Personal Injury Law From Your Laptop with Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer® Kara Vaval

Kara Vaval:
I'm this little girl, this little lawyer, and I was like, watch me lawyer up. So then I went ahead and I got real litigators, and sure enough, $2.1 million when he could have just settled for $150,000, I'm sure he lost his job, because that was.

Ali Katz:
Wow, congratulations.

Kara Vaval:
That was a big faux pas. Yeah. Thank you. And so that's what I say to lawyers. I'm like, look, okay, we're here to live a life, and we have a career that we sprinkle into it, and it happens to be law. Now, in order for you to live that life, you have to have time-freedom, and you have to have money-freedom. So in order to have time-freedom, you need money-freedom, because you got to pay for certain things so that you're not the one doing, period.

Ali Katz:
Hello, and welcome to the NewLaw podcast, where we guide entrepreneurial lawyers to build law practices into businesses they love. I'm Ali Katz. In this episode, you are going to hear me talk with Kara Vaval, the Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer. And you're going to hear about her journey from growing up in Haiti to building her law practice using an amazing type of personal injury law and now teaching that to others as an entrepreneurial lawyer through Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer. And her story is fascinating. You're really going to want to tune into this journey of how you can love your life as a lawyer, providing personal injury services in a way that I bet you haven't heard of before. So tune in and learn from Kara, and I'll see you on the other side.

Ali Katz:
Hello, Kara. It's so good to see you. I'm so happy that you were able to join us today.

Kara Vaval:
Same. So happy. I was looking forward to this interview, so I'm excited.

Ali Katz:
Where are you joining us today from? Where are you?

Kara Vaval:
I am in South Florida, in beautiful Fort Lauderdale.

Ali Katz:
And is that. Did you grow up in Fort Lauderdale, or did you end up there after law school? How did you end up in Fort Lauderdale?

Kara Vaval:
Actually, I grew up in Haiti. I'm an island girl, and so I grew up on the island back there, went to college in New York, and came down to South Florida for law school, and then the weather trapped me. Yeah, I've been here now, I have like 18 years. I think I'm a Floridian at this point.

Ali Katz:
Yes, you are officially there longer than I was. I was there the first 17 years of my life, so you've got me beat. And even though you weren't born there, you are more of a Floridian than I am. That is true. Now.

Kara Vaval:
I absolutely love it out here.

Ali Katz:
So you grew up in Haiti and then came to the US for college and ended up in law school. What was that path? How did you end up becoming a lawyer?

Kara Vaval:
Oh, my goodness. So that answer is kind of like a twofold answer. Growing up, I was just always a talker. I talk a lot. I debated everybody. I just would not shut up. And I currently see that my daughter is on that same track. And so people would always say to me, oh, my gosh, you'd be such a great lawyer, you'd be such a great lawyer. And growing up in Haiti, there was a lot of injustices that I saw that. A lot of wrongs that weren't being righted because of the political system there and the judicial system being so defunct. And then it hit home when I was about 14 years old and my father was actually killed in Haiti. And till this day, justice still hasn't been served. And so it was my desire to do something with myself that would make him proud, kind of like carrying on his legacy, but also just wanting to be a voice for the voiceless and wanting to bring justice where injustice was just, you know, crawling around. And the great thing about America is that we have a system that allows us to do that.

Kara Vaval:
You know, you can plead someone's case and you can get an outcome. Whereas in a country like Haiti, so many injustices go, and injustice just runs rampant in that country. And so, unfortunately, many people have to deal with loss and just wrongs that are done to them and that they just don't have a way to get justice for.

Ali Katz:
There's never going to be justice.

Kara Vaval:
There will never be justice.

Ali Katz:
But here there could be. That's really what I'm hearing you say, is you really felt that by becoming a lawyer, you could help people get justice here in the US, something that you couldn't do at home.

Kara Vaval:
Correct.

Ali Katz:
Well, I'm so sorry to hear about your dad's death at such a really a tender age. 14, you said?

Kara Vaval:
Yeah, and he was 42. And the crazy thing is, this year I turned 42. So I'm so present to how young he was now more than ever, because, I mean, I feel like a kid still. I feel like I'm just starting life. And yet all his dreams and all of his hopes and aspirations, which is shut off out of nowhere again, in circumstances where anywhere else in the world there would be people brought to justice. And although that would never bring him back, at least there would be some kind of finality, some kind of closure that could have been attained.

Ali Katz:
How long after his death, did you leave Haiti and come to the US?

Kara Vaval:
About two years later. So I moved to the US a month shy of my 17th birthday. I just could not stay there anymore, and it was kind of against my mom's will, but I wanted out of there, and so I moved to New York. I had my grandmother live there, so I was able to stay with her and find my way. I found a high school. Took me an hour to get there just because it was, like, the better school to go to. I mean, I had gone into an all girl catholic school my whole life. And so here I am in Queens, New York, and the school in my neighborhood, they had to put the kids through metal detectors. And I was like, I don't want to get shanked. So I found a school ways away with a different population. Did my last year of high school there, and then I applied to Adelphi University in Garden City. They had an opportunity scholarship that allowed me to go to school, stay on campus, and they were covering the cost of the room and board and all that stuff. And so I did that. Graduated with a double major in poli sci and business administration. Took a year off, and moved to South Florida. I was working in Manhattan as an executive assistant and preparing for my wedding back then, I was saving some money, and then came down to South Florida for law school. I was not doing snow and law school at the same time.

Ali Katz:
That was new for you?

Kara Vaval:
It was very difficult. Those six years that I spent in New York, those were school of hard knocks, right? Concrete jungle. They don't call it that for no reason, it is a concrete jungle. It really is.

Ali Katz:
And when you were in New York and you were going to undergrad, did you know then that you were going to go to law school, or did it come up only after you graduated?

Kara Vaval:
It was something that was kind of always in the background. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, and so I figured the best graduate program that would encompass everything that I wanted to achieve, really, was law school. And so I sat for the LSAT. I had to take it quite a few times. I'm not a good test taker. Standardized tests are not for me. And so when I got into Nova and St. Thomas and some of these schools out here, that I really. Anyway, that's really where I wanted to go anyways. I just packed up and just took a 5x7 U-Haul down here and never looked back.

Ali Katz:
You said you were saving for a wedding back then. So did you have a spouse that went with you at that time?

Kara Vaval:
I did. I did. We got married, came down, and we spent 13 blissful years, two beautiful children, and now I am happily divorced.

Ali Katz:
Congratulations.

Kara Vaval:
Thank you. That was a nice run. A great journey. Happy for all of it, but very much so happy to be on the other side as well.

Ali Katz:
So you have teenagers now. How old are your kids?

Kara Vaval:
My son's 15. Yes, I have a teenager, and my daughter is 10. But having a 15 year old with a 10 year old, she thinks she's 20. So sometimes I have to. I have to dial her down because she gets a little confused, and it's like, no, you're 10. You know, no, we're not putting makeup on just yet. You're 10.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. Slow it down a little bit.

Kara Vaval:
Slow your own.

Ali Katz:
You really are entering into. My kids now are 21 and 24, and so I'm on the other side of it. You're entering into a pretty challenging time for motherhood, and it's really great that you've built your business the way it seems like you have. We'll get into that so that you can have the time to be present with them, because so many lawyers don't. And then they get to these teenage years with their kids, and they realize their kids actually need more presence, and then they have to make a change. And so that brings me to this question of, did you always know that you were going to be an entrepreneurial lawyer?

Kara Vaval:
No.

Ali Katz:
When did that occur?

Kara Vaval:
It's so funny you said that, because my kids, my son actually is the reason why I became an entrepreneurial lawyer. He caused me to. And I say that all the time, like, you saved my life, you know, you coming in at the time that he came in. So I sat for the Florida bar on July 2008. Right. I had just started a job as an associate, but pending my license, and so my bar admission. And so in August, I find out that I passed a pregnancy test, but I had not found out whether I had passed the bar exam or not.

Kara Vaval:
So, as you probably could tell, I was just like, holy cow. I can't even let the cat out of the bag because I didn't know if I had passed or not. I didn't want to lose the job. Sallie Mae was already calling for her money back. Back then, she was Sallie Mae. Now she's Navient. So here I was, pregnant, new rookie lawyer, totally green, working with the securities litigation attorney who was super sophisticated, and I'm feeling small. And then my bar results come out on September 22. I pass. And then the market crashes. September 29. That's. Now we're in 2008, right? And so I let him know that I'm pregnant. And, like, all hell breaks loose. I went from being the best little new attorney that could possibly make partner to, you know, did you even go to law school? Who wrote this motion? You know, like, what the hell is this? Like, degrading. And so it was a very miserable nine months for me.

Kara Vaval:
Really not a good experience. And I would sit there, you know, in my car during my break, just tears coming down my face, like, is this it? Like, that's what I just did. Seven years. I went through literally ten weeks, twelve hour days studying for the bar exam just to get this license. And first of all, I was offered $47,000. I was making 50 in New York prior to going to law school, so I took a pay cut. And then. So when I had my son, it was just like, I'm not going to put my kid in daycare to go. Like, I'm not doing that. I would rather. Yeah, I would rather do anything else that's legal, right? I just, you know, short of selling stuff, like, I'm just. I will do anything else. And so, sure enough, I was about three months into my maternity leave, unpaid, and eating up at my savings. And I prayed because I'm one of those, if my back's against the wall, I have to look up, right? So I prayed. And I was like, God. I was like, God, I need you to do something.

Kara Vaval:
I've done followed all. I checked all the right boxes. I'm not supposed to be in this situation. I did everything I was. Again, I tell you that I get goosebumps because it's so real for me. And I walked into a Target nearby one day with my son. I'm on this little thing with this little cart, and this woman offers me a facial with Mary Kay cosmetics at Target. You know, I said, okay, I don't usually let people come in my house, but whatever, she comes, she does her little shindig.

Kara Vaval:
And by the end of my time with her, I became a Mary Kay consultant for $100. And guess what? I always say I bought my freedom for a $100 because with that hundred dollars, I started selling skincare cosmetics, and skincare and color cosmetics literally on. Whenever my husband came home, I handed him the baby. I went to do what I had to do. And I had a license to practice law at the time, and I was still doing what I had to do, hustling to make the money to stay home with my kid. You know, that Mary Kay beauty business funded my law firm. I drove my pink Cadillac to court.

Ali Katz:
Wow, you got a pink Cadillac.You won in Mary Kay.

Kara Vaval:
I had the pink Cadillac. And so that spanned about five years, and I was doing both. Eventually, I had my daughter, and it was like, okay, I'm going to retire my pink suit, and I'm going to just focus 100% on growing my law firm. And that's what I did.

Ali Katz:
That's amazing, Kara. I love that story so much. So, Mary Kay, you said Mary Kay funded your law practice, so you started your Mary Kay business, but you also started a law practice at the same time, it sounds like.

Kara Vaval:
Correct.

Ali Katz:
What was that? What was the law of practice? What were you doing?

Kara Vaval:
Door law. Anything that walked through the door, that's what I was doing.

Ali Katz:
That's what we call it.

Kara Vaval:
Yeah. So what I did was, and I wish I had it with me to show you, I printed 5,000 flyers for $150. And if you saw that flyer was my picture, I had kind of done a little logo on PowerPoint and law offices of Kara whatever. And then I had, from divorce to dog bite to foreclosure defense, to, you know, whatever issue you had, I'm your girl. Right. And so because I had my community, I went into all the Haitian restaurants, barbershops, and just asked the managers of the stores if it would be okay to drop my flyers. I would put stacks of cards and flyers there. And I will tell you, 15 years later, my phone has never stopped ringing. That was my original marketing strategy, and so I did that. It works.

Ali Katz:
That's strategy. It works for a minute because there's so many lawyers who don't know where to get clients or how to get clients. And really that strategy of finding a community that you have a connection with and then making sure they all know your name, it's the answer to getting clients. The only thing that I probably would have done different at that time, and I'll ask you if it's the same for you, is I would have just focused in one very specific area. Maybe now, for you, that that would have been personal injury. For me, that would have been estate planning, but rather than taking whatever comes in the door, it would have been a very specific thing. When did you narrow down to saying, okay, I'm not going to be a door lawyer anymore. I'm going to focus on personal injury specifically, because that's really your focus today, yes?

Kara Vaval:
Yes. So, actually, what happened was the community kind of forced me into immigration because I was getting a lot of immigration work. When the earthquake happened in Haiti, there was a lot of TPS, temporary protective status work coming my way. A lot of immigration work just kept coming through the door. And immigration work actually somehow also translates into family issues. And so then I would have that. And so I was practicing immigration and family law for a very long time, and then one of my close friends and, I did her divorce. We literally left the courthouse, and on her way to, I think she was taking. I'm not sure what it was going. She was taking her daughter somewhere and got into an accident. She calls me, and she says, somebody just rear ended me. Today's, like, not my day. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, girl, I just gave you your divorce decree. It's your freaking day. But, but, okay, sidebar.

Kara Vaval:
But, um. And so she's like, I need a lawyer. I need you to help me out. And I said, I don't do PI. At the time, I had always been referring my PI cases, you know, get my 25% referral fee, whatever. No one was willing to teach it to me. And so she said, I really need you to take this case. And I was like, it's not my thing.

Kara Vaval:
And so as she insisted, I said, okay, let me see what I can do. At the time, my husband worked as a bodily injury adjuster for an insurance company. So he was just like, take the case. You know, it's really not as difficult as you think it is. It's most likely going to settle pre-suit. And because, of course, I'm thinking litigation, I'm thinking, I've got to go to depots, and I'm gonna have to invest money in this, because that's how I'm thinking PI. And so I took the case on, and I kid you not, I sent them to treatment. There was a 10/20 policy. I got the records, I sent a demand, and they cut me the 20,000.

Ali Katz:
What is a 10/20 policy?

Kara Vaval:
So a 10/20 policy is like $10,000 per person, $20,000 per incident. And since it was on the insurance, it wasn't like it was a great insurance case policy. Nothing. It's like 20,000. Well, the insurance company cut me the check for the 20,000 for both her and her daughter. And I was like, I made $6,606. Like, when I did, I was in literally 2 hours, probably tops, of work, of lawyer work, right between, you know, collecting her records, putting together a demand. I mean, we're not talking about rocket science.

Kara Vaval:
For me to make $6,600 as a family law attorney, billing at even $350 an hour, it took me a while, right? And I was just like, I am moving forward a PI attorney. No more family cases, no more immigration. I started literally winding down those cases, because it just. There was nothing that made more sense. It was just, I'm helping people. I'm getting five star reviews all the time because everyone's happy of the outcome. I'm always putting cash in someone's hand. Family law, no one's ever happy with the outcome.

Kara Vaval:
Immigration takes too dang long. So it was just I wanted to be happy doing what I do, and I found, or it found me, really. And so I've done PI only since then. And that's what, I want to say 9,10 years now.

Ali Katz:
And then you began to teach it because nobody ever was willing to teach it to you, sounds like?

Kara Vaval:
That's it. So what happened was I was running my practice. I had been virtual from day one. I was virtual way before Covid made that, right?

Ali Katz:
Same as me. I was virtual since, I think, 2006. And then Covid came and I was like, okay, this is just normal. Nothing new.

Kara Vaval:
Nothing at all. The only people who kind of looked down on my method were colleagues, fellow lawyers. But my clients never had a problem with how I practiced. I met them at Panera. I met them at Starbucks, or I didn't meet them. I was on Zoom way before y'all knew about Zoom. Like, you know.

Ali Katz:
Right.

Kara Vaval:
Because don't forget, the Mary Kay business model is a direct sales business model. You're working from home. And so I just literally emulated that and kind of copied that into having very low overhead. I mean, I. For a while, I was everything from the receptionist to the janitor, but eventually I outsourced the phones. I, you know, but I always had the professional suite 1000 that everybody else has at the local virtual office spot. When I started doing the PI work and all of that, the money kept coming in. And because my overhead was so low, I was banking and I was living a good life for. I mean, I don't want to say for a woman, but really, at the time, for a lawyer woman who looks like me doing it the way I was doing it, so unconventional, I had something pretty good going. And so I contacted the Florida bar. I said, listen, I think I have an idea for a course that I feel like law schools don't give us enough information to start on our own. But I have, and I'm not teaching law and how to practice law. I'm teaching the business of running a law firm. And so I sent them an outline, and the Florida bar agreed to assign eleven CLE credits to my program. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna get to work then. And so once I had that, I got into the studio, and I just, you know, got the green screen, started recording the content, and then I started doing it kind of like on a one on one coaching with some students that I, that came on board. And then eventually I built it into a program. And the real. The reason is it's just not difficult, the not knowing what to do makes people so insecure. And it's like, once I lay it out in bite sizes, it's just, you realize, I can do this. When I did my first PI case, I was like, man, why did I refer all this work, all this money that I could have made? Because it's just, I didn't know. And so I also created this PI lawyer playbook. And sometimes people just want to get that from me.

Kara Vaval:
They don't necessarily want to do a full blown how to become virtual kind of program. They just want to know, how do I add PI so that even if I get one PI case a year, I mean, one PI case a year could change your life. One PI case a year can send your kids to private school. You know, for me, my PI cases just allow me to have a lifestyle that if I didn't have a cash flow, a high cash flow business in my law business, I wouldn't be able to have. And that's it. Right.

Ali Katz:
I love that so much. And it's, in fact, why, when I talk to you, first of all, the way that we started to talk is because you've registered the trademark Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer.

Kara Vaval:
Right.

Ali Katz:
Because you're helping lawyers to learn how to use their laptop and have a lifestyle and be a lawyer with personal injury and really cherry pick cases. That's really what I heard when we spoke. It's like, you're not taking cases that are going to litigation.

Kara Vaval:
No, I outsource those.

Ali Katz:
That are going to settle. Yeah. So you're not stuck in court all the time. Because that's one of the things that we want to, you know, here at NewLaw, it's about keeping families out of court and out of conflict, but it's also about keeping lawyers out of court and out of conflict to the greatest extent possible. Because who wants to be subject to the court schedule? Opposing counsel? That's, like, so difficult to deal with, but you really don't have any of that, right?

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Kara Vaval:
No, it's a 100% pre-suit business. So if it's not settling, I mean, don't get me wrong. We have cases that we've had to file on because they're either lowballing, and I want the insurance companies to know that I'm not afraid to, to file suit. But then once it's something that is gonna go into past mediation, I'll lawyer up. And so that's what I've done. I mean, I have. I have cases that gone to trial. You know, I'm looking here. I have this daily business review thing on my wall here. We did a 2.1.

Ali Katz:
As everybody should.

Kara Vaval:
Yeah, yeah.

Ali Katz:
Let me just pause you there for a moment. So, if you cannot see your goals on your wall and if you cannot see where you are on track to your goals and what you've already done, that is like a huge entrepreneurial lawyer tip right there. So, right now, Kara's just looking over on her wall. What do you see over there?

Kara Vaval:
A $2.1 million jury verdict that we got for a child, it was a slip and fall case at a local bowling alley. And the insurance company, when I went to mediation with them, they would not give me more than $75,000 for this kid. They originally denied the claim and denied liability, and then finally, they threw in some money, and then we couldn't get past the 75. And I looked at that lawyer, and I said, I'm gonna make you lose your job. Because the parents were willing to walk away with $150,000, and he did not do that. And so I said that because I felt like the reason why he did not. And maybe it was in my head, but he looked at me, and he did not think that I could really go head to head with him in court. And so he, I felt like he was judging the case based on me, because I'm, like. No, I'm this little girl, this little lawyer, and I was like, watch me lawyer up. So then I went ahead and I got real litigators, and sure enough, $2.1 million. When he could have just settled for $150,000, I'm sure he lost his job, because.

Ali Katz:
Wow, congratulations.

Kara Vaval:
That was a big faux pas. Yeah. Thank you. And so that's what I say to lawyers. I'm like, look, okay. We're here to live a life, and we have a career that we sprinkle into it, and it happens to be law. Now, in order for you to live that life, you have to have time-freedom, and you have to have money-freedom. So in order to have time-freedom, you need money-freedom, because you got to pay for certain things so that you're not the one doing them, period.

Kara Vaval:
There's no going around that. So in order to be able to have money-freedom, you have to have something in your law business that's bringing in a lot of cash, whether it's PI, whether you have, you know, even I encourage them to create products, right. Products around their practice. You know, sometimes, like, I have one of my clients students, she's, uh, she does employment law. So it's like, okay, what can, as an employment lawyer, what kind of product can you have to be able to give to small business owners? And they can pay you for those products, and then if they need your legal services on top of it, then they'll pay you for whatever, but you're not doing all of the stuff that you can teach them how to do for themselves and then take over when they really need you. So it's a matter of, you need to be making money, whether you're sleeping or doing whatever. If I'm on vacation, I mean, we did last year, I was with my kids in Hawaii in June of last year, and we brought in a 100k in attorneys' fees because cases that demands were out settled while I was on vacation with my kids.

Ali Katz:
Wow, I love that so much.

Kara Vaval:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. And the way that I see it, we support lawyers to get into estate planning, where they can build a business around this systematized offering, where they get to be counselors to their clients and help their client families throughout life, and then, of course, be there for their client families when the clients can't be. And I really see this personal injury possibility, the way that you are describing it, as really like a perfect add on to a really thriving estate planning practice. Because most of the lawyers that we serve would just refer matters out. They're not going to take it. They're going to refer it out. Maybe they'll get a referral fee. Maybe they won't even get a referral fee, depending on what state they're in or whatever. Yeah, maybe they won't even get it.

Ali Katz:
And really what we're teaching our lawyers is how to be their client's lawyer for life. And so that means that those clients are going to just like your client, that you got the divorce for calls you immediately because she gets in an accident. You're her lawyer at that point. You handled her divorce. For our clients when they are using our system, they are that family's lawyer. That family is going to call them for everything. They're either going to refer it out or they're going to handle it.

Ali Katz:
And what I'm hearing, what I'm getting, what I love so much, is that they could actually handle some of the PI cases with the right systems in place, knowing what to refer out, knowing what to keep and maybe just a couple hours of communication, of gathering of records, of communication with the insurance company, with the adjuster.

Kara Vaval:
Which can easily be done, can be sent to a case manager. There are so many people virtually that will handle all of that for you. I always say you need to know what they're doing so that you can inspect what you expect. However, all that grunt work, because I don't need to be on the phone with the medical providers, grabbing records and sending requests and, like, I don't need to be doing that. Someone can be doing that from the Philippines, really at this point, however, you need to know what it is. And so when you come to my orbit, I just teach you what you need. So you know how to train your people, and you can also use the training in, they could just watch the videos and then it's working smarter and not harder, really. Right. And so once you have your systems in place and you have your forms and templates in place, and everyone knows, because pre-suit cases are very repetitive, it's the same process. It's kind of like there's a letter for everything, and everyone has to get that letter, like, so it's just having it preset in your system, it's easy money and why not?

Ali Katz:
And people are happy.

Kara Vaval:
And people are happy, and they're always bringing you business.

Ali Katz:
It's so much, it's so interesting because I never made this connection, but in so many ways, it is the same context as estate planning, where once you know what questions to ask, once you know how to help people make decisions, I would say that probably that's the difference, right? With PI, you're really making all the decisions for the clients. With estate planning, you're really helping them to make the decision.

Kara Vaval:
So one of the ways that I help my students is, I have Voxer. Voxer is kind of like this little walkie talkie thingamajig that we have, it's an app on the phone. And in the beginning, you know, they're a bit nervous, trying to figure out, okay, let's say this person has three level herniations, and the insurance company offered me $50,000. Is that enough? Like, they don't want to do a disservice to their client not being able to properly evaluate. And I'm there for that. You know, in the beginning, they use me kind of like training wheels. And then eventually I start seeing that they're not reaching out to me anymore because it's like they figured it out.

Kara Vaval:
They know the values of these various injuries because most of them are soft tissue. You know, it just. You start knowing how much a bulge is worth, how much, you know, a sprain is worth, how much herniation is worth, and depending on if the herniation is in the neck or in the lumbar, so it's quick that you get it, and then once you do, it's like you've been doing it your whole life. It's almost like it just, you put it on, and then the jacket fits, and then you just never have to alter it again. And then you're just there, okay, cruising, and then just moving cases along.

Ali Katz:
Yes, yes. And now you know exactly what to do. And I love that, that you're providing that Voxer support, because I do think that when lawyers are going out on their own, they don't have that partner down the hall. You know, I had that when I was first in practice. I had the partner down the hall. You had the partner down the hall. And we may not have liked the partners down the hall.

Kara Vaval:
Right.

Ali Katz:
But we had that. We had that. And that's the same thing that we'll provide as well, is law business mentors for the exact same thing. Like, oh, I need to run this by someone. Who am I going to run this by? Great. We provide that mentorship. You provide that mentorship. So I love that so much. So you decided that you were an entrepreneurial lawyer. Let me ask you that. Let me start. Do you identify with that term now? Entrepreneurial lawyer? Is that clear to you?

Kara Vaval:
I am an entrepreneur. I'm a lawyer, I'm a businesswoman. Absolutely. Yes. Yes, I am that. I am that. And I am her.

Ali Katz:
Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And so what's the end game? Where do you see this all going? You know, if we look out 20 years, and you'll be in your sixties then, where's it going?

Kara Vaval:
Well, I'll tell you what speaks most to my heart is empowering women to be financially independent and emotionally independent. That's. That's the calling on my life, it's very clear. And I know that my journey has just informed me on how to guide women into financial independence and emotional independence, because to me, those are very important places that one needs to gain independence to live a happy life as a woman, especially. And so that's what I see. I have a book that I'm working on now, and it's really talking a lot about the divorced woman and how my financial independence provided me that part. Right. It was not just, you know, you have to gain the courage emotionally and all of that, but if your purse doesn't have the courage to do it. Also, sometimes you kind of stay stuck in situations that don't serve because you are not financially independent. And so as for the law firm, it's going to continue doing what it's doing. It's on wheels right now. My son is already kind of talking about possibly doing, going to law school. He's 15. Who knows what's going to happen? I would love that, of course.

Kara Vaval:
But whatever's going to make them happy, I don't see this going away. PI is not going to go away. People are going to keep bumping into each other, and cases are going to keep generating themselves. I currently now have, like, a really good niche into the wax injury law. Believe it or not, I get a lot of wax cases. Wax cases? Yeah. Brazilian wax. Yep. Brazilian waxing. Bad lip injectables and fillers and all that stuff gone wrong. And so that's not going away. Cosmetic injuries are not going to. And it's such a little niche market that most lawyers don't tap into. And I am just, like, basking in it.

Ali Katz:
Who would even know?

Kara Vaval:
Basking in it.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. That's amazing. It's really. It's really amazing. Kara, here's what I want to do. I want to make sure that everybody knows how to find you. And also that if they mention the NewLaw podcast, that they will get to have a discount on joining one of your programs of $500. Because if you are either deciding on a practice area right now and you've ruled out estate planning, if you, If you're considering estate planning, of course we want to support you with that. And if you're already doing estate planning, you might want to add on personal injury. If you have ruled out estate planning, for whatever reason, you're, like, not into that. This could really be a great practice area that really, it sounds like you can launch into with the right support in your community. Everybody bumps into each other. I love that.

Kara Vaval:
No, but we're on the phone sometimes when we're not supposed to be, when we're behind the wheels, it happens. People just bump into each other. I think the statistics, last time I checked, it's every 9 seconds somebody gets into a car accident in Florida. 9 seconds. This is just one kind of injury. Now, again, you can decide, like me, to go into cosmetic injuries. You can go into, you know, nursing home stuff. There's so many different spaces. Children get injured at school. There's so much, you know, like, there's so much.

Ali Katz:
Well, I think especially when you say that nursing home cases, right. So if you are providing estate planning services, that could be a really good niche, right. People who are injured in nursing homes. What a gift you're giving to hold the nursing homes in your community accountable to actually serving the people that they're serving. I mean, I imagine that's going to be a huge, growing area. And I think the other thing to remember here, and, Kara, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine in all these cases.

Kara Vaval:
Correct.

Ali Katz:
You're going up against insurance.

Kara Vaval:
You're going up against an insurance company that has the duty to mitigate their insured's exposure and damage to the insured directly. And so it behooves them to try to have you go away with a settlement check and getting a release from you. Of course, some insurance companies, you got to twist their arm a little bit. They just don't want to cut that check. But for the most part, the injury speaks for itself. The records speak for themselves. You know, once they've seen the medical providers, the records speak for the injury that this person sustained. And evidently, if this person sustained this injury and it's because your client rear ended her or because your client had water on the floor in the store when it should have been dry, then you just got to do what you got to do to make that person as whole as possible, especially for the goodwill of your client, you know, especially if it's a store.

Kara Vaval:
I have cases where the insurance company, you know, they just. They get it. They know they don't want you to have to drag their client's name into court. They just go ahead and write you a check. I mean, I've had, you know, your public says and whatnot of the world. They just. They do the right thing. They do the right thing because they're in your neighborhood, and they don't want to have 15,000 lawsuits pending against them in Broward County.

Ali Katz:
Right, right. And when people have a good lawyer on their side, they get better outcomes, and you get to be that lawyer that they have. And so I really love that you found your way into this through Mary Kay, Kara. I love that now you're teaching other lawyers because nobody would teach you, and you had to figure it out on your own. That's the way that I found my way to it, too. I was like, I cannot believe that there's no systems for this, that there's no processes for this. How can it be that I have to reinvent this wheel? I promise, no other lawyer will ever have to reinvent this wheel. We'll just literally guide them step by step. And now you're doing the same thing.

Ali Katz:
For those of you that are ready to add on personal injury or build a personal injury practice where you're keeping families out of court and out of conflict. That's what we stand for here. You're keeping yourself out of court and out of conflict as well. And you can always refer out the cases that need a big lawsuit, like the $2.1 million case where you share.

Kara Vaval:
Absolutely. And I negotiate. I'm not taking a 25% cut, because most of these cases, I've worked them up for a long time. And so, I mean, this particular one, I had gone into mediation, so, you know, we did 50. I'm sorry. A 60-40 split. I mean, I've had 50-50 splits. There are law firms that. They'll be happy making that 50% if they know that it's going to be a big verdict. Right? I mean, I had a negligent security case where this 17 year old kid got gunned down in his neighborhood, and I 50-50 with co-counsel, and he's the best in the game. And so I was like, I need you on board. But we made that deal, and. And he was happy to get the 50% that we got on that because it was. It was a pretty nice chunk, right? And so all of this to say that if you even get one PI case, it literally changes your financial situation and lifestyle. You know, some of us have student loan debt that we've carried. You know, some of us just have mortgages that we want to pay off.

Kara Vaval:
You know, you might want to get into that luxury car. You might want to get your elderly parent an apartment. You might want to get your kids. You know, like, just whatever it is, it doesn't have to be. It does not have to be one thing, but that extra cash, what you can do with that chunk, as opposed to the billables that take forever to be able to bring together, man, for me. I will literally die spreading that word. Right? Because it's just, why not?

Ali Katz:
Yeah, yeah. It's so great. It's so great. Well, I love that so much. So if you. If this is you and you're hearing this, you're like, yeah, I want that. You're going to go to laptoplifestylelawyer.com. yeah. So, laptoplifestylelawyer.com and when you talk with Kara, if you mentioned to her that you came from the NewLaw podcast, she will take $500 off of your course enrollment.

Kara Vaval:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
That's when you do the big course. Right. You have some other courses as well. And maybe she'll have some other discount for you on the smaller courses because you came from NewLaw. But just mention it. Make sure that you mention it. And then over here on our side, if you have questions that came up from this, bring those questions to our socials and post your questions, engage there, because we can have Kara back. We can ask your questions for you to really be able to start to get you on the path to being an entrepreneurial lawyer.

Ali Katz:
And, Kara, if you're going to leave everybody today with one most important thing that they. You know that anybody who's considering becoming an entrepreneurial lawyer, to love their life as a lawyer, to love the way that they're using their law degree right now, what is the one thing that you would love to leave every lawyer in that. In that place where you were, you're thinking. You're like, okay, back. Back then, you were working for the firm. You were pregnant. You were. I don't even know. Were you even considering going out on your own? What would you wish you would have heard back?

Kara Vaval:
Okay, so I published a book back in 2016 entitled "28,000 days - make yours count". And 28,000 days is the average lifespan of a human being. About 75 years on a average. You are all going to die one day. And so while you're here, and I hate to say it that way, but that's what it is, we all have a guarantee that we have to exit. We are going to have to exit. At one point, it behooves you to have your 28,000 days filled with happy memories, time spent with your family, happy doing what you do, not miserable in traffic or in some corner office, having someone breathing down your neck, micromanaging you. It is your duty to create your life the way you want to live it.

Kara Vaval:
And after all these dues you've already paid, earning a law degree and getting a license. Yeah. It's your responsibility to go ahead and convert it into the kind of cash that gives you the lifestyle that is worthy of you. So that's what I have to say on that.

Ali Katz:
Yes, Kara. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Preach it. I once was going to create a show called "We're all dying".

Kara Vaval:
Yeah.

Ali Katz:
Because we're all dying. And when we look at that, we could say, oh, I really want to live. I want to live. I want to have a great life. And as a lawyer, there's no reason for you to not be having a great life, making great money, serving great clients. And here's just another path. Kara, thank you so much for bringing this path to us today. Thank you for doing all the hard work to get yourself from Haiti to the United States and then to be in New York for six cold years, to make it to law school and to make it through Mary Kay and to just keep finding your way to more and more clarity so that you could be helping people in the way that you are today.

Kara Vaval:
Thank you and thank you so much for inviting me and opening your listeners to me and my message. Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it. And thank you all for your listening. I really appreciate being able to do what I do. It's a gift.

Ali Katz:
Well, I hope you loved Kara as much as I did. And if you know that you want to give personal injury a try with Kara, you can go to laptoplifestylelawyer.com and be sure to let Kara know that NewLaw podcast sent you so that you get a $500 discount on her training program. And then if you are ready to consider adding estate planning to your practice and building a business around it, you go to newlaw.co/show. That's newlaw.co/show and apply to speak with a law business advisor who will map the path from where you are now to where you want to go, using your law degree in a truly meaningful way and making great living along the way. Can't wait to meet you there. See you on the other side.