Jessica Riley Reflects in a Law360 Story on Lessons She Learned as a Junior Lawyer

Hinshaw partner Jessica Riley of our Dallas office recently spoke with Law360 about the advice she would offer to junior lawyers based on her own career experience.

In the story “5 Mistakes Veteran Attorneys Would Avoid Given A Do-Over,” Jessica details how she learned that investing nonbillable time into volunteering for professional organizations, such as her involvement in the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, could help her cultivate relationships and develop leadership skills that would be invaluable on her path to partnership.

Jessica’s reflections show there is a path to successfully balancing doing the work with professional growth. Her key takeaway: consider nonbillable service not as time lost but as an investment that can significantly pay off over the course of a legal career.

Read the Law360 excerpt:

“When you are at any firm, you quickly begin to measure your day in six-minute billing increments and can easily forget that billed time, while vital to your success, cannot sustain you. Sometimes it is the nonbillable commitments that change your career path and outlook,” said Jessica Riley, a financial services litigation partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP.

Riley recalls stepping away from billable work a few years into her career to get involved with the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, and discovering that the practice of law is more fulfilling when connecting and building relationships with other attorneys.

She says she wishes she had not felt guilty every time she stepped away from her desk to invest time in the group, of which she later became a leader, because her time there became just as important to her professional growth as the hours reflected on a time sheet.

“Looking back, I remember being so concerned about taking an hour and a half out of my day that I failed to appreciate the intrinsic benefit of stepping away from billable work,” she said. “Those opportunities to cultivate relationships and leadership skills proved invaluable to my path to partnership.”

• Law360: “5 Mistakes Veteran Attorneys Would Avoid Given A Do-Over” (August 27, 2025)