What I’d Set Out to Do

I never intended to practice family law. It was so far off my radar, I did not take a single class in family law in law school. My focus was entirely on Constitutional law and litigation. Through my involvement in the local anti-war movement and a bar association with a focus on social justice and human rights, I did a significant amount of work on behalf of war protesters, environmental activists, and animal rights folks – all people trying to be heard by the government and to get some kind of redress. I dealt with a fair amount of police brutality, as well, which sadly came as part and parcel of first amendment right-to-speech and right-of-assembly work.

“The NLG is dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system.
We seek to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.”

I volunteered at Partnership for Civil Justice, a DC law firm that continues to get significant judgments against the government for overreaching policies and its agents’ violations of the Constitution, and also on the defense team of the Towsontowne 8 – a group of charming folks who were arrested for handing out anti-war flyers at a mall. They Towson arrestees were delightfully uncontroversial, ordinary people quietly making information available to those who wanted it. Does the government not understand that the best way to radicalize its citizens is to arrest them and attempt to punish them for Constitutionally protected activity?

I was the Chair of the MD chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association that has been active since the 20s and was once a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee for working against McCarthy in his Communist witch hunt. I was all about social justice and democracy, not at all about who gets custody of the sofa when a marriage falls apart.

After law school, I took a year off to travel around the world. It was a life-long dream that I knew I would never make time to do once I got involved in practicing law. I sold my condo and used the proceeds to backpack through dozens of countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. I spent the largest portion of the year in Southeast Asia, living in hostels and simple lodging in small villages throughout these amazing countries. I had traveled extensively in Europe before, but the time I spent in “third world” countries gave me a different kind of invaluable experiences and perspective.

What I Ended Up Doing, part I

“The Women’s Law Center serves as a leading voice for justice and fairness for women by advocating for the protection and expansion of women’s rights through legal assistance to individuals and strategic initiatives to achieve systemic change. We are a non-profit organization that provides free legal representation and education programs to protect and empower individual women and their families. Advocacy, research and policy initiatives advance access to justice and equality.”

When I returned from traveling after law school, I wasn’t looking for work yet but was encouraged by a friend to apply for a job at a non-profit that, among other things, represents victims of domestic violence. It looked like a great way to help people, so I interviewed and was offered the job, which I accepted without hesitation or much consideration. At the Women’s Law Center of Maryland, I exclusively represented victims of domestic violence for about 2 years. I loved it. The pay wasn’t great, but it was incredibly fulfilling, if sometimes emotionally exhausting, work.

I was very lucky that my first job as an attorney put me on the front lines right away. For so many attorneys working at gigantofirms, it can be years before you even meet a client in person, let alone go to court to represent one on your own. I had a busy court schedule, sometimes handling 2-3 trials a day. It forced me to learn fast and to get over my newbie lack of confidence quickly so I could do the important work of representing people in literal physical jeopardy.

Litigating is an amazing thing. I can understand why some people hate it; if it’s not your cup of tea, it must be a horribly stressful ordeal. But if you like it? Awesome. A trial is a bit like juggling flaming batons while running a marathon and reciting Hamlet’s Fourth Soliloquy. You have to maintain focus on so many different aspects of the case at a trial: the facts you know; the facts you annoyingly discover during the proceeding (just tell your lawyers everything up front, people! It makes it so much easier to champion your cause!); questions for your witnesses; your witnesses’ answers; how to reframe questions if your witness is flaking under the stress and not getting his or her story out; the judge’s reaction to testimony; the opposing party and opposing counsel’s reactions; opposing counsel’s cross examination; potential objections; evidentiary procedure… and so much more. And that’s just a bench trial with no jury to consider! It can be both mentally and physically taxing, but there’s nothing like it.

And, unlike 80% of what lawyers do for clients, it’s the one part they typically cannot do for themselves. From knowing when you are supposed to stand up to knowing how to establish the legal foundation to get a photograph admitted, there are so many rules and procedures to follow to get your evidence before the judge, litigants without counsel are at a distinct disadvantage. Lawyers level the playing field; know which facts are actually legally relevant to the verdict; and (ideally) do not have a strongly emotionally invested interest in the facts or outcome. Those factors make it easier for a lawyer than a litigant to clearly present the information a judge needs so he or she can make a fair and just decision.

What I Ended Up Doing, part II

The family law thing sprang out of that job. I really enjoyed my work at Women’s Law Center and I loved that every day I got to help people in need. Time and again though, once I had helped to secure protection and some stability for my clients, they would ask me to help them with the next steps. They needed help with things like getting a divorce from their abuser or working out custody and visitation arrangements with someone with whom they couldn’t safely be in the same room. The funding of the non-profit was very specific about the services we could offer. Our role was crisis intervention, not long-term planning.

At some point, a colleague and I started talking about opening a private practice together. My future law partner worked with me at the non-profit. She had been a couple years behind me in law school and had started at Women’s Law Center a year or so after I had. I’d assisted in her training and appreciated her passion for the work we did. We got along well and shared the frustration of only being able to bring our clients to the threshold of their new lives, but to not walk them through and make sure they got settled safely.

We had also come to realize that with our non-profit salaries, if either of us needed an attorney, we would be hard pressed to come up with the funds for a retainer and a hefty hourly rate. We imagined there were many people similarly situated. Thus, we started our firm with a mission to provide access to the legal system to those who might otherwise not be able to obtain representation – people of modest-to-ordinary means. There had to be a lot of people who made too much to qualify for non-profit representation, but not enough to be able to afford traditional counsel.

Believing that your income should not dictate the kind of justice you get, we opened our firm with a very unusual business model. Unlike traditional law firms, which require an upfront retainer payment of several thousand dollars that goes into an escrow account that must be replenished whenever funds get low, we accepted a small retainer followed by a monthly payment plan that fit our clients’ budgets. We encouraged them to be very realistic when considering how much they could afford monthly. It didn’t have to be a lot, but it did have to be dependable. We would be relying on that money to keep the lights on each month. With a number of clients all sending in timely monthly payments, we calculated that, in the aggregate, it would be enough to pay the bills and give ourselves a salary comparable to what we made at the non-profit. It should even be enough to allow us to devote a percentage of our work to pro bono clients. We were careful to keep our expenses low.

My notion was that the attorney-client relationship was one of mutual trust – the client was trusting us to provide zealous representation and good counsel and we were trusting him or her to honor the financial arrangement we set. Every single attorney I knew told us it was a bad idea. They thought the idea novel and kind, but ultimately to be a recipe for disaster. Generation after generation of law firms used the traditional set up for good reason. Clients flake. You end up with a lot of accounts that never end up paying. You need that retainer money and escrow replenishment to make sure you are being compensated for the work you do and to can keep the business going. You’re not going to be in a position to help anyone if you go out of business. Still, I felt optimistic that by treating clients with kindness, respect and dignity, they would respond favorably and keep up their end of the deal.

Et voilà! I suddenly became a family law attorney and small business owner by accident.

The first few years were pretty great. It was good and meaningful work. My first clients at the firm were people who I’d helped at the non-profit. My mentor kindly threw me a couple cases, as well. Both my partner and I were well-liked by our clients from the WLC and they were happy to refer friends. Most of those friends had virtually no money, but that was okay. We had an access-to-justice mission and everyone promised they would pay their monthly bills. I was happy to be able to help people with a much broader range of issues, fostering long-term solutions, not just getting folks out of danger and placing band-aids on broken bones that needed to be set.

At first, we worked without pay, but we’d prepared for that. We could have taken out a small business loan, but I really hate being in debt. And I have always had this thing about having a low-fuss escape plan from things. As one who has enjoyed the freedom to indulge my wanderlust throughout my life, I have particularly hearty aversion to feeling trapped. I was determined to avoid having loans and property imprison me in a job I might no longer want someday.

It was just a couple months until we were able to start paying ourselves. We had tons of clients, both paying and pro bono, and our business plan experiment seemed to be working out imperfectly, but okay. I quickly learned a lot about my new area of law; was busy with negotiations, settlements, and court cases; and continued to be able to help a large number of domestic abuse survivors. In control of my own schedule, I also had the luxury of being able to arrange my work so I was always available for my kids. I never missed a single performance or field day or class picnic. I was even able to go to my daughter’s school several times a year to participate in Diversity Day, American Education Week, to read books to her class, and bring cupcakes and treats in for Halloween. In retrospect, I see that I worked way too much and was carrying an immense amount of stress, but at the time, I thought I had a pretty awesome work-life balance.

After a while, though, that sense of balance no longer existed. I constantly felt like I was behind schedule and never managing to catch up. Negotiations, document drafting, trials, tax filings, accounting, billing… I was Sisyphus, staring at my computer every night, wondering how I could be working so much and making so little progress (or money). I struggled with bitterness toward my clients and the profession in general. Within 5 years of opening the firm, I wanted out.

Next time… Why I Left Being a Lawyer