Meghan Freed thinks the authorized system is damaged and that divorce will be one of the best factor that’s ever occurred to you. Apparently, a number of hundred thousand folks on LinkedIn agree together with her.
There is a particular kind of LinkedIn content material that will get shared by individuals who would in any other case by no means contact LinkedIn with a 10-foot pole. It tends to be sincere in a approach that company platforms usually discourage. It tends to say one thing true about a human expertise that everybody has had however no one has put fairly that approach earlier than. A disproportionate quantity of it’s more and more coming from a divorce lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, which isn’t a sentence anybody predicted.
Meghan Freed is the managing accomplice and co-founder of Freed Marcroft LLC, a household legislation agency she constructed from scratch in 2012 together with her accomplice Kristen Marcroft. The agency has made the Inc. 5000 record of fastest-growing firms a number of instances. It has been named Hartford Magazine’s finest legislation agency for 11 consecutive years, and it lately launched non-public arbitration providers that includes a retired choose, for shoppers who would like their divorce to not be penciled in by an overburdened Connecticut courtroom system.
However, none of for this reason you may need encountered Meghan Freed lately. Recently, she wrote a publish on LinkedIn about what divorce shoppers really need from their legal professionals that made you cease scrolling. Or in regards to the psychology of individuals in the center of a marriage ending that felt uncomfortably correct. Or a publish about what it means to apply legislation for the human being sitting throughout from you fairly than the billable hour.
She has a lot of ideas, and because it seems, the platform is sort of receptive to them.
The philosophy underlying all of this isn’t refined; Freed Marcroft doesn’t function on the standard household legislation mannequin, which is adversarial by default, costly by design, and oriented towards no matter end result survives the longest courtroom battle. Freed’s mannequin is nearer to divorce being a transition, centering round transitions that may be navigated with intention, and the lawyer’s job is to assist the particular person in entrance of them get to the opposite facet intact.
She attracts from frameworks just like the Empowerment Dynamic. She has opinions in regards to the Four Agreements. In different phrases, she shouldn’t be a typical divorce legal professional, which might be the purpose, which brings us to the non-public choose.
Freed Marcroft lately started providing non-public arbitration providers by a retired Connecticut choose, a service that enables divorcing {couples} to primarily rent their very own adjudicator fairly than ready for the state courtroom system to search out a slot for them someday after their children graduate highschool. This is authorized, and it’s more and more frequent amongst folks with the means to entry it. It raises questions that folks is not going to be shocked to search out ourselves asking: who will get to decide out of the general public system, and what does it imply that opting out has turn into a product?
To be clear, Freed shouldn’t be unaware of this stress. The pitch for personal arbitration shouldn’t be “justice for those who can afford it.” It’s nearer to “the court system is genuinely overwhelmed, your divorce is genuinely time-sensitive, and here is a way to resolve it that doesn’t require your children aging out of the relevant custody arrangements before a hearing date materializes.”
This is a actual downside with a actual answer hooked up to it. Whether that answer ought to exist as a non-public market fairly than a public useful resource is a query above Freed’s pay grade, and actually above everybody else’s too.
What is notable is that Freed is working on the precise intersection the place the authorized system’s failures meet particular person folks’s very pressing wants, and she or he has constructed one thing that addresses the hole, fairly than simply billing hours whereas everybody waits.
There is one thing inherently absurd about a divorce lawyer dominating a platform primarily identified for “hustle culture” content material and executives saying that they’re “humbled and honored” to just accept awards from different executives. Freed has checked out that panorama and determined, apparently appropriately, that what it was lacking was sincere content material about relationships, shopper psychology, and what it truly appears to be like wish to apply legislation when a human being’s life is on the road, and the viewers has agreed enthusiastically.
When you concentrate on it, it’s very on-brand for 2026. The authorized system is backlogged, the remedy waitlists are longer, and the people who find themselves good at explaining difficult human conditions clearly and with out condescension are on the market. They’re simply tougher to search out than they need to be given all of the noise. Meghan Freed has merely made herself findable, one LinkedIn publish at a time.
Whether a Hulu present is forthcoming is unknown, but when Connecticut ever will get a status authorized drama, you realize who the decision goes to.
The Jezebel editorial workers was not concerned in the creation of this content material.
