Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Medina.
Hi Melissa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story begins in Brooklyn NY, the famous Coney Island area to be exact. I’m 2nd generation Puerto Rican to be born off the island. At the age of 9, I moved to the Island to live with my grandparents. I returned to NY in 2000 to finish high school and started a family a little earlier than expected at 19. Wanting to raise my son out of the crazy of NYC I moved to AZ in 2004 right before my son was born. I like to think that Brooklyn gave me my grit and hustle and Puerto Rico gave me an intimate connection to my Latina roots and community and Phoenix is where those two merged and flourished.
Since I can remember I envisioned myself working in the legal field. Attorneys and Judges always intrigued me. I loved how formal and powerful their roles appeared. I got my 1st job as a legal assistant in 2005 for a criminal defense attorney and quickly feel in love with the job. It was a lot what I had envisioned and a ton more, what was so special about working in the legal field was how it felt to help someone and the warmness you felt when they expressed how you made a difference in their lives no matter how small you felt your role was.
I worked for a couple attorneys before landing at a criminal firm in 2009 where I learned how to really become a paralegal. I took the time to go back to school and get my paralegal degree graduating in 2015. The last 5 years old so I feel like I became more confident in my ambitions and started to think about how I could make the legal field a career and just not my job. That’s when I created Affordable Legal as a side hustle, I decided I would take up the requests the firm was getting to help with documents and make extra money. At the same time, I was also assisting a former associate of the firm I worked for start her Personal Injury practice, after a couple years I started see that I had helped create a lucrative business from the ground up and I was hooked. I asked for a contract position with the personal injury attorney so I could also continue and work on doc prep. Fortunately, that attorney declined and I suddenly was at a cross roads I had reached my full potential as a criminal paralegal and I wanted more. So, I applied at another personal injury firm. It was a great opportunity I learned that after 11 Years at the same place I still had the ability to make it work in another arena and that my connections had value as many of them followed me to the new office, and most importantly that I wasn’t happy working on someone else’s dream.
Not always having the time to work on my side hustle due to my 9-5, I decided I would take a crack at my marketing skills, professional relationships, and doc prep experience and make it my everyday hustle. I officially filed my LLC September 30th, 2020, and Affordable Legal as been up and running since. I leased a small office in April 2021 and could not love it more. I feel like this is just the beginning. I get to provide affordable and reliable legal services to my community through my personal skills and connections, creating a unique niche for myself in an industry I’ve always wanted to be a part of and I Love it here.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Being a business owner is never easy, you don’t have a clock in or clock out time. You have to remind yourself every day you are worthy and capable.
Having the confidence to know that you are solely responsible for your business’s successes or failures.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Affordable Legal?
We a variety of legal solutions including affordable and reliable legal document prep in the areas of family law, criminal, probate, civil, and business solutions, Personal Injury concierge service assisting in all areas of the process (tow, property damage, attorney and medical) free of charge to the client and free Attorney consultations the in the areas of Family Law, Workers Comp, Criminal, and Immigration.
What sets my business apart is that we provide both an affordable alternative to the traditional attorney services as well as access to the best attorneys and firms in the area. We can service the community at any budget.
The part of my brand I’m most part of is the empowerment aspect. I’m a small women-owned business providing my community both English and Spanish speaking with services they often didn’t know they had access to.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I was raised in the projects and I was an orphan by the age of 9, but success was always an option.
Contact Info:
- Email: affordableleagdooc@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/affordable_legaldocs/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/affordablelegaldocsLLC
Image Credits
Saguaro Creations
