Collaborative Family Law, Solo Practice, and Fee Splitting with Camila Motta

Welcome to studying law around the world. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for. You today I have the opportunity to speak with Camilla Motta. She has an incredible practicing family law. She is a graduate of Osgood Hall and I'm so glad to be able to talk with her today. Thank you so much for making the time to be in the podcast today, Cavilla. Thank you, Klaus, for inviting me. It's actually really nice to be able to share my experience, not my views of how you know the law life is here in Ontario. And thank you for describing my practice as incredible. It's certainly is to start over podcast I I wanted to say that I don't think I ever had a guest before who practices family laws and to stay below for you to introduce herself. Still, my name is Camila Moda, I share my Brazilian background with claws, so I am from Brazil. I immigrated here as a grown up already without family, and initially when I first immigrated, the licensing equivalency was not an option, so I would have to go back to law school. I still wanted to have kids, so I basically left law on the side for a while while I was going the family. Eventually the option to do the LM was available, so I had my kids already. So I went back to school, finished my LM, finished my NCAA, I did an article, I decided to do the LP. I didn't even try to find an article in position. From the beginning, I knew that eventually I would have my own practice and I had heard that the LP teaches you like some business you actually leave there with the business plan. So I know from the beginning that LP would be my choice. And I also, I was a little bit scared of some experiences I heard from article articling students. Like sometimes you hear amazing experiences, you know, people who are really lucky, but you also hear experiences like I was just photocopying or, you know, I, I was doing work that is not like legal training and I didn't want to take a chance. I didn't want to risk it. So at the LP, I also knew that it I would have some kind of standard experience and they did. I did learn a lot. I was exposed to different areas. Even though I always knew it was going to be family law. It was a way for me to expose myself to like an immigration file and things like that because we do role-playing. So it was very interesting. The result also, while the they have a lot of new ideas, like they have a department that is about innovation. So it's really nice to see the energy and all the ideas they have. And like, if I had more, more time available in my life, I would probably, you know, had joined because they always had like open doors, at least back in the day. They always felt like they were welcoming. So it was a really nice experience. I have friends from the LP that I still see when meets and like I refer people to that refer people to me. Also. It was a nice experience. The work placements just for four months. And in my case, that was when the pandemic hit, so it wasn't even four months for me, but luckily I had enough for the license and then I got my license. Fantastic. And and you mentioned starting your own practice and and knowing that you want you would be doing that from the get go. So so I'm curious about, you know, family law specifically of all areas in the few moments that made you the scientist starts revive law. And then also, was there like a specific problem that you saw often that you wanted to solve for families when you wanted your friend? Decision one thing is for you to be a mature student and the other thing is for you to know like off college and offline school. Like my law degree is from I think 2005. So even though I'm a newish lawyer here, you know, Ontario, my law degree is not new, right? So I like when I opened revival, I used to tell people I'm too old to have a boss. So ultimately that was me. I my idea, like I want to be able to have this work life balance. You know, my priority were always my kids. So I knew that they were still little, that they would need me. I didn't want to no go work on Bay Street. And you know, between crazy hours and all those things, I mean, I, I'm not, it's a wonderful career too. It was just not for me considering my priorities and where I was in my life at that point. So off when I got my license, opening my own practice was an option, but it was also like scary option. I didn't have experience, and funny enough, I was going for separation myself at the same time, so I just thought it was too much to handle. But it was also remembered the pandemic. So the courts were closed, no one was hiring. They were actually letting people go, so I didn't really know what to do, but I applied for some jobs. I got a job right away. Like within a week I got a job even in the in the middle of all that. But it was feast bleeding. No one was offering a job, a salary, you know, So it was feeding in King City, which was OK for me at the time, unfortunately didn't work. So I was there for less than a month. And I'm not going to share the details of that. So it just simply didn't work. And that was July 2020. So in August 2020, I kept applying, but there were like maybe one or two job postings because of the pandemic. And then I decided, well, you know, and remember, I'm separating. So I really needed income. Like, OK, so here I am. I'm going to do what I can, you know, I can. I knew how to do wheels. I'm going to start offering wheels and I'm going to start presenting myself as a lawyer. You know, I'm a family law lawyer and I'm going to be a state planning lawyer. At the time, I wasn't doing markings or anything like that, but I quickly set up a website using Google. I, I'm a Google fan. So everything I have all my, my firm, everything is Google based. So I prepared my, my own website. It wasn't a huge fan, but you know, it was a way to show people my name, my e-mail, how to contact me. I set up my Calendly at the time was a free account and I actually found two, maybe or three clients. I'm Brazilian couples that hired me to prepare. This takes planning documents and they did and that I was pretty confident right away to to prepare state planning. I did do that at my work placement. I used to go to to watch like webinars every week about the about that. So I was pretty good doing that. I'm like, OK, so at least this is stumpy. So here I am doing my invoices here and there and then a friend of a friend who had a lawyer who had a a love for a family law firm was looking for a lawyer but they didn't want to pay a salary to because of the circumstances. And and then she ended up like pulled some quotes hiring me and that's where I worked for two years. So I started there September 2020. And that was it. So when you work for fees bleeding like the classic feast bleeding, you just receive a portion of your collective fees. So even if you build $1 million, if that the former can only collect 200,000, you are going to receive a percentage of that 200,000, right. So that's very important. And sometimes like the form, you, you don't necessarily have control over how the payments are going to be made. So sometimes the form is OK postponing the payment from the client, which means your salary is going to be postponed too. So it's scary. But at the time, like literally there was no job, job postings. So it's what I had. At least they could give me work. So I got a, I started like at the beginning, my first four months, three months and my income was really low. But within 6 to 8 months, my income was pretty OK and it just kept increasing from there because then you get more and more clients and and it was OK. Like my my first court appearance was I think in October 2020. And it was already an ex party motion, an ugly one, probably the worst I ever had in my career. And that tell you ended in my hand because, you know, like, we kind of knew we were going to lose that one and we did. But it's not bad when your first experience is a lost case, because then you don't feel guilty that it was like on you the loss. Like it was like no one would have. I couldn't like on the fact I had, I couldn't win that motion. But it gives you a lot of experience. It teaches you how to deal with your anxiety. I remember on that day that I really felt, oh, that's what they what they put in the movies. Because often in the movies you see a lawyer like running to the bathroom right before a court appearance, and then you can hear like that, you know, their guts are not really well. And I thought I was still nauseated. I didn't have to run to the to the bathroom, but I felt the nausea from the anxiety, right? I really feel for my clients. That was always the case. So I knew that client was going to lose and and it was really bad, like having to go through that. But every single thing that happened in my life brought me here, right? So I'm thankful for everything. Yeah. So when you when you do face bleeding, you see exactly how much revealing, how much you are generating to the farm, how much the farm is collecting. So you are thinking money all the time. It's not just you know, you get your pay stub and that's it. No, like you need to know how am I going to bring clients? Yes, the firm can can give you some clients, but at some point they may stop giving you more clients, right. So you need to bring clients. In my case, I was able to negotiate a higher percentage for the clients I was bringing. So obviously I wanted to bring more clients because if I'm bringing the clients, then I'm making more because it would be a higher percentage. And, and yeah, so I would say it wasn't hard to generate income. The first six months, yes, they were tough. But after that it was OK. And it was funny because I was also going like a month after or within the month I got my license. My ex-husband served me with an application. So my actual 1st court appearance in Canada was my own case. And obviously in the in the facts of my case, it was sad that I was a lawyer, that I had my license and all that all that information about me. So the judges knew why was that I was a new lawyer and no doubt so both judges I was before from my own case, they you stopped the hearing at some point they would excuse themselves and that's the other side to talk to me about my career. So I've received first hand career advice from very important judges in Ontario family law judges them like as a family Lord lawyer, that's who you want to to listen to. And one big advice that I got from the second judge was do not worry about how you're going to attract clients. The clients will come. Focus on your work, do the best you can and the the clients will come. And I always keep that in mind, like, and it's absolutely true that at least in this six years, like five years and a half, the clients did come and they keep coming. And yeah, as, like, as a business owner, you don't have a pay stub. So sometimes they do worry. Sometimes I like my goodness, like, is my income decreasing now? You know, like, do I need to for some work? Like, what's happening? Where are the clients? They disappeared because yes, there are waves, but I I like so it's sometimes from time to time I do feel this anxiety, but I didn't really have to deal with that problem that Oh my God, I don't have clients. No, not yet thankfully and hopefully after. Now did I put your question, what was the question again? Oh, absolutely. And I do appreciate you going into, you know, the, the clients specific and in the, in the thoughts about money, because sometimes we talk about law and we talk about, you know, developing a practice and all of that and focus a lot of on the work and don't even mention the, the financial aspect of it. But it's, it's hard to ignore the reality that, you know, any profession has a specific ending mind in a way, right? So I do appreciate you going into that. And I, I'd love to hear, you know, if, if you could tell me, you know, in, in another like 5 minutes or so. What does a family law practice looks like generally speaking? So is there a lot of like, is it 100% court applications? There is kind of like a 5050? Is it because if I understand it correctly, it identifies much more as, as like a barrister practiced in a solicitor 1. So I'd, I'd love to hear a little more about like, even though it's hard to say what a day-to-day looks like in any practice because it can be so varied. What does it generally look like? I asked her 2 emails most of the time. Most of the time that's what I'm doing. I'm answering to either clients emails or obviously opposing counsel emails. But what does it look like? I guess it also depends on how you want to build your career. So you have litigators, people who will only have court cases. So they made you some negotiation from the beginning, but right away they are starting an application and they're pursuing that in court. You can be a mediator. You know, you can decide not to work as a lawyer necessarily and become a full mediator. My experience finding clients as a mediator, it's not it's not easy, it's hard or a lot of mediators offering family one mediation. There was a lot of competition and and no one like it. So people don't necessarily need mediation, right. So I don't know how I don't think it's easy to be a fully family law mediator and earn all your income from that. The other option is there is like there is one side of this, not necessarily the family law, but it's very connected child protection. But many lawyers will do just child protection or just family law. I haven't done child protection yet. I only do family law for now. And right now I'm transitioning my my practice to focus on collaborative just so collaborative practice is a way of alternative dispute resolution. So we have mediation, we have negotiation, we have arbitration, and we have collaborative practice. So collaborative practice. We work as a team. We have to have specific training as collaborative professionals and both sides need to have lawyers. So whoever is listening, I don't know if you're aware, but if you go to court hearing in Ontario, in family courts, you don't need to have a lawyer in collaborative practice, if you choose that option, you need to have a lawyer and that lawyer needs to be a collaborative lawyer. And the team, the full team would be also a financial professional who will work with the financial disclosure. And it's an impartial professional hired by both parties and a family professional who is a psychologist or social worker who is usually going to help first dealing with all the emotions. And also they help a lot with the parenting term. So when we're negotiating the parenting terms, Allison recognize the full team. I think it's like right now, it's the, I think it's the best approach to divorcing and separation. The and like we are so committed to that that we actually sign a participation agreement. And that participation agreement says that those professionals involved can never represent those clients in courts. So that means if I work for a client as a collaborative lawyer, I can never be in court with that client. So that shows my commitment. That also shows my clients commitment because who wants to hire another lawyer and pay for them to review everything again and you know, miss out on everything that was already done right. And having the financial professional usually makes it easier and cheaper for the parties to prepare their financial disclosure. And having the family professional, it's also cheaper to discuss with a family professional the parenting terms than paying two lawyers. And they are much better equipped to deal with all the emotions and mediate that kind of conversation then lawyers are. But even when there is no children involved, it's nice to have a family professional because even like in the middle of a conversation about spousal support, it's never easy. No one wants to pay spousal support. And who needs the spousal support usually really needs a spousal support. So it's a hard conversation and the emotions got really high and the lawyers sometimes, well often we are very focused on the arguments and and the law in protecting our clients that we may miss some cues like, OK, this client is now is checked out. You know, we cannot, there is no way we can reach an agreement right now. And the defendant professional was there to help us with that, you know, to hold the brakes and check in with the clients at the right time and make sure that everybody, we say they are in their green brains so we can actually negotiate a settlement. So collaborative is beautiful and some lucky lawyers, they only do collaborative. So all their files 100% are collaborative. Collaborative. I'm not there yet, but right now. So in 2024, September to November 2024, I had over 60 court cases and in 20 in February, no, sorry, April 2025, I had my first and only so far trial and after that I really decided I didn't want litigation. Litigation cost a lot of money to my clients and emotionally it's quite draining to everyone around. That trial really affected my family life too. And remember, my priority is my family. So I decided, you know what, like generally court is not helping my clients, it's not helping me, it's not helping my, my health, my, my work life balance. It's not what I want for my life. I was already doing mediation training and I was already waiting for my collaborative training. So I'm really transitioning. I'm not closing, at least not now, the door completely to litigation. But since then I've reduced my litigation cases to two files. To the point that I had just one. Now looks like I have some new litigation files coming, so I may end up with about 5 this year. But but yeah, so this is what you do in family, like as a family lawyer, right? Like we answer a lot of meals. We do a lot of calculations for property division, family financial statements, incomes, you know, imputing income to someone because often the reported incomes are not the actual incomes. So, you know, we need to understand a little bit this person, that's the profession, how much should they make? And then you need to know, you know, you know, you need to be a little bit of investigator and you, you need to calculate retroactive support. You need to kind of like foresee how much support, like when you're calculating lump sum spousal support, how much support does this person expected to be entitled to, you know, in their lifetime from this relationship? So you kind of need to calculate all that. You need to know a little bit of taxes, you need to know a little bit of real estate. So we need to know a little bit of everything. I have a lot of clients from Brazil, so I also need to know a little bit of the, you know, the connection between getting married in Brazil and moving here, separating here, separating Brazil, all that. So it's never boring. There is never one case that's like the other. You know, you just build on your experience. Obviously I know way more now and I'm way more confident now than I was six years ago, but there is not one case that is like straight forwards and it's super easy. Oh, I've seen this before. There's always something that you have never seen before. It's. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing the reality of the practice and also the different possibilities within a family law practice. That's so interesting. I think that like me, a lot of the listeners have been going through the Ontario bar exams and, and I think that one of the subjects that we do end up studying is about the collaborative practice. But it, it, it's really just more about the rule of the of not being able to go to court with the same clients. So it's interesting that you brought up more of the why that is true. And, and I really like this idea of this is such a big commitment, right? And to, to wrap today's episode, I wanted to ask you a little more now focused on, you know, young lawyers, early career professionals were thinking about, you know, committing their practice to family law or pursuing that as a career. I really like that you mentioned in a few times, you know, what does the practice also can be like and how it could be draining in some points. The litigation can be very complicated and can take a, a personal toll as well. So I see that there's a lot of like personal characteristics that then maybe we'll help you or will be not helpful when you're trying to to become a family lawyer. And wouldn't you ask from you, are there a few skills that you see in people that are usually helpful for those who want to pursue a family practice or, or if you have any comments regarding that, you know, in in a piece of advice for younger lawyers. Having life experiences does that a lot. That's what I draw on to. Like I have life experience as a child of divorce appearance. I divorced here in Ontario. I have kids. My kids are in shared quote UN quote custody. We don't use custody anymore, but they go back and forth. So I share a lot of these struggles my clients live and I can tell them, hey, we may be disturbed because I've seen this. I know how how this works but obviously a young lawyer won't have all this life experience and hopefully not every family law lawyer has been through divorce. So I guess you really need to have listening ears. You really need to hear and understand and believe your clients struggles because from the outside if you don't have the delivered experience, you may not think it's important, but you really need to hear your clients. So, for example, like the lunch bag, you couldn't clean the lunch bag, you know, or he sent a spray of milk, you know, like you're going to hear all this stuff the, the pants go, but they don't come back. He didn't brush the my child's hair. So all this, especially if you don't have kids, you don't have this in your life. It may sound OK, just leave me alone. But no, like you, you're really dealing with people's lives, right? And you're setting them up either for failure or for success. So and you need to learn. And with practice, you will learn how to the sweet spot between being detailed and not too detailed because the more detail you have is also more doors for people to fight. But you also don't want to be so general that they're lost in the middle of the conflict. And which time you do learn that the sweet spot. But yeah, you need to be you need to. I'm very I ground my clients a lot. You know, I tell, I shared with them the frustration and say, I hear you. It's frustrating. But here we cannot do magic. So let's be realistic and let's see what we can do. We cannot change someone's behavior. This is what we can do, right? So and I, I work a lot like we'll have to be a little bit of a therapist too. So I work a lot with my clients on their own groove. Look, you need like even my, my website now says that I want to help my clients grow through their separation, right? And, and I honestly believe that I grew for my separation and I want to help my clients do that. They cannot, they cannot change their access behavior, but they can change how they deal with their, their access, right? So we need to be patient. We need to, to hear, to listen to our clients. We need to be detail oriented, you know, like we need to know what we're doing and consider all the different aspects, like all the possibilities in the future. What's going to go with what's going to happen with this kid? This kid's gonna grow. They're going to college. They make, you know, so many things we're we're dealing with. And on the, I guess, on the professional career side of things, what I would say to a young lawyer is if you know you want family law, don't wait until you're licensed. Show your future employer that you're interested in family law. Family law is hard. More than 50% of the lawyers that choose family law give up and go to different areas. So as someone who has tried hiring lawyers very recently, it's really hard to find someone who really knows what family lies about and is applying knowing how hard this is going to be, how draining is going to be. And despite all that, that's what they want. So prepare your resume, yes, get get the grades, do all that, but go to CPD programs, Go on the Law Society website and find CPD programs that are family law. Take whatever courses you can in family law. Osgood has a family law excuse program. Yes, it's, it's expensive, but it will show, which will give you information that you should have and it will show your future employer that you you're really dedicated to, to this area of law. There is the Family Law Summit organized by the Law Society every year and it's, I think it's about 300, four, $100 and basically like if that's all you're going to do, it's a lot of information, very good, very current information from the best in our area. And, and yeah, and, and read the decisions and, and really show them that yes, this is what I want to, to do. You know, I know how hard it is and that's what I want I. Really appreciate you taking the time and coming into the podcast today. Camilla, thank you all for tuning into today's episode. Thank you.