Every successful career is shaped by people who challenge us, sharpen us, and inspire us to think differently. Sometimes those lessons come from formal mentors. Other times, they come from someone willing to give honest feedback when it’s needed most.
In this episode of Verdict: Road to Recovery, Clarke Speaks reflects on two influential mentors who helped define both his legal career and the culture of his law firm. From a federal judge who challenged him to treat every client like they were his only client to a secretary whose relentless editing transformed his writing forever, Clarke shares how humility, simplicity, and servant leadership continue to shape the way he practices law today.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
🎓 Finding Mentors – Why seeking out great teachers changes your career
✍️ Learning to Write – The power of honest, constructive criticism
⚖️ Client-First Philosophy – Treating every client like your only client
🏛️ Starting a Practice – Advice that shaped an entire law firm
🌱 Leadership Through Service – How mentorship creates lasting influence
Featured Keyword & Other Tags
mentorship, legal career, trial lawyer, leadership, client service, law firm culture, legal writing, professional development, David Vicknair, Verdict Road to Recovery
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TranscriptClick to read
So what mentors did you have going through your career, and what did they mean to you, and what did they teach you?
So the first mentor that comes to mind — I worked for this federal judge when I was in college, my first summer. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do that summer, and I didn’t want to just get a job, you know what I mean, in a firm or whatever. I wanted to have a meaningful experience that would allow me to learn and be around really good people and smart people and people of character who would teach me something.
So I was telling a friend of mine about it, and he was farther into his legal education than I was, and he says, “If I was you, I’d work for a federal judge.” So I’m like, “Well, I don’t know anything about that.” He’s like, “Well, just write them all and ask them.”
And so we get a book from the library at my school, and I go through there and I start writing these different judges. There’s only like six of them in the Eastern District of North Carolina, so I write Judge Howard, Judge Boyle, Judge Britt at the time, Judge Dupree — I think that was all of them at the time. But anyway, I write them all letters, and then I wait, and I hear nothing.
And summer’s coming closer, and finally I get a letter back, and it’s Judge Malcolm Howard in Greenville saying, “Alright, you can come here.” And so I go there and I get an apartment, and I don’t make any money out of it, but I got to pay for my apartment stuff, and my dad helped me do that — which is interesting, because we had lost touch for a long period of time, so he was able to come back and help me. So it’s funny how it worked out. But I got this incredible experience by working for this federal judge that summer.
For example, I thought I was a good writer, right? I thought I could write. You know how you have these skills that you think you’ve got — I don’t like to brag, but I’m really good at it — so I thought I was a good writer. So the first day they go, “Here’s your assignment.” It was a writing assignment; I’m supposed to write a draft opinion for this judge.
And the judge has a secretary who works for him — her name was Helen Kraft. She’s not a lawyer, she’s a secretary. And I do my stuff, and I was like, “Okay, I’m done, who do I hand it to?” They say, “Well, you’re supposed to hand it to Miss Kraft.” And so I hand it to Miss Kraft, and I’m sitting in my office going, “When is she gonna—” I’m looking for her to come in there. So a little while later she comes in, she hands it back, and it’s marked from one end to the other. I’m like, what the heck, man — she unapologetically crucified every single thing that I said, and I was instantly embarrassed. I’m like, this is terrible.
And she did that to me every day that summer. I mean, brutal honesty — she’s not interested in sparing feelings — but she was the best writing critic, in my opinion, in the world. She was merciless, but she was so good, and she was so smart, and she was so concise, and she was so good at all this stuff. And really, that was an important thing for me, because I had included all this crazy language like Latin and stuff, and she was like, “This is nonsense. Good legal writing is simple and clear. It is not flowery,” and here I’m trying to impress somebody. It’s like the motto of North Carolina — “to be, rather than to seem.” That’s what this lady’s mission was. And so I learned a lot from her, and I still have nothing but respect for her.
Well, so the judge — there was this guy, Malcolm Howard. He was kept separate from me — he had his clerks, and then I was a summer clerk. So he took me to lunch the first day, and he talked to me about his legal philosophy, and that gave me some really good perspective. And then I’m in court, I can see him, but I don’t spend much time with him for the whole rest of the summer. And then at the very end — he got to know me through my writing and through my presence and through my contributions to discussions and those kinds of things. So he’s really the next mentor that I have, right?
So at the very end of the summer we go to lunch again, and he says, “So where do you want to work?” And he’s kind of a gruff, curmudgeon kind of guy — he’s a brilliant guy, and he’s a phenomenal judge and lawyer and legal mind, but he’s not somebody who’s sugary nice, you know. So he says, “Where do you want to work? What firm do you want to work at?” And I think he’s trying to suggest maybe he can make some calls, and I’m like, “Well, I don’t want to work at a firm.” He’s like, “What do you mean?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m gonna start my own shop.” And so he sits back a little bit, and he kind of smiles, and he kind of looks off into space — because that’s what he had done. I didn’t know that at the time; I did not know that he had started his own firm. But apparently — he went to West Point, and after that he went to law school, and then after that he had his own firm and he did trial work, and then he went to work at the U.S. Attorney’s office.
And so he comes back into our conversation and he says, “You gotta be like that guy Jerry Maguire.” And this is when the movie Jerry Maguire is popular — which was before your time. But the idea from Jerry Maguire is: Jerry Maguire is a sports agent, and he works for a big firm, and they just churn and burn, right? They try to represent as many people as they can, as fast as they can, as hard as they can. And Jerry Maguire has a conscience — a moment where his conscience gets to him, and he says, “I need to be paying closer attention to each of my clients and take care of these people individually as if they’re the only person in the world.” And so that’s what Judge Howard was trying to tell me — he was saying, “You have to take care of each client like they’re your only client.” And from that point forward, I said, “Okay, that’s good advice.” And in fact, our original motto was, “We take care of every client like it’s our only client.” And that’s evolved now — now we have more involved core values and a mission and vision and values and those types of things — but they all come from that concept: taking care of every client like that’s our only client. And that comes from him, and the influence he had on me, and the way that I think about this and the practice of law.
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