Can a challenging career in family law still pave the way for a truly wonderful life? Retired Judge Julie Field and Heidi Webb, co-founders of the Consilium Institute, welcome family law attorney Stephen Vertucci to discuss a transformative approach to legal practice.
Stephen, an early adopter of the Consilium process, shares how he shifted his perspective from being mired in negativity to finding re-energizing purpose—seeing his work as “a part of the creation of two families, not the breakup of one.” Dive into this candid conversation to hear Stephen’s key advice for professionals on protecting their mental health, the importance of breaking bread to settle cases, and the powerful message behind his favorite movie of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life. Learn how to find a better, less conflicted path for your clients and for yourself.
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Listen to the podcast here
It Really Is A Wonderful Life! A Candid Conversation With Attorney Stephen Vertucci
Welcome to the show. This is the series for the Consilium Institute. I am retired judge Julie Field, and I am here with my partner and colleague, Heidi Webb. We are the co-founders of the Consilium Institute. We are so excited to have as our guest Steve Vertucci, who is an attorney and one of the early adopters of the Consilium process as a practicing conciliant practitioner. Steve, thank you so much for being with us.
Heidi, Julie, thank you for having me. It is a pleasure.
Let me tell the world a little bit about you before we launch into our conversation here. Steve, you have been a family law attorney for 22 of your 24 years in practice, and you were a prosecutor before that, if I recall.
I was. It seems like nine lives ago, but yes, I was a felony prosecutor in Maricopa County, down in Phoenix, in the early 2000s.
Since then, you have practiced in the Chicago area, Phoenix, and Colorado, and you have been in Colorado since about 2007. Steve, you have had a solo practice since 2016 here in Fort Collins, Colorado.
That is right. We are celebrating ten years this year.
You were born and raised in one of my favorite towns, the Windy City of Chicago. I want to talk a little bit more later this afternoon about your hobbies, which are movies, old-time radio shows, and, of course, spending time with your wife and family. Steve, we are just very excited to have this conversation with you, and thank you so much for being here.
You are welcome. This is my first podcast, so bear with me.
We are honored that you chose to be with us for your first podcast. This will be a really fun conversation. I just know it.
You talked about some of your different practice backgrounds, being a prosecutor and in different areas of practice in different places, and currently you are a solo practitioner. What are some things that you learned from some of those experiences?
The first thing that comes to mind is that I am so happy where I am now in northern Colorado. Practicing in Chicago and in Phoenix, it was downtown urban areas, and I practiced for ten years in Denver. In Northern Colorado, it is a small group of attorneys that practice family law, and we constantly interact with each other. There is some, there is just more collegiality, a little bit more professionalism because you know you are going to be dealing with that attorney around the corner in another case.
Whereas when I practiced in Chicago, Phoenix, and Denver, you may have a case against someone, and you will never have another case with that person. It might lead to a manner of practice that maybe you would not do if you are going to be dealing with that attorney over and over again over your career. I am really pleased that this is where I have been, and I am happy to be here.
What was the first firm that you worked at, and were there any particular lessons you took from that?
The Importance Of Mentorship And Client Perspective
For anybody in our audience who might be in law school or thinking about going to law school, or maybe your first year or two in practice, I had a professor in law school. He taught a bankruptcy course, and he said some things to us. It was the third year. He said some things to us that really stuck with me and some other classmates, that he ran his own firm.
He gave us a suggestion. He said, “When you are looking for that first job, do not look for the highest paying job out there, although it will be tempting. Look for a job that is willing to be patient with a first-year associate. Look for the job that has the best community of mentors who are going to be willing to teach you and be patient with you.” That was the best advice I was ever given. The first firm I worked for in Chicago, I want to give them a shout out here, Sullivan, Taylor, and Gumana, some of the kindest, most patient family law attorneys I have ever come across.
When looking for your first job, do not chase the highest salary, no matter how tempting it is. Choose the place that will invest in you, mentor you, and patiently help you grow. Share on XThey just taught me the fundamentals. They were willing to take the time to teach me the fundamentals. One thing in particular that family law attorneys out there taught me is that you have to remember the person that you are meeting with in a consultation. You have to remember the courage it took for them to get to that chair in your office.
They had to get up that day, get their sons ready, get themselves ready, drive to your office, park in a parking spot, wait in your lobby, and then sit in your office to discuss one of the most personal things someone could ever have to share about the breakdown of a marriage and share it with a perfect stranger. That is a perspective I learned at that first law firm that I do not know if I would have learned at a different type of firm, at a higher pace, or at a bigger law firm. It was a small firm that really took the time to teach.
I love that about what you are saying is that it is really from the client’s perspective that you are thinking about the experience. Often, lawyers are trained sort of top-down transactionally, what they should do procedurally or in terms of filing things with the court or presenting an argument or all sorts of skills that lawyers need to develop, but to actually pause and say, “Think of the courage it took for someone to sit before you today.” That just speaks volumes about both who trained you and that you remember it, and that I am sure it continues into your practice today, but that is so quintessential about someone’s experience when they are talking to someone for the first time.
I agree. Also, the person you are meeting with can hopefully sense that you understand that perspective, and it gets the relationship, the attorney-client relationship, off on the right foot.
What brought you into family law in the first place? You went from being a prosecutor to going into family law. Why that change? What was it about family law that made you decide that this is where you wanted to be?
Transition From Prosecutor To Family Law And The Role Of Empathy
I get asked that quite a bit. I saw that people I worked with at the prosecutor’s office had been transitioning to family law firms. The people who did leave the office transitioned to family law. When I would speak with them, I would ask them, why did you go into family law? Is it a huge leap? Is it a big change? The feedback I gathered was in family law. Unfortunately, you are going to spend a lot of time in court, and the trial skills you learn as a prosecutor transition very well. It is not all just about trial skills.
You have to be willing to roll your sleeves up and empathize with clients and understand their perspective, where you did not always have to have that perspective as a prosecutor or a criminal defense attorney. The combination, I think, using the trial skills I had learned as a prosecutor and then just knowing my personality and background and upbringing, I just sensed that getting involved with families, getting involved with domestic violence victims, standing up for the little guy, I thought it would be a good transition for when I was interested in it, and it worked out.
You talk about going to court, right? That prosecutors in your office said that the skills are transferable from being in a criminal case to being in a family law case. Is that your experience as well in terms of being in court?
I think so. You have to be cognizant of the issues you are going to court about, because if you are going to cross-examine a sympathetic spouse, taking an aggressive approach, you may have cross-examined a criminal defendant. You’d better adjust it when you are going to be cross-examining someone in a family law case. The issue spotting, the impeaching credibility, those types of concepts transfer well, but it is not 100% transferable because you have to adjust. You have to adjust in light of the issues you are litigating, but those cross-examination skills you learn as a prosecutor come in very handy.
It sounds like the technical skills transfer well, but the software or the pieces that are more human-focused are different.
That is a great way to put it.
It is interesting to distinguish what you are doing in both courtrooms. In a criminal courtroom, it is, I do not want to say a one-off, but it sort of is. You are litigating something, and these people are not hoping to meet again. It is really the opposite. They may be hoping they do not meet again, but they will meet again and again. The question, I think, or the takeaway often for lawyers is, how do we contribute to that, or how do we make that worse for families by our presence in the courtroom?
Two things come to mind with what we are talking about. I remember having a family law case in Arizona. It was a relocation case where my client was the father. The mother was trying to relocate the kids all the way to Florida. It was early in my career. I remember getting up for the opening statement, standing at the podium. I was prepared, focused. I turned to my right for whatever reason. I just turned to my right to look at my client at the trial table, and he was clutching a photograph of the kids, and he was trembling.
His hands were trembling holding the photo. It took my breath away for a moment. That is, in a nutshell, that is the difference between prosecuting cases and family law. You have to remember the emotion of what you are in court about. It is not just about whether a crime occurs or not. It is not a civil suit between company A and company B. This is about families, it is about kids, and you have to maintain that perspective.
Really recognize the long-term impact it has, especially on a removal case, or, for people who are listening who may not know what we are referring to about removal cases, legal language to say that one parent wants to move out of the state that they are living in with the other parent to another state and take the child or children with them. I experienced something last week that was really moving.
It was at a conference that had a panel of young adult children who had been the subjects of contested custody court trials. They were speaking about what their experience was with the court system, how it impacted their relationship with their parents, their siblings. It was really powerful. It is really unusual. I do not think most, it is certainly the first time I have had in a panel situation, not that I have not talked to people who have had that experience, but question after question about who you interacted with in the court?
Did you speak to the judge? What did they say? Did you talk to a guardian ad litem? What did they say? What is your experience? Where did they meet you? Lots of questions about sort of how, and these were small children. Who was 8, 10, 4, and 12 years old? What were their memories? Their memories were really powerful. Lawyers just do not often think or account for the long-term ramifications of what happens in those situations.
Considering Long-Term Ramifications Of Going To Trial
One thing I am sure both of you share with clients, I know we share this with clients, is that when we are contemplating going to trial, we emphasize that your relationship with your spouse or your former spouse is never going to be the same after a cross-examination. It is never going to be the same. You need to think about that, because there are going to be times when you are going to have to sit in the same area at a soccer game, a recital, or an eighth-grade graduation and think about the long-term ramifications of going to trial.
Think of the long-term ramifications of the line of questioning we are going to get into. That reminds me of a personal experience I had. My wife and stepson, when my wife was dealing with her divorce and some post-degree issues, I would talk to her from time to time. We were dealing with an issue where her ex-husband just was not complying with court orders, was not paying what he was supposed to pay, and was not contributing what he was supposed to contribute.
My wife is not in the legal field. I would, of course, just for my instincts, tell her, “Come on, we have got to take him to court. He has to face the consequences. These court orders.” She taught me a valuable lesson that just because you can take someone to court does not mean you should take someone to court. She reminded me of that lesson. We have to sit next to him at hockey games. We have to sit next to him at eighth-grade graduations.
We did not take him back to court. I would like to think that I do not talk to my son directly about this, but I would like to think that there was a decorum between all of us that was preserved because we did not take them back to court, because we did not go down that road. Now, not everyone is in that position. Sometimes you do not have a choice. You have to go back to court, but it is something to really think about.
That is absolutely true. Even if you have to go back to court, there are ways to go and ways not to go. What you were saying about the line of questioning, what do you really need to ask? What is the nexus and the question that you are really trying to get to, and to diminish somebody in order to get there, or they are better to prove your point? Is this necessary?
I would just like to, if it is all right with you, Steve, just reflect for a minute with you on a case that you had in my courtroom where it really was a picture in contrast. You were being very professional and focused on the issues and the other attorney and the other party, and I am sure you recall the case I am talking about was just completely out of bounds and out of control. “I did what I could to control him, but he would not stop.” He did not take your lesson, did not understand your lesson of less can be more and make sure that you are recognizing the impact that you are having on the long-term relationship between the parties, let alone the relationship between the attorneys in this small community.
Consilium As A Better System For Professionals And Families
I remember that case very well. To tie in Consilium to this, I specifically remember that it was a two or three-day trial, and either before or after one of the days, I was the last one or first one in the courtroom, and I was unpacking and packing my things. You and I were the only ones in the courtroom, and I mentioned something that, “Boy, there has just got to be a better way to do this.
There has got to be a better system, a better way of doing this type of work, not only for the professionals involved, but for the families involved.” That is when you brought up the idea of Consilium to me. That is where that discussion started. That is where my relationship with Consilium began. Those types of cases are challenging. What I remember about that case, again, is a lesson. The takeaway was that you are time-limited in trials. You only have a certain amount of time.
In that particular case, that attorney spent about 90% of his time trying to prove a point that there was some nefarious planning afoot between my office and one of the experts, so that he only had about four to five minutes to actually ask his client questions about the issue we were there about. I could sense the frustration on his client’s face when you cut them off at the time limit, and she was mid-sentence. She really did not get to talk about or tell her story.
He had been warned. He had been duly warned repeatedly. Just to circle back with the Consilium conversation, I did not specifically remember having that conversation with you, but Heidi, my last year on the bench, was teaching me the Consilium techniques and process and way of thinking. It obviously had permeated the work that I was doing on the bench. It is the reason that I retired so that I could do this and invite fantastic attorneys like you into the fold of the tapestry and become a conciliatory practitioner.
What I share with folks when I am asked about Consilium, I have two different answers when I am asked by experienced attorneys or newer attorneys. I explain that Consilium is literally the best practice in every aspect of representing folks in family law. It is the best practice. For experienced attorneys, it is a way to fine-tune what they have already learned. To fine-tune it, it is a refresher on so many different aspects of what we do. For younger attorneys, it is really, I have yet to be at a firm in Colorado that has the time to train folks.
I have worked at a couple of places, and I cannot say that my firm has the time to train people. With Consilium, it is really recommended. I really recommend it for attorneys with under five years of experience because it really fine-tunes best practices on trial preparation, experts, raising your financial IQ, gaining that client’s perspective, and helping them understand the long term when they are trying to figure out what they want in a case. I have just been thrilled with my experience with Consilium.
Thank you.
Me really happy. It also makes me wonder if it has. I was about to assume that it had, but if it has acted, hopefully positively, on your own sort of family experience, mental health, preservation as a family law attorney, how it may have impacted you in those ways.
I will say this. I am in trial less often. I settle cases more often since I have become a conciliatory practitioner. Of course, has plenty of impact. That is more time with my family, that is less stress. All kinds of things are affiliated with that. Consilium, being a family law attorney, Consilium wears you down from time to time because it is hard not to soak in the stress that you are sensing from your clients in the conflict. Consilium, I would say, recharged my batteries.
It recharged the pride I take in being a family law attorney, and that you are a part of a solution. You are a part of the creation of two families, not the breakup of one. I really would say maybe somewhere along the line, I soured on being a family law attorney and really questioned, is this what I want to do until the time I retire? Consilium really reopened my eyes as to the benefits of why we do this.
I love that it had that effect, but I had that same experience, Steve. I think that is what resonates so deeply, what you are saying, because when I started shifting my own perspective and mentality, I thought, I feel re-energized, and I feel less, I do not know, I do not want to say, there were times I felt bored. I felt bored with the process. What is really dangerous for family law attorneys is feeling like, “This is another case, whatever.”
No one’s life is whatever. No one’s life is like someone else’s life. To really listen intently, compassionately, and have the curiosity to really ask the questions that help someone re-envision their next best chapter was so energizing instead of being mired in negativity all the time, which I think the process, the sort of preparation for trial and just finding all the loopholes and all the ways that you can wear somebody else’s case down, is not a positive experience.
I could not agree more.
It is great to hear you say that.
I will also say, one of the privileges that I have had is working with you over the years that you have been in Colorado, both as a mediator before I was on the bench when you were with the firm down in Denver, and then when I was on the bench having you in my courtroom and since then having the privilege of working with you on different mediation cases.
One of the things that I love about your approach and your creativity in solving cases is really looking at every aspect of what the solution could be. I am thinking in particular about that challenging case with the land use issue in the divorce. Without talking about anything confidential, I wonder if you could just talk about the process of that because we traveled that process together, but then you and the other attorney brought it home.
We all have cases that are challenging from time to time. As the case progresses, you can identify where perhaps your client is mired in their position, and they are not budging. Just transparency, some blunt but diplomatic transparency is what helps there. Give the client the perspective of, “I am going to pretend to be the judge here and here is what I am listening to.” Try to put a mirror up to your client and try to put them in the shoes of the judge, and here is what they are hearing.
Have your client listen to what the other side is saying. It is not the best way of explaining it, but I think just being blunt with your client that “Look, I do not know what the judge is going to do here. Do you really want to put this in the judge’s hands? Do you want to spend another $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000, another three or six months where we have the chance here to tweak a few things?” Most judges have that saying, “If there is a settlement offer on the table that you can live with, maybe it is not perfect, maybe it is not great, but you can live with it, take it.”
I love telling clients that, because sometimes they are just so mired in the emotion of their position. They are unable to put a mirror up to their position. That comes with experience from time to time. Having a mediator like you, Julie, with your perspective of presiding over these cases for ten years, also helps clients because here is a judge who has heard it all and done it all. There are cases like that where you find yourself just thinking, “Boy, how are we going to get these folks to move?” It happens once in a while.
Creative Conflict Resolution Through Breaking Bread
The other piece that struck me about it was that I stepped out at the end, and it was you and the other attorney and the two parties getting down into some fine detail. I was not available for those conversations. I recall that you called and told me that the way you brought it home was by inviting everyone to dinner.
That is right.
Everyone sat around the table.
I learned that in Chicago. I think either a judge or somebody taught me that it is harder to argue and disagree when you are breaking bread together. We went through two 8 to 10-hour mediations after our five mediations with you. In that second session, it was about 5:00, and I just mentioned to the other attorney, we were both Italian by the way, so maybe that was the common denominator, “Marco, why do we not order dinner for everybody and let us break bread here and see if we can get these final few items, get over the bridge.” We did.
It is a great story. I think it is so true. It is humanity. Even when you are angry and disappointed and feeling all sorts of emotions that you would rather not feel, there are ways to increase the probability of somebody seeing something more positively in tracking that window open a little bit.
That reminds me, I think I have told you the story before, Julie. There was a judge down in Denver when I was a younger attorney, and we were having a lot of conflict. It was a relocation case, and the judge issued an order for both attorneys to go out to lunch together. I do not know if it should be embarrassing that I am telling this story, but the judge issued an order that we had to go out to lunch together. We could not bill our client for the time. Just go out to lunch together, chat, and do not discuss the case.
I like it. I am going to pull that out of my back pocket next time. I had not thought about that one, but that is a good one. That is great.
It is making me think about environments too, in terms of where we talk, settle, and negotiate. Whether it is in Julie’s office as a mediator, in a courtroom versus a restaurant, at a round table versus a rectangular table. All these things really influence and matter. Even the colors or the lack of color in a space changes how people see each other and how they feel. All these pieces of how we get to yes matter. They leave people with certain feelings depending on how we construct an environment.
Avoiding Negotiation Fatigue In Long Mediations
I could not agree more. Right now, I am involved in a case where the other attorney down in Denver wants to schedule a full nine-hour mediation. My background and experience with those types of mediations is that by the time you get to the seventh, eighth, or ninth hour, fatigue is setting in. I have had too many cases where people agree to something in that ninth hour, and they wake up the next morning, and you are getting a screaming phone call that they want to back out of the agreement.
I will not do it. I will do a half day. I will do a four-hour session. If we make progress, we can even schedule two half days. We can do a half day on Tuesday and the other half day on Thursday. I agree with that comment you just made, Heidi, about a round table versus a rectangular table. That is a very interesting point. That is very interesting. All those little things come into play.
I long ago put a round table in my office. For years, I had a rectangular table. I actually did it at our dinner table at home, too. I will be perfectly forthright. I did that when my son was about 11 or 12 and just pushing the boundaries. We sort of had assigned seats at the table when I was growing up. We did not have assigned seats at the table.
There was an unspoken rule that the grown-ups sat at the ends of the table and the kids sat on the side. He decided to usurp that. I decided to get a round table because I did not want to say outright, “You cannot take on a more authoritarian role.” I did not want him to feel like he had authority. I also did not want him to feel like he was being dismissed. The way to equalize it was to just say everybody has a voice. This is how it is going to go.
I like that.
It was a good solution. I am wondering how much of it was about you. Steve, you are quite the movie buff. I know that from different conversations. Tell me one of the things that you like to do when you travel. Tell us about your travels and your journeys that you take, especially with yourself.
My love for movies comes from my childhood. My dad was a huge movie buff. When he would tell me stories about going to the movies in the ‘40s and ‘50s, I was fascinated. He had a story when they re-released the movie Dracula in the ‘40s. My dad and my aunt Dolores went to see it. They were so scared. I just had this picture of the story they told me that once they got out of the theater, they ran all the way home. He just instilled in me a love of movies. What my son and I now do, my son Noah loves movies just like I do, is travel to locations where famous movie scenes were filmed.
My love for movies began in childhood. My dad was a huge movie buff, and I was fascinated by his stories about going to the movies in the ’40s and ’50s. Share on XWe do it now wherever we go. If there is a famous place where they filmed the scene, we love to travel there, take photos, and just imagine what it was like when they filmed that scene and the famous people who were there. It has become a thing. New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Mexico, Dallas, any place we go, we try. There are some great websites out there now that you can look up a city, and they will tell you all the places that have been filmed there.
Fascinating. Do you look at silent films too?
Yeah. My son is a huge Buster Keaton fan, and a Charlie Chaplin fan, and there are some locations in Los Angeles that you would not believe. They are untouched since they were filmed 100 years ago. The location is almost untouched.
He is in the middle of putting these silent film reels together. It is too much to explain right here, right now, but anyway, it is a fascinating conversation to be had. That is really fascinating.
What was your favorite place that you found? What is the favorite place that you and your son have found?
Let us see. I am a huge fan of the Godfather series. During the first year or two of the pandemic, we as a family decided to do a road trip to go see some family in Los Angeles. We drove through Lake Tahoe. I remembered that Lake Tahoe was where the scenes in Godfather 2 were filmed, where the Corleone family owned this house. I remember looking up where it was located, but it was hard to get to. You could not get there just from driving on a public street. The famous scene where Al Pacino is where they knock off, I am not going to give away anything in the movie, but there is a famous scene.
There is a famous scene where they show Al Pacino looking out from the house, and we wanted to get to that side of the house. You could not get there unless you took a boat out there, and the boats that day were not going to that section of Lake Tahoe. We had to pay the person a couple of extra bucks to take us out there. It took a long time. It was windy. It was just challenge after challenge, but that was satisfying. My wife thinks we are crazy. She says, “What is the movie? What do we have to do this?”
You will see it there.
Thinking and realizing how much you love movies, you must have watched the Oscars recently. Did you think they were fair results? Do you think that?
Let us see.
Did they get it right?
I thought they got it right. Every year we do the Oscars contest in our family. We fill out the ballots, and my son always wins. They did get it right this year, although I would have loved to have seen Benicio del Toro win best actor instead of Sean Penn. It was a close race. After one battle after another, it was a terrific movie. They got it right.
What is your favorite movie of all time? That is probably a hard question.
That is a tough one. I go with It’s a Wonderful Life.
That is my favorite.
There is so much to love about that one.
I want to watch it again.
Such a great message that every person’s life makes a difference.
There is a backstory I have read about and studied so much about that movie. It was Jimmy Stewart’s first movie after he came back from World War II. He did not want to do the screwball comedies that he was known for prior to that. He had a very tough experience in World War II as a combat pilot. He saw a lot of death during his war experience.
Hollywood wanted him to do a bunch of war hero movies, and he forbade that. He was really at a crossroads about where he wanted to take his career. He knew Frank Capra, the director, from a previous movie they had done together. When he saw the script, he felt that it was the right vehicle for him. It was a risk for both of them because they were an independent movie studio.
Jimmy Stewart did not know if he still had the chops after what he had gone through in the war. He did not know if he could play that part. In that particular scene, when he is at the bar, if you remember, he is at the bar, and he is praying to God for some kind of sign. Those are real tears. Those are real tears coming down his face. That was a difficult scene for him. There is just so much about that movie. The backstory, the message, the acting. You cannot beat it.
There is so much about It’s a Wonderful Life that makes it timeless, the backstory, the message, the acting. You simply cannot beat it. Share on XTalk about somebody who had the grit to re-envision a life after the war and what he had been through. Taking control and choosing who I am now and how I want to represent is pretty powerful.
There are some interesting articles out there, if anybody in the audience wants to Google them, stating that the real hero of the movie is Donna Reed’s character. She is the driving force that creates the change that happens. If you really do a deep dive into the story, there is some credibility to that, that she is really the one who is pushing for change.
That is true. Everyone’s life makes a difference, Steve, and you certainly have made a difference in many people’s lives in the work that you have done with families. Are there any last thoughts or messages that you would want to share with folks who are tuning in about who you are, what you do, or what they should be thinking about if they are going through a hard time?
Protecting Mental Health And The Need For Support Systems
For the attorneys or the legal professionals in our audience, one thing I would share is to find a way to protect yourself mentally when you are doing this type of work, because it can take its toll. My suggestion is to find something that you can, whether it is a hobby, a friendship, or something that takes your mind off this stuff. When you are in the middle of a stressful week or a stressful trial prep, make sure you are taking that time to separate yourself from your work. You have to protect yourself.
This is difficult stuff we are dealing with, and your mental health is a priority. For people who might be watching this who are not legal professionals but are going through a family law case, mental health is tough stuff. Make sure you have a resource, whether it is a therapist, a best friend, or a family member. You are going to need that person to talk to and vent to as you make your way through this process. There will be brighter days. You just have to keep that in mind and have your support system in place while you are going through this.
I hear a thread here of community, and the importance of community in terms of divorce support groups for people who are going through it. I really encourage people to seek those out. I think you would too when you’re working with people. Consilium is a community too, which we think provides professionals with an opportunity to be together and work together. It does provide some good support.
Especially for people thinking about Consilium, if you are a solo practitioner, Consilium is a godsend. When I worked at a big firm in Denver, it was a firm of 30 to 40 attorneys and paralegals. Whenever I had a question or I needed to brainstorm with somebody, I could just walk down the hall and plop down in somebody’s office. When you are a solo, you cannot do that anymore. If you talk to most solo people, that is what you miss. You miss having that support system. Having the ability to talk to another conciliant practitioner, “Am I thinking about this the right way? Am I missing something?” Having that network of people who are experienced or more experienced than you is so handy when you are on your own.
If you are a solo practitioner, Consilium is a godsend. Share on XThank you. It is such a delight to have a chance to talk to you. I’m a little closer to proximity.
I love the Boston Area. I look forward to getting out there sometime, and I will look you up.
We would love to entertain you and host you. Come, there are films made here. There is lots to explore.
You could probably name a handful of them right off the bat, right, Steve? Ben Affleck or Matt Damon.
Yeah.
If people want to find you, Steve, what is the best way to find you?
My office manager is going to kill me. I do not do as good a job as I should in knowing all of these things. I know I am on LinkedIn. I know we have a website.
Is your website? I will share it with you.
The website is NoCoDivorceLaw.com. We have a Facebook page and my LinkedIn page. As everybody else, the website is probably the best way to look me up.
You can also find Steve through the Consilium Institute website. He is on the directory there. If you are looking for a very able, skilled, fun, and funny Consilium practitioner who may feed you if you come to his office, probably Italian food, come to ConsiliumInstitute.com and look for Steve in the Colorado portion of the directory. Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. It has been absolutely delightful.
Thanks for having me.
Important Links
- Stephen Vertucci on LinkedIn
- Consilium Institute
- Heidi Webb on LinkedIn
- Julie Field on LinkedIn
- The Law Office of Stephen Vertucci
About Stephen Vertucci
Stephen Vertucci is a seasoned trial attorney whose path to family law is anything but ordinary. A U.S. Navy veteran who served during the first Gulf War, Stephen went on to build a dynamic legal career spanning criminal prosecution and high-conflict family law.
From litigating felony jury trials in Arizona to founding his own successful family law practice in Colorado, Stephen brings both courtroom strength and deep compassion to his work with families.
Widely respected for his skill and integrity, he’s built a reputation for advocating fiercely for his clients while maintaining the highest ethical standards—and we’re excited to have him with us today.