On the Couch |Christine Sedrak | Anchorage Legal | McNeill Real Estate
Recently we were delighted to have Christine Sedrak of Anchorage Legal, a local Family Lawyer, as our guest #onthecouch. Christine spoke about how she specialises in guiding her clients through the difficult time of separation, giving them all the tools they need to make an informed decision regarding their future.
In particular, her business focuses on ensuring couples are given the opportunity for mediation to achieve the best outcome, without resorting to expensive Court proceedings if they can be avoided.
If you are separating and not sure of what the next steps are, contact Christine for some great legal advice.
McNeill Real Estate are delighted to be hosting local business owners, identities' and personalities from around the Mornington Peninsula, to share their great products, services, and events with others.
This idea to share came about when the team, Janet McNeill and David Kershaw, realised that during the course of running their own business, they were meeting so many amazing people with great stories, that they wanted to let others know what was on their doorstep.
If you would like to be involved in sharing your own story, contact Janet or David to discuss further.... we cannot wait to meet you!
Videos are uploaded every Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe to our channel here to learn all about the Mornington Peninsula, how to buy, sell or rent and meet some fascinating people!!
Janet and David
JANET: Hi are you looking for an amazing family lawyer who is actually going to work for you and make sure that you have the best outcome? Well this video is all about Christine Sedrak from Anchorage Legal.
JANET: Welcome to another episode of On the Couch with McNeill Real Estate. My name is Janet and today I'm delighted to introduce Christine Sedrak from Anchorage Legal. Christine provides family law services, Wills and Estate services, to people on the Mornington Peninsula and beyond. So welcome Christine.
CHRISTINE: Thanks Janet and thank you for having me.
JANET: So Christine tell us about yourself and your background.
CHRISTINE: So I have been practicing law for for 10 years now. I found myself very early on in my career in family law and along the way learnt other bits and pieces in different areas of law and about four years ago decided to start up Anchorage Legal. Hit the ground running from there.
JANET: Yeah fantastic! So why why did you decide to start Anchorage Legal?
CHRISTINE: I had gone on maternity leave, I was pregnant at the time, had twin girls and decided I wanted to come back to legal, but I didn't want to come back to working the standard law jobs of 8 am to 8 p.m and then travel time. And I was offered a few positions in the city, which would have required me to leave home at six in the morning, get home by nine o'clock at night and I just wasn't prepared. You never see your family, no. So I decided to just start up very slowly. Didn't expect it to grow this much and it just picked up from there. Until you know I ended up with an office in on Main Street and busy, busy!
JANET: That's fantastic! So obviously you started Anchorage Legal, but what is your sort of business philosophy.
CHRISTINE: So the idea behind Anchorage Legal was to empower our clients to be able to make their own decisions. I guess there's a reputation for lawyers to kind of direct and tell you what you need to do, rather than giving you the options, and giving you the advice and letting you make your own decision. And I just wanted to move away from that idea and that clients know that, as lawyers, we're human! We need to be, we need to empathize with our clients, and let them know that we understand.
JANET: Okay that's great, so as I was saying before it's, you know I do have a legal background, so I've sort of worked in lawyers offices in the city for many years, so and what you tend to find when you're talking to people, is that you know, you know friends who are separating, whatever they all go "oh no don't go to a solicitor because you know they could all they're going to do is make matters worse and and get things, people fighting each other and the only winner of course is the lawyer". But this is completely different.
CHRISTINE: No and and look, a lot of the time I see, for example, separating couples that say -we don't want to go to a lawyer, we want to do, we want to do it ourselves, we want to do it amicably, and I always say to these clients I have no problem with you choosing to do it that way, but just know what you're entitled to so that, you know in years down the track, you don't come back and say I wish I'd seen someone and just got the advice. I don't you know, you can do the rest to yourself and I usually direct my clients, that there is a lot of the process that they could do themselves. But just get the initial advice, to understand.
JANET: Yeah that's that's terrific! So what sort of services do you provide?
CHRISTINE: So we're largely a Family Law firm. We most of the lawyers that work with me, have only ever really practiced in family law. And we also offer the extension of Wills and Estates planning. Because Wills and Estates and Family Law work together, hand in hand.
JANET: Yeah that's true, yeah yep that's true. I think one of the first things you do when you separate, is change your Will.
CHRISTINE: Absolutely absolutely and you'd be surprised a lot of clients actually forget.
JANET: Another thing that I noticed is that you've called yourself, or described yourself, as a collaborative lawyer, tell me what that means.
CHRISTINE: The old concept of legal and how lawyers operate is, we sit behind a computer, we fiercely type on a keyboard, and we have word wars! I suppose. The collaborative approach tries to veer away from that a bit, where we have lawyers and their clients join an almost a roundtable conference and a mediation type, yes it is a mediation approach, but rather than looking at rights and positions, we look at what each party wants to achieve and what their interests are in doing that, and trying to reach an amicable resolution, rather than spending a lot of money fighting litigation. You know correspondence, all of that and essentially achieving the same outcome.
JANET: Yeah and emotion gets involved a lot doesn't it?
CHRISTINE: Absolutely absolutely and I always tell my clients look, you come to me with a lot of emotion, my role here is to take out the emotion, and give you the the the facts, the advice the advice.
JANET: Yeah okay so who would be your ideal client and you know how can they actually benefit from your service?
CHRISTINE: I can't really tell you who an ideal client would be. I often see, and there's one particular client that comes to mind. She initially came to me at the breakdown of her relationship and she was broken, and in that first appointment and I still recall the first appointment very clearly, she was very very broken and I remember seeing her on the last appointment when she said to me "I'm empowered. I'm strong. I'm good" Yeah and that's what we try to do. We try to help those clients. We try to give them the strength, so that they they overcome their emotions, while we overcome their legals. And then at the end of the process, they're in a in a stronger situation, and they can understand that actually they there is survival after!
JANET: Absolutely, a lot of them don't think there is survival. Having been through it, you know, you think your life is over! Absolutely. Because what you thought what you planned for your future isn't there anymore - it's like everything's just taken away.
CHRISTINE: So yeah yeah it can be really hard. But it's really good to have those clients that will take on board your advice and you know really put their trust in you. And then you see them come out the other side that's beautiful. That's the best part. Although they end up saying we don't want to see you again but that's part of the job it's mixed.
JANET: So obviously there are a lot of legal firms who offer the type of services that you do what makes some Anchorage Legal different?
CHRISTINE: I guess we we really try to put ourselves in our client's shoes. I've had several cases where clients will come to me for a second opinion and it would be very easy for me to tell them, you know, what you're lawyers not doing a good job - move your file over here - there's been a lot of circumstances where I've said look I think your lawyer's actually doing the right thing. It's good that you're seeking, you know another point of view. But if you come to me it's gonna cost you this much for me to get up to date with your file and I would prefer that you look after you. Rather than moving your file and me looking after me! So we really try to get into our the shoes of our clients. And really feel what they feel. We also try to continuously grow ourselves in in the law, and the law is always changing. So we're we're doing you know, we're very high on education and and bringing ourselves up to speed as to the changes that are happening in the law.
JANET: Okay that's great because there's so many different changes happening all the time.
CHRISTINE: All the time absolutely yeah that's true.
JANET: So Tell me about a time when you have actually helped a client and sort of what effect it had on them.
CHRISTINE: look like I mentioned before, there's a lot of clients I see at the beginning and they say to me but I just can't see a way out of this. And the there was a particular couple of clients recently who said to me, I recall right at the beginning you told me that this would be the outcome. Unfortunately with both of those clients, we had a difficult party on the other side, that just did not want to engage, refused to to correspond, refused to get involved in the process, so that we could resolve it amicably and unfortunately in both of those clients we had to issue proceedings and interestingly enough we I've resolved both of those matters within a week of each other, and both of them have said to me right from the beginning you told me that this was the outcome I was going to get. Yeah and great they were they were they were impressed and I was very pleased.
JANET: yes that's great because they felt like from the beginning I thought you were given the right advice all the way through yeah and held their hand the whole way through. That's right yeah, and like I said that towards the end, they're empowered, they're stronger than you they realize, that you know even though this process was very overwhelming for them, they've overcome that process.
JANET: Yes that's absolutely brilliant. Yeah they must feel amazing.
CHRISTINE: Yeah and look it's a very stressful and emotional time. As lawyers we just need to focus on our clients and just make sure that we've taken on how they feel but also given them very clear advice throughout the way.
JANET: Yeah okay that's great. So Christine how do people find you?
CHRISTINE: We're located on Main Street. 328 Main Street in Mornington. In Mornington. But we've got the website Anchoragelegal.com.au. Clients often get referred to me through facebook pages, that I didn't even know existed, because someone's referred to me on this.
JANET: Yep brilliant Facebook's amazing.
CHRISTINE: Google, we have a we have a page on Linkedin. We probably need to be a little bit more active than that. Yeah so and you know phone numbers, emails.
JANET: Okay so Christine what do you do when you're not working?
CHRISTINE: Well I have two very young twin girls, they're four years old. We love spending time with my husband and my and my daughters. We like to travel, although in these times no one's really traveling, because we've all been curtailed haven't we! Yeah really sad and just relaxing on the Mornington Peninsula. We love, it out here and my husband and I both work on the Peninsula. And yeah just enjoying our family.
JANET: That's good so what part of the Peninsula do you love the most? Oh that's a tricky question well you've got ,you've got all the beautiful wineries and you've got Portsea and Sorrento. We often go out there and and go to the beach and but we we're very very beach beach side.
JANET: Yeah that's brilliant. Yeah okay that's brilliant. Thank you for joining us Christine. So that concludes another episode of On the Couch with McNeill Real Estate. Stay tuned for further episodes, and subscribe to our channel and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Bye for now.
