In this episode, Alay Yajnik and Elizabeth Green Lindsey, President of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and Shareholder at Davis, Matthews & Quigley, discuss:

* How Elizabeth leveraged social, political, and attorney relationships to build a book of business in a new geographic area in just three years
Business development for new attorneys
The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers

Alay Yajnik: Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage, your source for biz dev tips, wisdom and inspiration. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik. We’re unleashing your inner rainmaker in three, two, one…..
Alay Yajnik: And it’s my pleasure to welcome to the show, Elizabeth Green Lindsey. Elizabeth is a shareholder with Davis Matthews and Quigley in Atlanta and is also the president elect of the AAML, which is the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Elizabeth, how are you this morning?
Elizabeth Green Lindsey: I’m doing great, thank you.
Alay Yajnik: Thank you. I’m doing really well. Also. See, I was already answering your question. Thanks for being on the show today. Really appreciate you taking the time and joining us.
Elizabeth Green Lindsey: Well, thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Alay Yajnik: So tell us a little bit, if you will, about Davis, Matthews and Quigley, what they do and then what you do for them.
Elizabeth Green Lindsey: Sure. Davis Matthews and Quigley is a small law firm in Atlanta, Georgia, where we focus on families with wealth and we can manage and handle almost any controversy for a family except for bankruptcy and criminal law. We do tax trust and estate work, commercial real estate, some residential real estate, disputes with neighbors. And a large segment of what I do is solely in the area of family law.
Alay Yajnik: So just if you could tell us a little bit about your career trajectory, how you got started in family law, what you love about it, and then how you grew your career to become a shareholder at this firm.
Elizabeth Green Lindsey: Yeah, let me start at the beginning. You know, people wonder why you go to law school and I don’t have a great story for that. I was coming out of college with obviously a pretty good student and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So I decided to go to law school. And in law school, I engaged in a class called Civil Clinic and in that I represented a client in a matter involving usury. And as a law student, we sued the finance company, and we won and we got attorneys fees. And in that particular case, whatever doubts had about being a lawyer, I was on fire. It was just great to represent somebody who really needed help and had been taken advantage of. From that experience, I knew that I needed to do something fast-paced and people-oriented. So the options probably were criminal law or family law at that time. And I chose the path of family law, started my career in Charlotte, North Carolina, at a small firm and practiced family law. And from that moment on, I’ve loved it. And so I’ve been fortunate that I have had great mentors and great experiences learning about family law over the course of the years. And family law has really emerged. When I started practicing law years ago, there was pretty relatively simple. People usually had a house and maybe a retirement. But as things have moved on, people have much more varied interests. We have businesses that need to be valued. We have commercial real estate partnerships, trust, estate, executive benefits, all types of very complicated issues. Plus, you tie into it all the personality issues that come along with a divorce and the reasons for the divorce and the custody issues and dealing with people’s personality and their children. So it’s a great way to have a lot of interests every day. And what you do, that’s never the same day and you’re helping people in...