 Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki. You're watching Life in the Law at Think Tech Hawaii. We're on from 1 to 130 on Wednesdays. And we are very lucky today to have a guest who has not only a colleague but a dear friend. She's a family lawyer and she's been practicing, for how long have you been practicing now? 12 years? For six years. Six years. Okay. Her name is Robin Gregory. Welcome, Robin, to the show. Robin and I share something, we were just talking about it earlier, we share something in common and that is the fact that we both went to law school at a later age, right? Yes. We didn't go straight from college to law school. And I wouldn't encourage anybody whose dream that is to pursue that dream because I think law school is a great place to discover yourself and discover how you fit into the environment, right? I mean, it really gives you a place and sense of place in government and a place as a citizen, I think. Right. My first year of law school, I thought everyone should be required to take the first year of law school classes because they teach you about your rights with criminal contracts, criminal law, contracts, right? Right. Everything that you need to know in life, you learn in your first year of law school. It's contracts, property, it's criminal law. It's constitutional law? Yeah. Sometimes it's first year. But there's one more, oh, torts, which is harms. Torts are like harms, you're a dog bites somebody, that's a tort. So how did you find it? I was a little bit, well I was the only, I was one of two older people in my class and everybody was a lot younger. Was that the same case for you? That was the case for me. I graduated from law school in 2010. I was 46 years old and a lot of people were coming straight from their undergraduate. So they were early 20s. I think we had one person who was as young as 21 years old in our class. So people were a lot younger than me, which means that they had a lot more stamina and energy than me. Well, that's true. It requires a lot of focus and dedication, I would say. Much more than an undergraduate degree, law school takes a lot of focus. There's a lot of reading, a lot of heavy reading. Now, people told me that it would be the hardest thing that I've ever done and I'm like, I've done a lot of hard things, it's not going to be that bad. Yeah, you had a baby, you had two babies. Right, how can it be harder than parenting? It was hard, it was so hard. Really? Yes. Really? Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. Because I thought it was just me. It is a truly incredibly hard thing. It's really a test of your endurance, a test of your focus. With younger people, at least, it was a test of my composure because you have to do a lot of rational arguing and you can't lose your composure while you're discussing an issue with somebody, I think. Right. And I have a tendency to do that, but you don't, right? Oh, no. I can lose my composure at times. So during your first year of law school, was there one section that you really took to, did you just love criminal law? I didn't think I would love criminal law, but I did. I really liked contracts. Contracts was really difficult, but I like contracts. Because people don't understand what a contract is and how enforceable it really is. If you agree to something, and particularly if you agree to something in writing that it's enforceable, I'll tell you, I have a family law case going on right now, and one of the parties agreed that they would give a portion of their retirement income to their ex-spouse. Now this was 35 years ago. So this guy hasn't seen this woman's 35 years. He's remarried and he's like, well, why do I have to do that? I'm like, listen, you signed this agreement. You're bound by this. There's really nothing. I don't think the court will modify this. Once you sign on the dotted line, it's an agreement and you cannot get out of it unless the other party signs something that says that you can get out of it. And we're making contracts every day. Every day we make oral contracts. We agree with someone to do something, well, if you do this, I'll do this. That's an oral contract and it can be enforceable. Can be enforceable. Absolutely. So, well, let's back up a little, how did you decide to go for your BA? I mean, what, because you had a teenager, at least one teenager or two? I had one teenager and one child out of the house and I just always wanted to finish my education. I had started a couple of years of college early on and then I quit because I had kids and I had other things I needed to do. I think that's a common scenario. People have kids and then they think, well, it's too late for me, but it's never too late, right? Right. It's never too late. It's never too late. Look, I graduated from law school when I was 46 years old and now I'm practicing a lot. Anyone could do it at any time. Yeah, the great thing about law though is also it's kind of age impervious. You can practice law until you're like, I've seen people practice law until they're like 80 years old or even older, 85 years old. So it really doesn't matter when you get your start. You can always practice. There's always an opportunity for you. It might not be the glamorous kinds of opportunities that younger people have, but you definitely will be able to develop a practice even if you're in your 40s, 50s, absolutely, absolutely. One of my fears was that I was too old. No one would hire me because I was too old. I was getting too close to retirement age. And I talked to another attorney and he said that he thought I would probably be more hireable than some of the younger people right out of law school. For one reason and he said this is totally off the record, but if a law firm is looking to hire a young woman, it's quite possible she's going to have one or two kids. Right. It's a risk. You assume that risk. Yeah, absolutely. And so that attorney is going to be out for a certain amount of time to have those babies and get them settled. And so that's something since I was beyond that, that I could be more hireable. And also because I have some life experiences and those can help me relate to clients and what's going on in a situation. I think so. And it gives you certain amounts of gravitas in court. I mean, I know a lot of people have problems going to court and I've never felt disrespected by the judges or afraid of the judges. And I know like a lot of the younger attorneys are, they're just terrified to talk, to speak in court. And, you know, you just, you've been around. So you know, you know, what you can say and what you can't say, you know, in a public context, I think, better. Yes. I think that's true. And also, I think having more experience, we're able to compartmentalize better so that we can say, okay, this happened in the courtroom. It's not personal and, you know, not go home and cry, oh, the judge didn't like what I said. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, that's, you know, when I was in law school, I didn't think I'd ever be able to do that. I never, I never thought I'd be able to distance myself from the client or the problem or winning or losing. And it's really amazing the way you learn. You don't learn that in law school. You learn that through practice. I mean, there's a reason it's called practice, because you're practicing every day, right? And you learn, you learn that, that dispassionate, because it's, you don't serve your client well if you're not dispassionate and rational about what you're doing. Right. If you take it personally. Yes. Absolutely. And it's difficult, especially in family law, not to get personally involved and be filling the emotions, you know, your clients are going through so many emotions in their divorce. And I oftentimes have to tell clients to go see a counselor, because I am trained to take care of their legal needs. I'm not trained to take care of their counseling needs. Right. You know. And particularly, you know, clients don't realize how expensive they think they're just, you know, I'm just talking to you like you're my friend. And, but it's, you know, we work, we live and die by the billable hours. So we really have to portion our time fairly so that we can, you know, make a decent living. And, and, you know, we're entitled to that, too, the clients are entitled to be zealously represented, but we're also entitled to, you know, payment for our services. And whenever you counsel a client, you're counseling from a legal perspective. Yes. Whether it's a phone call or an email. And I recently had to start telling clients that I had a couple of clients say, well, I just talked to you on the phone. I don't know why you're billing me for this. I said, I could be doing services for another client, you know, rather than talking to you on the phone. So talking to you on the phone, answering your questions, that is a legal service. Right. That's part of the practice of what I think is educating your clients. And I think that something else more mature people are actually better at that, because we've dealt with confrontation before, I mean, the actual, and I don't mean violent confirmation, I'm just saying, facing that, and having to tell people hard news, like, there's not an avoidance there, we're better able to, you know, speak to somebody and, you know, in a way that you can be heard, but not get into, you know, heated discussion about it. Yes. I think that being a parent has really helped me with that as well, trying to present something to someone without having them become offended. Right. Okay. I don't like what you're doing. Right. Right. If you did it this way, you know, you might have better results. So what kinds of things did you do when you were in law school? Did you do moot court or we want a journal or anything, something like that? I did moot court. I did the environmental moot court and I got to go to a competition in White Plains, New York. Wow. And I was with two other members of my team. Robin's a terrific lawyer. I have to say this. I know this. Oh, thank you. You're a terrific lawyer. You are. Thank you. Yeah. And that was quite an experience. That was the first time I'd been to New York. And it was being around all of these other mostly young attorneys who had, I was probably the oldest in the old moot court panel. But it didn't really matter. Everyone just treated me as a colleague. And we all had the same cases, the same case that we were working on. And it was so much fun to be competing against these other attorneys. It was very exciting. You know, I've been doing a little bit of litigation lately and it is really fun. I mean, it's super fun. You know, it's like a game. It's like a chess game. So I could see the allure. I mean, I definitely could see the allure of it. You know, it's like a mind, you know, I'm going to put this piece here. I wonder how that piece is going to, you know, turn out or whatever. So you must have won a competition while you were in law school to get there. Is that right? I had to go through a vetting process of not actually win a competition. But the three of us were chosen to be on this team and to represent the University of Montana School of Law. You know, I earned people that are returning to school who think, who have kids or who have other responsibilities who think that too busy to participate in extracurricular activities. But extracurricular activities in law school are so important because that's more like the practice of law than school is, right? Yes. Right. Going to move court and engaging in move court, it bears much more resemblance to what you do day to day or writing for a journal, it bears much more resemblance than sitting in a classroom taking notes or answering socratic questions or two things. I absolutely agree. I learned so much being on the move court team. I learned about brief writing. I learned about oral presentation, which are things that are touched on briefly in law school, but mostly we're looking at the books in law school and being able to have that hands-on experience and the nervousness of getting up in front of a panel of three judges. Real judges. Yes. They were actually real judges who were volunteering for the move court competition. And that was, that was scary. It is scary. And it's something, yeah, if it's something you've never done before, it's scary. And so that was a really good experience to have under my belt. I think it sounds like it was great. You know, I have to say, for anybody that's thinking about returning to school, this is what I always say. I always say, this day we say, you're not afraid of anything. I said, I'm afraid too, but I jump anyway. It's scary, but you have to do it anyway. It continues to be scary, and even my practice things continue to be scary. And you just have to forge right in. So if your kids are a little older and you're thinking about, oh, I always dreamed of being a lawyer, I'd say, at least apply and see, you know, take the LSAT and apply and see if it might not be something that interests you. We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and talk to Robin a little more about her family law practice. And so maybe some of her interesting matters that she might be able to tell us about. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha. I'm Richard Emory. I'm with co-host Jane Sugimura of Kondo Insider, Hawaii's weekly show about association living. The purpose of these videos is to educate board members and Kondo residents about issues relating to association living. We hope they're helpful and that they assist in resolving problems that affect the relationship between boards and their residents. Each week, Thursday at 3 p.m., we bring you exciting guests, industry experts who for free will share their advice about how to make your association a better place to live and answer a lot of very interesting questions. Aloha. We hope you'll tune in. Hi. You're watching Life in the Law. I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. Of course, you can catch us live on the Internet and any time of the day or night on YouTube, just Google up Life in the Law and you'll be able to see all our shows, including this one with Robin Gregory. Thanks for joining me, Robin, today. Robin's a family lawyer and I was a family lawyer in New York and I always have an interest in it because the dynamics are so interesting. It's like psychology. It's the psychology of people. So tell me, what kinds of cases do you do, like a lot of child custody cases or those I found always to be very hard? Yes. A lot of my cases involve child custody, whether it's a divorce or a paternity. Now paternity doesn't necessarily mean that they don't know who the father is. It just means that there's not a marriage involved. And we see that a lot these days, probably a lot more than in the past where there's a child and the parents have never been married. And so most of my cases do involve custody, which means that emotions are high. When I go into the courtroom, what I do can mean whether my client gets to have custody of the children or not and that makes things very intense. It is. It is very intense. I had a couple of cases like that and you really don't want to lose for your client because it's your client's child. So what there's really nothing more at stake, maybe criminal law, there's something more at stake, but there's really nothing more at stake than that. So how did you develop an interest in family law? Well, when I went to law school, I did not plan to be a family law attorney. In fact, I did not take any family law classes. I concentrated more on business and a few criminal classes and contracts. But when I got out into private practice, I found that that's what people needed was family law. They really do. I mean, people ask me constantly about it. I go to the bank and I do some business at the bank or people, it really, it's a really significant area of practice, I think. In my view, it's not taken seriously enough, but a lot of business law, real estate law, all this law is taken very seriously among businessmen and family law is like, well, that's not just squabbling, it's not like real law, but it really isn't. It's a delight to engage with a real lawyer on the other side and really be able to think about the difficult issues that are facing, it's a cultural, legal cultural issues, like parental alienation or something like this. I agree, Mary, on that a lot of people think of family law as, oh, something they'll do on the side. Yeah, it's not well regarded, well respected, I guess. Yes, yes. And I'm not quite sure why that is because it definitely, I think, is one of the hardest areas of law. There are definitely certain statutes that you have to follow, certain rules have been sent down by the Supreme Court, case law that you have to follow in order to get your clients the spousal support that they need or the custody that they should have. One of the things that I see often that I find really difficult is parents using the children. And I just... It's really common, isn't it? It is really common. They don't do it intentionally, even necessarily, but it's very common. Right, right. And so the courts often tell the parties, you know, don't send messages through the children, don't involve the children in the litigation, don't talk to the children about the divorce except, you know, certain parameters. Kids don't need to be involved in that. They have enough going on, you know, their parents are getting divorced, they don't need to be part of the litigation as well. Do they ever appoint guardians at Lightham or law guardians for children in any cases? They can. Yeah, they can if things are bad enough. I have never had a case so far where a guardian at Lightham has had to be appointed. What I try to do rather is try to do some mediation or maybe do a custody evaluator, something like that, that gets us out of the courtroom setting. How do you do that? Like, how would you go about getting a mediator or a custody evaluator? Does the court appoint those people? I mean, can you ask the court to appoint them? Are they there at the court or you have to get an independent person or how does that work? Well, it's best to get an agreement between the parties, especially if you're going to do mediation. You really have to have an agreement between the parties that they're going to participate in this mediation. Then they have a third party who is not involved at all, who basically doesn't care about either side except that they want both sides to resolve the issues. And so basically then what you do is you go to the court and you say the parties have agreed to mediate. Maybe we can't agree on a mediator. Will the court appoint a mediator or we will give, each side will give a couple of suggestions of who they want. Is that an independent cost from the cost of legal services? I mean, does that cost the client's money? I mean, because the thing is, you know, a very touchy issue in family was so many times our clients don't have a lot of money and, you know, there's not a lot of money to be made. You know, you do a big real estate deal. Everybody expects to get rich or whatever. Yes. So is it an extra burden on if you decide to mediate that it costs more? Yes. Yes, it does cost more. You have to pay the fees for the mediator. The mediator is someone who is making their living, helping people resolve their issues. So yes, the mediator does charge and it's, there are different places that you can go though. For low income families, they can go to the Mediation Center of the Pacific and they have a sliding fee scale, but something that you said, we were talking earlier about family law not being as well respected. And I think one of the reasons is that there is not a lot of money involved. You probably aren't going to get rich being a family law attorney because these are families, they have other expenses, they have kids, they have houses, things like this. It's not like a big corporation or even a big commercial litigation where there's a theoretical prize at the end, like if you win, you win your contract damages. Yes. When you win in family law, you win typically, well, I guess you can win, you know, child support and spousal support, but really you win the organization of the relationship going forward is what usually happens. Yes, that's a good way to put it. Yes. So it's so funny, we're talking about first year classes. Family law should be a first year class because it's really just as fundamental as contract law and people really ought to know when they have children, what their responsibilities will be. I mean, I've had so many parents, dads, not understand the concept of child support, they think it's basically spousal support and they don't understand it's their responsibility till the child is 18 or however old they've decided. So that would be a really, I mean, I think everyone should have to take family law. And you know, oddly enough, it's not a requirement in law school. Right, it's not. Yeah. And those are good points that the father or mother sometimes is paying the child support and they'll say, well, I don't want to pay my spouse any money, they shouldn't be benefiting from money. Right. They confuse the distinction for spousal and child support. Right. Right. And you know, their ex-spouse or ex-partner may have a slightly higher standard of living because they're receiving the child support, but if it's just in consequence with the child having a higher standard of living, then who cares? Right. Don't we, I always find it shocking, I mean, I've had a number of clients try to hire me to reduce their child support or for not, you know, you can modify a child support payment if this change circumstances, obviously, but I mean, I've had encounters with people just who had plenty of assets and plenty of income and just out of, you know, sheer spite didn't want to pay, that's something we should say in family law, there's a lot of, especially if you get the wrong lawyer, there's a lot of spiteful behavior that can ensue. Yes. And I try to, I always try to put a damper on that if I can, but there are some lawyers who encourage the fight, you know, they encourage, they stoke the flames. That's true. I do not stoke the flames. And even with a good lawyer, there can still be spite, there can be hurt feelings, there can be a lot of anger, and that's another reason why people need to see a counselor. So there's the divorce is getting more and more expensive. You have your attorney, you have your counselor, you have the mediator, and then maybe you're going to custody evaluator to give a report and a recommendation to the court. So divorce can be very, very expensive. But I would say one thing about mediation, mediation can save you money, actually. I think every penny that one invests in mediation, you really often get it back, particularly in these personal family circumstances, that mediation is ideal because it gives everybody the opportunity to be heard, every person's needs to be addressed, different solutions can be, can be arrived at. So mediation can really abbreviate litigation, I think. Yes, I agree. It can help you to avoid trial and trial is very spendy, you know, a trial you're looking at depending on the case, but probably around $10,000 for a trial, you know, and that's getting together witnesses and evidence and actually going to the courtroom, which is probably the least amount of cost in the entire trial scenario. But yes, I agree with you that the mediation does save a lot of money. And also not only money, but it saves hurt feelings. Relationships. Yes. It saves relationships, absolutely. Yes. I tell people once they go to trial, if they, if they didn't hate each other before they go to trial, they're going to hate each other after they go to trial. That's true. That's true. Yes, we agree on this. You know, I always say, don't litigate mediate, but I mean, really, if you can, you should. Absolutely. So we're running out of time, so I wanted to thank you for coming. I so appreciate it. I'm so fast. And so I always, it's such a feminist thing to go back to law school, to go back to school, I always think. And you know, having this little theory about women, you know, women, men, as they get older, they develop more questions about themselves. But women, it's almost the reverse. You don't question yourself as much and you go with, you know, you've got more and you get more powerful. It's kind of, it's a little bit of a strange conundrum, but, and I think returning to school is part of that. And finding yourself as part of that, you know, maturing process can be very valuable. Yes. And I would like to encourage anyone who's thinking of going back to law school, just remember, think you can or think you can't, either way you're right. Right. Do it. And don't worry about the money. The money comes one way or another. We find a way. Right? Yes. Right. Well, thank you for tuning in to Life in the Law. I'm Marianne Sasaki. You can see us every week on Wednesdays from 1 to 1.30. We'll see you next week.