As a father of three teenage daughters and with a remarkable career background, Rocheleau was not your average student. Sometimes he felt closer in age to his professors than his fellow students. But this was not a negative for the ambitious Rocheleau.
“It made me younger,” he says. “Hanging around all those young people was great, like charging your battery. In fact, I plan on doing it again. I’m going to go back to school when I’m 60.”
Having already completed two years of college while in the Air Force, Rocheleau understood that the initial step in this new endeavor was to finish his undergraduate degree before pursuing law school. While this might have appeared intimidating to some, Rocheleau, always keen to evolve and better himself, welcomed the challenge with excitement rather than trepidation.
“It was probably the best decision I ever made in my life, next to marrying Stacy,” he says, flashing his signature grin. “I’m more of an entrepreneur and the law has always fascinated me.”
After working at Right Lawyers as a paralegal for over a decade—a firm where Stacy had established her career—it was only natural for him to join the firm once he passed the bar exam. Just as naturally it would seem, Rocheleau gravitated toward family law, specifically divorce and child custody.
“At that time Stacy was handling personal injury, divorce, some construction defect, as well as a few other areas,” he explains, “but I believed we should narrow our focus. I don’t believe you can do several things and do them all successfully, or as well as you can when focusing on just one or two things. I once read if you’re going to do something, make sure you’re great at it. I like to be honest with myself and believe everyone occasionally needs to take stock of their strengths and weaknesses.
“We chose divorce because it’s probably what Stacy was best at, at the time, and there was a natural funnel of clients,” he continues. “Coming from the insurance world, personal injury seemed to make the most sense for me to focus on. After a while, I had to admit that wasn’t working for me. As I told Stacy, ‘We’re good at personal injury, but we’re not great. Let’s just be great at divorce and custody.”
Rocheleau is not just honest with himself, he’s equally transparent with everyone. “Gravitating toward divorce felt right and to be quite frank, I like the drama. I like it from the standpoint that this is my chance to talk them off the ledge. To be clear, when I say I like the drama, I don’t mean I enjoy stirring up emotions or agitating, but rather it doesn’t bother or distract me, and I like being the one to bring order to the chaos.”
