Alistair Vigier is a man of many lives. He currently lives in Toronto and owns his own law firm; in 2009, he graduated from Camosun’s Criminal Justice program. Prior to that, he was busy getting shot at in the military. Literally: he was standing near a target in the woods with his troops one day when the crackle of gunfire filled the air.
“When a bullet comes near your face, you can actually feel a whip,” says Vigier. “In the moment, you don’t have time to adjust to anything; it happens really fast. You don’t really understand what’s going on… There’s a lot of adrenaline and confusion.”
Due to medical discharge, it’s been years since Vigier lived the military life; now, he is the CEO of law firm ClearWay Law. And it seems to be working out for him: BC Business magazine put Vigier on its “30 Under 30” list in 2017 (“30 Under 30” is a list that celebrates 30 businesspeople under 30).
He says the time he spent at Camosun was critical to his career path, due in part to the mentality of some instructors.
“[Camosun Criminal Justice instructor Brian Young] was a big part of inspiring me to get into the legal industry,” says Vigier. “I really liked his teaching method. He was really fun.”
Vigier says many of Camosun’s instructors “actually have real-world experience,” which he contrasts to other schools, such as UVic, where a lot of instructors are PhDs and have never actually worked in business, he says.
“They’re totally, 100-percent theoretical,” says Vigier.
Vigier says instructors having real-world stories to back up the course content reinforces for him why people should get an education.
“That makes you more curious about it,” he says.
Vigier says that the law industry is broken; he says that 70 percent of people are representing themselves in court, which he compares to “doing surgery on yourself.” Vigier says people represent themselves because of the costs associated with divorce lawyers, and the emotional context in which clients deal with family lawyers.
“They’re already going through an extremely stressful period of time in their life,” says Vigier, “and the last thing they want to worry about [is] are they getting overbilled? Are they going to go bankrupt because of the divorce and communication with lawyers? It’s very, very messed up. The industry needs to be changed. Most divorce lawyers can agree on this.”
Vigier’s answer is self-represented coaching, which involves hiring a lawyer part-time to teach clients how to represent themselves in the courtroom through a flat rate.
“If you show up in court by yourself and you don’t know the terminology, you can actually turn the judge against you by pissing them off because you’re doing all the wrong things, and that has nothing to do with your case,” he says.
Vigier says he understands why some people might not want to hire a lawyer full-time, but he calls a part-time, flat-fee-based model “a real opportunity that not a lot of law firms are doing.” He also firmly believes that law firms should be owned by people who are not lawyers, thus eliminating potential conflicts of interest. The value lies in combining the skill set of lawyers and non-lawyers to create a better business model, says Vigier.
“Non-lawyers bring a very specific skill set to the law world that the lawyers don’t have,” says Vigier, adding that lawyers are analytical and typically very good at their jobs. “But what they’re not good at is technology; they’re not good at marketing. They’re very cautious; they’re risk-adverse people.”
Awesome job bro