The Heart & Head of Family Law (Ep. 46)

[01:00:00:20 – 01:00:24:22]
We’re back to you today within your best interest. I am super excited today to introduce you to Ms. Ashley Iovine, Mrs. Ashley Iovine. We’ve worked together a long time and I think it’s super cool to be able to display not only the person on the sign that people think is the big deal, but honestly the person that also makes this whole business run. So let’s get right into it.

[01:00:26:04 – 01:01:53:27]
Ashley, kind of tell me about what got you into family law, how you got here, how long you’ve been practicing what your approach is. So I’ve been licensed for almost 10 years in November. I fell into family law, which I don’t know. I think that’s somewhat typical. Did you trip or fall? I did a full fall, full face fall into it. I was working out in Midland at the time and when oil prices go down, divorce rates go up. I was the youngest associate at the firm that I was working at. And so I fell into doing family law. Were you doing oil and gas as well? I was doing a little bit of oil and gas litigation. My first case was actually for cow sperm. That’s important when you’re for heifers out there, I guess. Okay. Yeah, so that was- That’s like oil and gas. That, well, it’s similar. I mean, they have gas and- See, everyone thinks that family law is just like only do family law, so. I do now, I mean, which I’m glad about because I don’t wanna be dealing with cow sperm, obviously. But- Okay. But with all of that, I kind of fell into it. My husband and I moved back. We went to TCU for undergrad. We loved Fort Worth. And neither of us are from Fort Worth. We’re both transplants. But moved back here. I randomly got an interview with you. I don’t think you were looking at the time. A mutual friend of ours introduced you to me, me to you. And I kind of been there for eight years? Eight out of my 10, so. So we both do consults. And I think some people think like, there’s this name on the side and that’s the person I need to talk to.

[01:01:55:01 – 01:02:13:14]
I love the idea of everyone understanding that I matter very little and everyone else. But reality is, it’s cool in my opinion to think about the dynamic of the firm and how many different personalities there are. So tell me like your approach versus what you perceive my approach is.

[01:02:14:16 – 01:02:27:01]
I think if I were to classify your approach, it’s very fast and loose. You speak at record pace words per minute. I also speak very fast, but I do think that the consults that I handle,

[01:02:28:15 – 01:02:54:25]
I start out giving a bird’s eye view of the point of this consult is to get issues that you may have, whether or not we can help you with those issues and how much is it’s gonna cost you. So I kind of guide them into going into the consult where I feel like your energy has people open up really quickly. And so they just kind of word vomit at you. And then you kind of have to steer them back in the right direction. I lead the train pretty quickly from the beginning. So you’re saying my ADHD kicks in? It kicks in a lot if you don’t have the medication.

[01:02:56:08 – 01:04:57:07]
(Both Laughing) So as far as we talk a lot about like the relational side of what we do in business, why or how do you approach in the console, whether we’re the right fit for the client and whether the client’s the right fit for us? A lot of it depends on, I refer to it as a personality point and a price point that has to kind of fit for our firm, whether we like it or not, whether the prospective clients like it or not, we have a certain hourly rate anywhere from 350 an hour all the way up to 595. And so because of that, they have to be comfortable with the idea that the retainer is gonna be a little bit higher than maybe other firms that they’ve talked to. And then there’s also of course, the personality point, which we do have a variety of personalities at our firm that handle maybe more aggressive cases versus cases or clients that wanna be more amicable. But I think all of us take the approach of, we would love for you to be able to get your case done with as little shrapnel as possible. Because at the end of the day, what I tell these prospective clients is that I can drop a nuclear bomb on your opposing party all day long, but you’re the one that has to co-parent if you guys have kids together. So I do think we try to take the approach of, let’s keep things as kumbaya as possible until we can’t. And then at that point, you got sharks, sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s a big misconception that people think lawyers notoriously just want people to fight so they get paid per hour and all that. Do you actually enjoy people wanting to kill each other? No, I think especially in family law, you’re dealing with people’s families. This is something that is way more emotional than other facets of law that we don’t really go into. So because of that, I think we do take a very careful approach is maybe the word I wanna use in realizing, especially since we both have families, this is a really horrible time of your life. And so we do try and do a lot of handholding because most people do not get married or have children thinking that this is going to go south, obviously. So they’re shocked when they’re calling us most of the time. So after you do a consult and we decide that we’re the right fit for a client,

[01:04:58:22 – 01:05:20:14]
what is your experience of the client’s interaction from month one to month five in a case? So usually, especially with Justin and I handling the consults, obviously you and I doing that, we either, I either take the case on myself if I have the ability on my caseload on my docket, or it’s farmed out to one of our other, at this point, three other attorneys.

[01:05:21:18 – 01:06:14:00]
So from month one, we start with the process of give us everything you have really from, that we’re gonna use at a temporary orders hearing. I always tell our clients, we take the approach of temporary orders are temporary, but they set a precedence for the rest of your case. And how fast does that happen? Usually that’s within two weeks, longest it will be is usually a month to get temporary orders in place. Two weeks is our bread and butter, that’s typically what we’re doing. There are some clients that don’t necessarily wanna go to court, or maybe they have facts that prevent them from wanting to testify in front of a judge at this moment. And so because of that, they usually come to some agreed temporary orders, and maybe they don’t have to go to court. But usually we get a temporary restraining order and order setting hearing set within what? 48 hours from the first consult with the petition being filed. And then we set that within 14 days. And as far as like, you’re a mom. I am.

[01:06:15:06 – 01:06:20:17]
You got a family, you got a life. How fast does this stuff happen for you as an attorney with our firm?

[01:06:21:20 – 01:09:19:08]
How fast does- Do you have to get things ready for a case? Like, what is that like? So because those first two weeks are crucial for us, and again, there are other attorneys that don’t take the approach and they say, well, we can always modify the temporary orders. We don’t, I think we’ve both been in the experience of seeing that judges typically say, okay, well, what’s the precedence that’s been set at the beginning of this case? And that’s how it’s gonna be for the end of time. So we work really hard on the front end to get you, if you’re parents in this case, to getting you be the joint managing conservator with the exclusive right to designate the residents, getting child support right away, getting a schedule that you agree with, because while you can modify it, there is a standard that you have to meet in order to do so. So it is extremely quick. We have amazing paralegals at our firm that handle a ton of the heavy lifting. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good segue to, as far as the paralegals, and I think you said farmed out, but it’s really farmed into our firm. I should have been more specific. It’s people that are at our firm, but it’s not Justin or I, typically. Like today, for example, you’re covering a mediation for one of our other attorneys. Who’s double booked. Who’s double booked. And does that, like, I think clients sometimes have the perspective of, oh my gosh, if I’m not dealing with Ashley today, nobody knows my case. How do we approach that? I think we, so what’s great about our process is we make sure that there are timelines and our case files are succinct, but also making sure that they’re able for anybody to pick up and read. I can read it, know what’s going on, know the facts of the case pretty quickly. And so we make sure to go in, every attorney, I mean, provided we have the time to, if this happens, where they’re double booked, we tell the client well in advance. So I think once we realized that he was gonna have this emergency setting, he called the client immediately. So that was, I think, within 24 hours of him learning about it. And then I spoke to the client as well, indicating here who I am. I’ve done this for a long time. I’m very comfortable with your position. I’m comfortable with opposing parties position. There’s actually two opposing parties. In this case, there’s a grandparent and a father, a biological father. So we do try to put them at ease. I don’t know that it always translates. I think you’re always feeling nervous. You gotta see before you believe kind of deal. And so luckily with a mediation, when you jump into something like that, there’s a lot of downtime between the mediator coming in and out of the room, so you can feel out and calm their nerves a little bit. But what I like about our firm is that there’s no questions asked. I mean, the number of times that we’ve had to jump in for each other, any one of us of the five attorneys has been pretty consistent, whether it’s been a kid got sick, there was an accident, there was an emergency. Life happens. Life happens. And we jump, I mean, no questions asked to jump in, which I don’t know if that’s true for a lot of firms. I’ve been here for a long time, but I do think it’s somewhat unique. And I think that’s comforting for us, but from a client’s perspective, if I were to flip my role into a client’s viewpoint, I can see how clients get very nervous, but behind the idea of you’ve been talking to somebody and they don’t really understand what our internal processes are.

[01:09:20:09 – 01:12:24:05]
So can you talk a little bit about just our monthlies and what we do as just kind of a day-to-day, how you interact with other lawyers in our firm? So most days we have what we refer to as the brain trust. So we’re pretty aware, especially you and I, since we handle most of the consults, we know most of the cases coming in, regardless of if we’re actually the lead attorney on the case. But all of our attorneys typically daily meet with each other to bounce ideas or legal strategies off each other about how we’re gonna examine a witness, how are we gonna move forward on a legal strategy to try and use leverage against maybe the other side? How are we going into mediation? What are our non-negotiables versus negotiables? So those are things that we do daily. We also have monthly meetings where we meet as a firm to discuss if there’s anything coming up that maybe we need help with, or we want somebody to kind of be a listening ear to tag team on. So I do think that collaborative approach is something that is somewhat unique, mostly because I think people have this assumption that all attorneys are out for themselves. I’m out for myself, I’m out for me advancing in my career. And I have loved that every attorney that I’ve worked with at our firm doesn’t have that. It’s not that they don’t have that drive to wanna be the best they can be, but they also realize that we can be the best team we can be to in addition to being the best attorney we can be. Yeah, so like you mentioned the paralegals. Why, as far as cost savings, I’ve talked before about the case list, having next steps, making sure in the billing itself that we describe what the next steps are, what the other side was asking, and literally letting the client kind of know, all right, even if the request is ridiculous, they’re still asking for primary even though they’ve never raised your child or anything like that, all those other stuff. Why do we have to prepare as if we’re going to final trial inside of those first months for that temporary orders here in your mind? A lot of it is for the client’s benefit as well. We want the client to know, I mean, I think you say this phrase a lot, how the soup is made, why we’re doing what we’re doing. And so we’re overly descriptive, overly detailed in explaining what our process looks like, explaining why you’re being billed to do these things. So it’s for their benefit as much as ours to make sure we have our hands on most of our cases every day. It’s very rare that I’m not looking at one of my cases out of my caseload every day to figure out where are we at, making sure my paralegal and I are on the same page, making sure we know who’s taking what tasks, I guess, for lack of better phrasing. And so I do think it’s done in a way to make sure the case is moving along. The worst thing that you can do in a family law case is be stagnant. Unless of course there’s some whiff of an attempt of reconciliation and maybe you’re wanting to sit for that reason, the majority of our people, when they decide they want to either get divorced or break up and have to share a child is get out quickly. And because our court’s dockets are backed up enough to be six months to maybe a year, two years out, we try and do things to get temporary orders in place, at least so we have something to call a ball and strike zone, really. And so as far as the paralegals are concerned,

[01:12:25:08 – 01:14:53:08]
can you kind of give your take on how the paralegals help curb costs and also do a lot of the handholding behind the scenes so it’s not all lawyer driven? It’s actually, I think the majority of those first couple months is paralegal driven. It’s not that we don’t want to talk to our clients, but we’re trying to, number one, stretch your retainer out as far as we can. Paralegals are quite frankly way more experienced because of their length of time that they’ve been practicing versus a lot of the attorneys at the firm. But they’re also, they’re less per hour and they’re able to touch base on the things that they’re gonna be doing for us, which is really like hearing prep, document, I guess I should say document collection and then going through it with us as attorneys. They do a lot of the handholding for our clients. They do a lot of the phone calls with our clients too, especially when it’s the emotional stages of the first couple months. A lot of the phone calls have nothing to do with the law. A lot of the phone calls have to do with crying over this being their life, being upset that they’re gonna have to share their kids. Can’t believe that they’re in this position. And those are the things that our paralegals are very comfortable having that conversation about with, because again, it’s not that they want to not talk to us, but I think we are very much black and white. Our job is to be the head. Your job is to be the heart. Our job is to be the head in this case. And we talk a lot about timelines and inventories and then the backup documents. So my view on that is like, we’re using the paralegals a lot too, to get all the information gathered and in an organized fashion. How do they get that to you? And what do you do with that information when it comes to you? Do you mean the paralegals? How do they get it to us? So the clients just as background send it via a, it’s similar to like a Dropbox link, but it’s through Clio. And they give you everything you need. Everything. Right when you need it. Oh, it’s exactly. I mean, no, we’re being very facetious here. It’s very rare that we get a client that has a perfect timeline with perfect supporting evidence, with all text messages and screenshots that they’ve ever had. And so if you were to call that client and be like, “Hey, you don’t have this.” And then charge that increased rate every single time, stress the client out, then they get a higher bill. Absolutely. That in your mind, is that in your mind, as I understand where the paralegals really help as well as the behind the scenes? It’s mostly, and it’s things that they don’t need my hourly rate because my job is to give them legal advice, not to talk about what documents need to be given to me. Once they’re submitted, the paralegal figures out, “Okay, based on the case, what do we need? Are we missing anything?”

[01:14:54:10 – 01:16:21:10]
Making sure that we have everything we need for both the first hearing, really, and we kind of do inventory appraisements about three months in. So that can be something that they can either upload at the beginning, or we have a little bit of time for that as far as a final division is concerned for divorces. But the paralegal’s job is to gather all the documents and then they sit with us, at least mine does. I can only speak for my paralegal and I. My paralegal Cindy comes in, sits with me, goes through all of the documents and says, “Here’s what I have pulled. I want you to review everything, but play close attention to what I think is gonna be important for your case.” And I do think it is a good time management for both the attorney and the paralegal, but also from the standpoint of billing. So we talked a lot about our internal personalities and we have different ones, we bounce different ideas, but how do you perceive that sometimes we match up some of our personalities with a specific judge and the differences of the court personalities? There are certainly, judges are human. I think a lot of times clients forget that. At the end of the day, they’re human beings. They make mistakes, they make rulings that don’t make sense. So we try to put people into specific courtrooms and I don’t know how much the audience knows, but at least in Tarrant County, where we primarily practice, I shouldn’t say we only practice, but it’s right down the street from us. There are 12 courts, there are six district judges, six associate judges. So that’s 12 different personalities based on temporary orders and then final trial that we’re having to kind of guide attorneys into based on what their history has been in that court.

[01:16:22:10 – 01:17:36:22]
We do a pretty good job because most of the judges have been sitting for a little bit. So we know which judges quite frankly, prefer maybe some attorneys in our firm or some attorney style. It’s not necessarily a personal thing, but it’s more of how they approach, how you definitely take, you start off the bat, you’re coming in really hot. There are other attorneys that are firm and other judges who prefer a more laying the foundation approach before getting, revving up onto the other side of the track. Yeah, and I hear that I want the bulldog or whatever approach. Why is it important in your mind that you have that chameleon approach or you have the multifaceted approach of different lawyers, different personalities with respect to those judges personality? You have to, because we know what the judges are gonna be looking for. We know what judges, there are times that the bulldog approach is very off putting. Actually, I’m not gonna say all of our judges, but the majority of the judges in, that we practice in front of in all of the counties, take the approach of, you can still have some decorum in the courtroom and sometimes these bulldog or shark attorneys come across as being way too aggressive and almost disrespectful really to the court process. So we know which judges want that and they make rulings based on the show,

[01:17:37:24 – 01:19:03:14]
I think more than anything else, and which judges are gonna be basing things on fact and take a little bit more of a softer approach. And so that is important when I talked about earlier, a personality fit and a price point fit, as far as in a consult, what we’re looking for at our firm, I do think that it’s not just personality of the client and the attorney, it’s whatever court you kind of fall into, it’s a lottery. And what about the fricking facts of the case? People forget that we don’t pick the facts. If we got, have we ever represented Jesus? Have you ever seen us do that? I have never seen us represent Jesus or any second coming of Christ. Second coming? Nope, none of them. Have you had clients that like you have struggled with kind of giving advice to, because you’re kind of afraid of how they’re gonna receive the advice? Yes, there are a lot of people, especially when it’s super high emotions, most people don’t take criticism well, regardless of if it’s constructive or not. So there is a certain way to approach how to tell somebody that being aggressive and claiming that the other person did everything wrong, claiming that you did nothing wrong in this relationship, it was the other side that ruined it. Usually it takes two to tango in all aspects of a marriage or relationship. And I do think that that creates certainly a personality type that judges are not a fan of. Judges wanna see co-apparenting, judges wanna see that you’re willing to say, “Look, he was a great father, he’s not a great husband.”

[01:19:04:26 – 01:22:56:06]
Yes, he’s had things that he’s done in the past, but I’m hoping we can work towards that. They don’t wanna see you say, you should never see the kid, regardless of how you try to redeem yourself. And I know we’ve, some people out there think that lawyers are blood sucking vultures that only wanna bill and I guess go on yachts and do you have a yacht? I wish, no. But as far as family law is concerned, I’ve seen, to get a little personal, I’ve seen you actually teared up and very upset about– More often than you think. A client’s perception, whether it’s real or perceived. It’s definitely an idea, I’ve had to become very comfortable with their perception of clients is their reality. It doesn’t matter if my perception of their situation is different, their perception is their reality. And it is we as attorneys are easy scapegoats, we’re easy people to blame. You usually wanna find someone to blame, whether it’s your spouse or if you don’t get what you want out of the divorce, especially if you go to a final trial and a judge makes the decision, lawyer’s the first one to blame. And I think that people don’t realize that we take that home, most of us. I can’t say all attorneys do it. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna ask you, like how do you compartmentalize that? I find I am pretty good at it. I am gonna say that I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing. I actually use my maiden name, he introduced me as Ashley Iovine, which is what I use at work, it’s on my law license. And my married name, Ashley McCaffrey, is who I am at home. And so I think bifurcating, I don’t wanna say two personalities, but I can be Ashley Iovine at work and then I leave it at home. When I leave the office, I have to be mom, I have to be wife, and I try and shut that door, at least for the day. That helps me compartmentalize maybe a day so it doesn’t bleed into my marriage, it doesn’t bleed into how I parent. But that’s not to say that it’s easy. And why do you, and not that we need to gain crocodile tears or empathy points, but why do you feel the importance to need to, I guess, recharge your battery so that when a client’s going through difficult situations, they feel a sense of positivity even in a tough situation? I think that at the end of the day, most of our clients have to realize that they’re the ones that are going through this. It is not our job to stoop to that and go through it with them, that’s not gonna help them. Our job is to truly, like I said, be the head on this and say, “Look, I know that this is a tough time for you, I know that you’re going through hell.” But our job is to get you everything that you want in this case, or the majority of it, and try and divide this as cleanly as possible. And so us providing that positive approach, providing that, I don’t wanna say black and white, because our area of law is very gray, as you know, but I do think that it helps them see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because this can be a really dragging facet of the law, because it is so emotional. And there are children involved, I mean, my husband jokes all the time, “You are paid to break apart families for a living.” And I hate that idea of it, because I do think that there is hope on the other side, if you are not in a happy marriage, if you are not in a happy relationship, and especially if you have kids, your kids feel that. And so I do think that being positive and explaining to them, this is a low point, this is a valley, you got peaks ahead of you, does make them feel better about their situation. And if we have the client that at all costs, you’re trying to give them constructive criticism, you’re trying to be positive, everything is by the letter of what we do looking correct, but they continuously kind of wanna beat down everybody around them. How many efforts or how many attempts do you make before we say, “Hey, we’re not the right fit anymore.” I usually do, maybe it’s because I’m a sports fan, I do a three strike rule, I’ll give you the first one. And I tell people all the time, I’m willing to admit if I was wrong to something, I take things to the chin, I’m willing to say, “Nope, I should have filed that earlier, I should have emailed back sooner.”

[01:22:57:21 – 01:24:11:28]
But what I’m not going to do is let either my paralegal be spoken to a certain way, our staff be spoken to a certain way, I’m able to take more hits, but if you’re hitting at our staff, I’m gonna– It’s like the person that beats up the waitress and supports staff. And so I think I do try to give them three chances of either being aggressive towards our staff, criticizing our legal strategy, or butting heads with us. I tell people all the time, I’m already against the opposing party and council. The world. I’m having to deal with the judge. The last thing I wanna do is not be on the same page with my client. I tell people, if this is not a fit, and if you are not happy with what we were doing, this is not a situation where we’re court appointed. This is a situation where we will gladly give you references, send you to somebody else that’s maybe a better fit for your personality. And so I do think some clients, I’ve had a couple clients tell me that they think that’s unprofessional, but I think it’s unprofessional for me to continue on a case where I know that you don’t want me on it. And you don’t like the approach that I’m taking. And that happens pretty rarely, but I’ve literally had conversations with you about, hey, I just really think I can flip this one around, and I really wanna work through this. I don’t understand, why do you put in the effort for that? Why we put in the effort to try and flip it?

[01:24:12:29 – 01:24:51:04]
I think we try to do it because, I mean, at the end of the day, we want to be people, attorneys that help people. We want to help you through your case. And we do always think that we’re the best for the job. I truly believe that our firm is the best for most of these cases. And so for us to try and fit that square peg into a round hole sometimes, is it gets, like I said, I give you three chances of trying to do that. And then if it’s truly not working, or if they can’t take the criticism of maybe facts in their case that maybe don’t shine so positively and see that maybe they can hold themselves accountable. What’s an example of, give me an example of.

[01:24:52:05 – 01:25:20:07]
People that take the approach that they’re the only parent that has ever done anything right. The other parent doesn’t feed them the right way, that doesn’t discipline them the right way, doesn’t take them to the doctor that they want them to. It’s very much the idea that it’s my way or no way. And I have to remind these people, you had a child with this person. And so at some point, you’re somewhere aligned. I don’t know how long you had to align, but somewhere you aligned.

[01:25:22:22 – 01:27:56:01]
Even if you disagree with parenting approaches, judges very much take the idea of in your house, you do your rules in the other party’s house, it’s the other party’s rules. And so it’s a lot of this holier than now, I think approach is the phrase that I like to maybe use that is very off-putting to attorneys, it’s very off-putting to clients, to other parties, I should say, not our clients, and very off-putting to a judge. And so I think we have to try and lead them more down a path of being a little bit humble and saying, okay, maybe there are things I could have done differently, but here’s XYZ why I’m still the parent that usually makes these decisions, if that makes sense. Yeah, and I mean, we’ve obviously done thousands of cases and in many of those, get a lot of glowing kind of internal reviews, not the Google reviews. And then obviously there’s the few keyboard warriors out there that hit where, sometimes maybe it didn’t go the exact way they wanted or the timeframe they wanted, but can you talk a little bit about, when somebody, when you really do the job right, how that impacts you when somebody is just constantly, like they don’t wanna pay their bill or they don’t want to receive criticism, when they get into a courtroom, why we spend so much effort taking it on the chin from your perspective? I think we take it, we try not to take it personal, but we do, like, I mean, we’re human, I’m a human being who, when we work as hard as we do to put a case together. And I know how hard our firm works behind the scenes. I know how many hours we’re spending outside of our eight to five. I put my kids down and if I have a trial, I’m going through all the documents and prepping well into the night. Yeah, what’s that like? Cause I know for me, like I wake up in the middle of the night and I think 30 different other things, I’m sure clients do too. It’ll be a two or 3 a.m. type situation where clients, I think, assume, I talk about, I try to turn it off, but we can’t all the time. We know what it’s like because we do have kids and I can’t imagine having to think about the idea of sharing my time with them or dividing assets that I’ve generated together that’s mine. This should have been mine with my spouse. And so we are up in the middle of the night thinking, okay, this is maybe how I wanna approach this witness or okay, I wanna make sure I add this to my timeline. And those are things that clients don’t see. So when they’re critical of how we’re doing things, we take it personally cause they don’t see all the stuff that we did behind the scenes to prep for them. Yeah, I’ve talked a lot about kind of the temporary orders, the discovery, the mediation, all of these are pieces of mosaics or I guess pieces of the mosaic to create the mosaic.

[01:27:57:14 – 01:29:09:09]
And so until you get to the end or you see the trial and oftentimes a mediation, we get clients that are just like, well, I could have done that. And so where do you perceive like the real value add from how you approach a case to a client versus what they think they can do themselves? I think the value add for any attorney, not just me, is going to be the idea that we know what the backend is gonna look like. Most of the judges, we know what the law is. We know how the judges air on the side of the law if there’s like a gray area or some discretion that they’re given. And so we’re able to tell them, look, you can either come to this sort of agreement and do what you wanted to do with your spouse or you could take the risk, go to final trial, but here’s your Achilles heels. Here’s where you’re gonna have some trouble. And I do think that’s invaluable because people wanna make an informed decision about their lives. 95% of our cases settle. Why? Because they wanna have a scalpel approach instead of a hammer approach, which is what most of these judges have. And so it gives them the opportunity to feel like they at least knew what they were giving up with the risk of maybe going to final trial. But that’s something that you can only have with experience

[01:29:10:09 – 01:30:05:20]
in the DFW area with all these various judges that we’re in front of, because we’re in Wise County, we’re in Dallas County, we’re in Collin County, we’re in Denton County. We’re in those counties. And so we’re comfortable with saying, I had these facts in front of this judge and this is how this judge ruled. So you need to know that going in. And so I do think that if clients think that they can do this themselves, if you are truly amicable, can split everything down the middle, both great parents, sure, maybe you can do this yourself, but you’re probably gonna be coming back to us for a modification at some point. And you’re probably gonna be coming back for an enforceability issues because you don’t know what the terms look like or what’s supposed to be included. And that’s where attorneys come in. How difficult is it for you? I know we’ve had plenty of cases where the result is like really, really great in our mind. And the client’s like, well, that’s not that great. How many of those cases where we know that the back end of the result is great

[01:30:06:27 – 01:30:13:18]
and they just do it in mediation versus like they get to get their pound of flesh in a trial or a courtroom aspect.

[01:30:14:27 – 01:31:03:21]
You think personality wise? Yeah, I’m just curious. There are certain people that want, I hate to call it the show, but they want the theatrics. They want to go to court and feel like somebody else heard their story. It’s a lot of people, especially in our cases with infidelity or God forbid, domestic violence. They want, I don’t wanna settle. I’ve settled for lots of things in my life. I had somebody that, not me, but these clients had somebody that cheated on them. They had somebody that hurt them. And so a mediation is maybe not appropriate for them because they’re gonna take the risk. They want somebody to hear a third party to hear, this is how horrible this person was to me. So why, I mean, I know the answer to this, but why do you feel the inspiration or need to lead them down a path towards settlement when you can obviously get bonus more, paid more,

[01:31:04:25 – 01:31:06:14]
to go to trial and then the client actually,

[01:31:07:17 – 01:34:52:15]
a lot of times wants that pound of flesh. Why do you still encourage them to resolve it? Most of the time we encourage settlements, especially in situations where there’s not any of those major things, right? Because you have a say in your life. If you go to the courthouse and you put everything up to a judge, the judge decides. The judge decides what your possession schedule is. The judge decides what your holidays look like. The judge decides whether you keep the house or sell the house. So I think most people like that control. I mean, you’re already losing so much control when you’re in a family lawsuit because this is out of your control most of the time. I mean, you guys, you’re no longer gonna be, you know, living together, you’re no longer gonna be partners, you’re no longer gonna be co-parenting together, you’re gonna be co-parenting in different houses. And so I do think that people want that element of control still to get the majority of what they want, even if it’s not everything that they wanted. It’s very rare that people, even in our great success stories, get everything they want out of a case. Yeah, and you talked about scalpel versus hammer. Like as far as mediation is concerned, one of the things that I think you and I have shared over the years is like, you can really carve things out with a scalpel. And you can get creative. What is, like, just give a couple of quick examples on that. So the biggest one that I see, you know, in recent times is our standard possession schedule in Texas only accounts really for spring break, you know, based on an academic calendar, Christmas break or winter break, Thanksgiving break, and then summer. So I have people that care a lot about Easter. I have people that care a lot about 4th of July or maybe not doing 30 days in the summer, which is what the standard possession schedule would give a noncustodial parent. That’s hard if both parents work. How do we figure out childcare? Maybe we do more of a week on, week off. I think it gives you the ability to alter, the possession schedule’s a big one, because I don’t know that it works for everybody or every schedule. I also think it creates some really unique and creative approaches to deciding if, okay, maybe we wanna figure out division of assets and debts. It’s a way that I have a lot of people who, parents, who care about the emotional value, you know, of a home, not the financial value. They wanna keep the home because that’s where they raise their kids. And so we can find tooth combs saying, okay, then we’ll give you the other side more in other areas, whether it’s retirement or maybe a monthly installment payment, you know, like contractual alimony. There are ways that judges aren’t gonna look at. Judges are going to say, I’m just dividing this right down the middle. They’re looking at a spreadsheet. They say, how do I get to 50-50 here, as far as division of assets and debts. And so a client wants a pound of flesh, but now you’re going, okay, wait a minute. We can actually put secure transactions into business division, which is basically your ability to get paid what people obligate them to pay for in the order. You can carve out separate provisions with respect to visitation and access. And you can also control the length of time and costs in a case. Absolutely. It’s very much, and I mean, again, you’ve indicated it’s adverse to our interest. We get paid to go to final trial. I get paid to do more hours. Except for we actually have ethics and like our clients and more business. And I have to tell people all the time, like, I want you to be happy leaving us. How many times have I said, Justin, we are the only service industry where you pay us to take half of your things and to take half of your time with your kids. Why didn’t you sell puppies? I mean, I question this a lot, Justin, why I didn’t do something that, you know, everyone was happy at the end of it because at the end of the day, no, most of our clients aren’t, they’re not thrilled to be in this situation. They’re thrilled to maybe be done with the process of litigation, but they never thought they were gonna be doing this. So they never thought they were gonna be paying somebody to break apart something that was built together. Yeah, and I just wanted to close with just saying, I really admire you as a human being. And I think that that gets overlooked a lot in work, but I also admire the fact that you’re a mom, that you bring your experiences from home.

[01:34:53:27 – 01:35:30:26]
You’re kind of a beacon of light. So I don’t wanna just toot horn there, but I just wanted our listeners to understand that what I’m proud about when I literally stake my name behind an individual is all of your experiences, your perspective. So I just really appreciate you sharing some of that. And I know we could go on for days about those issues, but I wanna close by saying, you know, when we talk on these interviews or initial client consultations or podcasts, when I beef up or just give you the way that an individual is at our firm,

[01:35:32:00 – 01:35:42:16]
this is who the individual is. And so if you don’t like it, go somewhere else. I love it. I think your energy is awesome. And I really appreciate you here today. I appreciate you as well. Yeah.