I love being a family law lawyer (most of the time) and leading my team.
Just like you, I started my firm for both balance and financial reward, it can't be that hard right?
But things get busy and we normalise 'busy' by working late at night or early morning when everyone else is sleeping, eating more takeaway than we would like to admit and outsourcing our home duties to relieve pressure. The balance we dreamed of becomes a distant memory. We become more stressed and snappy, and our relationships and work quality suffer.
We think team growth is the answer
In the early years, I kept telling myself and my husband: I’ll hire this person and then I won't be as busy. Spoiler alert: it didn’t get better, my pressure just changed. I was now completing more non-legal work in running the business: marketing, mentoring, client complaints, accounts, IT and HR. It was exhausting, did not spark my joy and was not why I became a lawyer and created my firm.
Qualified and competent team members are hard to find (particularly regionally where I am), you have to invest in their growth and training and then compete with the larger firms offering shiny things. Post-Covid19, the employment landscape substantially changed. There has been an increase in practitioners leaving private practice and larger firms became increasingly aggressive in their recruitment so competition for experienced lawyers intensified.
Leading a law firm is not an easy gig and comes with challenges. I have certainly had my fair share.
I clearly remember my lowest point: it was late-2022. Our firm had grown to a team of 10 and we had just won Employer of Choice at the local business awards. I was pregnant with my daughter. Then my 2 year old son got sick with what started as 'daycare germs', progressed to a 3 week hospital admission and months of monitoring and care. It was the scariest time in my life!
I thought I had built a team that could operate without me. The reality was too much still relied on me. What did I build this for? It felt more like handcuffs than freedom.
I began questioning why things were done (or not done) a certain way. I knew there had to be a better way...
I questioned whether I could actually have it all: be a present mum and wife; a family law lawyer and lead a law firm.
I got clear on why i created my firm: for freedom and balance. I want to be able to be present for my family; I want to not take my laptop on holidays; I want to attend my children's school events; I want to share meals with my family; I want to work with a team who share my passion; I want to be financially rewarded for my hardwork and skill and I want to excel in my legal career that I worked so hard to build.
I went back to basics and thought deeply about small changes that would align with the life I wanted to build. I reduced our firm working hours to 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday. I created a fixed fee structure to eliminate the billable hour. I created internal systems to reduce reliance on me. I focused on team members who share my values for quality over quantity. I created structure within my firm with workflows, precedents and fixed fees so that I could have freedom. This structure is Family Law Circle.
