CASE STUDY
LEAVING LITIGATION TO BECOME A LAWYER AGAIN
Like so many other lawyers, there was a strong desire on Pam’s part to start something more than just a run-of-the-mill practice. She wanted to build something that felt like an actual part of her life, rather than something that dictated all the parts of it.
ABOUT THE LAWYER
Pam Maass Garrett
Before mom and law practice extraordinaire Pam Maass Garrett joined New Law Business model and becoming a PFL, she began her career as a litigator.
“I started off as a government attorney and then went into private practice litigating cases.”
THE PROBLEM
Leaving Litigation
Pam found herself researching topics like “Leaving the Law” and “How to deal with burnout – topics that she never imagined herself looking into when she’d first become a lawyer. Her role as a litigator had left her stressed and exhausted. And yet when she’d investigated starting her own practice or spoken with lawyers who had already begun their own practices, the results weren’t very encouraging either.
“I had met with a lot of successful attorneys to talk about maybe starting my own firm and most of them didn’t have the type of firm I wanted to have. They were very burned out…all they did was work. And I really wanted a more balanced lifestyle.”
It was this dual desire – to remain in the law as her own boss and have a practice where she could establish this “balanced” lifestyle, that kept Pam interested in pursuing a practice with NLBM and eventually led her to take on the program wholeheartedly.
A Lawyer Finds a Way
The way Pam describes her start with NLBM is akin to how many people follow in the effective footsteps of a parent organization when setting up a franchise. While, of course, law firms aren’t franchises, uniformly representative of a paradigm business or org, Pam found that she was getting the very best tools, training, and resources for how to set up a successful business, while also still getting to infuse her own creativity, personality, and take on practicing the law.
“You get the benefits of what are all the tools to be successful but then it’s your brand, it’s your firm, you can customize it and personalize it…you get the freedom you wouldn’t get from starting a franchise.”
At the beginning of her experience with NLBM, this freedom was incredibly important to Pam. But something more too. In Pam’s experience, many of the lawyers she’d seen begin their own practices did so without truly knowing the important logistical details of what they needed from their firms – how many clients, how much revenue, etc. This was resolved in the opening stages of her enrollment with NLBM.
“From the beginning, what I really liked about the program is that it starts with you. I think it’s very common for business owners and lawyers who start firms to be like I want to make money and not have clarity of how much money they actually want to make. Then you kind of get into this scarcity mindset where your kind of just taking any case, and you’re stressed, and you don’t have that roadmap to follow. What I really loved from the launch phase was that clarity.
This experience of wanting to see and understand the logistics early on or even before joining is not a unique or once-off kind of experience. As Pam suggests,
“A lot of lawyers want to see that math. They want to know what’s possible.”
For Pam, what was possible was only just beginning to become clear.
AN ESTABLISHED PFL LAWYER
For Pam, the growth of her practice has been the product of hard work as well as the incredibly helpful NLBM education. Much of the training still pops up in her day-to-day work.
“It’s still something that I still use today, even three years into it, where I’m looking at okay, I have this massive to-do list of things to do this week; what is really moving the ball forward? Because it’s so easy for other distractions to come up and other opportunities to come up. But what is really aligned with that most important priority, and what do I need to cut out? What do I need to delegate?”
Pam admits that anyone starting a new business is met with insecurities, fears, and doubts. But what few tell prospective business owners and entrepreneurs is that those challenges don’t end after the first three, six, or twelve months. They continue to grow, and new challenges come up all the time. Just ask Pam. In light of her success, she faces much-coveted challenges like managing a larger team, a heftier budget, more clients, and the dynamics that come with all these advancements.
But she no longer sees herself as she once did – isolated and on her own.
“It’s lonely being an entrepreneur. [With NLBM] you get an advisor and someone who can support you. The New Law Business Model Community is amazing.”
Pam has taken full advantage of not only the coaching and continued training and education that NLBM offers, but she’s also made the utmost use of its community, finding others to grow her practice alongside of, learn from, and look to, to be encouraged as well as encourage herself.
And as for the results, Pam describes them best.
“We have seen an increase in the number of families we serve. Right now, we’re typically serving 15-20 families per month and our goal for 2023 is to serve 30 families per month.”
Pretty amazing work for a litigator who almost quit the law.
Pam Maass Garrett
PERSONAL FAMILY LAWYER
“What attracted me to the program was all the tools and lessons and then being able to implement it. the coaching really is the secret sauce that puts it all together because it allows you to stay focused to see those blind spots that you don’t understand are in your way. There are so many different things throughout the coaching process that have helped me.”
Now it's your turn
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