Meet the Women Rainmakers!

Carol (Carrie) Hogan

Interview by Susan Letterman White

Name: Carol (Carrie) Hogan

Firm Name: Jones Day

Address: 77 West Wacker

Chicago, Illinois  60601-1692

Phone: 1.312.269.4241

Nominated by Susan Letterman White

Practice area: Product Liability & Tort Litigation

Carrie Hogan is a partner and the head of the Product Liability Practice in the Jones Day Chicago office. She focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation with an emphasis on product liability, professional negligence (medical and legal), consumer product safety, toxic tort, and false advertising/consumer fraud lawsuits. She has extensive trial and appellate experience in these areas in state and federal courts.

Carrie is national coordinating counsel for Laboratory Corporation of America's (LabCorp) professional negligence litigation related to its Pap smear testing. She also has defended ALAS members in complex legal malpractice actions. She represents The Sherwin-Williams Company in its nationwide lead paint litigation brought by state attorneys general, local and state governmental entities, and private plaintiffs. She also has extensive experience managing and coordinating nationwide litigation programs for clients such as The Chamberlain Group, Experian Information Solutions, LabCorp, and TRW.

Most successful/Favorite Rainmaking tip: Treat everyone like a potential client and nurture your relationships. I consider every person that I meet, from a secretary to the highest-ranking executive, as an important contact. I nurture every relationship and try to make a personal connection. Once or twice a year, I will pick up the phone and call my contacts instead of sending an ecard or email to keep the connection going. Obviously you have to be a good lawyer. However, you cannot assume that having met someone once or twice or doing one piece of good work for them is enough for them to remember you and want to hire you again.

Biggest influence on career/best career advice: The best piece of advice that I received from an older partner was “Always take your work seriously, but never take yourself seriously.” It’s important to always stay grounded and never take yourself too seriously. This job can turn you into a person you might not like, especially if you are a litigator. The job of a litigator is essentially combat every day. Our relationships are adversarial. When clients call, it’s not good news. It’s important to learn to control that atmosphere and not make winning important in every aspect of your life; otherwise it can consume you.

Percentage of time devoted to marketing: Currently, I spend approximately thirty-percent of my time on marketing. As I get older, that percentage increases every year. Being good at client development takes a lot of time and as you move into the position of a senior lawyer in a law firm, your rainmaking responsibility increases. The fact is that marketing and developing business is every senior lawyer’s job and you cannot assume that someone else is taking on or handling that responsibility.

Proudest accomplishment: My proudest accomplishment was making partner at Jones Day. I’ve been a partner there for eleven years. I come from a very big blue collar, Irish family. I was the first generation to go to college. I was the only child of my generation to attend graduate school. I used to take my Jones Day paycheck to my grandparents’ house and we would stare at it in disbelief. My grandparents could not believe what the firm was paying me because in one paycheck I would make more than my grandfather would make in several months. It was truly the American dream come true. I am proud of my pathway—getting a job at Jones Day out of law school and then becoming a female litigation partner there.

Knowing what you know now, if you were starting out as a lawyer today, what would you do differently? I would have mellowed out sooner. The first seven or eight years felt very intense and a little like I was constantly in a dogfight. Other than that, I have no regrets and wouldn’t change a thing. I made a great choice in the law school I attended and the type of lawyer to become. My decision to join Jones Day, despite not having done summer clerkship there and the fact that they did not have a presence in Chicago when I joined, was right for me. I met Dan Reidy in the hallway of my law school as a third-year student and had a coffee with him. He convinced me to come meet everyone in the Chicago office. After I did that, I just had a gut feeling that joining this firm was the right decision. I have never regretted that decision.

Tell me about one rainmaking strategy or tactic that you initially thought would work, but it failed. Why did it fail? In my opinion, writing articles and speaking is not super effective. I do not believe it makes me an expert in the eyes of the in-house counsel that make the decisions about which lawyers will get their work. Further, your publications might not hit your targets and even if they do, your targets may read your articles, then not remember you when they need a lawyer with that area of knowledge. Every law firm nowadays has blogs and newsletters. You become one of many highly qualified lawyers writing on a myriad of topics. It doesn’t transform you into an “expert.” My experience has been that in-house counsel will call because they have heard about a case you’ve won or good work you have done for another client. Word of mouth has been my best client development tool. For example, Dennis Donahue, one of the best jury consultants in the country, has on more than one occasion referred work to me. I think it’s more powerful when others talk about your performance and skills.

Rainmaking that does work. Again, treating everyone as if they are a potential client and cultivating those relationships.

Tell me about one rainmaking strategy or tactic that you initially thought would fail, but it was a great success. Why was it successful? Someone once told me that I should always talk to people on airplanes. I never thought that it would be an effective way of developing business, but it worked for me. One day, I boarded a plane and the last thing I wanted to do was to talk to person next to me. I was tired, but I noticed that gentleman sitting next to me pulled out materials with the name of company that I had heard of. We started to talk and, by chance, he had an issue with one of his products. He later called me at the office to talk further about the issue and we ended up doing some work for him.

What has been your greatest frustration about trying to get new business or new clients? When you are trying to bring in new clients at a large firm, like Jones Day, which is very serious about protecting the interests of its current clients, you inevitably have conflict situations that prevent the development of new business.

If you were mentoring a young woman lawyer, what advice would you give her regarding rainmaking? I have three pieces of advice that I think are very important.

First, it’s important to be confident.

Second, always be prepared to articulate what you do in short period of time. Most people ask “So what do you do?” Your answer must be succinct, meaningful, and include specific details. Have an answer prepared.

Third, ask for what you want. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. It seems to me that women have a harder time asking for what they want. We feel awkward. Some of the best male rainmakers I know do not have that concern. Be prepared and able to ask: “Can I do that for you?” “What can I do to get your work?” If you are feeling uncomfortable asking, you are already at a disadvantage, because there are three people in front of you who will ask.

Would you say you ever had a mentor that made a genuine difference in how your career turned out? If yes, please describe. Yes. I have had so many. But I would like to acknowledge two in particular. Dan Reidy is the reason that I am at Jones Day. Besides recruiting me, he has excellent legal skills, charisma, approachability, likeability and he consistently models behavior to emulate. Dan is the lawyer that I always aspire to be. He has an easy way about him and he is a terrific leader of the Chicago office. Joe McEntee is another person, who has had a meaningful impact on my development as a lawyer. He taught me everything that there was to know about litigation when I was a young lawyer. He gave me significant responsibility and would say “You’re going to do this.” I was scared to death, but his trust in me made me courageous, and I learned that every time that you to do something that scares you, do it, the next time it won’t be as scary. Soon, it becomes second nature. So I learned that to grow, you must continually do things that scare you.

Think about when you started out as a lawyer. Now think about the new female lawyers just starting out. What is different now compared to when you started? While I know some studies have indicated that women have not made as much progress as we would have hoped in the last 20 years, I do see positive signs of change. While it is still hard to be a woman in this predominantly male profession, I have seen slow changes that make me hopeful that it is getting easier for women to assimilate in, stay until they make partner, and be successful at prestigious law firms like Jones Day and other places. While we still have a great deal of work to do, I do feel women are given more credibility off the bat, more trust, and instill more confidence in older male partners, than they did 20 years ago when I started. While it is certainly is not a solution to the inequality problems, it is a start and makes me hopeful.

List words that best describe you: I am driven and ambitious. I try to be approachable and treat everyone with respect.