{"id":16652,"date":"2018-11-07T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16652"},"modified":"2018-11-05T11:58:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T19:58:57","slug":"camosun-criminal-justice-alumnus-gets-accolades-as-law-firm-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/11\/07\/camosun-criminal-justice-alumnus-gets-accolades-as-law-firm-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun Criminal Justice alumnus gets accolades as law firm CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a bullet comes near your face, you can actually feel a whip,\u201d says Vigier. \u201cIn the moment, you don\u2019t have time to adjust to anything; it happens really fast. You don\u2019t really understand what\u2019s going on… There\u2019s a lot of adrenaline and confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun alumnus Alistair Vigier is now the CEO of ClearWay Law (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Due to medical discharge, it\u2019s 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 <\/i>magazine put Vigier on its \u201c30 Under 30\u201d list in 2017 (\u201c30 Under 30\u201d is a list that celebrates 30 businesspeople under 30).<\/p>\n

He says the time he spent at Camosun was critical to his career path, due in part to the mentality of some instructors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[Camosun Criminal Justice instructor Brian Young] was a big part of inspiring me to get into the legal industry,\u201d says Vigier. \u201cI really liked his teaching method. He was really fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vigier says many of Camosun\u2019s instructors \u201cactually have real-world experience,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re totally, 100-percent theoretical,\u201d says Vigier.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Vigier says instructors having real-world stories to back up the course content reinforces for him why people should get an education.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat makes you more curious about it,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Vigier says that the law industry is broken; he says that 70 percent of people are representing themselves in court, which he compares to \u201cdoing surgery on yourself.\u201d Vigier says people represent themselves because of the costs associated with divorce lawyers, and the emotional context in which clients deal with family lawyers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re already going through an extremely stressful period of time in their life,\u201d says Vigier, \u201cand 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\u2019s very, very messed up. The industry needs to be changed. Most divorce lawyers can agree on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vigier\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you show up in court by yourself and you don\u2019t know the terminology, you can actually turn the judge against you by pissing them off because you\u2019re doing all the wrong things, and that has nothing to do with your case,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ca real opportunity that not a lot of law firms are doing.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNon-lawyers bring a very specific skill set to the law world that the lawyers don\u2019t have,\u201d says Vigier, adding that lawyers are analytical and typically very good at their jobs. \u201cBut what they\u2019re not good at is technology; they\u2019re not good at marketing. They\u2019re very cautious; they\u2019re risk-adverse people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-november-7-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16654,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16652\/revisions\/16654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}