The published guidance on Show Your Work runs from too-general marketing summaries to too-specific technical papers, with very little in between. This piece aims for the middle: enough specificity to be useful, enough breadth to be applicable.
This piece is for family-law attorneys who already have the basics and are deciding whether to make Show Your Work a focus area.
For family-law attorneys, Show Your Work usually shows up in active matters with specific procedural deadlines. The work has to integrate with discovery timelines, motion calendars, and (in litigated matters) trial preparation. Practitioners who carve out time for Show Your Work analysis outside the immediate procedural pressure produce better work than those who squeeze it between filings.
The first cases
Get on at least one bar-section committee related to Show Your Work in your first year, even if it’s just helping with administrative tasks. The relationships you build with section leaders in your first three years become the referral network for the next twenty.
The first three years of practicing Show Your Work are about volume and humility. You don’t yet know what you don’t know. The matters you take should mostly come through senior practitioners you’re working under, not directly. The hours per matter will be higher than they ever will be again. Bill them all anyway; you’re paying for the education with your time.
Years 4-7: deepening the work
Year four is usually when Show Your Work starts to feel like leverage rather than work. Your templates are mature. Your network is producing inbound referrals. The matters feel familiar enough that you can recognize problems faster and patterns of resolution earlier. The hours per matter drop noticeably; your rates can start to rise. For deeper reference, see Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.
Years four through seven are when peer relationships with other practitioners in Show Your Work become genuine assets. The relationships built earlier mature into reciprocal referrals, shared insights from current matters, and the kind of bench of co-professionals that makes complex matters manageable.
The mature practice
Mature Show Your Work practices often hire associates or paralegals who can carry the lower-leverage components of each matter. This is where the templates and case-file discipline built in earlier years really pay off; the senior practitioner becomes a producer of analytical depth and client relationships while infrastructure they built handles the volume.
Senior practitioners frequently take on roles in the broader professional ecosystem: section officers, conference presenters, mentors to mid-career practitioners, board members of relevant organizations. These roles aren’t required but they extend the practitioner’s reach and reinforce the reputation that produces ongoing referrals.
The arc of the work
Practitioners who stay in Show Your Work for a full career often report that the work becomes more interesting, not less, as their depth increases. The analytical work has more layers than it appears to in year one; the relational work has more nuance; the strategic work has more options.
Pricing trajectory across stages: years one through three are about earning the right to charge specialist rates; years four through seven are about charging them; years eight and beyond are about commanding them.
The honest summary of Show Your Work for family-law attorneys: it rewards depth, it punishes shortcuts, and it compounds across years for practitioners willing to invest in the long arc.
How VennBoard fits in
If you’re building a focus on Show Your Work, the case-management infrastructure matters more than most practitioners think going in. VennBoard is built specifically for family-law-adjacent practitioners and handles the document organization, the multi-party coordination, and the engagement-management that makes long-arc matters manageable.
Practitioners interested in seeing VennBoard’s case-management infrastructure for Show Your Work work can learn more at VennBoard.com.
Further reading
IRS Publication 504 (Divorced or Separated Individuals)
Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement