April 18, 2025 • 32 mins
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🧠Most small law firms are hiring wrong—and it’s holding them back. In this episode, Brett Trembly breaks down the proven hiring mindset and systems that helped him scale from solo to a team of 35+. From why you should hire people more experienced than you, to how to train, manage, and retain team members (even virtually), this is the no-fluff hiring playbook law firm owners have been waiting for.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways:
- Why “cheap” hires usually cost you more.
- How to flip the hiring script and find true A-players.
- The step-by-step system to filter, test, and train top talent.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Law Firm Marketing Minute.
This is part two of two of ourconversation with Brett Tremblay
of Tremblay Law and Get StaffedUp.
In this episode, brett divesdeep into exactly how he hires
and gets the right people intothe right seats.
That has freed him up topractice law and to scale both
of his businesses.
So sit back, take notes and atthe end of the episode, if you
(00:23):
feel so inclined to do so,please leave us a review.
We would greatly appreciate thefeedback.
It helps us grow the show.
All right, let's get right toit.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Rhett, something you said that jumped out at me.
You know, this is true.
You know, in the marketingspace I've seen this.
I've also been in the law firmspace for you know, 15 years or
so.
But you know you said you hiredan attorney.
That was that was.
That was better than you, right, more experienced.
A mistake I see people make allthe time again in legal but,
(00:53):
but plenty of other places toois is is hiring people less
experienced than them, right,and and and.
Then they end up kind of havingto babysit them and and and.
So talk about that.
Talk about, because I thinkwhat most people naturally do is
they feel like they need tohire somebody who is less
experienced than them, and thenthey're gonna train them and
(01:14):
groom them and all of this, butyou kind of went the opposite
direction.
I think that probably wasreally important.
So talk about that thoughtprocess real quick.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
It's one of the best things I ever did, and it wasn't
something that I came up withon my own.
I was doing a budget at aworkshop and I was putting
80,000 and my mentor at the timewas like, why so little?
And I'm like hoping he didn't,hoping he didn't like dig in and
start, you know, interrogatingme, but he did and he's like why
(01:41):
would you hire someone thatdoesn't know what they're doing?
You're actually paying someone80 to 100 grand to then teach
them for two years and that'sgoing to take more of your time.
Why would you do that?
And I didn't have a good answerfor that.
So he's like stand up in frontof the whole room and promise
that you'll hire someone withmore experience than you, and I
did.
And the difference was probablylike 20 grand, right, which is
(02:06):
like what?
Two grand per month, oh my god,is that one of the smartest
decisions you can ever make?
And there's people out therethat that are tired of trying to
run their own business or thatare don't want to be in a big
law firm anymore.
Like you can find people withexperience.
It's not impossible.
Um, the the default is let meget the cheapest person possible
, because that's what I canafford.
I get it because like that'swhat I can afford.
I get it because, like that'swhat I felt and how I operated
(02:28):
and I think to a certain extent,we all still do that in our
business somewhere.
And it's not.
It's not like you.
The answer is no.
Go find the most expensiveperson, because maybe that
person holding themselves out tobe an expert really really
isn't and and and they aren'tworth the money.
So so there's a balance there.
(02:48):
But the idea that you're gonnatake time off your plate because
when you hire someone, that'sthat's like only billing or only
doing legal work then you, youstart to bring in a lot more.
It's like hiring someone tojust make pizzas all day long.
You're gonna have so much moreinventory to sell.
You're not gonna be behind likeyou just need someone to just
make pizzas all day long.
You're going to have so muchmore inventory to sell.
You're not going to be behindLike you're just need someone to
like throw that pizza in theoven and boom, and you're
(03:10):
selling it and you're handing itout all that.
But like you need that personright, what you're doing with
your time is is bringing in morecases and networking so that
you continue to feed that personand they work in harmony very
well and it's almost like, oh myGod, how am I making so much
(03:32):
more money now?
But it just happens that wayand it's actually very logical.
We just let the emotional sidesort of get in the way of
following a process.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, hey there, Jana , here.
I hope you're enjoying thisepisode and we will get right
back to it in a minute.
Listen, out of all the thingsDanny has taught me about
marketing, one of his bestlessons is that the hammer is a
great tool, but it's pretty muchuseless if you need to get a
screw in the wall.
Marketing is the same way.
There are so many tools, butthe ones that make sense for
(03:58):
your law firm depend on yourgoals.
So when you have 30 minutes totalk about strategy and tools,
I'd love to share proven tactics, some free resources and
possible courses of action.
Check the podcast descriptionto reserve the best time for you
, and I look forward to talkingmore.
Now let's get back to theepisode.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
No, that makes so much sense and I think you know,
I know I can relate and I'msure a lot of people listening
can relate to just that.
There's still like a fearfactor of signing up, you know,
for a new expense, right.
And like I think one place weget ourselves in trouble is like
we annualize a salary in ourhead, right, and we're like, ok,
let's say you're looking at asixty thousand dollar a year
(04:35):
like support role in your lawfirm and you're like sixty
thousand dollars, like that's somuch money I don't feel like I
can.
I can, you know I can affordthat, but it's like you know,
one of the things like I'vestarted to do is don't think
about the annual amount, right.
Like you're not committing toputting $60,000 into a black
hole over the next 12 months.
You really probably need to givethis person about 90 days to
produce an ROI, so it's not$60,000.
(04:56):
It's like five grand a monthfor three months and if the ROI
isn't there, you move on.
But once, and if the ROI isn'tthere, you move on.
But you know most of the timeif you're hiring strategically
the ROI kind of, is there Anythoughts around that?
Do you think that's like?
Would you think about it thatway?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
For sure.
A lot of people like all right,well, my law firm did 500k last
year and I took home 150.
So if I hire this person for 60, I'm going to make 90 next year
because I'm going to have topay that person 60.
Well, yeah, but then what isthat person doing for you?
Right, like everybody you hireshould be doing something for
the business that allows thebusiness to have more output,
(05:33):
more product in our case, morelegal work.
You're helping more people whoneed to pay for those services.
So this shouldn't be like youshouldn't be reducing your
take-home by signal.
There is a point in time wherethat may happen, but that's when
you're much bigger.
That's when you're like you'remaking over a million dollars a
year and you're like I'm justgoing to hire a law firm
(05:54):
administrator or a CEO and I'mgoing to go on and do my next
thing.
So instead of making a millionbucks this year, I'm going to
make seven hundred fiftythousand to almost do nothing.
Now, it's never.
It's never that easy.
You still need to be involved,you still need to look at
numbers.
But there is a point in timewhere you can get to where
you're like I'm actually hiringsomeone, I'm going to make less
(06:15):
money, but it's going to changemy life.
You're buying back your freedom, type of thing At the growth
stage.
Every hire you make, they aremaking the business more
efficient with more output thatyou need to be charging for.
So if you have the billingassistants right and they're
capturing time, and or you'resigning up more flat feet
(06:36):
clients and then you're serving,servicing them faster, so now
you're starting to get referrals, it should all play on itself
and again, it's just.
It's just logical and that'swhy I like to use like
restaurants so much, becauseit's like a tangible asset, like
, if I can sell 10 pizzas in onehour, I can make this much
money, but that's it.
That's all that my systemsallow.
(06:57):
I can't just make more unless Ihire someone else, or I pay for
a bigger invest in a biggeroven, right, or or do more
marketing, but then I still needthe bigger oven or the extra
person, and and that that's theanalysis.
And with us, we don't need topay for the bigger oven, we just
need to hire someone.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's awesome.
Okay, so Rachel's question.
So Rachel has had a horribleexperience I'm quoting her
horrible experience with havingpeople work for me.
They were undermining anddisrespectful and were not
incentivized to support me or myvision, right?
So tough experience havingpeople work for her.
And so her question is pleasetalk about how you hire someone
(07:36):
and evaluate and manage yourhire.
And I realize there's a lotthere, but let's jump into it
because I think that is anawesome question and thank you
for asking, rachel.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
It is an awesome question.
I'm going to do my best becauseI mean, I mentioned having like
35 people at the law firm.
Gsu has got about 150 at thispoint.
So you would think like, oh,this guy should know exactly how
to nail this question.
But here's the issue.
I'm not a legal coach, right?
(08:07):
I'm not an advisor and Ifrankly don't want to be.
There's so many people now that,like, have a little bit of
success and now they're like alaw firm advisor or whatever,
and maybe some of them are good.
I know a lot of them in thefield and a lot of them are good
.
Having a mentor, you know, likeworking with you, danny, as
like a marketing, like afractional CMO marketing
(08:29):
services.
That is smart because you'renot just investing like a ton of
money in one person in-house,right, because you're probably
not ready yet.
In my law firm, we have afractional chief marketing
officer, even though you know Isaid what level we're at,
because there are ways tobasically just be smarter.
(08:50):
Like I don't need someone atthat level of true C-suite
person who is full time at thelaw firm.
But, that being said, I'm ahuge believer in coaching and
paying for it, paying someonelike a pro program.
And again, I, I, I know a lotof them so I don't need to like
shout them out here.
(09:10):
But who will help you with thethe like, the granular like?
Here there's something called ascorecard.
So scorecard is you givesomebody five to seven
repeatable tasks and they checkthem off every week.
Marketing is easy, example,because it's number driven Did
you do 20 social media posts?
Did you make 15 calls?
(09:32):
Did you set up five lunches forme next month?
Did you book me a speaking gig?
Right, like every week?
You can just check them off andas long as they're filling out
their scorecard, they're doingwhat you ask them.
They can look you back and belike well, I'm doing what you
asked me to.
But a lot of the ways that wemanage and I'm definitely guilty
of this is like just throwingstuff at them, not giving them
(09:52):
anything in writing, saying Ineed you to do this, this and
this, and then gettingfrustrated when it's not done
exactly how you want and whenyou want.
But it can't be unless you takethe time to put things in
writing, with a job description,with a report card, and then
using a management tool where,when you're giving a project.
I'm looking around because Ijust read the book who, not how,
(10:13):
and I mean they have a resourcein there that you, basically
you, fill out.
Here's what success looks likein this project I'm giving you
and you type it up Like here arethe tools I think you need,
here's the timeline and thenhere's what I want to accomplish
.
And when you give that tosomeone in writing, they have a
way better head start on aproject.
(10:34):
So, but that's a project On theday-to-day, the scorecard type
things Like let's say, you hirea receptionist, here's how I
want you to answer the phone.
You need to listen either torecording or how they're
answering the phone and thengive feedback.
So what we tell people to do isyou're going to meet with them
all day.
The first day you hire them andyou're just going to record
(10:56):
everything.
You tell them there's somethingcalled Loom, in case you don't
know where you can record yourscreen and record that
conversation and then refer themback to that conversation.
But if you, you, you leave outdetails, then two days later
you're going to meet with themfor for half a day.
The second week you're going tosay we're going to meet 30
minutes every single day at thistime, and over time you'll have
to put in less and less of yourtime, but you're just training,
(11:17):
feedback, training, feedback,training, feedback, and just you
know it would be like you'relearning a new skill you
yourself.
And so you're going to say, inorder to be good at the guitar,
I'm going to then practice 30minutes a day, every day, and
over time I'm going to getbetter.
Right, thankfully, being a goodlegal assistant or receptionist
(11:38):
is not as hard as getting goodat the guitar, which takes a lot
of hours.
But the point is practice,practice, practice.
But without the weekly coaching, coaching, you're not getting
feedback, you're not learningthe tips and you're not getting
better.
So, um, it's not rocket science, but it does take intent and it
takes organization and it takesconsistency to train someone.
(11:59):
I really, like you know rachel,acknowledging her question, um,
that she's convinced she needsa hire, but like she's had a bad
experience, and I kind of lookat it like you learn to.
You try to learn to ride abicycle when you're four years
old one time and you fall andyou're like bikes are dumb, they
don't work for me.
I hate bikes, I mean.
No, you just got to keep goinguntil you figure it out, and
(12:22):
there are plenty of resourcesonline.
There's plenty of, probably,youtube training videos,
probably a lot of LinkedInlearning videos and, again,
getting someone in place thatcan help you learn how to manage
people, because it is a skillto learn how to manage people.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So let's zero in on the hiring part of the equation,
right, because that's obviouslysomething you did a lot of
going from solo to 35 people onyour team at the law firm, not
to mention you know I think yousaid over.
You know over a hundred at GetStaffed Up, and I imagine your
hiring process has like evolvedover the years.
You've probably like figuredsome things out, but like talk a
(12:59):
little bit about you know, thehiring process specifically that
Rachel kind of asked about,like what tips can you share as
far as hiring the right folksfor roles?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
By the way, I can't wait to get to Jacqueline's
question, because I love thebilling assistant question.
But to answer yours, danny, andto follow up, I'm just going to
tell you my hiring process atthe law firm, which is actually,
early on, very similar to whatwe developed at Get Staffed Up.
The thing with Get Staffed Upis we're recruiting thousands of
people per week, which is notthe same as filling a few
(13:32):
positions, right.
We recruit at scale and then wewhittle that down to the top 1%
.
So we're only placing like 50out of 1000, if that makes sense
, right, that's how we get tothe top 1%.
So we're only placing like 50out of a thousand, if that makes
sense, right, that's how we getto the quality, because we're
putting in tests and tests andmore things.
But let me just tell you thatthe hiring system that was
recommended to me, that Iadopted, that I loved and that
(13:53):
got me and gets me eight playersthat I believe eight players at
my law firm.
So you put out an ad.
The ad should be very odd andlong and difficult and it should
make you stand out.
It should basically like itshould make 90% of the people
who read it say like I wouldnever work for this law firm.
(14:14):
Screw them.
This sounds terrible, Becauseyou want to repel the people
that aren't going to be good foryou and you want to attract the
10% of people who are like, oh,this is an opportunity to stand
out, right?
So, like my long ad and I usedto find people on Craigslist and
all over the place it was likethis is going to be the longest,
hardest you know applicationprocess you've ever had.
(14:35):
I was basically doing this longthing and at the end I had,
like you, what you need to do isemail me at this email address.
You need to put in the subjectline I am your next and then
whatever position you're hiringfor, and then after that, in
parentheses, spell your namebackwards and parentheses and
(14:55):
then in the body include likename whatever, it is okay.
Again, I haven't mentionedresume.
Resumes are so incrediblyoverrated and a Okay, again, I
haven't mentioned resume.
Resumes are so incrediblyoverrated and a waste of time.
I can't like.
That's like the default hiringand it just like like nobody's
ever rethought fucking resume.
I think they're stupid.
So let's say you put out an adand you get 30 emails, maybe
(15:16):
like five are going to do itright.
So you just saved yourselfhours from looking through 25
resumes of people that who careswhat they put in writing on a
resume?
They already can't followinstructions.
The people who read the wholething and who took the time to
care about doing it the rightway, those are the people you
want to push down the processright.
So, out of those five thatrespond the right way, you send
(15:38):
a follow up and you say here's aseven question, nine question
quiz.
A few of them won't do itbecause they're like oh, I
already read this whole thing.
But the ones that do willanswer all that like who's your
favorite superhero and why?
Um, you know what?
Why?
Why do you really want this job?
Like you.
Now you're trying to get asense of their personality.
Um, number seven for me wasalways like send a video or an
(16:03):
audio recording so I could kindof sense like energy of the
person you know and again you'rejust whittling down more people
.
So then at that point youprobably have two or three
candidates you really like.
Then you are schedulinginterviews and then you make
sure they show up in time, makesure they're professional.
There's a lot of differentresources online for the types
(16:23):
of interview questions youshould ask, but you should be
prepared to ask really goodinterview questions, with each
question having a purpose of thetype of response you're trying
to get.
Okay, but that's still not themost important part.
Then, after, if you like, twopeople, you're looking at
resumes and comparing experienceand then you're giving a test.
And my favorite part of theapplication process like going
(16:48):
back to the guitar if you were alead singer for a band and you
were hiring a guitarist andDanny we've talked about this
before, but I'll say it againWould you interview people by
asking them who their favoriteguitarist is?
Is that how you're hiring yournext guitar player?
No, you're handing them theguitar and saying play for me,
right, you're testing them, youwant to see how they play.
My first paralegal hire we hadthree candidates.
(17:11):
Two of them were being pushedby a recruiter and one was an
organic find.
So I brought them all back infor a second interview because I
was like, well, I don't knowwhat to do here.
They all three sound good, Ihad my laptop and I had a
pleading right.
So Miami-Dade County stoppedpleading, but with a lot of like
just things that were wrong andI didn't tell them what they
were coming in for.
So I love surprising people withthe quiz because you get to see
(17:34):
how they react under pressure,which I have a lot of stories
about right, good and bad.
Actually, all good, because ifthat person reacts the wrong way
and you don't hire them, it'sgood for you and for them.
So, anyway, the two paralegalsbeing pushed on me by the
recruiter I turned the computeraround and they like blank, like
you're a paralegal withexperience and you want me to
(17:55):
hire you and you don't know whatyou're looking at.
Like how did you get this farin the application process?
Because I listened to thefreaking resume, right?
The third person before I couldfinish turning on the computer
like she knew she knew what shewas doing.
Not only was she my hire,obviously she was a fantastic
hire.
She's with us nine years laterand she's my office manager.
(18:17):
Just just giving you an exampleof how important it is when to
hire someone, not based on howthey talk to you in an interview
, but how they can actually dothe job for which you are hiring
them.
If you're hiring an intakeperson or receptionist, don't
you think that person should beenergetic and sound, really nice
and happy on the phone, so youwant to speak to them before to
(18:38):
gauge that you don't want youknow somebody who's doom and
gloom answering your phones.
So every position is different.
Every position has a differenttest.
Again, not rocket science whatare they going to be doing?
And then test them on whatthey're going to be doing.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Love it.
That's awesome, all right.
Jacqueline had a great question, kind of circling back to to
billing.
Basically, what programs orprocedures can we use to get
billing out every two weeks,coming at it from the place of
being short-staffed and nothaving a dedicated billing
person?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
What I tried to do early on was my big idea was I'm
going to come in on Saturdaysand get my billing done and my
CPA had a daughter who had afriend who was interested in XYZ
.
So I hired this girl and wewould like meet at like 10
o'clock on a Saturday and I wastrying to train her for several
months to just do all my billing.
Sometimes she couldn't show up.
(19:35):
It's the part-time conundrum,because there's part-time
commitment and you can expectpart-time results.
So, like, your question is ifyou don't have a dedicated
billing person, right, andyou're short-staffed, well,
don't be short-staffed anymore.
Your billing person is like thefastest person other than your
executive assistant who will payfor themselves just by getting
(19:55):
the bills out consistently andon time.
It's like having a littlecollector out there, because
you're separating yourself fromthe process so you don't have
all those weird emotions andguilt about sending out your,
your, your bills.
They're worded the right waybecause you're training them and
then you are actually reviewingthe bills before they go out.
But, like, the amount of timethat us lawyers have to spend on
(20:18):
doing our own invoicing is likewe got to put in all the time
entries.
We're going to make surethey're right.
We're going to make sure it'sthe right matter.
We got to do the pre-bills.
We got to double check that theamounts are right.
Then we got to download andthen we got to put them all in
an email.
And then we got to write theemail, attach the thing, send it
, get excuses, follow up.
Like holy crap, why would youever try to do that yourself?
Right?
(20:38):
It would be like just trying tokeep one analogy going letting
everybody eat at that littlepizza place.
You have right, maybe you hirethe person and now you can do 20
pizzas per lunch and then like,well, I'm gonna call you
tonight for payment.
Okay, no, you pay when you walkin for the pizza.
You know why?
Because they'll never get paidif they don't ask for the money
(21:01):
right then.
And there They'll never getpaid.
You're gonna like, well, let mehire an assistant or come in on
a Saturday and look through allthe receipts of who ate pizzas
and then start calling them andtrying to get paid.
Like that's what we do as lawfirm owners and I'm not saying
every single person is justgoing to walk in and pay you up
front and you'll always havemoney ahead of time but like
(21:21):
damn, why not have somebodyconsistent sending out the bills
?
You will never convince me thata law firm doesn't need a full
time billing assistant.
It just won't happen to me.
I'm sorry, I look you dead inthe face especially when they're
virtual.
They can do every single thingvirtually and they only need a
cost like $2,000 a month.
That person will pay forthemselves so incredibly fast
(21:44):
that you know.
Yes, I highly recommend a VA.
Let me say one more thing,because people think, well, of
course he does.
He sells them and he'sself-serving.
And, yeah, fair, like who'sfunding the study?
Right, depending on who'sfunding the study and who's
supposed to make money on thestudy.
That's kind of like the medicalthing.
Now it's like you got to payattention to who's funding the
(22:05):
study.
I'm, I am self-serving bysaying a VA, but I will tell you
I don't always answer that way.
The one person who you may wantin person is a legal assistant.
It can very easily be doneoffshore, but if, like you, if
you need a legal assistant andyou don't have like the mental
wherewithal to kind of gothrough the training of how to
(22:28):
do it virtually, hire someone inperson costs you way more, but
hopefully that person is reallygood and it's nice to have
somebody in person to sort ofkeep you organized as well.
But in terms of billing, all ofyour stuff's on online anyway.
It's all in the cloud, it's allin Clio.
I mean you don't need to paysomebody domestically three
times more to get your billingdone.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So let's hit Jacqueline's follow-up question
to that, which is what does itlook like to have a VA?
Do the billing?
What types of programs andpermissions do you need in place
?
Can you speak to that?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yes, the American Bar Association is clear.
Local Bar Associations areclear.
You just need the samesafeguards for your offshore or
international employees that youdo your domestic employees.
If you had someone sitting inyour office, would you be making
up all these reasons why theycan't employees?
If you had someone sitting inyour office, would you be making
up all these reasons why theycan't, like, take credit card
payments?
No, besides, if you sign up fora law pay, you're just emailing
out a link.
You're not actually taking likecredit card numbers right.
(23:30):
When you hire offshore, you'redoing background checks anyway
and you're hiring from like atleast we do like second world
countries, people who are, whoare, who are vetted, who have
you know they're, they're likeequivalent of social security
numbers who don't want to bereported and arrested where they
are.
You'd be surprised at the levelof trust and transparency.
(23:50):
But you know, if you're reallythat concerned with it, like my
law firm, we don't take socialsecurity numbers.
We don't need to.
I don't do bankruptcy, maybebankruptcy attorneys do, maybe
PI attorneys.
But like you can sequester thatinfo.
But what does that have to dowith sending out invoices and
bills Like there's, there's.
You get them an email addressright at your firm.
You get them a login topractice Panther, rocket, matter
(24:13):
, clio, whatever it is and thenyou are teaching them how to get
the bills done every other week.
Now a good system and I talkabout this in the book is to cut
up your clients into quarters.
So, like, the first week of themonth you are invoicing clients
whose last names and like Athrough I don't know E, and then
you take F through whatever,blah, blah, blah, so that the
(24:35):
cash flow it's not like you'resending 40 bills on the last day
of the month, but you'resending 10, 10, 10 and 10, or 15
, 15, 15, 15, right, so that youare consistently getting money
in every week and you're sort oflike smartly avoiding like the
highs and lows, where the 15thand 30th every month you get a
(24:55):
bunch of money and then youdon't get any money for two
weeks.
So that's a little tip and whyyou can use a full time and why
they're busy, especially asattorneys.
If you just put your time veryquickly, contemporaneously in an
Excel spreadsheet and you sharethat Excel spreadsheet because
it can be a Google sheet, theytake the point one, the point
(25:18):
five, the two hours, they takethe matter and they're inputting
all that info into yourtimekeeping system.
You're saving yourself anotherhour per day from having to go
in and make sure it's allperfect and manipulate it, which
is another huge annoyance forattorneys and why we don't cap
our time.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, all right.
So, brent, I want to to onemore question here, cause I got
a few different variations ofthis question kind of via email
before we even started this.
I think this is a big one too,which is, like, how do you build
culture Right, cause that's,that's one of the things I think
about and hear people ask about, like, how do you and you guys
have obviously done done a greatjob of this how do you build
(25:55):
culture with, with the remoteworkforce whether that means you
know out of the country or justyou know, just working remotely
from from home in the same city?
Like, how do you, how do youapproach culture with a remote
team?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I'm going to answer that.
But Leonard followed up with afew questions.
And, leonard, just just to befrank with you, I'm sure if we
were talking, if my tone mightbe a little bit different,
because I could like hear theintent behind your question, but
like two questions in a row, itseems.
Leonard, like you're, you'reprobably unintentionally making
(26:29):
up reasons why I won't work tohave somebody virtually which
are just not true.
So of anyone virtual, even ifthey're in your office, unless
they're like over your shoulder,they're not going to know how
much time you spent working onsomething.
That is something, unless youhave software you can't delegate
.
So you are going to do a motionfor 30 minutes and then you're
(26:49):
going to take 15 seconds andyou're going to put you're going
to put Tremblay versus Deckeras the matter.
You're going to put legalresearch and construction of
motion to dismiss.
You're going to put 1.5 hoursand you're going to put the date
and then you're going to moveon.
That's going to take you 15seconds.
Instead of opening up my case,typing in the matter, making
(27:11):
sure it populates.
That process will slow you downbecause you'll be doing it
yourself.
Your assistant, who has sharedaccess to that document, will
then copy and paste and go putit in the matter themselves.
At the end of the day, theyshould have four to six hours of
legal work to go input for you.
It'll take them time to copyand paste, but again, that's a
(27:32):
ton of time you're getting offyour plate and why it's so
profitable for you, all right.
So how do you build culture?
We do things like quarterlyparties.
We play like I don't knowcharades, believe it or not,
virtually in virtual chat rooms.
We play like Jeopardy,different type of board games,
(27:54):
because there's a lot ofcompanies that do that.
For virtual teams, we havemeetings where we are every
single week.
Every department is together ina full 90-minute meeting.
We have flown people up,believe it or not.
For annual parties.
We send gifts Mostly it's theweekly touch points and making
sure that you treat youroffshore staff the same as your
(28:17):
domestic staff, right as much aspossible.
And it's just being thoughtful,like if we're going to have a
team meeting, let's have ascreen up with a camera with our
five people that are all inColumbia, for example, along
with our five people here, so wecan all feel like we're in the
same room and we can participate, because you don't want to
treat your offshore team likesecond class citizens.
(28:39):
You want them to feel as muchas a part of your team as other
people.
Some of our clients early onhired a legal assistant and
they're now the office managerstill virtual, and they run
almost like the whole firm.
Virtually, I mean like,unfortunately, what we do,
because we're used to working acertain way and we have to
rethink our systems a little bitas we start to say, well, how
(29:02):
can this work offshore?
I mean it's 2025.
Trust me, it could work.
Even the whole fax becauseLeonard said something about
faxes.
My business partner before hesold his farm as a real estate
transactional practice, he usedto have someone come in his
office and do the closing rightand when you close there's a
stack of paper like this big,but then all he would do is put
them in the scanning machine andclick a button.
(29:25):
He was done.
It scanned it to a file in thecloud and then the post
processor, who was at that timefor him in the Philippines and
we don't recruit otherPhilippines anymore.
We're all in LATAM in SouthAfrica for a lot of cultural and
English and educational reasonsand time zone reasons but she
would do the sorting and allthat good stuff that happens.
(29:46):
I'm not a real estate attorney.
Afterwards, all virtually, it'slike of course it can be done,
cause it's all, it's allelectronic files now anyway, yes
, someone has to be in personbecause you you have like
interaction, right, but 95percent of things that a law
firm are done via computeranyway.
So if you have an assistantwho's in the same physical
office and they're three doorsdown, the only difference is
(30:09):
they can bring you a cup ofcoffee.
That's it Nice.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Brett, this was super helpful Some great questions,
great input.
Obviously, this is just such animportant topic, brett, for
people that want to learn moreabout you.
Get Staffed Up, how do theyconnect with you?
How do they learn more?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, absolutely Getstaffedupcom.
I mean just like it soundsright.
Go to the website.
You can see the pricing, thepositions we offer, and you
heard a little bit about how wedo our hiring and recruit so
many people and how we find thebest of the best, and that's
really what it is at the end ofthe day, because we're talking
(30:45):
about humans, right?
So so nothing's foolproof.
Sometimes you got to go throughseveral assistants to get to a
good one, but instead of doingit yourself taking three weeks
hiring, firing, taking fourweeks hiring like a six-month
process where you're justburning so much time you can
outsource that to us so we canfind somebody great for you.
(31:07):
We also have a replacementguarantee.
So if someone's working for youthrough us and they leave for
any reason, we replace them andat the end of the day, we're not
just giving you someone.
You are interviewing at thefinal stage all the people we
vetted and making your owndecision and we use some
software to help us do that, andwe have really good success
rate.
But it's not always perfect,right, and it is simple but not
(31:31):
always easy.
So it takes time to train, butwhen you invest in your people,
domestically and orinternationally.
Eventually it's going to reallypay off.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, no, and I think what you guys have built kind
of speaks for itself, Brett.
So listen, thanks for beinghere.
Thank you everybody for thequestions.
Getstaffedupcom, if you want tolearn more about Brett and his
company.
And with that we're going towrap it up.
So, Brett, thanks again foryour time.
Thanks everyone for being here,and let's have a great rest of
the week.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Thanks for.
Welcome back to the Law Firm Marketing Minute.
This is part two of two of ourconversation with Brett Tremblay
of Tremblay Law and Get StaffedUp.
In this episode, brett divesdeep into exactly how he hires
and gets the right people intothe right seats.
That has freed him up topractice law and to scale both
of his businesses.
So sit back, take notes and atthe end of the episode, if you
(00:23):
feel so inclined to do so,please leave us a review.
We would greatly appreciate thefeedback.
It helps us grow the show.
All right, let's get right toit.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Rhett, something you said that jumped out at me.
You know, this is true.
You know, in the marketingspace I've seen this.
I've also been in the law firmspace for you know, 15 years or
so.
But you know you said you hiredan attorney.
That was that was.
That was better than you, right, more experienced.
A mistake I see people make allthe time again in legal but,
(00:53):
but plenty of other places toois is is hiring people less
experienced than them, right,and and and.
Then they end up kind of havingto babysit them and and and.
So talk about that.
Talk about, because I thinkwhat most people naturally do is
they feel like they need tohire somebody who is less
experienced than them, and thenthey're gonna train them and
(01:14):
groom them and all of this, butyou kind of went the opposite
direction.
I think that probably wasreally important.
So talk about that thoughtprocess real quick.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
It's one of the best things I ever did, and it wasn't
something that I came up withon my own.
I was doing a budget at aworkshop and I was putting
80,000 and my mentor at the timewas like, why so little?
And I'm like hoping he didn't,hoping he didn't like dig in and
start, you know, interrogatingme, but he did and he's like why
(01:41):
would you hire someone thatdoesn't know what they're doing?
You're actually paying someone80 to 100 grand to then teach
them for two years and that'sgoing to take more of your time.
Why would you do that?
And I didn't have a good answerfor that.
So he's like stand up in frontof the whole room and promise
that you'll hire someone withmore experience than you, and I
did.
And the difference was probablylike 20 grand, right, which is
(02:06):
like what?
Two grand per month, oh my god,is that one of the smartest
decisions you can ever make?
And there's people out therethat that are tired of trying to
run their own business or thatare don't want to be in a big
law firm anymore.
Like you can find people withexperience.
It's not impossible.
Um, the the default is let meget the cheapest person possible
, because that's what I canafford.
I get it because like that'swhat I can afford.
I get it because, like that'swhat I felt and how I operated
(02:28):
and I think to a certain extent,we all still do that in our
business somewhere.
And it's not.
It's not like you.
The answer is no.
Go find the most expensiveperson, because maybe that
person holding themselves out tobe an expert really really
isn't and and and they aren'tworth the money.
So so there's a balance there.
(02:48):
But the idea that you're gonnatake time off your plate because
when you hire someone, that'sthat's like only billing or only
doing legal work then you, youstart to bring in a lot more.
It's like hiring someone tojust make pizzas all day long.
You're gonna have so much moreinventory to sell.
You're not gonna be behind likeyou just need someone to just
make pizzas all day long.
You're going to have so muchmore inventory to sell.
You're not going to be behindLike you're just need someone to
like throw that pizza in theoven and boom, and you're
(03:10):
selling it and you're handing itout all that.
But like you need that personright, what you're doing with
your time is is bringing in morecases and networking so that
you continue to feed that personand they work in harmony very
well and it's almost like, oh myGod, how am I making so much
(03:32):
more money now?
But it just happens that wayand it's actually very logical.
We just let the emotional sidesort of get in the way of
following a process.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, hey there, Jana , here.
I hope you're enjoying thisepisode and we will get right
back to it in a minute.
Listen, out of all the thingsDanny has taught me about
marketing, one of his bestlessons is that the hammer is a
great tool, but it's pretty muchuseless if you need to get a
screw in the wall.
Marketing is the same way.
There are so many tools, butthe ones that make sense for
(03:58):
your law firm depend on yourgoals.
So when you have 30 minutes totalk about strategy and tools,
I'd love to share proven tactics, some free resources and
possible courses of action.
Check the podcast descriptionto reserve the best time for you
, and I look forward to talkingmore.
Now let's get back to theepisode.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
No, that makes so much sense and I think you know,
I know I can relate and I'msure a lot of people listening
can relate to just that.
There's still like a fearfactor of signing up, you know,
for a new expense, right.
And like I think one place weget ourselves in trouble is like
we annualize a salary in ourhead, right, and we're like, ok,
let's say you're looking at asixty thousand dollar a year
(04:35):
like support role in your lawfirm and you're like sixty
thousand dollars, like that's somuch money I don't feel like I
can.
I can, you know I can affordthat, but it's like you know,
one of the things like I'vestarted to do is don't think
about the annual amount, right.
Like you're not committing toputting $60,000 into a black
hole over the next 12 months.
You really probably need to givethis person about 90 days to
produce an ROI, so it's not$60,000.
(04:56):
It's like five grand a monthfor three months and if the ROI
isn't there, you move on.
But once, and if the ROI isn'tthere, you move on.
But you know most of the timeif you're hiring strategically
the ROI kind of, is there Anythoughts around that?
Do you think that's like?
Would you think about it thatway?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
For sure.
A lot of people like all right,well, my law firm did 500k last
year and I took home 150.
So if I hire this person for 60, I'm going to make 90 next year
because I'm going to have topay that person 60.
Well, yeah, but then what isthat person doing for you?
Right, like everybody you hireshould be doing something for
the business that allows thebusiness to have more output,
(05:33):
more product in our case, morelegal work.
You're helping more people whoneed to pay for those services.
So this shouldn't be like youshouldn't be reducing your
take-home by signal.
There is a point in time wherethat may happen, but that's when
you're much bigger.
That's when you're like you'remaking over a million dollars a
year and you're like I'm justgoing to hire a law firm
(05:54):
administrator or a CEO and I'mgoing to go on and do my next
thing.
So instead of making a millionbucks this year, I'm going to
make seven hundred fiftythousand to almost do nothing.
Now, it's never.
It's never that easy.
You still need to be involved,you still need to look at
numbers.
But there is a point in timewhere you can get to where
you're like I'm actually hiringsomeone, I'm going to make less
(06:15):
money, but it's going to changemy life.
You're buying back your freedom, type of thing At the growth
stage.
Every hire you make, they aremaking the business more
efficient with more output thatyou need to be charging for.
So if you have the billingassistants right and they're
capturing time, and or you'resigning up more flat feet
(06:36):
clients and then you're serving,servicing them faster, so now
you're starting to get referrals, it should all play on itself
and again, it's just.
It's just logical and that'swhy I like to use like
restaurants so much, becauseit's like a tangible asset, like
, if I can sell 10 pizzas in onehour, I can make this much
money, but that's it.
That's all that my systemsallow.
(06:57):
I can't just make more unless Ihire someone else, or I pay for
a bigger invest in a biggeroven, right, or or do more
marketing, but then I still needthe bigger oven or the extra
person, and and that that's theanalysis.
And with us, we don't need topay for the bigger oven, we just
need to hire someone.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's awesome.
Okay, so Rachel's question.
So Rachel has had a horribleexperience I'm quoting her
horrible experience with havingpeople work for me.
They were undermining anddisrespectful and were not
incentivized to support me or myvision, right?
So tough experience havingpeople work for her.
And so her question is pleasetalk about how you hire someone
(07:36):
and evaluate and manage yourhire.
And I realize there's a lotthere, but let's jump into it
because I think that is anawesome question and thank you
for asking, rachel.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
It is an awesome question.
I'm going to do my best becauseI mean, I mentioned having like
35 people at the law firm.
Gsu has got about 150 at thispoint.
So you would think like, oh,this guy should know exactly how
to nail this question.
But here's the issue.
I'm not a legal coach, right?
(08:07):
I'm not an advisor and Ifrankly don't want to be.
There's so many people now that,like, have a little bit of
success and now they're like alaw firm advisor or whatever,
and maybe some of them are good.
I know a lot of them in thefield and a lot of them are good
.
Having a mentor, you know, likeworking with you, danny, as
like a marketing, like afractional CMO marketing
(08:29):
services.
That is smart because you'renot just investing like a ton of
money in one person in-house,right, because you're probably
not ready yet.
In my law firm, we have afractional chief marketing
officer, even though you know Isaid what level we're at,
because there are ways tobasically just be smarter.
(08:50):
Like I don't need someone atthat level of true C-suite
person who is full time at thelaw firm.
But, that being said, I'm ahuge believer in coaching and
paying for it, paying someonelike a pro program.
And again, I, I, I know a lotof them so I don't need to like
shout them out here.
(09:10):
But who will help you with thethe like, the granular like?
Here there's something called ascorecard.
So scorecard is you givesomebody five to seven
repeatable tasks and they checkthem off every week.
Marketing is easy, example,because it's number driven Did
you do 20 social media posts?
Did you make 15 calls?
(09:32):
Did you set up five lunches forme next month?
Did you book me a speaking gig?
Right, like every week?
You can just check them off andas long as they're filling out
their scorecard, they're doingwhat you ask them.
They can look you back and belike well, I'm doing what you
asked me to.
But a lot of the ways that wemanage and I'm definitely guilty
of this is like just throwingstuff at them, not giving them
(09:52):
anything in writing, saying Ineed you to do this, this and
this, and then gettingfrustrated when it's not done
exactly how you want and whenyou want.
But it can't be unless you takethe time to put things in
writing, with a job description,with a report card, and then
using a management tool where,when you're giving a project.
I'm looking around because Ijust read the book who, not how,
(10:13):
and I mean they have a resourcein there that you, basically
you, fill out.
Here's what success looks likein this project I'm giving you
and you type it up Like here arethe tools I think you need,
here's the timeline and thenhere's what I want to accomplish
.
And when you give that tosomeone in writing, they have a
way better head start on aproject.
(10:34):
So, but that's a project On theday-to-day, the scorecard type
things Like let's say, you hirea receptionist, here's how I
want you to answer the phone.
You need to listen either torecording or how they're
answering the phone and thengive feedback.
So what we tell people to do isyou're going to meet with them
all day.
The first day you hire them andyou're just going to record
(10:56):
everything.
You tell them there's somethingcalled Loom, in case you don't
know where you can record yourscreen and record that
conversation and then refer themback to that conversation.
But if you, you, you leave outdetails, then two days later
you're going to meet with themfor for half a day.
The second week you're going tosay we're going to meet 30
minutes every single day at thistime, and over time you'll have
to put in less and less of yourtime, but you're just training,
(11:17):
feedback, training, feedback,training, feedback, and just you
know it would be like you'relearning a new skill you
yourself.
And so you're going to say, inorder to be good at the guitar,
I'm going to then practice 30minutes a day, every day, and
over time I'm going to getbetter.
Right, thankfully, being a goodlegal assistant or receptionist
(11:38):
is not as hard as getting goodat the guitar, which takes a lot
of hours.
But the point is practice,practice, practice.
But without the weekly coaching, coaching, you're not getting
feedback, you're not learningthe tips and you're not getting
better.
So, um, it's not rocket science, but it does take intent and it
takes organization and it takesconsistency to train someone.
(11:59):
I really, like you know rachel,acknowledging her question, um,
that she's convinced she needsa hire, but like she's had a bad
experience, and I kind of lookat it like you learn to.
You try to learn to ride abicycle when you're four years
old one time and you fall andyou're like bikes are dumb, they
don't work for me.
I hate bikes, I mean.
No, you just got to keep goinguntil you figure it out, and
(12:22):
there are plenty of resourcesonline.
There's plenty of, probably,youtube training videos,
probably a lot of LinkedInlearning videos and, again,
getting someone in place thatcan help you learn how to manage
people, because it is a skillto learn how to manage people.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So let's zero in on the hiring part of the equation,
right, because that's obviouslysomething you did a lot of
going from solo to 35 people onyour team at the law firm, not
to mention you know I think yousaid over.
You know over a hundred at GetStaffed Up, and I imagine your
hiring process has like evolvedover the years.
You've probably like figuredsome things out, but like talk a
(12:59):
little bit about you know, thehiring process specifically that
Rachel kind of asked about,like what tips can you share as
far as hiring the right folksfor roles?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
By the way, I can't wait to get to Jacqueline's
question, because I love thebilling assistant question.
But to answer yours, danny, andto follow up, I'm just going to
tell you my hiring process atthe law firm, which is actually,
early on, very similar to whatwe developed at Get Staffed Up.
The thing with Get Staffed Upis we're recruiting thousands of
people per week, which is notthe same as filling a few
(13:32):
positions, right.
We recruit at scale and then wewhittle that down to the top 1%
.
So we're only placing like 50out of 1000, if that makes sense
, right, that's how we get tothe top 1%.
So we're only placing like 50out of a thousand, if that makes
sense, right, that's how we getto the quality, because we're
putting in tests and tests andmore things.
But let me just tell you thatthe hiring system that was
recommended to me, that Iadopted, that I loved and that
(13:53):
got me and gets me eight playersthat I believe eight players at
my law firm.
So you put out an ad.
The ad should be very odd andlong and difficult and it should
make you stand out.
It should basically like itshould make 90% of the people
who read it say like I wouldnever work for this law firm.
(14:14):
Screw them.
This sounds terrible, Becauseyou want to repel the people
that aren't going to be good foryou and you want to attract the
10% of people who are like, oh,this is an opportunity to stand
out, right?
So, like my long ad and I usedto find people on Craigslist and
all over the place it was likethis is going to be the longest,
hardest you know applicationprocess you've ever had.
(14:35):
I was basically doing this longthing and at the end I had,
like you, what you need to do isemail me at this email address.
You need to put in the subjectline I am your next and then
whatever position you're hiringfor, and then after that, in
parentheses, spell your namebackwards and parentheses and
(14:55):
then in the body include likename whatever, it is okay.
Again, I haven't mentionedresume.
Resumes are so incrediblyoverrated and a Okay, again, I
haven't mentioned resume.
Resumes are so incrediblyoverrated and a waste of time.
I can't like.
That's like the default hiringand it just like like nobody's
ever rethought fucking resume.
I think they're stupid.
So let's say you put out an adand you get 30 emails, maybe
(15:16):
like five are going to do itright.
So you just saved yourselfhours from looking through 25
resumes of people that who careswhat they put in writing on a
resume?
They already can't followinstructions.
The people who read the wholething and who took the time to
care about doing it the rightway, those are the people you
want to push down the processright.
So, out of those five thatrespond the right way, you send
(15:38):
a follow up and you say here's aseven question, nine question
quiz.
A few of them won't do itbecause they're like oh, I
already read this whole thing.
But the ones that do willanswer all that like who's your
favorite superhero and why?
Um, you know what?
Why?
Why do you really want this job?
Like you.
Now you're trying to get asense of their personality.
Um, number seven for me wasalways like send a video or an
(16:03):
audio recording so I could kindof sense like energy of the
person you know and again you'rejust whittling down more people
.
So then at that point youprobably have two or three
candidates you really like.
Then you are schedulinginterviews and then you make
sure they show up in time, makesure they're professional.
There's a lot of differentresources online for the types
(16:23):
of interview questions youshould ask, but you should be
prepared to ask really goodinterview questions, with each
question having a purpose of thetype of response you're trying
to get.
Okay, but that's still not themost important part.
Then, after, if you like, twopeople, you're looking at
resumes and comparing experienceand then you're giving a test.
And my favorite part of theapplication process like going
(16:48):
back to the guitar if you were alead singer for a band and you
were hiring a guitarist andDanny we've talked about this
before, but I'll say it againWould you interview people by
asking them who their favoriteguitarist is?
Is that how you're hiring yournext guitar player?
No, you're handing them theguitar and saying play for me,
right, you're testing them, youwant to see how they play.
My first paralegal hire we hadthree candidates.
(17:11):
Two of them were being pushedby a recruiter and one was an
organic find.
So I brought them all back infor a second interview because I
was like, well, I don't knowwhat to do here.
They all three sound good, Ihad my laptop and I had a
pleading right.
So Miami-Dade County stoppedpleading, but with a lot of like
just things that were wrong andI didn't tell them what they
were coming in for.
So I love surprising people withthe quiz because you get to see
(17:34):
how they react under pressure,which I have a lot of stories
about right, good and bad.
Actually, all good, because ifthat person reacts the wrong way
and you don't hire them, it'sgood for you and for them.
So, anyway, the two paralegalsbeing pushed on me by the
recruiter I turned the computeraround and they like blank, like
you're a paralegal withexperience and you want me to
(17:55):
hire you and you don't know whatyou're looking at.
Like how did you get this farin the application process?
Because I listened to thefreaking resume, right?
The third person before I couldfinish turning on the computer
like she knew she knew what shewas doing.
Not only was she my hire,obviously she was a fantastic
hire.
She's with us nine years laterand she's my office manager.
(18:17):
Just just giving you an exampleof how important it is when to
hire someone, not based on howthey talk to you in an interview
, but how they can actually dothe job for which you are hiring
them.
If you're hiring an intakeperson or receptionist, don't
you think that person should beenergetic and sound, really nice
and happy on the phone, so youwant to speak to them before to
(18:38):
gauge that you don't want youknow somebody who's doom and
gloom answering your phones.
So every position is different.
Every position has a differenttest.
Again, not rocket science whatare they going to be doing?
And then test them on whatthey're going to be doing.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Love it.
That's awesome, all right.
Jacqueline had a great question, kind of circling back to to
billing.
Basically, what programs orprocedures can we use to get
billing out every two weeks,coming at it from the place of
being short-staffed and nothaving a dedicated billing
person?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
What I tried to do early on was my big idea was I'm
going to come in on Saturdaysand get my billing done and my
CPA had a daughter who had afriend who was interested in XYZ
.
So I hired this girl and wewould like meet at like 10
o'clock on a Saturday and I wastrying to train her for several
months to just do all my billing.
Sometimes she couldn't show up.
(19:35):
It's the part-time conundrum,because there's part-time
commitment and you can expectpart-time results.
So, like, your question is ifyou don't have a dedicated
billing person, right, andyou're short-staffed, well,
don't be short-staffed anymore.
Your billing person is like thefastest person other than your
executive assistant who will payfor themselves just by getting
(19:55):
the bills out consistently andon time.
It's like having a littlecollector out there, because
you're separating yourself fromthe process so you don't have
all those weird emotions andguilt about sending out your,
your, your bills.
They're worded the right waybecause you're training them and
then you are actually reviewingthe bills before they go out.
But, like, the amount of timethat us lawyers have to spend on
(20:18):
doing our own invoicing is likewe got to put in all the time
entries.
We're going to make surethey're right.
We're going to make sure it'sthe right matter.
We got to do the pre-bills.
We got to double check that theamounts are right.
Then we got to download andthen we got to put them all in
an email.
And then we got to write theemail, attach the thing, send it
, get excuses, follow up.
Like holy crap, why would youever try to do that yourself?
Right?
(20:38):
It would be like just trying tokeep one analogy going letting
everybody eat at that littlepizza place.
You have right, maybe you hirethe person and now you can do 20
pizzas per lunch and then like,well, I'm gonna call you
tonight for payment.
Okay, no, you pay when you walkin for the pizza.
You know why?
Because they'll never get paidif they don't ask for the money
(21:01):
right then.
And there They'll never getpaid.
You're gonna like, well, let mehire an assistant or come in on
a Saturday and look through allthe receipts of who ate pizzas
and then start calling them andtrying to get paid.
Like that's what we do as lawfirm owners and I'm not saying
every single person is justgoing to walk in and pay you up
front and you'll always havemoney ahead of time but like
(21:21):
damn, why not have somebodyconsistent sending out the bills
?
You will never convince me thata law firm doesn't need a full
time billing assistant.
It just won't happen to me.
I'm sorry, I look you dead inthe face especially when they're
virtual.
They can do every single thingvirtually and they only need a
cost like $2,000 a month.
That person will pay forthemselves so incredibly fast
(21:44):
that you know.
Yes, I highly recommend a VA.
Let me say one more thing,because people think, well, of
course he does.
He sells them and he'sself-serving.
And, yeah, fair, like who'sfunding the study?
Right, depending on who'sfunding the study and who's
supposed to make money on thestudy.
That's kind of like the medicalthing.
Now it's like you got to payattention to who's funding the
(22:05):
study.
I'm, I am self-serving bysaying a VA, but I will tell you
I don't always answer that way.
The one person who you may wantin person is a legal assistant.
It can very easily be doneoffshore, but if, like you, if
you need a legal assistant andyou don't have like the mental
wherewithal to kind of gothrough the training of how to
(22:28):
do it virtually, hire someone inperson costs you way more, but
hopefully that person is reallygood and it's nice to have
somebody in person to sort ofkeep you organized as well.
But in terms of billing, all ofyour stuff's on online anyway.
It's all in the cloud, it's allin Clio.
I mean you don't need to paysomebody domestically three
times more to get your billingdone.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So let's hit Jacqueline's follow-up question
to that, which is what does itlook like to have a VA?
Do the billing?
What types of programs andpermissions do you need in place
?
Can you speak to that?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yes, the American Bar Association is clear.
Local Bar Associations areclear.
You just need the samesafeguards for your offshore or
international employees that youdo your domestic employees.
If you had someone sitting inyour office, would you be making
up all these reasons why theycan't employees?
If you had someone sitting inyour office, would you be making
up all these reasons why theycan't, like, take credit card
payments?
No, besides, if you sign up fora law pay, you're just emailing
out a link.
You're not actually taking likecredit card numbers right.
(23:30):
When you hire offshore, you'redoing background checks anyway
and you're hiring from like atleast we do like second world
countries, people who are, whoare, who are vetted, who have
you know they're, they're likeequivalent of social security
numbers who don't want to bereported and arrested where they
are.
You'd be surprised at the levelof trust and transparency.
(23:50):
But you know, if you're reallythat concerned with it, like my
law firm, we don't take socialsecurity numbers.
We don't need to.
I don't do bankruptcy, maybebankruptcy attorneys do, maybe
PI attorneys.
But like you can sequester thatinfo.
But what does that have to dowith sending out invoices and
bills Like there's, there's.
You get them an email addressright at your firm.
You get them a login topractice Panther, rocket, matter
(24:13):
, clio, whatever it is and thenyou are teaching them how to get
the bills done every other week.
Now a good system and I talkabout this in the book is to cut
up your clients into quarters.
So, like, the first week of themonth you are invoicing clients
whose last names and like Athrough I don't know E, and then
you take F through whatever,blah, blah, blah, so that the
(24:35):
cash flow it's not like you'resending 40 bills on the last day
of the month, but you'resending 10, 10, 10 and 10, or 15
, 15, 15, 15, right, so that youare consistently getting money
in every week and you're sort oflike smartly avoiding like the
highs and lows, where the 15thand 30th every month you get a
(24:55):
bunch of money and then youdon't get any money for two
weeks.
So that's a little tip and whyyou can use a full time and why
they're busy, especially asattorneys.
If you just put your time veryquickly, contemporaneously in an
Excel spreadsheet and you sharethat Excel spreadsheet because
it can be a Google sheet, theytake the point one, the point
(25:18):
five, the two hours, they takethe matter and they're inputting
all that info into yourtimekeeping system.
You're saving yourself anotherhour per day from having to go
in and make sure it's allperfect and manipulate it, which
is another huge annoyance forattorneys and why we don't cap
our time.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, all right.
So, brent, I want to to onemore question here, cause I got
a few different variations ofthis question kind of via email
before we even started this.
I think this is a big one too,which is, like, how do you build
culture Right, cause that's,that's one of the things I think
about and hear people ask about, like, how do you and you guys
have obviously done done a greatjob of this how do you build
(25:55):
culture with, with the remoteworkforce whether that means you
know out of the country or justyou know, just working remotely
from from home in the same city?
Like, how do you, how do youapproach culture with a remote
team?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I'm going to answer that.
But Leonard followed up with afew questions.
And, leonard, just just to befrank with you, I'm sure if we
were talking, if my tone mightbe a little bit different,
because I could like hear theintent behind your question, but
like two questions in a row, itseems.
Leonard, like you're, you'reprobably unintentionally making
(26:29):
up reasons why I won't work tohave somebody virtually which
are just not true.
So of anyone virtual, even ifthey're in your office, unless
they're like over your shoulder,they're not going to know how
much time you spent working onsomething.
That is something, unless youhave software you can't delegate
.
So you are going to do a motionfor 30 minutes and then you're
(26:49):
going to take 15 seconds andyou're going to put you're going
to put Tremblay versus Deckeras the matter.
You're going to put legalresearch and construction of
motion to dismiss.
You're going to put 1.5 hoursand you're going to put the date
and then you're going to moveon.
That's going to take you 15seconds.
Instead of opening up my case,typing in the matter, making
(27:11):
sure it populates.
That process will slow you downbecause you'll be doing it
yourself.
Your assistant, who has sharedaccess to that document, will
then copy and paste and go putit in the matter themselves.
At the end of the day, theyshould have four to six hours of
legal work to go input for you.
It'll take them time to copyand paste, but again, that's a
(27:32):
ton of time you're getting offyour plate and why it's so
profitable for you, all right.
So how do you build culture?
We do things like quarterlyparties.
We play like I don't knowcharades, believe it or not,
virtually in virtual chat rooms.
We play like Jeopardy,different type of board games,
(27:54):
because there's a lot ofcompanies that do that.
For virtual teams, we havemeetings where we are every
single week.
Every department is together ina full 90-minute meeting.
We have flown people up,believe it or not.
For annual parties.
We send gifts Mostly it's theweekly touch points and making
sure that you treat youroffshore staff the same as your
(28:17):
domestic staff, right as much aspossible.
And it's just being thoughtful,like if we're going to have a
team meeting, let's have ascreen up with a camera with our
five people that are all inColumbia, for example, along
with our five people here, so wecan all feel like we're in the
same room and we can participate, because you don't want to
treat your offshore team likesecond class citizens.
(28:39):
You want them to feel as muchas a part of your team as other
people.
Some of our clients early onhired a legal assistant and
they're now the office managerstill virtual, and they run
almost like the whole firm.
Virtually, I mean like,unfortunately, what we do,
because we're used to working acertain way and we have to
rethink our systems a little bitas we start to say, well, how
(29:02):
can this work offshore?
I mean it's 2025.
Trust me, it could work.
Even the whole fax becauseLeonard said something about
faxes.
My business partner before hesold his farm as a real estate
transactional practice, he usedto have someone come in his
office and do the closing rightand when you close there's a
stack of paper like this big,but then all he would do is put
them in the scanning machine andclick a button.
(29:25):
He was done.
It scanned it to a file in thecloud and then the post
processor, who was at that timefor him in the Philippines and
we don't recruit otherPhilippines anymore.
We're all in LATAM in SouthAfrica for a lot of cultural and
English and educational reasonsand time zone reasons but she
would do the sorting and allthat good stuff that happens.
(29:46):
I'm not a real estate attorney.
Afterwards, all virtually, it'slike of course it can be done,
cause it's all, it's allelectronic files now anyway, yes
, someone has to be in personbecause you you have like
interaction, right, but 95percent of things that a law
firm are done via computeranyway.
So if you have an assistantwho's in the same physical
office and they're three doorsdown, the only difference is
(30:09):
they can bring you a cup ofcoffee.
That's it Nice.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Brett, this was super helpful Some great questions,
great input.
Obviously, this is just such animportant topic, brett, for
people that want to learn moreabout you.
Get Staffed Up, how do theyconnect with you?
How do they learn more?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, absolutely Getstaffedupcom.
I mean just like it soundsright.
Go to the website.
You can see the pricing, thepositions we offer, and you
heard a little bit about how wedo our hiring and recruit so
many people and how we find thebest of the best, and that's
really what it is at the end ofthe day, because we're talking
(30:45):
about humans, right?
So so nothing's foolproof.
Sometimes you got to go throughseveral assistants to get to a
good one, but instead of doingit yourself taking three weeks
hiring, firing, taking fourweeks hiring like a six-month
process where you're justburning so much time you can
outsource that to us so we canfind somebody great for you.
(31:07):
We also have a replacementguarantee.
So if someone's working for youthrough us and they leave for
any reason, we replace them andat the end of the day, we're not
just giving you someone.
You are interviewing at thefinal stage all the people we
vetted and making your owndecision and we use some
software to help us do that, andwe have really good success
rate.
But it's not always perfect,right, and it is simple but not
(31:31):
always easy.
So it takes time to train, butwhen you invest in your people,
domestically and orinternationally.
Eventually it's going to reallypay off.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, no, and I think what you guys have built kind
of speaks for itself, Brett.
So listen, thanks for beinghere.
Thank you everybody for thequestions.
Getstaffedupcom, if you want tolearn more about Brett and his
company.
And with that we're going towrap it up.
So, Brett, thanks again foryour time.
Thanks everyone for being here,and let's have a great rest of
the week.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Thanks for.
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