Beyond Traditional Law: Angela Giampolo on Passion, Purpose, and Practice

Viktoria Altman: Hey guys, please welcome to the Law Firm Accelerator, Angela Giampolo. Hi Angela, so nice to have you here.

Angela Giampolo: Thank you so much, Viktoria, for having me.

Viktoria Altman: To start us off, could you introduce yourself and, tell us about your practice?

Angela Giampolo: Sure. So, Angela Giampolo and I have my own law firm for the last 17 years, licensed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, and Arizona.

About 17 years ago, I saw a need in the United States for a lawyer geared predominantly towards the L-G-B-T-Q community for all their legal needs. and so I formed Giampolo Law Group as the law firm that would serve them, and then Philly Gay Lawyer

from an advocacy perspective, which is the name that I do my radio shows, books, columns and whatnot.

Viktoria Altman: Awesome. So when you say Philly gay lawyer, are there specific practice areas you focus on?

Angela Giampolo: I coined what I call L-G-B-T-Q law.

And under that is estate planning, adoptions, uncontested divorces, transgender name changes, we do pro bono, and employment discrimination, are the main areas that we focus on.

Viktoria Altman: You emphasized uncontested divorces. Can you talk about why it’s only uncontested divorces for you?

Angela Giampolo: Yeah, so I’m very passionate around uncontested divorces to the extent that a divorce can be amicable, right? If people wanna throw Tiffany vases at one another that they can’t afford, there are plenty of lawyers out there that I can refer them to, but I fought hard for marriage equality for a number of years, and so I’m very passionate.

We’ve been watching straight folks mess up marriage for 400 years, so I wanna do things differently. We do marriage differently. my four people walked me down the aisle at my wedding and we had a drag show at the end of the wedding. It was a three day wedding culminating in an all day drag show,

so we do marriage differently. We do life differently, and I’m passionate around doing divorce differently, so I educate. my clients around all of the creative ways in which we can do divorce amicably. it’s not always easy, but at the end of the day, if they’re committed to an amicable process,I help get them there.

And estate planning very similar. A lot of my folks don’t want to get married, and so from an estate planning perspective, there’s a lot of unique nuance documents and adoptions, the only way that we’re forming families in some way, shape, or form is through IVF, surrogacy private adoption, foster adoption, so that it is a big portion of the family law.

And then I do a lot of,prenups and postnup Again, L-G-B-T-Q folks have only been allowed to marry for 10 years, so a lot of them are older. I was 38 when I got married and owned multiple properties by then and my business and this and that. And even, straight folks,

the national, marrying age now is 31 for men in 29 for women. So people are meeting with 401Ks and all of the things. I always tell folks, everyone has a prenup, if you’re married, it’s whether or not you wrote it or the state in which you live in

But if you get divorced, we’re reading something, and the divorce code is meant for everyone in the state therefore meant for no one. And so who better than to write your own divorce code, than you and your partner. When it’s phrased that way from an empowering place, a lot of folks think a prenup just becomes a brainer.

Viktoria Altman: I love that.

That is such an accurate quote, but also such a good thing for other divorce lawyers to maybe using their own practice. Everyone has a prenup, whether you wrote it or the state wrote it for you, you have one. Brilliant, I love it. It makes sense as somebody who’s been divorced,

Angela Giampolo: Right

Yeah. the other way that I describe it is, especially for folks who have never been married, if you’ve never done something before, if I’m gonna have board game night and you’re coming over to my house and it’s a brand new board game hot off the presses still shrink wrapped, right?

And we unveil the board game. What’s the first thing that we’re gonna do?

Viktoria Altman: Try to wing it.

Angela Giampolo: Read the instructions right.

So you’re gonna do this thing called marriage play this game that you’ve never played before. And so why not write your own, rule book?

We signed one a couple months ago, and this couple their, happy Place is Provincetown which is a little gay mecca mainly for summer.And they’ve been every year for the last 14 years, they’ve been together for a while. And they put in that if someone throws in the towel, that even if it’s February, they agree to put away their phones, turn off the white noise, go to P-town and discuss how they got there, right?

And you’re taught in the law not to put in unenforceable provisions in an agreement, right? But they wanted that in there. And so I, I added a whereas clause, Making it clear that it was unenforceable and I can’t call the cops. just because Patrick said Scott won’t go to P-Town,

There’s nothing that I can do to make him go to P-Town. But if 11 years from now they get divorced, I hope that they go back and read that and see that, and remember the intention with which they added that and the love that they have for one another when they put that together and, if folks could channel even a fraction of the love that they have for one another on the way out of a divorce, that they had on the way in, there’d be a lot more amicable divorces.

Viktoria Altman: I really like that. It sounds like you really do your best to just lower the temperature and that can be so important with divorce lawyer. When you have two divorce lawyers who are trying to lower the temperature, that can make it much better for everybody involved, especially if there’s children, for sure.

Angela Giampolo: Absolutely. Yep.

Viktoria Altman: So you have a very cool, niche for yourself. You’ve created this niche for yourself. And that, brings us to the next question. This is a podcast about marketing, and I know you are an expert in marketing, so can you tell me a little bit about what kind of marketing efforts have been most successful for you

Angela Giampolo: Like to me, the number one component of quote unquote good marketing, is attracting people who are going to enjoy working with you and repelling people who won’t enjoy working with you.

I remember one of my first offices was in a suite of multiple lawyers and, I would always get gifts, in the receptionist that we all shared was like, Angela, why do you always get gifts? And everyone else gets hate mail? And I’m like, because my clients like me,

flowers are coming in, wine, chocolate, all of these things. I’ve never seen a lawyer get so many gifts. And I’m like, my clients like me. You go on my website and there’s two minute video of me welcoming you, giving you a snippet of what it’s like to work with me.

So what aspect of marketing has been most successful for me is really just being myself, authentically. every time I do anything on social media or any video, it’s, I. not scripted, I’m not reading,

it’s not, forced and, I think about what I’m gonna say, but at the end of the day, I say it, coming from my heart and people gravitate towards that. Also my social media is for better or worse, like Gloria Steinem said, the personal is political,

And so for me, the personal is professional. I joke that I’m gay for pay. in the sense that, everything that I do is L-G-B-T-Q. My office is in the gay hood. My UPS woman is gay, my landlord’s gay, like all the things. And so you’re on my social media and you’ll see me on vacation

at Pride, I do Pride festivals. I go live at Pride. And so people see the real me I’m RBG for Halloween, and I’ll do will signings dressed as RBG. And my personal is professional instead of political. My personal is professional and vice versa. and again, I think people gravitate towards that because they see the human side and

they already know, and trust me, which is the number one component to, turning a cold lead into a warm lead without you having to nurture them in any way is for them to go to the internet, And all platform social media. And they can already get a sense of my personality of what it’s gonna be like to work with me long before they’ve ever reached out.

And then the second piece to that, is I niched down 17 years ago when it was not okay to be gay in any way, shape or form in most places in the United States and I remember I had mentors and advisors that were like, Angela, you’re, you shouldn’t brand yourself as Philly gay lawyer,

you make up 7% of the population. How are you going to eat? You’re gonna repel 93% of potential clients right off the bat But I trademarked, the riches are in the niches. And it’s very true because people Google, they see me on social media and they have already self qualified

When they reach out, I never have no shows. They always show up and it’s because it’s so clear what I do, that before they reach out, they’ve already decided that they need the service and they’re reaching out to just form that engagement.

The niching in and of itself, first and foremost, Like I could just niche and leave it at that. And then I niched. And on top of that, I’m very authentic in all of my marketing.

Viktoria Altman: So there’s a couple of things you’ve said that are very interesting, and there’s a couple of things that I’ve heard from other extremely successful folks.

One thing I think you didn’t mention, but you implied it, is that you have a very long-term view of your practice. When you build your practice, you didn’t build it for a month, you didn’t build it for a year, you built it for decades because it sounds like you wanted to be able to continue to specialize in this, and that allowed you to turn away some cases, some clients who weren’t the right fit for you, but it also prevented burnout and it created a better,

reputation for you. Because it’s when we take the client, we know we shouldn’t be taking that our reputation gets burned. Yeah. Because we know every time, I’m not a lawyer, but I work with lawyers and I’m like, I really shouldn’t be working with this person.

And you never regret walking away from something.

Angela Giampolo: Yeah, so let’s hone in on just that piece, because I think not enough lawyers set out when they either open up their firm or if they’re part of, a firm and need to market themselves.

I think the first step is getting clear on what you want, your journey as a lawyer to be. What you want to look like. So when I opened up my firm, I was very clear, like you said on what my vision was, not just for the law firm, but what would make Angela Giampolo happy to exist as a lawyer.

And that meant no litigation. I knew that I wanted to be able to create a firm that would be successful regardless of where I was in the world long before Covid, 17 years ago. So that meant that litigation wasn’t going to be something that I would do personally.

It just, that wouldn’t make me happy. So I got clear on what I would love and then built the firm around what I would love, and then the vision for the firm, secondary to that.

I’ve always been a happy lawyer and I’m always telling students, who come to me, should I apply to law school? And I’m always the one saying yes, because I love it. But at the same time, not enough folks actually get clear on what they would love.

They just think I’m a lawyer and lawyers do these things, and so this is what I have to do. And next thing it’s 11 years later and they’re not as happy as they otherwise could be. Just wanted to expand on the vision pieces. I had a vision for the firm, but I also had a vision for me.

And how I was gonna be as a lawyer.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah. That, certainly makes a lot of sense. And I know there are folks listening out there who are trying to figure out their vision. and talking from my perspective, I run a marketing agency and I’m very particular about the clients I will take, I’m very particular about the work we will and will not do.

And in the end it comes down to what makes Viktoria happy, because I like to work with people who are easygoing and I like to work with people who will give me the opportunity to do my job rather than stand over me. And I like to work with smaller lawyers because that gives me the ability to really help them.

And rather than dealing with a lot of red tape, I can actually do things. And I think for any entrepreneur out there, whether you are an attorney or not, it’s very important to figure out your vision first. And you may not be able to turn away a case initially when you first open, but when you have that clear vision and you know that’s where you’re going, as soon as you have that opportunity, you know you have to start, moving towards your vision.

Whether that’s baby steps or whether you got lucky and found your amazing clients right away like I did. Whether that’s giant leaps one or the other, you have to move towards your vision, but you can’t move towards something unless you have it, then you just don’t know where you’re going you’re just wandering around And so you have this very long-term perspective and you have a niche that you love and that you feel very passionate about, which is, again, you are lucky to be in that position, I’m lucky to be in that position, but a lot of people don’t have that niche that they feel so strongly about.

What would you suggest for those people who are lawyers now and who are trying to find their niche. What would be a good way to find it?

Angela Giampolo: I would start with an internal exploration, Because first it stems from, coming up with your perfect client avatar.

Especially a couple years in, when I crystal clear on my perfect client avatar, they were clients had become friends and I, downloaded their Facebook picture, like the actual,two or three clients that were the perfect clients.

So wasn’t just, when you do marketing exercises and it’s like, Sophie is 44 no, actually make it tangible. If you’ve had a practice or you’ve been in practice for, anything more than six months, you’ve had someone that you loved working with, right?

Hone in on what it was about that real client that you worked with, that you loved. Whether it was, like you said, I don’t wanna be micromanaged if it’s about how the client is and nothing to do with the niche or community or anything like that, but just how the client is. Just get clear on a real client that you served and what you loved about it. And that will get you 30 to 40% of the way there. Because now you have something tangible that you’re like, I want a hundred of these clients, and then delve further. So what do you love? Do you. love baseball. I had one lawyer friend who loves gin and he’s become a specialist in gin distillery.

There’s so many micro distilleries out there now. He’s like the go-to for micro gin distilleries. And it doesn’t have to be a large community.

Where do you flourish? Which communities do you flourish in? Take a hobby and turn it into the perfect client. There are so many aspects about yourself that you love, where also you will be relatable.

My friend who represents gin distilleries, when he goes and tastes the gin, the clients love that he’s a connoisseur of it and that their lawyer is not just some lawyer. That their lawyer is relatable.it’s so personal, but that’s what makes it so that you will find your perfect client base as opposed to just throwing a dart against the wall.

okay, that’ll be my niche, Or just saying I do corporate law, there are a ton of lawyers who specialize in that. How can you drill down even further and in my opinion, you wanna drill down so far that someone’s looking at you and is like, why would you only wanna work with 7% of the population?

When you’ve drilled down that far, then you’re basically the only lawyer catering to those people. And when a hundred percent of those 7% call you, it’s actually a lot.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah. It’s a lot of people. So really good advice there. Take your ideal client, an actual person who you’ve actually worked with, and you don’t have to work in your own law firm with that client.

That could be, your client you worked with right out of law school, and then you come to somebody like myself and it’s so much easier for us to design conversion elements To, get better pictures to, to make sure we appeal to that specific client. And we can actually even ask that client, “hey, what do you think about this verbiage?”

Which is not something we can do when we are trying to grab everybody in the world. And I think that’s something that really works super well and so few people do it. Now, there are many ways to, I don’t this phrase, there are many ways to pet a cat, right? So there are some people who do very well appealing to a broad segment, but there are not that many people who do very well

doing what you do, being very niched down and I think it’s only because people are just not trying it. They they get into a practice, they have a good life, and they forget to find that happiness. But what’s the point of, We spend so much time at work, you gotta be happy doing this stuff.

Otherwise, what’s the point.

Angela Giampolo: Right? Imagine if every single day you woke up and worked with clients that you loved working with.

Viktoria Altman: I do. And it’s a great life. You wake up and you’re like, yes, I get to be myself today.

Angela Giampolo: Exactly.

Exactly. And that only happens if you have people constantly reaching out to you that

you know you’re already gonna love, and it’s because you’ve set your whole marketing to attract that. And to your point about working with folks like yourself,target marketing, once you hone in on who that person is, with the way ads are and Facebook like Viktoria can just deliver a whole bunch of people who fit that exact demographic. But first and foremost, what are the traits and characteristics and demographic information to hand to someone like you. I think it’s best served by first doing some solo reflection,

and then you can just dive in and get strategic and technical

Viktoria Altman: You need to know where you’re going before I can really dive in there and I actually get calls all the time from new lawyers who are just starting out.

And I will take every call. I’m happy to talk to people, happy to give them advice, but I will usually turn them down because I don’t think they understand their market. And if you don’t understand your market, I’m not gonna understand your market and you are not gonna be happy in the end. And it’s just not worth it.

You know what I mean? so I often will say to new lawyers, figure it out first. Figure out exactly what you want, and then call me back in six months or a year, and I’m here to give you advice. But I can’t take your money because I don’t know what to give you. I don’t understand.

Right.

So you’ve done a lot of things You’ve been very successful. Tell me about the least successful thing you’ve done in marketing

What would you say? oh, I shouldn’t have done that.

That’s a hard question.

Angela Giampolo: I would say it was spending a lot of money, on, a marketing campaign, that I was sold into let’s put a ton of reels out there.

And then they produced all of the prompts and we spent three days filming, imagine three days completely out of your business, from nine to five. I knew I wanted reels. I’ve been doing everything myself and,

and it was like, okay, let’s do this marketing campaign. But I shouldn’t have left the prompt creation up to them.

And I spent an exorbitant amount on this like real campaign that still hasn’t even launched. I haven’t even put the reels out and into the market because I’m not a fan of them.

I’m sure that would’ve worked for somebody. And it could have worked for me if I had taken the hours, to really hone in on the prompts There was nothing natural about the whole process. and so I ended up not putting it out to the world.

Like I didn’t like it, it wasn’t me. It would’ve been a complete demarcation from anything anyone knows about me on social media. Just didn’t fit But I gave it a shot. if you’re clear on how you portray yourself on social media,

and whatever your stance is, if it’s super formal, then seeing you in a pool on vacation is gonna be like super weird if you’re always in a suit And for me it was the flip of that, it was something completely different,

and I didn’t listen to my gut. But then I’m like, do something new. Try it. Reels are all the rage, just do it. I would say the takeaway is stay true to your marketing

’cause people want consistency above all else, and they can sniff that out like right off the bat.

Viktoria Altman: So a couple of things there. I find that it is incredibly hard to do good social media from outside the office, and the reason why is because you are very authentic and the people who do social media well are very authentic.

And the only way for you to portray yourself authentically is for you to be you or for somebody who knows you very well. So what I found useful, especially for attorneys like yourself who do have a longer sales cycle, is to consider hiring somebody who would work with you next to you. Younger,

the younger the better because they know all the tiktoks and all this stuff. And have them internalize your message, your environment, your unique sales proposition and have them do the work.

Instead of putting it on a person who has never met you or met you for three days, have somebody who’s worked with you for six months and somebody who’s on the same wavelength as you.

And there’s many amazing recent college graduates who would love this job and would love to work with you. So that’s a something for you to consider in the future. You don’t have to do it yourself.

We don’t do social media for humans. We do social media for ai, but not for humans, and the reason why is because I just don’t think I can deliver an authentic product that’s going to generally convert the people that you need in the long run. And I’m sure there are agencies who do it, but overall, I would say bring that in-house, whereas things that are extremely technical, like ad management and SEO and web design that you don’t need to do in-house, that you should outside of your, office because it is very technical, it’s more efficient.

Angela Giampolo: What do you mean by social media for ai, but not for humans.

Viktoria Altman: So when I. Publish a blog post, let’s say on your website. I could just publish a blog post and then nobody knows about it, maybe somebody will visit it. But what I do is I actually tell, and by I mean my team of 15 people, not me personally.

I tell Google, I tell Facebook, I tell Twitter it exists. So when we go, we post,a little blurb from your blog post on Facebook, and then we link back to it. we post a little blurb on Twitter, link back to it. We post a little blurb on your Google My Business listing, which is owned by Google, link

back to it. We create a video using AI technology, based on your blog post, which is just reading the text, because you’ve already approved that. We post it on YouTube and Google owns YouTube. So Google now is informed that this blog post is prominent enough for various entities to have it on social media, and then we link to it.

So anytime we create a link, it’s like a vote of confidence. When you have back links, multiple back links from YouTube, from Twitter, from Facebook, even though they’re generated by our property, by your law office, that still tells Google you are working on things, you have active social media presence.

So we are not looking to convert people I’m not counting people converting because you posted a blog post. I’m counting people converting because you go online and you talk about something really cool and people see you and see a smiling face and they like you.

But having those blog posts there is helpful to give, google and,all the social media knowledge of what you do, where you are,how you practice. So all those things ideally should be done every time there’s a new piece of content on your website.

And that includes Pinterest. It includes a whole bunch of other properties as well.

Angela Giampolo: So additional eyeballs, right? It’s not meant for conversion per se, direct from A to B, but additional eyeballs and by default authority, both Google authority as well as from the human seeing it ’cause it’s oh wow, they wrote this The long term result of doing that consistently is eventual conversion in some way, shape, or form.

Viktoria Altman: Exactly. I have an attorney, Russell Knight, who is in Chicago. He’s a top divorce lawyer in Chicago.

We don’t write anything for him. He loves writing. God bless him. He will post the blog posts and all we do is we go and we create all of these different social media properties. We also do a pr every time he posts a blog post, anytime any one of our clients gets a blog post, we do a press release.

We post it all of social media. He does exceptionally well based on just that work alone. For most of the clients, we write. But because he doesn’t want us to write, we do just that work. And it works really, it works to the point where he had to take a year break because he couldn’t hire people fast enough.

Yeah. So he just came back a few months ago. So yeah, it works really well. So that’s a tip for anybody out there.

Angela Giampolo: No, that’s awesome.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, he’s got, he hired six lawyers in a year. So I think he’s good.

Awesome. Thank you for letting me rant about marketing. I love this stuff and I’m like, I get very excited about it.

So to get back to you, you have been very successful in scoring some really major media coverage. I know you have a unique niche, and not everybody does, but could you give some advice to other lawyers out there who would love at least a quarter of the media coverage you’re getting and how can they get that?

Angela Giampolo: Yep. There are sources out there, there are a ton of CLE providers outside of the top three, like NBI and Lorman, outside of those, there are so many CLE providers that are starving for content from lawyers.

They do a lot of what, you said in terms of it goes out to the world, it gets indexed. You’re getting your name out there as an authority. And use the gin distillery example. But to even if you do something not, not unique in the sense of I’m a divorce lawyer.

Pick a very specific nuanced area of divorce law. Maybe something in the law that just changed and use a company like yourself to send out press releases to. 10, CLE providers and become the expert in that new area of law, Powers of attorney laws changed in 2018, and I sent out, to all of, CLE providers, I can talk about Act 95 and they’re like, love it.

So it’s a gold mine to go to these CLE providers and say, I will be an instructor for you. And then you get to put that on your website and on LinkedIn. I’m a faculty and this, that, the other, and I wrote, all the things. so that’s low hanging fruit that I feel like anyone tomorrow could go out and do and be speaking on a topic next month.

Also writing. so I write for online periodicals, But just like Russell Knight, it can be your blog, Just start writing and Google indexes it, LinkedIn indexes it, but start writing And don’t write about just general stuff. Write about very specific nuanced stuff because then someone will Google that, right?

But if you just write about divorce, it’s like you’re competing against a million other lawyers writing about divorce, If you write about international cross-border kidnapping in a divorce, ,something so random that maybe only happens out of 2% of all cases. But now that gets Googled and you’re the one popping up because you wrote four articles on it or something.

Googling, publications in your practice areas and reaching out to them and say, would you like a reoccurring columnist, at no charge, just to be able to advertise. And so I have a lot of gift in kind things like that where I don’t pay for advertising in certain, magazines, but I’m giving them content.

And so by virtue of me having content on there, it’s like an ad for me. I didn’t pay 750 bucks for the ad. And it’s more than an ad because I’m providing value to their readers.So writing, really just being proactive.

also we’re lawyers, we’re advocates. So depending on what you do, reach out to the antithesis who hates your side, if you will. So I was a Fox News analyst. They loved me. Really? Fox loves me. there aren’t many L-G-B-T-Q legal advocates reaching out to Fox saying, I’ll be your person.

But I wanted to be on CNN or this or that, They’re a dime a dozen. Yeah. But who is me reaching out to Fox saying, I will let your audience beat me up for four hours, and it did when marriage equality was happening, I did a four hour block, 15 minutes in random cities around the country and for 15 minutes I was just

fielding, the craziest, sometimes most hateful questions I was on religious radios. It’s an audience, it’s a listenership, right? So I’m not thinking that the audience of Fox News is gonna reach out to me and I’m gonna become their lawyer, but it’s how I get to repurpose and says, as seen on Fox News, as seen in the Wall Street Journal as seen on.

So then you get to add those badges to your website, add authority, and then someone like yourself, repurposes that content. and just the words that came out of my mouth and the fact that I was on the radio. If you’re creative, regardless of who you serve and what practice areas you, you are in

there’s low hanging fruit for media, for

all lawyers.

Viktoria Altman: That’s brilliant. Some great advice, some very unique things I haven’t heard before. I love it. So we don’t have much time left, but I wanna talk to you about Caravan of Hope. Can you tell me a little bit more about this?

Angela Giampolo: Yeah. So I keep my marketing very simple, right?

So it’s literally what it sounds like, it’s a caravan, 32 foot RV that I took cross country, last June, 5,000 miles, 14 cities providing pro bono legal services to the L-G-B-T-Q community. at a time when the human rights campaign had declared a state of emergency.

For travel for L-G-B-T-Q folks. Last year there were 535 anti L-G-B-T-Q bills introduced, and as of May of this year, we already surpassed that. So we’re on pace to be over a thousand anti L-G-B-T-Q bills by the end of this year. this June, I purposely took off,to prepare for next June to do it again, but so the Caravan of Hope is,

a nonprofit that I founded when, the anti L-G-B-T-Q sentiment got really bad, after the 2016 election. And, does exactly what it says, I took it cross country and provided pro bono legal services

In the 5,000 miles that we traveled, the 14 cities that we stopped in,the word law or legal is not in the name, It’s Caravan of Hope. if you didn’t know that it was legal in some way, shape, or form, that’s not readily apparent by the name. And my biggest aha or takeaway at the end of that trip was that the most hope

we gave folks were the ones that we could not help legally actually. But that just by listening to them and making eye contact with them and hearing their story for once, like in the middle of Alabama and in the middle of Tennessee and these places where it’s not okay to be out. That we were a resource.

They would come on the caravan. I had a documentarian on board. And I would give folks 15 minutes with a documentarian to tell their story. I have chills. and I would see their shoulders go up from being like all tense to walking out of the rv, relaxed and smiling, and these were folks that in no way, shape or form could we actually help legally.

But just by being willing to listen to their story and legitimize it, normalize it. Accept them, love them, we gave them more hope than I realized. So it, it was definitely a transformative, amazing month. I never thought that I’d survive 30 days in an RV with three people and Nico, my chihuahua came, he was co-pilot.

and we’ll do it again next year. And my vision for that is I’ll have lawyers all over the country willing to do their caravan in their state that I don’t have to travel the whole country in one rv, but that there’s 50 caravan of hopes, all over the country serving the L-G-B-T-Q community in areas where, it’s not as easy to be out like it is here in Philadelphia.

That’s great idea. And, it’s,

yeah. I also have chills. I. So you,

Viktoria Altman: you mentioned working with lawyers all over the us. Now I know that you also work with lawyers all over the US when you don’t have the caravan going.

Can you talk a little bit about this?

Angela Giampolo: Yeah, so serving a small community, about eight or nine years ago started to realize that I was needed well beyond the states in which I’m licensed.

And hired an ethics lawyer. We worked through the. ethical potential landmines, that all lawyers have to be cognizant about. But, when folks want to work with me and it’s in a state that I’m not licensed,

I then reach out to a lawyer in the state. We co-counsel. and the client is clear in the engagement letter that I am a legal consultant, that is not a retainer agreement, I’m not a lawyer. but if they want to work with me directly, then we can work together as a legal consultant.

And then Viktoria, who, I know you’re not a lawyer, but we’ll just pretend so then Viktoria is the licensed attorney in Oklahoma. That is making this possible and she will bless the documents or any of the transactional work that I do in about 14 states in which I’m not

licensed, but yet I work with co-counsel and then that relationship turns into a referral relationship. Like I have one out in Colorado. They now need to do a, confirmatory adoption. So while we did the estate planning together, I can’t step into a courtroom. Out there and nor would it make sense to travel and, getting me admitted Pro Hac Vice and all, just for an adoption.

So I then formed these long-term relationships with these lawyers all over the country. And now my contact in Colorado is handling the confirmatory adoption. And so it. It. Yeah, it is made for an interesting, unique, way to continue to grow my practice and work with folks that I love.

Viktoria Altman: Another great idea.

You have really good entrepreneurial ideas, and I like how you combine, doing good with also really great marketing. It’s a unique and rare skill. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Law Firm Accelerator, Angela, thank you. I really appreciate it. I appreciate all the tips you’ve shared.

Angela Giampolo: Thank you so much, Viktoria.