When Jennifer Broder was in third grade, she served as the judge in a class mock trial, she remembered on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast. After the trial was over, she said, she received a note from the father of a classmate who was a “very prominent entertainment litigator in Los Angeles,” where Broder grew up.

“He commended my performance and said that I would make a great judge one day,” she said. “That note really stuck with me, perhaps subconsciously. Someone at the top of their field saying that I would be good at this was something that I always thought about as a potential career path.”

Broder, now an M&A partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP in Los Angeles, fulfilled that early promise. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2011, she clerked for Leo E. Strine Jr., then the chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, before joining Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

There, she worked with the late Robert E. Denham, the longtime outside lawyer to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A) and Warren Buffett. In addition to enjoying the subtleties of the law, Broder showed a pragmatic streak as an associate. She brought a printer to a meeting where she and Denham were counseling a board as it was considering removing the company’s CEO. The printer proved invaluable in what turned out to be a document-intensive process.

Broder also discussed her move last year to Baker McKenzie with a group of MTO lawyers and how her practice has evolved with the changes in the Los Angeles economy and the convergence of entertainment and technology.

Listen to the podcast with Jennifer Broder below:

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