In this episode of the Polestar Podcast by VELA Wealth, host Kevin Parton interviews Morgyn Chandler, a distinguished lawyer and Managing Partner at Hammerco Lawyers. They explore Morgyn’s legal career from its inception to the present, highlighting pivotal moments that she faced as challenges, which were transformed into opportunities for success. Morgyn emphasizes a human-first approach in her legal practice, fundamentally reshaping her firm’s operations by prioritizing empathy and compassion in client interactions. Her experiences illustrate the critical importance of adaptability—both professionally and personally—demonstrating how such flexibility can significantly influence success for entrepreneurs and business owners.
Podcast Highlights:
- Learn how the 2008 financial crash catapulted Morgyn to make an unexpected career move, ultimately transforming her into the outstanding lawyer she is today.
- Discover how a significant legislative change in 2019 regarding ICBC personal injury claims drastically reduced the firm’s business.
- Explore how Morgyn and her team champion an empathy-first approach to law, leveraging their understanding of human connection.
- Get inspired by Morgyn’s ability to pivot quickly, focus on the future, and find solutions to challenging problems.
About the Guest – Morgyn Chandler
Morgyn Chandler is the Managing Partner at Hammerco Lawyers and leads the firm’s civil sexual assault group. She is a forceful advocate with a successful track record of winning exceptional results for her clients.
With over a decade of litigation experience, Morgyn has a reputation for successful resolution based on persuasive and astute legal strategies. She believes that establishing and maintaining open, honest, and ongoing communication with her clients is critical to ensuring the best possible outcome. In addition to practicing in the areas of personal injury and estate litigation, Morgyn is the practice lead for Hammerco’s civil sexual assault group. She acts on behalf of survivors of sexual assault and is a powerful advocate for her clients against both individual and institutional defendants. Morgyn believes that survivors deserve to be heard, and respected, and deserve the opportunity to hold perpetrators accountable.
Morgyn is a sought-after speaker in her field and has been named for her work in Personal Injury Litigation by Best Lawyers in Canada since 2020. Learn more about Morgyn at Hammerco Lawyers LLP and get in touch with her on LinkedIn, Morgyn Chandler.
About the Host – Kevin Parton
Kevin Parton, CFP professional, specializes in personal and business financial planning, tax reduction, and estate planning. Kevin is diligently concentrating on client education as a powerful strategy for building financial certainty. As no financial situation is the same, Kevin and his team monitor clients’ plans and implement personalized strategies to reduce their personal and corporate taxes, and protect their income, assets, and loved ones against the financial consequences of a serious illness, injury or death, ensuring clients maintain financial certainty and peace of mind. To read more, please visit the VELA team page.
The episode is also available on:
The Podcast Transcript:
Kevin Parton:
Welcome to the VELA Wealth Polestar Podcast, where we bring together financial experts, visionary entrepreneurs and passionate philanthropists who share not just their expertise but also their personal stories, reflecting on remarkable experiences and offering inspirational insights. I am Kevin Parton, your host for this episode and I’m very excited to introduce our guest and friend of mine, Morgyn Chandler.
I met Morgan nearly a decade ago as part of a business networking group. Over these last 10 years, I’ve grown to know Morgyn as a friend, confidant, entrepreneur and a leader at her firm, as well as within the legal industry. Morgyn is now the managing partner at Hammerco Lawyers, where she’s built a reputation as one of the most dynamic and dedicated legal professionals in the field, and that’s not just my humble opinion. Her journey in law began with a passion for advocacy and a strong commitment to justice, and throughout her career, she has represented clients in a wide range of cases, from personal injury and estate litigation to some more intricate areas of law, ensuring that her clients receive the best possible outcomes. Her expertise and legal acumen have not only earned her many successful verdicts, but also made her a trusted advisor to individuals and businesses. While in the role of managing partner, the firm has expanded its reach and impact, pivoting from the firm’s decades-long focus on personal injury, to a more robust focus on providing top-tier legal services across various practice areas, while navigating changes in the BC insurance laws that have proved to be insurmountable for many other lawyers and law firms to navigate. In addition to her impressive legal career, Morgyn is deeply involved in the community. She’s committed to giving back, whether through pro bono work or by supporting various charitable initiatives. I’ve always viewed Morgyn as a trailblazer and inspiration for women, lawyers, entrepreneurs and high achievers. With that being said, welcome and thank you for being here, Morgan.
Morgyn Chandler:
Thank you, Kevin. It’s so wonderful to be here. I cannot believe it’s been a decade since we met.
Kevin Parton:
It’s pretty maddening. I’m going to first start by saying I think everyone should practice writing a bio intro for their friends because as part of preparation for this, I got to go through your history and all of the things you’ve done, and over the years, I’ve formed my own internal opinion of how much I admire you. But going through the details is a pretty exciting experience. So, if you or anybody else wants the opportunity to feel grateful for people in their lives, write their bio for them.
Morgyn Chandler:
I will write your bio anytime, Kevin.
Kevin Parton:
Fantastic. I want to jump into the journey of where you started. We’ll get to how you built up to being the managing partner, and how you navigated pivoting the firm during a challenging time when BC Laws were changing, and we’ll also get to discuss some interesting stories about the importance of estate planning. But for now, I want to start with the beginning. What inspired you to pursue a career in law?
Morgyn Chandler:
Looking back, I don’t think that I ever consciously thought I wanted to be a lawyer. But now it seems like such an inevitable outcome and a natural fit for me. But growing up, I knew I wanted to do something interesting, and I knew I wanted to work with people. I came from a family of teachers and social workers and didn’t really know any entrepreneurs or lawyers. Then I got into undergrad, and I was casting around thinking what am I going to do? And thought “Oh well, I’ll write the LSAT and I’ll apply to law school and that’ll open some doors. Sure, why not?”
Then I got into law school and found it interesting, but again, still didn’t really have a concept of what a lawyer did. So, I found myself thinking, “Oh well, I’ll join one of these big firms and I’ll work on these deals with major corporations, and I’ll go that route.” And so I found myself articling at a firm in downtown Vancouver. And each day was more and more mystified by why people would actually do this type of work until I got onto my litigation rotation.
So, when you article at a law firm, they send you around to the different departments, and litigation was not an area that I had ever thought was all that interesting. I sort of thought it was like all the lawyers on TV and didn’t really know what they did. But then I found myself working with trial lawyers, doing trials and it felt like coming home. I thought, this is my place, these are my people. So, then it was about figuring out if I wanted to be in the courtroom, and what kind of work do I want to do? I had a little bit of exposure to criminal defense, but that was not an area that I wanted to pursue. I really admire the people who work in that area. I think it’s incredibly challenging and rewarding, but it wasn’t for me.
I also knew that I didn’t really want to go into family litigation. So, I found myself thinking well, what’s left? Of course, I was articling in 2008 and there may have been a major worldwide financial crisis at the time. So, it was challenging to get hired back by the firm that I was articling with because they didn’t hire anybody back. In fact, across the city, nobody was getting hired back. Then I found myself on the open job market with every other law student in Vancouver looking for a very small number of jobs. I was very fortunate to interview with, as it was called then, Hammerberg Altman, Beaten, and Maglio.
Kevin Parton:
Very traditional name.
Morgyn Chandler:
Very traditional name. And it was mostly a personal injury firm and, in the interview, I found myself talking about my passion for personal injury. Well, my inner voice was saying, “Just give me a job.” But it was honestly the best thing that could have happened to me. It really was the best place I could have landed. Because I realized very quickly that personal injury encompasses a wide range of areas, it gives you a ton of courtroom experience. It sounds trite to say, but you get to work directly with people, and you get to help them at some of the worst moments of their lives and actually make a true difference in their lives. So that set me on the path, and I haven’t really looked back.
Kevin Parton:
Well, I’m sure everyone has a unique story getting into it. If you had predicted where you’d end up before you started, you wouldn’t have guessed it. But like you said, you’re happy where you are. The first thing that comes to mind when you tell that story is; well, I’ve talked to many, many lawyers, and some of them have become maybe a little bit jaded about the profession or the work they do or disengaged. And you mentioned that working directly with people has been a saving grace for you. Do you think that might be why some people become less passionate about the profession? Because you lose that human interaction?
Morgyn Chandler:
I think it comes down ultimately to whether there’s a real values alignment and whether you have a purpose in what you do. I do see that disengagement. It is common in our profession as it is in many other professions. Ultimately, I do think that it is a function of people not checking in with themselves, not asking the questions: “Why am I doing this? What drives me? What do I find fulfilling about this? Is this serving me and my purpose?”
I’ve had to check in a number of times over the years to make sure it is in fact still driving me and still aligned with my personal goals and values. And I’ve found over the years that it is and it’s evolved. I evolved from a broad personal injury practice where I worked with people who primarily were involved in car accidents and that type of thing, and my practice now is mostly working in civil sexual assault claims. So, I work with survivors of sexual violence and bring claims against the individuals and institutions that have been complicit in abusing them.
That very much speaks to me and my values and the people that I find myself working with are often vulnerable individuals who haven’t had a voice, maybe they were children at the time, they didn’t have the ability to speak out. Now they’re looking for some accountability. And so, I would never have envisioned myself doing this type of work. But over the last 5-7 years that I’ve been doing it, it really speaks to me, and I’ve found a new passion for the law and for what it can do for people. I think that’s a rarity.
More often than not, people don’t have the agency and autonomy in their careers. Because law, like many professions, is one where it’s easy to get shuttled around into different positions and not have a voice for yourself and think about what you really want to be using your expertise for.
Kevin Parton:
I think it sounds like there’s enough areas in law to start with. If someone feels like they’re disengaged and then you say check in with your values and make sure there’s value alignment. I think for many, the fear is in the question, “Should I be a lawyer? Should I do the thing?” That in itself can be confronting. But maybe, that introspection can mean maybe you’re just practicing in the wrong area. You want to be a lawyer, you want to do this, but maybe redirect yourself somewhere within your field, and so it’s not such a drastic change to the point that you have to reinvent yourself 10-15 years down the road. Or if you were pursuing things for the wrong reasons, be it security or more immediate income, and it puts you in a certain direction that’s not feeding the soul.
But it sounds like you’ve started off on the right foot inadvertently. And now, years later, are really aligning both the professional side of doing well financially and running a firm, but also, doing that while practicing in an area of law that means the most to you. That’s something that can evolve over time too.
Morgyn Chandler:
That is absolutely true, and I think for a lot of people it’s a scary proposition to think, “I’ve invested eight years of my life of school and articles and the financial commitment of doing that. And now to think I don’t want to do this, and I have to start from scratch.” That’s a really scary thought for a lot of people, but there are so many different areas you can practice in. You can also have a law degree and not practice law, and it still opens the door to so many different careers. You can be a lawyer and apply to be a member of a tribunal that makes decisions about residential tenancy issues or human rights issues or strata issues. There are so many different areas that people can go into, but I think fear holds a lot of people back.
More often than not, lawyers do not have the mind of an entrepreneur. They don’t think about reinvention. They don’t think about the next stage in their career. Beyond the thought of, I’m an associate, then I’m a partner, and that’s that. And that’s a shame, because you have so many wonderful people who maybe have these incredible skills that they could be applying but are a little bit stuck. So that’s one of the things that speaks to me in terms of mentoring younger lawyers, is making sure that they’re aware of all of the opportunities that are available to them and thinking outside the box in terms of what their skills mean? You have critical thinking skills, interpersonal skills, public speaking skills, so let’s look at that, instead of just slapping a label on it.
Kevin Parton:
Which I think is huge. Especially the longer you’re in a particular field, the more you start to connect the skills with that field and start to think, I’m only good at this thing versus how are these skills transferable? Then the longer you don’t make massive change, the more you don’t have a story that tells you, you can succeed in that environment, which tends to be why a lot of people don’t change unless some big event occurs that forces change upon them, and then they learn.
I want to start at the beginning now of when you started at a law firm. What was the journey from being an articling student or an associate lawyer to becoming a partner and how did you manage the two different roles? One is a lawyer at a firm doing lawyer stuff and the other, being on the partner track. Where did the entrepreneurial journey fit in there? Because I think those are two very separate tracks. In my experience as an advisor, but also partner at a firm, one is operating a business, the other is operating a practice. So, what did that look like for you and how did it evolve?
Morgyn Chandler:
I was so fortunate in landing at the firm that I landed at, primarily because of the people who were there. The people who were there were already operating from a very entrepreneurial mindset, from a growth mindset. To become a partner at that particular firm, you had to build a book of business. You had to build a practice that became profitable not just for yourself, but for other lawyers within the firm so that you could support the growth of the firm. For me, that just made sense. I’m a self-starter, I’m motivated by a lot of different things, I’m ambitious, I’m driven, and so putting that kind of goal in front of me meant okay immediately that’s motivating. I need to develop my skills. I need to become a great lawyer. But now I also have this opportunity, and this opportunity is entirely within my own power. And that for me, was so motivating. It wasn’t like I have to hit these milestones, and I have to do all these legal things. It was like I can get there as fast as I want to and I’m going to get there fast, and faster than anybody else because I had the ability right away to say okay, I need to become a good lawyer so that I can sell myself. So, then I’m going out and selling myself and I’m really good at that. I’m good at talking to people and I’m good at getting them to trust me and I have an unbreakable mentality of ‘I will get that business’, and I don’t know where that confidence came from.
Kevin Parton:
Just run with it!
Morgyn Chandler:
I ran with it! I had a great mentor and sponsor as well, who was saying from day one “This is what I did, here’s how I did it, but find your own path. You can do it.” Then I was a magpie, going around, picking and choosing what I liked from the various lawyers at the firm and thinking that style doesn’t work for me, but this does, I like how that person’s doing this thing, I like how that person’s built that practice.
A lot of law firms don’t think of building practices the way we did. It’s very much, you’re working with institutional clients, the expectation is that those will get handed down over the years as one lawyer retires. So, you’re trying to woo these institutions and companies, but you’re not out there hustling for your own practice. And I liked the hustle. So, I found myself right away joining organizations that would help me become a better businessperson because I was focusing on law, I knew how to do that, and I had the resources for that. But I had to figure out how to sell myself. What am I selling, what’s my brand, etc. I didn’t have language for it then but that’s what I was doing. So, I had these two parallel tracks where I was learning how to be an excellent lawyer and also building my own book of business so that I could become a partner. At that time, partnership was the ultimate goal.
I never really thought about running the firm. I didn’t know what that was about and I thought that wasn’t for me. But I’m going to be a partner and that’s my goal. So, that’s what I did. And in six years of practice, I built up my skills as a trial lawyer. I also built a practice that was profitable enough that I was invited to the partnership. That was great in terms of meeting that goal. It was so motivating for me for the future. But then, I found after I became a partner and I built this practice that was self-sustaining, I did find myself thinking, “Okay what now? What next?” And I didn’t necessarily have an answer for that question.
Then we were confronted with pretty major changes to the nature of our business and that was an opportunity. Scary for sure at the time, it was very scary, but it was an opportunity.
What happened is, essentially a lot of our business in personal injury was dependent on motor vehicle accident claims and making claims through ICBC. But then the government changed the rules and basically said, “We’re not doing that anymore. We’re moving to a no-fault system”, which means no lawyers are involved. You can’t make claims for damages or compensation. It’s more of a Work Safe BC model where we’ll give you the treatment and care that you need and get you back on your feet, but we’re cutting lawyers out of the system. So, at that point, we’re looking at it and thinking, okay 90% of our revenue right now is coming from the work that we do helping people with ICBC claims. So now what do we do?
Kevin Parton:
That’s a huge number.
Morgyn Chandler:
It’s a huge number!
Kevin Parton:
We’ve talked about this before, where that number probably wasn’t dissimilar for many lawyers or many law firms, there was an entire segment of the market focused on this. What I found incredibly interesting, which I think is also an entrepreneurial trait, is those who have a strong sense of “why” tend to be able to persevere in the face of something like that.
It’s very easy to say no, I don’t care enough or it’s too much work, or I was passionate when it was easy and the money was good, but now things are going to change. So, it can be hard to find that drive if you don’t have a strong sense of “why”. That’s what makes this story exciting. In the face of 90% of revenue coming from a particular area and that well is dry; to say we’re going to pivot an entire firm and navigate other areas of law and become new in those areas of law, is incredible.
So, I’m sorry to cut you off there, but I’m really excited about this having happened and seeing you on the other side. Let’s dive into that now. What was the process of deciding that we’re going to push forward? Was there ever any conversation about throwing in the towel? And building on that, how has it been over the last few years?
Morgyn Chandler:
Yes, it’s exciting now that it’s been five years in the rearview mirror.
Kevin Parton:
Sure is. Post talk. In the moment, I’m sure it was traumatic.
Morgyn Chandler:
Yes, at the time it was traumatic. I think there was a collective moment of silence where everyone in the firm had to take stock personally and say, “Okay what do I want? What’s my next chapter?” Because some of our partners had made their money and they were ready to retire, and they were doing it because they enjoyed it, but they didn’t have to do it. Some of us, who were younger in our mid-30s, and early-40s, got years and years of work ahead of us and we’re thinking, “Where do I go now?”
So, there was that personal stock-taking and then there was a moment as a group, as partners, where we said, “Put it all on the table. Do we fold? Do we run it out and get rid of the files that we’ve got? Do we make money on those and then fold up their tent and go home? Or do we reinvent ourselves?” Collectively, we decided to reinvent ourselves. That was the moment that I was voted in as Managing Partner as well. Which, looking back, was it a vote of confidence or something else?
Kevin Parton:
Totally was, for sure.
Morgyn Chandler:
It certainly was, but I didn’t know what I was getting into at the time, at all. I will tell you right now that building a book of business and building a successful legal practice is very different from running a firm and a lot of people find themselves in the situation that I was in where you’re really good at what you do, so let’s promote you. It doesn’t work like that. Those skills are not always transferable.
Fortunately for me, I was able to make that shift, and I found myself reinvigorated by that. That was the time in my life when my enthusiasm was waning and I was a little bit unsure of what was next, and now all of a sudden, I’ve got this major challenge. I’m basically reinventing a law firm with my partners, but I’m at the helm of this and I have to think where do I start? So, we had a lot of strategic planning sessions together as a partnership and we decided what we needed to do and that was everything; from the types of law that we wanted to practice, to the changes we need to make to our technology infrastructure, to the rebranding that we needed to go through, we were essentially starting a new law firm now.
We were very fortunate because we had the capital and the infrastructure from our existing firm, which was fantastic, but we had to totally reinvent ourselves from the ground up. One of the things that we did was an analysis of what we had and what we do with it. What we had were skilled trial lawyers, absolutely. Then we identified how that translates to a new sector. Just because you’re a personal injury lawyer, doesn’t mean that’s all you can do. So, we started looking around and thinking what is our purpose. We want to help people. We want to make sure that we are providing assistance to people who would otherwise have a lot of difficulty navigating the system. I think people have an idea of what that means and the sort of vulnerable individuals who may have difficulties.
But the law is really challenging and accessing the legal system is a privilege for people. There are business owners, entrepreneurs and other individuals who are highly successful in other areas of their life and are doing well financially, but then they get into a legal mess and all of a sudden, it’s overwhelming and they don’t know where to turn. They don’t know what to do or who to rely on. So, you do need to have a lawyer to help you navigate through that. But you need to have somebody who can also understand what you’re going through.
I think that was what we brought to the table– an empathy and a compassion. We always say, we’re human first, lawyer second. We are excellent lawyers (that goes without saying) but more importantly, we’re people who understand that another person is going through a really challenging time, and we’re going to help with that. That means finding the most efficient resolution to the problem.
The other thing we brought to the table, in addition to our skills as trial lawyers, was creativity around billing. We had never been tied to the traditional hourly rate billing model that a lot of lawyers are tied to. Because we did personal injury, we were more often than not on a contingency which means we get paid if we’re successful. If we’re not successful, we don’t get paid. So, we had to think how we could apply that to other areas of law. We found that there was this gap in the market where other areas of law, like commercial litigation and estate litigation lend themselves really well to contingency litigation as opposed to an hourly billing model. We had the resources to be able to do that and to understand that the law firm is taking a risk because they could be doing work for sometimes five years and not getting paid. Not a lot of firms can do that, and we had the infrastructure where we could. So that was a shift that we could make right away. We also saw that class action work tied very much into our values and was a similar billing model in the sense that you have to be prepared to work on these files for maybe 10 years and not see a dime.
Kevin Parton:
I was going to say, those are long cases.
Morgyn Chandler:
Yes, they are. And not only are you not getting paid on those files for 5 to 10 years, but you’re also carrying the costs of maybe hiring experts, forensic accountants, experts that come with a price tag of sometimes six figures. So, you have to be able to invest in that and not get paid for a long, long time. That’s a challenging undertaking for a lot of lawyers and law firms. We thought, if we do it now we have the ability to take that on. And so, we did. I think the key was not wasting any time. We didn’t sit and think, well maybe it’ll change. This change was thrust upon us, but we embraced it right away. I think that’s a real lesson for people in terms of how you react to change. You can cope with it, meaning you live with it, but you’re sort of fighting it the whole time. There’s still this push/pull and hoping it’ll revert back somehow, or you can absolutely accept it and say this is our new reality. Forget about the past. It’s gone. It’s done. We can’t change it. What do we do with this? And that was very much the mindset that we took.
I think that has been a major reason for our success. This happened in 2019, so we were already embarking on this journey when the pandemic hit. We were already in position to see it as just one more thing – a global pandemic. Throw it on. We got this.
That mindset really helped, because through that time we had changed our name, moved, rebranded, and we undertook learning these new areas of law and hiring practitioners who could teach us. We also purchased a firm on the island. We needed to extend our runway in terms of capital. We knew we needed to invest and one of the investments we could make was in lawyers (and firms) who saw these same changes and chose to retire. We were able to acquire their files that we could see through to conclusion. It was win-win. We were able to extend our reach and allow us to build these other practice areas and get comfortable with those.
Kevin Parton:
That’s exactly right. You talked about how when change happens, you can spend so much time fighting the change, and the coping is oftentimes not being willing to accept that a life or a future you thought was going to happen is no longer going to exist. I had this conversation with somebody the other day. I said you effectively mourn the death of a life that you lived, because if you’ve predicted the future in your mind, you’ve lived it, and now all of a sudden that’s not there. So, you’re mourning the death of something, and it stands true when people die as well. There are some who live in denial.
And I think there’s two parts to that. One is, mourn it, it’s okay to be devastated by something that didn’t happen. But if you’re going to let that determine the rest of your life, it’s not going to get better. And there’s a saying I heard that was just that, “Opportunity sometimes comes in the form of change we didn’t predict”. And you’ve got a certain amount of energy, and if you use the energy fighting the change, instead of leaning into the change, you don’t have energy for the other. So, I think the sooner you can say this is the new reality and take all of that energy that would be put into fighting, and lean in, you could start to create something. Like you said, now five years out, it was tough at the moment, but where you are now isn’t where you would have predicted six or seven years ago. But I would argue it’s a much better place than you thought you would be.
Morgyn Chandler:
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I think my partners would as well. All of us find ourselves reinvigorated by the work that we’re doing by the expansion of our skills into different areas. It’s a much more dynamic and interesting time to be a member of our firm and to be practicing. There’s not one of us who would say we wanted to go back. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend some time mourning. It’s distracting, but there’s a period where you have to go through that process and understand that the reality that you had envisioned is not going to happen. That doesn’t mean that you won’t get to a similar place or get the end result. It means you’ve got to take a different path to get there. I think that for some people, they just get stuck in that and aren’t able to make the shift and move on.
That’s what we’re seeing now in the in the legal world, we’re seeing that there are firms who didn’t make any shift. They are now realizing that the end is here. You don’t have any more work coming from ICBC if you were dependent on that. There’s not some sort of magic reversal that’s happening. So, you have to deal with it and if you’re dealing with it now, you’re five years too late. Because it took us a long time to do it and to get here. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but you’ve made it much more challenging on yourself. So, I think fighting off change and that resistance doesn’t serve you in the long run, but that’s a hard lesson to learn and I do think you have to go through it to learn it.
Kevin Parton:
Totally. And you said something which I think comes only from having to reinvent yourself or pivot. Like I said before, a lot of times this comes from people who experience a traumatic event in their life. When you have to reinvent yourself, you start to learn that your skills are transferable. You’re not just the personal injury lawyer, you’re someone with resilience. Then you trust that whatever future you create is going to be a good one because you’re no longer trying to create a future you can predict. You’re being the best version of yourself today and one day you will get somewhere that you’re proud to be. It seems that it only comes through having to prove to yourself that you can reinvent yourself.
I’m going to jump ahead a little bit, because there’s been two moments in your life where what you thought would happen and what did happen were different. And those are quite pivotal. One is where you thought you might work at a large corporate law firm, and then 2008 happened. The second one being when BC Insurance law changed and then we had the pandemic, and all of a sudden you are reinventing yourself again. So, it seems like a bit of serendipitous circumstance, but like I said, many people get presented with those pivots and they choose the opposite. They cower, or they take whatever the safe route is. I think, going back to you being voted as managing partner of the firm, there’s something about where you see these challenges and think, yes it sucks but how are we going to get through this? You think first of the solution versus the problem.
Morgyn Chandler:
Absolutely, it is 100% your mindset and that is something that I’ve learned. When I look back, those are the two pivotal moments of my career that I absolutely credit with where I am now and I’m so happy with where I am now. But it is 100% about mindset and I think you have to be willing to set aside your ego to recognize that what you thought was going to happen, what you worked for is not going to happen. But you can either sit down and cry about it or you can get up and do something about it and find an opportunity and that mindset makes all the difference.
Kevin Parton:
There was a lunch that we went to where I was able to leverage you having gone through this for a time in my life where I was in that same boat, I wasn’t necessarily willing to let go of a future I thought I was going to have and was in a little bit of self-pity mode. So, maybe some advice I would give if you’re in a moment like that is seeking out someone who’s walked the path before, who can shine a little bit of light and can be that voice of reason when things seem dark. That was really helpful for me and maybe that will be the case for you.
Morgyn Chandler:
Yes. A little bit of self-pity is allowed. Everyone’s allowed a little bit, but it is what you do with it, and I think the difference with you is that even though you were going through that, first of all you have the self-awareness and introspection to recognize it and think, “Ok am I mourning the future that I thought I would have or am I mourning something else?” Asking people about their own journeys and their own struggles helps a lot, but you have to put your ego aside, be willing to listen and to see how other people have gone through it and how that might be the situation that you’re faced with. I think that’s the difference. Having a willingness to engage in a discussion at a difficult time when a lot of people just want to sort of go away and not talk to anybody and deal with it on their own. But you have to be willing to engage and to listen, because that’s probably the biggest thing that can pull you out of those moments.
Kevin Parton:
Totally. Well, you did pivot, and you got into estate litigation as a particular area of law. And this is kind of where the podcast focusing on financial areas and what you do in law intertwines most wholeheartedly. What are some areas that you find would be wise to prepare for, in your experience? And what are some stories of what can happen if they don’t? And maybe lead into that with how was your foray into the world of estate planning and what have you learned through that process?
Morgyn Chandler:
It’s interesting because estate litigation is, on the one hand, highly technical. You’re dealing with trusts, you’re dealing with tax implications, it’s a highly technical area of law. On the other hand, it’s so personal, because at the end of the day you’re dealing with people. And yes, you’re dealing with an estate and there is money and there is property and there are assets. But the key is you’re dealing with a family and you’re dealing with the family dynamics that have led up to that moment. So, when we talk about money, really, we’re not talking about the money. We’re talking about the family dynamics and everything that led up to that moment.
So, it was a great marriage between our technical legal skills and the empathy and compassion that we were able to bring from having worked with people going through really tough times in their lives looking for compensation because of injuries. For estate litigation, we’re dealing with people at a very difficult time in their life. Someone they love has passed away, so first of all, they’re grieving. They’re dealing with that, but they’re also dealing with the family that is left behind and the disputes over what should happen to the estate. So, there’s a lot of feelings, but you also are dealing with all this technical stuff. Having the background of knowing the law, and being excellent trial lawyers and having dispute resolution skills, was a perfect marriage.
So, that’s how we got into it and my partner, Krista Simon, who now leads our estate litigation. That had been an area that she was thinking of moving into and exploring for a few years before we did. Again, the impetus for that change was the change to our industry that was thrust upon us, and it was the push that she needed to make that move. We’ve all talked about this at the firm. It goes to show that comfort is the enemy of growth, right?
If you have no need to make a move, well, why would you? Everything’s fine. You’re good. And then along comes the challenge or the opportunity that you need, and it pushes you out of your comfort zone. As lawyers, we have a certain level of comfort with the law but still, running your first estate trial is very different, even though you’ve run 50 trials before. That was a challenge, but it was a great area for us to move into and very much aligned with our values and our purpose.
Estate litigation has proved to be an interesting area in the province of BC in particular because we have this unique ecosystem. We have WESA, the Wills, Estate and Succession Act, which sort of governs everything to do with wills and estates. That is a statute that has some peculiarities particular to BC – for example, allowing biological children or spouses to challenge a will. This comes up in the media a lot because at the end of the day, a person should be allowed to do what they want with their estate. It is their property, their business that they built. If they want to give it all to one child and disinherit the rest, well, why can’t they do that? WESA seems to suggest that you can’t, that in fact you need to provide some compelling reason as to why you would do that, or the court can actually step in and say, “Never mind that you wanted 100% to go to, for example, your son, we’re actually going to split it between all four of your children.” The court can do whatever they want.
I think some people feel like this is that an overreach. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It means that you have to put some thought into planning. I think that’s where our discussion is really important about what are the misconceptions about estate planning and what are the mistakes that people make.
I think number one is people don’t think about it, or they don’t think about it until it’s too late. It’s having to face your own mortality, which is a challenging thing for anyone. But it is our reality. All of us are going to die. We need to think about it now so that we can prepare for what happens. What I found really shocking is the number of high-net-worth individuals with complex corporate structures with multiple properties and developments and everything else, who have no estate planning. They just don’t have any.
Kevin Parton:
Do you suppose this is one of those things where comfort is the enemy of change? I hear the story time and time again, and I’ve experienced it, where especially if you’ve got a complex structure, you’re busy and you’ve got a million different things calling on your attention, so it’s really easy to say I’ll get to that later. That doesn’t diminish how important it is, but it makes time management a very justifiable reason to push it off. Unless someone dies in your life where you realize what can happen if you’re not prepared, the first time you’re going to be impacted by not preparing properly is when you die, and your family is then fighting over what’s left…
Morgyn Chandler:
…and they’re having to clean up. While I don’t do planning, speaking to my colleagues who do, they indicate anecdotally that a number one impetus for people coming to them and saying, “I need to talk to you about my will/I need to get a will done”, is because someone in their life has died – usually someone who is younger, a surprise, nobody knew what was happening and all of a sudden, your mortality is very much confronting you. But for some people, that is exactly it. They don’t see it as a high enough priority to make the time. It’s one of those things that you put off until you can’t put it off any longer. But people need to think of it as a fundamental part of the human experience. You go to the doctor, you go to the dentist, you get your estate in order, because if you don’t, then the government dictates what will happen to it and that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.
Kevin Parton:
I don’t think people like the government telling them what they can and can’t do for many things, let alone what they can do with your stuff when you’re not around to help.
Morgyn Chandler:
Sometimes, we have clarity at least on what happens if you have no estate plan. But I think an even worse thing that can happen sometimes is that people don’t update their estate plan. That’s a very common issue that we grapple with, is perhaps an individual was married, they had kids in that first marriage, then they got married again. Maybe they had more kids, maybe not. But they don’t update their estate plan, and that includes updating things like the beneficiaries of insurance policies and the like.
So, all of a sudden, you now have a subsequent spouse or subsequent children who are looking at this and saying, “Well, wait a second, that shouldn’t stand, that’s outdated. He did that plan before he even met my mom.” Or whatever it is, and yet you now have to engage in this very expensive and lengthy legal battle to try to set that aside or to prove intentions were different.
Look, I realize like I’m preaching and I don’t necessarily do this, but a will is something that you should be looking at once a year. You should diarize that and note down any changes. Do we have any new corporate entities? Do we have any new properties? Do I have a new spouse? Do we have any new children? Has our executor passed away, or are they no longer comfortable or competent to take on this role?
The choice of executor is a really important one, because first of all, it’s a very involved job. And yes, there is some compensation that they can receive for doing that job. But so often people say, “Well, I’ll just name, one of my kids, or maybe all of my kids, because that’s fair.” Well, that’s a mistake. You need your executor to be able to act and to be able to be nimble in that situation. And if you said, “Well, I’m going to name all three of my kids as joint executors because I want it to be fair.”, then you’re just creating so many difficulties for them after you’ve passed away. And the resentment sets in pretty quickly. All of these factors are things to consider.
I think absolutely at a minimum, once a year, you should be asking yourself if you need to update anything, and if yes, make the time to meet with your lawyer or whoever it may be to help you update your estate plan. That is probably the single biggest mistake that we see is people failing to update their estate plan.
Kevin Parton:
You raised a good point there. For those who do get a will, in many cases their circumstances are fairly basic. They may have a job, keep that job for 20 or 30 years. There’s less that might change on a year over year basis. And if that’s the case that you’re using to justify not doing it, or not updating it regularly – understandable. But if your situation is different (if we just look at business owners for example) there are a number of things that can change year-over-year. We see this with planning. You make projections and goals and then the next year, 15 things are different. Having a regular process by which you’re sitting down, and taking the time to review all of the moving parts is important so that you can go back to your otherwise busy life and focus on all the other things.
I realize we’re short on time here and we should have another conversation very specific to some of these stories, because I’d love to get into them, but I want to wrap this up in the way that I’m doing this now, which is circling back to advice for entrepreneurs.
You mentioned something early on about purpose, which is something that I really try and focus on. The more you can align yourself with a purpose or your values, the more the journey of entrepreneurship becomes both enjoyable and not dependent on a particular outcome. So, for people striving to find purpose, what have you done in your life to take stock and make sure that your decisions are being led by purpose or your values?
Morgyn Chandler:
That’s a great question. I think when I started truly thinking about it, I was always aware that people talked about values and purpose, and to me it was sort of buzzwords in the background and I thought, “Okay, sure.” But I think when you reach a certain age or a milestone, you get to a point where you have more self-awareness. You have more ability to be introspective and you do start to think about what drives me and what my purpose is. But first of all, it’s realizing you don’t need to overcomplicate it. Your purpose and your values can be really simple things, and they are very personal to you. But spending some time doing some reading or talking to people about their own values can be very helpful. Kevin, you and I have talked about this and had lunches where we will sit for too many hours and think about all of these things, but it’s so important.
I also think surrounding yourself with people who share that desire and that curiosity to think about and spend time on these things is really important because just naming and identifying your values is such a huge starting point and then reevaluating that as well. We’ve talked about a lot of re-evaluating, but just like your estate plan, it is important to look at it and say, “These are my values” that I set out. Maybe you’ve written them down, maybe you just have them in your head, whatever it may be, but they do change over time. They change with you. I don’t have kids, but a lot of my friends do, and I know that when you become a parent there is a change in how you see the world and how you approach things. As you get older, maybe you put importance on things when you were younger that you don’t put importance on anymore. One of the things that we had to look at when we were going through this reinvention of Hammerco is putting labels aside because labels aren’t serving anybody. Look truly at the function of what we do and for us, that was very much about wanting to help people. We want to give people a voice. Now that drives what we do and that drives our purpose. I think spending time on that analysis and giving yourself the freedom to think about your purpose and recognizing that this is equally important to your work as everything else that you do.
Kevin Parton:
I think that’s great advice, especially coming from someone who thought they were all cliche terms once upon a time.
The last question from an entrepreneurial perspective, maybe technical, maybe otherwise. What’s the most valuable advice you would share with leaders or entrepreneurs based on your experience now looking back on everything that’s happened in your life and the decisions you’ve made and the lessons you’ve learned?
Morgyn Chandler:
The greatest thing that I can offer is to listen. That is the key. That’s the secret – certainly it has been for me. That is the secret to my success because truly listening means you’re accessing all this information that you wouldn’t otherwise. It can be listening to your stakeholders, your clients, your employees, but you should be listening to everybody because they’re offering different perspectives which is so important. So, you don’t get stuck in an echo chamber. Listen to those offering insight into how we can be doing things differently. I think it’s a natural human inclination if something works to think, why change it? But people from the outside may be looking at that and saying, “Man, there’s a better way to do that”, and you’re never going to know if you’re not listening and you’re not asking those questions.
As a business owner, so much valuable advice can come from your customers and your clients. They’ve seen it-they’ve been on the other side. That was true for me as a lawyer, and it’s still rings very true for me as a Managing Partner. To ask people in the community: What do you think of us? What are we doing that you like? What are we doing that you don’t like? How can we do better?
Our mantra is “Continuous Improvement” – getting better 1% every day, and that is largely because we listen. Then we take what we hear seriously. We think about how we can implement feedback. There’s lots of other things that go along with this, including embracing change and not being rigid, but truly listening is so important. I won’t say it’s a lost skill, but I think it’s really hard to do. It’s really hard to do in this environment where you’ve got so much coming at you all the time. It’s hard to carve out space with no distractions and listen truly and get that feedback and then think about what can I do with that. That is the key to so many great changes that we’ve made.
Kevin Parton:
Alright, make space to listen and actually listen. Great advice there. So, before we wind up for anybody who is listening and might want to get in touch for proactive or reactive reasons, where do they find you and how do they go about getting in touch?
Morgyn Chandler
Yes, absolutely. I love having conversations just like this, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. So hammerco.ca is our website and you can find my contact information there. You can send me an e-mail, you can give me a call. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Morgyn Chandler.
Kevin Parton:
Fantastic, Morgyn. Thank you so much for making the time today. I get the selfish privilege of having lunch with you once in a while and doing this, but I love that we were able to record this and share some of your story with everybody else.
Morgyn Chandler:
Thank you, Kevin. That was great.