Khurram’s Quorum – Ep 037: Sunny Kim on quit BigLaw, own your narrative, LinkedIn upgrades in 20 minutes

Khurram’s Quorum – Ep 037: Sunny Kim on quit BigLaw, own your narrative, LinkedIn upgrades in 20 minutes

Sunny Kim quit her BigLaw tax job without a backup plan, wrote one LinkedIn post about what she gained, and 60,000 people read it. Now she teaches lawyers how to build authentic personal brands on LinkedIn—and why the "I'm humbled to announce" posts are killing your visibility.

This episode is different from our usual deep dives. It's a practical, punchy 50-minute bootcamp on LinkedIn for lawyers. Sunny breaks down why lawyers think "trust = skills + outcomes" when clients actually want to know if you're someone they can work with, why calling yourself "Attorney" instead of "Associate" plants seeds for career ownership, and how to repurpose client alerts into high-performing posts in under 20 minutes.

We cover profile optimization (your headline and About section are doing 80% of the work), the formula for helpful content (vulnerability + insight = relatable education), and why commenting on major voices' posts is a low-risk way to build visibility before you're ready to post your own content.

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:

• Helpful = Vulnerability + Insight: Why the "I'm honored to announce" posts feel safe but add zero value—and how combining emotional relatability with sharp takeaways (like breaking down a 350-page IRS regulation into three points) builds trust faster than credentials alone ever could.
• The 20-Minute Profile Upgrade: Two changes that take under 20 minutes but transform how recruiters and clients find you: (1) Replace "Associate at Firm" with "Attorney | [Practice Area]" in your headline (don't stay mysterious—you're not helping yourself), and (2) Optimize the first four lines of your About section with practice area, years of experience, major matters, and awards.
• Repurpose, Don't Write From Scratch: The safest way to start posting is educational content—take client alerts, articles, or conference takeaways you've already created, add a hook that shows you did the hard work ("I read the 350-page report so you don't have to—here are 3 takeaways"), and post it. Track the impressions and bring those numbers to performance reviews.
• Why Personal Brands Are Taking Over: Law is a people business, and even institutional giants like Blackstone and Meta are betting on personal brands (John Gray running videos, Zuckerberg becoming the face of Meta)—lawyers who build visibility now control their narrative, attract opportunities on their terms, and aren't dependent on their firm's marketing machine.

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Full Transcrip

Khurram Naik: This is Khurram with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Sunny Kim. Sunny practiced in Big Law and then did a big reset to discover her passion for helping lawyers find and share their voice through social media. So we're doing something we don't normally do in this podcast—we're going to talk about some specific approaches lawyers can use to improve their LinkedIn presence. So let's get into it. Here's Sunny.

Khurram Naik: All right, Sunny, I'm excited to do this with you. This is going to be very different than the format I've done in the past. Usually I do like a two-hour deep dive. We're aiming for like 40 minutes here. This is going to be short and punchy, and we're going to dive into LinkedIn for lawyers. This is a topic that means a lot to me because I'm so active on LinkedIn, and you have just kind of like blown up on the scene and you're doing such a great job of sharing content for lawyers for how to be active on LinkedIn and sharing your story about how you came to this, which itself is so remarkable. So there's not a chance we're going to cover all the things I want to cover in 40 minutes, but I think this will be an interesting, short, punchy overview of LinkedIn and a little bit about how you've come to it.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, I'm excited.

Khurram Naik: So then how… so you practiced in Big Law, you were a tax lawyer, and now you teach lawyers about how to use LinkedIn, and I think you do some other consultations as well. Give me the short of this story because I think it's such a remarkable story.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, sure. As you said, I was at Davis Polk and then at Gunderson, and I practiced as a tax associate there for about four years. And most recently I was at a private equity fund as in-house counsel and doing some tax and fund formation work there. And last year I think I just burned out, and I knew it was time to leave when I realized that I have the best teammates, like the best boss, I'm doing substantive work that's interesting, and if I still feel kind of lost—like I'm not sure what my next step is in life and I'm not sure what's my reason for getting up and I don't feel super pumped about every day—I was like, I think I need to just kind of give myself a break and figure out what it is that excites me and what I want to do. So I just put in my notice without anything really lined up, which I know is very risky, but I always loved writing and I naturally just gravitated towards it. And after two months of quitting, I just put up a post on LinkedIn about the two things that I feel like I gained since I quit my job. One of them is control over my time, which I value very much now. And that post just resonated with a lot of people. It’s the first post I wrote on LinkedIn, and I think 60,000 people read it, which was huge at the time because I didn't have a ton of connections.

Khurram Naik: That is huge, I have to say.

Sunny Kim: So it just resonated with a lot of people. And since then, I've been writing on LinkedIn, and I just had a lot of lawyers and even founders and executives just reach out to me asking how I write and if I could help them write as well. So I started doing that for free in the beginning, and then people were getting results—like they were getting clients, they were getting seen for job opportunities. So they were like, "I think this is a valuable service, you should charge me for this," which is how my business started. And so now I've been writing content primarily for lawyers and also coaching them if they want to do more writing themselves, but just giving them more instruction on how to optimize the format and the types of topics that work really well on LinkedIn. So that's my short story.

Khurram Naik: That's awesome. And you know, it's funny because I was a patent litigator and routinely people make comments about how patent litigators aren't famous for their personalities. I remember I worked with a tax lawyer early in my career—I didn't work with her directly, but worked at a firm with her—and we had an icebreaker, we're going around the room, and she said… we were all asked like, "What's your favorite book?" and unironically—unironically—she swore up and down she meant it, she said her favorite book is the Internal Revenue Code. So that's I think what patent and tax lawyers are better known for is that sort of… So I mean, I love that you are like a breath of fresh air, I think.

Sunny Kim: Thank you. That’s funny that you say patent litigators have that sort of rep, at least maybe among themselves. Two of my clients are actually patent litigators, and I think they write very interesting stuff. There's so much out there… I think, I mean, it's not patent, but one of the attorneys who attended one of my sessions, she wrote about "The White Lotus" and how there's a character on the show who wears Duke gear pretty regularly, and if that's a trademark issue for Duke, anyways, because he's kind of a shady character. And so she sees those little things just from watching shows, like media. There's a lot of trademark and patent issues that people may be very curious about, I think especially with fashion brands as well. So I feel like compared to tax law, you guys probably have a more interesting take on things that people care about, but that's interesting that you guys have that sort of rep from amongst yourselves.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I think there's lots of ways to take pretty dry topics and make them interesting. I think we've probably all had an experience of maybe school or law school, a course in law school or undergraduate where there was a course heading into it that we thought was going to be really boring and then somebody really made it come alive through skillful storytelling and vivid anecdotes. And so I'm really struck with your LinkedIn presence. I think you do a great job of sharing helpful ideas, sharing moments and vignettes from your life, even really small ones, but that still help people get some sense of insight and transformation. I feel like I can be really interested—there's so many ways we can jump off and talk about LinkedIn for you and what works for you. I think the storytelling part is really interesting to me because I sense that you intuitively, or maybe you're doing it in a structured way, you include transformation. Like I think that's a key part of every part of your story—like from that first post about how you came to quit your job and then were just figuring things out, and then that iterative process of sharing publicly of what you were working on and building and getting people to buy into and cheer you on in your story. It seems to me transformation is a key part of that, right? Just even the smallest moments, what was the transformation that I experienced that is an insight to someone else? Does that resonate with you?

Sunny Kim: It totally does, and that's interesting you mention that. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I'm just thinking back to a couple of my last posts and yeah, there is definitely that transformation arc. And I think that kind of content resonates with a lot of professionals, but especially lawyers because I think in our profession there's a tendency for people to want to show their most perfect side of themselves, right? And you want to be perceived in this really polished way, which I totally understand, that comes with the territory. But I've seen from not just my own content but from other lawyers who are sharing stories where they highlight transformations where we've all been in that place where we felt a little bit underprepared or just kind of trial by fire in a way and we weren't fully… we didn't feel fully equipped to handle the responsibility we were given. But somehow we had people alongside us or maybe we just figured it out on our own and got from point X to Y. Those stories work really well because I think so few lawyers are willing to be vulnerable about that. But that earns people's trust because I think so few people are willing to share that, and it is really showing your growth, right? And your maturity and your ability to even thank other people who are working with you to get to that transformation. So I think it builds a lot of trust and that's actually helped not just me, but like a lawyer client of mine get client leads because there's just a lot of lawyers out there who are really good at what they do. But I think the people that lawyers… like the lawyers that people want to work with are lawyers that they feel like they have a connection to and they trust, and I think sharing stories like that builds that trust.

Khurram Naik: I think trust is such an interesting word that you're connecting here because, yeah, I'm so interested in what the connection between trust and insight is. And maybe the way that I'll explore it is because I think how lawyers typically think they earn trust—you hear it all the time—is "Oh, if you just do really good work, that's what will make you trust me. You'll see I'm excellent in court, I win all these cases, or we get all these deals done," whatever it is. I think lawyers publicly and maybe privately as well assume that that is the direct connection. And I think lawyers are very skeptical of things like… they know that relationships are important, and I think they're still very skeptical of that. I guess one way to explore… I guess I'll be interested in your take on that. What is the connection between trust and some of that vulnerability you're talking about? Because I think so many lawyers think it's "trust equals skills." Show you my skills and outcomes, that's what will make you trust me.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of layers to building trust. So I do think there is a lot of validity in establishing trust through doing good work, obviously, and there's also trust that's built by sharing helpful information with people. So if you are the lawyer that is proactively educating clients—let's say like if you're like a fund lawyer like me and you are sharing knowledge on LinkedIn about different financing options for anyone who wants to raise funds for like a startup or something—then I feel like because you are providing that helpful information to someone proactively, you are kind of establishing that trust. And then once they know about you, then they're going to be able to check you out and read about the different matters you've worked on to even build that trust further. But the thing is, I think there's a lot of lawyers who win a lot of cases, do great work, have a lot of transactions on their resume, but I think that next level is establishing, "Do I want to actually work with this person? Does this person seem like someone that I could see myself actually collaborating with and enjoying the process with?" And I think that's where the more vulnerable sort of, "I'm a team player and I acknowledge other people who work with me and I'm a mature person who is able to show that I am growing and I'm not perfect"—I think that's where people kind of connect on a deeper level aside from just doing good work or showing that you've done good work.

Khurram Naik: Your comment on the growing thing is so interesting. Like I… it's so interesting because I value growth and I communicate around how I grow on LinkedIn, but I didn't tie that directly to the value to a client to say, "Oh, you are willing to say you're not perfect and grow" because I think even I assume that clients want somebody who is fully formed and perfect or whatever. So why do I share that then about my personal growth? Maybe I intuitively did it for the reasons you're describing without realizing it.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, I see posts of yours where you do that.

Sunny’s courage in quitting BigLaw and building something new reminds me of Jaimie Nawaday, who took a different kind of career risk — launching Disrupting Drinking as a BigLaw partner, putting her reputation on the line to challenge the corporate cocktail culture.

Khurram Naik: Okay. Because I mean, I'll say that I explicitly have a formula that I keep in mind for myself and I share for other people, which is—I think the goal is… I had a mentor early in my legal career, a litigator, who a simple principle that he used in his advocacy was rather than disparaging the opponent or getting hung up on some technical aspects of their brief or whatever, what he would do is say, "What opposing counsel has done is not helpful. Here's what's helpful." So his North Star was "helpful." And that has been my North Star since then as well. I find that to be such a powerful tool—to focus on what is helpful. And so for me, for LinkedIn in particular, I think I have a simple formula: Helpful = Vulnerability + Insight. That's my simple formula for LinkedIn because we've all seen one or the other. We've seen things that are imbalanced on vulnerability or imbalanced on insight. So if it's got too much insight, then it's just like, "Here is a digest of the latest Supreme Court decision." It's just like, "Okay, I've got the raw facts and legal analysis you just dumped on me, but I can't connect to this dry subject matter or you, even if I'm interested in the subject matter." It's just like, "And now what? What do I do with this now? Okay, so I have these facts, I've lodged them somewhere in my head, now what?" And you, lawyer, I know nothing about you. Yes, I know that you're… I can see from this digest that you are capable of reading a Supreme Court decision and distilling the essence of it down, and okay, that's helpful that you're able to make something complex into bullet points. That's valuable. But other people can do that too, and just why would I work with you versus another lawyer? What's good about you or your platform? So that's the imbalance in insight. Imbalance of vulnerability are people who come and just dump all their emotions like, "I cried in my office and it was so hard to get through this day." Okay, and what do I… that's human, I get that you had an emotional experience, I get that, but what do I do with that? You know? So both are very extreme, they're not helpful. But if you combine the two, then what I'm showing you is like, "Hey, here's some maybe hard-won insight. I gained this insight through some hard-won experience"—so vulnerable plus insight. And so then it just becomes a lot more relatable to say, "Okay, yeah, so right, I see how all of us experience challenges, I see now how you can get insights on the other end of that. It can be counter-intuitive. So I relate to you in that you went through something difficult and got something valuable out of it. Now you're sharing with me, that's so helpful you're doing that." And so like, hey, you're helping me, you're relatable, you're the person I'm drawn to. So like that to me is my goal. And it sounds like you and I are both on that same…

Sunny Kim: Yeah, I think I just… I would love to hear your example post that you can think of that does both of that in one post. Because my approach has been if it's like educational content, then it's educational content especially for lawyers. But like you said, it's really helpful when they break it down in a way that's actually coherent and you're able to understand it instead of just saying, "I wrote this post or this article about this" and then just linking it. Like the educational post should try to summarize what the article's about and actually kind of… it's not about you, it's more about the reader and your future clients and why they should even read it in the first place. But that's like a separate bucket in my mind from the more relatable post. And with mine, there's always… there is like a transformation, but there's always some sort of underlying takeaway that is good. So as an example, when I wrote a post last week about just me not having M&A experience and joining a firm where that would be my focus, within that post I talked about a mentor at my prior firm who was really beneficial in teaching me M&A from start to finish. And so underneath that is basically me acknowledging my mentor and how much of a help he was, and also kind of promoting my old firm, Gunderson, about their senior lawyers having a big investment in their junior lawyers. So there is transformation in there, but underneath that there's like a deeper message that I'm trying to convey. And I don't want it to be like just a sob story of just hard times and it ends with that. That doesn't… that’s not an effective post. There has to be some sort of overarching growth or gratitude or a reflection that's helpful for other people to understand.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, that's fair. And probably as a practical matter, maybe a better way to put this is like there's a spectrum that both of these are on. Any given post is on a spectrum of these two qualities. And yeah, some posts are definitely… it's not even, right? It's not like 50% vulnerability, 50% insight. There's definitely like one post is going to be heavier on analytics, one post is going to be heavier on emotions. And yeah, I mean to your point, like I'm thinking of… there's periodically I revisit, you know, the Big Law associate chart. And something that I… you know, I was a life science major and so I'm used to studying charts and making conclusions based on data. Like you look at data and say, "What is the story this data is telling?" And so, looking at the associate chart, the story that I see in that is that, you know, post your fourth to fifth year is really when the inflection point starts to take off for your comp. And so, but then it starts to plateau past, say, your sixth year. So it's like this kind of S-curve. Well what accounts for that? And so I connect that to your value as a lateral associate—how early you frankly don't have a lot of value because you don't know anything yet. And then you know something, you know enough between your third and sixth years, maybe more third and fifth years. And then from then on, you're kind of locked into your firm because you're too senior for another firm to bring you in because they don't have enough runway typically, especially for litigators. And so that chart, like that's a pretty… that's a very analytical approach to that topic. And so what I'm trying to do as far as maybe vulnerable is the wrong word used, but maybe emotional is a better word used. And so maybe helpful equals emotional plus insight because I'm not talking about some personal experience I had there, it's not a vulnerability that I'm talking about there, but the emotional aspect I'm saying is I'm helping people understand what that means for them and how they're valued, how to think about themselves, and create some awareness of "Hey, here's something you have to be aware of—that this chart is analytically, objectively telling you this data that you can make this strong inference from." That's… I'm arming you with a tool to empower yourself to take control of your career so you make decisions about whether or not to lateral and the consequences of not doing that. So it's empowering people to share this content.

Sunny Kim: Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I see that. I definitely see that. It sounds like that would be educational plus relatable content.

Khurram Naik: Maybe that's what it is. Okay. Helpful plus relatable content.

Sunny Kim: Because they're getting that analytic broken down by you, but you're also translating how that analytic really impacts them and kind of factor in to whether or not they want to lateral or not. So there is more… it’s not just educational, there's some sort of relatable component where you're relating it back to how it impacts them. So that's just how I'm translating in my mind, but yeah, I think that's a really good example. And I was actually… yeah, I was thinking of another… it wasn't my post, but I saw… I think that's a good structure because I saw someone else do that with a case that she had like… or like she basically got a major approval that's really hard to get for her immigration law firm, but she also talked about the vulnerable part, which is that this was like a really big struggle because they weren't able to get it in the beginning. And she kind of walked through the different things and the approaches that she took to eventually get it. So it educated other people about how they could also get the same approval by taking those steps. But then there was a transformation because she got from point X to Y. And it’s not saying that she sucked or anything, it was actually like very relatable and like in a way like, yeah, transformational. Because everyone has to start from somewhere, right? And when I talk about transformation, it's not saying like talk about a time when you like really sucked and made a bunch of mistakes and you failed a client. It's more like something that everyone can relate to where you're junior or you're doing things for the first time, and that's just relatable for everyone. Everyone's been in that vulnerable point. And it's like, okay, like what did you do to get and evolve from that point to get to where you are now? Like I think those are the ones that work well, especially like I feel like people get promoted or they get like recognized on certain lists. That the transformation angle works really well when you share those posts because it makes you not just seem like you're bragging about the award. It's also like, "Hey, like I got this award, but it took like these steps or it took this mentor or my colleagues to help me really get there." And that's a much more relatable sort of promotional post compared to someone who's just saying, "Hey, I've been… I'm honored to announce I've been…" so, yeah.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, and with my podcast, what I strive to do is carve out the vanilla middle of what you just kind of… what you just talked about where, you know, what I don't do in my interviews is say, "Hey, can you tell me about the importance of hard work, mentorship, and network?" You know, just like… we've all… there's all kinds of mainstream legal publications that will have… you can pull up any one of their interviews and the headline is something about that, right? And so what I try to do in these episodes is I say from the outset, I when I'm talking to the people I interview I say, "Hey, we're carving that out. That is something that we are not doing here. What we are going to do is the two extremes on the other end, which is tell me about the very real challenges you have faced and face today. And then also talk about… so that's what's going to help us apprehend around the other part, which is what makes you really good? What is the strategy, the skill that you've applied? You can tell me about the luck, sure, I'm sure there's some luck, I'm sure there's a team involved. I want to hear about you—you did something exceptional, what was that?" Because no one's going to be able to really learn from what you've done if they don't really understand what you've done that's exceptional, and they're not going to relate to it—you're not going to be like a relatable person unless there's something vulnerable about you that they can relate to. And just like, if you just sound like a machine, "No, I'm just… I crush things, I work 100 hours a week, I write the best briefs," then like, "Okay, like you're just like some insane robot that I just can't relate to at all. It's just completely irrelevant to me that you are successful in that way." So I work really hard to help people… and it's hard for people because people are not used to talk about either of those things. They're not used to talk about things that I'm not good at, and people are not good at used to talking to things that they're really good at. But I think that's where the really good stuff is happening.

Sunny Kim: So you take this moment to get that sort of challenge plus why you're good at something from your guests.

The trust-building Sunny describes — vulnerability plus insight — connects to how Dai Wai Chin Feman approaches networking. He calls it non-transactional generosity and invests daily in relationships without expecting anything back.

Khurram Naik: Yes, and those two things aren't like… this isn't like a LinkedIn post where those two things are happening in one story or whatever, but those are two aspects of each of these lawyers I'm looking to draw on in order to learn from them. Because what I'm going to carve out in the middle is the vanilla boring stuff of "I'm so honored" and "I'm so humbled" and that kind of stuff. Those kinds of parts of their story, the canned part of their stories is what I'm carving out from there.

Sunny Kim: Oh sorry, I wasn't sure if you're asking a question or if that's just making an observation.

Khurram Naik: No, just making an observation.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, no. Yeah, it's funny because someone mentioned for every lawyer post that starts with "I'm humbled to announce" or "I'm honored to announce" or "I'm thrilled to announce," there should be a tariff on those posts. Yeah, there should be. It’s just so overdone and it's so generic and it's just not, I don't know, it's not really memorable. And I also think it kind of turns people off a little bit because it's just so overdone and we've seen it so much. But I think there are really good ways to be more creative about it, and I actually do see more of it in the feed compared to prior years—I don't know if you feel the same way—but I think there's been more genuine storytelling from lawyers as more and more people actually come onto that platform, which I think is great because there's more examples for people for people to draw from rather than the very typical posts that we've all seen.

Khurram Naik: I want to get into some… you know, you've got some great brass tacks so we can get into for some actual tips for lawyers. So I want to get into that, but I think my observation that I'm curious to get your reaction on is I think that many lawyers think that vanilla middle just now, that's what's safe. And so that's why they put that out. It’s like, "Well, I'll just put out what everybody else is putting out." But by definition, that will not stand out. The only reason to make a post on LinkedIn is to stand out. If you're trying to say the same thing as everybody else, you might as well not post. It literally adds no value to say what everyone else is saying. You wouldn't do that in a brief, right? Would you say something that the judge has already heard? No. If you're having a reply brief, you better say something that you didn't say in your opening brief. So same thing on LinkedIn, same principle. If you're going to say something, say something different. It doesn't mean to say something crazy and just like, you know, wear Groucho Marx glasses and just be a goofball or whatever, but you have to say something different.

Sunny Kim: And different doesn't mean unsafe, right? Different can just be adding one more layer that everyone else is not adding. Like in that post where you're saying "I'm honored to announce," instead of just saying that, just adding people who you want to thank, who helped you get that award or promotion or whatever. It’s not unsafe to add it, I think it's actually better and enhances your post. Because if… I mean, we've both been lawyers, imagine if we were tagged in a post like that, like how good that would make us feel for someone to win something big and acknowledge us as part of that achievement. That's actually better for me and for you. So yeah, I definitely hear you that people are more inclined to stay safe, but like you said, the way to stand out… because it's really at the end of the day, it's a visibility game and you want to get your name out there. And the reason why these social media platforms are effective is because you're doing it at scale as opposed to meeting each person one by one. So yeah, to do it effectively, you have to kind of lean into adding something that not everyone else is doing, but still keeping it professional.

Khurram Naik: Agreed. So let's get into some of that about how to present yourself. So you've got some ideas on profile optimization, your headline, your about me section. Tell me about how lawyers should think about presenting themselves in that way.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, one really simple tip that I think any lawyer can use is to optimize their headline. And I know that there are so many lawyers who just use "Attorney" or "Associate at [Blank] Law Firm." But even just adding your practice area goes such a long way. Like I want to hear your perspective on this as well to see if you agree with this. But when you search for lawyers, if someone just has "Associate at Firm Name," you're not able to see if they qualify for the position that you're trying to look for, right? Like if you're looking for a tax associate, it's much harder for you to find them if they don't have that in their profile. Is that right?

Khurram Naik: Yeah, and I think… well this is really interesting because I think any number of lawyers might think that there's value in being mysterious, and any number of firms model that, right? So there's like, I think particularly the white-shoe firms are much more… like if you pull up a lawyer's profile on one of these white-shoe firms' pages, it'll be extremely bare-bones and just say, "This is a corporate associate." And I don't know the reasons for that, but the easy cynical take would be that that makes it difficult for that talent to find its way to other firms because then I can't identify what this talent can do if I'm a recruiter. And so, yeah, I think no one is doing themselves any favors by being mysterious. I think it's helpful to share, "Here's what I do, here's what I'm good at" along the lines of what we were just talking about. And you don't have to have a narrative about it. I know that any number of lawyers are concerned about whether sharing something on LinkedIn is attorney advertising and contravention of rules of professional conduct. But just, even if it's just "Hey, I'm a private equity funds regulatory lawyer," whatever it is, "I'm a patent litigator," just having a short description of your subject matter just seems to be pure upside and no downside.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, definitely. Because… yeah, that's interesting. I have noticed that about certain firms keeping their associates mysterious. But you want to be in control over your own career, right? And if there is a really good opportunity, you want to make it easier for people with those opportunities to find you. So I think updating your headline to show your practice area… and I also want to add that for associates, instead of just saying "Associate," I would just advise that they put "Attorney" because I think that establishes more credibility and especially if you're trying to build thought leadership and speak from a point of a trusted advisor, an expert advisor. I think that title change alone helps you establish that. And we've all kind of been in situations where we look up the other lawyer that we're going to speak to before a call, right? And there's definitely… if you actually just say "Attorney," people have to scroll through and they could probably figure it out based on when you graduated from law school, but that's just a lot of work. And you can kind of have a little bit more confidence going into negotiations or other matters if you people don't really know that you're a first or second year or third year associate. So those are the two tips that I recommend for headlines.

Khurram Naik: I couldn't agree more with that. And I think the latter is going to be difficult for a lot of associates at law firms because the associate title is… it comes with a partnership track that you're on. So there's attorneys at firms that are off-track… if attorney is your official job title, that 99 times out of 100 means that you're not partnership track. And so associates correctly understand the cachet in being an associate. But when I practiced law, I did exactly what you did. I put "Attorney" on there. I knew that, yes, I'm aware that the cachet is with associate when it comes in Big Law, but the purpose of LinkedIn isn't for me to… I'm not trying to win points in the Big Law sphere. I'm already in there, so I already have those points. This is an option for me to get points with people who aren't in the legal sphere. So they just… they don't see me as "Associate" or "Partner," they just see me as an attorney, and they'll come to me then. And so, yeah, I completely agree with you. And I can't say, you know, if I was a more skilled Big Law associate I'd still be there. Like there's a reason why I'm no longer in Big Law because like that was not the practice of law in a Big Law format in the time that I was at a firm, like that was not my forte. But I do think "Attorney"—calling yourself an attorney on LinkedIn was something small within my control to take ownership of my career and that planted the seed for where I am today where, you know, I'm an entrepreneur and I own my work product. So I think that's the direction you're heading in in your career and I assume that it is because that's why you're taking ownership of sharing things on LinkedIn. Then yeah, I think you definitely should think about calling yourself an attorney and not just an associate.

Sunny Kim: Yeah, I agree with you on that. And along the same lines, I think on LinkedIn people are not really spending a lot of time on really understanding who you are. So you want to make it super easy for them to get that information very quickly. And one of the best ways to do that is to add an About section. It's just the first section that will appear if they scroll a little bit down, and it will only show the first four lines. So in those first four lines, you want to make sure it's very clear what kind of practice area you're in, what are the types of clients you serve, your years of experience, major matters that you've handled, as well as any awards or publications that you've been in because all of those things are trying to establish credibility and build some level of trust from the get-go. So people who optimize their profile to just maximize those first four lines, I think, really get those opportunities much faster than people who spend or that kind of waste that space or don't even have that at all. So that's another tip I recommend on your profile.

Khurram Naik: Great. I think that's helpful. Both of these—I mean, how long could this possibly take someone to rework? Maybe it takes a little time to think about, but this seems to be two things that can get done in under 20 minutes.

Sunny Kim: Oh yeah, for sure. And you can just… I think you can just take ChatGPT or any other gen-AI tool you use to paste in your bio and have it generate something for you for both of those sections. So yeah, I definitely think it could be done in 15, 20 minutes. And I also think you bring up a great point earlier about taking ownership over your career because I think a lot of us kind of feel safe in having the credentials and being at a Big Law firm, and we believe I think early on, because no one else tells us otherwise, that that alone is enough. But I think the world is very competitive and the higher you go up in your career, it becomes even more competitive. So you really need to kind of fend for yourself and watch out for your best interest as an attorney and really take ownership over your career. And building a presence on a social media platform and really just putting your name out there makes it so much easier for you to gain that control over your career whichever direction you decide to take it. So I think it's important to be intentional about how you want yourself to be perceived and how that perception is going to help you get to the opportunities that you're aiming for.

Khurram Naik: And so aside from seeking opportunities, what are other reasons why people should consider writing on LinkedIn? Like what is it that people… what are the reasons why people would even want to make posts on LinkedIn to begin with?

What Sunny teaches on LinkedIn, Ambika Kumar did through traditional channels — building a nationally recognized First Amendment practice from Seattle through articles, treatise chapters, and proactive thought leadership. Different platforms, same principle.

Sunny Kim: The main reason is law is a people business. And at the end of the day, of course they're going to contact law firms and like look at their names, but they're going to have to work with certain lawyers at those law firms, and you want your name to be the name that pops up because you have done the hard work of investing time into building a presence where people already know about you and trust you. And at the end of the day, yeah, like you can't just depend on your firm or company. You want to make sure your name is out there to get those clients, those firm leaders to sort of recognize you first. And that is why I think a lot of people, not just lawyers, are building their presence on LinkedIn. Before, I think Blackstone, its name would just stand on its own, but now you see John Gray, who's basically going to be the next CEO, he's investing time into building his own personal brand. We see running videos of him because he wants to also be more relatable and build trust with people like his institutional clients. And Mark Zuckerberg, same thing. I think before he was kind of… I think Meta or Facebook had a bigger presence, but I think he's seeing that there's other tech leaders who they are becoming the face and not the company. So everyone is sort of leaning into their personal brand outside of law, and I think law is starting to sort of gain traction and follow that trend. But the reason is that people just know that personal brands are where the world is going. And so we all I think need to lean into that.

Khurram Naik: I think part of what you're talking about, I know in tech circles there's a lot of distrust of traditional media outlets and so there's this concept in tech circles of going straight to your audience—you know, just getting direct access. And of course you're using things like social media platforms to do that, but you're not using traditional news outlets for that. So I think that's also driving a lot of it where they can shape the narrative directly. And so I think the same principle follows—that that law may be slow to it, but then you have an opportunity—this is an amazing opportunity to be early to it. And I think some of that's important to underscore as well—is like by definition if there is an opportunity, that means you're early. And by definition, something early means there's not going to be a bunch of other people saying, "Here's how to do this." So like if this looks weird to you, if this is like uncomfortable for you—like "I don't see other people doing it"—that's what makes this an opportunity. If everyone was doing it, there would be no opportunity.

Sunny Kim: Exactly, that's exactly right. Did you read that article by Alex Sue where he talked about the benefits that he got out of establishing a presence on social media?

Khurram Naik: I'd be surprised if I didn't, but I don't recall this one.

Sunny Kim: Oh yeah, but he actually mentioned exactly what you mentioned, which is you are able to shape your own narrative because you may not always agree with what your firm is doing or what your company is doing, but you want to put your own version of how you perceive yourself and how you want to be perceived out there because that just gives you so much more control over how you are as a person as opposed to just having a company or firm doing that for you. So I think yeah, that's one of the main reasons that it's so important to build and lean into a personal brand. You put it a lot better than me, but yeah, I just wanted to talk about that again.

Khurram Naik: So we're on the same page. And look, I know we're running into… we've got a stop here coming up here in a few minutes. Is, yeah, I think the most likely answer is that you'll have to come back and we'll have to talk for hours more about all the ideas that you have about sharing ideas. Are there one or two—now that we've done… I think it was helpful to establish the reasons why someone would even post on here to begin with—are there a few tips, one or a few tips, however many you want for how people should think about what they'll write?

Sunny Kim: Yes. I think the easiest way to start is to start with educational content. Because I think there is some courage that people want to work up before they start sharing more relatable posts. So the first step I think that's most low pressure for people is to repurpose things that they've written—maybe client alerts, articles—and post about that on LinkedIn. But add something to it where you summarize what it's about, who's the audience, why they should care about it. So once you get that first post out, it's going to feel much more comfortable for you to start exploring more relatable posts that really deepen the trust. And after that, if you still want to work up more courage to post, I recommend going to other major voices in the legal industry and commenting on their posts because that is one mini-post that I think of where you are still sharing your perspective and putting your visibility out there. And especially on big accounts like yours, for example, people really read those comments, and you can even see that now LinkedIn shows the number of times people view comments, and it could be very significant. So that is one other way where you could chime in with your own experience or thoughts that really add value instead of just saying "Great insight" or "Congrats" or whatever. And then after that, you can start off by writing a more relatable post like we talked about—maybe something about your award or a reflection about your career journey and why you joined your firm or your practice area. Those are things that are not really risky, and as long as you preview to the people who are tagged in the post that "Hey, I might mention this to thank you for this thing you did for me"—like I've done that myself with all the partners that I've written about, they love it. So and then, so I would do that. And then all of these posts that you have written about the firm or that are adjacently related to the firm that put the firm in a great light, I think you should track the metrics of those posts and the impressions, which is basically views, that you've gotten on those posts. And then bring it up in a performance review or talk about it when you interview with another firm that you want to lateral with—that "I did all these things that really promoted my firm and it got in front of 20,000 people." Like that's a value-add that I think shows that you have like a business development mindset in terms of not only promoting yourself but also getting your firm's name out there. So I think those are some of the tips that you can just immediately use.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, I love those. Those are perfect. I can resonate so much with that because I remember when I was an associate, like "What's safe? What's safe to post on?" And I remember for… we had a blog on tracking the biosimilars litigation market. And so we would have little biographies of the different people who contributed to the blog. And so we did add some like personal questions in there just to add some flavor and make it more fun in that way. And so there's a post about… so when it was my turn, I talked about "Hey, here's this mango smoothie that I've been making," whatever. And so then I decided to say, "Hey, when I got on LinkedIn, okay, here's this mango smoothie I'm making and here's like a little bit about me from my firm blog." And so like that was me doing this incremental stretch that felt safe. Like, "Okay, it's a little uncomfortable to talk about a smoothie I made, I know it's not really professional, it's not like something that relates to my work as a patent litigator," but a lawyer I worked with messaged me saying, "Oh yeah, I saw your mango smoothie thing, that was great." So it was like, "Ah, okay, so people… it's okay to be relatable and just share yourself." And so just the things you're talking about about repurposing existing content from your firm or things that you've done or talked to mentors—I love that because it's just like small steps that are safe to just practice sharing ideas. It's also when you talk about repurposing, it's not writing from scratch because, yeah, if you're busy as hell as an associate or other lawyers, you don't have time to sit down, the luxury of sitting down and work on some new post. So just make it easier for yourself, already have something on the paper that you can work with and just digest. And like you say, ChatGPT is a tool for getting things out the door. Like if I was new to this, I wouldn't be shy at all about using ChatGPT to generate the substance of a post because that just gets me in the game, just gets the ball rolling and plenty of room from there to add your mark and stamp on it. But it just gets the ball rolling, gets you the identity of the kind of person who makes these posts.

Sunny Kim: Oh yeah, 100%. And because you wrote the article, even if you used ChatGPT to think of a good hook and write it, you can verify that it wrote the correct information because you wrote the article and you know about it. So you can totally leverage ChatGPT. I would just highlight that when you write posts, it's very important—and you know this really well too because I see your hooks are really great—it's important to make sure the first three lines are what grab people's attention. So you don't want to use the first three lines to say, "I wrote this article about this topic" and just use all this legalese that's hard for people to understand. A very simple framework is to show that you did the hard work. So let's say it's about digital asset reporting—the IRS released the 350-page report about it. How I would do it is saying, "IRS released a 350-page final regs on digital asset reporting. Three takeaways that crypto companies should know." Because that shows that you did the hard work of reading the regulation or just reading the full thing and you're just breaking down the most important points that people need to know. And that could apply for any agency regulatory updates, cases… but people love when you do the work for them and then they're just getting the takeaways. So that's a really simple framework that you can use.

Khurram Naik: I love that. And what I would add to that—again, that's very safe to do that. And what you could do that was like if you want to stretch a little bit is to challenge yourself a little bit, I should say, is say, "I saved you the five hours of reading this, and here's the three points." Like to really call out like, "Oh my God, that would have been five hours of my life and you spent that five hours and now you're going to share with me? I'm in."

Sunny Kim: People love that! And people love even like when you go to conferences, like "I went to a two-day conference talking about this topic. The most important takeaways from panelists," and even tag the panelists. They love that, it gets your name in front of them. This is really low risk, and if anything I think firms really like that because it puts your work and your association with the firm on other people's radar.

Khurram Naik: Yeah. I think we could go on for a really long time. I think you've got so many good ideas here. So reluctantly I think we should wrap up now. But Sunny, this is amazing. I love the energy you bring to this. I saw you attended your free session recently where you were sharing these ideas. Your presentation was phenomenal, your energy was super high, people throwing you questions every direction and just like no matter what the question, you were excited to take it on. So you have such a passion for this. And so I think you're already making a huge impact from the people that I know because I've mentioned you to several friends of mine and they said, "Oh yeah, I just… I love Sunny's work." So I'm so happy to have you on here and then I'm hoping that you'll say yes to another one of these.

Sunny Kim: Oh yeah, I'd love to. Let's do a full one next time. I will make sure I have a lot of tips to share because there definitely are more. So I would love to come on again, and I want to thank you again for inviting me. This was a lot of fun, it just kind of flew by. So we'll have to do another one. But thanks again for having me.