For Daniel Victor, practicing law is all
relative.
After graduating from Vermont Law School in
2002, Victor went to practice with his father, Bloomfield Hills
attorney Richard S. Victor.
In his mere three years out of law school,
Victor, who is a specialist in divorce, child custody, and
grandparent visitation, has the credentials of someone much more
tenured.
Victor, in addition to having three published
articles on families of divorce, has also been asked to speak at
a variety of seminars hosted by various groups and
organizations, including the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association
(on grandparent visitation legislation and joint custody
presumptions in Michigan), The Michigan Family Law Section ("The
Seventh Annual Must Know Divorce Strategies By The Experts
Seminar"), and the Detroit Area Agency on Aging ("Grandparents
raising Grandchildren" symposium).
Moreover, Victor has been invited to be a
keynote speaker on the issue of children's rights in the United
States at the Pennsylvania Annual State Bar Convention.
An adjunct professor of family law at
Michigan State University College of Law, where he taught Family
Law II, Modern Issues in Family Law, Victor is currently
developing a course called Family Law Motion Practice that
focuses on the most common issues family law attorneys handle on
motion calls, which he will pitch to several area law schools.
Victor said he always knew he wanted to
follow in the footsteps of his father, so practicing law was a
natural progression.
"I grew up wanting to be just like my dad and
that pretty much speaks for itself," he said, adding that his
interest has always been in family law.
"I have a lot of experience with family law
just from my own personal history, coming from a divorced
family. I can't tell you how many times just in the past three
years that I take from my own personal experience and apply that
to the practice of family law," he said. "Nothing about
non-adversarial law interested me — I never wanted to be in
corporate mergers, I never wanted to be a tax consulting
attorney. I wanted to be a litigator and I only wanted to do it
if I could use my own personal experience, and that's why family
law appealed to me. Also, that's what I grew up learning from my
father so I knew having that door open to me was a plus."
Victor's passion for family law has led him
to take part in the Oakland County Smile Program, an educational
program held once a month for divorcing parents with children
under the age of 18.
He explained the most rewarding aspect of his
practice is being able to help people that are in extreme need.
"A change of custody is something my office
takes very seriously because we look at it — always — from the
kids' perspective," he noted, adding that before he even accepts
a custody case, he does a tremendous amount of preliminary
investigation to ensure what he is asking of the court is indeed
best for the child.
"I get great people at the worst times of
their lives who are going through tremendous difficulties with
uncertainty of their finances, their jobs, their kids —
everything you would consider to be a day-to-day stability is up
in the air, is unknown," he explained. "To have the
responsibility of helping them through doing it the best way I
know how is the best part of my job."
Q. What has been the benefit of
practicing law with your father?
A. I have been lucky enough to
learn how to practice law in a responsible manner from my dad. I
really don't think if I had learned how to practice law from
very many other people I would be practicing law the way I do at
this age. I think most 29-, 30- or even 35-year-olds are still
learning the ropes from the trial and error that comes from not
having a mentor and someone right next door who's been doing
this for 30 years. The fact that my dad has been practicing law
exclusively in the area of family law for 30 years and teaching
me how to do the same — I've just been like a sponge. Not only
have I been privileged to learn how to practice law the way he
does, but I've implemented it and I've recognized the value of
it.
Q. Was it ever a question that you
would practice with your father?
A. Yes. I think in the past three
years he's fired me four times, and he keeps rehiring me. But
now we're at a point where there's really no question.
Q. What has been the biggest
challenge for you?
A. Professionally, I had to get
over my own ego of thinking that I knew what was best. Although
I'd like to come to my own conclusions quickly, I needed to
learn to take a moment to really listen to the other side, to
really sit down with the other attorney and hear what my client
wasn't telling me.
It's very easy to get wrapped up in your own
client's tale, so my biggest obstacle was to listen to my
client's perspective with a grain of salt and an open mind,
knowing that I probably wasn't getting the whole story, and
taking the time to do a good investigation by keeping an open
line of communication with opposing counsel so that facts that I
needed could be presented to me and I could present those to my
client.
Personally, the biggest challenge was getting
into a groove with my father. We've always been tremendously
close but, for the past 30 years, he has had a mode of operation
that was a churning and well-oiled machine when I got involved
in it. I had to come into a practice that was operating at 100
percent full-steam and I had to find my way. Personally, my
relationship with my father for the first year or so was very
difficult because he wanted me to be at a place where I was
already practicing as I am now. He didn't have the patience for
me to have to learn how to do it, but in the end he had to
realize if I could learn in three years what took him 15, I was
in good shape. We got into a fair amount of arguments and had
personality conflicts in the process of acquainting myself with
the way he practices law.
Q. What is the most important
lesson your father has taught you about practicing law?
A: Number one, most importantly,
never go to court and ask for something that your client isn't
entitled to. That just speaks for credibility. My reputation,
what I hope it will be, is that I have the ability to tell my
prospective client if they're asking for something that's
unreasonable or if it's just purely out of emotion or spite or
revenge after a divorce.
I have no problem telling the client, "I'm
not going to do that; here's what I think you should do and if
you don't want my advice you're more than welcome to drive down
Woodward Avenue and find a lawyer who will tell you what you
want to hear." Just being with dad has given me the opportunity
to tell clients what they need to hear.
Q. You are involved in revamping
the Oakland County SMILE program (Start Making It Liveable for
Everyone). What does the program entail?
A. I'm also the Family Law Section
Smile Program chair for the state of Michigan. The purpose of
the smile program is to help parents who are going through a
divorce see and experience the divorce through the eyes of their
children, which includes — most importantly — instructing
parents on the fact that their children have a right to love
both of their parents and helping them learn how to assist their
children in exercising that right.
A child of divorce is now living in two homes
and that child most likely is not being encouraged to love mom
when the child is with dad and love dad when the child is with
mom. When children are living with their parents in one house
they see and learn it is proper to love both parents, just from
little everyday things that parents do for their children that
tell their children that their natural instinct to love their
other parent is proper. But when you're not living with both of
your parents, you don't get that encouragement.
The challenge that we put to the parents who
attend the SMILE program is, "What are you going to do to
encourage your child to love someone that you no longer love?"
That is the central theme of SMILE because that is how you
prevent children from being put in the middle and from
experiencing conflict. Parents have to understand that what at
one time might have been natural and subconscious must now be a
conscious exercise in facilitation their children's rights to
love both their parents. That is the only way to keep children
out of the middle.
Q. What has been your biggest
victory so far in your career?
A. I want to say being named one
of the "Up & Coming" Leaders in the Law by Michigan Lawyers
Weekly ….
But my biggest victory has been the fact
that, in the past three years, I've only had to try one custody
case from a divorce. That's been my biggest victory — that I
have resolved 99 percent of all of my divorce litigation without
trial. My goal is always to avoid trial. The victory is I've
been able to put my clients' and their children's lives in their
hands by counseling them in terms of what they needed to do to
settle their cases.
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