00:00:00 – 00:00:08 Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Leena Hingnikar. Leena, welcome on the show.

00:00:09 – 00:00:10 Leena Hingnikar

Thank you so much for having me.

00:00:10 – 00:00:13 Nitin Bajaj

It’s great to have you here. Let’s start with: who is Leena?

00:00:14 – 00:00:36 Leena Hingnikar

That’s a— that’s an interesting one to answer. I guess if I had to answer it off the cuff, I would say I am a mom first, I’m a wife, I am a daughter of immigrant parents who have very high expectations. And lastly, I am a family law attorney who runs my own family law practice, Hingnikar Family Law.

00:00:37 – 00:01:07 Leena Hingnikar

And I think I would characterize myself as somebody who is deeply interested in human interaction and personal relationships. And I think that family law is really where the law sort of intersects with those human personal relationships. And my job deals with the most personal of people’s relationships, you know, their families, their children, their homes, their money, identity change, and how we sort of deal with that.

00:01:07 – 00:01:39 Leena Hingnikar

And I think that being South Asian, that was not something that I typically dealt with as a child or understood. And that is likely why I went into this field, because I was so interested by it and I wanted to see how other people, not South Asian, and South Asian now as an adult, processed those interpersonal relationships, processed the change. And I wanted to be present helping them to do that. And so that is who I am, in a nutshell.

00:01:40 – 00:01:52 Nitin Bajaj

That’s really amazing. And I love how you delved into the why you do what you do, because that’s what I’m personally very curious about, how people find the things they do and what makes them continue doing it.

00:01:52 – 00:02:06 Nitin Bajaj

Now, in your case, you obviously checked off one of the three options we got growing up: doctor, engineer, lawyer, right? But then you chose a path that’s not really normal for someone in our community.

00:02:07 – 00:02:30 Nitin Bajaj

But also, as you said, you get into the most intricate of emotions and that deep— deeply connects humans at the very fundamental level. And with that, to me, comes a lot of pain and stress. And it’s not something that is easy to do.

00:02:30 – 00:02:51 Nitin Bajaj

So I’m curious if you kind of knew and had a sense of that as you got into this, but more importantly, how did you deal with if there was any kind of pushback from our community, especially your relatives and your parents, in taking this path?

00:02:51 – 00:03:27 Leena Hingnikar

That’s an interesting question. So I will say that I don’t think that growing up I had the lawyer option as part of our, you know, top three, if we had to pick who we were going to be when we grew up. Doctor and engineer were definitely two, but lawyer was not part of the landscape. But my older sister was an attorney. And I think because she’s seven years older than me, they sort of had, you know, their own generation. And there were several of those folks in our— in that— in our community growing up that became lawyers. So then it was kind of acceptable for me to go to law school.

00:03:27 – 00:03:59 Leena Hingnikar

Choosing family law was not in my cards. I had no idea that that’s what I wanted to do. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a child psychologist. I mean, that was what I thought I was going to do when I got older. Eventually went to law school, and family law was honestly the only thing that interested me. In all of the legal subjects I took, in all of the legal-related jobs I did, I really felt like, hey, this is somewhere where I can actually connect with people and have an impact on their lives.

00:03:59 – 00:04:33 Leena Hingnikar

I’m not dealing with just the business. I’m not dealing with other lawyers constantly. You know, it’s not transactional. It’s very interpersonal. And so I— I took this job, my first job out of law school, and I landed with one of the top family law firms in Los Angeles, having no idea who they were. And I will say my parents were skeptical in— skeptical to hated it, I would say, is the— is the range of how they felt about what I was doing with my career.

00:04:33 – 00:05:04 Leena Hingnikar

And I still remember this so vividly. I went to a family friend’s 75th birthday, I think it was, and there were a lot of people there I hadn’t seen in a very long time. And I just started my new job, and every one of my mom’s friends came up to me separately and then in a group to ask me what it was like, what was divorce all about, what were the things that I, you know, were seeing day to day, what were some of the juicy stories that I heard.

00:05:05 – 00:05:40 Leena Hingnikar

And I almost don’t think it was for gossip purposes. It was really because that generation never had this option. And it wasn’t that all these ladies wanted to get divorced. It was that they just, like, had no concept of what sort of went into this process, and they were really genuinely curious about it. And I left thinking, okay, I think I’ve hooked my parents. Like, I think they now understand that this is something everybody isn’t just going to spit on, you know, and say that I’m a failure in my career, but that they’re really curious and interested and want to talk to me about it.

00:05:41 – 00:05:54 Nitin Bajaj

That is so fascinating, but also so true. And I think while we’ve made progress in the last several years, that curiosity, that unknown, is still pretty high up there.

00:05:54 – 00:06:19 Nitin Bajaj

I mean, that’s my perception as an outsider, and you can validate or deny that. But generally, as we are maturing more into that space of openness, I think that stigma around in our community about relationships and— and a lot of that being taboo and almost a black box still continues to be fairly heavy-handed. But I would love to hear your perspective on that.

00:06:20 – 00:07:02 Leena Hingnikar

I think that’s accurate. I find I have a lot of South Asian clients, a lot being a relative term, right? I mean, if you look at the amount of South Asians, you know, generationally who are getting divorced, you know, I represent a fair number of South Asian people. And I think that there is still that stigma surrounding divorce, perhaps a bit less for those of my generation. So I’m right on the millennial Gen X cusp, you know, at 45. But it’s the older generations who are actually getting the divorces now, right? And my generation is just starting to get divorced. And so there is still that stigma.

00:07:02 – 00:07:43 Leena Hingnikar

I do think that a lot of South Asian people seek out other South Asian attorneys, you know, to represent them in the divorce process because they understand culturally the impact that it’s going to have on them, on their children, on their finances, and how this all works. And they understand the, I would say, maybe the patriarchal sort of view of how the divorce process is going to work, who’s going to keep the money versus who’s going to keep the children, right? And they really need somebody who kind of understands that dynamic. And it’s not just going to approach it from a very, okay, this is just the law, this is what it is, it’s very cut and dry, let’s move on.

00:07:44 – 00:07:46 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah, like you said, it never is. It’s—

00:07:46 – 00:08:11 Leena Hingnikar

It never is. And the families are always involved 100%. If there’s a remarriage, the new wife of the husband is completely involved in driving the entire divorce process. Now the husband has nothing to do with it anymore. And so those are just very culturally based things that if you are not South Asian, you basically need a class in understanding how the cultural dynamics work.

00:08:12 – 00:08:24 Nitin Bajaj

It’s fascinating. It’s more science than it’s law, I think, right? And that makes it really interesting. That may also say something about what goes on in my head, but we’ll leave that for another discussion.

00:08:25 – 00:08:49 Nitin Bajaj

Now, I’m curious to know, we started talking about the intricacies involved, which brings me to ask you, how do you measure the impact of your work? And if you can kind of paint a picture of, you know, since you’ve started the practice, how have you driven and contributed to the impact in our community?

00:08:49 – 00:09:20 Leena Hingnikar

So when I started the business, I had no book of business. I left my last law firm and I just took a leap and thought, okay, let’s see what happens, right? But I do feel over the last seven years, there has been this increase, definitely, in the level of South Asian folks that I’m representing. And I think that, you know, my philosophy is a little bit different than I think other attorneys who are in my same field.

00:09:20 – 00:09:44 Leena Hingnikar

My philosophy is how do I make the least amount of impact, right? Because when people are going through a divorce, their entire universe is shifting, right? You’re dealing with people’s homes, their money, and their children. And so those are kind of the three basic necessities of all, you know, humans on this planet who have those three things.

00:09:45 – 00:10:10 Leena Hingnikar

If I can provide clients with compassionate representation, meet them where they are, give them really pragmatic, practical advice to try to help them get to where they need to be with the least amount of damage possible, that’s what I’m trying to do. So it’s almost like I’m trying not to make an impact, but that is the most impactful way to be, I think, a good divorce lawyer.

00:10:11 – 00:10:39 Leena Hingnikar

And, you know, the same thing goes for, you know, when you’re negotiating a premarital agreement, you know, or a post-nuptial agreement. The least amount of waves that you make for people, they can get over this little hump and live their married life happily together. So I think impact-wise, I know that you were probably asking it on more of a, you know, global, how do I measure it in terms of how many people have I impacted? Tons. But I think the least amount of impact I have, the better for them.

00:10:40 – 00:10:58 Nitin Bajaj

Love that. Beautifully said. And that goes to the how you think and look at these things and how you get into becoming, if I can say so, a part of the family, even as it’s breaking apart. So I really love that perspective.

00:10:59 – 00:11:22 Nitin Bajaj

Now, obviously you deal with a lot of challenges, lots of emotions, turbulent times. You know, this is not just life-altering in the technical terms, but maybe devastating for a lot of the people that are going through these tough times. But what is the one big challenge that you face and you want to call out?

00:11:23 – 00:11:38 Leena Hingnikar

In terms of how to deal with clients, in terms of in my practice, what is the biggest challenge I face? I think there’s two big challenges. One is from a business side and one is from a client-based side.

00:11:38 – 00:12:25 Leena Hingnikar

So when it comes to clients, I think the biggest challenge that I face is clients understanding that their divorce lawyer is there to provide legal advice only and to assist with the legal part of the process, but that they aren’t your therapist, right? They aren’t there. And look, because we’re not trained to be therapists, there is somebody who charges much less than I do, who is very well-trained and who has the time and capacity to deal with that stuff. But oftentimes when clients first come in to you, that is a very hard thing for people to separate. And so I think a good attorney knows that that is the difficult thing and needs to figure out the path to unwind those two things while still keeping a good relationship with their clients, right?

00:12:26 – 00:12:49 Leena Hingnikar

And then from a business perspective, I think scale is the biggest challenge that I face. It’s like, how do you provide almost concierge service for people? How do you provide the same level of representation and service and accommodation when you grow, right? You’re not the one who’s there on a day-to-day, you know, speaking to every single person on every single call.

00:12:49 – 00:13:07 Leena Hingnikar

And while that is a goal of mine, that’s something I’m really looking forward to doing. It’s something that I have in my two or three-year plan. That is always the hitch. That’s always the hiccup where I sort of stop and say, ugh, is this really what I want to do? Because I want to keep giving my clients the same level of service.

00:13:07 – 00:13:18 Nitin Bajaj

True. Good challenge to have, but a challenge nonetheless. Now, on the flip side, come opportunities. What’s the one you’re most excited about?

00:13:18 – 00:13:54 Leena Hingnikar

The most exciting opportunity I think I sort of am thinking about is I have recently begun, recently meaning in the last three years probably, doing a lot of premarital agreement work in relation to foreign premarital agreements. So it’s kind of this not super popular area of family law. And I’ve been consulting on a lot of premarital agreements done outside of California and outside of the United States. And the validity of those when it comes to parties getting divorced in California.

00:13:55 – 00:14:11 Leena Hingnikar

And that, to me, is so academic. It’s exciting. It’s a fun, different area of the law where I still think that there is a lot of opportunity to create law and reasoning and new rules. And so that is something that I’m very excited about.

00:14:11 – 00:14:20 Leena Hingnikar

And then the other thing I’m sort of looking forward to is the scaling, developing that business plan and looking forward to that next chapter of what the firm turns into.

00:14:20 – 00:14:37 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Really looking forward to that. And as you said, you know, there is, that’s a new area and there is a lot of need and demand, especially with the migration, immigration, and other things that happens a lot. And I don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

00:14:38 – 00:14:38 Leena Hingnikar

Absolutely.

00:14:39 – 00:15:04 Nitin Bajaj

Now, as we look into the future, I’d like to take this moment to pause and reflect. And I would love to invite you to share two moments from your past life, one where things did not work out as you had expected. There was disappointment, failure, lessons, and another where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

00:15:07 – 00:15:37 Leena Hingnikar

So I will say, with some trepidation, that I think my biggest failure, perceived failure in this career I’ve embarked on, was actually starting my own law practice. I really felt that my last place I was working before this was kind of my home. I grew up there. I had been there for over 10 years. I thought that that was my future.

00:15:37 – 00:16:11 Leena Hingnikar

And I don’t know if this is a commonality in the South Asian community, but in my small community, risk was not something that was applauded. Risk was something that my parents avoided at all costs, right? They were not entrepreneurial. They did not want to take those risks. So leaving that firm to start on my own, kind of out of necessity, right? Because I was just at a place in my life where I needed to do something different for myself. That felt like a failure.

00:16:11 – 00:16:46 Leena Hingnikar

You know, it was a year of twiddling my thumbs and COVID hit right then. So I thought, okay, I guess I’m never working again. You know, it was really, I had no idea what I was doing. But it turned into the best decision I could have made. It turned into the best learning experience. It turned into, I am now in a space where I control my practice. I control who I work with. I can knock on wood, turn away work when I don’t want to do that type of work.

00:16:47 – 00:17:09 Leena Hingnikar

And that is kind of the ultimate goal that you don’t realize that you have is being able to say, hey, I can do this. I can do this in my sleep and I can do it on my own and I make my own rules about how I do it. And so I will say, though, even though it turned into something great, in that moment, I will say that was probably my biggest failure.

00:17:09 – 00:17:11 Nitin Bajaj

So I want to double-click on that.

00:17:11 – 00:17:11 Leena Hingnikar

Sure.

00:17:11 – 00:17:37 Nitin Bajaj

What was the, you know, it’s a fine line between the pressure that led you to believe or think or perceive this as a failure? Because, you know, there are eyes that are looking at you and saying, well, what are you thinking? You’re clearly not thinking. You don’t know what you’re doing. Why would you give up something that is assured you could do that in your sleep, right? So your parents are normal, right?

00:17:37 – 00:17:37 Leena Hingnikar

Yeah.

00:17:38 – 00:17:55 Nitin Bajaj

Mine are the same way. But what was going on? Was that almost like a motivation to prove them wrong? Not in a negative way, but just kind of almost taking that in the sense of, well, no, I want to do this and I want to shut them up, right?

00:17:55 – 00:18:01 Nitin Bajaj

And I’m not specifically referring just to the parents. It’s a general thing that happens in our community.

00:18:01 – 00:18:15 Nitin Bajaj

So what went on in your mind and in your space while you were making the decision, but also when you had made the decision in the first few months or maybe a couple of years as you were figuring it out?

00:18:18 – 00:18:48 Leena Hingnikar

It was probably more within my own parental unit where it was kind of, they were the ones who were the source of, you know, the, oh my God, is this the right decision? What are you doing? What’s going on? It wasn’t really the community at large per se. Although, you know, when your parents are giving you that kind of feedback, you feel it’s coming from the entire community at large, right? I soon learned that that wasn’t the case. It was really just my parents.

00:18:48 – 00:19:16 Leena Hingnikar

And then, yes, I will say proving them wrong definitely became a motivating factor. When I started achieving all of those silly accolades that, like, nobody really cares about, but in the legal field, right? When I started doing that stuff on my own and not with a law firm, you know, that was, you know, the law firm to be at or a highly regarded place or whatever. I was like, hey, look, I’m doing this by myself. I don’t even need all of that, right?

00:19:17 – 00:19:40 Leena Hingnikar

So it definitely, you know, it’s such a silly thing. These accolades are meaningless, right? At the end of the day, I always say that, like, no one is going to talk about how I was the best divorce lawyer on the planet when at my funeral. That’s never going to be the case. So I know it’s not that important, but those little things when you’re working at a law firm are important. You know, they place a lot of emphasis on these dumb things.

00:19:41 – 00:20:04 Leena Hingnikar

And so when that started to happen in year two, year three, year four, year five, I was like, okay, I proved my parents wrong. And even they have since been like, oh, I guess this was good. I mean, I haven’t heard a word about it. I haven’t heard anything about it from them other than, you’re doing great. You’re doing better than we were. And that’s saying a lot.

00:20:05 – 00:20:16 Nitin Bajaj

It is. Yes, I agree. Now, the other part of the equation where you had a success that blew your own expectations.

00:20:16 – 00:20:52 Leena Hingnikar

This is very case-specific, but it’s where this interest in this foreign premarital agreement sort of erupted was I had a client and she had a premarital agreement, you know, done in a different country. And the issue was whether the premarital agreement was enforceable or not in California. And we consulted expert after expert in this area, right? And everybody said, there is no way you’re going to win this trial. There is no way. You should call it now, settle the case. You’re not going to win.

00:20:52 – 00:21:16 Leena Hingnikar

And I said, okay, maybe we’ll try, right? With the knowledge that, of course, you have to make sure your clients are aware of all the risks, but we tried it and we won. And that felt like such a huge accomplishment because it was experts and mentors of mine who had told me, this is not going to work. You cannot do this. And I said, okay, well, let’s see. And I did it.

00:21:16 – 00:21:40 Leena Hingnikar

And that is where kind of this, from that, generated a whole new stream of business I did not even know was something that was a stream of business, you know? And that was very fulfilling for me to feel like I accomplished something in my career that was bigger than or more than where I thought I was going to be.

00:21:40 – 00:21:42 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Congratulations.

00:21:42 – 00:21:42 Leena Hingnikar

That was great.

00:21:43 – 00:21:49 Nitin Bajaj

And I’m also seeing a streak that you just have to be told that you cannot do something and then you just make it happen.

00:21:50 – 00:21:53 Leena Hingnikar

That’s generally how I’ve operated my whole life.

00:21:55 – 00:22:02 Nitin Bajaj

Now, switching gears, what do you do to de-stress, to have fun and, you know, not be working?

00:22:02 – 00:22:08 Leena Hingnikar

To not work. That’s difficult for lawyers to answer. I’m sure you’ve interviewed a bunch of them on this podcast.

00:22:09 – 00:22:22 Leena Hingnikar

When I am not working, I’m spending time with my daughter. I am hanging out with my family. I love going to concerts. I like to read. I cook on occasion. I have an 80-pound dog who I spend a lot of time with.

00:22:22 – 00:22:33 Leena Hingnikar

So those are the things I kind of do to de-stress. Reading is definitely the big picture one that takes me out of general reality and stress and allows me a minute to relax.

00:22:34 – 00:22:38 Nitin Bajaj

What’s your favorite book or at least one that you want others to know about?

00:22:38 – 00:23:01 Leena Hingnikar

I wish they hadn’t made it into a movie, although the movie is good, but now I feel like the book is kind of tainted by the fact that there’s a movie. But Remarkably Bright Creatures was a book that I read about a year ago, and that book stayed with me for weeks after I read it. And I don’t know, nothing necessarily special about the book. I just thought it was such a beautiful story.

00:23:01 – 00:23:03 Nitin Bajaj

Okay. Thanks for sharing that.

00:23:03 – 00:23:03 Leena Hingnikar

Yeah.

00:23:04 – 00:23:11 Nitin Bajaj

Now, onto my favorite part of the show. We call this the one-line life lessons. And Leena, I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

00:23:12 – 00:23:28 Leena Hingnikar

Oh, okay. I had to write these down. So I’m going to scroll down on my computer to tell you what they are. And I really had to think about this because I had no idea what to say at first. But when I really dug deep, I had some.

00:23:28 – 00:24:00 Leena Hingnikar

So I think the first one is that refusing to ask for help is not a marker of success. I think that I am somebody who has a very hard time asking for help and owning my own practice. Delegation, understanding how much I could take on and when I needed help was like key in keeping this practice running and thriving. And in my personal life too. I mean, that’s the way to have a good marriage. So that’s definitely one of my most important ones.

00:24:01 – 00:24:23 Leena Hingnikar

Another one is that people always tell you who they are and that we as humans just like don’t believe it for no reason. And I in my life always try to believe people when they tell us who they are. You believe them. You take them at their word. You’re not going to change them. They’re not going to become somebody different. It just, it is what it is.

00:24:23 – 00:24:46 Leena Hingnikar

This is something that I am taking on with me now in my maybe second half of my life is that I’m giving people the energy that they give me and only as much as they give me because that is really important. And energy is in low supply most of the time. I work a high-stress job.

00:24:46 – 00:25:02 Leena Hingnikar

I guess the next one, this is the fourth one. Work is called work for a reason. So I don’t look at it like work needs to fulfill all things for me. Work needs to fulfill something for me, right? And as long as it does, then I’m successful in my career.

00:25:03 – 00:25:17 Leena Hingnikar

And then the last one is one, you know, I talked about before is that nobody is going to give me accolades for being a divorce lawyer at my funeral. And so I better have something more to show for my life than just my career.

00:25:18 – 00:25:34 Nitin Bajaj

Love them. Every single one of them. Leena, thank you so much for being you, doing what you do, and congratulations on all of the successes. But I also know you’re just getting started. So more power to you and thank you.

00:25:35 – 00:25:37 Leena Hingnikar

Thank you so much for having me. This is great.