Khurram's Quorum

Khurram Naik
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How elite lawyers made decisions. Traditional legal media focuses on outcomes. But this podcast focuses on operating principles: how lawyers assess risk, build judgment, and choose opportunities. The podcast is a library ambitious lawyers can consult to learn how exceptional lawyers think, and our guests return to document their progress.

  1. Jun 1

    053 Rohit Nath: how curiosity leads to the frontier

    Rohit Nath's story includes crafting a $1.5 billion settlement with Anthropic, which if approved would be the largest copyright class action settlement ever. But I think what's much more interesting is the process Rohit used to get here: following curiosity and overlooked opportunities. We discuss: What Rohit discovered by reading a Supreme Court decision 100 timesThe deliberative and iterative process to crafting a path to victory in a frontier disputeVisualizing arguments to guide whether to take on a challenging matterHow Rohit hones his craft by listening to Supreme Court argumentsThe advantages of following legal issues others find boring If you like this episode, here are three more you might like: 049 Louis Tompros: creating adjacent bets — how small, adjacent matters can become the training ground for a frontier practice.047 Tim Yoo: how to study elite performers to find an edge — turning preparation into a performance system when the stakes move from the brief to the courtroom.046 Mani Walia: the lunch that launched a fund a decade later - trust, focus, and alignment — how lawyer-to-lawyer trust becoming real business years later, this is the relationship-compounding companion episode.About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 33m

  2. May 13

    052 Tim Chen Saulsbury: doing the up-front work

    Tim Saulsbury is an IP litigation partner at MoFo. Tim's story is about doing the up-front work. Whether it’s: commanding the technical record to make the most out of trial advocacy, looking for creative early wins, orbuilding a moat in Japan with relationship-driven client development Tim anticipates risks by taking a client-centric view of what success looks like and builds a responsive practice.  This is another episode that explores the relationship between being strategic and making the most out of opportunity, and the relationship between focus and diversification.  If you liked this episode, here are 3 others you might like: 047 Tim Yoo: how to study elite performers to find an edge - preparation, physiology, and treating trial work as a craft you can train for.048 Neel Chatterjee: testing assumptions - juries, credibility, and how great trial lawyers revise their assumptions after real-world feedback.049 Louis Tompros: creating adjacent bets - being ready for openings before they appear and building a career through smart adjacent opportunities. About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 30m

  3. Apr 15

    051 Alamdar Hamdani: seeing around the corner in enforcement

    Alamdar Hamdani is a former U.S. Attorney who now helps clients anticipate where enforcement priorities are forming before they are fully revealed. In this episode, we explore how Alamdar synthesizes executive orders, DOJ messaging, leadership signals, charging patterns, and institutional incentives to help clients see around the corner. This is a rare opportunity to learn how an experienced prosecutor builds a practice from the ground up. This episode demystifies how this new chapter gets written. If you liked this episode, here are 3 others you might like: 049 Louis Tompros: creating adjacent betsHow to find your edge and create opportunities before the market hands them to you. 047 Tim Yoo: how to study elite performers to find an edgeBuilding repeatable systems and using deliberate preparation to create real advantage. 046 Mani Walia: the lunch that launched a fund a decade later - trust, focus, and alignmentHow to compound relationships for years before they turn into visible business outcomes. About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 38m

  4. Apr 8

    050 Shashi Kewalramani: compounding skills across a nonlinear career

    Shashi Kewalramani has built a nonlinear career across elite private practice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, criminal defense, the bench, and now mediation. This episode is about how skills compound across those chapters. Some of the most valuable legal skills are not built in the most obvious places. In this episode, we explore: Nonlinearity openness to roles that do not look “on path” from the outside why the safe path is not always the path to the best skill development how varied experiences can clarify what you are actually good at CJA trust is built through time, transparency, and action indigent defense can be elite training in client counseling the hardest thing is often getting the truth from your own client Magistrate jurisprudence magistrate roles are underrated schools for writing, discovery, and case management repetition builds judicial pattern recognition Compounding advantage skills learned in one role transfer into the next deep listening, credibility, and clear explanation become differentiators later a nonlinear career can produce a more durable kind of expertise If you liked this episode, here are 3 others you might like: Judge Vince Chhabria for more on why process is substance, and how judges think about managing real cases in real time.Judge Matthew Kennelly for a deeper look at judicial decision-making, docket management, and what credibility looks like from the bench.Louis Tompros for another conversation about nonlinear legal careers, adjacent opportunities, and building something distinctive over time. About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 41m

  5. Mar 17

    049 Louis Tompros: creating adjacent bets

    Judge Richard Linn first pointed me to Louis Tompros years ago, when he told me my entrepreneurial approach to breaking into patent litigation reminded him of one of his former clerks. The story he shared stayed with me: Louis created his own chance to argue at the Federal Circuit by stepping into a pro bono inventor appeal. In this episode, we explore how Louis has built durable edge through high-agency adjacent bets: Agency create your own reps instead of waiting for permissiontake manageable risks to accelerate learninguse pro bono work, teaching, and relationship-building to create career-accelerating opportunities Adjacency bounded adjacent bets strengthen the core rather than distract from ittrial and appellate work sharpen each otherpatent, copyright, and trademark work inform each otherplaintiff and defense work reveal the other side’s blind spots Teaching teaching forces you back to first principlesit makes you more creative as a practitionerin a mistrust-heavy courtroom, the best advocates help the audience feel capable of deciding Client perspective the client is the fourth audienceyou can win the case and still miss what matters most to the client Gift-giving long-term business development starts with doing useful things for people before there is any immediate returnrelationships compound on an uneven timelinedoing good work and doing the right thing are not separate strategies The throughline is simple: create your own reps, make bounded adjacent bets, and let the learning compound. About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 42m

  6. Mar 11

    048 Neel Chatterjee: testing assumptions

    Neel Chatterjee has been testing some assumptions. In Neel's return to the podcast, we discuss what's changed in how he works. The recurring theme of this episode was testing assumptions. That includes: testing what jurors really think about "big tech companies"building consensus through a new model of a professional association of lawyers, Law Firm Partners Unitedchanging his belief of how to go to trial based on what he learned from fifth-graders.We also talk about specific techniques to use to invest in your network, like looking for the "twofer". About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 46m

  7. Feb 26

    047 Tim Yoo: how to study elite performers to find an edge

    Timothy Yoo is a first-chair trial lawyer who treats litigation like sport. Tim models his preparation and execution based on principles elite performers use: Prepare your physiology. Cortisol and adrenaline are part of the job; rehearsal is how you meet the moment.Pre-commit decisions. Use decision trees in outlines so you avoid reactivity under pressure.Credibility isn't just what, it's also how. Factfinders and clients read conviction, nuance, and authenticity through delivery.Be a reliable narrator. Your job is to help factfinders see the other side and draw their own conclusions.Adversaries are opportunities. Opposing counsel is your foil/dance partner, then you shake hands at the net.You'll use everything. Variety across matters compounds into mastery for the next big stage. About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 23m

  8. Jan 27

    046 Mani Walia: the lunch that launched a fund a decade later - trust, focus, and alignment

    When Mani was an associate at Susman Godfrey, he took a new colleague out for lunch for a vulnerable conversation about the demands of elite practice. A decade later, Mani's lunch friend was now a rainmaker - and Mani was who he called for funding. In this episode, we explore how Mani has used principles of trust, focus, and alignment to go from trial lawyer to GC of a multi-strategy fund to launching a litigation fund: Trustbeing trusted as a peer trial lawyer created the relationships that led to the fundthe intangibles become the tangiblesFocusfocusing on Texas trial lawyers creates operational excellenceit also enables them to act faster on decaying assets using limited informationAlignmentaligning upside and downside with firms creates a flywheel for trust and repeatabilityit also allows them to take risks others shy from About the host: Khurram Naik is a partner at Freshwater Counsel, a boutique recruiting agency focused on patent litigators. Before founding the agency, he practiced patent litigation at Goodwin. Khurram hosts Khurram’s Quorum, a podcast with in-depth conversations with federal judges, first-chair trial lawyers, and chief legal officers on their career challenges and successes. Khurram also shares insights on LinkedIn.

    1h 21m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

How elite lawyers made decisions. Traditional legal media focuses on outcomes. But this podcast focuses on operating principles: how lawyers assess risk, build judgment, and choose opportunities. The podcast is a library ambitious lawyers can consult to learn how exceptional lawyers think, and our guests return to document their progress.

Information

  • Creator
    Khurram Naik
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    53
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Khurram Naik
  • Show Website
    Khurram's Quorum

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