Getting Up and Running With the Help of a Coach and Today’s Tech

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

So if I was starting today as a New Solo entrepreneurial aspect, Change the way they’re practicing Leader. It means to be, make it easy to work, New approach, new tools, new mindset, New Solo, and it’s leap. Making that leap. Making that leap.

Adriana Linares:

Are you as excited to meet Alyssa Daigneault, as I am? Last month we interviewed Kellum Parks, who’s an attorney that came on the podcast about a year or two years earlier, talking about how he was looking to start a coaching practice for attorneys. I had him come back on because he let me know that after being on my show and my challenging him to take on another listener free of charge as one of his first coaching clients, Alyssa Daniel reached out to him and I’m excited to have her on the show today to talk to us about her experience in starting her law practice as a second career, getting some professional coaching from Kellum Parks and learn about what she decided to use with her technology stack and how she went about just launching this solo practice a little bit later after going through a lot of things in life, which sound amazing and wonderful. Hi Alyssa. Hi Adriana. It’s so nice to meet you and I think it is so cool that you are the one that first reached out to Klum when I said to him, Hey, why don’t you do this, take on a listener and then we’ll talk about it. Apparently you reached out right away. Do you want to tell us about listening to that episode, hearing about that opportunity and what led you to just jump on it so fast?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. So throughout the course of 2024, I had been searching for podcasts to just learn about the legal practice and launching my new firm. I knew after taking theBar in 24 that I was going to have my own practice and I was hungry to just learn all the different ways in which I could support my practice. So I found the legal network and then through that I found your podcast and I loved it and I would listen to it oftentimes driving back and forth to see my children to different sporting events and things like that. And so I was just consuming your podcast on a regular basis and one day Kellum came on and he started talking about his coaching practice that he was launching and how he was looking for a candidate. And I thought, I’m a really greatly positioned candidate for this job because I’m just starting. I’m just coming out of law school. I’m a seasoned professional. My husband owns small businesses, so I’m familiar with that landscape, but I’m new to the legal landscape and I really just wanted some guidance. So I just sent him an email

Adriana Linares:

Straight away. I love it. And he said he had a lot of people reach out, but yours was the first one and as promised, and he started with you. So I’m going to ask you a little bit more about your experience with the coach and encouraging other attorneys to find coaches, whether they’re for their business side, the legal side, or just better lifestyle side in the second segment of our episode. But I really want to start with your background. Quite interesting. Just tell us about that.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. Tell us about your past. Yeah, sure. Of course. I grew up in the state of Maine in very humble beginnings and went to the University of New Hampshire. I studied chemistry and didn’t really know what I was going to do with that coming out of the university. I spent a little bit of time, a short period of time and early in my career in industrial sales, kind of a very different arena than what we’re in here, and then wanted to start a family and decided that that really wasn’t going to fit my lifestyle. So I got curious about teaching. I really loved working with high school kids and quickly just fell into teaching and loved it. It was such a wonderful time in my life. It was a privilege. I taught chemistry, I taught engineering a little bit of math and when I needed to other things, but more importantly, I had a real purpose behind my work and that really gave me a deep appreciation for loving what I did every day.

And it also gave me the ability to raise my children, which was a really big privilege. What happened really was in and around 2000, probably 16, I can remember talking to my husband about the kids are getting older and I think I might like to try something new. And at the time, they weren’t older yet, but I just knew that this transition that I’d made this world big transformation would take time. And so I started brainstorming about different things that I could do. I was really passionate about differentiated instruction and teaching engineering, and that was one avenue that I went down. And I was also excited about possibly going into real estate in different ways. And then I really landed on the law and for me it was kind of twofold. One, I was always able to study and do school, so I kind of felt like I had the competency there.

And two, I just really wanted something that gave me a lot of choices and that’s what I felt like the legal field did. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in this new chapter, but I knew that going to law school would open up so many different doors and avenues to things that I just really didn’t know about. And so around 2018, I started the journey I had to study for the LSAT that took a year. I had to apply to law school that took a year. And then in the fall of 2020, amidst all the chaos of COVID, I was actually remotely teaching. I had my children remotely learning and I was going to law school remotely and it was kind of a wild time, but I started law school during 20 20 20 and graduated law school in 2024 from New England law in Boston.

And it was a wonderful journey. I had amazing community in New England, my professors, my colleagues, and it was a really great fit and I focused on that. And then once I passed theBar in 2024, I really just had this vision of creating my lifestyle practice. I wanted to create a law firm, create a business really based in law, but a business where I could take the strengths and all the different things that I had learned over my 25 years plus of being a professional, a small business owner, a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a mom, all these things and kind of mesh them all together and then add the law and start a business. And I wanted to create something really great. And so that’s what I did.

Adriana Linares:

I love it. And your areas of focus are,

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I focus primarily on property rights and land use. That is a really big piece of what engages my soul. I really am passionate about property rights and land use and housing and helping working class families, access housing, and all these conversations really get me excited. So a big piece of what I do is land use and development primarily in the commercial area. So that’s an exciting part of my practice. And then I also do a little bit of education law because I can Oh, neat.

Announcer:

Yeah,

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

It’s really referral-based business mostly just because I can do it and I can sit in those rooms really easily and help children and families. So I do plaintiff side education, law work and help families navigate a wide range of education issues on a referral basis, like I said. And then I do a small amount of public defense work. So I’m also a public defender for the children and family trial panel in Suffolk County, and I help families defend against state intervention action. So I keep my hand in public service and I also give back to my educational community to children and families, and I just really love land use issues. So I’m a pretty much a mixed bag, but it really is because that’s who I am, that comes from my life experience.

Adriana Linares:

You are the classic overachiever that is so impressive and I am so glad that I am not because that sounds like a lot.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

It was a lot. I have to say a lot of things we do in life, we’re really naive when we first enter into parenthood, but going to law school was definitely, I’m glad I was naive because I joked with someone recently, I don’t know that I would ever do it again. It was one of those things that once you’re in it, you’re in it and you’re doing it. But it was a lot and it was a big commitment of my time. It was a big commitment of my family’s time, my husband’s time, my whole family system really had to contribute to my success. And my husband was so supportive throughout the entire process. And I think having that community around you is so important no matter what transition you’re in in your

Adriana Linares:

Life. I have said this before, and I’ll just say it again. A long time ago I asked my mom who was at 24, divorced with two toddlers, my grandmother, her mother living with her who never learned to speak English. And I was like, oh my God, mom, how did you do it? Because I was probably 40 and losing my mind without being married and without children. And she said to me the most profound words, which is basically what you just said, but in a different way. She just looked at me and she goes, I was too dumb to think I couldn’t, which is what you said by saying when you’re naive you just go full force. But I think sometimes that is what gives us the energy to go through these things. Tell us real quick, you mentioned that you get your educational law clients buy referrals. How do you get your commercial real estate and land use clients?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

So primarily I’m using networking groups right now. Excellent. And that has been really powerful for

Adriana Linares:

Me. Love it.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I am new to the legal community and that I recognized immediately as a weakness of mine. I am a professional. I have that strength, that part comes easily to me, but the part, being a part of a legal community and being known and building my brand and getting people to understand who I am, that’s a really important piece of building my practice. And I think no matter who you are as a solo practitioner, identifying whether or not, if you’re a seasoned legal professional and you’re starting out in a new business, you probably are pretty weak on the business of law because for however many years you’ve been a successful practicing lawyer, but you’ve been able to walk into the office every day with a key and just be able to do your job as a lawyer and you need support On the small business side, for me, I was a seasoned professional coming new into a legal community, so I needed to build up my brand and learn who the people are in the community that are there to support me and how to learn, how to learn from them, how to get support from them, and also how I can contribute as a small business owner and someone with really different skillset sets than a lot of my colleagues in the legal community.

And so that give and take of skill sets is something I’ve been really excited about and something that’s emerging for me in a meaningful way this year with my networking groups.

Adriana Linares:

I love it. That’s so smart. On this podcast, people come on all the time and say the same thing. How do you get your clients best way? Word of mouth networking, word of mouth networking. You can do all the marketing ad work that you want, but it’s always comes down to networking and people who trust and know you. Is that the saying? The last thing I want to ask you about in this segment is when we were in the green room, you mentioned that you were going to take the Florida bar in about two weeks. You had just taken the Utah bar.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I am being waved in, so you’d I’m being sworn in tomorrow.

Adriana Linares:

That’s amazing. Oh yeah. Being sworn in tomorrow. That’s amazing. Tell us why you decided again, I mean other than the fact that we’ve already established you’re an overachiever, why did you feel getting other law licenses was going to be helpful or you just why?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Well,

Adriana Linares:

I’m

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Building a lifestyle practice,

Adriana Linares:

So for me, yes. I was hoping you’d say that.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I love that. Okay. Tell

Adriana Linares:

Everybody about the lifestyle practice.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Well, I think I turned 50 last year and looking at my life moving forward into this next chapter, as my children are in college now and graduating from high school, I’ve got two still in high school, but they’re setting themselves up and they’re flying, right? They’re doing their thing, they’re creating their own life, and I wanted to create mine. And so my husband and I, we love to spend time doing certain things and so that’s how I’m setting up my practice. So we are big skiers. We love to ski. We fell in love with Salt Lake City about a decade ago, and we have property there. We love it there. And so I waved into the Utah bar. I don’t know what my practice is going to look like in Utah, but I know I love to spend time there. And so while I can, since my bar exam can be waved in a short window, I’m waving into Utah and really excited about how I can contribute to the community in Utah. My son, I have one son at the University of Tampa and another one at Florida Southern, which is in Lakeland.

Adriana Linares:

Oh, cool. Right?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Yeah, they’re right in the Tampa Bay area. And my husband and I, we love the Tampa Bay area for a multitude of reasons, and many of those reasons are centered on commercial real estate. The Tampa Bay region is an amazing place right now, exciting for real estate, and we love the market. We like the weather during the winter months, we love the market and we have the added bonus of our children there who may end up staying in the Tampa Bay region. So I decided that I would sit for the Florida bar while I still had all these bar facts jammed into my head. Head. You’re in bar mode. Sure, yeah. Bar mode. And so I am sitting for the Florida bar and looking forward to being a member of the Florida bar in 2026. So really that’s the intention. It’s how I want to live my life. It’s where I want to be and it’s the type of staff I want to attract as I grow my practice in all three regions. I want to attract people that understand that your profession is an extension of who you are. It doesn’t define who you are. You have family, you have friends, you have communities, you have activities and things that you do and your legal practice and your profession is an extension of that, and it should really be a full integration, and you should feel really excited about that.

Adriana Linares:

I love that, and I think that is all wonderful advice. Let’s take a quick break, listen to some messages from some sponsors, and when we come back I’m going to ask you why coaching is important. Alright, everyone, we are back with Alyssa. Did you find or feel like has coaching been something important to you your entire life? You are a lifelong learner. You seem to get into a lot of things. You can’t possibly just figure everything out on your own even historically. So for me, encouraging attorneys to get help that they need, whether it comes from coaching or their bar associations or a mentor or a technology consultant or a CPA to help them, I think a lot of times attorneys are reticent, if not just outwardly stubborn to ask for and get help. Can you tell us why you did that and why it’s important and what you’ve learned from being so open to accepting help or asking for it?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. I think at the core to be where I am today, I had to learn how to ask a lot of questions and how to get help from others. When you come from humble beginnings and you aspire to go to certain places in this world, you have to be resourceful. You need to look around and see who you can learn from and how you can contribute to certain communities and learn from that. That was something that has been a part of my life since I was in college. I started coaching high school teams when I was in college. I coached a high school team early on in my career. I ended up, of course, having to resign from that when I had children. But even throughout my educational career, I was oftentimes a mentor. I was a department head, I ran a science department and mentored teachers and wrote curriculum and really was always looking for input. So it’s not surprising to me that as I emerged into the legal community, I was searching for ways to get advice from hiring bookkeepers and accountants to thinking about how do I set up this practice? And when Klum mentioned it on the podcast, I thought, that’s amazing. I wasn’t at a position where I could pay to hire a coach. So I was really excited to be able to be engaging in his services as his first client and help him with that. And also I felt like I could help contribute with him

To my experience as an educator. That’s what I did for over 20 years is I thought holistically about backwards design and curriculum and all those things. It was really easy for me to be in those conversations with him and give him constructive feedback on what was working.

Adriana Linares:

I’m sure he absolutely appreciated that. And that is such an important way to look at approaching relationships like these, which is it’s not just what can I get out of this, but what can I give back that’s clearly just built into who you are. And I love that,

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And it was such an amazing experience. Coaching is I would encourage anybody who’s considering coaching to remember, coaching is not something that you look for and seek out because you’re deficient. Coaching is something that you look for and seek out because you’re curious about how you can improve and you’re just constantly wanting to whatever it is that you’re doing to get better at it. And being a lifelong learner is something that I’ve always been, and it’s brought me to where I am today. And lifelong learners are always looking for ways to learn and coaches do that. And I think a lot of what you get out of a coaching session for me, first and foremost, just like the reason that we join a gym, it carves out the space. It says to you, okay, I’m going to meet with my coach and it’s going to be on these days and it’s going to be at this time.

And so you’re carving out space to do something very intentional that needs to be done that sure, theoretically on your own, could you do it? A lot of the things you probably could, but the next question is, will you? And I think that that’s the hardest part. It’s the same thing about gym memberships. Could you just go outside and figure out how to get exercise? Of course you could, but having a membership and going to a class every day holds you accountable to that. And so I think that was a really important part. Secondly, it gives you a framework and it holds you accountable to that framework. Okay, we’re going to talk about setting goals. We’re going to read this book traction, and then we’re going to talk about rocks. And you’re going to have to understand what that means. And so it holds you accountable. Could I give any person starting a law firm, a list of books? Of course I could. But does that necessarily mean that you’re going to read them, dissect them, talk about them, brainstorm on them? It

Adriana Linares:

Doesn’t put them into action.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And so I think that’s really important. And so it’s the carving about the time, it’s the resources that you’re getting. It’s the intention and it’s also that back and forth, right, that you get from having a conversation with someone. So I found it enormously powerful, and I would encourage anyone at any stage to always be thinking about who can help them in their journey of learning and how they might be able to give back. In the same vein,

Adriana Linares:

Can you give us an idea of the types of things that a business coach who specializes in helping lawyers coached you through?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. Well, I think first and foremost, what is the vision of my law firm?

Adriana Linares:

Okay,

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

This was a scary topic because through a lot of the podcasts that I’ve listened to, you have on your show actually,

You talk a lot about this, about creating that practice with intention, which is hard because you do need to pay your bills, and it is really scary. And so creating time to think about your vision is important. And it’s very easy to put that on the back burner because it feels daunting. And one of the things that I’ve learned that’s been most important as I’ve launched my law firm is the vision that I had for my law firm when I first came out of law school looks different today. And that’s okay. And being comfortable with the evolution of it all as you learn and grow is really important. However, you have to have that initial vision. You have to put those initial pieces into place so that you know what direction, what step you’re taking next. And then once you get to that next step, you’re going to pick your head up and you’re going to look around and you might shift course a little bit, but it’s really important to do that. So the vision planning was really important for me, and that was something that I really enjoyed about my time with Klum. Secondly, the resources. I’m a brand new law practitioner running a small business, okay, I got that,

Adriana Linares:

But

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

How do I do things like privacy policies and employee onboarding, and how do I write an ad for a paralegal? These resources and Kellum was so generous with lots of resources, and I think I didn’t use Kellum’s work verbatim per se, but it’s that

Adriana Linares:

Resource piece. It gave you a starting point and the idea you didn’t have to waste all that energy researching or figuring it out or editing and revising. You just had a good place to start. What are some other resources that you used or places that you went or organizations that helped you along the way along with networking, so networking, getting a coach, any other resources you want to make sure you remind us about out there in the world?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I do. So one of the most important things I found coming out of law school was I joined a lot of different networking groups because I didn’t know which one was really going to fit and I didn’t know what bucket they were going to fit into. And so I spent the first year going to a lot of different events. I’m a member of the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Real Estate Bar Association, the Women’s Bar Association. I have all these different groups that I was a part of, and I knew that that wasn’t sustainable, but I needed to find out where they fit into my practice. So it really came down. I was thinking and reflecting on that, this very question this morning, and I really see my networking in three buckets, and I’ve got three major groups that fill those buckets.

The first is the Women’s Bar Association, which has been amazing in terms of having women from across the legal landscape, practicing all different types of law. And we have a solo small firm group, and we meet for lunch probably eight to 10 times a year, and it’s very informal. We meet at a restaurant and it’s an hour, it’s a working lunch. And what I love about that group is these are women from across the legal landscape and we’re talking about our day-to-day practice. And that solo small firm group is really powerful and it’s a community of women. I can pick up the phone and call if I have a question. And it’s also a community of women I can give referrals for when business comes in my door that doesn’t fit what I do. So that’s one bucket of networking that’s been powerful. The second bucket is the Real Estate Bar Association of Massachusetts.

It’s a professional development bucket. And I think, so my first bucket is really that law practice, the business of law bucket. And my second one is really the practice of law, learning about the legal topics that are current because the law changes a lot. There’s a lot to learn. And the Real Estate Bar Association of Massachusetts is amazing. I started, actually, I joined as a student member even in law school, I would listen to, they have several times a month, they have zooms on current topics in the law, in real estate law. And I would just listen during lunch or I would listen during a walk or anytime. And the topics are really on point and amazing, and they have a conference in the fall and a conference in the spring. And so they have really filled this bucket for me of professional development in terms of the law. And in fact, in the fall conference this fall, I was at the conference and I was thinking to myself, wow, we don’t have a solo small firm committee of the Real Estate Bar Association. That’s

Adriana Linares:

Really, and I don’t have enough things to do. Why don’t I suggest this and offer to run it? So I did.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And so I did. I went to the executive director and I made the suggestion and he loved it. And so coming soon will be the solo small firm committee for the Real Estate Bar Association of Massachusetts. And I’m really excited a co-director of that. They’re going to give me my yin and yang and give me someone that’s been in the solo small firm legal practice for a long period of time, and I’ll bring my education cap and my small business cap and we’ll put together some great pd. So that’s really my second bucket of networking is how are you getting your information? And that’s a really important one. And then the last bucket just recently came to me as a member of crew. So Crew is the commercial real estate women’s networking organization, and that organization is really robust. They’re actually worldwide. They have a chapter in Salt Lake. I looked, of course they have a chapter in Tampa. Of course.

Adriana Linares:

Well, good thing or else you were going to offer to be the founding member of those chapters if they didn’t. It’s true.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

It’s true. I know it’s a weakness of mine. I’m always one of those people that when they ask if anybody needs to help, I just, oh, no, they’re looking at me. Your arm going on. They’re looking at me.

Adriana Linares:

Yeah, that’s amazing.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Yeah. So at any rate, the commercial real estate women’s networking group of Boston fills a really different bucket, me because that organization, that networking group are women involved in commercial real estate.

Adriana Linares:

These are your people.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And they’re not just lawyers. In fact, most of them are not. It’s all women architects, surveyors, interior designers, property managers, anybody that you can think of that would be working in commercial real estate, that a woman is going to be involved and very much dedicated to the cause of getting women and empowering women in commercial real estate because we still make up a very small demographic, which for me is right on point with a lot of the work I did as a science teacher, getting girls involved in science education and getting girls involved in STEM majors and things of that nature. And really empowering girls to get involved in studying science even though it was a male dominated industry. So for me, this was right on point. I love the mission and even more importantly, the caliber of women in the networking group is amazing. That’s

Adriana Linares:

Awesome.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Yeah, it’s actually a pretty rigorous application process. And so I became a member in November, and I’ve been to a couple events and the women are amazing. All of them are highly capable, really leaders in their field. And so that bucket is important. So that’s really my advice on networking is that you’ve got your solo people that help you with the business of law. And then I’ve got my law practice, my real pd, and then I’ve got the wider range scope of commercial real estate and how I fit into that practice.

Adriana Linares:

And soon you’ll be president of all of those various buckets.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

No, I won’t. No, I’m trying really hard to say

Adriana Linares:

No. Well, that’s a whole nother episode right there. Let’s take a quick break, listen to some messages from some sponsors, and when we come back, I’m going to ask you about my favorite thing, which is talking about technology and how you set up your practice for success when it comes to tools and services. We’ll be right back. All right. I’m back with Alyssa Danio, who does not have enough things to do. So she decided to take a break during her study for the Florida Bar and come on this podcast. She’s taken theBar two weeks from when this podcast was being recorded. You are amazing, Alyssa. That made me think as we were taking our commercial break of, one more thing I have to ask you before we start on your tech stack, because I know there are listeners asking themselves the same thing and especially women, and that is, how the hell did you find the freaking time?

How do you find the time? How do you manage your time? Is there a trick? Do you get up at four, stay up till 12? Do you write it all down? Do you use a robot, which is what I call all the AI assistants? Do you have an assistant? Do you schedule things out block time? Do you have a tomato timer? We just need to know how you do all this and you have children that you’re still raising that are still at home and a husband and all the personal things that you’ve not even mentioned. Do you have dogs? Do you have pets? I do have a dog who’s my best friend, of course. Yeah, of course.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Yep. She is my best friend. Yeah, setting priorities is a really important part of life. Thinking about how you manage your time really kind of flows from there. I’m not going to be your authority on rest, so that’s probably not going to be my gig. I need to be better at that. In fact, some of my goals for 2026 are really centered on more of that and less pushing and less things on my plate and taking some things off of my plate. But certainly some of the big ones are I try to stay away from things that drain my time. I’m not a television watcher, I don’t watch television. I do get on social media, but I’ve got a timer on my social media, so I do that. Right. That helps me. That’s

Adriana Linares:

Helpful.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And even when I ask for a 15 minute extension, I get the guilt and that always helps me to just get through that last,

Adriana Linares:

The robots are really good, that mother like guilt for sure.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

The guilt, yeah. So I have that. I’ve got my to-do list and my priorities and I try to really stick to that and be disciplined. The time blocking is really important.

That has been enormously powerful throughout my entire life. Just organizing my time in blocks so that I can carve things out. I try to integrate things into stuff that’s already happening. So for example, listening to your podcast, I oftentimes did that as I was driving back and forth to games for my kids and things like that, or anywhere that I had to drive my kids went to school a couple hours away from where I live, so it was a lot of good car time. So I make good use of that this morning on my walk, I made really good use of thinking about some of the things I would talk about today and doing a lot of brainstorming as I was walking, finding those opportunities in integrating what you already have going on in your life to something productive, because I think we all feel better when we’re productive. And that’s not to say that you have to get a lot of things done, but I think that at the very beginning of the day, if you set an intention of certain things to do, even if it’s only two things, if you do those things, you feel good about it and that gives you the motivation that you need for the next day.

Adriana Linares:

I agree. Alright. Tell us about your technology. What are you using? Did you find anything you didn’t like? How did you find the resources? I know New Solo is a good resource for you. You mentioned earlier. Is there anything outside of that that we should know about and just give us a little rundown on how you decided to form your technology infrastructure.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Sure. Well, I think first and foremost, you have to decide what is going to be at the base of your business. So really to me, it was a choice between Google or Microsoft and how I was going to set up email, document storage meetings and things of that nature. I was really familiar with Google from the work that I did as a teacher. We did a lot of that. So I went down that road and I am a Google Workforce user and I’ve found that it’s a little bit difficult sometimes because a lot of people in the legal community work with Microsoft. And so that can sometimes be a little bit of a hangup. I do have a Microsoft account so that I have Word and Excel and I can do redlining and I can share my documents, but I really decided to use Google. And with the advent of Gemini, it has been amazing.

Adriana Linares:

Okay, so great you just said, and I just want listeners to know that I do not recommend going with Google unless you are very comfortable with it like you are, and thank you for being honest about it being a little bit challenging sometimes. And then what about the rest of your tech stack?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

So I use Clio for my law firm management software, and I made that decision early on. I did a lot of research on it. I interviewed a bunch of different platforms and I had a lot of experience using student management databases when I was a teacher, so I kind of knew how I worked and what I was looking for. Really, it came down to just the amount of options that Clio offered because I wasn’t sure where my law firm was going to go and what the size of it would be, and I liked the ability to add a lot of different integrations to it. I liked the ability to be able to have my intake through Clio grow tied into my legal platform of Clio, managed

Adriana Linares:

I’ll streamlined. You don’t have to build the Rube Goldberg machine of technology, as I always call it. Nobody needs that. It just needs to

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Work. Exactly. And I had been using QuickBooks as part of my LLC that I formed in law school to do some ed law advocacy work. So I quickly integrated Clio accounting and switched over, hired a bookkeeper, CPN Legal, who I was, Peggy and her team, Peggy and her team,

And they’re great and they’re really familiar with Clio accounting. And so that was the foundation of my law firm in terms of my tech stack. And then I hired to start to think about other things. So I use Gusto to do all of my employee, my payroll, things of that nature. And then I needed to start to think about different software that I was going to use that are used in the legal community. I mentioned I use Microsoft, so I have a Microsoft account so that my staff and I can use all the Microsoft products. I also have Adobe, which is a really big part of the legal community. So I have an account with Adobe, and then I needed to start to think about ai, which is of course the big, what do you use? How do you use it? And this is an evolving conversation.

So really when I think about ai, I think about it in terms of what it does and what it doesn’t do. So for me, one of the best things I ever heard about AI was AI eliminates the blank page. And I thought, that’s amazing. That sums it up. If I could just have somebody give me a template each time I needed to start something, it would starting save me. And people sometimes scoff at that that aren’t really into ai, and I say, okay, well you’re using templates. I mean, you bought them in books or you bought them off of CDs. So you’re using templates all the time, and eliminating the blank page is not a new concept. It just happens that it’s easier to get it. And so that’s one of the most important things that it does. It also helps to organize large amounts of information, which as a legal community is really important because we have all this information coming in and sometimes we need to be able to organize it quickly because we need to be able to make decisions on that.

And so organizing the information is also really powerful. Importantly, what AI does not do is it doesn’t replace your brain. It’s a tool that you use that’s really enormously powerful, but it’s only as powerful as you are. So you need to be thinking about the data and the input that you’re giving your AI and the way that you’re asking it questions, how curious are you and how are you constantly training up your ai? So that’s a really important piece of understanding that the AI is only as good as the foundation that you build. Also, the AI is wonderful, but it is not your end result product. You can trust what it gives to you, but then you have to verify and trust. But verify is a really important part of my practice because hallucinations in AI are real, and you have to be able to sift that out. And so going back through and double checking, you still have to read the thousand pages that it summarized, but now almost like having CliffNotes on a thousand page book, you can read the CliffNotes first, which allows you to read the thousand pages that much faster.

Adriana Linares:

Do you have any specific AI tools that you love and are worth mentioning or maybe some that you said, oh, this is never going to do?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. So my AI is really into buckets, right? It’s open source, source love. Yeah, I’m always sorting. I’m a scientist by nature, so I’m always sorting,

I’m always sorting. So my open source AI chat, GPTI use, and I use perplexity and I use them very differently. Chat GPT is just an amazing way for me to dump a whole lot of information. I just used it this morning to revise my EOS to think about this whole meeting that you and I were going to have and just dumping a whole bunch of information in there and having chat GPT organize it for me, and then I’m coaching it, it’s giving me more and I’m loving it and it’s writing it and I’m tweaking it, and we’re just working together. So I love that. And perplexity is just a great search engine. I use it for that all the time. And then for closed source ai, I use, so I use Lexus. I’m a Lexus user, not really by choice. I am definitely a Westlaw person.

That’s what I used in law school, what I preferred, but Lexus, because I practice property law in Massachusetts, I need land court cases and I need specific cases and access to certain databases, and Lexi has the best access. So I ended up signing up for Lexus and I use it now and I love it. So I’m converted and I use the protege as part of Lexus and I love it, the ai, I have that as an add-on, and it really helps me to digest a lot of the substantive law and be able to get into it faster and be able to find it faster. That’s been really enormously powerful from a legal research side. So I use that. And then the last thing that I use is spell book.

Adriana Linares:

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

And book does something really different for me, which is it’s very contract specific. So when I’m doing, if I’m looking at condo docs or if I’m looking at just a general contract or maybe it’s an operating agreement or something like that, I can use spell book to help me analyze it, but I can also use it to help me draft and draft different clauses. So I’ve really enjoyed using that. So they really do different things functionally, but I have found those to be the most effective.

Adriana Linares:

I think with some of the legal specific AI tools, attorneys are hesitant because of the price. Can you talk to us just real quick about pricing or why it’s worth it and you shouldn’t be cheap about the technology that actually helps you practice better?

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Absolutely. It is really sticker shock. I remember having a conversation with my husband about how much I spend on a monthly basis on my software and my ai, and he just looked at me wide-eyed because I think for a small business owner, that seems like a lot of money for me. What it does is it helps me to be, I would pay for my software before I paid for a physical space if I was a solo

Adriana Linares:

Practitioner. Oh, sure.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

There are so many really creative ways to have physical space these days that I would tell you that the software is making you more efficient. It’s helping you to organize your practice for longevity, and then once you build your practice up, you can get that physical space. So an investment in that over an investment in office space, I would do in a heartbeat. Love it. It’s the foundation of everything you build. If you think about it in the inverse, if you grew your business without a lot of these tools and it was really starting to grow, you would be really hard pressed to integrate them when you’re already really busy.

Adriana Linares:

I

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Feel really blessed that at the very beginning I was intentional about this. I set the foundation up for my law firm so that now as clients come in, I have intake, I have forms, I have workflows, I have all these things set up and we can support the client moving on through the cycle. And that’s so enormously powerful because the busier we get, the less time I’m going to have to learn these tools and teach my staff.

Adriana Linares:

I’m so glad you know that and knew that when you started. The last thing I’m going to ask you about before I let you go and thank you, that was all very helpful, is your staff. You mentioned that you have employees or an employee. What do you have, what can you tell us about finding those people? It sounds like you’re running a mobile operation because of your lifestyle practice, which means you’ve got to have people that are able to support you and your clients from remote locations.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Well, I do have a physical space, and that’s really a privilege that I have because my husband is a real estate developer, and so I have real estate space.

Not everybody has that. I do happen to have that, and that has been really helpful in terms of building community with the people that I have on board. So the first person that I brought on board was someone to help me with legal research, and it was a colleague of mine from law school, and she really helped me at the very beginning before she graduated. She’s a year behind me in law school and really just started to help me with offloading some of these real document heavy type tasks that I really just didn’t have time to do if I was going to do the other things we’ve talked about throughout the course of the rest of this podcast. And so I hired her on a contract basis and she would do a lot of that document review for me. And that was really helpful. And then I had an idea, and it was amazingly powerful. I had a client that had some work that they needed done, and I looked at the client and I said, what if I organized that as a project? And I approached it from the lens of a teacher and I created a project based on the client’s needs, and I pitched it to the client and I said, for this project, would you pay X amount of money? And they said, absolutely.

And then I hired an intern based on the project and the project, I did it just like I would if I was doing a long range project for my students. And I just broke it into really manageable tasks with very clear goals and a very clear timeline and all my teacher skills on accelerant at that point in. And I pitched it on LinkedIn and immediately I got so much interest and I was surprised to see how many law students were really excited about this project-based internship. In fact, I got so many great candidates that I had a second candidate that I absolutely loved that I went back to my client and I said, do you have any other projects? Because I have another intern who I just can’t possibly like, oh, these two are so fantastic.

Adriana Linares:

Cool.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Yeah. So I created another project and hired a second intern. So I had two interns for the summer that worked on these project based internships, and it was wildly successful. We loved it. They loved it. I was in the office in the summertime twice a week with them. So that was good. We could build our community and build our rapport. They could understand expectations. It was very much a mentor-mentee relationship was very easy for me to fall into that as a teacher and a former coach, and it was wonderful. And so moving on after the summer, I asked ’em if they’d like to stay and they did, and they have been working with me. They’re still in law school and they’ve been working with me the entire year and they have become so proficient. I’m so proud of them. They’re about to graduate and sit for theBar in 2026, and they’re enormously helpful.

I can trust them to do certain projects and I know what to expect. And then the woman that I had as my consultant, I eventually ended up adding her to my law firm to help me more in a paralegal role, and hopefully in the future I’ll be able to transition her to an associate role. All of these things, of course, based on how my law firm grows financially and just kind of getting everybody on my team to understand where we are in our growth cycle, what we can afford and what we can’t, and whether or not that’s something they want to be a part of, and not making any promises outside of that I think is really important.

Adriana Linares:

You named your law firm Anchor Legal Team Alt for short. Tell us about that real quick.

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

I named my law firm after a soly quote. The quote is about sons anchoring a mother, and it was a very touching thing for me because my sons have all anchored me in so many ways professionally and personally, and really have made me who I am.

Adriana Linares:

I love it. And you can do that for your clients. It sounds like you do that for a lot more people in your life, almost anybody that meets you. I have a feeling, Alyssa, are you an anchor for? Well, thank you. That’s very kind of you. That’s

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

Very nice of you.

Adriana Linares:

We’d be friends if we lived in the same city. I can tell. That’s right. We would go to dinner. That would be nice. We definitely would. One of the reasons I wanted to ask you your law firm name so that we could make sure and get your URL out there, which is anchor lt.net so people could reach out to you, learn more about your practice and about you. And it sounds like you’re on LinkedIn, but would you do us all the favor of just spelling out your name because that is a tough one if we’re only hearing it. Of course. My last name is

Alyssa Vachon Daigneault:

D-A-I-G-N-E-A-U-L-T in French style. Of course.

Adriana Linares:

Yes. I like it. Thank you, Alyssa. Thank you so much. Hope everyone got some really good tips and benefits from this fabulous episode of New Solo, and we will see you next month

Announcer:

From nine to five. Anyone clock me? I was thinking this was the way to go and you put up your puppet show. I.

Continue Reading