#216 - This taught me more than law school ever did
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You know I'm all about prevention over cure when it comes to legal matters. And there's one moment in my career that taught me more about the reality of business law than all my years in law school combined.
I spent the first 12 years of my legal career as a litigation lawyer, representing business owners caught in messy disputes. Court battles, mediations, arbitrations…I saw businesses at their absolute worst moments, fighting over money and contractual obligations that should never have reached that point.
Law school had filled my head with ideals about justice and making a difference. Then a seasoned barrister delivered a reality check that stopped me cold: "This isn't a justice system; it's a legal system. If you want justice, go to a brothel. If you want to get screwed, go to court."
That statement opened my eyes up to the reality of what really happens when businesses end up in legal disputes.
The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong
What law school never taught me was the devastating toll these disputes take on business owners. The financial cost can be crushing (yes, even if you win!), but the emotional strain is often worse. I watched passionate entrepreneurs become shells of themselves, consumed by legal battles that drained their energy, their resources and their love for their business.
These weren't bad people or poorly run businesses. They were simply business owners who hadn't put the right preventative measures in place before problems arose.
From Reactive to Proactive
That's when I made the decision to completely change how I practice law. Instead of helping businesses fight their way out of disputes, I focus on keeping them out of courtrooms entirely through solid legal agreements and preventative strategies.
This shift taught me something no textbook could: understanding legal theory is important, but witnessing the practical reality of what happens when businesses don't have proper protection changes everything about how you approach the law.
Why This Matters for Your Business
If you're running a business without rock-solid contracts - whether with clients, contractors, or partners - you're essentially gambling with everything you've built. The cost of prevention is always smaller than the cost of a legal dispute.
Your contracts aren't just paperwork. They're your first line of defence against the kind of devastating disputes I spent years helping businesses navigate. The businesses that invest in proper legal frameworks upfront are the ones that sleep well at night.
Your Next Step
Take a hard look at your current agreements. Are they actually protecting your business, or are they just generic templates that might crumble under pressure? If you're not completely confident in your legal foundation, it's time to level up.
Don't wait until you're facing a dispute to discover the gaps in your protection. The conversation about strengthening your legal framework is always easier to have before you need it.
What's one area of your business that could use stronger legal protection? The time to address it is now, not when you're sitting across from a lawyer discussing your options after something's gone wrong.
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[00:00:20] Tracey: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Rise Up in Business Podcast. If you're a long time listener, you know that my practice very much focuses on preventative measures. Prevention's better than cure. I say it all the time and I focus so much in my business on preventative measures to help keep clients out of court.
I've been in the law for more than 20 years now, and I know how old that makes me sound. And the first 12 years of my career was spent as a litigation lawyer, so I was representing business owners in court or in disputes, mediations, arbitrations, either suing or being sued.
[00:01:00] Most of the time over money, but sometimes over other contractual obligations. And they were seeking other types of remedies, but mostly, when businesses get into dispute, money has something to do with it. So that part of my career was fabulous for me as the lawyer because I was much younger. I was single.
I had no life whatsoever outside of work. So devoting my entire existence to the really intense nature of a litigation practice was perfectly fine. I didn't know any different. It was all very exciting. I was throwing myself into my career. It was great. But day in and day out, I was working with businesses at their worst. They were in disputes, they were involved in complicated litigation. There was always something going wrong. So I was the fixer. I was the come in and put out fires. I was the strategist. I was, how do we move forward from this?
[00:02:00] But I never got to see people at their best until, and unless we won and we were successful and then they were better, never at their best, but better. But the reason they were never at their best is because there's a real trauma attached to going through a litigation for most people, and there's a cost attached to that. I'm gonna talk in today's podcast episode about something that taught me way more than anything I ever learned at law school.
This is the thing, like most professions, learning the theory is one thing, but putting it into practice is often something very different, and there's no exception when it comes to legal practice and disputes.
And when I share with you this one thing that taught me more than law school ever did, I'll also dive into a little bit more context around why it is I do what I do now and why the services that I offer and the preventative approach that I offer through the lens of a formal litigation lawyer is so valuable for business owners who want to set themselves up for long-term sustainable success.
[00:03:00] Because I can tell you this with complete certainty, it can take just one dispute, one litigation, one contract dispute to send a business on a downward spiral, so much so that sometimes they just can't come back from it. So, lemme go back. When I was in law school, I did my undergraduate degree and then I did my practical legal training.
So my graduate diploma, all of that together with my combined degree in business, took five and a half years. So as you can imagine, there is textbook learning, there are papers you write, presentations you give, mock trials you participate in, practical assessments that we undertake, but it all comes from the theory. And so we learn from previous judgements, we learn from historical law, Commonwealth law, we go way back to where common law started and we learn it all.
[00:04:00] The theory. And we are taught that there is justice here, that we are seeking justice. So we're embarking on a practice of a legal career. And we're going to achieve justice for our clients.
And I was so driven by that because I wanted to help people. So I thought practicing law, this is where justice is. This is where I'm going to be able to make a real difference. So I graduate, I start practicing, and then very quickly I land on my feet in a commercial litigation practice, very much baptism by fire, sink or swim, straight in the deep end.
I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but looking back, I'm very grateful for that experience because I landed on my feet and here I am. But justice is what I thought we were seeking for our clients, for our business owner clients who were involved in litigation, who were suing somebody because they'd been wronged or they were defending legal proceedings because they'd been unjustly sued.
[00:05:00] There was an unjust claim made against them, and they had a defense. So in that process, once you embark on the litigation route or the dispute route, or you're in mediation, very quickly, I became accustomed to the level of stress business owners were under because they had to work with their lawyers, whether you're suing or being sued, to give the lawyers what they need to do their job. So there's lots of time required, and as soon as you start working with litigation lawyers, it is expensive. So everything they do has a cost attached to it, and there is an awful lot of work to do when you're involved in a litigation dispute matter.
So it's expensive and very quickly I learned that not only was there an emotional stress for business owners having to take time out of their day to day and spend with their lawyers and attend meetings and review documents and go back through their records and talk to their team or their accountant, or engage a financial expert for reports.
[00:06:00] Not only was there a cost attached to that commercial cost in terms of dollar signs, but also the time away from the business. There was an emotional cost because of the stress that they were going through and the flow on effect that that had on their lives outside of business. But then there was the financial stress, because all of this is costing money, but it was a spiral because not only were they paying the lawyer's invoices, they're taking time outta their business, they're not generating revenue.
It really was a spiral effect. So the dollar signs and the costs just kept increasing, and this was consistent across every litigation matter. That's the way it is today when you get involved in any dispute. Those are the costs. Personal, emotional, financial. They're all real. I'm getting to the learning part right now. When you go through a court process, whether it's mediation, arbitration, court litigation, and you get to the end of that process, you are withered.
[00:07:00] It's like you've been in the arena, you're weathered and you come out and you might still be standing because you might've been successful, but then there's the argument around, well, do I get my money back if I won?
And you don't get 100% of your costs back. So all of the invoices you've paid to your lawyer and your barrister and your team, you don't recover 100% of that. So you don't come out unscathed financially either. The way I describe it to clients, it's almost like a Medicare system where you go into the gp, you pay the invoice in full, and then Medicare will give you a portion back, so there's a gap that you're out of pocket.
It's exactly the same with litigation and court. The only variance is, well, how much are you out of pocket? And a good lawyer's job is to try to reduce that out of pocket amount as much as they can. And there's strategies for that. But the point is, you're out of pocket. You don't recover 100% of it, and you certainly don't get your time back, and you certainly don't recover what you've lost by way of revenue in the business because you've been focusing on the dispute.
[00:08:00] So you get to the end of this process and I started asking myself, where's the justice? Where's the justice here? Because in all of the books and all of the learning that I'd done in law school, I thought that I was embarking on a path to justice, if you like, but I wasn't, and this is the point. One of the barristers that I worked with, I had a discussion with him about this and he'd said to me very clearly, and this is a little polarizing, and it's stuck with me every day since.
This is not a justice system, it's a legal system. If you want justice, go to a brothel. If you wanna get screwed, go to court. And my goodness, my goodness, did that have a profound impact on me, and it forever changed the lens that I look at when I'm looking at the court system and litigation and the dispute process. So when clients would come to me and they would say to me, Tracey, I wanna pursue this. It's not about the money, it's about the principle.
[00:09:00] I would very quickly learn that I had to have a conversation with them such that they knew that I was very happy to support them and to back them every step of the way whilst we're going through this process on the basis of their principles.
So long as they knew that there was no justice here, because we have a legal system, not a justice system. And that right there taught me more than law school ever did because law school focused on the theory. The practical reality was often very different. And so now when I'm working with business owners, I know very well the immense, immeasurable, often immeasurable value of working with them now to develop contracts and agreements that work.
That serve the business to protect the business and support the business moving forward because it is so important to make sure that those agreements and contracts are rock solid and are doing everything they possibly can to support that business, to keep that business out of disputes and as far away from court as humanly possible.
[00:10:00] And the reason I do that is because of my background. It's because of my experience. It's because of what I've seen, and I've spoken on this podcast so many times about what I've seen that could have been avoided. Businesses being destroyed, livelihoods being ripped apart. I've talked about that over on my Instagram account.
I've talked about it here on other episodes. But now I'm giving you a little insight into why, why that happens. Why is there such destruction? Why can it be such a slippery slide for businesses when they get caught in disputes and find it really hard to claw their way back? And sometimes, depending on the type of business, sometimes it only takes one dispute, whether it's 5,000 or 10,000, to just pull that first thread before things really start unraveling and sometimes it can be really hard to claw that back. So when I say prevention is better than cure in business, it really is.
[00:11:00] It's not a cliche because like the barrister that I worked with early on in my career had so absolutely pointed out to me, this is a legal system, not a justice system. If you want justice, go to a brothel. If you wanna get screwed, go to court. I'm talking here about the context, friends, of commercial litigation and business disputes. I'm not talking about our criminal justice system. Not even touching on that. Commercial disputes. It had such weight when he said that to me, and I wanted to share that so that you could fully appreciate the weight of why it is I do what I do with the knowledge and experience that I have, because I know what it takes to rip a contract apart. I know what it takes to be clever and strategic and muddy the waters and keep businesses embroiled in litigation for such a long time, such that a business can't afford to keep going. Been there, done that.
[00:12:00] So as polarizing as it is, that little catchphrase that came from that barrister in the context of what we were working on taught me more than anything I ever learned at law school, because there is a practical reality when you're dealing with people and businesses and knowing the principles of common law and knowing how to enforce a contract sometimes just isn't enough.
'Cause even if you're successful, it can be too late. This is not designed to be a negative Nancy episode. That is not how I roll. You know, that's not my style, but it is designed to give perspective and insight into what I know can be really powerful knowledge for a business owner to have.
So if you're listening and you're thinking, I don't know if my contracts are rock solid. I bought templates, I borrowed somebody else's. Maybe it's time to uplevel. Then perhaps it really is the time. So whether it's your agreements with your clients, your contractor agreements, or the agreements you have with your team, they all need to be rock solid to support your business so you don't end up embroiled in a situation which is gonna cost so much more than what's actually in dispute.
[00:13:00] I hope you've enjoyed this really short and sharp episode. Please reach out and let me know what you think. I love receiving your feedback. Like I say so often on here, delivering this podcast for you is absolutely one of my favorite things in my business, and I love so much that you get so much value out of it and that you reach out and share that with me.
If there's something in particular that you would love me to talk about on the podcast, please reach out and let me know because this podcast for me is all about delivering value for you. So I would love to hear from you. As always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time.
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