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    Family Law: Creating New Beginnings and Transforming Lives With Amber James

    Family Law: Creating New Beginnings and Transforming Lives With Amber James

    January 15, 2025   |   Written by Gladiator Law Marketing
    Amber James Amber James

    Amber James is the Founder, CEO, and Managing Member of New Beginnings Family Law, a firm dedicated to resolving disputes with compassion and care. In addition to helping parents resolve divorces and property division issues, Amber offers adoption, surrogacy, and estate planning services. Under her leadership, the firm has grown from its humble beginnings into a seven-figure business. It has become recognized in family law circles for its empathetic approach and commitment to minimizing the emotional impact on children. 


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    Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

    • [01:39] Why Amber James transitioned from music educator to family lawyer
    • [03:32] Amber’s journey to law and building New Beginnings Family Law
    • [06:33] Setting boundaries with clients while maintaining empathy 
    • [07:38] Mastering communication to reduce the emotional impact on children
    • [14:11] How Amber’s music education influenced her approach as a lawyer
    • [18:17] Qualities of a good family law attorney
    • [21:22] Top priorities when handling cases involving domestic violence
    • [23:29] The early days of New Beginnings Family Law and how it grew to seven figures
    • [27:52] Amber’s advice to aspiring lawyers

    In this episode…

    Families find themselves navigating complex emotional and legal issues during life-changing moments like divorce or adoption. How can attorneys provide not only legal guidance but also emotional support to ensure the best outcomes for their clients, especially children?

    According to Amber James, a seasoned family law attorney, the key lies in balancing empathy with clear boundaries. She highlights the importance of coaching parents to focus on their children’s well-being, even amid conflict, and helping clients reframe difficult transitions as opportunities for growth. Amber also underscores the necessity of creating a safe and supportive environment for clients, particularly in cases involving domestic violence or contested adoptions, where emotions run high, and outcomes can have lasting effects.

    In this episode of 15 Minutes, Chad Franzen sits down with Amber James, Founder, CEO, and Managing Member of New Beginnings Family Law, to discuss her journey from music education to becoming a leading voice in family law. Amber shares how she helps clients prioritize their children’s emotional health, why storytelling skills are vital for lawyers, and the strategies that helped her grow her firm from scratch to seven figures. 

    Resources mentioned in this episode:

    Quotable Moments

    • “I knew I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was very small, watching Perry Mason and Matlock with my dad.”
    • “The biggest challenge family lawyers face is creating an appropriate boundary between lawyer and client while being helpful and empathetic.”
    • “I always try to coach my clients that what you really want for your child is to see their cheering section there for them.”
    • “Family law is a balance between lawyer and coach, helping clients co-parent for better outcomes for their children.”
    • “You’re no one’s savior. You can guide them and provide legal advice, but you can’t fix their entire situation.”

    Action Steps 

    1. Develop empathy and emotional intelligence: This approach helps build trust and rapport, enabling attorneys to guide clients through emotionally charged situations like divorce and custody battles.
    2. Set healthy professional boundaries: Establishing clear boundaries with clients prevents emotional burnout and ensures that lawyers can support their clients effectively without being overwhelmed by their personal conflicts.
    3. Engage in continuous learning and observational experience: Observing family law court cases and reading extensively about family law, psychology, and emotional intelligence enhances a lawyer’s competence and adaptability in handling complex legal scenarios.
    4. Utilize mediation and collaborative solutions: Incorporating mediation and creative problem-solving strategies can lead to more amicable resolutions, reducing the emotional and financial strain on clients.
    5. Prioritize personal well-being and a work-life balance: Balancing work demands with personal life through intentional scheduling and pursuing personal interests prevents burnout and enhances overall career satisfaction.

    Sponsor for this episode…

    This episode is brought to you by Gladiator Law Marketing, where we deliver tailor-made services to help you accomplish your objectives and maximize your growth potential. 

    To have a successful marketing campaign and make sure you’re getting the best ROI, your firm needs to have a better website and better content. At Gladiator Law Marketing, we use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and decades of experience to outperform the competition. 

    To learn more, go to gladiatorlawmarketing.com or schedule a free marketing consultation. You can also send an email to ad**@gl*******************.com .

    Episode Transcript

    Intro  00:01

    You’re listening to 15 Minutes, where we feature community leaders sharing what the rest of us should know, but likely don’t.

    Chad Franzen  01:09

    Hi, Chad Franzen here, one of the hosts of Share Your Voice, where we talk with top notch law firms and lawyers about what it takes to grow a successful law practice. This episode is brought to you by Gladiator Law Marketing, delivering tailor made services to help you accomplish your objectives and maximize your growth potential. To have a successful marketing campaign and make sure you’re getting the best ROI, your firm needs to have a better website and better content. Gladiator Law Marketing uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and decades of experience to outperform the competition. To learn more, go to GladiatorLawMarketing.Com where you can schedule a free marketing consultation. Amber James is my guest today. She is the Founder and visionary of New Beginnings Family Law. Combining her passion for helping families with her extensive legal expertise, starting her career with a background in music education, she transitioned into law to pursue her calling in family law. After earning her JD in 2006, Amber launched her own practice dedicated to resolving family disputes with compassion and care. At New Beginning, she focuses on minimizing the emotional impact on children during legal proceedings, offering services in divorce, adoption, surrogacy, and estate planning. Amber, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

    Amber James  01:24

    I’m well. Thank you so much for having me. I really am looking forward to our conversation.

    Chad Franzen  01:29

    Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Hey, as I mentioned, you had a background in music education. Tell me how and when you knew you wanted to become a lawyer.

    Amber James  01:39

    Oh, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. From the time I was a very small. I used to watch Perry Mason and Matlock with my dad, so that kind of dates me a little bit. But I would watch those with my dad and knew that that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I went to high school, kind of got sidetracked a little bit because I did fall in love with music as well. You He played clarinet, flute and saxophone and things of that nature. And being a first generation college student, you know, the more most first generation college students become teachers. And so I thought, well, this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m a first generation college student. I’m going to go to school and become a teacher. And as a teacher realized that I could not advocate for my children, my students, in the way that I would have liked to. And so lacking the diplomacy to continue to be a public school teacher, I decided it was time to go to law school. And then, you know, found my way into family law, where I get to advocate for kids in a way that is actually meaningful to their lives.

    Chad Franzen  02:38

    What was it about those shows like Perry Mason that you watched with your dad that was appealing to you in terms of becoming a lawyer?

    Amber James  02:45

    Sure. You know, they always solve cases in an hour. You know, we all know that that’s not realistic in the real world. But as a child, it was that lawyers were able to help people in really strange circumstances. You know, Matlock might try criminal case one day and a personal injury case the next. And, you know, had kind of a general practice but was able to really make a difference in the lives of his clients regardless of what kind of case he had. And that really intrigued me and the ability to help other people in a way that was unique and that would help them tell their story to a jury or to a judge. That really was exciting for me.

    Chad Franzen  03:25

    So you you ended up getting your JD kind of take me through the beginning of your journey through the legal industry. How did you kind of kind of get started?

    Amber James  03:32

    Sure. So I went to Birmingham School of Law, which is a night law school, and worked full time during the day. I started out at a personal injury law firm because I knew I was called to help hurting people. And lots of people get injured and have to go through a personal injury case. So I started there. I worked there for about 16 months when I was offered a position as the law clerk for a judge in Birmingham that tried nothing but family law cases all day long. And I thought, well, that’ll be a change of pace. It’s a different kind of job. You know, you work for the state, you get state holidays. And I had a toddler at the time and I thought, well, this this works out with my life. So I took the job and the judge’s office and fell in love with family law. And realizing that the people that hurt the most are those that are sitting in his courtroom looking to him to make a decision about what’s going to happen with their children, what’s going to happen with their finances and things of that nature. So that got me into family law. And then I met my current husband. I had been divorced from my ex-husband, my son’s father. I met my husband, who had been divorced from his former wife, and I had a stepson or he had a son. Now, my stepson, and really got to see how parties can really affect the outcome of how their children turn out. In a divorce case, like the level of anxiety a child experiences going from one home to the other, and how you can really impact the life of a child. When you work with parents in a family law case, you know you you have the opportunity to coach them and teach them on how you can parent that child in such a way that they have a better outcome, even if their parents aren’t going to be able to stay together.

    Chad Franzen  05:14

    So what inspired you then to start New Beginnings Family Law?

    Amber James  05:18

    So I when I left law school, I knew I wanted to be a family law attorney. And in the area where I was at the time in Alabama, that was not something that was done. Like, you didn’t just have a niche, a niche practice. You had a general practice kind of like Matlock, you know, or one of them. But so I knew I wanted to do just family law. And finding a firm that would allow me to do just family law was difficult. So I just decided to hang my own shingle and do things the way I wanted to do them from the very beginning. And it started out as James Family Law Center, because that was my last name, and that’s what made sense. But then as I grew up knowing I didn’t really want to take on like, named partners. I didn’t want the firm to be, you know, James Smith Jones and all these other people. I really wanted the name of the firm to tell a story about what it is we hope for our clients. I mean, Alabama allows us to have trade names in that way, which is a was a huge benefit. So in 2014, I changed the name of the firm to New Beginnings Family Law, because that’s really what I hope for my clients is that each of them can see that while their circumstances today may be difficult, they can indeed have a new beginning.

    Chad Franzen  06:28

    What are the biggest challenges you face in doing family law?

    Amber James  06:33

    I think the biggest challenge that family lawyers face is being able to create an appropriate boundary between lawyer and client, in a way that you can be helpful to a client. You can have empathy for a client without kind of buying into the entirety of their their conflict, so being able to maintain a certain level of of a boundary where you say, I’m here to help you and I’m empathetic to what you’re going through, and I want to hold your hand and walk you through it. But I’m not also going to, like, sit in the in the ditch with you and let you just wallow. Like, we’re all going to come through this together. And I’m going to try to lift you up and then, you know, realizing that we’re not responsible for the decisions our clients make in their family law cases. Like, sometimes they do things you tell them not to do. And understanding that, you know, as much as we want to care for them, we’re not responsible for their, you know, overall well-being and the overall choices that they choose to make.

    Chad Franzen  07:29

    I know you prioritize minimizing the emotional impact on children. What are some ways you go about doing that?

    Amber James  07:38

    A lot of that has to do with coaching clients on, you know, proper communication. Helping them see that while they may not care about their spouse anymore, or you may have, you know, very deep seated hatred for that other parent. That their child is still part of both of them. And when you tell a child I hate your father or I hate your mother, or your mother is a horrible person, your father is a horrible person. What you’re telling that child is half of them is bad. Half of them is is despicable to you, detestable to you. And it starts impacting their self-worth and their self-esteem. And sometimes it means that they attach to that parent who is talking badly about the other parent because they want to only identify with that parent. And then to the exclusion of the other parent. And sometimes it just, you know, tears the child apart in both directions. So I always when I talk to clients, I tell them the story of these two little boys. And the story of the two little boys is about my son and my stepson, and about the difference in those two young men, because of the way each of the sets of parents chose to parent. And my son’s father was actually at my house yesterday. We were celebrating that he’s going away to seminary. And I was there and my husband was there, and my ex-husband’s there. Like, that’s what we do for Nick. Nick gets a cheering section everywhere he goes because his parents understand that we don’t like each other in that way anymore. We’re not romantically involved with one another, and we have no desire to be married to one another. But we all love him. And then, you know, you have cases where Mom and Dad hate each other, can’t be in the same room with one another, can’t sit at the same end of the stadium when a child plays a ball game and the child is looking to both sides, like, where do I go and what do I do? And that creates anxiety and stress in that child’s life. And so the child doesn’t have that cheering section. So I always try to coach my clients that what you really want for your child is for him to look up in one or her to look into one place in the stands or in the audience and see their cheering section there for them. And if they, as parents can give them that, that even if they divorce one another, that’s a gift that they can give their child to show them that, you know, we cannot be married to one another, but we can also all be here for you.

    Chad Franzen  09:52

    So there’s a lot more advice that you give to your clients beyond just kind of, you know, legal advice regarding the divorce.

    Amber James  10:00

    Oh, yeah. That’s I feel like that’s part of my calling is to say I can help you resolve some of your legal disputes. We can go to court and put on the gladiator armor, you know, and go fight the battle. But what’s really going to be helpful to you is if I also train you on how I co-parented and how you can co-parent so that your child can have a better outcome. So I feel like a family law attorney has this kind of balance between lawyer and coach in a lot of ways.

    Chad Franzen  10:28

    Can you is there has there been like a memorable case that has really impacted you during your time doing this?

    Amber James  10:35

    There have been several, but the one that I think probably impacted me the most in the last few years is I had what was a contested adoption. So a birth mom who had given her child up for adoption, and that’s the decision she wanted to make. Her family got involved. and decided to kind of coax her out of the decision she had made and started fighting for custody of this, this child back from these adoptive parents who had had the child for like 4 or 5 months. And that battle dragged on, and we had some legal decisions that made that were not in compliance with the law, but were made. And so then we had to appeal them. You know, so this was a long battle of in trial court, in the appellate court, in trial court, in the appellate court. And then we had to try the case over the course of three days. And when we got to the end, then you had to wait for the result, you know? And eventually, though, the court found that the little girl should go home with the adoptive parents who had now not seen, because in the course of the case, a court order was entered that removed the child from the adoptive parents and placed the child back with birth. Mom’s family essentially. And it was just such a mess. But in the end, when that little girl came home to her adoptive parents And she had not seen them in, I think, 6 or 7 months at the time that they got her back. But for her to instantly see them, this smile come on her face and this like, relaxed, you know, her whole body relaxed into the body or to the chest of the, the adoptive mother. And just this, like all this stress drained out of this little girl’s face. It was one of the most memorable and beautiful moments in my career. And being able to be there in that moment when they, they got her home. And so it’s it’s one of those things that will always impact me. It was one of those cases. I didn’t I didn’t know what the right answer was going to be. You know, I knew in my heart what I felt the right answer was. But from a legal standpoint, what what is the decision going to be? And so winning that case was kind of one of the highlights of my career.

    Chad Franzen  12:39

    Do you have to take I didn’t you know, I never thought about I thought adoption I’ve always thought is kind of just a like a happy type thing. Is there a lot of I don’t know, for lack of a better word, drama associated with, with your adoption cases that you have.

    Amber James  12:53

    Noticed are like just like what you said. They’re happy cases where everybody is in agreement and it’s all going to go well. It can there can be drama when, you know, a birth mom makes a decision that she knows is best for her. And then her family gets involved and wants to change that decision or, or cause those kinds of issues. But that that particular case is probably the most drama filled and difficult one we’ve had. But you can see cases to where and they’re sad. It’s like when a birth mom has passed away. You know, has raised a child and you say, mom and dad were not married or they were divorced from one another. And so now stepmom is going to adopt because mom has passed away. And now mom’s family is still very upset. So those can be difficult to and trying to help the mom’s family, you know, integrate still in, in in a way that helps maintain that family connection but also honoring the new family that’s being created in the adoption process. So it can it can have its ups and downs. You know, there’s more happy moments in adoption than sad ones, but there can be drama in that, too, sometimes.

    Chad Franzen  14:03

    Has your background in music education influenced your career at all? Has it helped you in some way?

     

    Amber James  14:11

    I think when it comes to going into a courtroom and kind of the same mindset that I would get into when I would perform, you know, a clarinet solo or a vocal solo in the the kind of the things that you do to prepare yourself to go on stage and to perform, I think helped me in getting ready to go to trial, because it’s the same thing. You’re making sure that you’ve practiced your part, that you feel that you’re dressed in a way that empowers you, that you look in a way that you know, makes you feel good about yourself, and that you have put the pieces together of a performance to make it a cohesive thing that you can give to the audience. because in family law, I have an audience of one. I have a judge that I have to try my case to. And so thinking through all the performance things that you would do to get ready to go on stage to perform for a larger audience, I do those same things to prepare myself to go in front of one judge, you know, to you got to get your mindset right. You’ve got to feel good about yourself, and you’ve got to have all of the pieces and parts put together in a way that you can present it in a way that will appeal to the feelings or emotions of the judge you’re trying the case for.

    Chad Franzen  15:19

    I know family law can be a very demanding field. How do you kind of not get caught up in the emotions, maybe of a case that can be where everybody, all sides are being very emotional. And how do you kind of maintain a work life balance?

    Amber James  15:36

    Oh, those are great questions. So I have worked a lot on my own personal mindset and overcoming, you know, different things that I feel that lawyers sometimes it’s it doesn’t matter what field you’re in, a law can develop this complex of a savior complex. I’m here to save my client. I’m here to save them from this situation or that situation, and really working on yourself and realizing that that’s something that may appeal to your root system of needing to to save other people and realizing that you’re no one’s savior. You can help guide them and direct them, and you can provide legal advice, but you can’t fix their entire situation for them. But I do a lot of that. I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of mindset work on myself. And then I also am very clear about when I work and when I don’t. I’ve had my children are now I have one that’s leaving for seminary in a few weeks. And then I have a daughter who’s in college, and it’s always been important to me to be there for their important events. So they knew that mom worked a lot, you know, and that sometimes I would have to work late. But if there was an event that was important to them, I was going to be there for that. And, you know, now as I’m older and I, you know, my kids are not in dance and band and I’m not having to run to all those activities. It’s finding outlets for things that I enjoyed that I didn’t get to do, you know, when they were younger. So I’m back singing. I’m in a group. I have developed friendships with other women now, and we go and do things together. And then my husband and I have date night more often than we used to. He works in my firm, so that’s kind of weird. We we have date night where we don’t talk about work, you know, and then we’re at work. We can talk about work, but, you know, we it’s redeveloping friendships and relationships when you get to that empty nest kind of stage. But it’s I’ve always tried to make sure that my kids knew they came first, that my children and my husband came before all other things in the firm, and if it was something important to them, I would be there. But it is difficult to create work life balance. I think it’s kind of more like work life integration. I mean, we do that with our lawyers here. Like, you know, we have one lawyer whose daughter attends school and has to be picked up and dropped off because she goes to a private school and there’s no buses. So their work life integration, She drops her child off at school. She comes to work. We all know there’s a hard boundary. At 2:00, she leaves and goes and picks up her daughter. And then she goes home and she works from home that afternoon. You know, in this day and age, you can do that. So it’s a little easier, I think, to create a work life integration at this phase versus maybe work life balance. You’re never going to have 12 hours a day at work and 12 at home necessarily, but finding a way to integrate work and life is important.

    Chad Franzen  18:12

    What qualities do you think a good family law attorney has or would need to have?

    Amber James  18:17

    Sure. They need to have empathy. I think all lawyers need to have empathy. You need to have the ability to. I find it helpful to have a background in theater or music or art or something, where you’ve had to kind of create a piece of something and present it to someone. Because you are really putting together a story. If you’re a good writer, I think you could be a good family law attorney because you’re creating a story from your witnesses and from what your client’s testimony is going to be, and you’re trying to make that into something that a judge will listen to. You know, you have characters in a play. You have characters that are going to try, you know, perform before the court. And you’re trying to teach them how to present. I’m having good information about how to interpret body language in a way that I think that’s helpful for family law attorneys, because you want your client to have a certain either openness or closed off, depending on the circumstances. So having some background in theater and body language and, you know, as well as law and empathy and psychology, all those things could be really helpful to a family law attorney, because if you can maybe not get to the point where you could diagnose the client. But if you can notice two kind of quirks and things to kind of understand how your client thinks and feels from a psychology perspective, that can also be really helpful.

    Chad Franzen  19:36

    What role does mediation in your practice?

    Amber James  19:38

    Sure. I don’t mediate as a mediator myself in a lot of circumstances. I’m starting to kind of wade into those waters a little bit and try it. But mediation, like the mediation process, is a huge part of our practice. I think about 80% of our cases do go to mediation. And when you’re thinking about a divorce perspective, and those cases generally settle in mediation, unless there’s some really strange circumstance that just needs to be tried because our mediators here are so good. They’ve all tried cases in front of all these judges. And really know kind of their quirks and their ins and outs and can say, you know, if you present this to the court in this way. I don’t know that you’re going to get the result you’re looking for and that can help a client. You know, as lawyers, that helps us to to have that outside voice to say, hey, you know, I know you feel like the case is going this way, but this is my concern. If you try it, let’s try to come up with a creative solution, because a mediator sees both sides. And the way we normally do mediation here is you caucus, you know, so you have husband and husband’s lawyer here and wife and wife’s lawyer over here. And the mediators going between. So the mediator knows both sides. They don’t ever disclose both sides but they, you know, are like well you know I don’t know that that that’s going to, you know, go the way you think it’s going to go. Maybe try this solution instead. And so they’re really great creative problem solvers. Our mediators here in our area are so a lot of those cases settle. It’s harder when you get into, say, a modification of a custody case where one party’s been awarded custody and now they want to change. Those can be harder to mediate.

    Chad Franzen  21:16

    What do you have to prioritize when you handle cases involving domestic violence?

    Amber James  21:22

    I have to prioritize my client’s safety. Our staff safety. You know, we I put in safety protocols here. Unfortunately, everybody has had active shooter training in our office. We were all David and I or one of the other lawyers in my firm are both certified in domestic violence mediation. So we use a lot of the things we learned there to learn how to create a safe environment within our firm. And one of the great things about the building we’re in is you could park in our parking lot, and nobody really knows that you’re at a family law firm like it could. You could be here for the bank or. I mean, there’s a telehealth, not a telehealth, where we’re trying to say, like one of those nurse practitioner medical practices upstairs. So you could be here for a variety of different reasons. You wouldn’t necessarily only be here to see a family law attorney. So that does help create that different level of environment. You know, we’ve we’ve created scan cards and, and things like that to secure the, the work environment for ourselves. And if we have a client who’s the victim of domestic violence, we always bring them kind of to the interior of the office. So we have like exterior rooms that are conference rooms, and we have interior rooms that are behind a locked door, and then we’ll bring them back, you know, through that. And then we do a lot of, you know, domestic violence training so that we can screen properly and learn the most recent criminal laws and how we can use those to protect our clients if need be, you know, making sure they are seeing the magistrate to file the right kind of warrants and things of that nature. But with the domestic violence victim, you really have to go even deeper into the helping them kind of goal set and coaching them on how to have that next step in their life where they are no longer dependent on the person who’s been their abuser, or falling into another relationship. Just like that relationship, you have to really work on their internal feelings and mindsets and emotions and help them find that feeling of worth again, so that they don’t fall into that pattern of just entering into the next relationship. That’s just like the last one.

    Chad Franzen  23:22

    When you first launched New Beginnings, what were the early days like? How did you go about getting clients and things like that?

    Amber James  23:29

    So when I was, I call it being a baby lawyer. And when I first hung my shingle, it was me and a laptop and a cell phone in an office where the guy ran an insurance agency and he happened to have extra space. And so when I wanted to go get clients, the first thing I did is I went and got on the appointed list because I just knew that that was a way to get, you know, clients in the door. And it wasn’t money that would pay me right now. It would pay me whenever the case was over. But I would also get valuable courtroom experience. So I represented parents in cases where Dr. was taking their children, and I represented the children in those kinds of cases as a guardian ad litem. And then I was also a very early adopter of technology. So I was one of the first law firms in our area to have a website. And I felt like that was going to be the new wave of the future. You know, it’s the new back of the phone book kind of thing. And at the time, though, most of the lawyers in my area didn’t think that, they thought, no, it’s the yellow page ads and it’s, you know, billboards and it’s those kinds of things. And I’m like, no, I think this digital like, billboard like website thing is going to be a hit. So we had a very simplistic website, but we spent money to do that, you know, to have this website and because we were the only ones out there at the time. That was a way to to bring in clients. 

    Chad Franzen  24:45

    So you’ve grown. You’ve grown the firm from zero to to seven figures, I think. What is it about the culture there that makes it so special? And how do you get clients now.

    Amber James  24:58

    Well, we’ll start with the get clients now. The get clients now. I mean, you have to adapt to whatever the newest technology is from that perspective. But we’re also active and out in our community. You know, I when I was a baby lawyer, I got into rotary at some point and that helped. I’m also now part of the Women’s Economic Development Council and the Women’s Business Center, and we’ve been very active in our chamber, which gives us exposure to other business owners, because those are really people we like to help, too. Women who own businesses, who are now going through a divorce. And we’ve got to figure out how do we protect her business from being, you know, chopped up in the divorce. And so we get clients in that way. We probably do more, get more referrals now than we ever have. But we still have an active, you know, online presence. And between websites and directory listings and things like that, what’s unique about our culture is it very much is team oriented. A lot of people say that like, oh, we’re a team oriented firm, but we really are. We hate each lawyer in the firm knows everything about everybody else’s cases. To the point that if any one of us needed to pick up a file and go, we could. We make an effort to greet a client. If there’s a client in the hallway and they’re not ours, we still introduce ourselves. And then as a firm, we, you know, we really work on our our culture. And on the mindset of our attorneys and understanding that we are a team. We’re not five lawyers, you know, in five separate siloed law firms. We are one law firm. We speak with one voice. There’s one font. There’s one format that we, you know, we all use. And we do a lot of team building activities to, you know, when we have a problem, we solve that in a creative, you know, way using, you know, normal business, you know, techniques versus, you know, because a law firm and a business are the same thing. Lawyers like to think of it as maybe not. But using the same things you would use in any other business. You know, we have a business coach. A few weeks ago he came in and did a problem solving game with us. So bringing in some outside perspective sometimes can be helpful. But we are a very close knit group here in our firm, and it’s a really I think it’s a great place to work. And we’ve been, you know, named some of the best places to work. And so that’s been, you know, a blessing too.

    Chad Franzen  27:10

    Sounds great. How can people find out more about New Beginnings Family Law?

    Amber James  27:14

    Sure. Probably the easiest thing is to look at our website. It’s newbeginningsfamilylaw.com. You can find us on different. You know, we appeared as guests on different podcasts. And so we have some of those links there as well. Or they can always just give us a call at the office. And it’s (256) 518-9529.

    Chad Franzen  27:31

    Okay. Sounds good. One more question for you. If a young lawyer or maybe a recent law school graduate or someone entering law school even came to you and said, I really want to get into family law. This seems like a way I can help people. What is some advice you would give them that maybe they didn’t learn in law school, or couldn’t learn in law school, and could only have learned by, you know, walking in your shoes?

    Amber James  27:52

    Sure. I think, you know, I would encourage them to observe a family law court case to see how it goes. You know, our dockets here are published publicly on the 23rd Judicial Circuits website. So you can see which judges have domestic relations cases. I would also encourage them to find a lawyer that they would be willing to to talk to and be open with and can have a good relationship with. To, to bounce ideas off of. To be that sounding board when they need it. I’m blessed that. I mean, one of my very best friends is a family law attorney, and we don’t talk about people or cases necessarily, but it’s just like I’m struggling today because like, this is going on and and I’m having a difficult day. So having someone to to be that confidant for you that can understand what you’re going through. I also encourage them to read voraciously, anything they can find about divorce or family law, or just psychology in general. Emotional intelligence. Any books on emotional intelligence would be helpful for them to understand. You know, being emotionally intelligent in yourself and then recognizing when clients are trying to manipulate them or things of that nature as well. So I think it’s it’s reading, it’s finding good confidants and it’s going and just observing what actually happens in a family law court case so that they can be more comfortable that they know exactly how to present a case.

    Chad Franzen  29:14

    Okay. Great advice. Hey, Amber, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been great to talk to you. Thanks for all your insights and for sharing your time with us. Really appreciate it.

    Amber James  29:22

    No problem. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much.

    Chad Franzen  29:25

    So long everybody.

    Outro  29:26

    Thanks for listening to 15 Minutes. Be sure to subscribe and we’ll see you next time.

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