine doing. And I think that's just a good lesson for life in general. There have been many times before where we were on one side, and then we got to the other side.