Welcome to the Bluebird Law newsletter & thank you for your support!
This week marks Bluebird Law, LLC’s third anniversary! I am so grateful for you and your energy, time, and -- most importantly -- your trust. You trust me with your referrals, your questions, your stories, and, of course, your families. It means the world to me and I am privileged to serve this community..
In honor of guiding this practice through its third trip around the sun, I am sharing with you three of my most important discoveries from the past three years as well as some other information that I hope you’ll find helpful.
Moving forward, I hope to provide some useful information and resources for you in this newsletter. I welcome your feedback at swarren@bluebird-law.com. I may not respond, but I will certainly value your feedback.
Shannon
1: Your weakness may be your unpolished superpower.
The comment I get from people when I tell them what I do is often “but you’re too nice to be a lawyer.” That used to make me feel self-conscious; as though I didn’t have an innate personality trait that was necessary to be a lawyer. And that belief was reinforced by partners and other attorneys at my former firm who displayed very cold and tough exteriors and seemingly looked down on me for my lack thereof. But when I decided to pursue family law through my own practice, I soon realized that my ability to care about and relate to people wasn’t my weakness, but my superpower. It allows me to really listen to my clients, to come up with the best version of their story possible, and to troubleshoot creative solutions that will help them rather than prolonging litigation. While many opposing counsel surely see my friendliness or lack of “bulldog” persona as a trait to be exploited, I have come to learn that is their weakness, not mine. If you find yourself in a situation like mine, have hope. Your weakness may just take some polishing to become your superpower.
2: Changing your mind is powerful.
Like many lawyers and other people in this world, I struggle with perfectionism.I hold myself to an impossibly high standard – always striving to make my first iteration of anything I do perfect.But through this practice I’ve realized that life doesn’t work like that. Facts change and opening your mind to new possibilities can reveal different perspectives that you didn’t notice before. It’s more important to change your mind based upon new evidence or ideas than it is to invest that energy into defending your first draft. I recently read the book Think Again by Adam Grant on this very subject. We as humans have a bias toward first impressions – meaning that we believe our first impressions are right when the data disprove that. Going into this third year, I am committing to focus not on perfection, but continuous improvement. So don’t be surprised if you hear me approaching problems with more curiosity and fewer opinions.
3: There are no lost causes.
I don’t need to tell many of you that sometimes a case can feel like a lost cause. When you get a ruling against you, it can feel insurmountable. One of my first hearings in this practice was like that. It was a seemingly slam dunk case in which I represented a mother who was trying to remove her son from a very dangerous situation with his dad. The professionals were on our side and we had both ongoing criminal and child abuse cases related to this same dad. But the judge ruled against us. I try not to take rulings personally, but this one got to me. I was devastated for my client and her son. And I was amazed and inspired by how she kept her composure. She knew that if she lost it, her son would lose the one constant and safe person in his life. So she put her pride aside and continued to coparent as best she could with his dad. Recently I learned that this mom got her son to safety when CPS removed him from his dad’s care.
