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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