Broker Between Two Worlds

Like a lot of first-generation Americans, Sonam Vachhani was often called upon to translate complex information for her parents. “My entire life, I was taking something that was really confusing, really intimidating, and trying to make it accessible,” says Vachhani, whose parents came to the U.S. after emigrating from India to Canada in the 1980s.

As an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, she had that same feeling of being “a broker between two worlds. … I found myself trying to be a bridge for people who find themselves dragged into a criminal case. They have no idea what to expect.”

Vachhani never intended to become a prosecutor, but after completing two summer internships for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, she was sold on the idea. Shadowing an assistant DA “really opened my eyes as to how victim-centered the work actually was,” she says. “I was watching people who were only a year, two years, ahead of me in law school, handling cases that required so much responsibility. These cases had huge impacts on people’s lives and liberty, and these young attorneys were doing it so well.”

Beginning in 2017, the newly hired ADA sharpened her courtroom skills for three years in a stream of felony jury and bench trials. In her first one, she was pitted against a seasoned criminal defense attorney in a matter involving a convicted felon who’d been pulled over at a traffic stop with a firearm. A lot of technical evidence and testimony followed. “It was one of those things where you’re talking to a bunch of ordinary people in the jury, you’re trying to figure out how to make them not fall asleep, trying to keep them engaged with something that is not exactly riveting,” Vachhani says. “You’re learning to tell a story.”

She secured a guilty verdict against the defendant. 

My entire life, I was taking something that was really confusing and trying to make it accessible.

Other cases haunt her—especially those on behalf of children assaulted by adults. “These were really emotionally heavy assignments,” Vachhani recalls. “The cases where I’ve had young children and I got to hold their hand through it and help them through their testimonies stayed with me the most. They used to draw me pictures afterwards, and I still keep those to this day.” 

In 2020, she left the DA’s office for private practice, where she briefly handled insurance defense cases for two different Pennsylvania firms. “I left public service because I recognized that it was time to grow in a different direction,” she says.

Advocating for corporations, rather than people, just wasn’t as rewarding. “I started thinking a lot about: What can I do that will bring me back into that role of being able to work directly with people?” she says.

The answer came from her mentor, the chair of the family law practice at Curtin & Heefner in Yardley, which she’d joined in 2022 as an insurance litigator. “I clearly find myself drawn to the high-stakes stuff, the conflict, so family law seemed like a natural segue for me,” says Vachhani, who’s now at Vetrano | Vetrano & Feinman. “And I realized I could draw from so many of the skills from those previous jobs. I wasn’t a stranger to the chaos, the emotional stuff, the having to be a bit of a therapist that comes into play just about every day in family law.”

An extroverted nature coupled with prosecutorial experience gives her confidence in court, and her upbringing helps her explain the complicated processes involved in divorce and custody proceedings to her clients. 

Not long after she made the switch, she took on a custody case for a woman who’d already worked with several other attorneys. When Vachhani accomplished what the previous lawyers hadn’t, the client told her, “I know you haven’t been doing this for long, but this is what you’re meant to be doing.”

“She just wanted to feel heard and sided with,” Vachhani says. “I felt really good about that.”