Leslie A Ryland

"I love accompanying my clients through the process of letting go of one life and beginning a new one. I love looking across my desk at a new client and being able to honestly tell him or her that we will make it through this together. And at the end of each case, I have the satisfaction of knowing my help truly made a difference in someone's life." I didn't discover my love for family law until well into my legal career. In law school, the family law classes and cases seemed obscure and remote: dry, dusty discussions of community property, tracing separate property claims, and mathematical formulas for support obligations. As a young attorney at a large, full-service law firm, I accepted the assignments given to me by senior associates and partners. I dabbled in civil litigation, bankruptcy, the occasional transactional memo. When the partner who headed the firm's small family law department asked me to draft a Motion to Modify Spousal Support, I was intrigued. Finally, an assignment that actually had to do with real people's lives. No procedural jousting or lofty academic theories. As I discovered preparing that first Motion and in the subsequent months of additional family law matters, my work had a direct impact on how my clients lived their day to day lives—where the children lived, who got the house, how much money each side had to live on. In those early days, I had lots of legal education, but not so much real life experience. I remember meeting with women in their 40's, devastated by an adulterous husband and the profoundly changed circumstances in which they found themselves. I could help with their pleadings, but I couldn't really relate to what they were going through. The years passed. I left the practice of law for 12 years while raising my own family. Staying home with my 5 kids, enduring the dissolution of my own marriage, living through the circumstances about which I had only read, gave me a greater appreciation for what my clients experienced. When I returned to family law in 2006, my skills were rusty, but my empathy had expanded exponentially. Since that time, my knowledge of the law has grown to match my hard-won understanding of family law's emotional realities. I love my job. I love helping people navigate the system. I love accompanying my clients through the process of letting go of one life and beginning a new one. I love looking across my desk at a new client and being able to honestly tell him or her that we will make it through this together. And at the end of each case, I have the satisfaction of knowing my help truly made a difference in someone's life.