Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / Episode 289 | Scaling Your Business with Legal Strategy featuring Juliet Peters

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Episode 289 | Scaling Your Business with Legal Strategy featuring Juliet Peters · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:01
  Intro: Welcome to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers? Ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Davina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love.
• 0:31
  Davina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now, here's Divina.
• 0:51
  Davina: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. I'm your host, Divina Frederick. And my guest today is Juliette Peters. Juliette started framework legal in 02/2014 with the mission of building a client center business law firm that would work in lockstep with its clients, providing them with the strategy solutions and confidence they needed to scale their businesses. Building a business that scales can be difficult and Juliet understands the challenges of growing a business because she runs one herself.
• 1:22
  Framework legal's process starts with open dialogue. They invest in understanding your their clients' unique teams and goals and guide them in creating the right vehicle for success. They also work to minimize risk to their clients' businesses and maximize benefits for both routine and transformative transactions. Juliet's firm is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, where they serve business clients throughout the state. Hi, Juliette, and welcome.
• 1:50
  I'm so glad to have you here from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm so grateful to be here. Good. Good. So I have, introduced you, but I'd like to hear a little bit more from you.
• 2:02
  Let's start with, just your law firm and the clients you serve and the type of services you provide for them.
• 2:10
  Juliet: So, I am a boutique transactional firm, and, the name of the firm is Framework Legal, and I focus mostly on kind of two verticals. One is outside or fractional general counsel work, and that's everything from helping, you know, companies do all of their contracts, derisk, light employment, anything that a business owner might face day to day. And, typically, those are businesses that, you know, exceed about a million dollars in revenue. They're not big enough that they have an inside, counsel. Right?
• 2:50
  So they have frequent needs, but they don't have somebody in house. And then the second part of the business is really focused on business transitions. And so that's mergers and acquisitions, that is internal sales, that might be identifying and finding some kind of internal successor or whether or not someone might go down the ESOP road. So those are kind of the the, you know, areas that I probably focus the most of my attention on. Sometimes I help executives when they have executive employment agreements, and those come with, any kind of an option or something like that.
• 3:33
  I have a group of employment attorneys I work with who are uncomfortable diligencing the internal investment thing, but I would say that's a pretty small part of the practice.
• 3:43
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about the verticals that you serve. What industries do you tend to work with?
• 3:49
  Juliet: So I am pretty much industry agnostic. I really don't have, you know, any industries that I serve more than any others. I would say the only thing I really don't do is deep doctor medical practices. So I have you know, there are a couple of people in Phoenix who really do that work. And, so I but I do have home health care providers, dentists, you know, and those sort of ancillary practice components, just not doctors themselves.
• 4:23
  But I have people in all industries, you know, software as a service, all kinds of professional service providers. In Arizona, we have, specialty lawyer things called alternative business structures or ABSs, which allow non lawyers to have ownership interests. So in in law firms, and so I do some of that.
• 4:45
  Davina: Different from most other states.
• 4:48
  Juliet: Hugely different. There's only a handful of states doing it, and, we have a hundred I I was just looking, like, we have a hundred and seven, law businesses that have nonlawyer ownership. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 5:03
  It's really interesting.
• 5:05
  Davina: Yeah. It is. I think I think that's something that, lawyers are always concerned about when they when they see that. But I can see where there's a there's a market for it. Certainly, there are people who might be, business investors or Yeah.
• 5:23
  People even people who are married to lawyers who own the firm or something might have some interest or whatever that they wanna protect. It's it's it's a fascinating area, I'm sure. And you guys are probably forging the path a little bit Yes.
• 5:37
  Juliet: In that. Absolutely. Yeah. Washington kinda started. They did some experimentation, then Arizona, and and and Utah has what's called a sandbox.
• 5:46
  Right? So they allow some of that to go on, but Arizona is really I mean, we took a a rule, away, that, you know, since you have lawyers who listen to your podcast, the rule that would allow us to fee share is gone. So we can share fees with non lawyers and other lawyers do fee splits. And then we have this whole ABS thing. And then in addition to that, we have what are called paraprofessionals who are working in, you know, criminal family, and they work under the supervision of a lawyer, but it's essentially a paralegal who is doing the heavy lifting and will even appear in court.
• 6:32
  So it's really kind of interesting. And that the whole purpose of this was to kinda open the playing field for access to justice. Whether or not that's actually doing that, I'm not exactly sure yet because a lot of the ABSs are not in the access to justice universe. So
• 6:51
  Davina: Right. Right. Exactly. What what yeah. What is access to justice?
• 6:54
  What does that include? Right? So Right. What was there, and and we're we're gonna come back because Yeah. I don't wanna spend too long on this, but I just I'm curious now.
• 7:04
  Was there a a perceived shortage of lawyers, is kind of what led to this? Well, I mean,
• 7:11
  Juliet: it so nationwide, the statistic isn't there's a perceived shortage of lawyers. Right? And we definitely don't have a shortage of lawyer, lawyers in Arizona. What it is is a, shortage, an actual shortage in cost effective lawyers for people in areas like landlord tenant, certain criminal cases, and family law. Right?
• 7:35
  People end up having to go it alone because they can't afford a lawyer. Right? And so this was supposed to be one of the ways that you would deal with that, kind of a gap, if you will, between legal services that really are needed in the community, and the cost of legal services generally. What's happened, at least from where I sit is, it's a lot of, it's a lot of class action. It's a lot of, you know, personal injury.
• 8:10
  It's those things where there already are players that are nonlawyers. You know, there's marketing companies and all of this. So that's kind of I would say, based on what I just saw, that's probably the vast majority of these. Now there are some that are really interesting like lawyers. This has been a godsend for lawyers who are both CPAs, right, and lawyers because they were having to run two different businesses.
• 8:38
  Right? And so this allows them to have everything they do, CPA services and law services under one platform. And I just noticed also KPMG was just approved. So it's really gonna change the practice. And the bigger players like KPMG or, you know, there were a number of, what used to be called alternative legal service providers or all sets, who now have, firms in Arizona.
• 9:06
  And their goal is to drive all their legal work through Arizona because then that opens up or at least they believe it opens up 50 state practice. So it's it's interesting. It's a fascinating area. So
• 9:18
  Davina: Yeah. And I think there's gonna be a lot of, unintended consequences that may come out of that Yeah. As a result of that. Because, you know, they could have limited if the access to justice was they could have said in these areas of practice.
• 9:31
  Juliet: Yeah. I know. Yeah.
• 9:32
  Davina: As a lawyer and a business owner, how are you finding it, to have this kind of competition in your state?
• 9:41
  Juliet: I haven't really felt it personally yet. I think there are a lot of things that are changing the way we practice law. Right? So, AI is a huge one. Right?
• 9:53
  And what that is gonna look like, how that will shake out, it's fundamentally going to depress the price of what I would call documents. Right? I do believe that, you know, I've always been one who is interested in new things and new delivery methods. I do think that there is some upside to all of these. And, you know, I think for creative lawyers, we were always kind of hemmed in by the rules.
• 10:25
  And I don't mean, you know, just breaking the rules to break them. I mean, you know, if you wanted to take an interest in a company instead of get paid, you know, you have to do all of these disclosures very state specific. Right? Mhmm. But I think that, it hasn't I haven't seen it yet as a negative.
• 10:44
  I don't think up until this point, most of these service providers have not gotten a lot of traction. It'll be interesting to see what happens with a KPMG level, somebody coming in who really, you know, is already heavily involved in a professional services across the board, what that begins to look like. But I think at lawyers, we always kinda have to be sensitive to how the market is changing, and the market is changing rapidly. It's changing for those of us who have been in practice for a while, and it's it's also on the other end changing for people who are coming out of law school and simply don't have the training, or access to the training resources that they really need to become practitioners. That was always something that was left to firms, and further to stop hiring at the level they were hiring.
• 11:41
  And even when they do, the pressure for their associates to perform quickly and be bringing money in the door sort of has, you know, really impacted training programs and the day to day way that I learned, for example, in a large firm to be a lawyer. Right? Right. Right. It's different.
• 12:01
  And that the great thing is I'm a huge proponent of starting your own practice. I believe for women particularly, that is the key to the kingdom. Having said that, I think that it's I see a lot of younger lawyers who just don't have the practice skill set because that wasn't developed in them. Yeah.
• 12:25
  Davina: Yeah. Well, I think there's a, there's this issue of young lawyers too. I don't really know that all big firms train young lawyers. I think a lot of them put them in the backroom, throw them meat, and say, bill, bill, bill, bill, bill.
• 12:42
  Juliet: Yep.
• 12:42
  Davina: And I think a lot of young lawyers are going out and immediately starting their practice because they might try to work someplace, and they get shocked at what it means to be a lawyer. And the requirements being lawyer, it's not an hourly. I get to leave at 05:00. I'm hearing a lot of stories about this. People saying I'm hiring a baby lawyer.
• 13:01
  They're coming in and they're crying because they've never worked before and they have no soft skills and they don't understand the work ethic or the requirement of the job or whatever. And they're wanting to leave early to go to the gym if they work one day late. And these are true actual, you know,
• 13:17
  Juliet: stories that people told me.
• 13:19
  Davina: And so then you have these young lawyers who are saying, well, I'm gonna go start my own law firm. And because I want work life balance, and I and I think there's a, I'm a huge advocate of work life balance for lawyers, but I my particular method is around building a firm and then putting yourself in that position as opposed to being the worker in the firm. Right? Building your own firm. But I also think there is a, you know, there is a danger of people, you know, not being the best lawyers when they start, and not having anybody there as a safeguard of them.
• 13:57
  But on the flip side, I've seen people work at a firm for years and then go out and try to start their own, and they literally don't know how to they know how to do one thing that they learned at that firm. So I don't think there's a broad spectrum of training that a lot of firms provide anyway. It's a gap. And I think ultimately, lawyers are responsible for getting as it has always been, we're responsible for getting our own training Yes. And making sure that we are competent to practice in our area, you know, and that may require a little extra homework, a little extra work to do it, you know.
• 14:27
  Yes. And I wanna go back and tell your story because so people understand your framework, where you come from. So Right. Let's talk about how you started your legal career.
• 14:38
  Juliet: So law is a second career for me, not even my first career. I went to uni the college just thinking that I was going to, take a really great pre, law set of courses, which was journalism. Right? Mhmm. And then I fell in love with journalism, and I thought to myself, well, if I'm gonna do that, I have to do that when I'm young, and I can move around a lot, and I don't have, you know, a lot of things tying me down.
• 15:07
  I can get to law school, you know, when I'm a little bit older. And that's what I did. I worked for a decade as a working journalist, and then in my mid thirties, I went back to law school. And, you know, I would say for me, a couple of things happened. Number one, I you could have the only thing I was ever around as a lawyer was prosecutors.
• 15:31
  Right? And so I expected I was going to become a prosecutor. That is what I went in for. Right? And nobody was more shocked than I was that I ended up, you know, in a civil litigation firm doing civil litigation.
• 15:45
  Right? And I just really loved the business thing. And so I litigated for, around six years. I had an opportunity to go into, the, attorney general's office in Arizona doing a hybrid, you know, journalism and, and special counsel role. So I did that, and then I worked in house in a company, for a big franchise company.
• 16:18
  And then I went back into the attorney general's office for a cleanup. They had, their largest division, which was what served child and family protection, in Arizona, had a bar complaint because of the way they were writing their petitions. And so I had a real cleanup and that, you know, I supervised, like, 380 people there. Oh, wow. And so when I was finishing up there because the AG was turned out, I knew that I could go back into a firm, but I was gonna have to pick litigation or transactional.
• 16:53
  And I wasn't that lawyer anymore because I had just come out of two Fairlink high level stints, one in a private company, one in a public company, and I didn't wanna go back to just being a litigator. Not that there's anything wrong with litigation. I love litigation. You just evolved. Right.
• 17:10
  But I wanted to do kind of a broader level. And I have, you know, fam family members in my background who were entrepreneurial, when I was a kid and owned a company, and I'd always been kind of attracted to that. So I started, my firm first with two other dudes. That was a bad scene. That only lasted about ninety days.
• 17:38
  Oh, wow.
• 17:39
  Davina: Oh, wow.
• 17:39
  Juliet: And then I went in with another partner who I worked with in house, another guy. That was that was actually a good experience, but it was clear he didn't really wanna grow. He didn't really enjoy, a small firm. And so oddly enough, you know, I I went on and started my own solo firm, which I've been doing for a decade now, and he went in house with or I'm sorry, into a law firm. Actually, my first law firm.
• 18:11
  Very strange. Oh, wow.
• 18:13
  Davina: It's so wow. Oh, wow. Connected.
• 18:15
  Juliet: But, yeah, I came out no clients. Started from scratch. Yeah. Yeah. From the ground up.
• 18:22
  Davina: I know what that's like. And you have when I started my firm, I I was one of those people that came out of lawful law school and started my firm, but I was also 42 at the time. And I had a whole career. Like you, I have a journalism degree. Unlike you, I did not go into journalism because where I live, there weren't a lot of opportunities and I made the mistake of getting married to my first husband and getting stuck there.
• 18:45
  So I, I went into marketing instead, but I know what that's like to have another career and then to go into the law. And I love what I love about your story is that I think so many of us get locked into our head that once we start down a path, we have to stay on the path. And I love that your story really includes all of these public sector, private sector, large companies, small, you know, like in house Yep. And law firm. And so you've had all these, and that really makes for a really interesting career, doesn't it?
• 19:18
  Juliet: It does. And I I think that would be the one thing I would say to people, you know, who don't know a % what they wanna be when they grow up. I still struggle with that sometimes. Right? But I think the the issue is if you focus on your why, right, that really drives you, and you keep yourself open for opportunities, you will find your why on other paths where you did not expect to be or go.
• 19:52
  And I think that law particularly because it it attracts, I would say, a more conservative in terms of changeability. Lawyers, not all lawyers, but, you know, we're not, like, ones to super embrace change right away. And I think one thing I've learned, probably really hard over the last fifteen years is the only constant, honestly, is change. And so if you can get comfortable with shifting sand beneath your feet, you will know and learn how to stand on it. Right?
• 20:31
  I think that will be even more critical as the decades go on now because the pace of change is dizzying. And I think that it is learning what skill set do you have, what's your secret sauce, what are you really good at, and how do you apply that in different areas. And I think when I look back, I go, gosh. It it was a lot of fun to stretch.
• 20:59
  Davina: In the
• 20:59
  Juliet: moment, you know, you don't realize you're doing it until after it's done. Right? I can't use but I think it yeah. I think it's that being open to exploring other things that maybe don't fit on that in that box that you made for yourself. I think that's where the real growth and really joy comes in.
• 21:26
  Yeah.
• 21:27
  Davina: Yeah. I would you mentioned that, you know, you think people who think sort of conservatively come are attracted to the law. And I I think there's also the training aspect of it. We're trained to be so cautious and to for our clients, we have to know everything that could possibly happen. We see liability everywhere we look.
• 21:46
  Even if you don't do torts, you're going out to a restaurant going liability. If you see a crack and it's all like, there's there's all that is part of it is our training as well. When it comes to our own careers and particularly when you become an entrepreneur and you start and own a law firm, you really are are saying I'm, I haven't I have to also think like a CEO. I also have to think like a business owner. I also have to think like an entrepreneur, and that requires a little more risk taking.
• 22:16
  That requires making decisions more quickly based on the best information you have at the time. Yep. And I think that's that's powerful throughout a career no matter what is just saying and forgiving yourself for mistakes in the past saying, well, I've made the best decision I could make at that time based on the information I had at the time. Because I think every lawyer has worked someplace that they were like, oh, yuck. Can't believe I ever worked there or I dealt with that or I had that business relationship or whatever.
• 22:46
  And so that, that also, I think, you know, that embracing change and also just saying the decision I made was the right decision for me at that time. Absolutely. You making those decisions right for you, whether they you now judge them as right or wrong. Well, you know, I made the best decision I could at the time. Tell me about what led you to opening your own firm.
• 23:10
  Like, what was the moment where you said, this is what I'm gonna do instead of
• 23:16
  Juliet: So I think that, I lacked the courage of my convictions when I first decided to, go into business with, first, it it started to be first of all, it was three other guys and me. One of them was a long time, very close, law school classmate, and I lost a friendship over that first thing. So, it it but I think what I was attracted to about that is I knew I had it in me to to do it, but I liked having the safety net that came with three other lawyers who were coming out of private practice, right, and me coming out of a public practice. I thought, you know, that will give me some access to referrals and clients. Wrong.
• 24:09
  Wrong.
• 24:10
  Davina: Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It did not.
• 24:13
  Juliet: Right? So, and then the second you know? And and so I it took me till starting my own firm, which I did still very trepidatiously because I was like, can I make a go of this by myself? But I had this idea of what I wanted to see the firm be, and it was just wasn't gonna work the way we were doing it then. I was doing all of the administrative work and no compensation work.
• 24:39
  When have you heard that story before? Right? Awesome. So, I decided, look, I'm already doing I mean, I I really think that I came to the decision because it was like, well, I'm already doing all the administrative work. And if, you know, I can outsource some of that, right, and focus on biz dev, I'm gonna be really okay.
• 25:03
  And I absolutely was, in short order, okay. And so it really was, I think, a decision of, you know, circumstance. I mean, I didn't wanna go back into a firm, and I was like, well, it's sink or swim. I mean, that's really how I felt. Right?
• 25:26
  Davina: So And you're touching on a very common, issue that I see with women lawyers when they wanna go, particularly if they've worked in a firm. I don't see it as much with people who sort of come out and start their firm. But people who've worked in a firm, there's often this feeling of I need partners to make me feel. And it's most often, it is just a it's a, it's a emotional thing. I need somebody because emotionally I need somebody to share the highs and lows and the burdens of this and all of that.
• 25:58
  And we don't look, I mean, for instance, with you, you're in there running the firm right from the beginning. And that's another thing too. I wonder what it is about women that we often just jump in and start doing all the things. Right. And the guys just kind of like expect it and go along with it.
• 26:18
  And don't, you know what it is that's compelling for us to, you know, do this. Is it control? Is it, we're just expected to be the ones to do the admin stuff or what it, what is it you think?
• 26:33
  Juliet: I think, well, in my particular instance, I think what it was is I had, the person who I was partnered with had a very, you know, he was never gonna be the one to do any administrative work. It just wouldn't get done. And so for me, I can't live like that. I need a more, you know, regimented I need my, you know, I need the the books to be clean. I need all I needed that for me.
• 27:05
  Right? And so as a result, that was a void, and somebody had to step in and certainly wasn't there.
• 27:11
  Davina: That's kind of interesting though because the converse you could have had a conversation that says we need this. Who's going to do it? And and and it does in and we just go, we're going to do it because, you know, and and I think that's a common common thing with women owners to do that. So tell me where once everybody's out, it's you. What what was the plan?
• 27:34
  What did you do with regard to, business development?
• 27:38
  Juliet: Network might took us off is what I did. I mean, I, you know, I Arizona has, or at that time, ten years ago, had a very good, kind of startup ecosystem that was happening. And, Arizona had long time been a boom and bust town for real estate. Right? And so after the last real estate crash, 02/2008, you know, everyone kinda looked around and said, we cannot do this.
• 28:07
  I mean, we've done it every decade since the nineteen eighties. We have to stop this. We need to diversify the economy, you know, of the area. And so I started by doing a lot of, you know, startup kind of work. And, while I love start up entrepreneurs, it just was not a recipe to get paid.
• 28:31
  And so I probably figured that out. I'm also fortunate that land Arizona is the land of small businesses. 90% of our businesses have less than 20 employees. So there's ample amount of, you know, work out there and entrepreneurs who need help. And so what I did was just really start joining groups, start, you know, networking, and, really started, you know, working the, circle of people that I had, and building from there.
• 29:04
  And I was quite anxious about making the pivot into mergers and acquisitions because it's not an area that I loved initially. When I was in house with a company, we were a franchise company, and so we always we were not necessarily doing the acquisitions. They were among franchisees, but we were always involved in approvals and things like that. And I just it wasn't where I spent the most amount of my time. And so I was fearful, of that, but it's turned out to be really once I got over and did the first one, you know, it's an area I love because there's so much psychological work in it.
• 29:51
  Tons. I mean, the the psychology of people who are selling their business is a really interesting place to be. And Right. My, you know, ability to be able to help people and educate in a nonthreatening way has been very, very, you know, helpful there to entrepreneurs who who are get get by a lot of times by, you know, faking it a little bit. And I don't mean that, you know, as a as pedantically.
• 30:25
  I mean, that's what they're they're really good at. Right? And so but what you don't know, you can't fake your ways through a transaction. You will really be in deep doo doo if you do. So you have to find a way to be able to work with entrepreneurs and, make them so that they're not their ankles aren't up when you're talking to them about things they don't understand or don't know about.
• 30:54
  Right?
• 30:55
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. I can see that's a challenge. I could see it. And also from an you know, you when you're getting to the point where you're gonna sell a business or merge or something, you have to have financial documents that back up what you say.
• 31:10
  Juliet: Yes.
• 31:11
  Davina: And if you're dealing with a lot of, you know, family owned businesses, people who've been in business for years, they've been doing it the way that they do it. I imagine that that really comes up. We're like, this is where we have to understand compliance and do the things to be compliant. And that's probably a real challenge for Yep. Work in that area of practice.
• 31:30
  Juliet: I think anybody who works in the space of selling, buying, and selling businesses will tell you the number one deficiency that we see across the board. And I don't care if you're a lawyer or a CPA or what end of the pipeline you're in, is people do not understand their financials, and they're typically a mess. So and you have these, you know, conversations all the time. I had one last week with, you know, a very nice husband and wife team. And, but they have this idea of what their business is worth, but it's not at all tied to what the numbers are.
• 32:06
  So so that's always kind of you know, that's difficult conversations that have to be, you know, that have to be had. And that's a reason why so many businesses don't end up selling and then close instead because you, as an owner, either have to adjust your expectations and tie them to the real metrics of your business, or you have to admit, hey. I don't have what it takes to hit to sell an enterprise level business because I don't have a structure in place. It's dependent on me. You know, there's a bunch of factors that make certain businesses risky, and they won't sell.
• 32:43
  Right? So,
• 32:46
  Davina: yeah. We're always, my husband and I are always looking at businesses for sale when, you know, we've kind of checked things out, you know, and and it it it it is a challenge. It's one of the things I'm always telling women lawyers though is that, it's it's one of my issues with solo for life. I had so many women friends that were solo for thirty years, and then they get to the point where they're like, oh, I need to start thinking about the future, and I don't have enough safe or invested. I haven't turned this into an asset that I can sell.
• 33:23
  You know, there are a lot of things. And so that's why I'm always encouraging women in particular to start looking at your law firm as building a law firm instead of staying solo for so long for that reason. Because, when you go to, when you, you get to the end, you're most people just close-up shop. That's really truly what lawyers often do is just close-up shop if you've been solo for years or they might transition it to an associate. And I have seen some associates make bad deals because they didn't understand what they were doing.
• 33:57
  And suddenly, they're saddled with all of these dead files
• 34:01
  Juliet: Right.
• 34:02
  Davina: That don't result in business and, you know, and and all the burdens that go along with it. So, it it really is critical to have to have a somebody who understands that kind of thing. Yeah. So tell me about
• 34:14
  Juliet: oh, sorry. I had to
• 34:15
  Davina: go ahead.
• 34:15
  Juliet: Stop on you. I I just had a thought about that. I think for women who own their own law firms, I mean, I would say two two things. Right? One thing is that, not everybody does wanna grow, and so you have to know if you don't wanna grow and why you don't wanna grow.
• 34:33
  Right? You have to know that you're making a decision not wanna to not wanna grow and what the consequences of that growing is one one path, right, which is completely appropriate to take. You wanna maximize your revenue. Right? But you don't necessarily wanna have a big staff and hire a bunch of lawyers, and that's not why you're doing it.
• 34:54
  Right? And then the other path is I think that women business, women lawyers should look at acquiring other practice areas, again, with help. Right? Because I think it's an underutilized, and law firms are not, you know, they are not priced the same way that a regular business would be. Meaning, you don't take your bottom line and multiply multiply it towards a multiple because there's just, you know, we have ethical reasons why clients don't transfer, and there's all kinds of things.
• 35:29
  But there's ways to do that. Right? So if you think that you wanna grow through acquisition, that is actually a strategy that I think is underutilized generally in law except among the Am Jur group. Right? And so that's really something, you know, to look at as a woman lawyer.
• 35:48
  And I I also wanna say that I think, for women business owners, particularly lawyers, community is everything. You have to have a community of people around you. You need a coach. You need somebody who's gonna get you out of your own head, because it's, you know, it's a lot. Right?
• 36:12
  And Right. You know, running a law firm, particularly with the stress of the law part of it, is not what anyone would really sign up for if someone's if come and buy this business. Right? So so I think that for, you know, that that's that that is really important to get clear on why you're doing what you're doing and what your path is. And do not think you can go it alone because you absolutely cannot.
• 36:40
  I made that mistake for, you know, a few years. It was stupid. But, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And also women are brain of bootstrapping and, you know
• 36:52
  Davina: Yeah. And I think there's I think there's also this feeling of everybody else has got it together but me. I think we often feel that little paranoia of, because I will have people say to me, they'll hire me and we'll start our work and should I hire a lawyer right now or should I I wanna get my systems all in place before I hire a lawyer. And I'm like, why? And they said, well, I don't want them to see my mess.
• 37:13
  And I'm like, you're hiring them to help you so you can have the time to clean up the mess. Right? And there's this idea that other people are going to be judging us. If they look behind the curtain, they're gonna judge what they see. And I think high it's a high achieving woman curse because high achieving women and also, we're in a competitive environment with men, and that can be used against us in a lot of ways if people, you know, opposing counsel perceive something about us or whatever.
• 37:46
  And especially if you're dealing with nasty ones. Yeah. Men and women. So I I I completely understand where that where that comes from. And I think despite that, you gotta you gotta find some people to trust, that you can bring in and, to help you because everybody I mean, I've had I've had plenty of coaches because I they we all have blind spots.
• 38:10
  Yep. We all have things that error we may even see them and still not know how to overcome them. Even if intellectually, we know. Emotionally, we might not know how to overcome a thing. Right?
• 38:22
  So I think it's very, very important. I agree with you to have community. And I just wrote an article for the women on law, newsletter. And I was talking about my experience when I first hung out my shingle. And one of the mistakes that I made was I didn't have, I didn't have enough mentors.
• 38:43
  I didn't really cultivate those mentor relationships. I was fortunate in that I had some who sort of adopted me, but I didn't talk with them enough, you know, really pick their brains enough, really spend enough time. I didn't, cultivate more relationships like that, both for the subject matter and for business. And there was nobody for business for me back then. I didn't have anybody that was like a model for me for business and how to run a business.
• 39:12
  I just kind of thought, and I think this is common. I just kind of thought I can do this. I can run a business. And I didn't realize till I was in the thick of it, like, what that meant. I knew how to get because since I came from a marketing background, I knew how to get work.
• 39:26
  That was no problem. But then how do I run all the other aspects of the business? And coaching really changed that for me, really helped me learn that. So and so but it's not just coaches. It can be mentors who just Absolutely.
• 39:39
  Subject matter mentors or just your network in terms of business too. When you talk about that's when you worked your butt off, going out and getting that network of people. And it takes some time. We don't always get in with the right people to begin with. There's gonna be a lot of people who don't understand what we do and refer us leads that we don't want or need or spent, you know, in business formation.
• 40:02
  We get a lot of the, you know, a lot of the ones who are just starting a business. They've got no money, you know, versus that level that we're looking for. So I I agree with you completely on that. What do you what are some of the things that you First of all, I wanna hear about your biggest sort of, challenge that you had to overcome. And then I'd like to hear about your what you think is that you've done really, really well.
• 40:27
  Juliet: So I would say professionally, my biggest challenge, was a lawsuit. And lawyers don't talk about lawsuits. Wow. They happen to a lot of people. Yeah.
• 40:40
  I was particularly
• 40:41
  Davina: They happen to a lot of lawyers.
• 40:43
  Juliet: They do. And, mine was particularly cloying, because it was, really not based on anything that I did or didn't do. So, and it went on for six years. It just recently ended, as we were preparing for trial. I think what it has been my biggest point of heartburn and also my biggest teacher because I had to learn how to run around it.
• 41:17
  And I'll never forget one of my you know, one of the best pieces of advice I got was, from, the lawyer that helped me with some stuff at the beginning prior to, you know, to all this going, you know, the way it went was he said, you're gonna, you're gonna put this in a box and you're gonna put the box on the shelf. And you're only gonna take the box down and look at it when there's something you have to do. And then you're gonna put it back, lid back on.
• 41:49
  Davina: That's wonderful.
• 41:50
  Juliet: I have thought I thought of that over six years, three million times when I wanted to spin out of control.
• 41:56
  Davina: Yeah. Because it would just eat at you. I imagine. It just eat away at you if you let it.
• 42:00
  Juliet: It's very and like I said, this one was particularly if you let your head spin into someone fair or what the hell, You know? At the end of the day, I did I was able to put it in a box up on a shelf, only take it down when I need to. I got some good, you know, expertise on testifying out of the deal. And, I think that the fact that I could do that and carry on with my life and my business and have some of my best years despite that, I if you had told me that ten years ago, I would have laughed in your face. But, you know And if they told you that
• 42:48
  Davina: you would have a six year law, like, at the beginning, you would have been like, oh my god. I can't do this. And So crazy. It's incredible. It's interesting because you also got the perspective of a client.
• 43:01
  Right. Right? Yep. It goes through such a thing. I I was involved in a lawsuit with, sale of a business Yeah.
• 43:08
  Years ago. And, definitely mistakes. I made the I didn't hire the best lawyer for it. But fortunately, we were able to resolve it pretty quickly, but our biggest mistake is we didn't vet the people buying the business. Yeah.
• 43:23
  I understand. You know, stuff stuff so we should have probably hired more help at the beginning when we were selling representation. But you learn you learn things. And I think a lot of lawyers, that's something that we don't talk about in in the law of malpractice lawsuits. We don't talk about grievances.
• 43:39
  I mean, I've I've worked with some of the best lawyers and had them as clients and they've been grieved. And it's devastating when they're grieved. And most of the times, it they prevailed because there's nothing to it. Right. But it those kinds of things.
• 43:54
  I think that's one of the scariest things to me about being a lawyer. I used to say in the beginning, I was like, it's like the only career where they take away your whole career Right. If you screw up. If you make the wrong mistake, they'll take it they'll take away your bar license, you know. But it you know, they don't do that if you own a restaurant or whatever.
• 44:12
  Juliet: Right? Exactly.
• 44:13
  Davina: And so, well, so that was your biggest challenge, and that's some great advice for people to be able to car compartmentalize like that is huge. And and probably the only way you were able to emotionally sort of survive. Yep.
• 44:25
  Juliet: Yeah. So Learn some hard lessons about insurance through that. I mean, there were a lot of learning lessons. Right? Yeah.
• 44:31
  I would say my biggest, I would say my biggest success, is, not necessarily directly tied to the business. It's where I've gone personally in the last twelve years. I've had some incredibly challenging personal times with a lot of death, illness, and, you know, to family members and, really, really rough rough go. And I think that, for me, being able to continue to swim in very choppy water is, really the thing I'm the most proud of and have done the work as I was going through it to really excise a lot of mental barriers that I had that I didn't know I had. And there's a huge amount of resilience that I've built, you know, and that has shown itself in my business as an and as I'm ready to pivot again a little bit, do a little bit more coaching and training and a little bit more, you know, writing and speaking and all of those kinds of things.
• 45:51
  I think I wouldn't necessarily have been able to do that if I was the same person I was twelve years ago. So, I think that, embracing things that I'm scared of I mean, I definitely was nervous about m and a. And, you know, if I had not embraced that fear and kind of push through it, I would not have had the gift of all of the transactions I've done, you know, after that. Right? Which have given me a lot of richness in terms of having personal, really have, having, you know, personal, you know, good job.
• 46:35
  Right? I I get that the serve is it the service aspect of helping people sell their businesses has really been a gift for me. And, you know, at its core, that's always what I wanted to do is serve. My service has just looked differently at different times of my life. Right?
• 46:56
  But it's, if I had not gone through that fear and really said I can learn what it takes to do that, I would not be where I am. And it isn't easy. Right? I mean, you've gotta do the you have to do the work. And, you know, you backslide.
• 47:15
  Right? I mean, I was I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago. I was like, wait a minute. You mean it isn't a destination?
• 47:22
  Davina: It's like you leave your no, you're gonna get to a point
• 47:26
  Juliet: and then you're just gonna stop and
• 47:27
  Davina: it's gonna all be good. That is not how life works. There's always a challenge. There's always something facing us that that that reveals another part of ourselves that we maybe don't wanna look at or
• 47:38
  Juliet: that
• 47:38
  Davina: we don't wanna talk about or didn't even know existed. So yeah. Yeah. That is true. And I do think some of this is it's the beauty of, aging too.
• 47:47
  It's the beauty of getting older, and then you start to see a lifetime's career and a body of work. And looking back at that and saying, I'm I'm proud. It wasn't where I thought I was gonna go or what I thought it would look like, but, wow, I'm very proud of that and what I've accomplished. And for me, I think it I feel a a stronger and more capable just because of years of the experiences I've had and things I've had to learn and, you know, that I never thought I would have to learn and all of that. And then you just feel like, okay.
• 48:20
  Well, I'm, you know, I'm the $6,000,000 woman now or whatever. Right? And then something else challenges that, but nonetheless, there are those and I think that you mentioned earlier about joy and finding joy in our lives. Even as you're going through this, you're you're finding joyful experiences in your life even as you're kind of being attacked and feel like you're having to fight. There's things there that felt joyful for you.
• 48:50
  So give me an example of, like, some of those things.
• 48:53
  Juliet: So it's funny because I have such a complicated relationship with the word joy because I used to have, like, a, every year, I would set a, you know, a phrase that I would meditate on that would come to me for the for the following year. And I, think it was either in one one of these particularly bad years, and it might have been right before the pandemic I had set. The message I had gotten was joy and ease, and then the year proceeded to be nothing about joy and nothing about ease. But now that I look back, I think that was the point. Right?
• 49:32
  It's finding I I really do think that was the point. Finding joy and ease is of this thing. It's internal. You're not gonna find it external. And it's it's being able to see that when you're in the darkest hours.
• 49:51
  Right? That is where where you can then look back and say, you know, wow. There was joy, and I now know, you know, I will now know what ease feels like because maybe I didn't know, and I had to go through what unease or disease felt like for a long time before I can see it. So for me, joy, I'm really focusing on the joy in the little things, particularly because I feel right now we're in a very chaotic period of the world. Mhmm.
• 50:29
  Chaotic. And I think that whatever your ideas are, right, you cannot help if you're a thinking people person to feel the churn. The churn. The churn. The churn.
• 50:43
  Right?
• 50:43
  Davina: Right.
• 50:43
  Juliet: So I think, you know, for me, it's remembering to look at the sunrise, look at the sunset to, you know, be grateful for, you know, a coffee or I mean, I have gone really micro because I think we've been fooled, you know, into thinking joy is big. Right?
• 51:07
  Davina: Right.
• 51:08
  Juliet: I can't hear you. Those big moments when you have a baby, when you when you, you know, when you get married. And, yes, those are all wonderful, but that is not day to day. And if you expect that, you're gonna be sorely disappointed because that is not what the daily tasks of living look like.
• 51:25
  Davina: Yeah.
• 51:26
  Juliet: Right? I agree with you. I agree with you.
• 51:28
  Davina: And that's something, been having that discussion with my husband lately because we're, you know, talking about various things going on in the world and things going on with family and all sorts of things. And I and I said, you know, and he gets into this and I'm like, we have to stop and look where we are or what we have, what today is gonna look like, what because really, we're so blessed. We're so fortunate. We're so, you know, and and it can be hard when you're seeing the suffering, you know, going on around you or whatever. But the trigger word for me is fun.
• 52:03
  That's a fun I can't people say my mother always says, did you have fun? What did you do to have fun this week? And I'm like, I literally work. Right? That's my fun.
• 52:12
  I work. I talk to people. I work. Right. And so it's something that she doesn't understand.
• 52:17
  Yeah. Fun is a thing that it's always been that way with me with people. We're gonna go do something like ride a roller coaster. Well, to me, that's not fun. Right?
• 52:25
  So my idea of fun and if you're an introverted person or a cerebral person or whatever, your idea of fun is different from others. So when I hear the word fun, I'm like, can we choose a different word? What does that look like? Did I hear you?
• 52:41
  Juliet: I agree with you on that. Fun. That's a hard word. Also, hobby. That's the worst word for me.
• 52:46
  Davina: Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Hobbies. One of my hobbies are my hobbies are starting another business.
• 52:50
  My hobbies are talking with people about business. Right. My hobbies are going to the gym, which, you know, how sad is that? But that is my hobby is going to
• 52:59
  Juliet: the gym. Actually a
• 53:00
  Davina: good hobby. Yeah. It's a good hobby. I've
• 53:02
  Juliet: yes. Well wish I had that hobby. I'm always working on that hobby, and it always feels more like a chore than a hobby. But, oh,
• 53:09
  Davina: I I had to do a lot of work to change my mindset around that because for years I mean, I grew up with two sisters, and we were never encouraged to play sports or do anything like that. And, I I've never, I've always been a head head, hard person and body last. And so over the years, I happen to be married to somebody who is athletic and he's a fitness coach through the years. We owned a gym. I mean, so I have that person who is, you know, always encouraged me.
• 53:39
  And I look at it now, especially in our age and I go, I'm so grateful that I'm with somebody who promotes my health and well-being because it's something, you know, years ago, I didn't consider it that. I was always about aesthetics. Yeah. So it's very interesting how you change as you get a little bit older about that. Alright.
• 53:55
  So Yep. Go ahead. Oh, no. You go. I was gonna say we need to end.
• 54:00
  I probably could talk to you into the next hour, but let's go ahead and end. And why don't you tell us where we can get in touch with you and find out more about the work you're doing there in Arizona?
• 54:09
  Juliet: So you can, go to the website, which is frameworklegal.com. And I am personally on LinkedIn at Juliette Peters. I framework legal also is on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. You can find me, everywhere pretty much, but TikTok. Not yet on TikTok.
• 54:29
  Davina: So same. Alright, Juliet. Thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed our conversation.
• 54:35
  Juliet: This was awesome. Thank you.
• 54:37
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.