Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Holly Buckley on Bad Career Advice and Breaking the Mold in Big Law 6-3-25
03 Jun 2025
In this episode, Holly Buckley, Chair of Healthcare at McGuireWoods, joins Scott Becker to share two pieces of the worst professional advice she received.
Full Episode
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by Holly Buckley. Holly leads the healthcare department at McGuire and Woods. She works at the intersection of healthcare and private equity and is a tremendous leader, a force of nature.
We're going to talk to her today about a subject that we don't often get to visit with, but used this subject recently with another guest and just had a wonderful podcast. The podcast topic today, Holly, is what's the worst career advice or professional advice you've ever received? You don't have to note who it was from.
I hope it wasn't from me, but, but give us a second on what, what do you think of as bad career advice? What have you heard? What have you ever been told? Give us a few thoughts on what is bad career or leadership advice?
Oh, uh, it's funny. Cause I think that the two things that first, uh, came to mind are probably not very profound or helpful to, uh, a broader audience, but I will share them nonetheless, just because they're the first thing that came to mind and you took me by surprise with the topic. But I think maybe there's a broader lesson that can be pulled out of them.
So the first was when I was in law school and I was looking for work after law school. And I'm a first generation lawyer in my family. And I didn't really even know what a law firm was. When I went to law school, I kind of knew I was doing healthcare transactions and didn't really know the venues to do that.
And there was a particular professor that had a pretty defined view of what a big firm lawyer looked like. And he told me that he did not think that I was big law firm material and that maybe I should seek a job in government, which is obviously a great place to work also and has a lot of opportunities.
He judged me based on his perception of what he felt big law was and what government was and what he thought I was capable of or fit for. And it was a surprise to me that he would have made that pronouncement. And he apparently was wrong because I'm pretty, pretty far in on big law and have done relatively well for myself. And I think
Maybe the lesson from that is don't let others project onto you their impressions and go with your own gut and make your own decisions and freely try to decide the advice of people.
Yeah, so let's take a second on that because I think that's absolutely fascinating because there's so many different ways. One is I'll vouch for Howie. She's become an equity partner, a leader, one of the top lovers in the country, does tremendously well in leadership and in debt for clients.
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