#130 My personal experience engaging a lawyer recently
Recently, life presented me with a situation that led me to be on the other side of the table—now the client seeking legal assistance. Losing my mother was a deeply personal experience that exposed me to the impersonal, complicated and confusing legal world that far too many people encounter. So today I want to share my experience with you to illuminate what this experience should not be.
I've often spoken about my reasons for setting up my own business and my mission to educate and empower other business owners. My journey into this venture was marked by my experiences in traditional legal practice—a world defined by six-minute billable units, stress-laden success, and a significant lack of focus on client satisfaction.
When I started my own business, I was determined to prioritise the client experience, drawing inspiration from my personal understanding of what clients truly desire—a holistic, supportive, and empathetic approach that transcends the transactional nature of legal services.
In this episode, I talk about my recent experience engaging a traditional legal firm and why this reaffirmed my passion for the way I do business and the need for change in the legal sector. I was frustrated and disappointed by the lack of personal interaction, the non-transparency in fee structures, and the disconnect between expectations and reality. It reminded me that not every firm is aligned with prioritising client comfort and confidence.
But, as with any story, there was a turning point. I eventually found a law firm that resonated with my values—a firm that embodied the personalised, transparent, and supportive approach that I strive for in my business. The contrast between these two experiences reinforced the significance of a client-centric legal journey.
I hope this episode inspires you to seek the experience you deserve and it reminds you that you don't have to settle for anything less than transparent, empathetic, and professional legal support.
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[00:00:00] Tracey: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Rise Up in Business Podcast. I'm going to share with you today a recent experience that I had personally when I was engaging a lawyer. The reason I'm going to share this with you is because I'm gonna shine a light on what this experience should not be.
[00:00:41] I talk a lot in my business about my why, why I set up my business, what I stand for, what I aim to do in my business, and how I want to enrich lives. I've also talked a lot on this podcast about my personal journey in making a decision to start this business and why it is that I very much stand for doing law differently.
[00:00:59] For a little recap for those listeners that are new around here and that haven't heard me talk about this. So in short, the early part of my career was spent in traditional legal practice, the traditional law firm, the bums on seats, the time costing six minute billable units.
[00:01:17] The definition of success being stress and overwhelm and burnout. The performance reviews with partners being all about the money and your budgets and where you are sitting. And no one ever asking me back then, or caring about how satisfied my clients were, how supported my clients felt, how much impact I was making on their lives.
[00:01:38] very early on. my supervising partner at the time in a performance review said to me, I don't much care about that. When I asked him whether he'd spoken to my clients to gauge the level of client satisfaction, his words were, and I remember them verbatim, I don't much care about that.
[00:01:58] So there were a lot of aha moments for me earlier on in my career. But the point is I experienced it. I experienced that traditional law practice. I was in a litigation and dispute resolution practice area so it was male dominated, you've got that masculine energy. I experienced it. I know it. I lived it. I breathed it. I did it. So when I made the decision to leave traditional practice, Which I did to have my children. I taught law at ANU with a beautiful team, really supported, valued for being a person, not just a lawyer, which was new to me. All of the things led me to ultimately end up making a decision just over four and a half years ago to start this business.
[00:02:41] And part of what I wanted to capture in this business and really honor in this business is the client journey, the client experience. So I set out to do that. I set out to do that, and I set out to be different. And I was drawing on my personal experience from the heart. What do clients really want? As a client, what do I want? How do I want to be supported? And it was in those moments that I came up with many of our current processes and systems. We've refined things along the way, but it was from the heart and my business is very much soul led. I though, like all of us, got to a point where I think I started taking my stellar client journey experience for granted, and I say stellar, and you might think it's arrogant.
[00:03:29] You might think that. I'm biased, but I tell you, it's hand on heart confident because of the feedback that I'm constantly getting from clients of how much they love their experience with me, which is why most of my clients are not one-off clients. They're long-term clients. We have a relationship. I'm part of the team.
[00:03:48] I nurture them, I support them. I love this so much. Part of the reason why I can say to you with absolute confidence that my clients have a stellar experience with me is because I know they do because they tell me. But like I said a moment ago, like many of us, I start taking that for granted and I start thinking, gosh, there's nothing really that special about what I do.
[00:04:08] I'm just doing what feels right. Doesn't everyone do this? And I forget, it's been a long time since I've been involved in traditional legal practice.
[00:04:16] But recently, the shoe was on the other foot and I needed to be the client. So my mother passed away recently. It's not something that I talk about often. I haven't shared it on here before. My mother passed away recently, and even though she was very organized, bless her, she had all her ducks in a row because she'd been through this process only six years prior when my dad passed away. So she knew what she needed to have in order and what was she was able to do to help us the most to make things as least stressful for us as she possibly could. So she had all of the, her things organized, all her ducks were in a row.
[00:04:55] And me being a lawyer, and I've practiced very early on that I had some wills and probate experience. I had a rough idea of what the next steps were and what was required. But being true to myself, I didn't want to dabble in another practice area. I respect my expertise, which is not as a probate lawyer, so I made the decision with my brother, we're co-executors to engage a professional, a probate lawyer, who can seamlessly and easily support us through this process, which is a very, very straightforward process.
[00:05:30] I don't know any probate lawyers. So I reached out to a colleague who practices in the area of wills, and she gave me details of somebody to reach out to, to help. And I did and that person was the partner of a firm. And guess what? As soon as I reached out, Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was now in their system of being another number when it comes to client turnover, and it all started from there.
[00:05:59] That's what I wanna share with you because I wanna explain to you that this is not what it's supposed to be like. This particular partner who I was referred to, as it happens, doesn't specialize in probate. She specializes in conveyancing, so she put me in contact with her associate who specialized in probate.
[00:06:16] So after some back and forth and getting her secretary involved to set up a teams meeting, we eventually had a meeting. It was supposed to be a meeting where there was a bit of a Q & A, a bit of a get to know you so she could give me a fee estimate so I knew what it was that I was in for, and so that I had some clear understanding of what the next steps would be, and from there I would decide whether I wanted to engage them.
[00:06:39] The associate was lovely enough, but it was a very textbook ticker box style process. Got all the pages, ask all the questions. Very impersonal and cold, but that's okay. I don't need handholding. Didn't need someone to be my friend. Just needed someone who knew what they were doing, so I was okay with that.
[00:06:58] Didn't feel great though. I got off the call and thought, okay, fine. So there's no stellar client experience here. What I was told would happen after that session didn't happen without some probing from me and then when I ultimately received the lawyer's cost disclosure and cost agreement, and for those of you who don't know, if you haven't engaged a lawyer before, all lawyers are required to disclose to you as a client before you sign off and engage them, their cost disclosure and cost agreement.
[00:07:27] And I've spoken in previous episode about the way lawyers charge, and so some lawyers will fix their fees depending on the work. Others will charge on an hourly basis and time cost, and there are other ways as well. Because this matter was so straightforward and simple because we'd already had a conversation and she knew exactly what was involved, my understanding or my impression from the end of that first chat that we had was that I was going to get a fixed feed quote, and we would pull the lever and go from there. That's how I charge in my business because I am specialized in what I do, I back myself, I've been doing this for a very long time.
[00:08:09] I know what's involved, so I pride myself on being able to say to my clients at the outset, this is what I'm gonna charge you. This is what it's gonna cost. No surprises. And they know. I had just assumed that most practices are caught up and did things this way. Well, I was wrong because when I ultimately received their cost disclosure and cost agreement, I had to sit down and read it, I kid you not, three times to try to understand what it was that they were telling me they were gonna do. And by the end of the third read, I still was not clear. I was really frustrated because I thought, gosh, is this still happening in traditional practice? It clearly is. I had just taken for granted the streamlined way that I provide service to my clients because I've been doing it now for four and a half years.
[00:08:58] I just assumed everybody had caught up and everyone did it this way, and I was thinking to myself as well, gosh, how does the lay person feel receiving these types of documents from lawyers like this? If I'm struggling to understand it, I deal in these things every day. I know the work that's involved, but they've just complicated it.
[00:09:16] It's confusing, and they've not been able to give me a fixed fee. They're giving me a range, which is a few thousand dollars variance, and about a half a dozen different hourly rates that they're gonna charge me. And I was really taken aback because it was really clear to me in our session together that she knew exactly what was gonna be involved.
[00:09:34] There were no surprises. Don't get me wrong. I understand the need for lawyers to charge on a time spent basis in matters where there's a lot of uncertainty. So, for example, litigation, you can't fix your fees definitively in litigation because you don't know the variables and you don't know what can happen.
[00:09:51] So totally understand of course. This was different. So then I reached out to seek clarity, and because it had already taken a bit of time to get to this point, I had no confidence around when I was going to get my answer, whether the answer was going to make any sense, and I'd lost trust. I'd lost confidence in them by this point, I'd lost trust. They were non-responsive to the email, so I decided to go elsewhere. I thought, you know what? If we've already started like this, we're not aligned. It's not gelling. I'm not feeling supported. There's inconsistencies already in what has been said to me and what I've seen, and in my impression and my understanding, I know how to surface clients.
[00:10:34] This is what I do and this is their level of service. I don't think we're a good fit. So I went and did my research and I found another law firm who looked really targeted and specialized in this area. I sent off an email inquiry. No kidding, within half an hour they phoned me. They talked to me to ask me the questions.
[00:10:59] Within five minutes, they'd gotten the same information from me that the other lady had needed 30 minutes for. They had then said to me, this is what's involved. Your fees will be within this range. Let me sit down. I'll send you a proper quote. Amazing. Within the next hour I had the proper quote, so within an hour after that, I'd signed on, given them the information that they needed, and we've now been tick tacking really swiftly so they can get everything they need from me so I can provide all that they need.
[00:11:28] I'm crystal clear on the process. I'm crystal clear on the fees. I'm crystal clear on their expectations of me and I feel really supported as a client. You can hear the difference though, can't you? But me being me, I then thought, I should out of professional courtesy and respect, offer some feedback to this lady so that she knows where it went wrong from a client perspective, because I would really value that in my business.
[00:11:54] All I'm gonna say about this is my gracious feedback wasn't received in the way I had intended it. I didn't want to get into a cluster of emails where she was defensive and trying to put to me a whole heap of things because I was the client and I've just chosen to leave them, and she was getting defensive and being really patronizing to me and really quite pompous.
[00:12:19] So obviously I was very happy with my decision making. I am really happy with the lawyer I went to. Their service is targeted, professional, courteous, and competent, and that's what I wanted. The reason I'm sharing this is because if you have experienced a circumstance like what I have outlined, which was my experience, I wanna say to you, that is not the way it's supposed to be.
[00:12:46] Not all lawyers operate that way. That's the takeaway for this episode. I do have a lot of clients when they reach out to me, they say, Tracy, I've been putting this off a lot because reaching out to a lawyer's overwhelming, reaching out to a lawyer's scary, reaching out to a lawyer is full of uncertainty.
[00:13:03] I don't know what to do. I feel really uncomfortable. I feel really nervous. So the aim of this episode is to say to you, you know what? I've experienced it too. That's not what it's supposed to be like. We are not all like that and if you are not feeling comfortable, Confident and supported in your relationship with your lawyer.
[00:13:23] Like any relationship, move on. Move on and find somebody that you feel aligned with, that you feel supported by, and that you feel confident with. That is what it's supposed to be like. When I had this experience, I thought, gosh, what am I gonna do with this? Sure. It's reaffirmed for me just how happy and satisfied and filled I am in delivering the client journey that I deliver for my clients, but I wanted to do more than that and I wanted to share with more people my experience to give you a contrast and explain what it's actually supposed to be like. So I hope I've achieved that in this episode, and I hope you've enjoyed listening along.
[00:14:01] If you know anyone that also has reservations or concerns about engaging a lawyer, Please feel free to share this podcast episode with them and please if you want to have a conversation, reach out via my website, book in a time to chat and let's chat so that I can give you pointed, targeted, helpful advice and guidance so that you can move forward with confidence and be supported with a lawyer.
[00:14:25] I'll put the link in the show notes to book in via the website. I hope this has been helpful and I hope you now know that if you have had that experience, it doesn't need to be that way. Thank you as always for listening. I'm so grateful for your time and I'll catch you next time.
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