Sidebar Advisors

Sidebar Advisors Attorney Podcast explores the career moves, risks, and decisions that shape a life in law. Hosted by Niraj Chhabra , financial planner and founder of Sidebar Advisors, the show features candid conversations with attorneys, legal leaders, and professionals connected to the legal industry. Guests share how they navigated firm changes, leadership, business growth, career pivots, and the moments that pushed them to bet on themselves. Each episode offers a practical look at the professional, personal, and financial choices attorneys face as their careers evolve.

Sidebar Advisors is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 98 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Sidebar Advisors, a business show with 98 episodes published.

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  Episode #100

  Tara Raghavan of Benesch: Rethinking Success and Taking Control of Your Career

  Sep 30, 202656 min

  Send us Fan Mail What happens when the definition of a successful career starts to change? Tara Raghavan joins Niraj to talk about taking greater control of her career, learning business development, navigating change when it doesn’t come naturally, and how experiences outside of work reshaped what success means to her. A fitting conversation about growth, perspective, and what comes next for the 100th episode of the Sidebar Advisors Podcast.

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  Episode #99

  Sarah Coyne of Ropes & Gray: The Judgement Behind A Successful Legal Career

  Sep 24, 20261h 7m

  Send us Fan Mail What does it take to make good decisions when the stakes are high? Sarah Coyne, Partner at Ropes & Gray and former federal prosecutor, joins Niraj to discuss the judgment she developed handling complex investigations and high-profile cases, what changed when she moved to private practice, and why her definition of a successful legal career looks very different today. The conversation also gets personal, including motherhood, financial security, her experience with breast cancer, and how her definition of success has evolved from pursuing the next achievement to building a career that leaves room for the other parts of life that matter.

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  Episode #98

  Thomas Chou of Morrison Foerster: Building A Career By Betting On Opportunity

  Sep 22, 202640 min

  Send us Fan Mail Thomas Chou’s career has rarely followed a predictable path. Now Managing Partner of Morrison Foerster’s Los Angeles office, Thomas spent nearly two decades practicing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, building a corporate practice across the U.S. and Asia before eventually returning to Los Angeles. In this episode, Thomas joins Niraj Chhabra to talk about the opportunities and unexpected circumstances that shaped that journey, from being trusted to run a major Yahoo transaction as a senior associate to moving overseas, building relationships during the dot-com crash, and taking on leadership roles he never originally planned to pursue. They also discuss why some of Thomas’s earliest relationships still generate business 25 years later, what practicing in China taught him about client relationships, how attorneys can develop business before they’re expected to have a book, and why becoming a senior lawyer sometimes means knowing which clients and opportunities to walk away from.

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  Episode #97

  Nema Milaninia of Freshfields: From Prosecuting War Crimes to Advising on Global Risk

  Sep 17, 202652 min

  Send us Fan Mail Nema Milaninia’s legal career has taken him from BigLaw to The Hague, inside one of the world’s largest technology companies, and ultimately back to private practice. Now a partner at Freshfields, Nema advises companies and senior executives navigating complex investigations, regulatory matters, and high-stakes legal and reputational risk. Earlier in his career, he spent eight years as an international prosecutor working on cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity before later moving in-house at Alphabet. In this episode, Nema joins Niraj Chhabra to discuss what those very different environments taught him about practicing law, making decisions under pressure, and viewing a problem from more than one perspective.

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  Episode #95

  Michael Gordon of Gordon, Fournaris & Mammarella, P.A.: How A Niche Trusts Practice Became A National Business

  Sep 10, 202650 min

  Send us Fan Mail Michael Gordon didn’t initially plan on becoming a trusts and estates attorney. Today, he leads a national estate planning practice at Gordon, Fournaris & Mammarella, P.A. In this episode, Michael joins Niraj Chhabra to share how he recognized an emerging opportunity around Delaware trusts early in his career and helped grow what began as a small, locally focused practice into a national estate planning group. Michael explains why Delaware has become an important jurisdiction for sophisticated trust and estate planning, the situations where attorneys outside the field should recognize potential planning opportunities for their clients, and what it takes to earn the trust of ultra-high-net-worth families.

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