Get all the inside secrets and tools you need to help you develop your intuitive and leadership skills so you are on the path to the highest level of success with ease.  Matt highlights the importance of legal advice.

In this episode you will learn:

• Emotional Capacity and Time
• Support Network
• Get organized

Matt Canzer, founder of Butterfly Legal, empowers self-represented clients with on-demand legal coaching. He is a licensed, practicing lawyer with experience in criminal prosecution, personal injury litigation, and mental health law advocacy. He also supervises law graduates serving underserved communities at the Everyone Legal Clinic. He is dedicated to using legal technology to meaningfully address the Access to Justice crisis with innovative, efficient delivery models for legal services.🦋

Reach out to Matt at: Butterflylegal.ca

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Grab your FREE meditation:  Reduce Your Anxiety MEDITATION

Are you ready to tiptoe into your intuition and tap into your soul’s message? Let’s talk 

Listen in as Jennifer Takagi, founder of Takagi Consulting, 5X time Amazon.Com Best Selling-Author, Certified Soul Care Coach, Certified Jack Canfield Success Principle Trainer, Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst and Facilitator of the DISC Behavioral Profiles, Certified Change Style Indicator Facilitator, Law of Attraction Practitioner, and Certified Coaching Specialist - leadership entrepreneur, speaker and trainer, shares the lessons she’s learned along the way.  Each episode is designed to give you the tools, ideas, and inspiration to lead with integrity. Humor is a big part of Jennifer’s life, so expect a few puns and possibly some sarcasm.  Tune in for a motivational guest, a story or tips to take you even closer to that success you’ve been coveting.  Please share the episodes that inspired you the most and be sure to leave a comment.  

Official Website: http://www.takagiconsulting.com

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Wishing you the best,

Jennifer Takagi

Speaker, Trainer, Author, Catalyst for Healing

PS: We would love to hear from you! For questions, coaching, or to book interviews, please email my team at Jennifer@takagiconsulting.com

Record. All right. I'm Jennifer Takagi with

destined for success. And today's one of my favorite days

is pot of Palooza Day. And I'm here with Matt. Matt is one of

the amazing people who agreed to come on the show, share his

genius, and he's an attorney, which we all need a little legal

in our life. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much happy to be here. Let's hope we

don't all need some legal in our lives.

We didn't know how to use it to our advantage.

So where are you? And how do you show up in the world?

That's true. That's true. I'm physically located in

Kelowna BC in Canada on the West Coast. I do run a an entirely

virtual law practice. And I focus on litigation coaching for

people in companies that are representing themselves.

Okay, so, you know, that's one of those

things, they say you shouldn't represent yourself, but that's

probably in a criminal case. But in other cases, like, how can I

represent myself?

Yeah, great question. You know, it's one of

these situations where if you can avoid representing yourself,

most people would prefer that the economics of the legal

profession is just that legal services, they're just not

always accessible. And there's a large and growing segment of the

population, that they have a legal problem that comes up,

maybe it's a small claims case, maybe they're going through a

divorce, could be a Tribunal hearing. And it just doesn't

make sense to pay for full service representation. So they

often don't have a choice but to represent themselves. And that's

when they reach out to lawyers like me to guide them on the

process, help them figure out which forms to fill out, do a

couple of strategy sessions and and help them move forward with

confidence. Well,

I love that you said that I had a situation in

my previous career. And I don't know how many phone calls I made

seen if an attorney would even meet with me to take my case.

And it ended up being an equal opportunity violation case. And

there was not an attorney that would take me and one attorney

just laughed at me and said, Well, if you want to waste your

money, oh, boy, yeah. And in the end, I ended up hiring a

mediator, it was the best thing ever all turned out well. But

sometimes it can be hard to find an attorney. And if I had had

somebody in my corner to guide me through the process, that

would have been really good for me, as it is. I paid the money

and it was worth every dime. Yeah, services are expensive,

because they're worth

it. Yeah, no, no, I have no doubt. And honestly,

stories like that are kind of what brought me into this type

of work. I was a litigator for about 13 years before, before I

pivoted into litigation coaching. And I would meet

clients in situations like yours, almost, you know, every

day. And they would say, Listen, I have this issue. This is my

budget, this is what I can reasonably afford on legal

advice. I certainly didn't laugh at anyone, or I hope I made

everyone feel respected. But you know, the unfortunate bad news

that I had to share was, this is how much it's gonna cost if you

want me to do this kind of work for you. And inevitably, the

question came, I can't afford that. I'm gonna have to do this

myself. Can you point me in the right direction? Can you look

over my shoulder? Can you answer a couple of questions? And and

traditional law firms are not well set up to handle those

kinds of services. And that's what brought me to a virtual

platform. That's what brought me to litigation coaching.

I love that. So what are a couple of things that

I might need to know or look for? Or our clients come to you

for on this on the situation and litigation? And is litigation is

prevalent in Canada as it is in the US? And do you work across

borders? I'm gonna say that was like five questions in one.

No, no, I appreciate it. I'm ready for

compound questions. I'm licensed to practice in British Columbia

now. So that's the only jurisdiction that I can offer

services in. I do have plans to expand I launched launched

butterfly legal not too long ago. It was really only about

six months ago. So I'm still building my business. And I do

have plans to expand across the country and one day into the

into the US market. Absolutely. What do you know, maybe some

tips for people who are thinking about about self representing

the number one thing that I encourage potential clients to

think about is whether they have the emotional capacity and the

time to engage in the work because lawsuits they're really

not. They're not quick. They do take time, you will have to be

able to you know, dedicate a couple of hours maybe on the

weekend or after work to work on this. So do you have the

capacity to do this for yourself? The second tip is to

make sure that your support network is set up around you

right to make sure that that you have people that you can you can

confide in that you can talk about lawsuits, they're

incredibly emotionally taxing. If it wasn't a stressful

situation, you wouldn't be in court. So, so be ready for that.

And then the third thing is just to be organized, it's I can't

tell you how much anxiety melts away, when you know where your

information is, you know, what your next date is, you have some

understanding of what to expect. So yeah, you know, if, if that

sounds like an option for some people, they're looking for a

cost effective way to do things themselves, but they do want

some professional guidance to, to walk them through it and

offer some advice. That's, that's the service I offer.

I love that. So with you not being actually the

attorney of record representing me, you're just giving me

guidance? Does that mean that your coaching program you can

cross borders? Are you still just operating mostly in Canada?

Or do you have a desire? Whichever way?

Yeah, great question. The way our law

license works is that we can only practice in the

jurisdiction in which we're licensed. So even though I'm not

Counsel of record, just giving the advice, reviewing records,

providing an opinion, even coaching sessions, that would be

the practice of law. So for now, I am in DC only. But I do have

plans to expand to the other the other Canadian jurisdictions,

and to the US. Part of that is also that that the law does

change in some of these areas. So it's important for any lawyer

that that a client's working with is, you know, to make sure

that they they've got a good understanding of the law in the

jurisdiction where the problem arose? Well,

yeah, because everybody's a little bit

different. I haven't looked this up lately, I'm in the great

state of Oklahoma in the US. And I haven't looked it up lately.

But we did have a law on the books, it was illegal to carry a

pair of pliers in your car, and the rear on your person. And the

reason was for cattle rustling like you would cut the fences

and steal all their cows. So I don't know if that's still on

the books. But if you ever come to Oklahoma, we'll have to look

that up and make sure I don't have any fliers in the car so

that you're not being league illegally.

Absolutely, you know what, every jurisdiction,

they've got at least a couple of those weird laws on the books

kind of thing. And there's always law school classes that

find them and say, you know, Professor, why is this illegal?

And we're like, cuz no politicians figured out how to

get it off the books yet.

Yeah, I worked for the federal government for

many years that I and people would say, why are we doing it

this way, and I am like a dog with a bone, I have to get in

there and research it and find it. And sometimes it was a

little hard and took a while. But there really isn't

legitimate reason for everything. The problem is, over

time, we may not know what that legitimate reason is, and it may

not be easily accessible. So we just assume it's stupid.

Everything or most things. There are definitely

some laws that are on the books that you're like, oh, this makes

sense anymore. I don't know that there's a justification for it,

but one of those weird quirks of our system. So

what are your favorite type clients? Like? Who

do you work with? I have a large audience in on my podcast that

are Canadians, a lot of Canadians in my world? So like,

what is your I mean, I get litigation, but is there a

particular type of litigation that your, your baby in the

thing we really like to hone in on?

Yeah, I mean, I enjoy and I'm happy to work with

pretty much anyone who's representing themselves. But I

found that the clients that find the most value for my type of

service, they're small business owners, Oh, right. Small

business owners, they often don't have, you know, budgets

for a legal department, they may not have the cash flow to put

down a, you know, a legal retainer. And so, you know,

either the business owner or a partner or maybe a senior

employee, they can represent the company in small claims court.

And those are the types of clients that that usually find

the most value from from my type of service.

Oh, my gosh, I love that. So your three tips

were number one, make sure you have the emotional capacity. And

I just want to expand on that just a little bit. Like

sometimes the question is, is it more important to be right? Or

save the relationship? And I think sometimes we emotionally

get caught up in what's going on. And you know, I'm right. And

I know I'm right, but at what cost? So having that emotional

capacity and that fortitude to stick with it, because

litigation is not a short, quick thing, typically. And then a

support network. If you're going after something that nobody

believes you can win or should win or should go after. You're

not going to have that support. So I think it would be critical

to make sure that have, you know your, your closest people in

your circle, understand what's going on and why it's so

important, right? So they can be there for you for that long

haul, because it's not going to be fast and organized. Like, I

am just the queen of having stacks of papers. And even in my

long term career in corporate and federal government, I did.

But if I called in sick for some reason, and somebody needed

something on my guests, I can pretty much tell you where it

was. But not everybody has that superpower, it is a superpower

of mine. But not everybody has that. And that's just a big

problem, because you've got to have every receipt, every email,

every everything. So those are three, just in general life

three great suggestions and tips to live by.

What makes it interesting and and, you know,

part of the value that I offer in in litigation coaching, is

that those you know, the first one the emotional capacity,

right, this is it's going to be stressful. And it's not just the

you know, it's not just the the emotion of having a lot of extra

work to do. It's that feeling of injustice that everybody feels

when they have a court case, right? It's a feeling that

something was done wrong to them. And that makes them see,

maybe not red, but like a shade of red, right, it gets gets the

blood going. And that is why we need the support network, right,

because the support network, even if you're not talking about

the details of the case, you just need someone that you can,

you know, maybe have a cry with how to vent with someone who's

going to give you a hug someone who's going to, you know, maybe

make you breakfast on the days that it's time to go to court,

someone's going to take you for a beer after court if that's you

know, if that's what you need. And only when those first two

pleat pieces are kind of taken care of, we understand the

emotional impact. We have people around us that are supporting

us. That's what lets us get organize. Right, because what I

found a lot of clients think that they're going to do is

they're gonna say, Great, two hours on a Sunday, and then I'll

be organized. And that's not usually how it goes, right? We

need to have a system, we need to develop strategies and

workflows to kind of organize what we need for our case, as we

build the case over the period of usually a couple of months.

From beginning to end. Average, I would say about two years

until you get to resolution. Yes,

that's awesome. So if my audience wants to get

ahold of you, how are they going to find you that?

Easy peasy it's butterfly legal.ca.

Better fly legal.ca. I will have all the

contact information in the show notes. Now. It was so great to

visit with you today.

Oh, thanks so much. It was great chatting with you.

Thank you. I'm Jennifer Takagi with destined

for success. I look forward to connecting with you soon.