We were lucky to catch up with Angelo Banks recently and have shared our conversation below.

Angelo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was really tired of senior attorneys not sharing knowledge. When you leave school, you hope for an opportunity to be placed with a mentor figure or someone who can teach you the ins and outs of your profession. Unfortunately, in the legal field, that rarely happens because the more the firm can have you research and figure things out on your own, the higher the billable hours. I decided, if I am going to have to figure this out on my own, I might as well cut out the middleman and really do it on my own. Therefore, I took my education, personal experience, and the months’ worth of work experience I had, and started my business.

The firms take low level attorneys and pimp them out for a billable hour. A firm probably pays the attorney their salary within one month of work. The rest of the year, that high hourly rate that the attorney charges go to the firm. As a young attorney, the moment you figure out how to do your job, you should immediately cut the middleman out of your hourly rate. This is not for a young attorney who is being taken care of financially and through benefits that has a path to make partner and grow within their firm. This is for the attorney who is doing all the work, staying at their office past 9pm, and every once in a while, when they have a question, nobody wants to help them.

I knew I was ready to go out on my own when the partners at my firm planned a meeting with me about my job performance. The first question they asked in the meeting was if I liked it at the job. My answer was, no. I would have never said that before at any moment in life to an employer, but at that moment, I knew I did not care anymore, and I could go do this on my own. I had already built my business model, all I needed to do was open it up and implement it.

It is cliche to say do not give yourself an option B, but that is a real statement. I knew this would work because it had to. I started my firm with no money, just closed on a home and had no money to pay the first mortgage payment, and I have two kids that were about to enter into another year of school. My plan had to work.

That was the money side of it, but the other side was, I just wanted a firm where I could be honest with people about their whole case. I wanted to be able to tell the truth and if they did not want to hire me, that was fine with me, but at least I would get to tell them the truth about how their case may go, what I think the flaws in the case were, what I believe their strong points are, and how much their case is really going to cost over time. The firms I worked at, I could not be honest with people because the goal was to get them to hire us and then bill as many hours as possible. Still through today, that is what is unique about my firm. I am brutally honest with my potential clients and my clients, and I never want them to believe I can do something that I really cannot do. For example, I never want a client to think I can get them full custody of their child if their co-parent is an outstanding parent that they just do not get along with. I am not going to sell a dream. I want the client’s expectations to be realistic from the start.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a small-town guy who spent a decade in the military and decided I wanted to be a father first and an attorney. After I had my children, I did not want to be gone all the time on deployments or just at work in general. So, I decided to get out of the military and go to law school. Once I was in law school, I had plenty of ideas on what kind of lawyer and person I wanted to be, but eventually, I found a home in family law. It was relatable to my life which has been filled with people who uphold or were raised in separate homes, and also, I had a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Counseling.

Once I figured out how to practice law. I decided I wanted to help out with divorce, custody, child support, adoptions, and other family matters like those. I have been around and had personal experiences with those things so I wanted to provide my community with someone who could relate to them other than just being my client. I wanted to help because I care about children having a great life even if they live in a split home, and I care about adults walking away from a situation on their own and still standing with dignity. That care in me is what makes my firm different from other family law firms.

I am proud to be someone who has been blessed with the ability to take on the stress and problems of others and help them through it. That is what Banks Law Firm is here for. A lot of people do not know how to function in life without their spouse or they do not know how to live a life outside of being a parent. A lot of children have parents who fight so much they completely forget that their kid needs both parents in their life. Banks Law Firm is here to help everyone going through a family situation, figure it out and manage it as best as they can.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As a solo attorney, every day is a tough one trying to manage your ability as an attorney, run a business, be a co-parent and full-time father, and still make time for my social life and doing things in my community like coaching. You never know if you are going to get a new client from month to month and the stress of having to make sure you have enough clientele to keep yourself afloat is an everyday battle. So, in this business resilience is an everyday task.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There is no lesson like bought lessons. In this business, you have to learn how to cut people off soon. Clients will lie to you, go missing on you, and the worst one, they will stop paying you. As a solo attorney, you have to learn how to tell your client’s what your expectations are about the attorney-client relationship, and if they cannot uphold those expectations, you cannot let them linger around and rob you of your time.

Contact Info:

• Website: bankslawfam.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bankslawfirm/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069683295923

Image Credits
Dominick Williams https://domvisions.com/