The Nomad Lawyer Reality and Challenging the Default Path with Ari Mike

Welcome to studying law around the world I'm Claudio Claus in each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life we talk about the hard parts, the surprises and the decisions that. Shaped their paths, whether. You're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world? This podcast is for. You. Today I'm interviewing Gary Mike, who is a lawyer who has a very interesting practice. He started his career in Canada and now works internationally as a nomad lawyer. Thank you so much for making the time to be here today. Erie, thank you. Glad you appreciate you having me on. Here, absolutely. And just start over podcast. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and walk us through a little bit of your path, you know, from law school to building your own remote practice. So quick into introduction, Amari at Digital Nomad Lawyer. I practice in corporate and commercial law like you said, now Canadian lawyer. I grew up in Montreal, Canada, known for its harsh winters. So I went to law school 2 hours away from Montreal in the city called the Sherbrooke. Actually, I come from a family of engineers. It's a funny story. I'm the first lawyer in the family. Like all the rest of my family. I thought I was going to be an engineer. But when I went to engineering school at McGill for one year, I really really hated it. And I said I can't do this all my life. So I had to switch to law school. The program I've had never heard, I didn't know anything about. So I gave it a shot ended up being one of the better decisions of of of my life. So like I said, I went to law school in in Sherbrook, which is a City 2 hours away from Montreal. And this had no prior legal experience, no lawyers in the family, you know, even lawyer friends. So I went to law school for for three years and I started noticing something very early on in my law school, which was the influence that big law firms had not only on lawyers, but on, on the students. I'll tell you a little story during one hour or two hours. So basically the first years of law school, they have big law firms would come and basically, I don't know how to say this better, but try to brainwash us into going into big law by they, they offered like these. They came in and, and had these big coach bus buses and that they took us from from Sherbrooke to Montreal and this big public buses to, to have them have us visit their offices in the glass towers in the, in the nice buildings. And I noticed that there were really trying to get us into big law. And at the time it was very, very impressive, right. For your, your young law student, you're going into these very nice office buildings, high rises in downtown Montreal. You're kind of blown away by by what you're seeing all the luxury of the premium styles, the type of offices. And I notice that this is the probably the only path for, for, for a lawyer. I mean, what else can you do? Like this is the way what? This is what they're showing us. So that's very interesting on that beginning. And if I remember it right, I actually watched a few of the podcast that you've been on and, and you're telling a little bit about your story. And I'd love to reproduce this in the podcast for our listeners to get a chance to know you a little better. I understand COVID played a little bit of a role in your story. And then you also, you know, worked at a very traditional law firm at first, then went on to a very technological 1. So I'd love to hear all those kind of checkpoints in your career as well if you're comparing. Yes, of course. So when I was a law student, I got, I got like I said, rejected by all these big law firms. Someone in my network gave me the opportunity to join this boutique law firm in in Montreal doing a corporate and commercial law. So I got in just because of my network. So that's why I'm very huge on building a network from a very young age. So I got in and that's basically where I learned of the base. Everything I know about commercial and corporate law, it was very, it was a is a very good learning experience, but it was a very old school law firm such that all of the partners were basically 60 to 70 years years old, amazing lawyers and some of the best litigators and commercial attorneys in, in the city. And that's where I learned everything I would. They took me under their wing kind of and I learned everything over there. But a funny thing happened that basically everyone got laid off during COVID. All of our staff, basically every single lawyer for the partners obviously got laid off because there were no more files coming in. It was very risky to go in office those days. Every single lawyer except one got laid off. Claudia, let me ask you, do you, do you know, can you guess which lawyer did not get laid off? Well, I'm thinking it was probably the the youngest one that, you know, got the the cheapest pay. Absolutely. I was going to ask you, I was going to ask you, do you know why? And yes, not because I was the smartest lawyer, not because I was the best lawyer, only because I was the least expensive one for them, the cheapest one on payroll. I like how you put it. That's exactly it. I didn't get laid off because I was like very specific, like you said, cheap cost for them. And that's what I, what I learned. Like I'm not indispensable, you know, like, and then we started practicing a little bit remotely from, because we, we, we couldn't go into the office. And I realized that if I could do this from home, if I could do this from my kitchen or, or, or cottage up north, why can't I do this from anywhere in the world? I love traveling. I love always traveled as as a young kid, my dad used to work from a bunch of places around the world and used to take us on those trips. And then when I went into law school, we had, you know, big summers off. So I used to do a lot of travels. But then when I got into the corporate world, that was like, yeah, you could only have two weeks of vacation per year. So I could only travel for two weeks. I was like, this is not a good trade off. I've been traveling all my life. I love traveling. I feel the most alive on those On those trips, you'll learn so much, get a lot of experience, meet new cultures, make global connections, friends all over the place. And just narrowing that down to two weeks was not it was not for me. So I had this opportunity to to join a digital law firm named Renault Enco. Again, this opportunity came through my network and I took a leap of faith there because I went from working for a maybe 50 year old law firm, which was, yeah, like at the time was probably been running for 50 years, to joining a law firm that had maybe under three years of operations. So joining a very established law firm, going from a very established law firm to a startup law firm. And it was a very risky move. And everyone around me told me not to do it. But my dad, my mentors, my friends, they said, are you crazy? Like, what are you going to do? You're joining a startup and you're going to leave the firm. And so you have a job now. Everyone's like laid off. Why are you going to do this? Not a smart move, but one of the main reasons why I did that switch was because that new firm, they didn't have any requirements to be in office. They said you could work from wherever they actually had a we work office Montreal, and they gave me access to their to their Wework card, which basically gives you access to all of their locations around the world. So that was basically two things colliding in my in my brain, right? I could travel and work at the same time and go to all the we works in the world. Wow, that was crazy. It was very attractive offer for me. So I took a leap of faith. I took a huge risk and I joined Renault. Renault law firm practice is basically a commercial law again, but more focusing on crypto and blockchain. So I developed some other type of skills over there. We learned a lot. So it was a smaller law firm and and I was I had more client management and having more interactions with clients rather than just execution. So I learned a lot. We had some great mentors, which I learned how to manage clients, the invoicing aspect, collecting sales. We learned a lot over there. So, so yeah, that's how I went from traditional law to digital first law. So I understand that your mentor lawyers were looking into transition from, you know, being in a law firm to having their own space and and growing their own projects. I wanted to hear a little bit about, you know, what are these lawyers, you know, giving up when they don't take that leap based on your experience and based on the kind of mentoring and teaching you do these days? Yeah, so running a law firm is is very different than than being a lawyer. That is execution, there's executing legal task, right. The trade-offs are are huge, but not to say that they're easy. But those lawyers are giving up a lot of their flexibility, freedom, autonomy. And also I would say they were giving up a lot of money because once you're on your own, you're not sharing the pie with anyone else. So in your, in a law firm have a usually fixed salary and then you have billable hour quotas that you have to hit when you're working for yourself, you have your own clients. You're, you're, you're billing your clients and you keep all of the margin. Where whereas in a firm, obviously the payments go to the firm and then you pay the salary that. So you don't have much flexibility of, of charging your rates. You have a salary that you negotiate beforehand. And that is it whether you work 100 hours or whether you work 40 hours, usually you're paid. That doesn't reflect, doesn't reflect that. So for me, I wanted to have the sense of freedom of, of, of first of all, having control over my time because I wanted to spend more time with my family. I wanted to travel or more, I work out a lot. I wanted to be able to, to, to train as much as I wanted in the middle of the day, at night, whenever I wanted. So this, having this, I always save this money is unlimited time is limited. Time is the true, true asset here. But we shouldn't, I think the lawyers or anyone in general shouldn't only think about how do I get the most amount of money. You should think about how do you get most control over your time because that is the scarce asset, that is the limited, limited asset. So the trade off of having more money is kind of first of all, it's, it's maybe it's an illusion. I don't think, I think business owners at the end of the day make more money. But for young, young lawyers who don't have, let's say a client base, they're always have this, this fear of, or if I go out alone, I'm not going to be making as much money because I don't have clients. But that's just off in a, a fear. And it's an irrational fear because once you do have that client base, you're actually going to make a lot more money and you'll have control over your time. Amazing. I really appreciate you mentioning this aspect of, you know the the client base. I think that how we usually say it in law, in building a book of business and, you know, BD activities, business development, it's one of the things that make people fear a lot going on their own. A lot of my audience here in the podcast are younger lawyers, early career professionals. And I, I really appreciate you coming in and sharing a little bit of that because I, I feel like this is one of the fears right along with maybe having the, the technical aspect of still being underway as a young lawyer. So I wanted you to ask you, you know, for a junior lawyer listening to us right now, what are a few practical steps that they can take to start building that book of business? Be it should be a better associate if you want to stay at your firm or be it you know should should go on or on your own. That's a great question. I get this question a lot and obviously that's one of the main themes of my coaching is how to build a book of business as a young lawyer. How do you how you do that? So I'll share my story and, and then what I basically teach other lawyers is you should really have to work on your network. And most lawyers don't have time to, to build that network because they're always working. That's the tradeoff, right? That's when, that's why I'm so huge on having control over your time, because then you can do the, through the activities that help you build that network. But build everyone talks about building a network, but no one really knows how to network. And, and, and that is huge, right? So first of all, I would say over 70 to 80% of my clients are my friends or family. Having a big in person network already helps, but also LinkedIn is a very powerful networking engine. But how to build that network? You just have to be a, a good, a good person, right, right. A good human who, who, who is valuable in the marketplace, right, If you're able to, And this is not to say only extroverts could be have a good network. I think introverts as well can have the same impact. Because I get this question a lot. Like I'm not very social. I don't know what to say that all can change and that that that doesn't make a huge difference. So like I said, practically most of my clients are my friends are come from my friends or their friends are friends. So just being a decent person and, and, and sharing what you know is, is, is a huge start. And then being very mindful about networking anywhere you go, anywhere you are, you can meet someone that could either be a client or refer you a client. And a lot of lawyers when they think of networking, they think of networking events. They think of like these conferences that they have to go to, which obviously helps, but they think of they have to go to these networking events and like talk to people. And sometimes it's uncomfortable, right? You got to go outside your comfort zone. I don't think that's the best way of networking. That is a good way. But the best way of networking is just in your day-to-day life, wherever you are, you should always be thinking about that's working. And when are you at your these networking events? Peoples, other people's guards are up there expecting to kind of be sold something. They're expecting to, to like free for, for people to come up and, and I don't know, ask for business cards or anything. But the best for me, the best based on network is it's going to sound funny, but in day-to-day activities like you at the gym or I don't know, you're the restaurant or for my case, the beach is a huge networking place just to talk to people when they're, when they're just relaxing, chilling outside, not in a professional setting. Because like I said, it's very different to talk to someone outside of work setting because you get to know them. You get to know the real them, right, when they're, when they're actually relaxing, having time or, or, or, or working out. Like I was at the gym yesterday, I met three very, very interesting people. And like my gym session turned basically into a networking event because like I, I took three very and three cool people in and which I got their phone numbers. And then we, we vibed really well. And those are definitely going to be either clients or they're going to refer me clients, right. So you don't necessarily my, my, my point is that you don't necessarily have to go to these networking events in order to grow your network. You just have to be mindful about it. And anywhere you are, every single day, it's an opportunity for you to grow that client base and to have these referral partners by just being a nice person and asking about them and being interesting and being interested genuinely in other people. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for for sharing those. I believe in the beginning of our podcast, you were talking about, you know, the little misconceptions or just general stereotypes that people might have of someone who is remote worker in general. And I want to hear you, you know, you, you build a fully remote practice. You, you, you advertise yourself as a remote lawyer location independent practice. So what the lawyers tend to get wrong about that? That path or that lifestyle? I guess they what they get to got wrong is they think it's easy or they think you're not working as much, which obviously none of those are, are are true. It's not easy to be a remote lawyer or nomad lawyer because you have to have a very, you have to be very disciplined and to be able to focus on your task. If you can't sit anywhere in a coffee shop wherever it is in the lobby and where, wherever and folk can't focus on your task, then you're not meant to be remote lawyer because there are distractions are everywhere. I, I hear a lot of lawyers say if I don't go to the office, if I work from home, I can't focus. They have this misconception of, of, of being easy. It's not easy. How you really have to be focused. You, you have priorities and you gotta get them done. Like you have clients waiting for results. They have given you their mandates. If you're unable to do that, prioritize that versus wandering around in a new city and you won't be able to be a remote lawyer, right? Because it's very, once you start traveling and working at the same time, it's very could be distracting because you're in the new city. You want to explore, right? That happens to me often. But sometimes you just got to sit down and, and, and do what you got to do. And then that's, I guess one of the harder parts of not being tied to an office and, and having supervision over you, right? You don't have anyone telling you that you need to do this. It's only your client, but they're, they're not there, right? So you have a partner or a boss that's saying, Hey, you, I need this by 4:00 PM. It's only, it's just just, you have to have that self-control. And then it's a muscle that you you can exercise. Fantastic. Well, I appreciate you sharing those points. And now that you coach other lawyers through this transition, what separates maybe the ones that can take off and and take action right away from the ones who maybe take a little longer have as a slow start? I'm not sure if it's just about personality, but maybe does it have to do with, you know, the readiness to action And and if So, what are some of the things you see that that sets them apart? And that I appreciate that you just mentioned, you know, being able to focus in different locations is a big one and for sure still that can be acquired and developed. But what are some of the overall thoughts you might have on that? That's a great question, Claudio, and I'm, allow me to kind of dissect your, your question a little bit. The first part is the lawyers who hire coaches are already going to be a lot more successful because that means they're ready to learn and they're coachable. The, the, the biggest issue that lawyers have is that they're so competent. They're so knowledgeable that they think they know everything and every aspect of, of, of kind of life. So they're not very coachable. They have this ego. So lawyers who already hire a coach that just tells you that they're ready to learn and that they're ready to apply and learn new skills. So that's the first aspect why I say this is before starting this coaching practice, I used to give a lot of advice to other lawyers on how to how to do things differently. And I used to get free advice. The feedback I got or the answers I got was Ohri. That's a, that's a great tip. I should implement that or I should do that. But they, they never did because the, the, the, the advice was free. But then I started when I started charging for those coaching sessions and I started having these programs, That's when people started to pay attention. Because when you pay, you pay attention, there's that value in, in that advice. So the reason why I say this is that you asked what, what do lawyers have? The ones where, let's say more successful in, in, in aid to, to, to throw, to, to go independent into, or to have their own practices is first of all, they have to be, they have to be ready to, to learn and, and to implement new stuff. Now, once they're in, once they're being coached, what is the difference between the successful ones and let's say not the, the, the, the, the, so the less successful ones, I would say consistency. So the the lawyers who show up every week like I, I do a call every week for three months. The lawyers who show up to a call already prepared and having done, let's say, the assignments or the homeworks that I give them consistently, I see a huge, I see a huge difference between those two types of lawyers because being consistently good is much better than being occasionally great, right? And if you can show up every day, every week and do the things, the little habits, if you could, if you could implement those, they'll go a long way. And, and, and the things that you need to do are basically habits that you need to do on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. And they're very easy to do. Like, I don't know, posting on LinkedIn that's or showing up or, or, or whatever it is. They're very easy habits, but easy habits are easy to do, but they're also easy not to do. So a lot of lawyers skip them. A lot of people skip them. So the ones who can do it on a on a regular basis without kind of seeing the results at first because it takes a little time until the ball starts to get rolling. The ones who can do it even without seeing those results are like just relying on faith. And my advice are the ones who will be more successful and who are more successful versus the others who do it once, do it twice, and then kind of kind of give up because they don't see results. I think that is a the most the biggest indicator. Fantastic to wrap up today's episode, really appreciate all that you've shared so far. And I wanted to focus again on those early career professionals, but maybe thinking about the the area that got into the coach bus and when she visited the big offices, you know, those early professionals who maybe feel a little pressure to follow the traditional routes. What's one piece of advice that you give then about, you know, building a career on their own terms to wrap up today's? One piece of advice is to not only focus on the law and the, and how to execute the legal mandates. Obviously that is very important, but you also have to build your network at the same time in parallel because running a business is, is very, very different than just being a lawyer who does the mandates. So I think for any lawyer, young lawyer that is listening, the big best piece of advice that I can give you is to first of all, learn sales. Sales is a very, very important how to communicate with other people, how to communicate your offer. But these are extremely important skills in any industry, but especially for lawyers because we are not taught that in law school and lawyers don't naturally, they don't have this ability to sell. I think that is huge. I'll leave you with a thought, Claudio. I was reading an article recently and it said that the lawyers who make the most money or the lawyers who are the rain makers, quote UN quote, they're not the lawyers who know the law the best or who are the most, who have the most expertise or who are the most competent lawyers. The lawyers who make the most money or the the rain. Rain makers are the activators. And activators mean the ones who have a, a huge network and they can connect people together, They can activate relationships. So the deals come to them and they make the deals happen. If you're able to be that type of lawyer, which obviously you have to rely on your network and I'll also on your communication skills and kind of just make things happen. Those are the lawyers that get paid the most. So if you want to build a book of business and and obviously make a lot of money so that you can have this type of freedom that I'm talking about, you really, really have to work on those quote on quote soft skills rather than just like reading the law and being the best or being the most up to date on the legal knowledge. I think that is the most important thing that has helped me and I've received this advice from my mentors and it couldn't be further from the. Truth. Amazing. Thank you so much, Mike, for making the time to be here in the podcast and thank you all for joining into today's episode. Thank you, Claudia. I really appreciate this.