#208 - The Life Experiences That Made Me A Better Lawyer
I've shared plenty of personal insights over the years—through podcast episodes, social media posts and conversations with clients. I've talked openly about my why, my passion for educating business owners and those eye-opening experiences from my early days in litigation and dispute resolution.
But here's what I've never shared. Today, I'm pulling back the curtain further than before, to share the significant life experiences that have shaped me to become the lawyer I am today.
Finding My Why: The Early Years in Criminal Law
There was a time in my career when I found myself straddling the world of commercial litigation and criminal law—an experience that was as enlightening, yet challenging. Early on, my days were consumed by the mechanics of the law, portraying roles that seemed devoid of personal introspection. I remember a pivotal moment vividly: being asked to step into a difficult criminal case, not for my expertise, but simply "because we need a girl." The nature of the charges was appalling, desensitising me to the harsh realities of what was right and wrong. That episode forced me to reflect deeply on my purpose. It became a significant turning point that nudged me towards aligning my legal practice with the soul-led work I truly wanted to pursue, ensuring that I’m always asking 'why’ in every step I take as a lawyer.
The Cost of Being Unprepared: A Client’s Heartbreaking Experience
Shortly after this turning point, another experience left an indelible mark on me. I was brought into a case where a business owner, neglecting to seek proper legal advice, found himself staring at the dissolution of his company and the loss of his family home. The image of this client, filled with regret and tearfully acknowledging the collapse of his dreams, has driven my advocacy for preventive measures in business. "Prevention is better than cure" isn’t just a motto; it's the bedrock of how I conduct my practice, aiming to equip my clients with the foresight and preparedness that could prevent such heartaches.
Lessons from Loss: My Parents’ Battles with Cancer
For me, accessibility in law became a passion rooted in personal loss. Eight years ago, I lost my father to cancer, a situation exacerbated by the geographical barriers to competent medical care in rural New South Wales. Witnessing my parents' struggles to connect with empathetic and communicative healthcare professionals instilled in me a determination to champion accessibility in my field. It's the reason my practice is rooted in empathy and collaboration, ensuring that clients feel understood, supported and able to engage with me on terms that meet their unique needs.
Running my practice on my terms means consciously choosing to work only with clients who are aligned with my methods and values. I’m not the lawyer for everyone, and that’s perfectly alright. Every case is a relationship, and just like any relationship, alignment is key.
These experiences have shaped the trajectory of my professional journey and continue to inspire the way I interact with my clients. My hope in sharing these stories is that, in some way, they resonate with your own life experiences or inspire a new path forward. Our past informs who we are, and it’s by looking back that we can clearly define our way forward.
As always, thank you for taking the time to share this space with me. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to connect with you today, hoping my experiences have sparked reflections on your journey as well. Feel free to pass this piece along to anyone who might find comfort or insight in these shared stories. Together, we expand the reach of meaningful discussions.
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[00:00:21] Tracey: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the podcast. Thank you for joining me for what is going to be the most personal episode to date. I've talked about personal things on the podcast in the past, and I've shared some personal insights and bits and pieces along the way, but I have never shared as deeply or as personally as what I'm gonna share today, and the reason I'm sharing this with you is because I talk a lot on the podcast with my clients in social media messaging.
[00:01:00] I talk a lot about my why in business, and I talk a lot about my desire to educate and empower business owners based on what I've seen in my early litigation and dispute resolution days.
Indeed, my business is underpinned by an empower ethos, so it's very much at the core of what I do. I talk about that a lot and I share widely on that, and I share insights into what I saw earlier on in litigation, and I share insights into how it is I know that so many things that go wrong can be avoided and the power of documentation and all the things.
But today I'm gonna share with you three very personal life experiences that have made me the lawyer I am today. And that hand on heart makes me what I think is a much better lawyer. So having legal expertise is one thing. Absolutely. Practical expertise is another thing. Absolutely. But life experience, it's just as important and it goes to the core of who I am and why I do this, and I'm gonna share that with you.
[00:02:00] There are three really significant life experiences that have led me to where I am today and that have supported my mindset, my attitude, my soul led purpose in this business. And the first is something that goes right back to my earlier part of my career, not too early. About 10 years in and it draws from my years in criminal law practice.
So as many of you know, I spent several years practicing as a criminal lawyer, so I sort of straddled the commercial litigation and dispute resolution and criminal law, and it was an incredible experience. It was, I learnt so much and I was grateful for the opportunity both with the firm that I was working at when I started, and then my business partner, we established a firm and he was a criminal lawyer and I was heading up the litigation team, but I did both.
[00:03:00] I did criminal law and commercial litigation in that space over many years, and I learnt so much in terms of the application of the law, in dealing with people, negotiation, reading people, the reality of life and what actually happens out there. I learnt a lot, but it wasn't all good and this life experience that I wanna share with you came about after many years of me doing the same thing day in and day out, year after year without thinking about why I was doing it. So I was never thinking about my why. It was just, I wanna be a lawyer, I wanna help people. Great. And if that's commercial litigation, great. And if that's somebody wanting to rip a contract apart because they don't wanna pay, great. That's what I'll do. Even if they had no basis, no moral or ethical basis to do it, if I could find a way out legally I would, didn't even think about it. Same goes with the criminal law practice.
I used to get asked a lot, oh, How do you act and defend somebody if you know that they're guilty? And any criminal lawyer will tell you that's irrelevant. We don't ask whether they've done it or not, whether they're guilty or not. It's irrelevant.
[00:04:00] Everybody's entitled to a fair defense. Everybody's entitled to a good defense. So whether or not someone actually did it was not a question that we discussed in the office. It was not something that would often pass through my mind. Every now and then, I might think, oh, Prosecution have a great case here, gee wonder. But it wasn't something that we discussed, and it certainly wasn't something that was discussed with clients. So after several years of this, there was one particular day that I was really under the pump in terms of work, and it was lunchtime and a barrister that we worked with a lot in our practice came back from court.
He was just starting a trial that our firm was instructing on. And he came back and he said, Trace, can you please come to court and be the instructing solicitor? We need a girl. So this was a jury trial and I'm not even gonna talk about the fact that he said we need a girl. And that it didn't even occur to me to mind that that was what was said. Doesn't matter.
[00:05:00] The fact is for optics, they thought that it would be better if there was a girl instructing at the bar table. And I didn't give two thoughts to that, and I didn't even think about me or what I had on my plate. I rearranged my calendar and off I went for that afternoon and the next day I was the instructing solicitor doing what I needed to do. I was aware of the case, of course, because it was a matter that our firm had, but the solicitor who was instructing, who was a boy, not a girl, came back to the office and off I went. Now, I'm not going to share the nature of the charges because they're appalling. They are appalling, and I'm not going to share that because you'll form certain views and it's irrelevant. The point is, I was so desensitised at that point in my career as to what was right and what was wrong off I went and I didn't think about do I want to be representing this person? Do I have capacity to take this on, even though I'm not the one that's been engaged.
[00:06:00] I've got other commitments. I've got a ton of other things to be doing. No, I just went off because I was the girl. I was asked to and off I went. And it was only a week later, and I don't know why, I had caused to pause and reflect on that, but it was a week later and I asked myself, what on earth did you do that for? Why did you go? It wasn't my case. I didn't have capacity. I was running myself ragged as it was. I've talked previously about my journey with adrenal fatigue and stress and all of the things, but I just did it. I became so desensitised to what mattered to me, to what my purpose was, that I just went off and did it.
That was a significant moment for me where I had cause to pause and reflect on my why in this profession. Why am I doing this? And it was shortly after that that I had a discussion with my partner and we decided. It wasn't at my request, it was just at me saying, this is what I'm doing.
[00:07:00] I'm not practicing in criminal law anymore. And I didn't. So there was no issue, from there I didn't, and I very much stayed focused on the litigation and dispute because I was thinking about my why and why am I doing this and my purpose, and what am I here for? And that's when I started giving thought to my why in this business, in this practice, and in my day to day, I had become so desensitised to what was right and wrong, to what served me, to what was important to me in my career, in my life, I had become so desensitised to it that it scared me. It was a moment that it really rattled me that I had just been sleepwalking much like a robot. I was so robotic day in and day out and doing the things. There was no emotion. I was living in masculine energy 98% of the time for a decade or more, and it wasn't serving me. And something happened that caused me to pause and reflect.
[00:08:00] That's when I started turning my mind far more often to my why, to what's aligned for me in my core to what I know is aligned to what I wanna be doing. It wasn't easy. It certainly wasn't set and forget, and I didn't get it right all the time, but that started my journey about my why and doing soul aligned work. Now in my business, I very much think about every single matter I take on, and am I aligned with this client? Can I serve this client really well? Is this client ready? Am I the lawyer for this client? And I'm not the lawyer for everybody, and that's okay. And I have no difficulty or reservation or hesitation in saying that to clients who reach out to work with me.
And if I have an existing client of many years and we've reached a point where we are no longer aligned, and another practitioner could better serve that client because another practitioner will be able to better meet their expectations, then I have no hesitation in beautifully and amicably parting ways with a client so that I can do the work that sets my soul on fire for the type of clients that I know are aligned with me, and so that clients and business owners can go and seek advice and support from those that are better aligned with them.
[00:09:00] So thinking about my why is something that I do daily. And I'm no longer desensitised and I'm no longer a robot in my business, and I don't do the same thing day in and day out. I feel, I reflect, I have conversations, and I'm really intentional about the clients that I take on to work with and support and collaborate with.
So that's my first life experience. The second one happened about 12 months after the first, and this one goes to the heart and core of my prevention being better than cure approach in my business. And you'll hear me say it time and time again over and over and over. And I often say I've seen it all when things go wrong and I have. I hand on heart have.
[00:10:00] But there is one standout discussion with a client, one standout matter that stands out miles beyond all the others that drives home the message that I send about prevention being better than cure, and that is when a business owner engaged me to give advice on a dispute within a business, and that business owner had entered into documentation without legal advice many years ago because they were mates. They were mates, and so he didn't get legal advice on the documents.
He kind of skimmed them. They changed a few things back and forth with the other party's lawyer who is not the sort of lawyer that I aspire to be or ever aspired to be, so questionable in terms of ethics and morals. But nonetheless, what had happened was there were clauses in that agreement that my client didn't know were there. So he doesn't know if they were there all the way through, or if they were included later on in some of the negotiations. He doesn't know, but he didn't get advice on it, so he didn't know what it meant. And the clauses that needed to be in this documentation to protect both parties equally weren't there.
[00:11:00] So this particular client was exposed and things went from bad to worse. And there's only so much you can do with a signed agreement that you get presented with, which is so one-sided and lacking the supportive clauses needed to ensure fairness. But back then when I got this, we tried to negotiate, we put strategies in place.
We did a whole host of things, but at the end of the day, we could only work with what we had and we didn't have much. And what this meant was, not only was the business dissolved and this particular person was out of the business, because of the situation and the scenario at play, it also meant he had a significant amount of debt attached to him being exited from the business for a whole host of reasons, which aren't important. But that day in my office back then, he sat across my desk from me and started crying and said to me, I now have to go home and tell my wife I've lost the family home. I don't think anything's impacted me quite the way that did in that moment and that has stayed with me ever since.
[00:12:00] So when I talk about my why in my business and what I do in this business and the messaging around preventions being better than cure and the importance of having the right people around you in business, it's because I've seen so much. And this example, this experience comes back to me every single time I talk about it because that could have been avoided if he had have had the right lawyer or a lawyer he could call to say, Hey, I'm about to do this. Can you have a look at it? If he had have known the importance of the documentation and if he just wasn't working on the basis of trust because he was mates with this fellow, that could have all been avoided.
So when I talk about the importance of documentation and why the close mates and friendships and family members carry the biggest risk, it's for these reasons because I've seen the consequences when people don't take the time to get the right advice and get the documentation done properly.
[00:13:00] So that is by far the client experience that has impacted me the most and has driven me in this business to focus on educating, empowering business owners and to be that lawyer that people can connect with to give the support that they need later to be able to pick up the phone and say, Hey, I'm about to do this. Is this something you need to look at? Uh, yes it is. That's how the conversation should go, and then the business owner knows.
So that's the second one. And the third life experience that has made me the lawyer that I am, a better lawyer, I think is losing my dad to cancer eight years ago. It was eight years ago on Thursday last week that we lost my dad to cancer. And that was a long journey and it was a battle. And what I saw time and time again in that journey was one, a lack of accessibility. I grew up in rural New South Wales and my family still lived there. My brother still does. My parents have both passed away.
[00:14:00] We lost my mum two years ago to cancer. They always lived there, and accessibility to competent medical care, to the support that they needed was really challenging as it is for so many families who live in these rural and remote areas. And accessibility was something I wanted to tackle in my business because I wanted people to be able to access really good, competent, supportive legal advice and legal support and legal representation because that's all I could do. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a medical practitioner. I can't do it in that space, but I can do it in my space. And I saw just how significant the barriers around accessibility were.
And on top of that was access to the right medical professionals and support people, and when I say the right ones, I mean ones that my parents could connect with because in all of those years, what I saw was struggling and insecurity and fear and a lack of understanding because my parents were really finding it difficult to connect with professionals who they could understand, who could explain things to them in a way that they needed.
[00:15:00] So all the trips to Sydney and all the trips to other towns for specialists and all of the things, my mum would often come back really nervous and really anxious saying, I don't really understand it. I would ask, did you ask, what about this? Well, yes, I, I did, but I didn't understand what they meant and I didn't wanna, you know, I didn't wanna sound stupid and it's all overwhelming. And gosh, that really, really had an impact on me because it shouldn't be like that. And what their experience was every now and then, they had a great one. Absolutely. And there are some that were fantastic, but that was rare.
And what I saw and what I heard and what I witnessed my parents go through and struggle with and face real challenges with was being able to connect with people who could support them in the way that they needed and explain things in the way that they needed so that they could process what was happening. It was a tough road and it didn't get easier as it went. And then later when mum became unwell and we lost her to cancer, she faced the exact same thing.
[00:16:00] So it was understanding and what does this mean? And she would often ring and say, look, this is what the doctor said and I've Googled it and this is what it means.What do you think? And you know, we all know how that goes and how overwhelming and confronting that can be. So I took that and I did what I could to support them through that process. And. It is what it is. But I've taken that into my business and I've gone, right. You speak to anybody and most people will say, I find lawyers to be unapproachable, off-putting stuffy, boring, dull.
They speak down to me. I don't feel seen, all of that. Every now and then you hear someone say something lovely, but that's not the majority. And taking all of that experience into my practice when I set this business up in 2019, after dad had passed away. I knew one of my drivers was accessibility, hence the virtual law practice. And I knew that being able to meet people where they were at and offer the support and collaboration that people need that I want to provide, was really important to me. And that is one of the drivers in this business, and it's very much anchored to my why.
[00:17:00] So I'm very selective with clients that I work with because if I don't think that we're aligned in the way that we work, then I'm not doing the client a service or myself a service to take the matter on. I am doing both of us a service if I share my view and encourage them to seek representation from somebody who can better meet their expectations or who operates in a way that they need.
It's not always me. But I collaborate with my clients. I support my clients. We are on the same team. We are on the same page. I'm on your side. Every now and then, not often, every now and then I will encounter a client who I've either misread or misjudged at the beginning in terms of the relationship, and we end up in a situation where, for whatever reason, it becomes a little fractured or a little tense, I think is the word. And there's almost been like a one upness like, huh, I'm gonna tell you this 'cause you got that date wrong, or you did that wrong. And for whatever's going on for them in their life and their business, [00:18:00] they need to use somebody as a punching bag, or they need to take out their frustrations or their stress on somebody. That's not going to be me.
So in those circumstances, I explain that we need to part ways now and move on because I don't work in those situations. Back in traditional legal practice, of course you had to, you had to be whatever the client wanted you to be because you didn't have a choice about who you took on. Very different for me in this practice where I do have a choice to who I work with, and I do have a choice to what clients I can take on so that I can meaningfully add value, and that's not everybody. So it's those life experiences that have made it really clear to me why I do what I do, how I do it in this business, and how I approach scenarios where a client is either not aligned or there's been growth and we are no longer aligned.
[00:19:00] So it's really clear to me and I'm able to deal with that in this business, whereas I never was, when I worked at the law firms.That's a significant component of running my own practice in a way that's unique to me, where I do things my way, where I serve clients in a beautifully aligned way, which is not consistent necessarily with traditional legal practice and the six minute time costing increments and the inability to connect, the lack of time to exercise compassion or or show empathy. None of those things are consistent with the traditional practice that I have experienced. It's not to say that it's everybody's experience, but it's mine. And so these life experiences that I've shared with you have very much informed the lawyer that I am today, and as you would've heard me say so many times on the podcast, if you're a long time listener, there is honestly not a day that goes by where I'm not grateful for my business and where I'm not so grateful for the beautiful clients that I get to work with and who I get to support and collaborate with.
[00:20:00] So this has been really personal and I hope that this has in some way or another, connected or resonated with you somehow to either prompt you to think about your why, to prompt you to reflect on your pertinent life experiences, to draw from that, to inform the next season of your business or the direction of your business, or to at least just offer an opportunity for reflection to gain clarity on what serves you and what doesn't and how best to deal with it because you are the driver of your own business and you do get to choose. And when we are really clear on what drives us in business, it's just so much easier to be able to make informed decisions without spending too much time agonising over whether or not this project's right for me, this client's right for me. Do I wanna stay around and try and sort out this dispute or not? You know, there's so many different ways that our experiences shape us and support us moving forward, and those are my key experiences that have shaped me and that support me moving forward. Oh gosh. I hope you have enjoyed this so much.
[00:21:00] I very much enjoyed planning this episode and sharing this episode with you. So thank you for listening. As always, I'm answering two questions at the end of each episode in this season of the podcast. The first question, which is a little off topic, but it, the question was, is a debt collector the same as a lawyer? No, debt collectors are usually not lawyers. So debt collectors usually have processes and systems in place where they can step in and help recover unpaid debts. But if they're not successful, they then need to refer to a lawyer.
Some have in-house, some have relationships with lawyers, or else they just refer back to the client to say, right now you need to go and engage your lawyer. The lawyer's actually the one that's got the ability to take legal action, so no debt collector and lawyer are not the same. The second question is, do I need to give notice to my contractor if I don't wanna work with them anymore. The answer to that is, it depends on what your contractor agreement says. Usually there's lengthier notice periods in contractor agreements, 30 or 60 days. Often in employment agreements, we've got the National Employment Standard notice period, which is one year per year of service up to four years.
[00:22:00] But contractor agreements tend to have a little more because of the nature of services being provided. But if you want to know what sort of notice period you have to give a contractor to bring services to an end or vice versa, the contractor has to give you the business owner to bring services to an end, it'll be in the contractor agreement under the termination clause. As always, thank you so much for joining me. if you know a business owner or friend that you think would also benefit to listening to my very personal episode here, I'd be so grateful if you would share the episode widely, because together that's how we get the podcast into the ears of even more business owners.
Thank you so much. I’ll catch you next time.
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