How One Family Lawyer Reinvented Divorce

serving anybody? And when we got down to we found two things that were fundamentally

misaligned with everybody in Falil. The first one is the big one.

Christopher T. Anderson is a family law attorney entrepreneur and the founder of newly family. He helps individuals and families navigate life's most difficult transitions with clarity, confidence and compassion, empowering them to make informed decisions that lead to healthier outcomes and lasting growth. Our brand, what we've created is a law firm that serves people. We help individuals to make the best decisions that they can for themselves. We help them to achieve

“the goals that they set for themselves. Here's the thing. In family law, people are generally”

running away from something or they're walking around the old, but the similarity between both those things is a very past focus. And very rarely are they thinking about the future.

So we will not start any engagement without first going through what we call the Polaris

Process. Where we. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Open. Check out the list of the latest info on the planet. You can live your dream. Hi, welcome back to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcasts. I'm your host today, Jay Sangen and thank you so much for joining us. We have a special guest that came in all the way from Colorado for our America's top lawyers show. And yeah, tell us your name, tell us a

little bit about yourself. What's going on? Yeah, you bet Christopher Anderson. I am the founder and CEO of the New Leaf family of law firms, including New Leaf family law, a New Leaf legacy and a New Leaf bankruptcy, as well as New Leaf defense. And as you mentioned, I'm here from our headquarters in Golden Colorado, but we serve the entire state and just now starting to branch out into other states as well. Okay, nice. So you are a family lawyer that's

kind of spread out in all kinds of stuff, right? Well, I mean, so very specifically, like our brand, what we've created is a law firm that serves people playing out. We started in 2021 with New the Family Law and that is by far our biggest law firm and really the the hinge of our success.

Like we're we've always planned to reach out to others. Other consumers that need legal services,

but family laws, what we do and what we've really studied hard on to do is the best. So family laws are best. What are you guys covering inside family law? I know you're serving people, but aren't most one of a lot of law firms will serve companies and corporations, right? But a lot of injury law will serve people and then you got, you know, divorce lawyers, family lawyers and family offices, right? So what are you covering with? Yeah, first of all,

never say never, but right now we don't have any plans to do personal injury. But so let's

“let's talk about the family law space. Yeah, I think that's the most important. It's the one”

that we started very intentionally in Colorado to accomplish a very important purpose. So you know, you asked the question, what does it do? Well, we help people, we help individuals to make the best decisions that they can for themselves and their family when they are facing some sort of transition in their family circumstances, whether it's a divorce, a change in parenting time or custody, a change in parenting responsibilities or something else.

But you know, when they're facing a transition in their family, we help them to achieve the goals that they set for themselves. Sure. Yeah. And so they're not kind of doing preventative measures and seeking you out before that transition, you know? Actually, they do. They do. And we do have a service. Almost people seek you out when the issues come up. They do. I mean, let me tell you a

“little history because I think it's kind of interesting. So when we actually launched the firm,”

because we sat during the pandemic, my partner and I, we sat and we said, family law is broken. It's not serving clients well. It's not serving the lawyers well. It's serving nobody. Well, they're getting the job done, but nobody's happy about it. It seems like a weird thing to say, it's divorce. Of course, nobody's happy about it. But what I mean is like it's actually

accomplishing something. And it's not helping the clients because nobody's asking the clients the

“questions that they need to be asking them. And so when we founded it, we actually said, you know,”

let's start with that. Let's not even do the law part. Yeah. Let's help people make decisions. And so we launched this whole. That's the root of it all. That's the root of being the lawyer. It's like, I got into this profession to help people. Right. And so let me, it's even in our title, right, where our actual title as professionals is attorney and counselor at law. And we've just forgotten the counselor part. Yeah. I mean, you hear on TV, sometimes we were like, hey, counselor.

But, you know, other than that, nobody pays any attention. Well, usually it's the blood sucking lawyer and not the health friendly lawyer or that. Right. So, but here's the interesting thing. So that we go in, we launched in 2020. We said, we're just going to help people. We created workshops

for decision making, help people make decisions. And we, you know, we always do root cause analysis.

“Like, why did that not go well? And the answer was that people didn't understand it.”

It's like, it's like walking into a room looking for your keys, except they're in a place where you never put them. Like, there's a, and I'm going to blame on the name of this, but there's an actual psychological phenomenon that you won't see them. Yeah. Like, if your keys are in the flower pot, you won't see them. Okay. Because you never put them in the flower pot. Oh, yeah. Right. So you're looking on the shelf. You're looking on the, on the counter. And you walk by the flower pot six times.

And you don't see them. And then, you know, your mom walks in and goes like, they're right. They're in the flower pot. Yeah. And, and, and the same thing happened. Like, people were so not used to lawyer saying, hey, let us help you make decisions. So we said, okay, let's put that on pause. And let's launch what you just said when people need to get a divorce, when people need to change in custody. But let's do that differently. And the way that we did it differently was,

you know, during the pandemic, when we were building the idea of the firm, we, you know, we, like I told you earlier, like, we understood that family law was fundamentally broken, not serving anybody. But we had that ask why? Why is it not serving anybody? And we drilled down or drilled down. There's a, there's a methodology in a, in a great book called The Toyota Way, um, where you ask

five wise. And so we make sure we always ask five wise. And when we got down to we found two things

that were fundamentally misaligned with everybody in Phanelil. The first one is the big one, the bill of the hour. Yeah. Billing people by the hour creates, uh, creates all the mystery. All of it. Um, it's like, should I ask that question? It's going to cost me. So I'll just kind of like reserve myself and, but meanwhile, you got the lawyers sitting in their chair. And like, listen, I want to be really clear with everybody. Lawyers, family lawyers. I know a lot of family

lawyers there. My friends, they are my colleagues. They're good people, right? They're not, like you said, you know, there's some bad reps. No, no, no, no. But they're good people. Finding a good lawyer, once you, once you go the route of looking for a lawyer. And when you have the one that you like, it's so important to have a good relationship with them, you know, and honestly, they become, they become like your friend because they're helping you out with

problems, right? And it's like, oh, man, you want to say, I love my lawyer. Because he's, he's the got my way back. Yeah. He's, he's got my back. He's helping me with these questions that I have, right? Yeah. So what's going on is, however, because they're, like I said, they're good people.

“Yeah. And that's what the clients want. They want them to be their friend.”

But here's this thing called the bill of love. Yeah. It's difficult. And law firms are also businesses.

And lawyers are people. And when you create for any human being a powerful incentive that incentivizes

a certain kind of behavior and punishes another kind of behavior, people tend to gravitate towards the rewarded behavior. And in this case, the rewarded behavior is create more work, create more drama, create more conflict, create more billable hour. And there are firms. You know, there's some of the bigger firms out there who actually teach this to their associates. They, we've interviewed some of them to join us. And they actually teach them when you get a file, I want you in that

file finding every single thing that you can do. Now, they're not saying to hurt the client, but every single thing you can do doesn't sound like it is all listening to the needs of the client. It's listening to the needs of the law. It's listening to, all right, what are the things we can do to leave no stone unturned? It sounds like a good thing, except the client's been left out of

the client wanting the relationship and to be heard and to be guided. And that's a mismatch. Right. That's complete mismatch. And you know, which we said, well, how can we fix that? How can we bring the client more into the conversation? Did I do that? We were going to try to fix it on the

edges and we finally decided, you know what? We can't got to get rid of it. We've got to rip it out

by the roots. No billable hour. Like the one way to change behavior is to remove the incentive for that behavior. So we removed it. And we said, we're not going to do that anymore. That also

“helps the client in a way that we were not initially expecting, but that there's really important”

which is it makes the fees predictable. Right. So we charge a subscription fee. And so the client knows from the day they hire the firm, how much is it going to be? Yeah. And if they missed the opportunity to ask you questions to get informed, then it's not them. And now, yeah, yeah, they're got now we're aligned. Right. You're paying for your lawyer for the month to do whatever needs

done. Yeah. And to not do what doesn't need done. And to listen. And that's the second thing. Right.

So we said there were two root causes. Billable hour was one. I like how you worked in the second one. I haven't really thought of it that way from the way that you just did. But the second one was exactly that, listening to the client. But deeper. Because if you just listen to the client,

“we won't accomplish what we're trying to do. Because here's the thing in family law. People are”

generally running away from something. They have been abusive relationship. Something is not working in their relationship. Or, and this is the one that people can really identify with that one. But people miss this one. The people who have been abusive in their relationship. The people who have been wrong. The people who cheated. They're walking around with guilt. They're walking around with remorse. And but the similarity between both those things is they're very past focused. Or the

fight's been going on so long now that they're very present focused. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, win, win, win, win, zero, some game. And very rarely are they thinking about the future. So we will not start any engagement without first going through what we call the Polaris process, where we insist on understanding from our client what they want their life to look like two years from now. A year after all of this is done and you feel we've been successful. What's your

life? Where do you live? What school do your kids go to? Who are they living with? What's your relationship like with your children? What's the children's relationship like with your ex-spouse? What's your relationship like with your ex-spouse? What's your relationship like with their parents? What's your ex-spouse is really like with your parents? What about what does justice feel to you so that you can kind of calm your anxiety and live? It's actually my belief that

justice is not what we're looking for. Yeah, that's not what people are actually looking for. They're looking for relief. Okay. They're looking to re-engage with their life. They're looking for a future and they haven't been and so just this is a very, again,

“present-focused word and rather than a future-focused word like this is what my life is going to be”

and we'd like to get our clients there because then that provides that's why we call the Polaris process. Right, it creates a North Star for every decision from that moment forward. So if clients says, "I'm so mad, I want you to file this thing or I want to do this thing." I say, "Wait, wait, wait, we can do that." But remember your future? Yeah. Does that remember the future where you, you co-parent effectively? Does that move you closer to that future?

If yes, we'll do it. If no, then one of two things needs to happen right now. Either let's take a different path or let's sit down again and say why you're a future that you envision you want to change. Which is okay, right? You don't, we're not locking it down as stone. But we want to make sure

that we're always moving towards that future. So that was the second thing. The Polaris process

moving people towards a future that they want and that, that resonated. Right. And so now we've been able to circle back and start to educate people ahead of time on which we do through variety of nonprofits and other ways that we just basically give that information, give that education, so that people feel empowered to make the decision when the time is right. So you're like the

them out, gives them the kind of, you know, the outside perspective on where, you know, it's like you're missing Christmas. You're missing life. You know, let me take you outside. Let me look at

“your life. What's it look like in the future, you know? Right. But what, who was the most powerful ghost?”

I don't know. Who was that? I'm a close to Christmas. You go to the Christmas future, yeah, right? Yeah, because past can't do anything about it. Yes, present maybe you can start to make some changes. But the future, you get to write. You get to change everything. Remember the ghost of Christ's future was a pretty bleak picture. Yeah. But it was clear it didn't have to be. Right. And that

was the powerful thing. Yeah. The hilarious ghost. Yeah, we'll call him a fire as ghost.

I'm going to maybe we won't do the grim reaper thing. But yeah, it's that ability to see that future and then build towards it that quite honestly, most people going through the voice or thinking about the voice, they're, they're just not where their head is. It's not where their head is at all or and getting your emotions. Yeah. You know, so you have to deal with emotions. And it's like, oh, man, we can't even focus on the case because we're, the emotions are so focused on this one

point or whatever, you know. So yeah, that's that's amazing that that you figure that out. Right. It's like, hey, take a step back. Think about your life. Get the, you know, think about you for a minute and don't think about the fight right now. Right. You know, that's one of our models. Oh, okay. We are all about the future. Yeah. And not the fight. Yeah. Okay. Um, and it

“because it's so important. And you said we figured it out. You know, the truth is that we guessed. Right.”

We hypothesized. We said, this is what we believe are the root causes and this is what we think will fix it. You know, as someone who started many businesses over the years, um, most of my guesses are wrong. And, uh, but it's really cool when one is right. And this one's got a really right. Well, it only takes one right. That's it. Right. Yeah. It only takes one time to get it right.

Yeah. Well, that's amazing. Um, so, uh, I always want to talk, do you know, uh, one of my favorite

guys to watch. She's a divorce lawyer on YouTube is a James Sexton. Have you ever heard of him? I don't know. You know, I need to look him up. Oh, my God. Yeah. Look him up. He's so interesting. It's just, uh, you know, talk, he's a New York divorce lawyer, right? Um, but I mean, you've got a podcast to, right, for a quite a long time and, and you help out other lawyers talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So it's called the unbillable hour. Um, we've been, um, I'm actually the second host.

“On the first host, I think hosted it from 2010 to 2012, something like that. And then I took over.”

Um, and then then I've kept it a little bit longer. Um, and, uh, you know, I remember joining Carson not the first guy. Um, uh, Jack Par though. That's his now I remember him. Um, but so yeah, we've been keeping that going for 12, 13 years. Um, and, uh, you know, so it's a, it's a, that's like OG podcast. Right? We are. I mean, we are one of the most original podcasts. And, um, we go every month. Um, and now we have a second episode and we're about to introduce the third episode. So, um,

so, and they're all different. So we have, uh, we have a regular episode, which, um, is all about helping the lawyers build the law firm business that works for them. So we, we, we, we talk about all sorts of things regarding law firm. We don't teach anything about how to practice law. But all about the business of law, how to run a law firm, how to do the marketing, how to do the sales, how to hire, how to fire, how to, um, understand your numbers and do the metrics. Um, and, uh,

and nuances of all those things. Yeah. Um, how to, how to, how to brand yourself like, uh, like, Saul Goodman. Yeah. It's all good, man. Um, absolutely. And, uh, and then, yeah, we've just introduced another episode where we're doing a panel where we talk about, like, current of topics, like, AI. Yeah. We can talk at these days. And, uh, now we're going to do a third one where we're going to be sponsored. I don't think I'm allowed to say by who yet. But by a major legal tech firm,

um, it's going to sponsor a third episode where we talk about, uh, technology specifically. Yeah. Um, so we're looking forward to that. Well, we have a few minutes. Let's let's quickly, uh, talk about AI here because, uh, you know, AI with knowledge-based businesses, right, is really giving them a huge hit. And especially for lawyers, it's almost like the associate job is gone, because people can just go to an AI and ask it all those questions, the initial questions, and get

you know, really good results, not not perfect yet, right? But at least they have a grounding an initial, like, they're in a better position to go to the lawyer, right? Uh, how are you finding it? These things- I mean, I think that's a great perspective. Being more ready to speak to the

lawyer and being efficient on time. Um, from our perspective, uh, it is the most amazing blessing.

a lot of law firms do is the administrative work, the exterior work. And the art is a small

part of what they do, which again makes them unhappy, because we'd like to do the art. But what we've seen in family a lot, the wood, you know what the biggest complaint, um, to state bars is against family lawyers, it's the obvious one. Um, I don't- I don't- I don't- I feel it. My lawyer doesn't call me. I lawyer doesn't respond to my calls. Yeah. I lawyer doesn't communicate with me. Okay. Um, that's number one. Um, and two and three are pretty close behind as similar

complaints. What we see AI is giving us the power to do is to finally give clients of law firms the level of service they've always wanted. And to do way more for our clients with the same

“pool of talent, with the same people, really upleveled the game. And that's what we're working on”

right now. So we see AI as this amazing tool, where the clients get the communication they've always

wanted. They get the insights. They get the three AM and like question answered, um, you know, and then follow up with from a human being, but they get, you know, if their question is, you know, have, has this been filed or did the court order this or did like, those are things that can be answered. So you don't need a lawyer or only go team to answer them. And they're getting that service and they're getting their documents done faster and better, the whole quality of everything

is improving. Nice. With the same team, with the same workers and we're able to provide a better

“experience. That's what it is. It's like you're bringing in, you know, the, the artificial intelligence,”

but that's allowing you to give more of a human touch to your, to your back. Exactly. And it's allowing the lawyers to focus more and more on the art because let me tell you. I mean, if anybody's been working with, uh, with chatGPT or with Claude or with any of these, um, it gets some interesting ideas sometimes. Yeah. Not right once. Um, like, listen, it's right a lot of the time, but it really can take left turns. Mm-hmm. And, um, we, we try to guard our clients from that part of it.

Yeah. Um, so we focus on the art of the, you know, because we're the ones that set out of the Polaris, we're the ones who've taken the time to, to understand and to help the client understand their goals. And then we use the AI to empower all that. And that, I mean, I think it's going, it's revolutionizing the way we deliver service. And I think it's a really wonderful event for clients. They're getting better service than they ever ever ever. Um, I was going to say, hope forward to it's the service

they always hoped for. Nice. Um, but then they ever got great. So, uh, real quick, where can people find

you? Gosh, um, they could always find us at newleeve.family on www.newleeve.family.family, um, we're on LinkedIn, we're on all the socials, we're on Instagram, we're on, um, uh, Facebook, um, Tik Tok, even YouTube. Um, so everywhere, but if you know, you want to check out our website at www.newleeve.family. Yeah, we got that dot family a set of dot com. But, uh, that's, that's where we're are. And the show is

“called The Unbillable Hour. Oh, yeah, that's how the legal talk network was, yeah, un- I've been”

billable hour. Okay, all right. Well, um, I'm looking forward to hopping in the studio with you in film in your episode, uh, a lot of interesting talks to go down. And, uh, thank you for joining us here. Been my pleasure. All right. Great to be here. Enjoy Miami Beach for, uh, however long you stay here. You bet. But thank you for joining us. And, uh, yeah, it's been great to have all these great lawyers here. Uh, honestly, when you find a good one, they become your homey and helping you out with

all the kinds of stuff that you're having issues with. But, uh, it seems like you're one of the good guys, which is great. We try. So, uh, all right. Thank you guys. And thank you, Christopher. Thank you, cheers.