When tech platforms face "bet-the-company" speech fights, they call Ambika Kumar. Starting as an associate who strategically positioned herself at the intersection of media law and emerging tech, Ambika built a nationally recognized First Amendment practice from Seattle—far from the traditional media law hubs of New York, D.C., or L.A.
In this conversation, Ambika shares how she identified the convergence of content moving online and tech companies needing First Amendment expertise, then executed a deliberate plan to become the go-to lawyer in that space. She breaks down her approach to client communication (short emails, phone calls over message chains, brutal honesty about odds), discusses arguing a 7:30 a.m. TRO hearing that blocked the first TikTok ban, and explains the evolving relationship between Section 230 and First Amendment protections as AI reshapes the landscape.
We also discuss the realities of building a practice while raising two kids, why "being eager" is an asymmetric bet that paid off, and what it takes to feel confident pushing back against more senior lawyers at fancy firms.
Keep reading below for the full link to the episode and the full transcript of our conversation.
Top Insights
Below are the highlights of our conversation:
- Eagerness as an Asymmetric Bet: Why being "too eager and ignoring non-verbal cues" as a junior associate didn't cost Ambika anything—and how showing relentless interest in learning, taking on non-billable work, and asking four or five times for assignments eventually opened doors that formal mentorship programs never could.
- The Section 230 / First Amendment Strategy: Ambika explains why tech companies initially avoided First Amendment arguments (fearing it would look like they're claiming a "constitutional right to host smut"), how that created over-reliance on Section 230, and why the NetChoice v. Moody case finally confirmed that online publishers deserve the same constitutional protections as traditional media.
- Communication Over Documentation: Why Ambika sends five-sentence emails instead of four-paragraph memos, picks up the phone instead of starting email chains, and believes talking through issues reveals tone and intent that text never captures—especially when clients are frustrated or co-counsel isn't hearing them.
- Building a Practice from a Non-Hub City: How Ambika strategically chose Seattle over media law centers like New York or D.C., identified the convergence of content moving online and tech companies in her backyard, and turned eagerness plus proximity into a First Amendment practice that handles headline-making cases nationwide.
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Full Transcript
Khurram Naik: This is Khurram with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Ambika Kumar. When tech or media companies have "bet the company" matters involving free speech, they come to Ambika. We discussed how she strategically built her career in the space starting as an associate. This is one of the most direct conversations we've recorded. Here's Ambika.
Khurram Naik: Ambika, I have been looking forward to this podcast for maybe a year. I don't know, it's been a long time coming, right?
Ambika Kumar: Yeah, it's hard to find a time.
Khurram Naik: It’s the longest I've waited to record an episode. No pressure, but I know it's going to be really good. We've just had a number of conversations for some time now, so it's just been really interesting to get to know you and your practice better. Something I'm really struck with is you're very down to earth, but you're also highly strategic. And so I'm interested in—I think strategy from our conversations is something that showed up really early in your career going back to law school, and that resonates for me because I think I was strategic in starting law school that led me down the path that I’ve been on. So I'm curious to hear—it sounds like you identify as a strategic person, taking a strategic approach to your practice substantively and then also professionally. Let’s start professionally. What is the role of being strategic mean to you? Like, how have you been strategic with your career?
Ambika Kumar: Well, I would say that I'm strategic in basically all aspects of my life to the extent it makes sense. In the context of my career, I went to Duke University and I graduated in 2002. While I was there, I was the editor of the student-run daily newspaper. It's probably the hardest I've ever worked in my life. And when I got out of college, I thought about becoming a journalist and realized that that was not necessarily what I wanted to do, in part because I wanted to have enough income to raise a family in the way that I was raised. And I thought, well, how about I go defend journalists? At the newspaper, we'd gotten a couple of demands that we had to talk with our lawyers about, so I'd been exposed to it from that perspective. I took a year off from college and then I went to University of Chicago Law School. Because I knew I wanted to work on First Amendment issues and issues for journalists, I did an independent study there with Jeff Stone, who is a scholar in the area.
Then when it came time to figure out what to do after that, I was researching firms trying to figure out who is sort of the best in the news media defense bar. There were two that were at the top of their game: Davis Wright, where I am now, and a firm called Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, which was a boutique in D.C. and New York. I interviewed with Levine Sullivan and didn't get a job. I interviewed with Davis Wright, and they were only really taking summer associates in their Seattle office. Sometimes we take from other offices with very exceptional cases, and so I realized that if I wanted to come to Davis Wright, I would need to at least start in Seattle. I split my summer between Davis Wright and Baker & Hostetler in D.C., which also had a media practice, although not nearly as robust as Davis Wright's. To me, the difference between the firms was night and day just from a personal aspect, but also substantively; I was doing more work at Davis Wright.
So I got married, took the bar, started my job, and moved to Seattle all in the same summer. I actually thought maybe I would move sometime to an area like the Bay Area; I actually didn't want to be in sort of the media centers of New York, D.C., or Los Angeles. I wanted to be at a place where I felt like becoming a partner was a real possibility and did not require working all day every day and sometimes all night. And so I came to Seattle thinking maybe I'll do a little bit of media work, it won't be everything, but let me see. By that time, it was clear that content was moving online. We had these tech companies in our backyard in Seattle and I was thinking we should be doing more for them. I mean, we already did do work for them, of course, but I thought I could find a place there. Between that and the firm's nationwide First Amendment media practice, I was able to build a career. I feel very lucky that I could do that sitting here in Seattle, which is really not a hub of media law.
Khurram Naik: How do you advise someone to execute on this? Any number of times, a lawyer might see some frontier of technology or some convergence of an industry. This is something that comes up a lot when we talk to lawyers who are early in their careers. There are things that they're really passionate about; maybe they wrote something in their law review or whatever. There’s just some topic that is just some interest of theirs, they're identifying something cutting edge, and they experience challenges with implementing that. "Hey, I'm just an associate, how do I move my career down this path?" I can see something, maybe everyone can see something, but the partners are embedded with their existing ecosystem of clients; they're not incentivized to build out some new practice maybe. There’s a variety of conditions that make it a challenge to grow in that way. How did you do it, and then what tips do you have for someone today who wants to take that strategic approach and converge their interests with the skills and platform that they're at?
Ambika Kumar: When I came to the firm, it was clear that I could not do only media work; there wouldn't be nearly enough. It was a very highly sought-after group. There was already one other associate in the group who was more senior to me. So I just did general commercial litigation. In fact, I had one partner in the IP litigation area who kept telling me, "Just get general commercial litigation experience, that's what you need." He was right, as frustrating as it felt at the time. Then when the firm circulates a list of clients for conflict purposes every day, I would look at that list—a lot of people do this—and I would see a case that had been brought in that I'd be interested in. I would contact the partner who was running the case and see if they needed help. I did this with one of my mentors. I did that and it was easy; we would just start working on it. With another, I think I had to ask him like four or five times until he decided, "Okay, I'm going to give her a chance." And then for me, the key was just doing really good work and not being a jerk, being personable.
Over time, I just got to know clients better and I was writing things. I think I was very fortunate to be at a place like Davis Wright because it is extremely collegial, and I think people are genuinely interested in developing associates who want to become partners. I also happen to be in a group where a lot of the rainmakers are women and had children, and that was for me a model. Although a lot of my models early on were men with families who were invested in their families and who would say, "I have to go do this for my kid now."
At the time, Davis Wright was sort of a regional firm, and so I think it was less—I don't know how to describe it—but certainly no one was doing document review day in and day out. People were actually getting—we had a one-to-one associate-to-partner ratio, which meant that the partners get paid less, but it also meant that the associates got the experience of multiple tenures of associates. They were doing everything from drafting motions to engaging in discovery and having client contact. So I think—I don't know, I can't say what would work today. I do think that finding people who can teach you how to do what you want to do is important and riding their coattails is important.
One of the reasons I came to Davis Wright was there's this treatise, a 50-state survey on libel law, and I looked at who authored the Washington chapter. It was Bruce Johnson, who was one of the mentors that I mentioned, the one that I worked with for a long time. And so I found him in my summer associate days and did work for him, and then I continued to work for him for years. I had a review once early in my career that was, "She's too eager and ignores non-verbal cues," which I found to be very confusing. And a couple of years later, the same partner said in front of a group of people, "This is Ambika, she's one of the most respected, if not the most respected associate in Seattle." And so what I learned from that was, even though I was being eager, that ultimately did not cost me anything. And in general, I think being eager can only help you. Showing an interest in learning, in feedback, not shunning projects that are non-billable—that's sometimes the best way to get to know somebody. They need help writing an article or a chapter or something like that, and you do it. Because it's non-billable, there's more time for developing a personal relationship because you're not charging anybody for that time. I honestly feel lucky that content and online just happened. I didn't go to law school for that purpose, I just saw it happening and I just happened to be coming to Seattle and I thought, well, this seems like a good opportunity. And it was.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I've observed among other litigators particularly that I've had on this podcast that I think that's a formula for success: starting out at an established platform and growing in some way into some frontier that hasn't been occupied. Sometimes that is a geographic office that's a frontier, sometimes it's a practice area. But it seems to me that that's an asymmetric bet. And as you said, eagerness is a form of an asymmetric bet, right? Like, there's a downside to eagerness; it can backfire. Maybe you look too earnest and naive or some other negative qualities from eagerness, but in balance, nine times out of ten, eagerness will have some asymmetric upside. So I guess that's I think this concept of an asymmetric bet in terms of eagerness on something on the day-to-day or on the scale of your career, that seems to be another concept. Does that resonate with you, the concept of taking asymmetric bets in your career?
Ambika Kumar: Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't have—I’m not somebody who can say something I don't mean or who can't just be brutally honest. And so often times that means doing things where other people would not feel comfortable doing it, whether it's having an unusual conversation with opposing counsel about our relationship and how to make it better and trying to slow things down and make it less—or whether it's knowing what's going on in the personal lives of the people that I work with. If they don't want to tell me, of course, I don't push, but I do take an interest. And I share my own personal life. And so I think those things are probably things that most people don't do but that have paid off for me in my career and in my personal life.
Khurram Naik: Can we talk some more about the substantive aspect of your practice? Tell me about substantively, you know, maybe going back to your associate days, a strategic mindset you took to how you counsel clients, litigation strategy that differentiated you, that you feel like was original, novel, a departure from consensus?
Ambika Kumar: My early associate days, I was way too shy and too scared to say anything in front of a client, much less adopt a novel approach to counseling. You know, I grew up in a culture where the people that were more senior to me were sort of authorities to learn from and to defer to. And that is how I operated in my practice. Honestly, it's only in the last, I don't know, five to eight years where I feel like I am that person where I sort of know what the right thing to do is or what the—you know, it's just more natural. And so I don't have a problem doing it.
I had a situation once where we were counsel for a defendant and there was counsel for a co-defendant and they were at like a—you know, one of these top-tier firms. Not that Davis Wright is—I think Davis Wright is a top-tier firm, but often that is not the impression of other people. And this more senior lawyer at a different fancy firm was suggesting that an argument that I had suggested was not worth making. And ten years ago, I would not have pushed back. But I did this time. I think it's important to—I mean, part of that is getting comfortable with my own level of knowledge and strategic insight, and some of it is not being discouraged when somebody who is more senior to me and is a white guy says something to me that doesn't resonate and felt condescending and felt like I wasn't being taken seriously. Fortunately, I have clients, and so clients, you know, they get it and they know that I'm good.
And so, in terms of novel approaches—so I'm very direct. I do not overstate our chances; if anything, I understate them. I don't want anyone to be surprised if something bad happens. I tried a case many years ago early in my associate years and the partner on the case thought that we were going to win. And I was like, there is no way we're going to win. And I had to be really careful about what I said. And sure enough, we didn't win. But anyways, so I send short emails, they're not long. And this is like not novel, but I do see a lot of people at other firms just sending these like four-paragraph emails. They're not memos, because I think memos are mostly things that clients have decided they don't want unless it's something really critical. But they also don't want to have to read 20 sentences if it can be said in five. And bullet points are helpful, bolded headings so like if you're looking for like a part of an email that talks about our motion to dismiss, there's like a little heading that says "Motion to Dismiss." I find that helpful.
I also increasingly believe in talking to people as opposed to emailing with them. It feels like it's becoming a lost art, but I have one mentor in particular who was like, "Just pick up the phone and call. Why aren't you just doing it that way?" And I think there's a couple of things about that. One is people can be different in writing; they're much more comfortable acting in a way that you would never see them act in person or on the phone. Also, you can read the tone of voice as opposed to reading tone of text—you can't always do that. And you might learn more. I recently had a situation where one of the lawyers I work with, he's like, "I'm going to send an email to blah blah blah." I was like, "Why don't you call her? Because then you will get more of an insight into what she's thinking." And he came back and he said that was a good call, because I did. And so, I mean, that's not client-facing.
With clients, sometimes it's easier to talk through something because otherwise you get spun up in this churn of emails. I've had that where I've been co-counsel with another, again, fancy firm and the client calls me and says, "I'm really frustrated by this email exchange. I feel like no one is hearing what I'm trying to say." And that's just a lot easier to convey and it's easier to cut to the chase on a phone call.
Khurram Naik: Are you saying the client was included in the joint defense group exchange?
Ambika Kumar: No, this was my co-counsel, so they were also counsel for the client. I often get paired with larger firms higher up on the Am Law scale to provide my expertise on various issues like the First Amendment and Section 230. I'm also really honest when a client asks me, "Do you have this expertise in your firm?" It does me no good to be like, "Yes, this person who kind of has experience." If I recommend someone, it's because I know that they're good. And so I just pitched a case where the case is in a state where I don't often practice. State officials are involved on the other side. And I pitched it and I said, "You're going to really need to pair us with somebody who knows these people." And things like local counsel, they're critical because they have the day-in and day-out experience that you don't and can't have to let you know any quirks about the judges, anything, any particular views they might have about the issues in the case, because a lot of my cases are politicized, especially these days because tech companies are in the limelight.
Khurram Naik: Is your observation—do you think that the importance of local counsel is more important in state or federal court? Do you have a point of view on that?
Building a practice outside the traditional power centers — the way Ambika did from Seattle — reminds me of Randy Gaw, who built his trial boutique Gaw Poe outside the BigLaw system entirely.
Ambika Kumar: Probably state, but I think it applies to federal court. Depends on where you are, right? Like if you're in rural Texas, it doesn't matter whether you're in state or federal court, you need somebody there. If you're in New York, way less of a concern. You should still have somebody there to ask basic—but it doesn't have to be somebody—and it depends on the type of case. You know, if it's a case that requires a particular expertise that involves knowing the procedure of the court or the judges on the court, like that's important too. But if it's a run-of-the-mill piece of litigation and it's in a major city, local counsel to me plays a lesser role.
Khurram Naik: Can we trace back to what was that path from commercial litigation to some of these high-stakes tech and speech disputes? And part of the question is also, I mean, you initially were very interested in the media tech litigation and you represented journalists and now you represent platforms. Can you talk about those two evolutions in your practice?
Ambika Kumar: I never—I mean, I did represent journalists for a good bit of time when Washington had an anti-SLAPP statute in particular. The news media had the resources to pay for their defenses and knowing that they would get their fees if we won. That statute was held unconstitutional, I don't know, it's been at least 10 years. And that work kind of died off. And the reality was being in Seattle, I was never going to be like a premier journalist defense lawyer. It's just something I had to give up. And frankly, something that's extremely competitive. Not to say that the area I work on is not competitive—I mean, it is, but it wasn't when I started. It wasn't as competitive, it didn't feel. I think that I just—if I saw the firm was litigating something related to content, I went after that case, went after the lawyer, asked if I could help. And the more that I did that work, the more exposure I got to other clients with similar work, and those clients happened to be platforms. But you know, I've certainly had help along the way, other work that has been referred from lawyers that I work with, which is flattering because it suggests they think I'm a good lawyer but also that I'm relatively easy to get along with, at least in the professional context.
I would go to conferences that were around the subjects that I—but they weren't my main—never did I go to a conference and think, "I'm going to get work from this" or "This is really going to significantly—" You have to go to them repeatedly; you have to see people year after year. And you also have to rely on your partners to introduce you to people, which I had. I had one person who would be like, "Look at the RSVP list and tell me who you want to meet, I will introduce you." And those things are really important because they're just the seeds of something that can grow later.
Khurram Naik: In picking up this clientele and starting to get experience in First Amendment, Section 230, I'm curious: what was the inflection point or points in your career? Like, what was the first inflection point in your confidence, skill set, the stakes of the matters you're working on in that space?
Ambika Kumar: I mean, the first high-profile matter on which I was lead was the first TikTok ban. Before that, I had worked on cases that were important and prominent and written about in the news, but I was usually a part of a team. So all my bios would say, "Part of a team that…" or that kind of thing. So it's really just been the last five years that I've felt this confidence. I mean, it was growing, right? It wasn't like a switch. I got increasingly comfortable pushing for what I thought was the right decision. And when I started, when I think when I got—there was like this MVP award for Media and Entertainment a few years ago that I got, and then I was like, "Wait, like maybe I have a profile that's not local or tied to someone else but that is just my own." And then the Wall Street Journal, after the first TikTok case, wrote an article in which they said, "They hired top First Amendment lawyer Ambika Kumar." And I was like, "Whoa, that's crazy! Is that me?" And so those things have certainly helped.
What has helped the most probably is the reassurance of the people that I work with who are much more senior to me who, when I'm ever slow—which yes, it still happens—are like, "You're going to be fine. Go take a vacation, take the day off." You know, from when I was an associate, "You're going to make partner, you're going to make equity partner." I didn't have the confidence. I only went up for partnership—and this was the year after my first son was born—because somebody said, "I think this is your year." And I said, "Really? Like I just had a kid, are you sure?" And he's like, "Yes, I think this is the right time." And I did and I got it. And then I went up for equity partner the year after my second child was born, I can't remember, somewhere around there. And so, you know, part of it is the firm has supported me immensely over the years in my career development and trajectory.
And you know, when I—I will never bill as much as I did before I had kids. It's just not going to happen. And I don't want to. And I think Davis Wright is willing to make investments of that sort knowing that, you know, I'd established a reputation: I was really hard-working, I was good at what I did, I had a kid, of course my hours were going to drop, how much we'll see. And I went through a divorce while I was at the firm. I never felt like pressure from the firm to minimize my personal commitments in order to bill more hours. And that's been easier the last few years because I generate business in addition to actually doing the work. And so generating business doesn't cost as much time, right? Like you've got a reputation, you write a client, you say, "I saw this was filed, would you like help?" And ten years ago, the chances I would get it from just that were minimal, and as time goes up, they're much higher. They're still not like super high or anything, but you know, there are now times where a major company I pitch for a case and I feel like it's like a 50/50 shot, which actually feels like a pretty good shot.
Khurram Naik: You have a couple of really wild stories in—I don't know if you'd consider them inflection points, but just maybe they're just tangible career catapult moments. But I'm thinking of the first one I'm thinking of is a TRO that you argued at 7:30 in the morning on two hours' notice. Can you share that story?
Ambika Kumar: Yeah, it was a Friday in 2020, I think September. So 2020, I would have had a few—no, not 2020, it was earlier than that. I don't remember when it was. My kids were small. I had two small kids and so they wake up early in the morning and sometimes in the middle of the night and all that kind of stuff. And President Trump banned TikTok. Times have changed. And or maybe times haven't changed and he hasn't either, but we got the executive order and I wrote a TRO motion in a day working with one of the litigators and then just filed it that day and I went to bed feeling like totally—it was one of those days like I was in my pajamas all day long, I didn't eat very much, I was just focused on getting this done.
And you know, so I was relieved to go to bed at night. I was like, "Oh, I'll get to sleep now." And like many people, I have a bad habit of looking at my phone sometimes when I shouldn't be, when I should just go back to sleep. But that habit was reinforced because at like 6:00 or 6:30, I looked at my phone and I saw that the judge had set a hearing for 7:30 Pacific, 10:30 Eastern because the case was in Pennsylvania. And I was working with a couple of other attorneys, one of whom was much more senior to me, and I called him and he said, "I was debating when to call and wake you up." And so he said, "So it's good you're awake." And this was during the pandemic.
And I went down to my—so it was a virtual argument, like one of the first ones I did or maybe the first one. So I went down to my basement trying to figure out—like I don't actually work at a desk at home, so like that was not an option. So I set up this crazy area where I had a side table with a box of like a fort building kit box on it with my laptop on top of that and my seat was the back of an exercise bike that had been torn to shreds by the cats that we had. And of course, I did not have my actual background, like I had a fake background. And we had the hearing. It was a lot of fun, but you know, and then I was done and I was like, "Okay, back to my Saturday life." I can't remember if we got an order, but it was definitely a hearing that went well. And unfortunately for the government lawyer, he had been like, I think even out of town or something and hadn't even seen the papers really, and so I felt bad for him because it's not like he knew the record very well; he couldn't know the record very well. And we got an injunction eventually. I don't remember if it was from that hearing or another; there was one that I feel like she said it was premature, something like that. So yeah, that was crazy.
Khurram Naik: And then wasn't there also another Saturday injunction hearing in another matter?
Ambika Kumar: I don't think so. You might be thinking we represented AWS in a lawsuit brought by Parler. Parler is a social media service—was a social media service on the right, sort of politically. And this was after January 6th, before the inauguration. And you know, it was made headlines: AWS suspended or restricted Parler's account and then Parler sought a TRO that would require AWS to restore its service. That one I remember I was going through a divorce and I was staying at a friend's house and I remember pacing the halls at her house practicing my argument. You know, there was a lot of prep including with other lawyers and including the client. So I remember that one vividly too because it was also very fast-paced and I was not even in my own house and it felt odd. And it was pandemic, so I couldn't go to the office either. So I was just sort of in this visiting—and the friend whose house it is, she was gone, so it was just me and my dog, my pandemic puppy. And I just paced the halls and practiced my argument and then I did my argument at a side table in her bedroom overlooking the water, again with no background. But I mean, pandemic definitely put me in some odd places physically to make arguments. It was kind of fun actually; started like thinking, "Like should I try to make sure I do it in this kind of room or that kind of room, like the kitchen?" You know.
Ambika’s approach to relationship-building — proactively seeking assignments, reaching out to partners repeatedly — echoes what Dai Wai Chin Feman calls “non-transactional networking.” He built his entire career on deliberate generosity and creating value for others.
Khurram Naik: I want to pick up on, you know, you're talking about your kids as part of your routine and the timing of the kids, and it seems like kids are your lucky charm, so just you know, if you want to level up in life, have a kid I guess, it sounds like. Do you feel like having children has influenced how you practice? You mentioned not billing as much, but you know, focusing things on things like, you know, you are by definition working reputation and so then you can focus on business development which is higher ROI for the amount of time involved. Is there a strategic dimension to having children? I had a recent interview with Laura Kruslich, she’s a litigator at Goodwin, and she talked about the ways that having children for her has made her more strategic as a litigator because in the past, she would have taken on every aspect of a case and enjoyed owning every aspect of a case, and now she realizes she has to take much more of a team approach and say who is the best person for handling this aspect of a case. So I'm curious for you whether you feel like having children has influenced—I keep on using the word strategy, so you can ignore the word strategy or supply some other word—influenced how you practice? Like has there been some sort of reciprocal relationship between having kids and how you practice?
Ambika Kumar: Well, definitely I delegate more. That’s a consistent theme. As one should as one grows more senior, but it's much easier when you have kids and there's something else you have to be doing. It’s a hard skill to develop and it's one that I try to tell people I work with, like try to help them, "Like why are you online right now? Go, go." And I think that having kids can change the way—change your personal interactions in a way that can be, I suppose, advantageous in the sense that some of the cases I work with are about tech companies and children. Having children gives me that grounding of thinking about like: Should my children access social media? If so, at what age? What restrictions should be on there? Should I be able to see everything? They're little right now—not little, but they're not of an age where they can reasonably demand privacy. And so, you know, some of those issues are still coming.
But I think there's something about having children yourself as opposed to having a colleague that has children that just changes your perspective, I think. And I talk to my kids about work. I actually practice because if I can explain it to my 12-year-old, I can explain it to a judge. He asks good questions. Client development efforts sometimes involve family now. I've taken a client and his son to a hockey game with my son. That part has changed too. I have a lot of female clients and there's a lot of conversation about our kids; it doesn't feel gendered, it feels like this is just my life. And so I can't say that it's helped me develop business in any direct way, except through friendships with parents of students in the same school, for example. Like that certainly has happened, but otherwise, you know, I stopped working on the weekends for the most part. And I try to make sure that other people on my teams aren't working on the weekends. I always tell them, "If you can't make a deadline, please check in; it may not be a firm deadline and we might be able to—" Oftentimes like I have a deadline for someone to get me something and then I'm like, "Uh-oh, I'm busy with this other stuff, can't review it right now." And so I'm just like, "Take it back. If you're not done, feel free to work on it some more." But yeah, those are the ways in which kids have changed my approach.
Khurram Naik: And then you mentioned tech views around the challenges that tech companies are having now around privacy, around addiction, you know, different aspects of social media use for children and questions about that. How do you reconcile the needs of a client and your personal views around how you want your children to interact with social media and what you expect from a social media platform? Like, how do you reconcile those two parts of your life?
Ambika Kumar: I don't think there is a lot of conflict between them. I really do believe that it is my job, not the job of the law, to teach my kids what social media is, how it should be used responsibly, whether it should be used at all. I mean, my kids—I haven't reached this point yet, but like should they want to engage in social media, I'll help them navigate it. And I do wish sometimes that on some services I had better tools to limit, for example, limiting access to specific types of content or specific content while allowing others. That can be hard to customize. And part of the problem is that because we, as a society, seem focused on making the platforms responsible for what children see online.
And you know, I've seen some arguments that are really like—I don't want to say frivolous, but they are not good arguments. Like I had one case where the client's terms of service said something like—it was an adults-only platform, it made that clear, it said by entering your date of birth, you're certifying that you're over the age of whatever it was. And then in a separate part, it said "People under the age of majority or minors may not access the service." And the claim in the case—one of the claims in the case—was that means you guaranteed in your terms it was physically impossible for children to access your service. Like, it's just a completely unreasonable reading in the context; what it means is you are not allowed to do so, not you physically can't do so.
And I had another case where the other side was adamant that my client should be able to verify the ages of its users. Now age verification is not like "flip a switch and it's done." It can't be. And it also has serious privacy issues. That's not to say that one day we might not get to a place where like that is a thing that we do, but we're not there yet. And I remember asking opposing counsel, I said, "What is it that you want us to do? Like how—like it's not possible right now." And the response was, "That's your problem, not mine." And so I wish that we had a more cooperative relationship with the people who have these concerns. We being—I wish the tech companies and government could work together on things as opposed to just—I think it's different in Europe; here it's very much like "We're going to pass this law and then we're going to penalize these guys until they comply." And often those laws are unconstitutional and it's counterproductive because then the real problem is still there. Like I really do want parental controls that are more tailored—that I can make more tailored for my kids. I could probably go look for one and probably find it, but it sure would be nice if it was like advertised or the government was like, "Here are some ones that we think are good" or what have you. But I don't—and in some states they do have that—not that specifically but like education for parents. But it just doesn't seem to be the dominant way that people attacking tech companies think about it.
You know, I'm a lawyer for in one of these—in some of these cases alleging that video games are addictive to children. My children play video games. And once again, when I see in some of these cases the number of hours a child—and the age at which their child—like, so-and-so started playing at the age of three. So-and-so spends 15 hours a day playing video games. Like, I'm sort of just wondering like what is going on that has made this possible and to happen? I hate my kids playing video games too much, I don't like it. And it's a constant struggle. And now that they're getting older, I can at least explain why I don't want them playing video games as much as they are. But they're not playing, you know—they didn't start playing at age three and they're not playing 15 hours a day. And I can't fathom that ever being the case.
Khurram Naik: "Hey, like you can watch with some frequency"—at this point it's become daily—"like videos of garbage trucks and construction." Those are the two ones, I love it. And then we also pair it with—and I have mixed feelings about this—pair it with meals because I've observed just like an adult, you're more likely to eat more when you're distracted, enjoying something. And so he eats pretty well as it is, but then we'll put that in front of him.
Ambika Kumar: He'll just be like, "Mmm, yum." My kids are—one of my kids I learned in therapy with him, he was in therapy, and the therapist has these fidgets everywhere. Fidgets were not a thing when I was growing up; like you did not—it was like you should not be paying attention to something else or messing with something else while you were also paying attention to a conversation. And also at my kids' school, the head of the intermediate division who's a good friend—I mean, she's no longer in that position—but her office was full of them too. And I was like, "Oh." And one day my son had a fidget he was taking to school and the nanny was like, "Do you really want him to take this?" And I was like, "I don't know." And so I asked my friend, I was like, "What do you think?" She's like, "Yeah," and it's permitted in school. And that's because if they have something that they're doing like this—and I find that I am the same way—I pay better attention. In therapy, talking about painful issues is easier if you're like throwing a ball back and forth or doing something that takes the sting away somehow. And so with my kids, you know, I feel the same way about drinking; like I'm not certainly not—he's 12, he's not going to be drinking alcohol anytime soon. But at some point, I will introduce it to him to make sure he knows how to do it responsibly. And that's all I can do, like I view my job and my role is to turn them into happy, good people. And part of that is knowing how to navigate the world as an adult. And we got him a watch when he was nine or a phone, and maybe ten. And it wasn't—he doesn't play games on it. It was because he's an anxious kid, and when I was late to pick him up for something, he would get just terrified. And maybe that's something he should have to learn, but like in this day and age, you really don't, right? Like as an adult, like you just text and you say, "Hey, I'm running a little bit late." And so, you know, it gave him peace of mind and it made me feel less guilty being late to places because I knew he would hear from me that I was just running late.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, and so I'm curious, your work seems very distinct to me in that I was a patent litigator, and so the relevance of public opinion is fairly low. To be fair, most of my work was bench trials, so I was far less exposed to popular sentiment. But your work is virtually inextricably linked to public sentiment. So I'm curious about—I’ve never had very satisfying explanations for our relationship with tech companies. Maybe the best analogy that I can make is, growing up in the '90s and 2000s, a lot of the backlash was toward companies like Walmart, which clearly most people used, but then had these very ambivalent feelings about and just also hated. And so they're the target of public ire. Or like McDonald's, let's say, with Super Size Me or whatever. So with tech, I'm curious to hear from your vantage point—I mean, you've been in Seattle for a period of time, and so you've seen the growth of tech companies there. Seattle's had this kind of—its relevance in tech has kind of fluctuated over time and kind of just gone in this very spiky process of upward and then down and then much higher. And so it hasn't been like this steady. And then also public sentiment on it, I think it's been kind of mixed in terms of like how much we love it or hate it. So I guess, can you speak to how the role of sentiment, tracking sentiment, being strategic about sentiment, policy—like how does that play into your work? Like, how do you weave legal reasoning, strategy with this sort of sentiment component to your practice? It just seems like a really unusual way to influence your practice, I'm not sure how.
Ambika Kumar: Well, look, the clients are businesses, and what's good for the law is not necessarily what's good for the business. And so when advising clients, I think it's important to understand what their goals are. And in these cases that are very high profile and very, you know, sometimes have very disturbing facts, there are strategic reasons to do various things. For example, sometimes clients have an arbitration clause, and the reason for that is so it does not have to be litigated in the public sphere, right? I think the popularity of arbitration clauses has waned over time to some degree for a variety of reasons. But some clients just won't make an argument because they think—I mean, I think for many years, I think some companies were reluctant to use the First Amendment in a way that said, "You know, we didn't know this content was on our service and so we're protected," because they viewed it as basically saying, "We have a constitutional right to have this smut on our service," right? Which is not that different from what Section 230 says. But the result of that was that Section 230 took off, and there was a lot of law developed in it, and the First Amendment law stagnated in the tech sector until people were like, "Oh, we better pay attention to the First Amendment too," culminating in the Moody v. NetChoice case.
The way Ambika navigates parenthood and a demanding practice — making partner after her first child, equity partner around her second — is a tension Priyanka Timblo also confronts head-on. Priyanka tried a case at eight and a half months pregnant and rejects the word “balance” entirely.
But because I come from a firm that has such a strong First Amendment practice, you know, a bunch of us felt long ago that it's sort of foolhardy to rely only on Section 230, which can be repealed, to the exclusion of the First Amendment, which is, one would hope, never going to be amended. So it’s interesting—I haven't had people ask me "How do you do this work?" or things like that. You know, I think it's interesting your comments about Walmart and McDonald's. I'm trying to think how analogous those are. I think—so Walmart, you only go to Walmart if you need something. You only go to McDonald's if you need to eat something. Technology is the source of everything in some ways. And so there is no way, even if you didn't want to use Walmart or McDonald's, you could do that, but you can't not use technology really and function in society.
And I grew up in the '80s and '90s where I had an analog childhood—there was none of this. But and so there's good things and bad things about it. You know, I think the important thing in any case in this field or not is to tell a story that's compelling, to have a narrative that's going to resonate with a judge. Because judges fundamentally want to do the right thing, right? They want to be able to find a doctrine that tracks what they think is the right result. And so whatever you can do to give them peace of mind that if they dismiss a case, it's not going to be the end of the world for another set of plaintiffs or, you know, really the client is a good actor and these are just bad facts. You know, sometimes these cases involve children who have died by suicide. Those are very hard cases because the harm is so great, even if it wasn't caused by the tech company but by third-party content or what have you, a host of factors. And those are cases that you know—I have a different approach in cases like that in terms of whether to settle, when to settle, what arguments to make.
Because the reality is in the law that suicide is an intervening cause that generally gets rid of liability for the tech companies. But we don't, you know—it's not like we go around—like I don't go around saying like, "Let's say this." It's kind of not an argument that appeals to one's sense of good and justice and fairness, right? What might resonate is these are the specific circumstances of this child; here are all the things that were going on in their life, here, you know, that kind of thing. And so but you know, that needs discovery a lot of the time, so it's hard.
Khurram Naik: Can you just, on a substantive point, can you go back and just briefly explain the relationship between Section 230 and the First Amendment jurisprudence in say the past 10 years? I know that's a big question and a lot to explain there, but for people that are—it's obviously a hot topic but a lot of people maybe they saw some dry summary of a Supreme Court decision recently and just their eyes glazed over.
Ambika Kumar: Section 230 was passed in 1996 and the purpose was at the time, you know, we didn't really have the internet. I mean, we had the internet but most of us did not. And at the time, the—you know, at common law, arguably a service could be responsible—like an AOL or a Prodigy could be responsible for the content that it hosted that other people posted. And Congress didn't want that to happen. Actually, Congress passed an omnibus law that was like, "You can't send harmful content to minors, but also here's this like exception to liability for third-party content." And most of the law was struck down and what survived was Section 230. And so over time, it has been expansively interpreted to protect publishers that host third-party content that allegedly is harmful.
And it has been litigated a lot in the last probably 15 years because it is such a strong immunity and it's one that kills lots of cases. And so it was designed to foster the First Amendment on the internet. It was designed—so in the brick-and-mortar world, in First Amendment land, if I'm a bookseller and I have obscene books in my collection that I'm not aware of, I'm protected. If I know they're there and I know they're unlawful, well then I'm not protected. With Section 230, it doesn't matter what I know or don't know, and the reason for that is because when a service polices its own content, it is incurring a risk of liability because then someone can come and say, "Okay, you vetted your content, but like you left this one out there." And the number of messages that we're talking about was just staggering. And so what Congress did was say, "Okay, you're just not going to be responsible for that. Like you're going to self-regulate, you're going to police your own service, and no one is going to be able to come after you and say you missed this one piece of content and so you're liable."
And so they are complementary of one another. And I think people don't always understand that. I frequently get the question, "How can you say that your client's a publisher but also entitled to Section 230 immunity?" And the reality is that Section 230 immunity applies to publishers. Like the answer is: these publishers won't be treated like publishers at common law if the harm is stemming from third-party content. But it's not necessarily intuitive and it does require an attention to detail. And I think that state legislatures down to municipal governing bodies, they're not concerned with the details often. Which as a citizen I find disappointing because I can—you know, if I were in government, I could think of much better ways to do regulation in this area, and I'm sure that's true in all other areas of my life. And in this area at least, whatever is politically popular is what's going to happen, and that's not always what's the most logical result.
Khurram Naik: And then, I’m sorry if I didn't understand it fully, but then what was the relationship with the First Amendment jurisprudence, like how did that—now it sounds like—?
Ambika Kumar: Yeah, so the relevance is that the First Amendment was being applied in the brick-and-mortar world and not on the internet ever, really. Even though there were principles that we now know from the NetChoice v. Moody case, which made clear—there was this reluctance to treat online publishers the same as brick-and-mortar publishers, this idea that tech companies and tech services and social media services were somehow different and so we're not entitled to the same protections. Even though what they were doing was the same thing that publishers have been doing for a long time. So there's a case called Tornillo—I can't remember if it's Miami Herald v. Tornillo or something like that—at the Supreme Court where some negative thing was written about a politician and I think Florida had like a "right of reply" law requiring the newspaper to host a response. And the court said, "No, no, no, like what messages you include, that's your—you have that right." And the same is true with social media and tech companies. They have the right to decide what mix of content is going to be on their services, to figure out what kind of communities they want to create, what they want to tolerate, what they don't want to tolerate. It's all about organizing content. And so the First Amendment principles apply equally to that as they do to Section 230. But because people were reluctant to make those arguments, Section 230 kind of predominated for a while. And then when politicians were like, "Well, maybe we should get rid of Section 230," people came around and started making more of the arguments that, as I said, culminated in the NetChoice case, which held that services that are arranging, editing content, etc., are publishers under the First Amendment and entitled to the same protections.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I can’t remember where I read this years ago, but it is pretty fascinating that someone made the assertion, and I haven't disagreed with it since then, that media businesses are fascinating because the existence of the business is constitutionally protected. I can't think of another business model that's protected by the most core tenets of our government.
Ambika Kumar: I mean, the gun industry is protected by the Constitution.
Khurram Naik: There you go, that's a good one. Can you speak to—an obvious, we talked earlier in the conversation, you were talking about identifying a change in technology that a body of law is going to be applicable to. And so you recognize that tech companies are becoming publishers and so there's new terrain to be—new clientele to be working with, they're in your backyard. So you saw this convergence happening there. A very obvious convergence is now AI. That's this new frontier that potentially Section 230, First Amendment applies to and some disputes around that. How are you thinking about this new frontier?
Ambika Kumar: I mean, million-dollar question, ten-million-dollar question, I don't know. You know, because the firm represents content creators and traditional publishers as well as tech companies, you know, we see the arguments on both sides. And for the most part, on some issues, we just stay out of the fray because we can't take positions that are inconsistent, very inconsistent, between those two. And so I mean, it will be really interesting. I do think there is a chance that at some point, I don't know when, the Supreme Court decides that AI information generated by AI is subject to lesser protection than corporate protected speech. So, you know, commercial speech has less protection than non-commercial speech. I could see the court saying the same thing here, like—and the reasons for that in the commercial speech context, the idea is that commercial speech is more robust, that companies are going to advertise, they're not going to be chilled by regulations of advertising because it's to their extreme benefit to advertise. And I think probably there is going to be some kind of similar analysis that the generators of AI stand to benefit from improving on AI. And so maybe it will always exist and will never really be chilled, and so the reasons we afford protection to political speech, which is much more easily chilled, don't apply here.
So I haven't seen that argument made by anybody. I could see making it, but it would have to go up very high in the appellate courts to really gain any traction. And much like we were just at the beginning of Section 230 and the First Amendment stuff 15 years ago, I think we're just at the beginning of whatever this is going to become. And I don't know what it is. Because the other thing is AI is always evolving and changing, and it's not something that's fixed.
Ambika’s success in converting non-billable work — articles, treatise chapters, conference panels — into practice development is the kind of strategy Sunny Kim now teaches lawyers to do on LinkedIn.
Khurram Naik: Is there anything different you see about the ecosystem of AI businesses versus the tech businesses you saw some years ago and the impact that would have on—I'm just thinking about a young Ambika Kumar today. Like, what would she be seeing as "Hey, how do I create the opportunity on my platform to be servicing either the copyright holders or the AI companies?" How would you be thinking about—is there something different about this ecosystem or conditions today, maybe at law firms as well, for how someone—you—at the stage that you were identifying this opportunity, would act?
Ambika Kumar: Well, I’d be thinking about who cares the most about this. It's content creators, content generators, but also content users. And I think there's probably some room for growth in the area of helping companies who want to make use of AI. I just read an article the other day about AI and medical advice, identifying cases where somebody was able to find a treatment for whatever they had that had not been identified by their doctors. That seems like a really beneficial thing. And I have actually used such technology, even though I'm the daughter of two physicians. And you know, I don't know what's going on in that space, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are copyright issues, if there are issues on relying on the advice. Even though there's probably a disclaimer somewhere that says you shouldn't rely on this, someone's going to be like, "I relied on it."
I think every industry is having to figure out how to integrate AI. And so there will be a range of claims from employment claims—like, my reviews were generated by AI—to you just saw that the California bar admitted to having some questions generated by AI for the bar exam, to medicine like I mentioned. You know, I'm sure it will affect every industry. And I guess I wouldn't be so focused on the tech companies, even though I live in Seattle, because it's going to affect more than just them. And it's going to be in areas outside the copyright context too. All of that will be an interesting thing to watch. And then there's a question of how does Section 230 apply to AI? You know, when I pull up—I mean, this has already been decided—but like, for example, when I pull up a map and I'm looking for, I don't know, tailors in the city of Seattle and I get like a few options pop up, what if it's wrong? Is that the service's fault for giving me the wrong information or not? And we know that that kind of thing is protected by Section 230 because it's been decided at the circuit court level. But that's just a form of AI, right? It's a form of taking information and putting it in a different format and you know—and maybe even like, you know, recommendations are a big thing right now. So yeah, I don't know that I have a specific area that I would practice in or look for, but you know, the news is just as good of a source as anything on what's coming.
Khurram Naik: And I'm wondering for you—you mentioned, "Hey, when I'm in a position now where I can pitch, and you know, maybe 10 years ago it would have been a long shot, but by virtue of having serviced some of these companies and clients and your reputation, maybe with clients you haven't represented or companies you haven't represented, you've boosted the odds of getting this work." How do you—it seems to me that someone in your position could be balancing two different things: one is picking up work today where there's an opportunity, you've got a set of tools that of course expand and the law changes, but you've got a playbook to apply to companies and so you could just run that playbook. Or you could be spending more time thinking about—you’re doing some of this, talking about some of the evolution that you expect of either jurisprudence or pervasiveness of the technology and who it would impact, who are potential clients, potential people that could be affected by laws, and spending more time identifying some frontier of your practice. It seems to me that there's some sort of balance to be had between frontier work for you and executing on that playbook that you have today for clientele. Does that sound right? Is that something that you balance?
Ambika Kumar: Yeah, for sure. I think it's kind of scary for people who are used to doing one thing for a period of years to think about a big jump to something else. And it's not a huge jump, but it is a jump. And lately, I have been feeling a little bit like more of the same, no variety, and wanting some variety. And that could be a place where it comes from. But I think that I have a very specific focus and passion in terms of the First Amendment and dissemination of information that keeps me in this sort of—like, I don't want to do employment work, I don't want to do class actions that are not related to my field. There are a lot of general commercial litigators who are fine with that, but it doesn't drive me to do anything. And so—and maybe you've identified where I am right now. I've got existing work, but sort of there's this prospect elsewhere that I think about but haven't really done much to engage in and get work in. And I think partly because at this stage, it's counseling, it's not litigation. Because I mean, it is litigation in some senses, but we're just at the beginning. And so there is probably a lot of counseling that's being done. I know there is counseling being done by my partners, for example. And the counselors are not always the litigators, and that's true in companies as well. It's odd to me because it seems to me that when you're building a product and you want to know the risks of litigation, a litigator at some point has to be involved because there are things that we see—we're used to reading something and turning it around and making it seem like it's something different. But obviously that can't be the rule in every product that's developed, and clients do consult litigators, of course, but it's a much smaller group of people than the people that are litigating these issues.
Khurram Naik: On that topic, how do you get—so you're talking about how people can get counseled and understand risks they don't understand—how do you do that on the scale of your team? How do you get new ideas from your team? Or can you point to matters you've worked on where someone that was on your team that you manage presented some view that was contrary to yours that you adopted? How do you get new ideas into your work?
Ambika Kumar: I don't know that there's ever been like an idea that I ultimately disagreed with. There have certainly been ideas that I'm skeptical of. There's also new arguments that I'm pleasantly surprised someone has come up with that I think are really good. I am a firm believer in "two heads is better than one." And so I do a lot of talking with my team about various issues, talking out loud or in messaging, what makes the most sense here. Because there are many calls in litigation that are not easy. And I tell my clients that too, "Look, this is not one I feel strongly about, here's what I think." Because they should be participating too. But clients also provide new ideas. They'll be like, "Well, maybe we should phrase it like this."
Usually if a team member disagrees with me strongly, they'll be able to persuade me or I'll be able to persuade them such that we're never really on a different page at the end. And that's because my team is awesome: they're smart, they're open to discussions of different viewpoints. Hopefully they've learned from me. I mean, I think the priority is to serve the client best and we understand what the client's goals are. There's room for disagreement in approach, but there's very little that—I mean, not always, but like there are certainly times where I'm like, "That is a dumb idea." But they're not usually coming from my team.
New ideas also come like when I do appellate arguments, I have moot arguments with outside counsel from other companies—other law firms, rather. So here I am doing a moot with my client for a circuit court and here are these other lawyers that are basically my competitors helping me prep in front of the client. And actually, a client suggested this to me once and now I'm just going to make it a practice if I can from a cost perspective. It's super helpful because you've been embroiled in this litigation and you know what you think, but you don't know what somebody fresh to the case thinks. And so you know, I don't often call my competitors and say, "What do you think of this?" but I wouldn't put it—it's not out of the realm of possibility on certain things. I often ask the general commercial litigators, "What do you think about this?" So you know, I'm always soliciting input, and I think that's one thing the team likes about me is that I like to vet these issues and not just sort of be like, "This is what we're going to do." And hopefully that gives them the ability to raise—whenever somebody's like, "I have a dumb question," I'm like, "Don't say it's dumb because you're not dumb and it's probably not dumb." Yes, there are dumb questions, but they're very few and far between. So I want you to raise them.
And I think particularly with women, they're not—we’re not taught to have as much confidence. That's my anecdotal experience. And so the chances that I'm going to hear "I have a dumb question" from a woman versus a man are much higher. It's not that men don't do it, they just don't do it as much. And so I will tell the women on my team, like, "Don't do that. You're smart." And people did that for me. I remember one of my mentors, who's probably one of the best trial lawyers in Seattle, once put in a review that I needed to be able to speak up more in front of clients because I had some value to add. And I want people to feel that way because if I'm working with them, it's because they do have some value to add. And I'm looking to squeeze out as much value as I can for the clients. Because my goal is to—oftentimes it's not to continue their litigation, it's to get them out of litigation in a way that's consistent with their goals. And so my goal is not—in some ways, it's self-defeating in the sense that law firms have historically prized billable hours. But my goal is to spend fewer hours on my cases and have my team spend few hours on my cases, just enough to do a really good job and get rid of it, whether it's through a motion to dismiss or summary judgment or through a settlement of some sort. I think that's where I get new ideas. Sometimes it happens in casual conversation with friends, they'll say something and it'll make me think.
Khurram Naik: On the topic of—you mentioned this mooting approach, and of course that's only when there's an argument to be made at that point in the case. Is there anything you're doing on any hygiene you have on a weekly or monthly basis with you or your team that you think differentiates you or makes you particularly skilled as a litigator?
Ambika Kumar: I'm not one for formalized processes. Just to give you an example, I had an assigned mentor and then I had other people in my life as a junior associate, and I cannot say my formal mentors were even close to being as helpful to me as the people I worked with closely. And I would say the same thing about probably like—I mean, would it be a good idea to have a weekly or monthly meeting? Probably. But the reality is I talk with these people all day every day. It's not as if like I go off to a deposition, I'm gone. My messaging app is closed, but I'm sure that somebody has messaged me about a case, more than one person.
And so one of my associates, actually it was a newer one, you're familiar with her, she said something like, "I like this, you're kind of like a millennial, like you'll hash these things out over messages." And I was like, "Well yeah, I think it's more efficient." And that is unusual probably for someone of my generation, but it's just how I work. And so my chats are full of debates about what we should say or we shouldn't say or is there a doctrine that says this or what do you think of this. And so my whole life, whether personal or professional, is a back-and-forth with other people. It's how I operate. I think it's probably what makes me a good litigator. I like to see different styles and ideas and pick the one I think is best. That gets harder over time because it's sort of like, "I know this and I'm not going to be swayed." But the nice thing is the law changes, so it doesn't have to be that like I was wrong, it can be the law's different now. So it's a little easier to accept and seriously consider a different idea.
Khurram Naik: So you're the co-chair of this practice. It was this hard-won process that in many ways was the very thing you were building toward when you first joined your firm. So what could top this? Like, what could be more gratifying than having achieved what you have? You've got high decades of career ahead of you if you want it. So what is it that's going to motivate you? Is there some sort of goal or something like that from here? Is it something substantive like arguing at the Supreme Court? What is it that's that North Star that is the next level for you, if that's how you think of it?
Ambika Kumar: That's one thing, is arguing at the Supreme Court. I would love to do that. But even just—I don't know, I think we talked about this—the last few years I've really felt my gender in my cases and it's almost like the more high profile of a case or important of a case, the more I feel it. And I don't know why that is. But I would love to not feel that way. That would be a goal. I don't know how to get there; I think it might be impossible. But one can dream. I applied to be a federal judge a few years ago and I would seriously consider that in the future. To me, it would be very gratifying. I think I'd be good at it, and I think I'd be fair and I think it would be meaningful to me in a completely different way than what I do now. Those are the things in my career.
A lot of my overall goals are more personal, like raising my kids to make it so that other women don't feel this way—I have two sons—to make it so that that's not a thing, although I think it will always be a thing. Or taking care of my parents or making the most of the time that I have, knowing that it's finite. But you know, in terms of career, I think arguing at the Supreme Court, getting more cases that are high profile where I'm the lead and sort of the presumptive authority on what we're going to do—because those positions are very hard to get and for a variety of reasons. But I think that I would feel good about that if that happened more often in my cases. And I can see it possibly moving in that trajectory, so it's not hopeless. I mean, I really enjoy mentoring and I would love to find a way to do that. I also think I'd be a good mediator, but I'd have to figure out "How do I become a mediator?" and that seems daunting. But those are the things that are exciting to me.
Khurram Naik: I think there are obvious things about becoming a federal judge that are appealing: the influence you have, the variety of matters you take on, that impact you have on society. What is underrated about becoming a federal judge?
Ambika Kumar: Underrated? I don't know. I mean, I think just the ability, especially in the area of criminal law, to have the ability to look at somebody standing in front of me, make an assessment about what's going to happen to them is very meaningful. I also—to be clear, there are definitely drawbacks. I interviewed a few judges when I did this before I applied, and it's clear to me that it is not the life for everybody. And particularly right now, I'm not sure. You know, if I were the judges that were holding unconstitutional executive orders, I don't know. I mean, it would be thrilling in some ways, but it would also be scary in some ways. Just like, you know, leaving the country and coming back as someone who's brown—yes, a citizen, but still brown—is also terrifying. So not terrifying, but it is worrisome, and the fact that I have to worry about it is terrifying. I think judges have the ability to help shape the profession in the sense that, you know, when I'm talking about women and men or younger lawyers, older lawyers—some judges have a rule that's like, "We want more junior lawyers to argue." I think there's a lot of authority and power in a judge, particularly a district court judge, who has more of an ability to affect the day-to-day life of the people that are clerking for them, that appear before them, whether client or not. But and by being an example, that hopefully deter stereotypes.
Khurram Naik: Well, I'm looking forward to your potential confirmation in the coming years.
Ambika Kumar: It's not going to happen, but that's okay. Maybe, maybe.
Khurram Naik: Ambika, this was exactly what I hoped it would be. It was such a great glimpse into your really unique career path, how you think. Yeah, I’m not going to use the "S" word, I've already said it too many times. But yeah, I just think it's very easy to talk to you and you have a lot to share that I think is very relevant for lawyers at any stage of their career. So I really appreciate your direct communication as you said. So I just appreciate how much you have to share here and hopefully we can do this again.
Ambika Kumar: Thanks, I appreciate it.