Because you never know how long they’ll take. And, this dream come true is proof in the pudding.
Last week, Personal Family Lawyer re-launched with an updated brand, updated website, and the beginning of a national marketing campaign featuring the lawyers in our community who are delivering on the PFL Promise in a way that has me inspired and excited AF.
In the next few posts here, I’ll be sharing with you how this all came to be, why living into your dharma creates a reality in which you actually cannot fail (no matter how badly you F things up), and how to break free of the lies that may be keeping you stuck or lost or off-purpose.
I pray that my journey with PFL is an inspiration for you to keep going when things are hard, or confusing, and especially if you feel lost, as I did so often over the years.
So, here we go … the beginning and middle of the story.
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When I was a wee bit, baby lawyer — aw, look at how cute she was … this was my very first headshot, taken back when I first launched my own law practice in 2003 or so.
That one … she had a dream. A dream of a new way of practicing law. A different way. A better way. Eventually, she coined the term “Personal Family Lawyer” and began to dream of a PFL in every neighborhood.
In service to this dream, she wrote a book, and began appearing on TV and radio all across the nation, sharing about this dream … of lawyers with heart, who loved their clients, and were loved by their clients.
She was a regular on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and Fox, and she really believed she was doing what she came to planet Earth to do. Certainly the external world seemed to be reflecting that back to her.
But, something was off … while it all looked really great from the outside, something wasn’t right on the inside. She didn’t know what it was though.
In her quest to figure out why “success” looked so good, but felt so bad, she almost gave up. She almost said “forget it, I don’t even want to be a lawyer. I don’t even want to train other lawyers. I hate it all. I hate myself. I hate lawyering. And I hate lawyers.”
She felt and thought these things because she was lost, scared and confused.
She wondered “did I really go to law school, and take on $100,000 in loans, and work so hard just so I could make money and help other lawyers make more money? Is this really what my life is supposed to be? Something doesn’t seem right.”
Time and again, she came up against a challenge of having followed all the rules, and in many ways winning all the games, and yet it felt like losing.
Eventually, as she searched her soul, it turned out she didn’t think she could be all of who she really is AND be a lawyer AND help lawyers.
Plus, being in business was really hard given how little she understood about stewarding wealth in the world in a way that felt good, and right, and true and beautiful. Repeatedly, she felt taken advantage of, attacked, caught off guard by the reality of how hard it is to be a leader in our culture … and how little she knew how to protect herself from the sad realities of business, and the dangers of becoming “succesful” in a tall poppy culture.
It was simply too much, and none of it seemed to make sense.
So she walked away from all of it, moved to a farm and filed bankruptcy.
For a year, she did only what she would do for free. At first, it wasn’t clear what that was. So she drove her kids to school every day, and went grocery shopping, and even cleaned the house. These very normal things were things she had forgotten how to do without help.
So, in the beginning of that year, she relearned how to do the normal things people do, when they aren’t running million dollar plus businesses.
Then, as she asked herself “if money didn’t matter, and I wasn’t making any decisions based on money (or at that time, the lack of it), what would I do?” Call-in radio! That’s what she’d always wanted to do.
So, she launched a show — a 4-hour livestream every week — called The Whole Truth Show.
It’s very sad that there are no longer archived episodes from the Whole Truth Show, as we’re pretty sure it’s the best thing she ever did, and may ever do.
From there, as she began to get curious with what else she would do if she was only going to do it for free, she found herself doing lawyer stuff, but in a completely new way …
This was quite a surprising revelation because she really thought she was done with lawyering, done with training lawyers, and done with being a lawyer … but on the other side of bankruptcy, and the fresh start that came with it, it turned out that the Personal Family Lawyer dream had not died, after all.
It had just been clarified, honed and refined.
And, it turned out that there was a lot this young woman needed to learn about life, and love, and leadership and legacy in order to hold the bigness of the PFL vision, and the fullness of the dharmic pull associated with it.
The vision would need to wait for her to grow up, and also to figure out how to train enough lawyers to actually fulfill on the PFL Promise.
Because what she discovered in that year of only doing what she would do for free … PFL wasn’t just about making more money for lawyers, or even teaching lawyers to market their services, and it certainly wasn’t just about what she wrote about in her first book Wear Clean Underwear or even the New Law Business Model book.
Personal Family Lawyer was about a new way of lawyering, and serving clients in a much deeper way, and helping lawyers create meaning in their own lives by helping their clients create meaning in theirs.
It would take time for her to become the woman who could stand for all of this.
It would take time for her to understand the true nature of inheritance, and legacy.
It would take time for there to be enough lawyers to serve the clients who would want a PFL for their family, once they understood how important it is to leave your family with the support of a trusted advisor.
It would take time for her to learn to stand in her full power.
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And here we are …
These past months have called me more into my power than I ever imagined would be the case.
I’ll share more about that in a future post.
For now, Personal Family Lawyer is here.
I’ve finally become the woman who can hold it all. And as we relaunch the brand and change up our offerings at New Law Business Model to accommodate the reality of PFL being back online and at the forefront … Life is certainly testing me to find out.
More on all that in a future post.
For today, I have a request. Please check out our new Personal Family Lawyer socials, and follow us on one or more of your favorites plus tag me in a comment @thealikatz so I know you checked us out.
Here’s the link to each:
Thank you for being on this journey with me. For life … and love … and legacy.
Ali
Do you offer estate planning services, or create Wills, Trusts, or Health Care Directives and POAs for your clients? If so, I’m ready to share with you how you can use my proven and tested law business model to rediscover your love for the law (in case you’ve forgotten) and get your life back, while making a great living to boot.
In my recent Masterclass, you are going to learn all about Personal Family Lawyer: what it is, how you can become a PFL, and why you might want to, IF you either provide estate planning services now, or have ever considered it.
On the Masterclass, you’ll discover how to build a successful law practice with…
a service you love to deliver
clients who are happy to pay you an average fee of $4,500 per engagement because of the tremendously high value on the service you deliver
plus a proven process for getting hired 80+% of the time you talk with a potential client
Register to watch the recording here, now before it’s taken down:
https://get.newlawbusinessmodel.com/dod-aba
I’d love for us to stay connected! When you connect with me on social media you will be able to be even more in the know about upcoming events and registration details.
Watch the Replay: How to Use Free Marketing to Consistently Attract More Law Practice Clients
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