Design and build your law firm in under 90 days

Hi my name is Angus.

I am a director at HouseMe Legal.

I run a boutique property law firm that makes the legal process for buying, selling, and refinancing property simple for millennials in New Zealand.

This is my story.

Since the beginning of my career, I was surrounded by the belief that if you work hard, stay in your role, and make partner then you will be happy. The longer I worked in the legal industry I realised this was not the case.

When I looked at the senior lawyers I knew, the majority had no work-life balance and had fractured relationships with their families and employees.

I realised I did not want to wake up in 10 years and for this to be me.

At the time, I did not know what my options were.

In March 2020, I was about to resign and start at a new law firm. I had everything: the pay rise, the boss I looked up to, and an opportunity to work in a new area of law.
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Then Covid hit.

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My perfect escape plan was thrown into the wind.

The person whose job I was going to take couldn’t go to London. My job offer was rescinded. I was stuck until they could travel.

For the next six months, I held on to false hope that Covid would be just another global pandemic that never lived up to the hype - I was wrong.

I felt like a piece of plankton floating in the ocean going wherever the tide would take me.

I was drifting. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

After the first lockdown in New Zealand ended in 2020, the residential property market went crazy. Everyone wanted to get in on the action and I started receiving a lot of calls from first-home buyers.

Suddenly, I was in high demand.

At the time it was difficult because my old firm was not interested in working with these types of clients - but I was.

This inspired me to start HouseMe Legal so I could exclusively focus on making the legal process for buying, selling, and refinancing property simple and stress-free for millennials in New Zealand.

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12 months after Covid first arrived in NZ, I was re-offered the same job.

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But I turned it down to open HouseMe Legal.

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Leaving my job was daunting. I was staring down the barrel of no clients, no income, no security and no mentor. This was incredibly daunting, but I knew I could do it.

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Most lawyers will give you a one-off 15-minute phone call but are too busy to catch up with you on a regular basis.

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To keep track of the never-ending roadblocks that seemed to pop up, I ended up converting one of my subdivision project management tables into a dashboard to record all the steps it took me to open my law firm.

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Maybe your next step is wondering whether you want to start a firm. I would love to have a conversation with you.

I have made time available in my calendar to talk to anyone who would like to tell me their story and to help them map out their pathway to open their own law firm.

Please reach out and book a call.

Angus