With all the cataclysmic forces in the world today, I have been trying to see the smaller things that I can be grateful for. And in November, which is often a month when we stop to focus on gratitude, I want to enumerate all the things I am grateful for, in work and in life.
First and foremost, I am grateful for good health. Professionally, I’m grateful that I have as much work as I have even if it sometimes feels like too much.
I’m grateful that I’ve been able to forge my own path, professionally, and for the people that I’ve surrounded myself with in my professional life.
So many wonderful people have given me a knowledge base and the courage to be a strong entrepreneur, a powerful female leader. They’ve helped me see things differently, to build this law firm so that we can help wonderful clients.
When I talk to people about my family law practice versus how other firms work, I see that mine is so different. So many things about my practice are different.
a colleague dinner in 2014
Without my marketing consultant Lynne Golodner, without my business coach George Haralampopoulos, and without good friends within my colleague community, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
In 2013, when I first launched Transitions Legal, Lynne and I were just beginning to work together. She said, “We have to brand you,” and while I didn’t know what she was talking about, I trusted her expertise and instincts.
Fast forward 11 years, and there is no other family law attorney in town who has branded themselves.
I’ve created something meaningful, original, inspiring. I don’t always see the accomplishment that this is, but I am grateful for creating an authentic legal experience and a firm that is driven by values.
And I’m grateful to have the humility to turn to others who know more than I do and who can help build my firm into something very special.
I am grateful for my team, who has supported me and partnered with me and believed in the Transitions Legal vision.
Of course, I’m grateful for my family. We are strong and connected, even while being scattered across the country.
I am grateful for my daughters and the opportunity to be their mother.
I am grateful that I had the opportunity to go to Israel this year. It was a life-changing trip that brought me so much closer to understanding the land and the people, and reinforced my identity and my heritage.
I met amazing women, learned the power of prayer with incredible educators, and strengthened my passion for Judaism, which has always been a strong and important part of who I am.
Most of all, I am grateful for the freedoms I enjoy as an American. This election season has been fraught with anxiety and angst, and while I try not to let it overtake my emotions, it’s not easy. I choose to believe that most Americans are good at the core and what is important is that we listen to each other and find those things we share in common from which to grow and build trust.
As we had toward Thanksgiving, our national holiday of gratitude, I’d love to hear what you’re grateful for! Message me here.
Alisa Peskin-Shepherd, at the beginning of Transitions Legal
Sometimes, despite nearly a dozen years of leading Transitions Legal, I like to look back on my legal career and reflect on how I gathered the confidence and the courage to go out on my own.
It was a gradual process, where I went from being an associate attorney in mid-sized law firms to joining two seasoned practitioners as their third partner, before starting my own firm. In that partnership, I had the support of knowing I was part of a team, but we brought in and worked on our own cases, so it was a good step toward becoming my own rainmaker.
Nobody was paying me, then; my income came from the cases I attracted and resolved. I was also responsible for expenses, albeit sharing those expenses with two seasoned practitioners who had been doing it for a while. I didn’t question things, I trusted them.
And then, when I felt ready to grow and take the next step in my professional career, the partnership dissolved over a difference in values, and that gave me the push to go out on my own 100%.
Lynne and I kayaking on the Huron River – friends and colleagues!
But I wondered how to get my name out there and even struggled with it for a while, until I found my marketing consultant and now good friend, Lynne Golodner. We met through a mutual friend. I hadn’t even come up with a name for my new law firm. Lynne helped me settle on branding, identity, marketing messages, everything—from website to social media to public relations to strategy. We still work together to this day, and now I’m known for my thoughtful, unique branding and marketing, and other attorneys are copying what I’ve been doing since 2013.
But it wasn’t just confidence that came out of that relationship. It was the wisdom that a professional needs the support of other professionals to really make their mark. Yes, I am an accomplished attorney. I am the expert on Family Law.
But any entrepreneur needs a team to run their business. What I learned from Lynne was to trust myself to spend the money and that by hiring the right support professionals, it would generate income, build my credibility, build my business.
That’s been the biggest lesson of all: to know what I do well and farm out what may not be my strong suit (like bookkeeping).
Creating a team of experts has given me the confidence to grow. Finding the right people for every role. Because I don’t have time to do everything, so I have to trust other people to get the job done right.
Over the ten years that I’ve been a female entrepreneur, I haven’t purposely pursued women employees – it’s something that just happened.
Talented women, passionate about the law, just happen to apply for job openings as Transitions Legal has grown and expanded. As a result, I now have a team of incredible women serving our clients from an Insight-based Approach to family law.
First, I want to mention my Marketing Guru and long-time friend, Lynne Golodner, who has been with me since the start. I found Lynne through word-of-mouth, and hired her to help brand and form my law firm. For a decade, Lynne has directed and managed all things marketing for Transitions Legal – including our website, social media, blogs, e-blasts, events, and more!!
I’m so grateful to have Lynne’s values-focused approach to Marketing. She listens to my priorities, just as I listen to my clients. We share a desire to create original and unique campaigns that support our clients’ goals.
Kacie Pohlman, Associate Attorney
My Associate Attorney, Kacie Pohlman, joined the team last year, bringing an energy for family law and a desire to help people through tough times in their lives with legal finesse. In college, Kacie studied romantic relationships and group therapy, and relies on this knowledge to understand how people react to and manage conflict during divorce.
Zoe Fields, Office Manager
Zoe Fields has been a crucial part of the Transitions Legal team for several years now, and I’m sad to see her winding down her days with us as she prepares to finish law school and sit for the state bar! Of course, I’m super excited for Zoe’s next steps, too.
Sophia Bagnall, Legal Assistant
Thankfully, Sophia Bagnall joined our team earlier this year to step into Zoe’s shoes, and she’s off to a great start! Sophia keeps us all accountable, organized and efficient as the firm’s Legal Assistant.
With more than three decades of legal professional experience, I still couldn’t do all that I do without such a talented and dedicated team. It takes a village!
My brilliant marketing guru Lynne Golodner pitched the idea to coincide with Valentine’s Day because media outlets are always looking for new ways to tell old stories. Forget flowers and chocolates – let’s invite a divorce attorney on the air to discuss how to show love to your ex.
Here is the very first “Loving Divorce” TV interview that I did, in 2013!
The idea was crazy enough to work, and we repeated it several times over the past decade, with great success. It’s not as crazy an idea as you might think. While at first blush, it seems like love is the last thing you might have for someone who broke your heart or whom you left, but hear me out.
Love can be preferential attachment – I choose you! – like we see in movies and romance novels. Or it can be something deeper, different and lasting. Love as universal identification – I see the humanness in you, and hope you see it in me.
When you’ve lived life with someone, whether for two years or twenty, there was good. You can’t deny it. Something drew you together, something kept you going, there were happy times and passionate moments and true partnership, even if it was brief.
Photo by Courtney Clayton on Unsplash
When we break up, though, we forget all the good and linger in the bad. We belabor the bad, frankly. We change the narrative so that the bad is the ONLY narrative of this love story, forever more.
That’s not fair to your history, and it’s certainly not fair to your partner. Yes, blocking out happy memories makes it easier to leave and easier to move on. But we must allow ourselves to embrace the whole story of our relationships in order to make peace with them and to learn how to do it better the next time around.
And, if you have children together, learning this way of loving your ex – your co-parent – is super important!! It’s not healthy for the children, nor for either of you, to stay mad at each other for years on end. To be bitter and resentful, to lash out every time you face a decision, an issue or an event where you both have to show up to shepherd your children through.
Accepting a different definition of LOVE for your ex-spouse, for the other parent of your children, for the person whose blood also runs through your children’s veins, well, it’s an act of generosity. Humility. Courage. And one that I encourage all my clients to consider.
Just as it’s a choice to remain married and devoted to a partner, it is a choice to look at an ex with fondness, with respect, or with disdain. You get to choose. Every single day. Just make the right choice.
In 2015, Alisa Peskin-Shepherd in the TV studio at the CBS/CW50 station in Detroit with Marketing Consultant Lynne Golodner and on-air host Ameer Makupson
Recently, I was reviewing some of the values and principles I shared when I sat down with Lynne Golodner of Your People LLC in 2013 to brand my new law firm. I said things like…
I have a very personal approach in law.
I do a lot of listening to get a feeling for the person and their issues.
The word compassion keeps coming to mind.
Mediation and collaboration have always been my thing.
It’s more than just a way to practice. It’s a way to work things out, outside of court, not be acrimonious.
a referral partner dinner in 2014
I did a happy dance when I read over these notes because it shows how consistent I’ve been in my legal career from the very beginning until today and beyond!!
For 10 years, these are the values which have driven the growth and expansion of Transitions Legal. The values on which the firm was built and continues to thrive and grow.
When I named my law firm, I knew I was choosing a non-traditional moniker, but I was fine with it because it expresses exactly what we do. We help clients through the legal aspects of important life transitions.
That word transitions has been important to me because it espouses my view on divorce: neither good nor bad, just a transition from one phase of life to the next. I don’t judge my clients. I help them emerge strong and with a clear focus on what can lie ahead.
I am thrilled to be celebrating ten years in business. We have grown again and again in the past decade, moved offices to fill more space, welcomed new team members, expanded our affiliations and certifications, and I am excited about what comes next.
Thank you to all of our clients for taking a risk on a non-traditional firm. They knew from the start that we heard them, we saw them, we understood what they needed, and we were dedicated to supporting their transitions fully and completely.
I am grateful for my daughters and the opportunity to be their mother.
