Lianne Houssami: Unbundled Legal Help for Self-Represented Parents

There is a middle option between hiring a lawyer for your entire case and representing yourself with no help at all. Lianne Houssami built her practice around it, and she says most people have never heard it exists.

Lianne Houssami is a Canadian lawyer who has practiced across several provinces and is now based in Alberta. She started out in family law, left after a highly contested case ended in a client's suicide, spent time as a Crown prosecutor, and then came back to family law determined to do it differently. Her focus is the roughly 70 to 80 percent of people who cannot afford a lawyer for a full case.

In this conversation, Lianne explains how unbundled, limited-scope work actually functions: you stay in control and pay only for the specific help you need, whether that is drafting an order or responding to a settlement offer, and how it can level the playing field for someone representing themselves. She makes the case that arbitration is the future for families, explains how it differs from mediation by producing a binding result, and lays out why the adversarial court system is such a poor fit for families to begin with.

She and Lisa also talk about why a good lawyer manages their own client rather than just following instructions, how Canada's maintenance-enforcement and child-support recalculation programs take some of the fight out of collecting support, and what any of us can do to push a broken system toward something better.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What unbundled (limited-scope) legal services are, and how you pay only for what you need
• How limited-scope help can even the power imbalance for a self-represented parent
• Why a good lawyer manages their own client instead of just taking orders
• Why the adversarial court system is a poor fit for families
• How arbitration differs from mediation, and why it may be the future
• How Canada's maintenance-enforcement and support-recalculation programs work
• What ordinary people can do to push a broken system toward change

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why she left family law, and came back on her own terms
5:00 Being direct, and why a lawyer must manage their own client
11:00 The gap: most people can't afford a lawyer for a whole case
12:00 Unbundled services: pay only for the help you need
15:00 Why the adversarial court system fails families
17:00 Arbitration as the future, and how it differs from mediation
19:00 Evening the power imbalance for the self-represented
25:00 Canada's enforcement and support-recalculation programs
27:00 Advocacy, and pushing a broken system to change

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Lianne Houssami at Shift Legal Solutions: https://www.shiftlegalsolutions.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.