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She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she
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is true, is true, she is brave, she is she
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is you.
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She is you, she is you, she is sure, she
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is true, she is strong, she is straw.
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She is true, is true, she is brave, is bray,
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she is she is you.
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Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here
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on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host,
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Dori Di Carlo, and you know we are here a
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week after week, show after show, breaking those myths that
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morepreneurs and business women, especially those of us building our
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businesses from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake
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sales and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart,
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we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of
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women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward
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to bringing today's guest into our business spotlight. I'd like
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you to meet Laura Lester, a trailing solo attorney who's
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challenging the traditional law firm model. Fresh out of law school,
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she built a thriving practice that generates about two hundred
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and fifty thousand dollars plus annually while working part time,
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proving that attorneys can succeed without sacrificing their well being.
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Lauren's journey from new graduate to successful entrepreneur isn't about profits.
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It's about transforming how legal services are delivered, making quality
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legal health more accessible while helping attorneys work less, earn more,
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and serve better. I like your mission, Lauren, I really do.
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So.
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With that being said, welcome to Word of Mom Radio.
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Thank you, Dorian. I'm so excited to be here.
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I am thrilled to have you, and I would love
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for you to take us on your journey. What just
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made you decide to become a lawyer, And then I
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want to know how you built a successful practice right
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out of law school.
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Yeah, it's a little bit crazy. So that moment of
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learning that I passed the bar, as you can imagine
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for most attorneys, is absolutely thrilling. But I came to
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that journey on a little bit different of a path.
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So law is actually a second career for me. I
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spent about a decade in the web development space and
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just kind of hit the ceiling, figured out that that
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wasn't what I wanted to do forever, and so wanted
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to find a path that would allow me to be
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an entrepreneur. So I actually went to law school to
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open my own business, which most lawyers don't say, but
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I found that it would give me the freedom that
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I was looking for. I wasn't a mom yet, but
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that was on the horizon, and so part of why
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I wanted to have my own practice was so that
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I could be a mom and so that I could
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make my own hour. So finding out that I had
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passed the bar was going to get licensed with such
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a thrilling moment for me, But then it came with
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a sobering realization that I had no idea how to
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run a business. They didn't teach that in law school.
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They just hand you this paper and say congratulations, you
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can lawyer, now, good luck. So I looked around at
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what other lawyers were doing, like mostlorepreneurs probably do when
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you start a business, like, well, I don't know what
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is everyone else doing, and I found the same story.
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It was high, buildable our rates, litigate everything, keep cost
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really vague, and don't actually tell the client what it's
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going to cost. And I thought that stinks, like I
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couldn't be a client of a law firm like that.
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That wouldn't work for me. I got a budget, right,
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I have a family, I need to make sure I
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can afford this, and so I said, I'm not going
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to do it that way. I want to build a
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firm that I can be a client of, and so
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I started to piece together ways that I thought were
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more client centered. So how would I want to work
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with an attorney, especially in you know, high conflict areas.
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I did divorce law for a long time. Most folks
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don't want to fight till the death withouse and drain
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all of their retirement. They just want to have a
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resolution that works for everybody and allows them to move on.
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So I really focused on what do legal consumers want
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and built a practice around that. And it's been almost
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ten years down this will be the tenth year this year,
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which is really exciting. And just tried to have a
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bit of a different practice made that really successful. And
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so now I teach other lawyers who do not want
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to follow the traditional model and want more of a
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work life blend in their life how they two could
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do the same, which will hopefully give more of our
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communities access to affordable legal representation.
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I'm so happy to hear this because, as we talked
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about before we started, my children's dad and I divorced
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back in ninety four. We never went to court. We
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drew up our own separation agreement, had it notarized, and
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a year later took it to a mediator, and who
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thought what we were doing was so unorthodox. And I
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was like, you know what, we have three kids. And
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I kept telling my children's father because you know, he
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wanted to just go to court. And I said, you
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know what, we will never find a way to be friends.
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And he said, how can we be friends we're getting divorced.
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I said, because we have three children, and it's not
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their fault that we can't make this work. We were
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in counseling five and a half years, so it's not
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like we just said, ah, screw this. We did everything,
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it didn't work. We worked great as parents, we really did,
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and at one point actually tried to get back together,
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and our kids were like, okay, now we understand why
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we're divorced because they were six, four and two when
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we split up. And as you know, eight years later, huh.
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We did not work married. We just did and some
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people don't. But there's no reason to be adversarial about
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it when you have kids. And that was my son
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who was not even six years old. His friend. We
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were watching her parents have this knockdown, drag out fight,
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and after we left, he goes, you know, she doesn't
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mind that her parents are divorced. She kind of likes it.
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She is to birthdays, to Christmases, to bedrooms. How come
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people who get divorced don't remember that they loved each
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other enough at one point to get married and have
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a family. And out of the mouths of babes and
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I like what you're doing, because lawyers should remind their
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clients of that, not try to get them to fight
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about Aunt Betty's table that neither one of them want.
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So for you, how do you work with attorneys helping
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them learn that they can actually not have to have
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their clients become adversaries and still give them a quality
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service and everything else, working smarter, not harder. How do
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you work with them doing that? Lauren?
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God, it's a mindset shift, because you know, we're taught
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in law school and the profession as a whole is
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very adversarial. And so when you get out and you
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see folks who are further down the road that are
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just going to take everything to a drag out fight,
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you think that's the only way to practice law. And
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it's really helping attorney see that at the end of
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the day, we're a business that solves a problem, just
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like you would go hire a plumber when you've got
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a leak in your house, right, you don't want the
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plumber coming along and saying, well, I'm just gonna tinker
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and try all of these things and i'll billy you
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for my time and let you know when i'm done.
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You would be furious. She'd say, no, just fix the leak.
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What do you have to do to fix the leak?
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What's the quickest way we can get there? And I
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think attorneys have lost sight of that. It's happened certainly
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over decades. No way back in the day, attorneys were
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a flat fee. They were there to help solve a problem,
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you know, and then life got complicated and we sort
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of went along for the ride. So it's really helping
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solos in particular, remind them you're a business. You're here
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to solve a problem, and your clients want you to
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solve it effectively and efficiently. So a big part of
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what I help them do is have that mindset shift
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and then really focus on the solutions they provide, not
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the time they're spending, because when attorneys spend time, they're
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looking just to spend more time, and typically that means
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what issues can we bring up? Oh, you wanted that table, right,
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Let's make sure that we fight over that. And the
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client doesn't know any better because we're in the position
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of expertise and authority, right, so they think, oh, I
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guess we have to fight over the table. They don't
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realize there's another option. So it's really having attorneys see,
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you know, what solutions are you providing, How can you
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do it in a way that's based on the value
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you provide, not the time that you're spending, because that's
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not what legal consumers ultimately want, and then building a
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business around that so that they can work less oftentimes
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earn more, and then they're serving their clients better by
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actually giving them what the clients are looking for.
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Again, so refreshing to hear an attorney speaking like this, Lauren,
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I have friends who are attorneys. They are not looking
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to cut down their bill of the hours. They're really not.
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They are looking at the fact that they want their
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kid to go to Yale. So you know that five
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minute phone call you're going to get they're getting billed
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for fifteen minute increment, and you know, my hourly rate
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is three hundred dollars, so it's an eighty five dollars
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pluck and so really it's it really is. I'm serious.
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My mom heart is so happy you're listening to this
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because this is what lawyers used to be. You know again,
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you know, you sat down and it was like, Okay,
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here's what it's going to cost. What I mean, I know,
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this is kind of a strange question to ask you, though.
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What made that shift happen where lawyers went from here's
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what it's going to cost to that vagary of well
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we don't know how long it's going to take, and
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it's this is what I charge an hour. Why is
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that so prevalent in this profession at this point?
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Yeah, the history of it is different depending on who
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you ask, but in general, we can point it back
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to around the nineteen seventies where I think the world
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started to become more complicated and so cases got more complicated, right,
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the issues between civil parties, whether it's in a divorce
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case or a business transaction rate, it just got more complicated.
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We had more regulation and laws and things that we
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had to consider, and I think attorney said, you know,
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we don't know how to price this anymore on a
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flat feet because there's now instead of three variables that
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we're trying to control, there's thirty. So it made sense
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for them at the time to just build by the
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hour because they weren't quite sure. And I think in
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the beginning the intention was probably good. They were trying
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to balance all of the needs of everybody and find
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a solution. But then law firms came along and for
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a lot of associates gave them these very high billable
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hour requirements that folks just had to build, you know,
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eight hours a day, but to bill eight hours you
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had to work ten or twelve hours, and so it
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just became this snowball effect that then to hit those
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very high billable hour requirements, folks were just coming up
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with stuff to do and to make cases more complicated,
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or bringing multiple people, and so just kind of got
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out of hand. And I think now the market is
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telling us, hey, this doesn't work for us, And that
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goes from you know, your neighbor to the corporation down
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the street. They have budgets too, and they don't want
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to write a blank check and just say, hey, let
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me know when you're done. They want to know what
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they're getting, you know, for what they're paying.
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Again, the law firm model. I had a friend who
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became a paralegal and because you know, didn't want to
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bartend for the rest of their life, and you know,
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went through the whole thing and whatnot lasted six weeks.
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I was like, are you kidding me? I'm going to
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work sixty hours a week as a paralegal. I'm making
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what I made on a Thursday, Like, forget it. You know,
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they had this different idea of what this was going
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to become. And so I, for one applaud that you
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are looking at that solo practice and helping. How do
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you work with solo attorneys and those solopreneurs that are
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looking to work less without sacrificing the quality of their work.
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Yeah, a lot of attorneys, I think most of us
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get into this profession because we ultimately want to help people.
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But the machine that we're in the traditional model very
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quickly takes that away or just makes it really hard
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to sort of have that warm heart that just wants
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to serve our community. So when I work with my
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coaching clients and fellow solos who are looking to build
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a different kind of practice, we focus on what they
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need the most. So at a coaching client recently who
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just wrapped up, she's actually transitioning from an in house role.
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She's going to go out on her own. She's got