Health / Wellness

How The Traditional Law Practice Model Drove Me To Find God

It turns out that the traditional law practice model didn’t actually make room for real happiness, just the appearance of happiness.

By Ali Katz  
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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Ali Katz to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

The Traditional Law Practice Model (hereinafter TLPM) sucks the most for parents, and I’m not sure how anyone survives it without a divorce or drug-addicted kids. Maybe they don’t. I didn’t. But it did drive me to find God, and ultimately a New Law Business Model (hereinafter NLBM) that would save my life and eventually lead to me remembering why I love being a lawyer. But it took quite a while to get there.

My daughter was born during my post-law school clerkship on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. By the time I started as an associate at Munger Tolles, she was just starting to walk, and by the time I left to start my own law practice, she was in preschool — a parent-participation co-op I’d never be able to participate in if I had stayed.

Sitting at my desk in downtown LA, pumping milk as I worked on transactions designed to save Warren Buffett millions in taxes, my stay-at-home-dad husband would call, my daughter often crying in the background, and I couldn’t figure out why I hated my work.

Looking back now, it’s obvious.

But, back then, I thought I was supposed to be grateful I had it “all.”

The six-figure paycheck, the 401(k), the house with the white picket fence a mile from the beach, the Eurovan parked out front, my husband staying at home to raise our children … it was supposed to be a really good life.

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I was 28 years old.

I had made it. Married. Baby. Prestigious job. Big paycheck.

And, I was miserable.

I didn’t fit in with the stay-at-home moms in our beachside community who got to spend their days at playdates and pedicures.

And, I was the only female associate in the office with a kid.

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I thought for sure there must be something wrong with me.

Why couldn’t I just be happy?

It turns out that the TLPM didn’t actually make room for real happiness, just the appearance of happiness.

And, I couldn’t maintain it.

Thank God for that because it created enough pain that I was willing to give up the false comforts in search of something more.

My misery drove me to look for answers, in a church of all places, given that I was a Jewish girl who grew up being taught that God was for stupid people.

And that church opened my eyes. It led me to see that if I wasn’t happy, I didn’t have to suffer. I could do something about it. I could use my powerful mind to create a new reality. My mind wasn’t just good for processing complex transactions and reading legal agreements, it could be used as a tool to create reality.

I wasn’t so sure about that (it sounded like a lot of snake oil and hocus pocus), but I was willing to give it a try because, really, I had nothing to lose.

I was LONELY with a capital L. Even though I was married and surrounded by colleagues at work, I felt more alone than I ever had. Misunderstood. Unappreciated. Hopeless.

So, who cared if I looked a little crazy by going to a church that taught the Secret?

I needed to do something. And, it did seem as if some strange force I couldn’t quite understand was leading me there. Odd coincidences started appearing in my life (I now know them to be “synchronicities” and they are an indicator I’m on the right path), and all of them seemed to be saying — go to Agape International Spiritual Center.

The minute I walked into Agape, a part of me I hadn’t known before yelled into my head, “You’re home.”

WTF? Now, I’m hearing voices. But, the thought only passed through my mind for a minute before I found myself caught up in the singing and wanting to belt out the lyrics I somehow seemed to already know.

“This is very strange,” I thought. But, my soul said yes. And so I stayed. And I learned to pray.

“Please God, help me see whatever it is that I can’t see because I know I can’t do this for the next 40 years, or even 20 for that matter.”

A voice (God?!?) came back to me with the suggestion that if I could do more meaningful work, and work for clients I cared about, maybe I could be happy in the TLPM and stay at MTO and keep collecting the six-figure paycheck.

So, I made an audacious request. I asked the partners if I could start taking on my own clients. Miraculously, they said yes. As long as I ran conflict checks, they’d let me build my own practice serving nonprofits and families through the firm.

I recognize now how truly unusual it was of them to say yes. They were taking on massive potential liability for my piddly little clients, and I see now it was an investment in me with the hopes I would stay.

If you have to work at a TLPM firm, MTO is a great one.

But it still meant an hour commute each way in LA traffic every day, and 12-plus hours in the office once I got there, and hours on the phone with the partner I worked closely with while I was in labor with my son.

Ultimately, that was the final straw.

After checking me for the third time over 12 hours of labor, with no progress beyond three centimeters (despite consistent contractions), my midwives looked at me and said, “Alexis, you need to get off the phone, and be here, present with us, or you are not going to be able to have the birth you want.”

I had already had one C-section, I didn’t want another. And God spoke again, “Hang up the phone, focus on the life you are creating, and you’ll know your power.”

In that moment, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to MTO after my maternity leave … a seed that had been planted months earlier (in the midst of a perfectly timed car accident that had me see I was going to become an entrepreneur and start my own law practice and ultimately a New Law Business Model) took root. I’d be leaving the security and prestige to find a new way of practicing law.

I had hoped I’d be able to stick it out at MTO for some years, but Spirit had other plans for me.

But I couldn’t think about that at the moment, I needed to focus on birthing a child. So, I did. And with Spirit’s support, I got my VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). My son was born. And so was a vision of doing law in a new way, a New Law Business Model would be coming, the labor would be far longer, the fear much greater, but I had found faith, and belief, in something much greater than myself.

If you are lonely, hopeless, and trying to make the TLPM work, wondering where you went wrong (when you followed all the rules and seemed to do everything right), consider that you are not alone. Spirit is with you. Life has your back. You just have to ask for the support, get out of your head, and into your heart and soul, and know that you were destined for a life you love. And, yes, your law practice can get you there, but not with the TLPM.

Yes, you’ll have to abandon the TLPM to have a life you love, but it will be worth it. You are worth it. Your clients are worth it. And, God, Spirit, Life, the Universe is on your side. You just have to be willing to ask.

Ali Katz (former name: Alexis Martin Neely) graduated first in her class from Georgetown Law in 1999, clerked on the 11th Circuit, and then worked as an associate at Munger Tolles and Olson for three years before building and selling her own seven-figure law practice in 2008. She then wrote the best-selling book on legal planning for families, Wear Clean Underwear: A Fast, Fun, Friendly – and Essential – Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents (get a free copy here), and appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and many other top radio and television programs as a family, financial, and legal expert. Along the way, Ali created the New Law Business Model where she teaches her proprietary Life and Legacy Planning Process and has more than 333 lawyers licensed as Personal Family Lawyers to serve families and biz owners with her heart-forward, relational, counseling-based methodology. Get a copy of Ali’s best-selling book, The New Law Business Model Revealed, on Amazon or get the digital edition here, as a gift.

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