Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] But you know, partnerships can be, they’re hard. I mean, they’re hard for lots of reasons. And so, and sometimes what makes what seems to make sense on paper turns out not to make sense. So, lots of reasons why things, you know, may not work out, and sometimes it’s amicable and everything’s great. It’s just like, why? Let’s just go our separate ways sometimes it’s not.

So, you don’t have to get into all that. But looking back you know, for those out there that might be thinking about taking on a partner, maybe they’re solo or whatever do you have any advice that, you know, looking back or maybe if you ever look for a partner again. You know, what advice would you give to yourself? Some people say, don’t do it. Which is fair too, but you know.

Roya Vasseghi: I only say too soon because it was so, it felt like it was so much work to merge the practices together. And then it was also so much work to unwind and it happened in what I thought was a very short period of time. Now that I’m saying it out loud, [00:01:00] maybe it wasn’t that short. It was just a lot of work.

So what would I do? What would I do differently? What advice do I have?

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview founding attorneys and hear about their journeys and lessons they’ve learned along the way. And I’m excited about today’s guest. This is somebody I met recently, well actually we sort of worked together for a minute and then didn’t talk to her for a while, and then I actually met her in person and I was like, wait a second.

I [00:02:00] know you. So anyway, I. Really excited today. We’ve got Roya Vasseghi of Vasseghi Law Group. She is she does a couple things, but I call, call her maybe an employment lawyer. She can tell me I’m wrong and tell me exactly what she is, but in the Northern Virginia area. So, Roya, welcome to the show.

Thanks for coming. Why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you, about your firm.

Roya Vasseghi: Sure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here. I am an employment lawyer, so the firm is Vasseghi Law Group. We’re three attorneys in Fairfax, Virginia. We practice in Virginia, Maryland, DC. We’re all barred in New York, but we we don’t practice really in New York. We do a little bit there, but we we’re mainly the bulk of our work is in Virginia, employment is a large part of what we do.

We counsel employers small to medium sized employers on employment issues and try to keep them out of trouble. We also litigate we do a lot of non-compete litigation. We do review severance [00:03:00] agreements, employee agreements. From time to time, depending on the facts, we’ll take an employee side case, but largely employer side.

And then we do general civil litigation as well. But I found over the years that employment, like for you, you remembered, I’m an employment lawyer. Employment really stands out and that’s, you know, what people think of our firm first for, but we also handle partnership disputes, contract disputes kind of thing.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so New York did you start in New York? Why do you have a New York license on?

Roya Vasseghi: I went to Hofstra Law School and actually one of the attorneys here also went to Hofstra. We overlapped for a year when we were in law school. So, after law school, I, I grew up in Southern California. I had a job in Southern California after law school was 2010. And my, I had met my now husband in law school and he is from Virginia.

He came back to Virginia. He didn’t have a job like many people in 2010, and he wanted to work for the government. And there maybe was some talk of, he had taken [00:04:00] the New York bar as his first bar and there was some talk of maybe going back to New York. And so I took that, I took California first, then New York.

And I’ve kind of just left it idle for, for many years. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: took California. Oh my gosh.

Roya Vasseghi: New York. DC No, not dc. We waved into ID into dc. I took Virginia because I hadn’t been practicing long enough when I moved here. DC was taking too long to wave into, and I was living in Virginia, working for a Virginia firm and then.

I worked for before I started my own firm wanted me to take the Maryland bar, the attorney’s exam. So I took a attorney’s exam, open book, but it was still a study situation. So yeah, I didn’t have to take any of more than once, but I took four bar exams.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. I took two, which I thought was a lot, but four is a lot in California. I mean that’s, was that a three day? That’s a big one, isn’t it?

Roya Vasseghi: I mean, I think it was, it felt the biggest because it was three days and because it was my first bar, but honestly, I thought Virginia and New York with all the, the distinct subjects were, and, [00:05:00] and I was also working at the same time I was studying to take those. It just felt really, really challenging.

But yeah, I mean, first bar, you don’t know what you’re doing. Everyone’s freaking out.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I will say, you know, I took, I took Georgia and then the very next bar I took North Carolina. And I will say the second one was, it just felt way easier. I mean, the pressure of the first one was gone. I actually slept the night before, you know, like, you know, it was actually, it was a lot different and it was funny, at least on the multi-state portion. There were a lot of the same questions. I mean, they’re like exact same questions. I remembered. So,

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, well they make you dress up in Virginia and they make you put on a suit. So when I took Virginia, I felt like a real, a real big kid. Well, look at me. I’ve been practicing and I’m wearing a suit.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh my gosh. So the other thing, the other question, so you’re in Northern Virginia, which means you basically, you know, you’re a stone throw from DC and Maryland. So you mentioned you got those two.

Do you practice in those areas too, or is it, you’re only in Virginia now?

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, no, I, [00:06:00] I said the, I always say the bulk of our cases are in Virginia, but honestly we, it’s, it’s evening out among the three jurisdictions. So still a lot of work in Virginia, but we represent our clients in Vir DC and Maryland as well. And. One of the attorneys here is barred now in Maryland as well.

So, we do a fair amount of work in Maryland, both in federal and state court.

Jonathan Hawkins: So another question with all the federal government layoffs or whatever you wanna call it, have you, have you gotten business outta that? Has it, have you seen a jump? I, I don’t, I don’t know enough. Are there any claims? I don’t know.

Roya Vasseghi: So I, we don’t do that. As of now, and we do a little bit of that work and we’re starting to do more, but as we were thinking about taking on more of that work, everything kind of went down and we figured maybe lot of the people that have been doing it longer, we have great referral sources that do it.

[00:07:00] So we don’t do a ton of work in that area, but certainly the number of calls that we’re getting for those, those individuals with claims has jumped.

Jonathan Hawkins: Call it the Doge litigation pipeline. Maybe I shouldn’t talk, but so, I do want to,

Roya Vasseghi: like, where will this, who will be listening to this?

Jonathan Hawkins: Exactly, exactly. So I do wanna circle back. So you graduated in 2010 from law school, which is I think the worst year ever.

Roya Vasseghi: It’s, I, I agree.

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you know, I, you know, the, the crash. So I graduated 03 and I, and I was at a real estate related. Type firm. We did some commercial real estate and litigation, and I remember in 08 it started, but it took a little while for it really to sort of reverberate through everything. And in that 2010 class, I just remember, you know, people pulling offers and all that stuff. What was your experience like graduating in that time?[00:08:00]

Roya Vasseghi: I had a boyfriend, as I said, my now husband and I had, I had a job and I didn’t know if I was gonna have a job, but I had. Summered at a firm in California where I had worked before law school in Southern California. And they waited a bit just to see how things were gonna shake out, but eventually extended both me and my good friend who summered with me.

It was a, like a 30 attorney firm. We both had offers. And so as much as I wanted to be in the same place as my now husband, I said, I gotta go. I gotta do this job. So I stayed there for maybe two and a half years and eventually. You know, my husband got his job at the State Department. It was clear he was staying here, and so I, I thought it would be really easy because litigation is just so, so portable.

I’ll just take a few more bars, I can, I can build, you know, I can build up in, in the DMV. So I moved I moved to Virginia and started working here.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so you got lucky it. So like, in [00:09:00] terms of not getting your job pulled, I, I’ve talked to a lot of people who, you know, had their job pulled or whatever. Just a scary time, just really, and, and it cha it changed the summer. You know, inter whatever, summer programs forever. I mean, I remember here in Atlanta before that there’d be like, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 person summer classes at these firms.

And then the firms that had 50, then those years that went down to like 10 or five. I was like, geez. So yeah, that was, those were scary times. So.

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, I mean, it took a while. It, it, it wasn’t easy to find a job here either. I think it took a while for the market to get better.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah. What was that like moving back or, or moving across the state from California? I mean, you had the experience. Did you move and just not have a job or did you

Roya Vasseghi: I didn’t have, yeah, I didn’t have a job. I [00:10:00] had tried I even used a Virginia address, but given the number of years I had been practicing, I was just. At the sweet spot to be able to change. Nobody, nobody believed I knew I was doing just yet. And also I just ed in the a.

I networked a little bit. I had been coming to visit my husband or my husband, Taylor’s, his name. I had been coming to visit Virginia quite a bit every few months. And so I would network a little bit when I was here. But I didn’t really know anything about networking and I didn’t really like talking to people.

I wasn’t as comfortable with it as I’m now. And I didn’t know anyone but I just, I just taught myself. And learn from others. Learn how to network and, and networked and connected with people. I joined the women’s bar in DC and I think I joined even before I moved here. And pretty early on I made met some really great women through that organization.

I got a leadership role. I made, you know, the people [00:11:00] that had met, I had met at professional contacts became friends. And I did some contract, you know, doc review for a while. And eventually I got a job at a small firm. As a law clerk, not a, not an attorney, because I had no relevant bar license. So I, I worked at that small firm for about three years.

Got my DC bar, my Virginia bar, and then moved and I got great experience to where I met my I’m sure we’ll talk about this later. A good friend, former law partner I met at that firm. Then after about three years, which was doing insurance defense, like my very first firm out of law school.

So I was very much considering myself a defense attorney. And then after that defense job, I was doing a little bit of employment, but also personal injury, mad mal defense, great litigation experience. I went to a regional firm because I really wanted to focus on employment and wanted to build out my employment practice.

I always wanted to build a book. [00:12:00] Which people thought was really weird. I wanted my own clients even, you know, right when I moved here, right out, you know, two, three years outta law school. So that’s what I was really trying to do at the firm before I started my firm. And I, I started, yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: I can relate. Very early on I like, that’s what I tried to do too. Like I just really tried to do that. And I feel like it has served me well ever since. What about, what about you? So how, when you say people, when people, no, when people thought you were, when you were trying to develop business it, you said people didn’t really understand that or whatever.

What kind of reactions, what was it? The partner say, Hey, don’t do that. What? What, what do you mean by that?

Roya Vasseghi: I don’t know that a partner ever told me not to, to try to develop business. I think everybody thought I was too young. The very first firm that I worked for here in Virginia, it was a small firm and I think it fed my. of my desire to be a small firm [00:13:00] owner because I was in it, you know, I wasn’t in a leadership position, but it wasn’t very big.

And I could hear everything that was going on and I could see everything that was going on. Look around, well, I think I could probably do that someday. I think I could do that. Maybe I won’t do this. But that the partner there, the owner of that firm, he actually incentivized, he gave a pretty generous origination bonus now as a law firm owner, I think it’s what he was offering was pretty generous.

And so. I had an interest in developing business and I was being incentivized. So I, I tried, it didn’t, it didn’t work as a baby attorney, but I tried. I got out there and I tried. When I got to the firms that were, you know, we had a 2000 hour billable requirement, my colleagues some of who, they’re still like good friends would say like, you’re crazy.

Why are you going to these Bar Association events? And, you know. We have to work 2000 plus hours. We have to do this. We wanna have, so like social life, we were starting families. It’s hard to make [00:14:00] time to go out to these events. So it wasn’t like anyone told me not to. I just think that everybody thought I was weird for focusing my, my efforts there.

I did have partners tell me, which I thought was interesting that. That’s great that you’re involved in the women’s bar in dc That’s good. You should do community work. That’s great. It’s not gonna get you business. But I kept doing it because I liked it and I liked the people and it wasn’t translating into dollars.

But I really liked the people I was working with on, you know, I eventually was on the board of directors. I met good friends through the organization, the organization’s doing great work. I eventually started mentoring younger attorneys. I was at one point a mentee, then I started mentoring. I liked it. But then once I started my own firm, I mean, the women’s bar, the people I met from the women’s bar, they were, those contacts were my largest referral sources in the beginning because they wanted to support me.

So, you know, those were the, that’s kind of the pushback that I got, you know. [00:15:00] To, you should wait until you’re more senior and, and do it, you know, do it the way that everyone else has always done it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, it’s good. You, you listen, you didn’t listen.

Roya Vasseghi: It’s been been okay.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s, you know, the way I see it you know, I’ve been, I was very active in, in the bar and I sort of go in and outta that around here. And it’s, part of it is, is you meet so many people, it makes, you’re bumping into these people in cases and otherwise, and it just makes the practice a little more enjoyable.

It was for me. ’cause you get to know these people you know, I never could say I went to this bar event and I got a case out of it. Yeah. But you’re right about the referral source sort of angle. And that’s a long play. And so I, you know, it was always fun and, and worth it for me as well. So, and they’re probably right if you’re a baby lawyer going to pitch to some big company, the chances you land in that are probably, unless you’re best friends with somebody in there or it’s your cousin or [00:16:00] whatever, is probably gonna be hard to get right.

Roya Vasseghi: I mean, yes, and I didn’t even know how to, every once in a while a partner would take me out with a client, not necessarily to pitch. We’re working on a case, we’re having lunch or something with a client, and I just didn’t know how to talk with clients. I thought it had to be this formula. Right. I had to.

Say only smart things and only talk about work. And you know, I just didn’t know what I think works for me now. And so it was just awkward. So yeah, I don’t think anybody would’ve hired me,

Jonathan Hawkins: You gotta get

Roya Vasseghi: at that stage, yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: It’s like the standup comics that test all their material in the small die bars before they go on the HBO special, you know? So you said you eventually made it to the employment area. Did you do that on purpose, or, or had you always sort of wanted to go that way?

Or was it just sort of a accident or a process for elimination? How did you get there?

Roya Vasseghi: I think it was intentional. The focus was [00:17:00] intentional. I did a little bit of employment at every, every job. My very first job out of law school, small firm in Arlington. When I first got here even at, when I was doing mad mal defense, I did a little bit of employment work, employment, defense work. It was interesting.

The stories were interesting. I mean, salacious, like the facts are just fun. You’re working with companies, you’re working with people. There’s a human element, no matter what side you’re on. It was really interesting to me and I, I kept hearing, you know, you have to, you have to pick something. You can’t just do all the things.

And I wasn’t, I didn’t feel, and I still kind of feel this way, I can explain it a lot better now, but when I went out and I said, you know, I’m at this firm and I do civil litigation. Even lawyers. Lawyers, other lawyers don’t, you know, you have to ask more questions. You have to be more specific for people to remember, for it to stick out Employment.

People seem to remember, you know, everybody kind of understands generally what [00:18:00] that means. Now, whether they send the right side to our firm, that’s another story. But it, it seemed to resonate with people more. So it was a genuine interest in the practice area and you know, for all the reasons I said. And then just.

It felt like something I could build easier.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I can relate to that too. ’cause I started out, I, I call it business litigation, you know? what does that mean? It means everything. It is like, well I do a little of this, a little that it’s like, how do you go. Business developed that it’s just, you just happened to be there when, Hey, I got a litigation here, take it. So, yeah, it’s, yeah, I’m with you. So let’s, talk about starting your firm. So you said you had get, sort of caught the bug maybe when you were at some of that smaller firm. What was the thing that finally pushed you over the edge? You’re like, I’m doing it.

Roya Vasseghi: This is fun I didn’t wanna be a lawyer anymore. So, there was nothing wrong with the people that I worked with. Nobody was [00:19:00] being mean to me at the last firm I was at. It was a great place to work and I still have good friends there and who have left there. But I just didn’t like it. I wasn’t doing the work that I wanted to do. I went to litigate, so I wasn’t litigating as much at that firm. They did a lot of condo, they represented a lot of condo associations and there was some litigation involved, but not, it was fine. It was just wasn’t what I was particularly interested in.

And it, the employment work, I wasn’t really getting my hands on either. I was getting a, some clients, some very small clients myself, a handful but it just wasn’t. You know, it just wasn’t doing it for me. I had one, I had one, my oldest daughter, so I have two girls. I had my oldest daughter at the firm right before I went to my last firm and I had my second daughter at I, the last firm, and I just.

I just decided I didn’t wanna do [00:20:00] anymore. I was listening to podcasts and reading books on investing in real estate. Like maybe I’ll go do this, maybe I’ll just work parttime and I can go by the hour and I’ll work out my house and I’ll go estate or something. So yeah, that was really like, I just was.

And again, not because anybody was being mean, I just, it wasn’t satisfying, I wasn’t doing the kind of work that I wanted to do. I didn’t really have any say over the type of work I wanted to do, and I felt like when I tried to bring in business or build the practice that I wanted, it was just difficult under someone else’s umbrella, you know?

Right. I’m not making the rules. I can’t say what the minimum retainer is or what kind of clients we’re gonna take.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s funny, I had a similar thing too. I feel like. Almost every lawyer and there’s some people that were like born to be a lawyer. It’s like they, that’s, they’re born to be a lawyer. That was not me, I don’t think. And there come came a time where I was like, I don’t wanna do this anymore.

And so then it’s like, maybe it’s the firm’s wrong. So if I switch firms and then. [00:21:00] You are there and you’re in the honeymoon period, and you’re like, this is great. But then you get back to, you’re like, eh, I don’t know. They’re like, maybe I’m gonna go do something else, not law. And I sort of did that for a while and I have found, for me, falling into this criteria that I have and having my own firm, it’s like just, I love that part of it.

I just love it. And so I assume you, you sort of found the place, you tried the real estate for a while and you said, all right, I’m gonna go back out. In practice law or what, what led to that? How did that happen?

Roya Vasseghi: It turns out you don’t have to listen to a podcast or read a book to know that you need a lot of money upfront usually to invest in real estate. So, that was really not something that I was in a position to do, which is why I thought, okay, well let me, let me work a little bit and figure out if this is something that I can even like break into the world network.

I don’t know, figure out how to, how to get in small and build, so I just, I mean, I, I decided to leave. I had, [00:22:00] see how old was my, it was December 20 not December, January, 2020 is when I officially opened. I decided in December. So I had a very small baby. I had been back from maternity leave for a few months.

My daughter was born in June, 2019. I didn’t have any clients that had ongoing litigation. I had a handful of employment counseling clients that didn’t have any issues. The one litigation client that I thought might, I might be able to stay on with, it didn’t, it didn’t work out. But I, you know, I just, I did it and I was just me by myself.

I was subleasing a office which is actually downstairs from where I am now, from a really good friend who did employment law. She had a lot of work. She said, you know, I have this office released, you can lease it for me, and also I might have some overflow that you can do. And also she was somebody that was a mentor to me, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

So I started my firm in January, 2020. I didn’t know. It [00:23:00] was end of January. I had no idea what was about, about to hit in March. I started setting up coffees. I did an announcement. I, I didn’t have any work. I was just trying to get work smart decision. And then, yeah, and then COVID, so I had to switch the whole game plan.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So take me through that. You, you, you start with no clients COVID hits. I mean, what what’d you do? I mean, I, I’m really curious, how did you

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah. Well, let me, let me just say like. Between the time that I moved here and I started my own firm, I was obviously said I had my kids, I had gotten married, I had a husband who works for the government. He had a, he had what we thought, a very stable job. Let’s not comment on stability in this day. You know where we are now.

But at the time, it was stable. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if we didn’t have one person, you know, with a stable job at home. So I [00:24:00] could survive a little bit without making, making a lot of money, but not. That long. The name of the game for me was networking, right? That’s what I had done. My whole, up until that point, it hadn’t resulted in a ton of clients, but that’s all I really know how to do.

So I just switched everything to virtual. Like I didn’t know what was Zoom was. I think I maybe had taken one or two video depositions for experts that were not local. That was my, that was basically all I knew about video, anything. So I think I posted on LinkedIn early on, you know, does someone wanna have a virtual coffee with me?

I don’t understand Zoom. Like, let me know. So I, I connected with people that I already knew. I asked for more connections. I made a real effort to build out my network in Northern Virginia. I’d worked in Northern Virginia basically the whole time I’ve been here. But my network was very DC heavy. So I started getting, making a real effort to know, get to know the employment bar in Northern Virginia.

Better get to know other Northern Virginia lawyers. I know that’s another piece of [00:25:00] advice people give. Don’t you know why waste time knowing people that do what you do, they’re not gonna give you work. I also think that’s not true. I get a ton of referrals from people that do exactly what I do, and I send a ton of work to people that do exactly what I do.

But that was kind of my game plan. Get to know. In the area, let them know I’m on my own, what I do, how I can help. And a lot of people didn’t have an employment lawyer to send things to. So slowly I would get things. It wasn’t, it wasn’t instant. And I, you know, between that and the woman that. I was leasing the office space from giving me some work, and she brought me into a litigation.

At one point my practice started growing. I had a very part-time, it was just me pretty early on. I brought a very part-time employee in to just help with clerical, all virtual, just to help with organizing my files and everything. And once I got busy enough, I realized I couldn’t, I couldn’t handle litigation without having some help.[00:26:00]

So I brought on a law clerk, a temporary summer law clerk. That was pretty early on too. And in doing that, I realized. One, I’m probably never gonna be able to, well, one, I was starting to like my firm ’cause I was, had control over the cases that I was taking and I was getting more interesting work. But also I wouldn’t be able to grow it if I wanted to stay in it and not go into that real estate thing without bringing people on.

But in employing the law clerk for the summer, even though she wasn’t in the same space as me I started to kind of envision, envision what a affirm could be like. That I actually wanted to work for, right? Maybe I can make the firm that I actually wanted to work for and I could do the things for, you know, to make the culture the way that I, I had wanted it at the firms that I was at before.

So that kind of, that’s when this new vision started evolving for me. Oh, maybe I’ll stay a lawyer. Maybe I’ll do, you know, more interesting cases. Maybe I’ll hire people eventually. So, yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. It’s, it’s [00:27:00] happened to me too. It’s like you get these ups and downs and you get reinvigorated for whatever reason. So that’s good. So eventually you, you, you had a partner at some point, right? Or you brought a partner on or?

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, so I started off by myself and about a year and a half in 2021. Yeah. Year and a.

A friend of mine who I worked with at the very first firm I worked at, when I moved to Virginia, we had been talking, you know, we worked together at that small firm. We were good friends after that. We stayed in touch. We often talked about just practice management and how we would do it and how it might work.

And eventually those conversations turned into, well, maybe someday. And that someday was. Summer of 2021 is kind of when that came together. So she came on, we did, you know, a complete rebrand and re-announcement of the firm. So that was great. It was another, you know, big [00:28:00] marketing push. She had a similar practice to mine a little bit, but she also did corporate work.

So it comp, I don’t do purely corporate work and nobody at the firm does. So it complimented, I thought, what, what we’re doing? I feel like I left out an important detail there, but that’s how that, so that’s, that’s how that started. I mean, we had had conversations about just practice management that led to, well, maybe we could do this someday.

And her firm was changing a little bit. They were merging. She didn’t wanna go in that direction, was what I gathered. And we decided to give it a try and partner up.

Jonathan Hawkins: And you don’t have to go through the details, but eventually you guys went your separate ways. So how, how long were you, you guys together?

Roya Vasseghi: I feel like I haven’t been at my, at my firm that long. I mean, it was only a little bit over five years ago, but I think officially the official like launch of solo practice again, or just just me was January, 2024. So I’m terrible at math. I guess I was a [00:29:00] longer time than I, than I thought it was.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, again, I, I’m not asking you again, too many details here. But you know, partnerships can be, they’re hard. I mean, they’re hard for lots of reasons. And so, and sometimes what makes what seems to make sense on paper turns out not to make sense. So, lots of reasons why things, you know, may not work out, and sometimes it’s amicable and everything’s great. It’s just like, why? Let’s just go our separate ways sometimes it’s not.

So, you don’t have to get into all that. But looking back you know, for those out there that might be thinking about taking on a partner, maybe they’re solo or whatever do you have any advice that, you know, looking back or maybe if you ever look for a partner again. You know, what advice would you give to yourself? Some people say, don’t do it. Which is fair too, but you know.

Roya Vasseghi: I only say too soon because it was so, it felt like it was so much work to merge the practices together. And then it was also [00:30:00] so much work to unwind and it happened in what I thought was a very short period of time. Now that I’m saying it out loud, maybe it wasn’t that short. It was just a lot of work.

So what would I do? What would I do differently? What advice do I have? We talked a lot, like we talked about how it would work, and I thought we had a lot of conversations in retrospect maybe. We didn’t have deep enough conversations or because we were friends, I, you know, we both didn’t, you know what everybody does, what you tell your clients not to do.

Right? Get everything in writing, and make sure there’s a plan. When you’re, you know, when you’re friends with someone trust someone you don’t necessarily. I go through that process or the process as strictly, I don’t know how else to say it. So maybe I would’ve asked more questions.

Maybe I would’ve talked more about, you know, where do we, where do we see this going? Are there any things that, you know, are there any things that would be just. Negotiables for you [00:31:00] if the firm did this. I honestly can’t remember what we had that conversation. Like, you wouldn’t wanna be, you know, you wouldn’t wanna be a partner anymore.

We talked about the kinds of work that we did and, and if, you know, any one of our practice areas wasn’t a good mix or if any one of our clients that we had necessarily be good a good look to the other one’s practice. But yeah, I just, I. I don’t know if there’s like partnership, like pre premarital counseling, but the partnership version, like maybe I would’ve, I would’ve done that.

I’m sure there is. Right? Coaching, we call it coaching, right. And I, we, I was working with a coach, so we did like, at least on my end, I would talk with him and I would kind of get checklists and things together and I would bring it to her and we would go through that. But maybe it would’ve been beneficial to talk with someone together or someone to like facilitate a conversation and talk about the things that you might not be.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this [00:32:00] podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you mentioned, you, you, you had a coach. I, I love coaches, so I’ve got a bunch. I’ve always had

Roya Vasseghi: Same.

Jonathan Hawkins: Um, Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So tell me your experience with coaches. Is it something that you’ve always done or how did you get introducing to the sort of the coaching world? I’ll call the business coaching world. And what’s your experience been?

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, I think I’ve always liked. Like idea of having a coach. I didn’t start having coaches until I had my own firm. This particular coach was, I reached out to him because I also 2020 and 2021 finally got diagnosed with a ADHD, which I suspected that was a thing for me for years. But I was in, you know, I was in denial about it.

But once you have your own firm, you start getting busy. You’re kind of, there’s no structure. You are the structure. I [00:33:00] realized very quickly that I needed to figure out how to manage this if I was gonna be. Gonna make it never, not to mention be successful. So I started working with one coach because he had business experience, but also he had experience.

He called, he branded himself as an a DH ADHD coach. So that’s how the coaching started. But since I’ve, I’ve taken on many, many a coach, whatever, whatever problem you might be having or area of growth to you, you can imagine there is a coach for that. But I think it’s really valuable. Some people, you hear it just the word coach and that’s it.

They don’t wanna hear anything else. But I, I feel like it’s been really important for my practice and, they’re not in your business, but it feels, you know, you have a part-time kind of partner or someone who’s invested in your business and your success,

Jonathan Hawkins: And

Roya Vasseghi: obviously, because you can’t pay them if you’re not successful.

But, but they’re actually, they’re, they’re invested.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the thing I like [00:34:00] about it too is, is they’ve seen a lot of stuff. You know, presumably you’re not the only. Person they’re coaching. So they’ve seen a lot, they can bring different perspective and I mean, you know how it is. I mean some, it’s like we were in that room a few weeks ago and it’s like sometimes it didn’t really happen that that time.

But I’ve been in rooms like that where before somebody gets up to say what their problem is, they’re telling somebody exactly what to do and then they get up. Their problem’s exactly the same. And you’re like, you almost need, you need somebody else to tell you sometimes. Right.

Even though, you know, you know, deep down you just, sometimes you just need somebody to tell you. so, so let’s talk about how, how you get your cases now. Is it still heavily sort of referral based type marketing, or what sorts of things do you do?

Roya Vasseghi: Still a lot of referrals. I have two more senior attorneys now, which is new as of last year for the firm who also want to build, you know, they’re not expected [00:35:00] to, but. I understand that they wanna build business and I wanna support them in doing that. So they are doing their own versions of business development.

Because I have two more senior attorneys. You know, we, I needed them and I still need them, but at the time, like we were drowning in work. But to keep that. Workflow sustained. It needed to be more than just, you know, my one off coffee. There’s only so many, so many one-on-ones I can have. So I actually got introduced to a paid net networking group.

Gasp. I thought it was appalling that I, anybody would ask me to pay this much for a networking group. Probably should have said that out loud, but I, I just thought, well, I’ve started, I started a mastermind group, not. It wasn’t a true mastermind in retrospect, now that I’ve been to a true Mastermind, but it had some mastermind elements.

I’ve started my own multiple of my own groups, which has been great for relationship building and networking and so to, to think about paying, [00:36:00] and the time commitment of this particular group, which is Provisor, I’ve, oh, no, I can’t, I can’t do this. But the person who asked me if I would guess at a meeting was somebody that I really respected and has built a firm and is established in the community.

I thought, you know what, if he’s doing it, I’m gonna give it a shot. And I went in and, you know, meeting one like, okay. a little bit, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit salesy. It’s a little bit str, like, too structured for me, but I, I think I’m okay with it. So I, I joined and pretty soon thereafter, because it was new in our area, I had the opportunity to.

Form the kind of the area’s attorney group. So there’s multiple chapters within our region and then, you know, there’s different professionals in each chapter. And then all of the attorneys are invited to participate in an attorney group. And since my referrals are. Almost all from attorneys. A little bit different now since I’ve been in this [00:37:00] group.

I thought, oh, this is, this is perfect. I’m gonna, this is what I’m gonna do. These are my people. I, I love talking with other lawyers. Anyway, I learned the most from doing that. So I’ve just continued that group since 2021 and our, our region has grown, so I, I do get a lot of work from that group. Particularly the attorney subgroup because we have such a close.

Group and we have a, a really robust listserv. I can’t believe I’m saying those words out loud. It sounds so, sounds so nerdy, but it’s just, we have like a very active group that’s just constantly referring business back and forth and supporting one another. So yeah, I, I’ve, I’ve gotten some work from that organization.

I feel like it’s a really good investment of time and again. I did it for the, you know, the networking, but I made, I made friends. Like that’s what always happens, right? You’re forming relationships with people. I’ve made pretty good friends from that organization as well. It’s it seems to be a good, like, they’ve [00:38:00] kind of figured out how to put together the people that wanna help other people.

Obviously we all would like to grow our businesses, but it seems to be a, a solid group of. Most, most of the people that are in the group nationwide wanna help one another and support one another in their own business. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, you mentioned pain, pain to be in these groups. So I’ve liked, for my own groups, I’ve been in free groups, I’ve been in, you know, all these various types of groups and, and my, you know, the free ones they’re good ’cause you, you sort of have some. Well at least if you’re sort of creating it, you have some a lot of input on who’s in the groups and the curation of the groups.

So that’s good. But when you’re not paying money, the commitment level is very, very low. Like, they just skip meetings and sometimes writing a big check or just writing a check, you’re like, okay, I’m gonna, if I’m paying, I’m gonna make sure I go to the meeting. So sometimes I think the payment is actually the what makes it good and, and. Maybe it’s a, [00:39:00] a sort of a filtering mechanism too. The, the, the non-committal, they’re not gonna stroke the check or the, the, I guess the lower value contributors, you know, sort of get filtered out maybe, I don’t know.

Roya Vasseghi: Well, every once in a while there is somebody who, who will just. Join, or their firm pays for it and, and they don’t attend or they don’t have time, they don’t put the effort in for whatever reason. And I feel like you’re just not gonna get, you’re not gonna get a lot outta it unless you put the time into it.

So it is a good group. I just think, I don’t suggest it. I, I kind of tell. I’ll tell you exactly how much time I put in first year and this year I track it all. But these are the things I’m doing. These are the things I’m not doing. You’re not willing to do. Like, at least most of what I’m doing, which I think is not the max of what you can do in this group.

You probably shouldn’t join because you’re gonna be disappointed. Your group’s gonna be disappointed. [00:40:00] Yeah. It’s an investment.

Jonathan Hawkins: definitely get what you put in or get out what you put in. So are you you have some sort of, I guess you said you helped form the group. Are you still leading it or have you backed off of that?

Roya Vasseghi: I’m still, I’m still leading what they call an affinity group within the, the, it’s divided by regions throughout the country. So our region is the DC Metro, which encompasses. I think, I hope I’m not saying this wrong. I think it encompasses Baltimore, at least my attorney group. It encompasses Baltimore and Northern Virginia.

So each, you know, there’s multiple home groups and then I am an affinity group, the attorney Affinity group, and there’s other, you know, there’s a women’s affinity group, there’s different affinity groups. But I lead the Lawyers Affinity group and still, still lead the Affinity group.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, we got, we got a bunch of chapters here in Atlanta. Is it so the, a lawyer, so if I’m in a lawyer affinity group, do they have, is this nationwide? Is it like a nationwide zoom, or is it, is it, how, how does that work?

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah. So my, my lawyer [00:41:00] Affinity Group is for my region, but Atlanta has its own, I know the I, I know the leaders for most of the regions. But they do have nationwide groups, and you can go into, you can guess. However many other groups that you wanna guest at. I don’t do as much of that nationwide because my practice is pretty regional.

Technically can I do, you know, federal employment litigation in other states? Sure. But I would get local counsel and, you know, it’s not, it’s not what I’m doing right now, but for those attorneys that can practice nationwide easily, I think it’s a great opportunity. I’m sure there’s a ton more that.

People could get out of the organization by guessing all over the country. At a minimum, just guessing at the attorney groups, EV, ev not every single region has an attorney group, but once they get big enough, they have an attorney group.

Jonathan Hawkins: And you know, like this is another example I tell people. You know, younger lawyers and they’re like, what do I do? What do I do? And I’m like, well, everything [00:42:00] works. You just gotta, I mean, the two, I mean, you just gotta find one you like that you’ll commit to and stay consistent with and just really get, go after it, whether it’s getting in a group or. Running ads or whatever it is, you know, speaking, writing every, there’s like, everything works. It’s just really a matter of, of how you, how much you put into it and what you make of it. So, So, other than provisor, are you, is that your main sort of thing? Other than probably local networking too. I mean,

Roya Vasseghi: I have a bunch of bar associations that I’m involved in in leadership positions. I feel like I’ve rattled them off and I forget when I’ll feel bad, but I do a lot with the Virginia Virginia Bar Associations labor and employment section. They have a really great conference every year. All the, all the employment lawyers in Virginia on both sides.

And it’s, it’s just a great group to be a part of. So, organizations like that, I’m involved in the Fairfax Bar Association here. But nothing, provisors is probably [00:43:00] the biggest thing that I, that biggest non non-lawyer thing that I do as lawyers and non lawyers.

Jonathan Hawkins: So another thing that, that’s always fascinating to me to hear from other law, law firm owners is sort of the, the, the growth that they go through. So you started out on your own. Sort of figuring it out in the middle of COVID. But now you said you’ve got two attorneys now that are with you. What was that like moving to sort of that management or leadership role from when it was just you and how did you, how’d you learn how to do it?

Roya Vasseghi: Stay tuned. I don’t know that I’ve, I’ve learned how to do it quite yet. I’m working on it. So this is something I talk about with my other law firm, owner friends a lot. There are law firm owners that do, you know, they’re doing the work. And there’s, they’re not managing, it’s mostly just them. There’s law firm owners that run the business almost [00:44:00] exclusively and aren’t really practicing.

And then there’s a group of us that are in between. I feel like the in-between is really hard because depending on what is happening, depending on which case is blowing up, you’re not, it’s hard to do the day-to-day management. So it’s a, it’s a work in progress. The two attorneys that are more, you know, the two current attorneys are here are more senior attorneys.

It’s given more. Focus on the business and work on management and systems and all the things that I had been ignoring for a really long time. How, how did I learn? I’m still learning. I read books. I listen to podcasts. I talk to other attorneys, find out what they, what they’ve done, what worked for them, what didn’t work.

I talked to my attorneys, I or the staff, like, what is this working? Is this not working? I’m, I’m not perfect. I never, [00:45:00] I I to be perfect, so I encourage people giving me feedback. So it’s really just it work in podcast talking to people,

Jonathan Hawkins: I’m with you. It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s, it’s really hard, you know? I tell people, you know, when I, when I, and I, before I started mine, I worked at three different firms and each one of them had been around. For a long time. So I joined two of ’em as an associate and you just sort of plug in and they weren’t huge firms, but they were big enough and they’d been around for 20 something years each. And then I joined the, the last one I joined as a partner. And it was the same way I’d been around 20 years. And you know, I tell people it’s like you want something, someone else does it for you for the most part. So it’s really easy. But then when you start your own, you gotta do everything. It’s like, you know. And the example I always give you, you got, you know, you need a stapler and you’re like, oh shit, there’s no stapler. So then you gotta go buy the stapler. And that’s [00:46:00] where it starts. And then all of a sudden you, you hire your first employee. And hiring is pretty damn hard too. Like, just doing the job post and getting ’em in there and interviewing, figuring out who the right person is. Then you gotta onboard ’em. You gotta learn that. So, you know, you make mistakes every time. It gets a little better every time. Yeah, then you gotta manage ’em all the, all the stuff that no one ever taught you at any of the taught me at any of my prior law firms. And then you’re just sort of like figuring it out.

Roya Vasseghi: I mean, even if you’re managing people at. At a law firm, right, at a partner level, and you’ve, or even.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is not the same. And, and you know, I was one of these people, and I know a lot of them, but like. Partners at big established law firms, for the most part, are not very good managers. I’ll just leave it at that. And they’ve not been trained. They might be able to boss people around on their cases.

Maybe they’re nice, maybe they’re [00:47:00] not, but they’re not really truly managers or development of people usually. There are exceptions. There are exceptions out there, people listening. But

Roya Vasseghi: I agree with you.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, it’s, it’s,

Roya Vasseghi: been on, you know, on the other side of that, it’s so easy to say like, Ugh, why can’t you get this right? Why aren’t you, you know, investing in me the way that I think you should be, or the other employees? What, why can’t you manage the workflow? Like, why is this person so busy and I, you know, I need more work all the time, or whatever, you know?

And on the other side of it, it’s really hard, even with just three, three of us, you know, two attorneys dividing the work. So it’s, yeah, it’s

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so what’s your method now? So, you’re trying to work more on the business, but you’re also still doing, you’re deep in the legal work. So do you have like, I take a day off and do this, or what’s, what’s your approach?

Roya Vasseghi: Is that a thing? Can I do that? No one told me I could take days off.

Jonathan Hawkins: well, well no days off from the legal [00:48:00] work to then do the work on the business.

That’s what I mean.

Roya Vasseghi: no.

Jonathan Hawkins: Go to the beach and just, you know, chill. You can do that too, but.

Roya Vasseghi: so some of my coaching. Some of the programs I’m in similar to, to probably what you’re in, require you to be offsite and go to, you know, two day sessions and work on the business. So that’s kind of forced working on the business. in the perfect world, I’m blocking some time every week, and it is, it is inconsistent.

Like I did this week. I, I blocked some time on my calendar to work on business related things. I work with someone, I have a a part-time, kind of a, a fractional operations finance person, so she having her. Helps and also forces me to block time to work on the business because if I don’t answer her, she’s just working hard and, and I’m the bottleneck and that’s not cool.

But yeah, I mean it’s again, work in progress. I’m trying to, to fit the managing the business and, [00:49:00] and working on the business end with working, like, doing the work work. The issue for me is I really like the work because I’m. You know, this version, you know, this, this stage in my career, I’m doing the kind of work that I want to do, and I find really exciting.

So I, it’s really hard for me to not be involved in the, in all the stuff, but especially if it’s a case that’s, you know, a super interesting topic to me. So I’m working on letting go a little bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well that, well, that’s a fair point. And that’s, you know, all these people are out there saying, you gotta become the CEO. You gotta, you know, stop doing the legal work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if that’s what you like doing, it’s your firm, do it the way you wanna do it, and then you just get somebody else to do that stuff.

Right.

Roya Vasseghi: Maybe.

Jonathan Hawkins: Maybe.

Roya Vasseghi: I mean, we can have a whole, a whole nother discussion about like, do we actually like it or have we just been conditioned to think that litigation is fun? But yeah, I, [00:50:00] I agree. Like I don’t, I don’t think that I need to a hundred percent, you know, not do it if I want to do some of this work, I just have to find a way to.

Still working on it. Be able to do some of the work, be able to run the business, or have people on my team that can help run the, the firm smoothly. And then also, you know, still have a personal life and see my friends, see my family, they’re important.

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, I saying like for me, you know, do I wanna do nothing but legal work all the time? No. Yeah, but there are parts of it that I do, I mean, there’s certain strategic and whatever type decisions that, you know, and it’s fun to like pick a strategy and see it work. You’re like, yeah, we just kicked their ass.

That’s kind of fun, you know?

You don’t necessarily get that in the, on the business side. Maybe you do. I don’t know. well, well, so shifting, you know, as you sit here, you’ve been at it for a while. Where do you see your firm going? What’s the vision for the firm? Have you, have you thought that Far ahead?

Roya Vasseghi: Yes, I have. Well, this, this year. I dunno if you’ve read the book [00:51:00] Vivid Vision. Maybe, maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. But my, one of my groups

Jonathan Hawkins: What?

What’s the book

Roya Vasseghi: vivid vision.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh, yeah.

Vivid. Yeah.

Roya Vasseghi: So I haven’t read the book, but I did, I haven’t finished the book, but we did I did work on core values for the firm, so I, I kind of.

Well, I, I didn’t kind of, I put those together and I messaged those to the other team, the rest of the team earlier this summer. So that was really great. That’s the first time I did anything like that. Where do I see the firm? Probably just on the same, same trajectory, doing the same type of work, just a little bit bigger and having more capacity to do more because there are these.

Cause and cases we wanna get involved in. And to be able to do that, we need more, we need more bodies and more resources. So I would like to grow, grow a little bit more. I can’t say I wanna be hundreds of attorneys, but I think we could be, you know, a little bit bigger and [00:52:00] do do more good.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I’ve seen that like, with my practice, I feel like there are some, I’ve gotten looks at some. Over the years, some pretty big matters just ’cause of my expertise or, or because of my name in the market here. But, but I didn’t land them and I think it’s because, they were gonna be big. And at the time it was, it was like just me and maybe one other. So there’s, I think there is some truth to that. There’s some matters that you just, you just gotta have a bitch whether you really need it or not. There’s a perception, I think so for sure on that. So on Vivid Vision, there’s a I’ll send it to you if you hadn’t seen it, but I think it was before he wrote the book.

There’s a video of a presentation Cameron Herold gave. On the vivid vision. It’s, it’s awesome. It’s in,

I’ll send it to you. It’s an old, you can find it on YouTube, but I’ll send it to you. It’s really good. So we’ve talked a lot. If you weren’t practicing law [00:53:00] and you could not do real estate, what would you be doing?

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah, I still can’t do, I still can’t do real estate. Man, I dunno. There was a time when I also wanted to be a coach. So maybe something, something along those lines. Maybe a coach or consultant or something. You know, working with small, I would still be in the world, right? I’d still be in the legal world, just not actually doing the work. Working with, with small firm owners, probably

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Roya Vasseghi: it’s my favorite thing in the world. When someone tells me they wanna start a law firm, it makes me happy. So.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you a chance to be a coach. Anybody’s out there thinking about starting a firm. What advice would you give to ’em?

Roya Vasseghi: So what I did is talk to as many people as you possibly can who have done it and now, you know, listen to the podcast interviews with the people that have done it, but get to know the people that have done it and see what worked for them and what didn’t. And you don’t have to do everything that they did, but I think that was the [00:54:00] best thing that I, I did for myself coming in. It’s not like it gave me the playbook, but it gave me some things to think about and some things to try. And then those people have become kind of my, my advisory board throughout the years. So get out there, make friends.

Jonathan Hawkins: And keep asking the questions and keep making the friends. Right. It never ends.

Roya Vasseghi: Yeah. There’s always something to learn. Yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: Roya, I appreciate you coming on. It’s been real fun. It’s been fun getting to know you, and thanks for coming on. So for people out there that want to find you or get in touch with you, what’s the best way?

Roya Vasseghi: Our firm’s website vasseghilaw.com You can find me on LinkedIn, probably LinkedIn is the easiest. So just my name.

Jonathan Hawkins: And we’ll put all that in the show notes as well for people. So again, thanks for coming.

Roya Vasseghi: Thank you. This was awesome. It’s fun to be here.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to [00:55:00] subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.