After 43 episodes in 2023, the Legally Bond team is taking a break for the holidays! Kim and Kate reflect on the year and look ahead to 2024. We will be back with all things law in the new year. We hope you and your families have a great holiday season.
After 43 episodes in 2023, the Legally Bond team is taking a break for the holidays! Kim and Kate reflect on the year and look ahead to 2024. We will be back with all things law in the new year. We hope you and your families have a great holiday season.
Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bong Shenekun King. I'm your host, Kim Wul Price. Today is a special and shorter episode of the podcast, where I get to speak with our producer, Kate Femmea, about what we were up to in 2023. We also want to let our listeners know a little bit about our holiday hiatus and wish you all a very happy new year and happy holidays. So how are you, Kate?
Speaker 2:Good, glad to be on the other side of the podcast today. I know it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:We do this before we hit record, but now we're actually hitting record with our conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So people get to see what it's like, hear what it's like behind the mic before you hit record. Well, so we've come to another end of a calendar year on the podcast. I mentioned you on the episodes, but do you want to give a quick reminder to everyone about your day job here at Bond and a little bit about you?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I've been with Bond for three and a half years now, which seems crazy. It's a good three and a half years. It's been a lot of fun. But yeah, I'm the marketing coordinator for our Buffalo office, but I also do all of our social media and obviously the podcast and help with advertising and stuff firm-wide. It's great.
Speaker 1:It's kind of fun. So you cover the Buffalo office and all the rest of us in the multitude of other offices.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's been kind of. I've started to travel a little bit more to see you in Syracuse and do some more to our Rochester office, so kind of growing my horizons outside of just being Buffalo based.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great. I think it's great. We need to make sure that everybody gets to know how talented you are, so I'm glad that you are hitting the road a little bit. One for the listeners. I'm the Chief Strategy and Diversity Officer at Bond and I oversee Pro Bono and show the Wellbeing Committee for the Firm. And, of course, the Firm podcast is a side gig for both of us and one that I am not ready to give up anytime soon. All right, so, kate, anything you want to talk about what happened on legally bond in 2023?
Speaker 2:We definitely had a great year. I was kind of looking at the back end of our podcast and we did over 40 episodes this year, which is awesome. Over 58,000 downloads in 60 countries and over 1800 cities. So shout out to our German, UK and Canadian listeners.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right.
Speaker 2:Out of the US for us.
Speaker 1:I love it. Canada is another country. Those of us in upstate and West New York forget that sometimes. That's fantastic. I can't believe it. Like this thing that you and I just sort of like, hey, should we do this podcast thing and it's really. It's been great. We get a lot of feedback from those interviewing with us, our summer law clerks and our new associates and sometimes clients, and then some of random friends. I think I told you a story like a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a long time, was like oh, my husband and I listened to your podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly why we wanted to do this podcast is we do so many cool things within the law firm. We have so many cool people within the law firm too. We wanted to get those stories out there, even within the law firm. Having some of our attorneys, kansas City to New York City, were across the US like they don't necessarily get to know kind of beyond the what's, what's on your bio on the website and to kind of get those inside stories and figure out oh, I didn't know you did that very niche thing within your practice and it's been, it's been fun. This is one of my favorite parts of my job for sure.
Speaker 1:Me too, no doubt about it, and I think, as we grow as a firm, it's important because, you know, we started as a place where everyone knows each other, even when we were 150 or so lawyers, and now that we're somewhere in the 299 range 297, something like that it's good, like this is a way for people to make sure they still know each other. So when we get everyone together at an all attorneys meeting or a members meeting, or we get all the staff together, people kind of know who everybody is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, live episode from the all attorney meeting this May.
Speaker 1:We're doing it, we're definitely going to do a live episode, so I mean no pressure. I'm also like planning the content, but that'll be fine, I'm good, I'll bring the equipment.
Speaker 2:You just bring your voice and we'll figure it out Sounds good.
Speaker 1:I love it. I appreciate you keeping us on top of all the tech things, the live episodes. We hope to go to some law schools maybe at some point. So I think it's great, but we do need to work on our legally bond swagging.
Speaker 2:It is in the budget for next year, so it is happening. We need to figure out what we're going to do, and I think, too, we've had in this kind of was in my notes. One thing that we did this year was we had more outside guests, so outside of the firm. So a special thank you to Paula Johnson, sal Curran, amy Johnston and Mirna Santiago for coming and talking to us about stuff. We want to make sure that they get legally bond swag for giving us their time in there.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, oh and I think I have a live episode for us. Mirna Santiago runs Girls Rule the Law and Bon Chenequin King is helping bring that first time outside of New York City up to Syracuse, new York, and have that program. So I think we should do a live episode, absolutely. I'm in. All right, sounds good. All right, sorry, mirna, I just think I volunteered. You didn't see it, but that's great. I love it, yeah, hearing more about other people in the profession, things that are important to the profession, issues from diversity, equity, inclusion to well-being and many other things. So it's really I think it's been an important, it's great conversation to have. Yep absolutely.
Speaker 1:While we're preparing for 2024 and there are changes at our firm, kevin Bernstein, who's been our managing member of the firm for the last eight years and a frequent podcast guest.
Speaker 1:I must say he's going to be returning to full-time practice as an environmental and energy attorney. So many thanks to Kevin for all he's done for Bond during his term as a managing member and of course, we're going to have to have him on in early 2024 to talk about everything energy law because that is actually a very important topic in New York State, with some big quotas and projections and goals set up for the upcoming years, so it'd be great to talk to.
Speaker 2:Kevin about that. I think that episode will put him in the lead for most frequent episode guest on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I think maybe like Senator Night Live, like do we need to get him a jacket? That's like I don't know.
Speaker 2:A live stream of him receiving the legally bond? Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:I think so that might be it. So of course, that means we have a new managing member. My not too far down neighbor, brian Butler, here in the Syracuse office, has been on a podcast before, but he was elected a few months ago and has been shadowing Kevin and he will be our managing member and begin his term in January. So the plan is that the episode after Kevin or soon thereafter is going to be Brian talking about taking on his new role and his vision for the law firm. So I'm excited to have that conversation too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it'll be a good kickoff to our year and I'm looking forward to the next year. I think it's going to be an interesting year, kind of all the way around.
Speaker 1:in a good way, I think so too, I am a little scared sometimes with, like, contemporaries and I are now the adults in the room, but that's okay. I have confidence in Brian. I'm not sure about me, but okay. But we keep. We're thinking about other topics firm guests, non-firm guests, making sure we talk to not only attorneys but staff members. So that's all in the works in our very frenetic, sometimes, planning sessions. But, yes, we need to sit down and have another one of those soon, don't we? Absolutely All right, well, we appreciate all the listeners talking to us talk about issues surrounding the legal profession. We're going to keep doing that. I say it at the end of every episode, but we really do encourage people to send ideas for consideration. If there are topics of interest, we hope that they will do that. Kate, you just had some great ideas for the upcoming years we were talking. I think there's a lot of good things we can talk about, isn't there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got some exciting things happening for our attorneys in the firm. We're going to definitely highlight one of our attorneys with the Olympics coming up. That'll be fun, yes, and just like on Olympics, yes, what a 24 Paris. Yes, so we've got I mean, there's just so many cool things that keep popping up during the year. And I think another fun thing that we did this year we've done it in the past, but I think it stood out more this year it's highlighting pro bono week and we did LGBTQ plus history month and I know we do stuff with Juneteenth and just talking about these various highlights and having people speak around those weeks and days and historical months. Those are fun episodes for all of us because we can include more people at the firm and had those good conversations with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly as folks who have JDs you and I and law firm people and people who work at law firms who always love to learn new things, and this gives us an opportunity to learn more and to keep evolving and growing. So I think those are great conversations.
Speaker 2:Yep for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I say it all the time, I'll say it on the podcast. Again, I'm grateful for all of your work on the podcast. It truly is a bonus that there's really no record of how many times I say um. So thank you for your excellent editing, kate.
Speaker 2:Like I said before, this is one of my favorite parts of my job and it gets me to see you a little bit more frequently and bug you about your calendar and getting scheduled and it's really just selfish. So that way we can have our short conversations to organize the podcast.
Speaker 1:That's one of my favorite things too. I do think maybe you and Aubrey DeVos should have some type of a support group calendar.
Speaker 2:And club. We'll put a little asterisk next to support club.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Well, thank you. So last thing I was trying to figure out did we add any other references to our Utica, Indianapolis, like I'm not sure, besides the bills? But is that cheating when you have a Buffalo office?
Speaker 2:Like I think that's one that can stay on the stay on our list. But I'm trying, yeah, I was trying to think. I think we're so used to trying to hear Utica or Indianapolis or the bill, but it's just, I can't think of if we added anything this year. But stay tuned for next year We'll see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll see what seems to like come up frequently, I do think, and we just missed our opportunity. But I think that the Buffalo office and the Kansas City office should have one of those bets Like we'll send barbecue, you send wings.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that was a big missed opportunity. Well, we'll make sure that happens in 2024.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll get some more references in there. We know there'll be some women's rowing references, probably from the Olympics, and you know Brandon Stewart is from Syracuse. The US women's national team, the soccer team, a lot of players are from Rochester. We got to get some of those references in and maybe some baseball references. I'm sure they'll start coming up.
Speaker 2:Well, everything's looking to Paris 2024. So we got to start with that bandwagon.
Speaker 1:We're going to have to do it. We're going to have to do it Well, I'm looking forward to the hiatus, because that means maybe a couple of days off. I definitely count this as one of my favorite things that I get to do here at Bonn. I'm really looking forward to our episodes in 2024. Me as well. All right, thanks for all you do, kate. It's a great example of teamwork, and I've said it before, but thanks for putting up with my schedule and being my co-conspirator on Legally Bond.
Speaker 2:I do it gladly, All right take care.
Speaker 1:["legally Bond"]. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Legally Bond. If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at LegallyBond at bskcom. Also, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to Legally Bond wherever podcasts are downloaded. Until our next talk, be well and happy New Year ["Legally Bond"].
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