Julie Younes & Caroline Willm: reinventing collaboration by creating Willness Partners
Two lawyers share their career, their challenges and their choice to dare: create Willness Partners to reinvent the client-lawyer relationship.
Two lawyers share their career, their challenges and their choice to dare: create Willness Partners to reinvent the client-lawyer relationship.
We offer you an episode animated by Ant Ercin, with two special guests: Julie Younes and Caroline Willm. They come to share their journey, their ups and downs in the firm, and above all, the story behind the creation of Willness Partners.
Caroline explains their choice very simply: both did not recognize each other in the way many firms operate today, especially in the client-lawyer relationship.
- For them, this relationship should not only revolve around money. The customer comes to confide his problems, he needs trust above all.
As Caroline says:
“You won't find your place... unless you create it yourself.”
Julie, for her part, says that from the beginning, she imagined partnering with Caroline — but she didn't really believe it, thinking that it would require too much money and time. They therefore left individually, in collaboration... until the reality of the job caught up with them.
Julie even talks about a real Descent into hell : overwork, lack of alignment with how to practice, loss of meaning. At the end of their respective collaborations, they met again. For Julie, it was almost written: “of destiny! ”
This is where the adventure Willness Partners has begun.
Another striking point in their testimony: the lack of modernization in some firms.
Caroline insists: a good firm is above all a firm that respects the liberal spirit. Simple example: does an employee finish their work at 5 pm? All right, he's leaving, no need for justification.
However, many structures remain fixed in an old-fashioned logic of “schedules”, where we judge those who leave early, even if their work is done.
Creating their own structure was therefore also a way to escape this straitjacket and regain more freedom.
đź’ˇ Julie: listen to each other.
From her first collaboration, she knew that it was not right for her. If she had listened to herself earlier, she would have avoided some negative experiences. His message: trust your feelings, don't let fear get in the way.
đź’ˇ Caroline: dare.
Dare to get started, dare to ask yourself the right questions, dare to structure your project instead of going headlong.
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Find the full episode here and on all podcast platforms!
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