More Than Legal Advice: Building a Firm for High-Conflict Divorce

Kyle McEntee:

We're joined today by Jonathan Merel and Kristina Lindsay. Jonathan is a family law and divorce lawyer and founder and managing principal at his firm of roughly 20 lawyers. Kristina also works at the firm, but as an in-house divorce coach, helping clients navigate the high conflict realities of divorce. She came to the practice after years as an advocate in the domestic violence world. I want to start off first by talking with you, Jonathan, about your family law practice. And then I think we can bring in Kristina to join the conversation for the second half to talk more about her work and how it fits together with yours.

So you went to law school kind of not knowing what else to do, which is honestly pretty common for a lot of people. But when you found family law, something you really enjoy now, what was it about it that clicked for you?

Jonathan Merel:

Family law was the first law clerking job I had at a firm while I was a law student. And you know, I kind of went into it just trying to be a sponge for information and seeing if I would like it. And really just kind of started liking like the fact that there was real people going on being involved in real situations. I just knew I would kind of get bored with like a transactional work or tax or real estate and stuff like that. I need like the real life situations. I need the emotional part of this job. And I immediately embraced it and it clicked with me. I liked hearing difficult situations that people were in and being able to try to get them out of it, whether the person was the victim or the person who needed help and had the issues that all kind of like clicked with me. And to this day, I still like doing it.

Kyle McEntee:

That first job you had out of law school was at a family law firm. You were there seven years, then you made the jump to start your own firm. What do you remember about those early days? Was the phone ringing off the hook?

Jonathan Merel:

No, definitely not. I mean, I think I left with like 20 clients of my own, but it was a long term vision. And again, that's terrifying when, you know, you have a two year old at home and you're about to have your second child and it's 2009 and it's a recession. I really could not have picked a worse time to do it, but I knew I had to do it. And I think that's what motivates you is the fear of failure. Definitely sleepless nights wondering, you know, how I'm going to pay bills, maxing out credit cards, paying for services just to keep the phone ringing, taking any sort of case that I could get to get some money in the door. I mean, these are the realities of any small business owner and someone starting a law firm, trying to convince clients to hire me, even though I had seven years' experience. You know, it's hard to compete against more established firms that have been around 10, 15, 20 years. Those are the kind of pitfalls that you can find as an initial business owner.

Kyle McEntee:

So you outlined all the reasons not to do it. Family obligations, difficult competition, a difficult market, but you also said that you needed to. So what precipitated this change?

Jonathan Merel:

I wasn't happy. I knew that I was underappreciated, underpaid, and I just didn't see myself having the future I wanted. So, I mean, I think I knew this like two, three years after I started practicing at the firm before when I was just making the decision, like I could do this and I could do this better than these people. So I was really just kind of taking notes of what I liked about how the firm worked, what I didn't like, what I thought I could do better and just kind of like kept these notes in my brain that like once I do start my own firm, I know I could do this better. I know I can treat my employees better and I know I could market better and I know that I could do this entire practice better. So like when I left, I had a plan and you know, that plan obviously requires clients and you know, clients require good results and a good reputation. So all these things had to click.

Kyle McEntee:

All right, so fast forward now, about 17 years later to where we are today, you've got a team of around 20 lawyers. You have other staff that are not lawyers. What kind of cases are you handling today? So not necessarily just your firm, but you in particular.

Jonathan Merel:

Well, I have my hands in all of our cases. I just kind of have to like use my time a little more wisely, I would say. There was a period like three, four years ago where I kind of made a decision that I was going to start working more on the business than in the business. But again, I'm still part of all new cases that come in. I'm still part of discussions when it comes to strategy and preparation for trial and all that. I'm still an integral part of the case, but I'm not in court as much as I used to be.

I'm really running the business itself, addressing, you know, marketing with my marketing director, talent acquisition, growth, expansion. All these things are kind of on my radar. And then of course, taking new client calls, stuff like that. I mean, I kind of wear a lot of different hats. I'm always working. That's how I like it.

Kyle McEntee:

So I want to pick on one thing you mentioned, case strategy. So what point are you brought in after a client has been onboarded?

Jonathan Merel:

If I bring the case into the firm or if it's an initial client asking for me or someone that I spoke to from the beginning, I'm going to be involved in that case strategically. Kind of like a CEO role of the case. And you know, again, not necessarily in the trenches in court or depositions and stuff like that, but more behind the scenes and strategizing and figuring out a game plan that's going to guarantee success for the client.

Kyle McEntee:

So your firm is named after you. Do you have clients calling in only wanting to talk to you? And how do you navigate that?

Jonathan Merel:

I sell myself and I sell the firm. First and foremost, I surround myself with amazing people, top to bottom, and they're not hiring a lawyer, they're hiring the firm. And every case that we bring in that goes through me, I work on with one of my partners and one of my associates. So it's not like I hand the person off to another lawyer and they never hear from me, but I make it clear from the get-go. It's a multiple hands-on deck team approach that we take to our cases.

Kyle McEntee:

So once you've got them persuaded that it's a real benefit that they get the entire team and not just you, what are the first questions you're asking?

Jonathan Merel:

Well, I mean, obviously, once they've retained us, it's about where are we in the case? Is the case about to be filed? Is it already filed? Are we substituting in for a different lawyer? What's the temperature of the case? Are there abuse? Do we need to get Kristina involved in the case to help with the client's emotions? Those kinds of things are really just the general questions. By the time they hire us, though, they've had a pretty extensive conversation with me or someone else in my firm, and we've kind of give some initial advice and ideas for what would be next if we get in the case.

Kyle McEntee:

So one of the reasons that you liked family law on a theoretical level was you got to deal with real people, real emotions, go into court, and then you mentioned that you're not going into court as much lately because of all these additional responsibilities. When you are going into court, though, do you feel like you're kind of going back home?

Jonathan Merel:

I mean, look, I lived in courthouses for the first 20 years of doing this, and I was there in the morning for four hours. You come back, try to get some client calls done, and then if you're not doing a deposition, you're back in court for a hearing probably in the afternoon, and that's why I would wake up at five in the morning, get to the office by six at the latest, because those hours before court, like six to nine a.m., were like I could get a whole day's work done, and I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time after.

So as the business began to grow, it became more and more difficult to manage all this stuff and spend my time in court and then come back to a million emails I haven't responded to and potential clients that I didn't have time to call and at the same time try to get home and see my family at a reasonable hour also. It just wasn't a sustainable model. It was hard because I loved going to court, I loved litigating, and I do miss it, but my time's better spent elsewhere, and again, I'm fortunate enough to have incredible attorneys that do it just as well, if not better, than I did anyway. So it's easy to hand it off to those people.

Kyle McEntee:

Yeah, so these cases that you're handing off, they can be messy, right? Full of emotions. So after doing this work for a while, I imagine you could start to feel a little bit like a therapist. Where do you see the limits on that as a lawyer of what you can provide to clients as it pertains to therapy?

Jonathan Merel:

Yeah, I mean, look, we're not mental health experts, but oftentimes we're thrown into that role, and that's, again, what always had me thinking, like there has to be a better person for these people to talk to that, again, isn't a lawyer, that isn't necessarily a therapist, but can kind of be that liaison that addresses the emotional impact, which has, again, led me to start looking to hire someone who could fill that void in not just my firm, but really the practice of family law in general.

I don't know of any other firm that really has an in-house divorce coach, but I thought trying to be the progressive type of firm, I feel like it made perfect sense if I found the perfect person, which thankfully I did, and Kristina was brought in, and she's such an incredible resource for people, whether it's someone going through domestic violence, someone who's just really having a hard time dealing with the emotional part of divorce, which is human nature to experience, someone who's not just in that mental health professional type realm, but someone who knows how divorce cases go, someone who could be part of the team and really be that liaison between lawyer and client that allows us to all work together as a team.

Kyle McEntee:

Christina, from your perspective, were you surprised when you first started considering the idea of working at a law firm?

Kristina Lindsay:

Well, I had started my own practice as a divorce coach in 2022, and I had honestly thought that the way of the future would be an in-house divorce coach. It was surprising, though, when I got that initial call from Jonathan, as that wasn't necessarily on my radar at the time. I had thought it would take longer, I mean, the wheels of justice move slow, and the way things change and evolve in society can take time. But from my initial conversation with Jonathan, I knew he was a forward thinker, progressive, the energy and what he had built with Merel Family Law was just so impressive that it was a really exciting opportunity for me.

Kyle McEntee:

All right, so tell me a little bit more about your background prior to joining the firm. You spent a lot of time working with victims of abuse, I think about 20 years of domestic violence advocacy. What kind of brought you to that world and how did you experience it?

Kristina Lindsay:

So yes, in about 2005, I started volunteering at my local rape crisis center teaching prevention education. I have a teaching background, so I thought that that was a good fit just to do service work. And through that experience that naturally grew, I obtained my master's in applied anthropology and community and youth work, where I completed a variety of internships doing victim advocacy centered work, always focused on gender violence. And then moving back here to the United States from the United Kingdom, I started working as a legal advocate. And it was just a natural progression.

Through my work in the legal system, I saw a lot of injustice happen. My clients who would maybe easily obtain an emergency order of protection with our assistance as an advocate would then get their cases transferred and consolidated into their domestic relations case. And then often we would just see that OP get vacated. They would be left without any recourse for the awful abuse that they were experiencing. And I just thought there had to be another way. And so once I became aware of this really grassroots movement in the high conflict divorce arena, I took trainings. I became certified in that. And really used it as a compliment to my advocacy work, and then branched out into my own practice.

Kyle McEntee:

And then how did you two actually cross paths?

Jonathan Merel:

That was me stalking her on LinkedIn, basically, when I was trying to find a good fit. I mean, I really didn't know where to turn to find a divorce coach. And I think I sent her a message on LinkedIn and said, what do you think about this? Let's talk. One conversation led to another. We met for coffee and just, it became more and more of a reality. And I said, she'll have all the support she could possibly need behind her, with me. And understanding that this is such a new novel concept in this area of the law and like the legal practice in general, that it's going to take some time for people to really digest it and understand that this is a service that a law firm can provide. Judges have commented to me how they think it's such a great idea and mediators. And I think we're really just kind of setting the tone for what lies ahead in family law. And this is not just a lawyer talking to a client and some old man in a suit kind of just telling the person how it is and how it's going to be in their divorce. This is a process that should involve more of a mental health, emotional support approach, not just the legal aspect of it. So I think it makes sense. And of course, you know, you need the great person to do it. So we're lucky to have Kristina and everything she brings to our clients who love her the second they talk to her.

Kyle McEntee:

So what were you thinking, Kristina, at that first coffee?

Kristina Lindsay:

I was excited, honestly, I was, you know, I enjoy working with attorneys. I also have worked in hospitals as an advocate and doing a lot of professional education for nurses, doctors, social workers. So I like that interface of being able to bridge the gap between where our clients are and in their emotional state and or in the process of going through their divorce and also with safety planning. That's part and parcel. I bring that to every single client in every case because typically there is an aspect either of emotional abuse or financial abuse happening where we can do that. So I enjoy working with the team we have at Merel. I think we have just a fantastic group of people, brilliant minds and also really compassionate. And we have a lot of fun together, too. It's like this is heavy and we can all get together and laugh and spend time together. It's really a special thing. I don't think you can find that everywhere. Like Jonathan said, he took time and he took a very kind of thoughtful process in order to build the firm. And you can feel that as an employee.

Kyle McEntee:

Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by a safety plan?

Kristina Lindsay:

Sure. So as a certified domestic violence professional, I'm qualified to safety plan with our clients. So anybody who's experiencing any kind of domestic abuse, I'm going to go through with them and think of where we can kind of plug the gaps or fill the holes, so to speak.

So that includes electronic safety. So thinking about, I mean, in this day and age, there's malware that is just so easily downloaded onto anybody's devices. We'll go through that.

We'll go through financial safety. And then it's simple things, too. Like if an attack is happening, try not to be in the bathroom or the kitchen. Hard surfaces, knives, things like that. We go the whole length of the spectrum. And I'm also certified in the danger assessment, which is a lethality tool that's research based and was developed out of John Hopkins. So that is something I can do with our clients who may have experienced things like strangulation, sexual assault and other threats to harm.

Kyle McEntee:

So from where I sit, it's very easy to see how this is complementary inside of a law firm setting. What I think I'm struggling to see is how that actually gets operationalized when it comes to each of your duties to not share information. How does the confidentiality piece of this work?

Jonathan Merel:

Well, Kristina, she's not a therapist and she's not on staff as a therapist. She's on staff as someone that's essentially an employee of the law firm, just like a paralegal and legal assistant associate partner. So the attorney client privilege extends to employees of a law firm and support staff of a client's case.

And we make it very clear when we have new clients retain that, you know, they understand that there is not this is not a mental health therapy relationship. They're not retaining her as a mental health professional. She's being on board as a divorce coach. And we very in great detail explain the limits on confidentiality. So that's made clear to the clients from the get go. And it's, of course, up to them whether they want to utilize her or not. Many do, of course, but they get into it with a clear understanding of limitations and expectations when it comes to attorney client privilege and confidentiality.

Kyle McEntee:

So what are the limits on confidentiality and privilege?

Jonathan Merel:

Well, Kristina’s conversations with our clients are privileged under attorney client privilege, but there's no mental health professional privilege. And they understand that working as a team, statements that are made to Kristina or statements that are made to us can be shared based on the fact that we are working under the same roof, under the same company, and that the attorney client privilege extends not just to lawyers, but employees within the law firm working on the case, too.

Kyle McEntee:

So I know we can't get into client specifics, but can you share a moment where this model really made a difference for a client?

Kristina Lindsay:

I liken this to my work in hospitals, too. So, for example, if you can imagine somebody going into the hospital, it might be hard for them to disclose abuse to their doctor or their nurse. However, if they're speaking to a domestic violence advocate like I was, it's easier for them to say, hey, yes, I did experience X, Y and Z, which I can then use to share with their doctor in order to make sure that they get the correct screenings, for example. And that is also something we've seen here at the firm.

So, for example, we had a client, again, protecting their confidentiality that had not disclosed to the attorney working on the case that they had experienced near fatal strangulation. I met with them. That is something that they were comfortable disclosing to me. And then I can therefore do a lethality assessment with them, make sure that we've gone over the relevant safety planning points and then share that back with the attorney so that he or she is fully aware of the scope of the abuse that that person has experienced, as well as some of those risk factors that may be barriers for them in actually separating because every case is unique. So we have seen that.

And I know that, you know, attorneys have found that valuable when I'm able to kind of give fill in the blanks and fill in those other perspectives because that can help inform their work and their strategy. So I think that's definitely a success that we see working as a team.

Kyle McEntee:

Jonathan, then you want to add to that?

Jonathan Merel:

I can't tell you how many clients have thanked me for the opportunity to talk to Christina. And again, she she's not talking with a lawyer head on. So I think clients, we try to obviously get them to open up to us. But, you know, sometimes we're like the scary lawyers. And I think there's just something different about Kristina herself and the role that she plays and the experience she has, obviously, having done this for so long, that really helps us because the clients feel comfortable with her. But someone that has the experience to kind of obviously engage in these conversations, ask the right questions, make them feel comfortable, divulge information that they maybe were scared to talk about before, which ultimately they know will help them when Kristina conveys it to us.

Kyle McEntee:

Not all divorce is adversarial, but what we're talking about here is largely adversarial. And I think one of the keys in any adversarial proceeding is information and information is currency. And so, Kristina, you're able to get this extra information out of people that can help inform Jonathan, you and your other attorneys in the work you're doing. But what about on the other side? Are you also getting information out of people who maybe are admitting to wrongdoing that helps you reframe the approach you're taking as the lawyer?

Jonathan Merel:

We don't always represent the good person. It goes both ways. And again, if people are admitting things that they did that maybe weren't right or weren't accurate as they told it to us, it's just another way to kind of get to the heart of these matters and to get the information we need.

Kristina Lindsay:

I really think of it as preparation, too. So if I can help our attorneys be prepared for a curveball that might be coming or yes, what I will say to my clients, even as a legal advocate, like what's the other side going to say? When you come back for a hearing, you need to be prepared to think about what they're going to say against you. And so that's the same in my sessions. And we may go over an incident and I'm like, hey, to the attorney, this is kind of the other side of it, too. And yes, that can help inform and help everybody be prepared and aligned, because ultimately that's the goal for our clients to be aligned with our attorneys and for me to be there understanding the attorney's strategy and supporting that. Like, I am always here for our attorneys, whether they want to talk about a case and kind of process their emotions with it, because this is a heavy job. Like this is there's nothing easy about being a family law attorney or on the other end of it. I'm here for our clients, too, to help them understand the way the legal system works on an information basis so that they know that we are all aligned in a unified team.

Kyle McEntee:

Who's there for you?

Kristina Lindsay:

Well, I have my family and my colleagues, honestly, like I get just as much out of being able to process and discuss different cases. And I will walk away to learning things from them. I mean, we have a brilliant group of attorneys and our support staff is fantastic.

And I just feel very lucky with that because I don't feel alone, even though there is just one of me as a divorce coach.

Kyle McEntee:

What about you, Jonathan? How do you manage the emotional weight of the work?

Jonathan Merel:

It takes a while. And I really think only a certain type of person can do this work. I mean, I've seen many people at other firms or even a few here that started doing this and realized it just wasn't for them, which I understand. It's a lot. And you really have to be able to separate the emotion from the job that you're required and expected to do as a lawyer. You see a lot of horrible stuff and that can really, really weigh on you.

And you also can't just be emotionally attached to these cases like they're your own family because they aren't. We're getting hired to do a job without the emotional attachment so we can give logical, rational advice that's not based on emotion. It's based on the law and strategy and achieving the client's goals, which we set out to achieve from the beginning. And if you let the emotions kind of cloud your judgment and get the best of you, one, you're not going to have a long career doing this and you're not going to do as good a job for your clients, for sure.