When I was in college, undergraduate at USC, I worked for a nonprofit,
more lowcost family law service that provided assistance to individuals who could not afford attorneys, but also
made too much for legal aid. And I worked initially as an 18-year-old answering the telephones. I then started
to watch as there were parillegals in the office and there were some family law attorneys that worked in the office
who I learned from and continued to work there actually throughout college and throughout law school. I went to law
school at night and ultimately became their senior parillegal. I ended up working at a different firm that I stayed at that is uh practiced
exclusively family law and realized on a personal level that my marriage was not going so great. And I found myself in
the same situation that often we all the time come across with our clients here and realized at that moment, well, I do
family law for a living. Of course, I can represent myself. I tried to represent myself and found myself doing
my paperwork on the weekends and even though it was me who wanted the divorce,
found myself typing in my kids’ birth dates incorrectly and crying. I ended up hiring my firm and I think at that
moment in time was the first time I realized what our clients experience and even if they’ve got business savvy,
they’ve got intelligence, they’ve got knowledge of potentially circumstances,
the emotions that are associated with what parties experience in this process
is unknown. It’s almost like a roller coaster. Some days are good, some days are bad. I ended up hiring my firm and
ended up fortunately not making it to court, but then came on to this firm. I’ve been here approximately 10 years.
And I think that the personal experience of going through this process and thinking that I understood it or I knew what it felt like to be a litigant,
I didn’t. I didn’t until I was. And what is something that I convey to clients all the time is while it feels as though
there may not be a light at the end of the tunnel or you may say to us that we may not understand their spouse or maybe
that spouse is savvy, businesssavvy, has a lot of knowledge. When it becomes personal and they’re going through this
process, those skills and skill set and how they may come off to others in a business environment simply fall out the window. And I know that from my own
personal experience and I carry that with me to clients today.