The France Reset offers rigorous, bespoke counsel to accomplished professionals who are ready to reclaim authorship of their own lives. We cut through complexity — practical, legal, and existential — so that clients can see their options clearly, realign around what matters most, and build something fuller and more meaningful on their own terms. Our clients are not starting over. They are moving forward, deliberately, toward a life that was always within reach — rooted in a place where history, art, and culture have been quietly insisting, for two thousand years, that a meaningful life is worth the effort.

About Elizabeth

Why I created The France Reset

For more than two decades, I have practiced at the most demanding edge of the law. As a federal criminal defense and appellate lawyer, my work has required sustained engagement with complexity, high stakes, and the full weight of human consequence — day after day, year after year. That kind of work is a privilege. It is also, if you are not deliberate about it, all-consuming in ways that quietly crowd out everything else.

A few years ago, I took stock and recognized something important: I had become extraordinarily good at serving others while losing ground on the life I actually wanted to be living. I was not failing — by any external measure, I was succeeding. But I had gradually ceded authorship of my own days, and I decided to reclaim it.

The role France played in my own realignment

Part of that recalibration was deliberate and simple: I started traveling again! Getting out of my professional environment and into new places — especially France — became less a luxury and more a practice. Engaging with new environments, new people, and centuries of history and culture required me to pay attention in a different register. It rekindled capacities that sustained professional focus can crowd out: curiosity, creativity, a willingness to take risks for their own sake.

Over time, I came to believe deeply in what intentional travel — particularly to a place as historically and culturally rich as France — can do for a professional life that has grown too narrow. This is not about escape. Buying an apartment in Carcassonne and beginning to build a life there was an act of expansion, not retreat. I chose France as the place where I could most fully re-engage with what makes a life feel whole. I know I am not alone in needing that, and now I want to help others find it for themselves.

How my legal background informs my work

Professionally, I still run a boutique federal post-conviction and appellate practice, working on complex, high-stakes cases throughout the United States. I am deeply familiar with what it means to hold responsibility, think rigorously, and navigate systems that are not designed to be user-friendly. I am trained to absorb complex, sometimes contradictory information — legal, financial, and logistical — and turn it into something coherent and actionable. I am comfortable in high-stakes environments and know how to ask the right questions of lawyers, notaires, and other professionals so that you are not left guessing in critical areas.

When we work together, you are not just getting someone who moved to France once and decided to hang out a shingle. You are working with a seasoned appellate lawyer who has done this work herself — and who brings the same analytical rigor to your reset that she brings to her most demanding cases.

What I believe about a life in France

I do not believe in moving to, or simply spending more time in, France as a form of running away. I believe in using France — its pace, beauty, history, and culture — as a context in which to build a more grounded, authentic, and meaningful life. A life that entails respecting boundaries, including your own and those of the people and systems you will encounter. It means caring about other human beings and about the communities you are entering. It means contributing to French society rather than extracting from it or trying to recreate an expat bubble. And it means being willing to take real risks in service of a life that feels more like you.

My clients tend to be people who are very good at carrying responsibility and who have recognized that their current configuration is no longer serving them as well as it once did. They have built lives that look impressive on paper but feel like they were designed for someone else. They are ready to make bold changes in a way that is still intelligent and legally informed. They care about books and animals, about friendships and genuine encounters. They fully understand the responsibility to contribute to their new environment and would never think to use the French connection to develop an AirBnb empire. They want France to be a beginning, not just an escape hatch.

My role in your reset

In The France Reset, my role is not to tell you who to be in France. My role is to lift the fog, sharpen your options, and help you design a concrete path forward — one that honors your values, your goals, and your reality. I help you think through the full architecture of your transition — practical, legal-adjacent, and existential — and you leave our work together with something tangible: a clearer picture of what is possible and a real plan for getting there. I see this work as a continuation of what I have always done at my best: helping people navigate systems that feel overwhelming and making it easier for them to reclaim authorship of their own lives.