December 6, 2023 • 33 mins
Do you ever wonder how lawyers seem to bring in an endless stream of clients? This week's guest, Elise Holtzman from The Lawyer's Edge, shares the secrets behind the art of rainmaking. We dive into Elise's personal journey, from practicing law to becoming a coach and trainer, and how she uses her knowledge to help lawyers transform into successful rainmakers. This concept, more than just attracting new clients, involves keeping existing ones happy, and importantly, having the right team to do the work.
We also discuss the critical role of delegation within law firms. Investing in junior associates and trusting them with tasks not only helps firms grow but also frees up time for higher-level work. After all, we all have the same 24 hours in a day - it's how we choose to use them that counts.
Connect with Elise on LinkedIn and learn more at www.thelawyersedge.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Visit spotlightbrandingcomslash pod to learn more.
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Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Center Stage putting your firm in the
spotlight by highlightingbusiness owners and other
industry experts to help takeyour firm to the next level.
Hey everyone, and welcome toCenter Stage.
I'm your host, john Hinton, andthis week we are being joined
by a former practicing lawyerwho has now become a coach and a
trainer now the CEO of theLawyer's Edge, which is also a
(01:16):
podcast which you shoulddefinitely check out and that is
Elise Holtzman.
She's gonna be.
We're gonna talk about just awide-ranging set of things just
around setting up your firm forsuccess and really give you a
good bit of insight into thethings that Elise helps lawyers
out with.
(01:36):
So, elise, thanks for joiningus.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm thrilled to be here, John.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Awesome.
So I kind of gave the broadstrokes introduction there where
you came from now, but tell usa little bit more about your
background and why youtransitioned out of being a
practicing lawyer to what you'redoing now with the Lawyer's
Edge.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Sure.
So I graduated from law schoola long time ago, went straight
into big law in New York City.
I didn't know anythingdifferent.
I didn't come from a family oflawyers and I also had a lot of
loans to pay off.
So I went to a couple of biglaw firms in Manhattan and I was
working in the area ofcommercial real estate
transactions, which I absolutelyloved.
I loved doing deals.
(02:15):
Back then we used to gettogether in big conference rooms
with a million documents and amillion people, so it was very
exciting.
I wound up leaving the practiceof law kind of grudgingly.
I loved what I did.
I was happy at my firm ingeneral, but there were no women
mentors back then.
I had amazing mentors andsponsors who were all men with
(02:40):
stay-at-home lives, and so theywere incredible and I learned so
much from them.
But ultimately, my husband andI my husband's also a big law
lawyer, by the way so we had ababy.
I'm afraid to tell you how oldthe baby is, but anyway, we had
this baby and we kind of triedto make it work.
It was like a bad movie, I meanpulling all-nighters and
working all weekend and tryingto make it work, and there was
(03:00):
no such thing as part-time backthen, but they let me try it and
I was supposed to work 40 hoursa week as a part-time gig and I
was still working 70 hours aweek.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So it was just nuts and.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I thought well, you know what I tried.
This thing it doesn't work.
I was sort of annoyed about thewhole thing and, at the same
time, because I felt like itwasn't my choice, and at the
same time, recognized that mostwomen didn't have the luxury of
staying home with their kids,which is what I wound up doing.
So I wound up being home withkids for a while and then, about
15 years ago 16 years ago maybedecided that it was time to
(03:33):
figure out what I was gonna bewhen I grew up and I found out
about executive and leadershipcoaching, did a full year
certificate program in that, andthen started the lawyer's edge.
So I've been doing this.
You know, I've been in businessfor almost exactly 15 years now
and work exclusively withlawyers and law firms on a
variety of things that theydidn't teach us in law school,
(03:56):
the most prominent of thosebeing business development and
leader development.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Awesome.
So yeah, and you know, I knowthat you're just an absolute
wealth of information on thisand the first question that I
had for you and I've seen thisterm floating around I've been
working with lawyers for nineyears, I've seen this term every
now and then and hopefully thisdoesn't make me sound too
ignorant, but, like, I'm stillnot entirely sure what it
entails and that is the termrain making, and I know that you
(04:24):
do a lot with this.
What exactly is rain making andwhat all does that encompass?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So it depends who you talk to.
Rain making is really aboutbeing able to consistently bring
in a significant amount ofclient business to your firm,
and so that can often be newclients, depending on the firm,
and it can often be, you know,keeping people that are already
clients very happy and bringingin new matters on a consistent
(04:51):
basis.
A rain maker is somebody who'sbringing in enough work that
they are keeping other people inthe law firm busy.
So there's leverage there,right?
You're not just bringing inbusiness that you're going to
sit and do, You're bringing inbusiness that is going to help
you grow the firm by having morepeople working kind of under
your umbrella.
And so some people will saythat rain making is when
(05:16):
somebody's bringing in atremendous amount of business
and it's somehow different fromcalling someone you know a good
business developer.
I think they're the same thing.
These are terms that we useinterchangeably, but it's really
about being able to for lack ofa better term make the cash
register ring both for yourselfand for other people in the firm
.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Got it.
Yes, I wasn't sure if it was.
You know kind of the synonymouswith the whole, the slang of
making it rain, you know withthe cash and the revenue.
But that is good because Ithink that does help frame kind
of the next few questions I wasgoing to ask because you know
you talk about being a rainmakerand that involves, you know,
(05:57):
having bringing in enough workfor other people to do.
But the starting point of thatis going out and finding good
people to do that work.
And so you know, I know that Imean there's so many people that
we work with and that we'reconnected with that help law
firms attract talent.
I know how we do it hereinternally.
(06:19):
Obviously we're not a law firm,you know, but we work with
lawyers, so we know how we tryto attract talent.
What things should a law firmbe doing?
You know, whether it's withtheir hiring process or
onboarding or whatever.
You know what sort of things doyou sort of tell people when it
comes to helping them attractand then also retain the rock
stars and the really good teammembers for a firm?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So the lawyer's edge does not do hiring, however
right.
So we're not an executivesearch firm or lawyer search
firm.
However, we do often have theseconversations with our clients
for the reasons you suggested.
Right, they're looking to growtheir firms.
They want the right people tobe there.
They want people that are goingto stay with them.
Right, it's not good for anylaw firms to have a lot of
(07:06):
turnover.
We have more of it in today'sworld than we used to right,
people leave to go pursue otheropportunities more than they
traditionally did, but it issomething that's top of mind for
all law firm leaders, and so,first of all, I think it's
important to have a really goodunderstanding of what your
culture is and what your valuesare, and if you're just looking
(07:29):
to hire people from quoteunquote, the right law schools
or with a certain pedigree, Ithink that you're going to run
into trouble, because peopleneed to fit right.
They need to fit in, and itdoesn't mean they all need to
look alike, right?
We're not talking about that.
But do these people share yourvalues?
Are they rowing in the samedirection?
(07:50):
Do they want the kinds ofthings that make sense for them
to want, based on what your firmdelivers or what your firm is
looking to achieve.
Another thing is that manyfirms hire without any
understanding of the business oflaw, so the people they're
(08:12):
hiring don't understand thebusiness of law, and the people
doing the hiring are oftenpaying more attention to what
technical legal skills do youhave?
What other law firm did youcome out of?
What law school did you comeout of, so that they wind up
hiring for pedigree or a list oftypes of matters that person
has worked on, rather thanunderstanding that long term.
(08:35):
It's important for these folksto also have an interest in the
business of law, running a lawfirm, bringing business into the
law firm, being part of,potentially in the future, the
leadership of the law firm,taking a longer view, so that
you're more likely to hire theright people.
And so I'll just give oneexample that comes to mind for
(08:56):
me.
There is a litigation boutiquein a large city that I've done
some work with, and there areabout 30 to 35 lawyers,
depending on what's going on,and they have they always have
hired for pedigree.
So the guys that started thefirm came out of big law firms
in the 80s.
(09:17):
They started this law firm.
They had business.
They were doing pretty well.
It was kind of natural for them.
And they said we need morepeople.
And so they went around hiringlawyers from you know the best
law schools in the US and Canada.
And what wound up happening was, some years later, as the older
lawyers, the senior lawyers,were starting to slow down and
(09:38):
retire, they realized that therewas quite literally nobody in
the firm except one guy that youknow was in the second
generation that generatedbusiness.
And so now, all of a sudden,you're looking ahead and saying,
oh my goodness, we hire theseincredible lawyers.
Many of them are people wholove to sit at their desk and
grind out really, really goodlegal work products but there's
(09:59):
nobody here that is interestedin helping us grow the firm,
helping us lead the firm andhelping us bring in the right
kinds of clients.
So I think it is important forlaw firms to take a longer view
when they're hiring.
You know it may not be easy toidentify who those folks are
going to be, but I do think thatit's important to at least have
conversations with people sothat they understand that you're
(10:22):
not just hiring them to grindout some good legal work for a
couple of years.
You are interested in hiringthem for the long term and the
contributions that they can maketo the firm you know are going
to be important, and then youkind of want to have a sense of
what they think those look like.
As far as retention goes, yeah,go ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, and to that point, you know in all the years
that I've been doing this andall the conversations and
everything I've noticed, likethis very strange relationship
here, because you know lawyersinherently, you know whether
they believe it themselves orthey've been told this is entire
, their entire lives.
They're incredibly intelligent,incredibly intelligent, very
(11:00):
smart, can process a lot ofinformation, but for whatever
reason and whether it's justbecause they assume the business
of law and business of runninga law firm is just kind of
something that comes with it andthey should be able to figure
it out or whatever, but it seemslike they're always really good
at being a lawyer.
But then they a lot of timesstruggle with that business side
(11:24):
of things and it's just sointeresting and like we've
always talked about how wellit's because they don't teach
you how to run a business in lawschool or whatever.
But is it, you know?
Is it just because it takes twocompletely different skill sets
to completely different partsof your brain?
Like why?
Why is that struggle soprevalent with lawyers?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I think there are a couple reasons there.
You mentioned the idea thatthey don't teach us stuff, this
stuff, in law school, and theyabsolutely don't.
I mean, I have this.
You know this joke that we gettwo things, and I mean it's not
totally a joke, but we get twothings in law school, you know.
One is we get a foundation inthe law, so they teach us
torrents and constitutional lawand contracts and criminal law,
all that good stuff.
And then they teach you how tothink like a lawyer, so you can
(12:08):
never think like a normal personagain, which is totally true,
like just go to buy like anoffice chair or something and
you're, you know, you're sort oflooking at the fine print.
But the idea is that they thensay you know, congratulations,
you're a lawyer, go have a greatcareer and their job is done
and it is, it's done, you leavelaw school.
But they never mention all ofthe things that are important in
running a law firm, in runninga business or even in, you know,
(12:31):
learning to motivate people andyou know all of the sorts of
things that hiring and firing,as we just discussed, all of the
things that come to be criticalin terms of running not just a
law firm, but also otherorganizations in house legal
departments, you know,government agencies, those sorts
of things so we don't get anyof that.
On top of that, though, thinkabout who self selects into law
(12:53):
school, right?
Nobody set comes to us and saysyou're going, you know you're
going to law school, john.
You have no choice.
We make the choice to go intolaw school, and so most people
aren't going into law schoolbecause they wanted to become
salespeople.
If they had wanted to becomesalespeople, they would have
gone and become salespeople anddone something different.
Most people aren't going intolaw school because they're
tremendous risk takers.
(13:14):
So research has been done on thepersonality types that most
often show up in law school andthen in the legal profession,
and those are people who aretypically not Big picture
thinkers, future focused rightthere, very good at detail work.
They're very good at executingon concrete, specific tasks,
(13:37):
very good at problem solvingright.
They kind of like time andstructure, and so these are not
the people that are thinking inlaw school about how am I going
to run a business?
I mean, didn't.
Even when I tell you I workedat a big law firm, literally
never crossed my mind.
Not joking.
I didn't grow up aroundentrepreneurs.
My dad always worked forcompany, my mom always worked
for a school system.
(13:58):
Somebody else ran the business.
I did the work that they gaveme and so it becomes clearer
when you're in a smaller firmpretty quickly, right, because
you know if you're not bringingin the business and you're not
running the firm, the phone, youknow the somebody's gonna turn
the electricity off.
So you have to pay moreattention to that.
But I do think that it's acombination of things.
(14:19):
And then Certainly at at some ofthe larger law firms and even
law firms that are smaller butyou know, have a Sophisticated
practice, let's say, or they'renot as focused on their junior
people, you know, running thefirm.
They say to their juniorlawyers listen, bill, bill, bill
, bill, bill.
Right, and look, even if you'rein a contingency firm or
(14:40):
whatever it is, the, the moneyisn't getting made unless
somebody's Working and billingthe time.
So no one is saying, hey, whenyou're a first-year associate,
even a fifth-year associate,most of the time let's pay
attention to the business of law.
No, it's all about get, become agood lawyer, be a good
technician, get the work done,keep the client happy and bill,
(15:02):
bill, bill, and so I'm not.
You know, I'm very.
I Don't really criticizelawyers for not knowing how to
do this stuff.
Rather than saying like, right,and it's more like Observation,
and rather than saying like mygod, why are these people so
terrible?
It's almost like why wouldn'tthey be terrible?
Right, because they didn'tself-select, because they wanted
to do these things, and thenthey weren't taught these things
(15:24):
.
And then they get to the lawfirm, and the law firm doesn't
teach those things either, forthe most part, unless you're in
a very unusual place, and so Ithink that that's really the
reasoning Behind the resultsthat we see in that regard.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, I mean it's.
It's kind of that perfect storm, like you mentioned, especially
with just kind of thepersonality types where they are
just really focused on beingdown in the weeds and executing
and then also being very riskaverse.
And you know, when you open upa business, there's a ton of
risk always in a lot ofdifferent things that you do.
(15:57):
And then you also find out,okay, well, now I need to
entrust a marketing vendor or Ineed to entrust, you know, a
Bookkeeper, and all this.
I have to now place my entirelivelihood almost into the hands
of maybe other people or.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I have to figure out how to do this all myself, and
that's I think that's where wesee a lot of this friction
showing up one of the thingsthat I say to people and I think
this is really important whenit comes to Moving ahead as an
attorney In the early part ofyour career as an attorney.
For most people, that abilityto be in the weeds, to be
(16:36):
focused on the details, toexecute and run something across
the finish line is immenselyvaluable.
And so you can imagine you getto a law firm and they want you
to dot those eyes.
They they need you to crossthose T's, they need you to
proofread the document and getthings perfect and get things
right, because that's whatthey're paying you for.
Right?
That is quite literally yourjob, because somebody else is up
(16:57):
here right and and like at ahigher level and delegating work
down to you.
Having said that, as you becomemore senior, your role shifts,
and so this is for everybody,not just for attorneys right,
but as you become more senior,your job becomes more about
managing people and projects andGetting stuff done, even if
you're not the one doing it, andless about your individual
(17:20):
contribution To you know,writing the brief or whatever it
may be.
That shift is not easy for manypeople to make, the people that
maybe have a harder timeearlier as a lawyer, because
they're bigger picture thinkersand those details make them want
to, you know, shoot themselves.
It's easier for them To shiftsometimes into those leadership
(17:45):
roles because they naturally seethe big picture.
They naturally are willing tolook out and say how can I get
this done, rather than with allthese people and resources, and
Rather than how can I do itmyself.
So what we're asking people todo is say, well, you've been a
really, really good associatefor all these years and now we
want you to help run the firm,which is a completely different
(18:07):
skill set.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Right, and so most people don't wake up in the
morning and say I have a reallygreat idea, this stuff that has
worked really well for me for 35or 40 years.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonnathrow all that out the window
and I'm gonna start doingsomething completely different
and change my skills upCompletely overnight.
Nobody does that Right, and soI think that if people are in a
position now where they'relooking to either become
(18:33):
somebody who is more senior,becomes a leader, wants to
become a rainmaker, or you are amanaging partner or a law firm
leader that's, looking at someof your people and you want to
help them get there I think thatexplaining that shift and
saying, listen, over the nextfew years, there are some
different kinds of skills thatwe would like you to learn that
(18:55):
we think will be instrumental toyou succeeding in this second
part of your career.
I think that helping the peopleturn the light bulb on to see
that they can't keep doing thesame thing they've always done,
even though they've been doingit successfully, is very, very
important, because I don't thinkmost people recognize that
that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because it
helps us kind of transition backinto the original path we were
going down in this conversationand I'm glad that we kind of
went down that tangent a littlebit.
But when it comes to retainingthose best employees, is that
really one of the best ways todo it is to kind of help them
develop those additional skillsthat like to kind of prevent
(19:37):
them from getting in that rhythmof doing what they've always
done, and kind of elevating theminto and adding those more
skills.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, sean, I think that's exactly what it's about
is recognizing what the skillsare, what the behaviors are, the
habits, what the mindsets arethat are required for success as
a more senior attorney, as alaw firm leader, as a rainmaker,
whatever it is that this personwants to achieve or you want
(20:06):
this person to achieve and theninvesting in them.
And I'm not necessarily talkingabout money it could be money,
and probably you could look atit as dollars and cents but
investing in these people andhelping them grow First of all.
That's what millennials and GenZ, who are starting to come
(20:28):
into law firms now, are lookingfor.
They have grown up where theirguardians and their parents have
made investments in them.
They love learning, they'vebeen taught, they've had
benchmarks, and so, look, I mean, you can complain about it, and
boomers and Gen Xers cancomplain about it, and
millennials complain about GenXers and boomers.
(20:49):
It's all good, it's all normal,but I think that, understanding
that these folks are coming intothe workplace, they want to
grow in general, they want togrow, they want to learn, and so
you have an opportunity to letthem know that, yes, you are
part of this firm, you are partof this culture.
We do want to retain you here.
We are willing to invest in you.
(21:11):
We are willing to help youfigure out what comes next for
you and learn those skills andgive you stretch assignments
that we are confident that youwill be able to take on, and not
just let them sit in theiroffices grinding out the work
and being invisible.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, absolutely and honestly.
That's one of the things that Ireally appreciated about what
we do here at Spotlight Brandingis people come here, they're
not just collecting a paycheck.
There's that culture of pursueyour passions.
Or if you want to take a course, let us know and we'll cover it
(21:45):
and help you develop skillsthat will help make you more
efficient in your seat, or tohelp you maybe take on more
responsibility, so that you canthen maybe elevate and make more
money down the road.
And that's to your point.
Yeah, people don't want to justshow up to work to make a
paycheck.
They want to contribute, theywant to feel like they belong
(22:09):
and they want more of thattwo-way street with wherever
they're working at.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
You mentioned that I have a podcast and I actually
just this morning recorded anepisode with a managing partner
of a 35-lawyer law firm inToronto and we were talking
about this idea that some lawfirms now are saying what?
We don't want to hire reallyjunior people because they're so
(22:37):
expensive, we don't want toinvest all kinds of time, money
and energy.
We'll hire them later, whensomebody else has done the
training and that kind of thing.
And so, look, it'sunderstandable.
I mean, we know that humanresources are often an
organization's biggest expenseand so for some law firms it may
not make sense to hire superjunior people.
(22:58):
Having said that, the concept ofwe don't want to invest in
people because they may leaveand go somewhere else, or we
don't want to invest in peoplebecause it's going to cost us
something, I think iscounterproductive.
It can be understandable andyet it's not desirable.
And so I encourage lawyers whoare listening in and have that
(23:20):
attitude to think about whatdoes this look like?
And we're not suggesting thatyou send them out to a million
conferences a year and just keepthrowing money at them.
There are ways to train yourpeople and mentor and sponsor
and make that investment of timeand energy, even if it's not
hard dollars and cents, that isgoing to reap you benefits.
(23:43):
And so, yes, some of them aregoing to leave.
We know that's the way it is,but does that mean that you
don't want to grow internallyand grow your firm and grow
leaders, simply because you maylose a little bit on one or two
people?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, and so we've talked about the employee side
of things.
I want to touch on the mindsetof that business owner before we
wrap up here and I want to askyou about how you can delegate
that work and pass it off tosomeone else and trust them to
do it.
We talk about how importantthat is you can't do everything
(24:20):
yourself but I'm curious to getyour thoughts on this, because
this is a question that I have,even in my own role, where it's
like, let's say that there's aworld where a lawyer has
delegated the bookkeeping, themarketing, all of the non-legal
stuff.
They've delegated that out,they recognize that that's not
(24:40):
what they're good at and they'reputting that in the hands of
another expert.
But then, if you feel likeyou're the expert in doing the
legal work, how do you delegatelegal work to other people and
still feel like you're beingeffective and being the best
lawyer that you could be?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I love this question.
There's so much unpack here.
Okay, so a couple of things.
First of all, you mentionedthat lawyers are highly
intelligent, and they are right.
They've done well in school,they're academically inclined,
they're really good at learningand they're really good at
executing.
And so what happens is and Iwill say this in you know, I do
a lot of speaking for lawyergroups and I'll say this in a
(25:21):
room and I'll just say thefollowing If I want done, if I
want something done, right, andthe whole room will say at the
same time, I have to do itmyself, right?
Because that's kind of themantra of lawyers is that I'm
smart, I trust myself, I know Ido good work, and if I give it
to somebody else, it's not goingto be done the way I would do
it.
What if it's not perfect?
Because there's a perfectionismtrain that runs right through
(25:44):
the legal profession and, by theway, if I delegate it to
someone, it's going to take memore time to explain it to them
than it would for me to do itmyself, right?
So I hear this all the time.
You know, if I had a nickel forevery time I heard this, I'd be
a very wealthy woman.
So here's the thing no lawyerhas ever, you know, earned
(26:05):
absolute top compensation,become managing partner of a law
firm, brought in tons ofbusiness who wanted to do it all
him or herself.
You cannot be the person who'ssitting up at three o'clock in
the morning proofreadingdocuments and be the leader of
your firm.
Right?
There are things that have toget delegated out to other
people, and so the second thingI would say is delegation is not
(26:26):
abdication.
There's a difference betweenthose two things.
And you mentioned the idea ofdelegating tasks out to you know
, for bookkeeping or formarketing or HR, whatever it may
be.
Even though you are hiringexperts to do those things, you
are still not abdicatingresponsibility.
All of those things have to bedone in accordance with the
(26:48):
firm's values and the firm'svision and mission and all of
those sorts of things, becauseotherwise it's not right for
your firm.
In the same way, you candelegate legal work out to
people and you're notnecessarily abdicating it and
just saying, well, you know,you're not necessarily totally
qualified yet, but sure go offand run with it and, you know,
do whatever you want.
(27:08):
So I think that this goes backto the investment concept.
When you delegate to otherpeople.
Yes, it does take time to teachthem and train them and make
sure they're doing it the XYZlaw firm way right, or your way.
At the same time, it's aninvestment that will pay
dividends.
If you were able to freeyourself up for the highest and
(27:31):
best use of your time, that'swhere the investment pays off.
So, as an example, I have peoplesay to me all the time because
I, you know, I do a tremendousamount of business development
work with law firms andindividual lawyers you don't
understand the least, I can'tfind time to do this stuff.
Again, it's the number onecomment that I hear from lawyers
when it comes to businessdevelopment.
(27:52):
The thing is that if you're notdelegating, if you feel like
you have to hold on toeverything yourself and do it
yourself, you won't have thetime You're not going to be able
to create.
We all have the same 24 sevens.
So it's a question of what areyou doing with your time?
And if you are proofreadingdocuments, if you are doing all
of your own bills, if you are,you know, answering every email,
(28:16):
no matter how immaterial it isright, if you're drafting low
level documents that somebodyelse could be drafting, you are
not freeing up your time for thehighest and best use, which is
probably doing the high, whichis probably one of three things
doing the high value, the highlevel legal work that only you
can do running the firm anddeveloping the business yeah
(28:40):
Right, and so you get stuck in acycle, and so what I say is
find the right person to whom todelegate, train that person,
give them deadlines to come backand talk to you.
Don't shoot the messenger whenthey do something that you don't
like.
Explain to them.
You know it's really a teachingprocess.
Make sure those lines ofcommunication are kept open and
(29:01):
that they're coming back to youand over time, you're training
them to do work in a way thatmakes sense for the firm and in
a way that allows you to do thethings that only you can do,
that only you're meant to bedoing.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, Absolutely.
And you know, as I'm hearingthis, it's like I almost hear
like lawyer voices in the backof my head.
But I don't have time to trainpeople.
I don't even have time to getall of this set up and it's like
, yeah, there's going to be atime investment upfront to get
all of this stuff systematizedand set up so that you can hand
(29:36):
it off.
But God, the amount that youwill gain back in the weeks and
months and years after that isgoing to be like remarkable and
I've seen it.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I've seen it happen so many times.
I have one client who is atrust and a state's lawyer and
he's in his early 50s and hesaid to me like I can bring in
so much more business, but Idon't have time to do it Right.
So what would happen if, all ofa sudden, you brought in this
amazing client or a series ofamazing clients and you either
(30:10):
did a terrible job or you had toturn them away because you
simply couldn't get to the work?
So what we wound up doing is,over a period of time, developed
a system for what happens whena new trust in the states matter
comes in and look, some of themaren't going to fit the
structure because some of themare going to be very unique
matters.
He has very high net worthclients and so we talked about a
(30:34):
system and developed a system.
So there's somebody who doessome intake and there are
certain forms that have to getfilled out and questions that
have to get answered.
It goes to a paralegal.
There are a bunch of thingsthat happen there.
The paralegal meets with theattorney a couple of times a
week to go over all of thematters.
The attorney meets with theclient a certain number of times
.
The expectation is the attorneywill meet with the client a
(30:56):
certain number of times to getthe understanding of what's
going on with the client andtheir family and all of that
sort of thing.
But what's happened is he'sbeen able to grow his business
dramatically and still provideexceptional service and perhaps
more exceptional service to hisclients, because he took the
time to set that up and itdoesn't happen overnight.
So you can't have that instantgratification mentality when you
(31:19):
want to grow.
It's not a one time thing, it'skind of a marathon, not a
sprint to some extent.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, absolutely, and that sentiment carries over
into I mean, we see it all thetime in marketing as well.
People expect overnight resultsand it's like no, you got to
build that momentum and it takessome time.
But it's really tough when thesociety we live in right now is
so full of instant gratificationand it just like people's
(31:51):
patience is just not nearly whatit used to be.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I just saw a post on LinkedIn that someone put on
about this idea that it takes along time.
It was a LinkedIn brandingexpert who talked about it
taking her 10 years to grow thisincredible following of like
50,000 people or something, andthat people think it happened
overnight.
And someone commented the onlything that's instant is oatmeal
and for some reason that juststruck me as hilarious.
(32:15):
But it really does go to allthe things that we've been
talking about today.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I mean a ton of great insighthere, as always.
How can people learn more aboutLawyer's Edge and get in touch
with you?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, so, people, I would love to meet you.
If you're interested in sayinghello, you can visit us at our
website, which isthelawyerzedgecom, and you can
also find me on LinkedIn.
I hang out there quite a bit aswell, and so definitely reach
out and say hi.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Awesome, love it.
Well, that is going to do itfor us here this week on Center
Stage.
Appreciate so much all thefeedback and all of the notes
that you guys have been sendingin.
That's going to do it At least.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Thanks for listening.
To learn more, go tospotlightbrandingcom.
Slash center stage.
This podcast is brought to you by Spotlight
Branding.
Whether your firm only gets afew referrals or it's 100% of
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The pros at Spotlight Brandingcan help you create that content
through blogging videos, emailnewsletters and more All
(00:22):
designed to help you increaseyour referrals and attract the
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Visit spotlightbrandingcomslash pod to learn more.
That's spotlightbrandingcomslash pod.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Center Stage putting your firm in the
spotlight by highlightingbusiness owners and other
industry experts to help takeyour firm to the next level.
Hey everyone, and welcome toCenter Stage.
I'm your host, john Hinton, andthis week we are being joined
by a former practicing lawyerwho has now become a coach and a
trainer now the CEO of theLawyer's Edge, which is also a
(01:16):
podcast which you shoulddefinitely check out and that is
Elise Holtzman.
She's gonna be.
We're gonna talk about just awide-ranging set of things just
around setting up your firm forsuccess and really give you a
good bit of insight into thethings that Elise helps lawyers
out with.
(01:36):
So, elise, thanks for joiningus.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm thrilled to be here, John.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Awesome.
So I kind of gave the broadstrokes introduction there where
you came from now, but tell usa little bit more about your
background and why youtransitioned out of being a
practicing lawyer to what you'redoing now with the Lawyer's
Edge.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Sure.
So I graduated from law schoola long time ago, went straight
into big law in New York City.
I didn't know anythingdifferent.
I didn't come from a family oflawyers and I also had a lot of
loans to pay off.
So I went to a couple of biglaw firms in Manhattan and I was
working in the area ofcommercial real estate
transactions, which I absolutelyloved.
I loved doing deals.
(02:15):
Back then we used to gettogether in big conference rooms
with a million documents and amillion people, so it was very
exciting.
I wound up leaving the practiceof law kind of grudgingly.
I loved what I did.
I was happy at my firm ingeneral, but there were no women
mentors back then.
I had amazing mentors andsponsors who were all men with
(02:40):
stay-at-home lives, and so theywere incredible and I learned so
much from them.
But ultimately, my husband andI my husband's also a big law
lawyer, by the way so we had ababy.
I'm afraid to tell you how oldthe baby is, but anyway, we had
this baby and we kind of triedto make it work.
It was like a bad movie, I meanpulling all-nighters and
working all weekend and tryingto make it work, and there was
(03:00):
no such thing as part-time backthen, but they let me try it and
I was supposed to work 40 hoursa week as a part-time gig and I
was still working 70 hours aweek.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So it was just nuts and.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
I thought well, you know what I tried.
This thing it doesn't work.
I was sort of annoyed about thewhole thing and, at the same
time, because I felt like itwasn't my choice, and at the
same time, recognized that mostwomen didn't have the luxury of
staying home with their kids,which is what I wound up doing.
So I wound up being home withkids for a while and then, about
15 years ago 16 years ago maybedecided that it was time to
(03:33):
figure out what I was gonna bewhen I grew up and I found out
about executive and leadershipcoaching, did a full year
certificate program in that, andthen started the lawyer's edge.
So I've been doing this.
You know, I've been in businessfor almost exactly 15 years now
and work exclusively withlawyers and law firms on a
variety of things that theydidn't teach us in law school,
(03:56):
the most prominent of thosebeing business development and
leader development.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Awesome.
So yeah, and you know, I knowthat you're just an absolute
wealth of information on thisand the first question that I
had for you and I've seen thisterm floating around I've been
working with lawyers for nineyears, I've seen this term every
now and then and hopefully thisdoesn't make me sound too
ignorant, but, like, I'm stillnot entirely sure what it
entails and that is the termrain making, and I know that you
(04:24):
do a lot with this.
What exactly is rain making andwhat all does that encompass?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So it depends who you talk to.
Rain making is really aboutbeing able to consistently bring
in a significant amount ofclient business to your firm,
and so that can often be newclients, depending on the firm,
and it can often be, you know,keeping people that are already
clients very happy and bringingin new matters on a consistent
(04:51):
basis.
A rain maker is somebody who'sbringing in enough work that
they are keeping other people inthe law firm busy.
So there's leverage there,right?
You're not just bringing inbusiness that you're going to
sit and do, You're bringing inbusiness that is going to help
you grow the firm by having morepeople working kind of under
your umbrella.
And so some people will saythat rain making is when
(05:16):
somebody's bringing in atremendous amount of business
and it's somehow different fromcalling someone you know a good
business developer.
I think they're the same thing.
These are terms that we useinterchangeably, but it's really
about being able to for lack ofa better term make the cash
register ring both for yourselfand for other people in the firm
.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Got it.
Yes, I wasn't sure if it was.
You know kind of the synonymouswith the whole, the slang of
making it rain, you know withthe cash and the revenue.
But that is good because Ithink that does help frame kind
of the next few questions I wasgoing to ask because you know
you talk about being a rainmakerand that involves, you know,
(05:57):
having bringing in enough workfor other people to do.
But the starting point of thatis going out and finding good
people to do that work.
And so you know, I know that Imean there's so many people that
we work with and that we'reconnected with that help law
firms attract talent.
I know how we do it hereinternally.
(06:19):
Obviously we're not a law firm,you know, but we work with
lawyers, so we know how we tryto attract talent.
What things should a law firmbe doing?
You know, whether it's withtheir hiring process or
onboarding or whatever.
You know what sort of things doyou sort of tell people when it
comes to helping them attractand then also retain the rock
stars and the really good teammembers for a firm?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So the lawyer's edge does not do hiring, however
right.
So we're not an executivesearch firm or lawyer search
firm.
However, we do often have theseconversations with our clients
for the reasons you suggested.
Right, they're looking to growtheir firms.
They want the right people tobe there.
They want people that are goingto stay with them.
Right, it's not good for anylaw firms to have a lot of
(07:06):
turnover.
We have more of it in today'sworld than we used to right,
people leave to go pursue otheropportunities more than they
traditionally did, but it issomething that's top of mind for
all law firm leaders, and so,first of all, I think it's
important to have a really goodunderstanding of what your
culture is and what your valuesare, and if you're just looking
(07:29):
to hire people from quoteunquote, the right law schools
or with a certain pedigree, Ithink that you're going to run
into trouble, because peopleneed to fit right.
They need to fit in, and itdoesn't mean they all need to
look alike, right?
We're not talking about that.
But do these people share yourvalues?
Are they rowing in the samedirection?
(07:50):
Do they want the kinds ofthings that make sense for them
to want, based on what your firmdelivers or what your firm is
looking to achieve.
Another thing is that manyfirms hire without any
understanding of the business oflaw, so the people they're
(08:12):
hiring don't understand thebusiness of law, and the people
doing the hiring are oftenpaying more attention to what
technical legal skills do youhave?
What other law firm did youcome out of?
What law school did you comeout of, so that they wind up
hiring for pedigree or a list oftypes of matters that person
has worked on, rather thanunderstanding that long term.
(08:35):
It's important for these folksto also have an interest in the
business of law, running a lawfirm, bringing business into the
law firm, being part of,potentially in the future, the
leadership of the law firm,taking a longer view, so that
you're more likely to hire theright people.
And so I'll just give oneexample that comes to mind for
(08:56):
me.
There is a litigation boutiquein a large city that I've done
some work with, and there areabout 30 to 35 lawyers,
depending on what's going on,and they have they always have
hired for pedigree.
So the guys that started thefirm came out of big law firms
in the 80s.
(09:17):
They started this law firm.
They had business.
They were doing pretty well.
It was kind of natural for them.
And they said we need morepeople.
And so they went around hiringlawyers from you know the best
law schools in the US and Canada.
And what wound up happening was, some years later, as the older
lawyers, the senior lawyers,were starting to slow down and
(09:38):
retire, they realized that therewas quite literally nobody in
the firm except one guy that youknow was in the second
generation that generatedbusiness.
And so now, all of a sudden,you're looking ahead and saying,
oh my goodness, we hire theseincredible lawyers.
Many of them are people wholove to sit at their desk and
grind out really, really goodlegal work products but there's
(09:59):
nobody here that is interestedin helping us grow the firm,
helping us lead the firm andhelping us bring in the right
kinds of clients.
So I think it is important forlaw firms to take a longer view
when they're hiring.
You know it may not be easy toidentify who those folks are
going to be, but I do think thatit's important to at least have
conversations with people sothat they understand that you're
(10:22):
not just hiring them to grindout some good legal work for a
couple of years.
You are interested in hiringthem for the long term and the
contributions that they can maketo the firm you know are going
to be important, and then youkind of want to have a sense of
what they think those look like.
As far as retention goes, yeah,go ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, and to that point, you know in all the years
that I've been doing this andall the conversations and
everything I've noticed, likethis very strange relationship
here, because you know lawyersinherently, you know whether
they believe it themselves orthey've been told this is entire
, their entire lives.
They're incredibly intelligent,incredibly intelligent, very
(11:00):
smart, can process a lot ofinformation, but for whatever
reason and whether it's justbecause they assume the business
of law and business of runninga law firm is just kind of
something that comes with it andthey should be able to figure
it out or whatever, but it seemslike they're always really good
at being a lawyer.
But then they a lot of timesstruggle with that business side
(11:24):
of things and it's just sointeresting and like we've
always talked about how wellit's because they don't teach
you how to run a business in lawschool or whatever.
But is it, you know?
Is it just because it takes twocompletely different skill sets
to completely different partsof your brain?
Like why?
Why is that struggle soprevalent with lawyers?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
I think there are a couple reasons there.
You mentioned the idea thatthey don't teach us stuff, this
stuff, in law school, and theyabsolutely don't.
I mean, I have this.
You know this joke that we gettwo things, and I mean it's not
totally a joke, but we get twothings in law school, you know.
One is we get a foundation inthe law, so they teach us
torrents and constitutional lawand contracts and criminal law,
all that good stuff.
And then they teach you how tothink like a lawyer, so you can
(12:08):
never think like a normal personagain, which is totally true,
like just go to buy like anoffice chair or something and
you're, you know, you're sort oflooking at the fine print.
But the idea is that they thensay you know, congratulations,
you're a lawyer, go have a greatcareer and their job is done
and it is, it's done, you leavelaw school.
But they never mention all ofthe things that are important in
running a law firm, in runninga business or even in, you know,
(12:31):
learning to motivate people andyou know all of the sorts of
things that hiring and firing,as we just discussed, all of the
things that come to be criticalin terms of running not just a
law firm, but also otherorganizations in house legal
departments, you know,government agencies, those sorts
of things so we don't get anyof that.
On top of that, though, thinkabout who self selects into law
(12:53):
school, right?
Nobody set comes to us and saysyou're going, you know you're
going to law school, john.
You have no choice.
We make the choice to go intolaw school, and so most people
aren't going into law schoolbecause they wanted to become
salespeople.
If they had wanted to becomesalespeople, they would have
gone and become salespeople anddone something different.
Most people aren't going intolaw school because they're
tremendous risk takers.
(13:14):
So research has been done on thepersonality types that most
often show up in law school andthen in the legal profession,
and those are people who aretypically not Big picture
thinkers, future focused rightthere, very good at detail work.
They're very good at executingon concrete, specific tasks,
(13:37):
very good at problem solvingright.
They kind of like time andstructure, and so these are not
the people that are thinking inlaw school about how am I going
to run a business?
I mean, didn't.
Even when I tell you I workedat a big law firm, literally
never crossed my mind.
Not joking.
I didn't grow up aroundentrepreneurs.
My dad always worked forcompany, my mom always worked
for a school system.
(13:58):
Somebody else ran the business.
I did the work that they gaveme and so it becomes clearer
when you're in a smaller firmpretty quickly, right, because
you know if you're not bringingin the business and you're not
running the firm, the phone, youknow the somebody's gonna turn
the electricity off.
So you have to pay moreattention to that.
But I do think that it's acombination of things.
(14:19):
And then Certainly at at some ofthe larger law firms and even
law firms that are smaller butyou know, have a Sophisticated
practice, let's say, or they'renot as focused on their junior
people, you know, running thefirm.
They say to their juniorlawyers listen, bill, bill, bill
, bill, bill.
Right, and look, even if you'rein a contingency firm or
(14:40):
whatever it is, the, the moneyisn't getting made unless
somebody's Working and billingthe time.
So no one is saying, hey, whenyou're a first-year associate,
even a fifth-year associate,most of the time let's pay
attention to the business of law.
No, it's all about get, become agood lawyer, be a good
technician, get the work done,keep the client happy and bill,
(15:02):
bill, bill, and so I'm not.
You know, I'm very.
I Don't really criticizelawyers for not knowing how to
do this stuff.
Rather than saying like, right,and it's more like Observation,
and rather than saying like mygod, why are these people so
terrible?
It's almost like why wouldn'tthey be terrible?
Right, because they didn'tself-select, because they wanted
to do these things, and thenthey weren't taught these things
(15:24):
.
And then they get to the lawfirm, and the law firm doesn't
teach those things either, forthe most part, unless you're in
a very unusual place, and so Ithink that that's really the
reasoning Behind the resultsthat we see in that regard.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, I mean it's.
It's kind of that perfect storm, like you mentioned, especially
with just kind of thepersonality types where they are
just really focused on beingdown in the weeds and executing
and then also being very riskaverse.
And you know, when you open upa business, there's a ton of
risk always in a lot ofdifferent things that you do.
(15:57):
And then you also find out,okay, well, now I need to
entrust a marketing vendor or Ineed to entrust, you know, a
Bookkeeper, and all this.
I have to now place my entirelivelihood almost into the hands
of maybe other people or.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I have to figure out how to do this all myself, and
that's I think that's where wesee a lot of this friction
showing up one of the thingsthat I say to people and I think
this is really important whenit comes to Moving ahead as an
attorney In the early part ofyour career as an attorney.
For most people, that abilityto be in the weeds, to be
(16:36):
focused on the details, toexecute and run something across
the finish line is immenselyvaluable.
And so you can imagine you getto a law firm and they want you
to dot those eyes.
They they need you to crossthose T's, they need you to
proofread the document and getthings perfect and get things
right, because that's whatthey're paying you for.
Right?
That is quite literally yourjob, because somebody else is up
(16:57):
here right and and like at ahigher level and delegating work
down to you.
Having said that, as you becomemore senior, your role shifts,
and so this is for everybody,not just for attorneys right,
but as you become more senior,your job becomes more about
managing people and projects andGetting stuff done, even if
you're not the one doing it, andless about your individual
(17:20):
contribution To you know,writing the brief or whatever it
may be.
That shift is not easy for manypeople to make, the people that
maybe have a harder timeearlier as a lawyer, because
they're bigger picture thinkersand those details make them want
to, you know, shoot themselves.
It's easier for them To shiftsometimes into those leadership
(17:45):
roles because they naturally seethe big picture.
They naturally are willing tolook out and say how can I get
this done, rather than with allthese people and resources, and
Rather than how can I do itmyself.
So what we're asking people todo is say, well, you've been a
really, really good associatefor all these years and now we
want you to help run the firm,which is a completely different
(18:07):
skill set.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Right, and so most people don't wake up in the
morning and say I have a reallygreat idea, this stuff that has
worked really well for me for 35or 40 years.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonnathrow all that out the window
and I'm gonna start doingsomething completely different
and change my skills upCompletely overnight.
Nobody does that Right, and soI think that if people are in a
position now where they'relooking to either become
(18:33):
somebody who is more senior,becomes a leader, wants to
become a rainmaker, or you are amanaging partner or a law firm
leader that's, looking at someof your people and you want to
help them get there I think thatexplaining that shift and
saying, listen, over the nextfew years, there are some
different kinds of skills thatwe would like you to learn that
(18:55):
we think will be instrumental toyou succeeding in this second
part of your career.
I think that helping the peopleturn the light bulb on to see
that they can't keep doing thesame thing they've always done,
even though they've been doingit successfully, is very, very
important, because I don't thinkmost people recognize that
that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because it
helps us kind of transition backinto the original path we were
going down in this conversationand I'm glad that we kind of
went down that tangent a littlebit.
But when it comes to retainingthose best employees, is that
really one of the best ways todo it is to kind of help them
develop those additional skillsthat like to kind of prevent
(19:37):
them from getting in that rhythmof doing what they've always
done, and kind of elevating theminto and adding those more
skills.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, sean, I think that's exactly what it's about
is recognizing what the skillsare, what the behaviors are, the
habits, what the mindsets arethat are required for success as
a more senior attorney, as alaw firm leader, as a rainmaker,
whatever it is that this personwants to achieve or you want
(20:06):
this person to achieve and theninvesting in them.
And I'm not necessarily talkingabout money it could be money,
and probably you could look atit as dollars and cents but
investing in these people andhelping them grow First of all.
That's what millennials and GenZ, who are starting to come
(20:28):
into law firms now, are lookingfor.
They have grown up where theirguardians and their parents have
made investments in them.
They love learning, they'vebeen taught, they've had
benchmarks, and so, look, I mean, you can complain about it, and
boomers and Gen Xers cancomplain about it, and
millennials complain about GenXers and boomers.
(20:49):
It's all good, it's all normal,but I think that, understanding
that these folks are coming intothe workplace, they want to
grow in general, they want togrow, they want to learn, and so
you have an opportunity to letthem know that, yes, you are
part of this firm, you are partof this culture.
We do want to retain you here.
We are willing to invest in you.
(21:11):
We are willing to help youfigure out what comes next for
you and learn those skills andgive you stretch assignments
that we are confident that youwill be able to take on, and not
just let them sit in theiroffices grinding out the work
and being invisible.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, absolutely and honestly.
That's one of the things that Ireally appreciated about what
we do here at Spotlight Brandingis people come here, they're
not just collecting a paycheck.
There's that culture of pursueyour passions.
Or if you want to take a course, let us know and we'll cover it
(21:45):
and help you develop skillsthat will help make you more
efficient in your seat, or tohelp you maybe take on more
responsibility, so that you canthen maybe elevate and make more
money down the road.
And that's to your point.
Yeah, people don't want to justshow up to work to make a
paycheck.
They want to contribute, theywant to feel like they belong
(22:09):
and they want more of thattwo-way street with wherever
they're working at.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
You mentioned that I have a podcast and I actually
just this morning recorded anepisode with a managing partner
of a 35-lawyer law firm inToronto and we were talking
about this idea that some lawfirms now are saying what?
We don't want to hire reallyjunior people because they're so
(22:37):
expensive, we don't want toinvest all kinds of time, money
and energy.
We'll hire them later, whensomebody else has done the
training and that kind of thing.
And so, look, it'sunderstandable.
I mean, we know that humanresources are often an
organization's biggest expenseand so for some law firms it may
not make sense to hire superjunior people.
(22:58):
Having said that, the concept ofwe don't want to invest in
people because they may leaveand go somewhere else, or we
don't want to invest in peoplebecause it's going to cost us
something, I think iscounterproductive.
It can be understandable andyet it's not desirable.
And so I encourage lawyers whoare listening in and have that
(23:20):
attitude to think about whatdoes this look like?
And we're not suggesting thatyou send them out to a million
conferences a year and just keepthrowing money at them.
There are ways to train yourpeople and mentor and sponsor
and make that investment of timeand energy, even if it's not
hard dollars and cents, that isgoing to reap you benefits.
(23:43):
And so, yes, some of them aregoing to leave.
We know that's the way it is,but does that mean that you
don't want to grow internallyand grow your firm and grow
leaders, simply because you maylose a little bit on one or two
people?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, and so we've talked about the employee side
of things.
I want to touch on the mindsetof that business owner before we
wrap up here and I want to askyou about how you can delegate
that work and pass it off tosomeone else and trust them to
do it.
We talk about how importantthat is you can't do everything
(24:20):
yourself but I'm curious to getyour thoughts on this, because
this is a question that I have,even in my own role, where it's
like, let's say that there's aworld where a lawyer has
delegated the bookkeeping, themarketing, all of the non-legal
stuff.
They've delegated that out,they recognize that that's not
(24:40):
what they're good at and they'reputting that in the hands of
another expert.
But then, if you feel likeyou're the expert in doing the
legal work, how do you delegatelegal work to other people and
still feel like you're beingeffective and being the best
lawyer that you could be?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I love this question.
There's so much unpack here.
Okay, so a couple of things.
First of all, you mentionedthat lawyers are highly
intelligent, and they are right.
They've done well in school,they're academically inclined,
they're really good at learningand they're really good at
executing.
And so what happens is and Iwill say this in you know, I do
a lot of speaking for lawyergroups and I'll say this in a
(25:21):
room and I'll just say thefollowing If I want done, if I
want something done, right, andthe whole room will say at the
same time, I have to do itmyself, right?
Because that's kind of themantra of lawyers is that I'm
smart, I trust myself, I know Ido good work, and if I give it
to somebody else, it's not goingto be done the way I would do
it.
What if it's not perfect?
Because there's a perfectionismtrain that runs right through
(25:44):
the legal profession and, by theway, if I delegate it to
someone, it's going to take memore time to explain it to them
than it would for me to do itmyself, right?
So I hear this all the time.
You know, if I had a nickel forevery time I heard this, I'd be
a very wealthy woman.
So here's the thing no lawyerhas ever, you know, earned
(26:05):
absolute top compensation,become managing partner of a law
firm, brought in tons ofbusiness who wanted to do it all
him or herself.
You cannot be the person who'ssitting up at three o'clock in
the morning proofreadingdocuments and be the leader of
your firm.
Right?
There are things that have toget delegated out to other
people, and so the second thingI would say is delegation is not
(26:26):
abdication.
There's a difference betweenthose two things.
And you mentioned the idea ofdelegating tasks out to you know
, for bookkeeping or formarketing or HR, whatever it may
be.
Even though you are hiringexperts to do those things, you
are still not abdicatingresponsibility.
All of those things have to bedone in accordance with the
(26:48):
firm's values and the firm'svision and mission and all of
those sorts of things, becauseotherwise it's not right for
your firm.
In the same way, you candelegate legal work out to
people and you're notnecessarily abdicating it and
just saying, well, you know,you're not necessarily totally
qualified yet, but sure go offand run with it and, you know,
do whatever you want.
(27:08):
So I think that this goes backto the investment concept.
When you delegate to otherpeople.
Yes, it does take time to teachthem and train them and make
sure they're doing it the XYZlaw firm way right, or your way.
At the same time, it's aninvestment that will pay
dividends.
If you were able to freeyourself up for the highest and
(27:31):
best use of your time, that'swhere the investment pays off.
So, as an example, I have peoplesay to me all the time because
I, you know, I do a tremendousamount of business development
work with law firms andindividual lawyers you don't
understand the least, I can'tfind time to do this stuff.
Again, it's the number onecomment that I hear from lawyers
when it comes to businessdevelopment.
(27:52):
The thing is that if you're notdelegating, if you feel like
you have to hold on toeverything yourself and do it
yourself, you won't have thetime You're not going to be able
to create.
We all have the same 24 sevens.
So it's a question of what areyou doing with your time?
And if you are proofreadingdocuments, if you are doing all
of your own bills, if you are,you know, answering every email,
(28:16):
no matter how immaterial it isright, if you're drafting low
level documents that somebodyelse could be drafting, you are
not freeing up your time for thehighest and best use, which is
probably doing the high, whichis probably one of three things
doing the high value, the highlevel legal work that only you
can do running the firm anddeveloping the business yeah
(28:40):
Right, and so you get stuck in acycle, and so what I say is
find the right person to whom todelegate, train that person,
give them deadlines to come backand talk to you.
Don't shoot the messenger whenthey do something that you don't
like.
Explain to them.
You know it's really a teachingprocess.
Make sure those lines ofcommunication are kept open and
(29:01):
that they're coming back to youand over time, you're training
them to do work in a way thatmakes sense for the firm and in
a way that allows you to do thethings that only you can do,
that only you're meant to bedoing.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, Absolutely.
And you know, as I'm hearingthis, it's like I almost hear
like lawyer voices in the backof my head.
But I don't have time to trainpeople.
I don't even have time to getall of this set up and it's like
, yeah, there's going to be atime investment upfront to get
all of this stuff systematizedand set up so that you can hand
(29:36):
it off.
But God, the amount that youwill gain back in the weeks and
months and years after that isgoing to be like remarkable and
I've seen it.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I've seen it happen so many times.
I have one client who is atrust and a state's lawyer and
he's in his early 50s and hesaid to me like I can bring in
so much more business, but Idon't have time to do it Right.
So what would happen if, all ofa sudden, you brought in this
amazing client or a series ofamazing clients and you either
(30:10):
did a terrible job or you had toturn them away because you
simply couldn't get to the work?
So what we wound up doing is,over a period of time, developed
a system for what happens whena new trust in the states matter
comes in and look, some of themaren't going to fit the
structure because some of themare going to be very unique
matters.
He has very high net worthclients and so we talked about a
(30:34):
system and developed a system.
So there's somebody who doessome intake and there are
certain forms that have to getfilled out and questions that
have to get answered.
It goes to a paralegal.
There are a bunch of thingsthat happen there.
The paralegal meets with theattorney a couple of times a
week to go over all of thematters.
The attorney meets with theclient a certain number of times
.
The expectation is the attorneywill meet with the client a
(30:56):
certain number of times to getthe understanding of what's
going on with the client andtheir family and all of that
sort of thing.
But what's happened is he'sbeen able to grow his business
dramatically and still provideexceptional service and perhaps
more exceptional service to hisclients, because he took the
time to set that up and itdoesn't happen overnight.
So you can't have that instantgratification mentality when you
(31:19):
want to grow.
It's not a one time thing, it'skind of a marathon, not a
sprint to some extent.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, absolutely, and that sentiment carries over
into I mean, we see it all thetime in marketing as well.
People expect overnight resultsand it's like no, you got to
build that momentum and it takessome time.
But it's really tough when thesociety we live in right now is
so full of instant gratificationand it just like people's
(31:51):
patience is just not nearly whatit used to be.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I just saw a post on LinkedIn that someone put on
about this idea that it takes along time.
It was a LinkedIn brandingexpert who talked about it
taking her 10 years to grow thisincredible following of like
50,000 people or something, andthat people think it happened
overnight.
And someone commented the onlything that's instant is oatmeal
and for some reason that juststruck me as hilarious.
(32:15):
But it really does go to allthe things that we've been
talking about today.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I mean a ton of great insighthere, as always.
How can people learn more aboutLawyer's Edge and get in touch
with you?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, so, people, I would love to meet you.
If you're interested in sayinghello, you can visit us at our
website, which isthelawyerzedgecom, and you can
also find me on LinkedIn.
I hang out there quite a bit aswell, and so definitely reach
out and say hi.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Awesome, love it.
Well, that is going to do itfor us here this week on Center
Stage.
Appreciate so much all thefeedback and all of the notes
that you guys have been sendingin.
That's going to do it At least.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Thanks for listening.
To learn more, go tospotlightbrandingcom.
Slash center stage.
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