Speaking recently on the Boutique Lawyer Show, Ms Bosnjak outlined why she started her firm amid border closures — and why it has been an extremely worthwhile venture for her.

Ms Bosnjak first developed an interest in migration law while in law school and working with a barrister on immigration matters. From there, she landed a job at a BigLaw immigration firm, which she said taught her a number of things.

“BigLaw really teaches you to manage your workload because generally, it’s massive to manage whatever your WIC report looks like and to manage humans because you’re generally working with a lot of people in a fairly intense environment, and trying to manage personalities and manage the ways of working with different peoples is definitely something that you learn. It also helps identify what the benefits are of training, and really highlights how important templates and precedents are.

“Smaller experience, though, was a total flip side. I think [it] gives you a more commercial mindset or understanding of what comes in, what goes out, how things are generated, why things are generated, what is a lead, what is sales, what is marketing, all of these things that, working in big law, you don’t really have to do deal with, because leads just fall in the door in a lot of BigLaw firms, because of the brand, because of the marketing,” she said.

“So, I had the benefit of getting bits and pieces [from] both, which was awesome, but I think like many lawyers, I became a bit disenfranchised with the way that my legal career was going. I wasn’t feeling overly happy. I wasn’t feeling overly acknowledged, and I didn’t really know what the next step looked like, so I did an MBA as something a bit different, and the purpose of that really was to break out of anything to do with law, and potentially move out of law, and was a bit of a life game changer for me really.”

The MBA has also been extremely useful in starting her own firm, Ms Bosnjak added.

“Being a practice owner is more than just being a good lawyer. I think that that is probably the key message that people need to ensure that they know the business of law, they know how to do marketing, they know how to do it,” she explained.  

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“I still am struggling with the way to do a financial forecast, and all these crazy things that you need to do, because you are everyone when you start a boutique practice. People that haven’t started yet maybe are under that beautiful bliss of ignorant thinking that it’s going to be that easy. I’m starting a business to earn more money and have more time, which is a total myth, but a much more rewarding process in my view than going to work every day for someone else.”

Following her MBA, Ms Bosnjak set up her firm, Passage Migration Consulting, in 2021 while borders were still closed.

“Setting up an immigration practice in the midst of a pandemic while international borders weren’t even open is a questionable decision, but we got there. I would say that I’m still in the building phase, but things are really starting to kick into action now, and it’s 18 months in.

“The why of it [sic] really for me is to be able to design my own work life, and that, for me, is having some sense of financial security, but also having some sense of good mental health. I feel like it deteriorated a lot for me towards the end of when I left private practice, and it’s really important to me that that never happens again. The idea or concept of burnout is real,” she said.

“But from a client perspective, the idea was really to improve the customer experience. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of situations where migrants are put in positions [where] they don’t have all the details or they’re just making silly decisions based on whatever information they do have, so one of the main values of my business is to educate people and to ensure that they have all the facts, all the information they need, to really create the best outcomes for themselves, based on a whole future plan, and not just on what’s going to happen next week.”

And moving forward, Ms Bosnjak said she’s extremely excited for the future of her firm — and firms like it, too.

“The future is bright for micro niche firms in my opinion, because I’m excited, I’m passionate about what I’m doing, and when I talk to any of the people that are in my circle of, that are practising in firms that are tiny like mine or working up into that slightly bigger size, they’re excited too,” she added.

“Because they’re getting to do law in the way that they want to do law, and practising it in a way that is really customer-focused, and has this really new law feel of automation and colour and personality and fun rather than the old picture of big law that we all had to subscribe to when graduating.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Rachael Bosnjak, click below: