Feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, anxious?
Work with me.
I'm Dina, and I help driven lawyers get out of the grind, so they can build the life and practice they jump out of bed for.
Working harder isn't how you achieve success.
Us lawyers are really good at working harder and longer hours.
What we're not so good at?
Slowing down to evaluate whether we're doing the most impactful things that will make our goals easier to achieve or busy work.
Most of my clients are afraid to slow down because they think they'll drop all the balls.
That's where I come in.
I give you a fresh perspective on your habits to evaluate them objectively.
You'll get the tools you need to manage your brain and change your habits.
Break unproductive habits burning you out.
There's a reason over half of all lawyers (and 67% of female lawyers) admit they're stressed.
The drive to work harder and harder seeps into every corner of our lives.
It starts in school where we're taught to feel compelled by getting the perfect A+ and fear anything less as if that means we're failures.
This societal brainwashing seeps into our work habits as adults.
WORK - where we stay later and work weekends to try to stop feeling behind.
HEALTH - where we skip the gym because we think our time will be better spent getting ahead.
RELATIONSHIPS - where we're rarely fully present with friends and family because half our mind is worrying about work.
GOALS - where we often put off our big dreams because we simply can't see a way to pursue them until "life slows down."
Life doesn't just slow down. We make it slow down, so we can create the life we want.
Change comes down to evaluating your habits and recognizing the ones not serving you.
Coach with me to get a fresh perspective and love your life.
What parents, teachers and lawyers are blind to is the legal profession is a broken paradigm.
They want to foster growth and productivity.
Instead they perpetuate over-working and hustle culture at the expense of the human.
What driven lawyers like you are also up against:
These habits are compounded by praise you may have received as "gifted" children who were rewarded the more they achieved. This turns us into people-pleasers who feel uncomfortable doing anything that may make a client or an employee unhappy.
It's doubly true for lawyers raised in a household with an authoritarian parent who valued work over anything else.
Those of us steeped in this culture created habits like people-pleasing, perfectionism, validation-seeking and over-thinking.
These habits actually fuel anxiety and procrastination, which makes it harder to move the needle on goals.
Every single one of these habits can be changed.
You can change.
My clients and I are living proof.
I've worked the 70 hour weeks as a criminal prosecutor, had the health impact of a breast cancer diagnosis at 29 while a trial attorney, and I literally fell asleep on dates because I was exhausted from the day.
In the midst of this, I also knew I was driven to do more in my life. For me that meant starting a business.
I needed to change my work habits to make room for this new version of me. I had to unlearn the broken paradigm to move forward.
If you want to pursue a dream in your life, ignoring the broken paradigm we've been socialized in can't go on.
And it doesn't have to.
I started coaching lawyers when I healed myself from decades of pushing myself to the brink.
I calmed my nervous system using tools learned from coaches and began focusing my brainpower on creating a life I wanted.
A life with purpose and drive to achieve my version of success.
One where I was in control of how I spent my time in my law practice and didn't feel so spent at the end of the day that I couldn't pursue my passions.
And one where I wasn't try to please everyone around me; I was only concerned about whether I was pleased with myself.
This is what happened next...
When I started building my coaching practice, my clients got inspiring results.
I taught them the same skills I'd used on myself.
Some of their successes:
- an estate planning client aiming for a $200,000 year in her practice blew past it to hit $250,000 while working less than she ever had before (4 days a week instead of 6!)
- a law partner building a yoga practice on top of her full-time position in only a few hours a week
- a lawyer making partner by learning to constrain her time and caring less about what her bosses thought
- Big Law clients stopped feeling overwhelmed and started having the confidence to say no to assignments they didn't want and start asking for what they DID want
- general counsel stopped people-pleasing and started leading more confidently
- partners hitting billable targets more easily and not sacrificing sleep or down time
- lawyers who didn't want to drink so much wine learned skills to stop over-drinking and start living more
Coaching accelerates growth.
You're already successful.
You've achieved amazing results with the skills you have so far.
The question is, do you have the life you want?
Imagine getting even better results in your life without feeling like you're working nearly as hard.
That's what coaching gives you.
It's like fertilizing your garden.
Everything becomes more vibrant and healthy.
If you're tired of feeling exhausted at the end of the day, I can help you.
Book a call with me, and let's get started.
What happens in a Strategy Session?
In a Strategy Session, you learn exactly what you need to know to make your next move.
If you don't know already, you'll get clear on what you want to make happen in your life.
We uncover habits of thinking you have that created your life right now.
You may already know some of them because you may be into personal development books and podcasts.
You likely know a thing or two about yourself.
What my clients usually don't know -- and what I teach you on our call -- is how to take sustainable action to change those habits.
You learn the missing pieces that have prevented you from getting what you want.
You also learn how your brain processes decisions.
Decisions determine results.
Your decisions also determine whether you feel anxious, overwhelmed or stressed out.
A lot of my clients describe themselves as over-thinkers, people-pleasers and procrastinators.
If that's you, you'll learn how these behaviors influence your decisions and prevent you from achieving the results you want in your life and law practice.
By the end of our call, you'll have clarity on what you want, a solid plan to make it happen and know how your brain makes decisions.
Each decision we make impacts our results.
Start making more decisions that move you towards your goals, and you'll see a change.
Whether you decide to work with me or not, the decision to book a call with me will be a game-changer.
Here's what lawyers say about working with me:
In my world, we celebrate successes.
Celebration hardwires success into our nervous systems.
Here are some client wins:
Frequently Asked Questions
✅ I'm already super busy. Do I have time for coaching?
We make time for what we want.
That said, I make it as easy as possible for my clients to succeed.
If you have a last-minute hearing, assignment or client emergency, I make it easy to re-book your time, so you don't lose a session.
Book a call with me, and we'll talk about any other concerns you have.
✅ I'm afraid I'm not fixable.
You're not alone if you think this.
First, you're not broken, so there's nothing needing "fixing."
You're 100% complete.
What may be "missing" is your understanding of how the brain works and how to use your brain's tendencies for you instead of against you.
That's where I come in.
Book a call with me, and let's go.
✅ I'm afraid I won't follow through on the work.
What you've done in the past doesn't define what you're capable of.
The reason you haven't followed through in the past has nothing to do with you or your capabilities.
When we don't follow through, there's one thing that stops us: our feelings.
We only do or don't do something based on the negative feelings we think we'll feel like disappointment or shame.
We're simply not taught these skills as children or in the legal profession.
When I work with clients, they get the tools to be emotionally resilient. These tools help them move through negative feelings instead letting those feelings block them from success.
No matter your goal, no matter what you've tried before, I can help you follow through and make your desires reality.
✅ I have hearings that pop up out of nowhere. What if I need to reschedule?
As a former prosecutor, I understand that lawyers sometimes get last minute hearings, assignments, etc.
When this happens, we reschedule our session for another time during the week or add it onto the end of your coaching package.
✅ I love my life, but I want to up-level it. Can you help?
Absolutely.
We can't even imagine what's possible for us until we start doing the work to expand ourselves.
We'll talk about how we can do that work together in our Strategy Session.
✅ Do you coach men?
Yes! If you're a lawyer, I can help you.
✅ What topics do you coach on?
Anything under the sun. The way we do one thing impacts how we do everything, so it's natural topics other than the law come up too.
Here's some topics I coach clients on:
- time management/overwhelm
- building their book of business
- employee/partnership relationships
- self-confidence/self-doubt
- people-pleasing/client boundaries
- building a new practice area
- hiring/firing decisions
- leadership
- hearings/networking/speaking engagement jitters
- difficult conversations with spouse/family
- mother/father relationships
- fertility treatments
- and so much more
I'm here to make your life easier. You can come to me intending to work on time management, and we'll work on whatever you need in our session that week. I've got you.
✅ Are conversations confidential?
Of course! While we talk about your thoughts about partners, clients, and cases, we don't name names. Also, I don't share specifics about anything we talk about unless I get explicit permission from you to share.
✅ Is coaching different from therapy?
Yes.
Therapy is past-focused while coaching is future-focused.
A therapist generally asks about your past and helps you work through unresolved issues impacting your present.
Coaching starts with your present, and it focuses on creating the future you want. We uncover the mindset leading to undesireable outcomes in your life, and we work through those to help you achieve your goals.
I've had clients in both therapy and coaching, and they found them complementary not redundant.
✅ I want to work with you, but shouldn't I be able to figure this out on my own?
This was a big one for me, and I see it with my clients too.
My question to you:
How much longer are you willing to wait to figure it out?
If you haven't figured it out on your own by now, doing more of the same won't help you change.
You've got to challenge how you think.
That's where I come in.
✅ I want to work with you, but I'm not sure now is the right time.
The time will never be "right."
There will always be something happening in your life.
Your power is in learning how to go after what you want no matter what you think may be in your way.
That's what's required to evolve.
You're ready to create the life you love.
About Dina
Dina Cataldo is a Master Certified Coach for lawyers and a former criminal prosecutor who helps driven lawyers grow their practices without overwhelm.
She built her coaching practice while practicing law full-time by turning herself into a morning person and becoming an expert at managing her time and emotional health.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer at 29, doing more with less stress became a non-negotiable. She had big aspirations, and didn't want stress preventing her from going after what she wanted.
Now she’s helps lawyers around the world take authority over their time and their mindset, so they love their life and law practice.
She hosts Be a Better Lawyer Podcast and created the Busy Lawyer’s Ultimate Time Management Guide.
