Once you’ve earned your J.D. and start practicing law, achieving a work-life balance is of utmost importance. How is that achieved?
Enter Laura Cowan, Esq., CPA. She is an estate planning attorney, entrepreneur and founder of 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer. Her latest book, “Lifestyle Lawyer Revolution” aims to help lawyers redefine success, revolutionize their legal career and reclaim their life.
Cowan worked as a CPA for prestigious financial institutions, including Ernst & Young and Goldman Sachs, before attending law school at age 35. She then went on to build her own seven-figure estate planning law practice in only three years.
During the pandemic, Laura channeled her financial stress into a solution and retooled and revamped every part of her estate planning law practice into a virtual business model, which was extremely successful.
She created 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer to teach lawyers how to build a virtual estate planning practice. For nearly three years, 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer has disrupted the traditional estate planning model, teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial attorneys her secrets to success.
She was named a Rising Star Lawyer by Super Lawyers six years in a row and has been featured twice as a “Top Woman Attorney in New York” in the New York Times. Laura received her B.S. in Accounting from Iowa State University. She received her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.
About her book
Cowanprovides a solution to the two options many lawyers think they face: to either practice law in a way that guarantees burnout or leave the law entirely. The daily grind, competitiveness and resulting stress create an environment where lawyers can’t see their way to a new path practicing law. Cowan shares that by embracing shifting norms about what it means to be a “good lawyer” and leveraging the freedom of remote work, lawyers can redefine their practice while making a great living and delivering exceptional service to their clients.
The book provides the “how to” for running a law firm like a business: prioritizing increasing revenue, building the right team and finding fulfillment in work. Cowan’s innovative framework shows lawyers how to thrive, whether they’re starting a solo practice or refining their existing firm, using a holistic approach that prioritizes mental clarity, work-life balance and personal fulfillment.
Below is an excerpt from the book.
Stop doing what you’ve always done and being what you’ve always been, so you can get and be something more …
I launched my law firm in the heart of New York City in 2016, diving headfirst into estate planning like everyone else: face-to-face, in person. Sure, we had the tech for virtual meetings (Zoom’s been around since 2013), but let’s be real—it wasn’t “socially acceptable.” Nobody was dropping $5,000 on an estate plan without first shaking your hand at the office. If you wanted to make it in this business, you met with clients in person, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and worked nights and weekends. That was the game.
Then March 2020 hit.
New York City shut down overnight. I moved to Rhode Island to quarantine with my Dad, and I’ll never forget sitting at his kitchen table, staring at my laptop, thinking, “How the heck am I going to get clients now?” It was terrifying. No roadmap, no precedent, just bills that needed paying.
So, I got to work.
Educational seminars became webinars. Client meetings? Zoom calls. The ubiquitous office whiteboard turned into a shared Excel sheet. Contracts were signed online, payments processed by credit card.
Every single step of my practice had to be rethought, retooled, and revamped. And it needed to be done quickly because I still had Manhattan rent to pay. When the dust settled, I had something entirely new: an A–Z roadmap to a fully virtual estate planning practice, battle-tested in the legal trenches of New York City. And as the world began to wake up, I noticed a trend. Lawyers everywhere were asking, “How can I do virtual estate planning?”
Enter the 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer.
The 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer is a reflection of my post-COVID reality: $10,000+/month in revenue from serving clients virtually and working only a couple of hours per day. It is my answer to the “new normal.” A normal where part-time lawyers are the rule, not the exception. Where the advice given from a Parisian café is just as powerful as what you’d get in a boardroom. Where technology isn’t the enemy, but the ally that gives us our time back, letting us focus on what really matters. A new normal that delivers five-star service to clients, even if you’re only serving a few each month. A new normal that lets you live a life you love without leaving the law.
… a life I love, you say?
Yes. More fulfilled. More connected. More relaxed. More engaged. More in control. How does that sound?
Let’s face facts: Law school doesn’t ask you (and wasn’t intended to ask you) what you want out of life. It doesn’t prepare you to run your own business, navigate the hierarchy and politics of a big firm, or convert leads into clients. It doesn’t prepare you to send clients to collection agencies or to handle them when they start screaming at you about something over which you have no control. It doesn’t prepare you for a lead who won’t fill out a questionnaire or who cancels their meeting at the last minute after you’ve booked a babysitter. I could go on and on. These are all things that add to “little t” trauma.
The 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer program doesn’t treat the symptoms of “little t” trauma. Instead, it treats the root cause of dissatisfaction with the legal profession: the overworking as a badge of honor, the chronic state of hyper-alertness that destroys your mental health and eats away at whatever self-care you’re able to manage, the billable hours dilemma that ensures you get paid but also saps any sense of flow and connection you have, and the drift that likely started in law school away from your values to the values others say matter.
At 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer, you are supported through the process of exploring what you want out of life, your current reality, and a way forward based on a proven, tested path to a career that serves you rather than you serving it.
In the post-pandemic environment we now live in, we show you how to capitalize on AI, technology, and team-based solutions that get you out of the trenches and into a life you love.
We help you develop a full and attentive relationship with your energy and your time: How you regain control of how you spend it and bill for it, how technology and well-defined support roles can take back your time, and how you implement tools and strategies to spend it in a way that feels meaningful to you.
Not me.
You.
The premise of 2HLL is that you decide what “success” looks and feels like. You decide if you work 10 hours a week to support your family or 90. You decide if you want to work virtually or from an office (or a combination of the two!) You decide if you want to meet with clients every day of the week or just on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. You decide if you want to serve two clients per month or twenty. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life or structure your practice. I am here to show you that options exist.
A 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer is a lawyer who has chosen to define success in a different way from the way she (or he, or they) thought she had to when she graduated from law school. A 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer has chosen to build their own path, to serve the populations and communities they want to serve while utilizing technology, appropriate staffing, and time management tools to maximize their productivity, work the hours they want to work, and provide excellent client service.
In short, a 2-Hour Lifestyle Lawyer is a lawyer who lives a life they love without leaving the law.
The book is available on Amazon.
