Anusha Srinivasan
BEFORE AXIOM: PILLSBURY WINTHROP; WINSTON & STRAWN
Two years shy of her 30th birthday, Anusha Srinivasan crafted a list of life goals she vowed to accomplish in the next year and a half. “I wanted to get a sense of where I was and where I wanted my life to head.” Mastering the classical Indian dance she had studied, and abandoned, as a child was her first endeavor. When one watches her pose, completely attuned to her body as it executes an unimaginably balanced position, it’s hard to believe that she hasn’t spent a lifetime dedicated to this art.
“Your audience is only getting one holistic experience; they probably don’t even realize when you’re dancing how many different things you’re putting together,” Anusha says. “But they will notice if any of the elements is even slightly off. Every part is a separate piece that has to contribute to a harmonious whole.”
“In a weird way, it’s a lot like law,” Anusha affirms. “You’re taking all sorts of information which you have to synthesize and present as one thing,” she says. “Behind the final product are a whole bunch of pieces that have to be put together in order to produce the final output.”
A busy lawyer who clearly enjoys her work, Anusha is a person who welcomes the challenges and rigors of law, but is not afraid to take a different path in order to accomplish her professional and personal goals.
Born in India, Anusha came to the U.S. with her family when she was seven. After a brief stay in Detroit, the family settled in San Jose, CA. Upon completing law school, Anusha began practicing at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw in San Francisco. “Big firms are the best training ground you’ll ever receive in any form of practice,” she says. “You have to always be on top of everything so you learn really fast.” Enjoying the work but craving a smaller firm, she moved to a satellite office of Winston Strawn in San Francisco. Even there, Anusha did not feel that she had enough control over her own schedule, and started to question if becoming a partner was the right path: “What am I doing here if my goal’s not to become a partner?”
Having reached her fifth year at her firm, she knew it was the right time to be thinking about her next move. Shortly after adding “Find a new way to practice law” on her list of pre-birthday goals, Anusha heard about Axiom from a friend of her brother’s.
Her current engagement, practicing employment and labor law at Yahoo!, has brought her both the professional challenges she enjoys and the freedom she needs to be in charge of her own time. “Axiom lets you be yourself, and it lets you practice law. It seems like those are two very simple things, but to get both of those things in a very disciplined, rigorous, and still intellectually challenging legal environment is actually one of the hardest things to find.”
Spoken like a true expert in the art of balance.