August 13, 2025 • 27 mins
Build a successful law firm with strategies that actually work—I’m sharing the gritty details of growing Sterling from zero to $17M and 27 attorneys.
No fluff - just the systems, pivots, and hard lessons that built our $17M firm.
This isn't another highlight reel story. I'm sharing the raw details of how we nearly failed at 18 months, made the painful pivot to focus and fixed fees, and built the law firm systems that work.
You'll get the real mistakes, the expensive lessons, and the specific strategies we use to help family law firms scale sustainably.
📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@jsterlinghughes
📝 Get your FREE Law Firm Growth Guide: https://jsterlinghughes.com/
📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Build Successful Law Firm: The Sterling Story Begins
1:37 - Serial Entrepreneur Journey Before Family Law
3:17 - Why We Chose Law Firm Over Roofing Company
6:19 - Starting Family Law Practice: Nine Months To Launch
7:21 - First 18 Months: Eight Lawyers And Total Chaos
8:59 - The Breaking Point: Three Bar Complaints In One Month
10:23 - $10K Consultation That Changed Everything
11:39 - The Expensive Pivot: Focus On Family Law Only
14:39 - Fixed Fee Family Law: Why Everyone Said It's Impossible
17:07 - 27 Lawyers, 100% Fixed Fee: The Results Today
18:37 - Pricing Iterations: Years Of Painful Learning
23:13 - Leadership Development: You Must Lead Yourself First
25:08 - Delegation Challenge: Letting Others "Screw It Up"
----------------------
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever wondered what it really takes to
build a successful law firmfrom the ground up?
In this episode, we break downthe steps and the strategies
that you need to understand whenestablishing your firm.
Well, hello and welcome to theSterling Family Law Show, where
we equip family lawyers how tohave the firm of their dreams.
I'm your co-host, jeff Hughes,along with my co-host, tyler
Dolph.
Today we're doing something alittle bit different that we've
(00:21):
never done before.
We're going to do a series onsharing the gritty, raw details
of how Tony and I started andbuilt Sterling Law.
We've grown that from zero, froma startup, to 17 plus million
and 27 attorneys a day, and thisisn't just like a war story
thing.
This is going to be.
We're going to dig deep intoour failures and share those and
(00:43):
some of the good decisionswe've made, and share those too.
Hopefully you all can take thisand synthesize it for your
situation and shorten yoursuccess curve in your firm.
Yeah, tyler, so often I hearall these stories of firms that
have started and it's just allkind of the gloss right, the
highlight reel, and look, I wantto do my very best to kind of
(01:03):
share the lowlights along withthe highlights, because I think
that's where you get some of themost valuable nuggets of gold
that help attorneys build theirfirm.
So hopefully we can share somevalue with our audience here
100%.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm really excited and, jeff, I want to start by
going all the way back to thebeginning.
You know, because you, forpeople who don't know it, you
are a serial entrepreneur.
You've started many differentbusinesses and Sterling was not
your first one.
Let's start at the verybeginning, when you were a
practicing attorney and decidedto pivot out of that.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So I'll give you the condensed version.
I started practicing here inthe Milwaukee area here in
Wisconsin in 1997.
So I've got some gray hairs toshow it.
I go back to 97.
So I worked.
It was in a small communityfirm, five attorneys and I was
the fifth one, and I was thereuntil 2005 when I left to start
(01:58):
or to run a side hustle that Istarted in 04.
So 97 to 04, practice lawstarted a side hustle and of all
things it was selling dishnetwork satellite, which is like
cable over your satellite right.
And so I did that, left mypractice in 05.
I did that until about fiveyears ago when I that business
(02:20):
just basically disappeared.
So that was almost 20 years Iran that business.
So that's how I got started inmy entrepreneurial ways Along
the way.
I think I counted once I'vestarted nine businesses and six
of them are no longer around.
Some version of fail.
Maybe they lasted a few yearsor they just failed within the
(02:42):
year or so, but one of thesuccesses was Sterling Law.
So Tony Carl's and I startedSterling Law 11 years ago this
week.
So that takes us back to 2004.
We started in June of 2004,.
Just him and I.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And Tony was at the call center right.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Tony was with me at the satellite business.
Yeah, he ran our marketingbasically for the satellite
business.
So we had worked together inthat life came together and
decided to start the law firmand we opened up in 04.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So I think it's really and I know the story and
I love the story, but I thinkour audience will also
appreciate it.
Talk to me about some of thoseinitial conversations with Tony.
You know, hey, should we startanother business?
We know that the call centerbusiness is kind of declining
because over the top, tv andHulu and YouTube TV and
everything is coming on board.
What was that kind of likefirst idea ideation lunch
(03:39):
looking like.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Okay.
So I went to Tony and his bosshis name is John so we hired a
guy named John.
John was his boss.
He ran the satellite businessat that time and I said, hey,
look, guys, go, go sit in a roomin a dark room and, like, think
through all of our options andcome back with some ideas.
And they came back and theirbest idea, which was a good idea
, was a roofing company, becauseit fit the criteria we were
(04:03):
looking for.
And I thought about that and foryears I had been noodling in my
mind how can I get back intolaw and take what I've learned
in business and marketing andbring that to law and do
something special?
But I couldn't imagine a waythat we could actually scale the
law firm, because most lawfirms in the B2C space are built
one or two attorneys at a time.
(04:25):
Okay, it's just slow.
Good growth, but slow, and Ididn't want to go slow.
So as I thought it through, Ithought I think we have a way
that we could actually scale itusing our digital marketing
capacity, because we are kind ofworld-class at digital
marketing at that point.
So I pitched Tony the idea ofstarting the law firm and he
wasn't like immediatelyreceptive.
(04:47):
Ok, because he was kind ofreally ingrained in his idea of
this, of this roofing company.
The more we thought about it,the more we researched it, we
felt like we could do some realspecial things there and help
some people.
So that's the direction that wetook.
And about nine months laterfrom that conversation is when
we launched the law firm.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And about nine months later from that conversation is
when we launched the law firm.
And just to correct me if I'mwrong here, I believe the
reasoning behind the roofingcompany and the law firm was we
knew how to drive local leadsRight.
We had established RocketClicksas an agency.
We were building that muscle ofdriving local visibility and
local leads, and so there isactually quite a comparison
(05:25):
between a roofing company and alaw firm as it relates to how
people search for those services.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, if you think about it, the client is
obviously looking for adifferent service.
But generally divorce is aone-time transaction, most of
the time, right.
It's usually high dollar androofing is similar to that.
Usually you're gonna get a newroof once on a house 30 years,
right, you live in a house,maybe once you'll get a new roof
on it, and it's a high dollartransaction.
(05:51):
And it's local search, wherepeople find the roofers through
local search just like they findtheir family lawyers through
local search.
So it fit every it all lined upand for us the thought process
was I was a lawyer, so we kindof had a barrier to entry.
We weren't competing againsteverybody that has a roofing,
that has a pickup truck and ahammer.
We were competing against otherlawyers and we liked the
(06:11):
competitive nature of thatmarket, more so than some of
these well-established roofingcompanies that we'd be going up
against.
So it made sense there.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yep, absolutely Okay.
So now we've decided we'regoing to build a law firm, and
it took nine months to from ideato execution.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It took a year for my execution.
It took nine months fromwhenever Tony and I decided that
we're going to do it to buildthe website and get it ready.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
And it originally a full service firm, correct?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Correct Everything family law, estate planning,
personal injury, criminal.
We were going to do it allbecause we could get the
business.
So we turned the lights on andright away the phone was ringing
.
In fact it was ringing beforewe turned the lights on.
We had those early calls go toanother attorney across town
that was a buddy of mine and hewas happy to take those free
(07:02):
calls because he did everything.
So it worked out great.
But the day we turned the lighton, so to speak, we directed
all those calls to our internalphone bank and away we went and
we in that first 18 months wegrew to eight lawyers and we
thought we were on top of thegirl the world.
But we were getting barcomplaints, client complaints.
We were doing everything andtotally unhappy with it because
(07:25):
it was just felt like chaos.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're building the plane as you were flying it.
You know, like you said, mostlaw firms grow one or two
attorneys at a time over maybe atwo or three year period.
You, in the first eight months,hired eight attorneys.
Now, was it practice areaspecific I'm going to get a
defense specific attorney.
I'm going to family lawspecific attorney or was it just
(07:48):
Well?
Speaker 1 (07:48):
we started with family law because that's what I
knew.
So our first three attorneyswere family attorneys.
But then we're getting criminalcalls, we're getting estate
planning calls, we're getting PIcalls, we're getting liquor
license calls.
We were getting everything andsaying yes.
Yeah, we were saying yes toeverything.
Calls.
We were getting everything andsaying yes.
Yeah, we were saying yes toeverything.
If you were willing to put yourcredit card down, we would
(08:12):
welcome you as a client and infact, I think our fourth lawyer
was a criminal defense lawyer.
So, anyway, we're making lotsof money on paper but no bottom
line.
In fact, we're losing moneybecause it was just a mess.
The firm was a mess internallybecause we were trying to grow
too fast and do everythingrather than focus on one thing.
So 18 months into it, we werejust discouraged and felt like
(08:32):
we're ready to quit.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Quite honestly, that's such a.
It's such an interestinginflection point where you've
shown your ability to grow.
We can hire attorneys, we canget leads, we can bring revenue
in.
We're not making any money yet,but we're going to figure it
out.
At what point you mentioned 18months in, you were frustrated.
Was there a moment or a day ora month you remember saying I
(08:57):
can't do it like this.
We got to change.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I think it was our third legit bar complaint.
Bar complaints are very scaryfor lawyers.
We don't want them ever.
We had three not for me but forother lawyers in the firm in
one, in one month.
Now they were all turned out tobe kind of you know nothing
complaints.
They went away, they weren'tvalid.
But that third one was like manwe are and that doesn't even
(09:22):
include the upset clients thatdidn't complain to the state bar
right, it's just goals that areelevated to that point.
And that's when I knew we needto do something and that was
about November of 2015.
And I remember there was thisguy named Lee Rosen and he was a
he's kind of a famous guy inour world.
He was kind of one of theinitial kind of gurus in family
(09:43):
law and I had been following hisfollowing his stuff for a while
.
So I reached out to him and Isaid, hey, lee, would you be
willing to meet with us and kindof answer, help us, like figure
this out.
And he said sure, and I go okay, how much will that be, lee?
And he's like that's 10 grand.
I'm like it was like a puckerup moment.
We're like, oh, we got to dothat.
(10:03):
But I just trusted his wisdomand what he had built there in
North Carolina.
So Tony and I got on a plane,went right down to South Beach
in December of 15.
And we met with him and it wasabsolute mind blowing, opened
our eyes to incredible ideas andthoughts that we never even
imagined.
(10:23):
And we took copious notes, likepages of notes over a seven
hour time period, recorded theconversation, left there, went
directly across the street intoa Starbucks and said, okay,
we're going to blow the firm upwhen we get back and we're going
to do this.
We're going to do it like inrecord time, because we were so
frustrated with where we are at.
And, um, we got back.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
so motivated to do something about it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, when you're losing money it can really be a
strong motivator.
You don't want to lose moneyanymore.
So we got back on the plane,came back and told our our
attorneys.
It took a couple of weeks forus to kind of get the
communication right, figure outhow we're going to do it.
But we came back and say here'swhat we're going to do.
And you know, we had half ourclients, 40% of our clients,
(11:08):
left because they weren't familylawyers and we were going to
focus just on family law andwe're going to go to fixed fee
and we're going to investheavily in technology with
Salesforce.
We made all these kind ofcornerstone decisions in a span
of about three weeks and comethat was in December, so
February 1st, we flipped over tofixed fee and we've been fixed
(11:28):
fee a hundred percent since thenfor new clients and away we
went.
It was painful, we had to.
We had to refund 40% of ourclients, yeah, and pay severance
to attorneys.
So it was a really expensiveproposition to do that pivot.
But we were really convictedthat if we focused on family law
and we were, we worked on beingthe best we possibly could be
(11:50):
in that, you know, specialthings would happen.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
So I want to live in this moment for a minute.
Right, you decide to completelychange your entire business,
your entire law firm, which I'msure is not very common.
You did it in record time, inthree weeks.
If you could go back and do itagain, are there some key
learnings in there?
If someone is listening to thisand they have a multi-practice
(12:15):
firm and they're thinking, orhave been thinking about
focusing it down into a singlepractice area, what lessons can
you share from that pivot thepositive and negative that you
learned during that time?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, and looking back on that, we went from chaos
to even more chaos for a coupleof weeks.
So we kind of had to get deeperin the mud and the pain, so to
speak, before we could come outof that.
And you know, for stubbornnessor impatience or a combination
of all those things, we just wecommitted to doing it really
quick.
Now, I don't think that's thewisest thing for every firm, but
(12:50):
I didn't like losing money, Ididn't like where we were going
and we just felt like let's pullthe bandaid off, let's rip it
off and just do it.
So I think that resolve wasthat's that served us well,
tyler, over the years, thatresolve of we're going to do it,
here's what we're going to do.
And we had teammates thattrusted us.
(13:16):
I got to stress that we had acouple of lawyers, holly Mullen
in particular, who's one of ourmanaging partners today.
She was with us then and Iremember just some of the
skepticism as I went to her andsaid hey, holly, you're an
amazing attorney.
You've been doing hourly yourwhole career.
I'm going to ask you to dofixed fee.
She's like we're in family law.
Do you realize?
You can't do fixed fee familylaw?
I'm like, no, but here's how Ithink it might work.
And a couple of days of hernoodling on it, she's like, yeah
, let's give it a shot.
And I think we also providedsome baseline comp.
They wouldn't fall below justto get their buy-in to help us
(13:39):
give that a shot.
So I think the lesson was wewere resolved and committed to
it.
We didn't want to burn the ship, so to speak.
We're going to go all in on itand that worked.
But the key I appreciate this alot, as I know you do about
just focus, focus, focus.
When you focus your whole firmbehind one practice area, you
can build everything around that, it, it, it benefits the
(14:01):
clients significantly and itbenefits you as a lawyer your
bottom line, obviously becausenow you're, you're able to
really serve clients in a betterway.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So that's incredible.
It's just crazy to think howfar you've come since that
moment as it relates to pivotingfrom fixed fee or from hourly
to fixed fee.
What was that transition likefor the lawyers you mentioned?
Holly, you know being an hourlyattorney your whole career now
(14:29):
having to move to fixed fee.
Was that an easier transitionfor other attorneys and for the
clients?
Did they understand all that?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Give us some more perspective on that kind of
fixed fee mindset.
Well, I'll answer from theclient's perspective.
They liked it and loved itimmediately.
Okay, especially because of howwe were quoting them, because
they were about a third of wherethe fees needed to be.
So they loved it.
Now, that's the good news.
I'll get that out of the wayfirst.
The bad news is it took us yearsof a learning curve, a painful,
protracted learning curve, toget it right, and so I'll
(15:02):
highlight the major lessons fromthat experience.
One is that we did notappreciate the difficulty it
would be to change our internalmindset to go from hourly to
fixed fee.
Yeah, hourly is done on areactive basis.
That's how the law is practiced.
In hourly you react to what thecourt you react to, your client
(15:24):
react to the other side.
There's very little proactivepushing cases along.
Some lawyers do it more thanothers, okay, but it's usually
going to be done by the court orone party's urgency to be done.
So we had to change our practice, mindset and habits, and that
took years and years to figureout how to do that.
So that was in, that that partwas there, and then it took us a
(15:46):
long time to figure out how tosell it.
I mean, so we switched in 16.
We didn't start figuring outhow to sell it until about 2021,
22 is when we really startedfiguring out how to sell it.
So it took that long and weeven started a quote sales
program in 18.
So it took us from 18 to 21,trying different things till we
got the messaging right to sellit.
(16:07):
So those two factors alone arereally difficult for lawyers to
adapt to, and it wasn't easy.
I don't want to paint it likeit was easy.
It can be done, but it's achallenge.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Every time I talk about our law firm and I talk to
other attorneys and I tell themthat it's fixed fee, the
reaction is very similar.
It's always like well, thatcan't happen, or how did you do
that, or there's no way that canactually work.
And it's fun to see thereaction as you or Tony explains
it to them on how you wentthrough these iterations and
(16:43):
different pricing models tofinally get to where you are
today.
And so I got to believe thatsomeone listening to this is
saying the same thing, likethere's no way that works.
So can you dive into a littlebit more on what those lessons
learned were during thedifferent pricing kind of
conversations and iterations youhad?
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah.
So I'll start with the resultthat we're enjoying today.
Okay, so we have 27 lawyers and100% of our cases are fixed fee
.
So we have 27 lawyers and 100%of our cases are fixed fee.
Now, within those cases, weonly do divorce and paternity
and post-judgment on either ofthose cases.
We also do some prenups andsome mediation, but that's
basically the same stuff.
(17:22):
So we don't take other casesoutside.
We don't do adoption, we don'tdo CHIPS cases, things like that
, and our lawyers on averagecollect average collect north of
650 a year.
So the results are strong.
From just a dollar and metricstandpoint, our client scores
are incredibly high.
I don't know.
(17:43):
We do NPS to check our clientscores and right now it's in the
mid-70s For family law.
That's unheard of.
Disney is below mid-70s.
So we know our clients love it,our lawyers love it and the
results speak for themselves.
Okay, so that's what's happenednow to get there from 16 to 25.
So this nine year period, thethe first lessons that we had to
(18:07):
learn was just getting thequoting down because we were
quoting way too low.
But you don't know you'requoting too low until you get
six months or a year into thecase, or some cases are like
three years old on a $2,000initial flat fee and we didn't
figure that part out.
So we eventually figured outhow to quote a lot closer to the
(18:28):
value of what we weredelivering, something more in
line with an effective hourlyrate.
That took us years to figurethat piece of it out.
Then we initially also brokedown our fixed fee cases into
stages.
So like a divorce, for example,would have three stages kind of
a negotiation stage, a kind ofa litigation stage where you
(18:50):
kind of you're more arguing withstuff and you're needing
outside help from the court.
Then you have a trial stage.
That's kind of how they allbroke down and it was based on
events and sometimes the eventwould happen in four months,
sometimes it happened in ninemonths.
Well, that didn't work becauseyou know now you're doing nine
months of work in one case andfour months on the other.
So we had eventually come to thepoint where we figured out how
(19:11):
to do it on a time-based, wherewe would promise clients certain
amount of work done andwhatever in a time period and
then that would trigger the nextstage and it'd still be three
stages roughly negotiation,litigation and trial would be
how we would do it.
So that took us a while tofigure that out, but that was.
You know.
I'm sharing that here becausethat was our.
That was a major turning pointfor us to solve that and
(19:34):
understand how to do that Rightand well.
By the way, tyler, if anyone isinterested in knowing more about
this, they can go tojsterlinghughescom where we
actually put up our retaineragreements.
You can, like, rip thoseretainer agreements down,
download them and figure out howwe do it and, you know, copy
those for your, for your stateand for your for your practice
there too.
So that was just on the codingand the sales side of of the
(19:56):
experience for clients.
The other lesson that it tookus a really long time to
understand was how proactive wehad to be, because if a client
did not feel we were reallytrying to push their case along,
when we would say, hey, youknow, client, your first stage
is over, now we're going to gointo the next stage of your case
, we have to be able to showthem hey, we really tried to get
(20:18):
it over with in this stage.
We couldn't.
And then now it's going to bethis next fee, which is a big
fee, and you know that took ussome time for us to understand
how to do that for clients, sothey could feel not great about
it but at least understand.
Yes, you did what you could andcouldn't get it over with, and
that's not within your control,so we're going to go to this
next stage.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
That's wild.
It's interesting that it tookso many iterations and obviously
you're feeling the benefit ofthat now, but for our listeners,
this success is is never astraight path, right.
It takes these iterations andthese the the motivation to
continue to improve and polishon what you're building.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, it's definitely zigzag.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Okay, so now let's take it from the attorney
perspective, as they werelearning this new model and they
were dealing with consumers.
One thing you mentioned was thereactive versus proactive.
Right now, our attorneys wantto get the cases done.
They want to push thingsforward so that they can
continue to grow and move on tothe next one.
How was that mindset, mindshift felt within the firm?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Um, well, within the firm, initially our attorneys,
especially the new ones, they'regoing to say the, the objection
we commonly hear as well whatif the other side wants to delay
things and slow things down?
And that's a valid concern andit does happen.
Okay, that definitely doeshappen.
It doesn't happen as much as weimagine it'll happen.
(21:50):
It happens a lot less than that, but it happens and we have
ways to kind of push thingsalong.
We also have some, some wordingin our agreement that to help
the client out, that if it'sclose to a resolution at the end
of a stage, we can extend it by30 days and it's not the full
fee for the next stage.
So there's certainly we'regoing to try to work with the
(22:11):
client and make sure that we'redoing right by them.
So there's some ways that we dothat too.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Love it.
We're going to have an entireseries.
So, if you're enjoying whatwe're talking about, we're going
to continue talking about Jeffand Tony's journey as they've
been building Sterling.
But, jeff, I want to focus inon a few just overarching
lessons learned over the last 11years, starting from nothing,
building it to where you aretoday, having to re-engineer the
(22:40):
entire firm a few years in.
What are some things that youwant our listeners to take away
as they're building their ownfirm?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
want our listeners to take away as they're building
their own firm.
Oh boy, let me go back to thebeginning.
So when Tony and I startedSterling Law, we came in with
the mindset that we wanted toscale it and grow it.
That's fairly unusual and it'sprobably not relatable to a lot
of our audience because, likemost lawyers would start a
practice usually a solo practiceand then they just begin to
build it and grow it from there.
(23:13):
And so for those that are inthat I just described, that are
in that situation, which are,which are most of our audience I
I encourage and I get thisquestion quite a bit, tyler,
from attorneys that are wantingto take their practice from a
solo or a one or two attorneypractice to grow it beyond.
That is, honestly.
It starts with yourself.
(23:34):
You have to be able tosuccessfully lead yourself
before you can lead others, andin my particular case, I go.
I went back to my years when Ipracticed law and I would drive
back and forth the court I welive in a.
My office was in an area thatwe were in a tri-county area and
(23:54):
each county courthouse was 25or 30 minutes away, so I had to
make that trip every day,sometimes twice a day, and I use
that time to do nothing butlike listen to books on CD back
in those days and I had to getto the point where I could lead
myself before I could grow andlead others.
So attorneys that are lookingto grow their practice, you got
to first start with can I leadmyself?
(24:16):
I can.
If I've mastered that, or atleast got to a point of
proficiency there, then I canpass that along and give that to
others and help lead the firmas well.
So starting there, I think, islike step number one lead the
firm as well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So starting there, I think, is like step number one.
We, on our law firm interviewseries that we have on our
podcast, I often ask thatquestion of like, what was it
like going from a solopreneur tobuilding a firm and having
multiple people at your firm andmultiple attorneys, and the
mindset shift that has to happenfrom being able to control all
(24:50):
the outcomes and build all theprocesses to now having to let
go of the vine a little bit anddelegate and set a culture and
build a culture with a firm.
I think that's what you'resaying right as your firm grows,
as your business grows, youhave to change and grow yourself
.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and I think probably the hurdle that trips
up the most is that willingnessto delegate and let control,
especially of work product,cause we as lawyers we're, we're
proud of our work product.
We put a lot, we put obviouslyseven years of schooling into
getting the skillset to be ableto deliver that work product,
plus the years of experience,and it's really tough to give
(25:26):
that up.
And that is the most commonlimiting factor for lawyers in
growing and building their firmis willingness to let others
take over, do the work, not doit.
As well as you make mistakes,you be patient with the mistakes
, train them through that, equipthem through that.
And frankly, a lot of folks arethey're just not prepared for
(25:46):
that, they don't want to do that.
And frankly, a lot of folks arethey're just not prepared for
that, they don't want to do that.
It feels so wrong and so off tothem that they would just
rather not do that.
And there's certainly honor inthat.
No problem with that.
Just understand that if that'swhere you want to be, you won't
be growing your firm a ton, andthat's great too.
One or two or three attorneyfirms can be amazing.
So growth isn't everything, Ican assure you that.
(26:09):
But if you really want to growit, you've got to be able to
delegate and let others screw itup.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's right.
There's this whole narrativethat they don't teach you how to
run a business.
In law school, they teach youeverything except that, and so
having to learn that on the flyor through mentors is definitely
a shortcut.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
It is for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Love it.
Jeff, really appreciate yourtime, excited to continue this
conversation and continue todive into the Sterling story and
learn more about yourexperience in building this
amazing law firm.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's been fun talking to you, tyler.
It's also weird for me, sittingin this seat on my show with
you, to get to be interviewed.
So we're looking forward to thenext couple episodes on this
series.
I know Tony's coming in,probably in the next one here,
to talk about.
What's unique about Tony'ssituation is that he's a
non-lawyer and he brings arobust skill set from a
(27:07):
marketing and operationsstandpoint, and obviously you'll
see why I chose him as my firstpartner in this, even though
he's a non-lawyer.
So he's going to have a lot tooffer.
And then from there we'll beadding in Jeff Kerlin, who's our
current president, to share onwhat we've done over the past
few years and how he's kind ofshaped the firm in the way that
he has, and then some otherfolks on our team.
So I'm looking forward tosharing this with everyone as we
(27:29):
move forward Awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Thanks again, appreciate it Cool, thanks D.
Have you ever wondered what it really takes to
build a successful law firmfrom the ground up?
In this episode, we break downthe steps and the strategies
that you need to understand whenestablishing your firm.
Well, hello and welcome to theSterling Family Law Show, where
we equip family lawyers how tohave the firm of their dreams.
I'm your co-host, jeff Hughes,along with my co-host, tyler
Dolph.
Today we're doing something alittle bit different that we've
(00:21):
never done before.
We're going to do a series onsharing the gritty, raw details
of how Tony and I started andbuilt Sterling Law.
We've grown that from zero, froma startup, to 17 plus million
and 27 attorneys a day, and thisisn't just like a war story
thing.
This is going to be.
We're going to dig deep intoour failures and share those and
(00:43):
some of the good decisionswe've made, and share those too.
Hopefully you all can take thisand synthesize it for your
situation and shorten yoursuccess curve in your firm.
Yeah, tyler, so often I hearall these stories of firms that
have started and it's just allkind of the gloss right, the
highlight reel, and look, I wantto do my very best to kind of
(01:03):
share the lowlights along withthe highlights, because I think
that's where you get some of themost valuable nuggets of gold
that help attorneys build theirfirm.
So hopefully we can share somevalue with our audience here
100%.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm really excited and, jeff, I want to start by
going all the way back to thebeginning.
You know, because you, forpeople who don't know it, you
are a serial entrepreneur.
You've started many differentbusinesses and Sterling was not
your first one.
Let's start at the verybeginning, when you were a
practicing attorney and decidedto pivot out of that.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So I'll give you the condensed version.
I started practicing here inthe Milwaukee area here in
Wisconsin in 1997.
So I've got some gray hairs toshow it.
I go back to 97.
So I worked.
It was in a small communityfirm, five attorneys and I was
the fifth one, and I was thereuntil 2005 when I left to start
(01:58):
or to run a side hustle that Istarted in 04.
So 97 to 04, practice lawstarted a side hustle and of all
things it was selling dishnetwork satellite, which is like
cable over your satellite right.
And so I did that, left mypractice in 05.
I did that until about fiveyears ago when I that business
(02:20):
just basically disappeared.
So that was almost 20 years Iran that business.
So that's how I got started inmy entrepreneurial ways Along
the way.
I think I counted once I'vestarted nine businesses and six
of them are no longer around.
Some version of fail.
Maybe they lasted a few yearsor they just failed within the
(02:42):
year or so, but one of thesuccesses was Sterling Law.
So Tony Carl's and I startedSterling Law 11 years ago this
week.
So that takes us back to 2004.
We started in June of 2004,.
Just him and I.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And Tony was at the call center right.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Tony was with me at the satellite business.
Yeah, he ran our marketingbasically for the satellite
business.
So we had worked together inthat life came together and
decided to start the law firmand we opened up in 04.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So I think it's really and I know the story and
I love the story, but I thinkour audience will also
appreciate it.
Talk to me about some of thoseinitial conversations with Tony.
You know, hey, should we startanother business?
We know that the call centerbusiness is kind of declining
because over the top, tv andHulu and YouTube TV and
everything is coming on board.
What was that kind of likefirst idea ideation lunch
(03:39):
looking like.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Okay.
So I went to Tony and his bosshis name is John so we hired a
guy named John.
John was his boss.
He ran the satellite businessat that time and I said, hey,
look, guys, go, go sit in a roomin a dark room and, like, think
through all of our options andcome back with some ideas.
And they came back and theirbest idea, which was a good idea
, was a roofing company, becauseit fit the criteria we were
(04:03):
looking for.
And I thought about that and foryears I had been noodling in my
mind how can I get back intolaw and take what I've learned
in business and marketing andbring that to law and do
something special?
But I couldn't imagine a waythat we could actually scale the
law firm, because most lawfirms in the B2C space are built
one or two attorneys at a time.
(04:25):
Okay, it's just slow.
Good growth, but slow, and Ididn't want to go slow.
So as I thought it through, Ithought I think we have a way
that we could actually scale itusing our digital marketing
capacity, because we are kind ofworld-class at digital
marketing at that point.
So I pitched Tony the idea ofstarting the law firm and he
wasn't like immediatelyreceptive.
(04:47):
Ok, because he was kind ofreally ingrained in his idea of
this, of this roofing company.
The more we thought about it,the more we researched it, we
felt like we could do some realspecial things there and help
some people.
So that's the direction that wetook.
And about nine months laterfrom that conversation is when
we launched the law firm.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And about nine months later from that conversation is
when we launched the law firm.
And just to correct me if I'mwrong here, I believe the
reasoning behind the roofingcompany and the law firm was we
knew how to drive local leadsRight.
We had established RocketClicksas an agency.
We were building that muscle ofdriving local visibility and
local leads, and so there isactually quite a comparison
(05:25):
between a roofing company and alaw firm as it relates to how
people search for those services.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, if you think about it, the client is
obviously looking for adifferent service.
But generally divorce is aone-time transaction, most of
the time, right.
It's usually high dollar androofing is similar to that.
Usually you're gonna get a newroof once on a house 30 years,
right, you live in a house,maybe once you'll get a new roof
on it, and it's a high dollartransaction.
(05:51):
And it's local search, wherepeople find the roofers through
local search just like they findtheir family lawyers through
local search.
So it fit every it all lined upand for us the thought process
was I was a lawyer, so we kindof had a barrier to entry.
We weren't competing againsteverybody that has a roofing,
that has a pickup truck and ahammer.
We were competing against otherlawyers and we liked the
(06:11):
competitive nature of thatmarket, more so than some of
these well-established roofingcompanies that we'd be going up
against.
So it made sense there.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yep, absolutely Okay.
So now we've decided we'regoing to build a law firm, and
it took nine months to from ideato execution.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It took a year for my execution.
It took nine months fromwhenever Tony and I decided that
we're going to do it to buildthe website and get it ready.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
And it originally a full service firm, correct?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Correct Everything family law, estate planning,
personal injury, criminal.
We were going to do it allbecause we could get the
business.
So we turned the lights on andright away the phone was ringing
.
In fact it was ringing beforewe turned the lights on.
We had those early calls go toanother attorney across town
that was a buddy of mine and hewas happy to take those free
(07:02):
calls because he did everything.
So it worked out great.
But the day we turned the lighton, so to speak, we directed
all those calls to our internalphone bank and away we went and
we in that first 18 months wegrew to eight lawyers and we
thought we were on top of thegirl the world.
But we were getting barcomplaints, client complaints.
We were doing everything andtotally unhappy with it because
(07:25):
it was just felt like chaos.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're building the plane as you were flying it.
You know, like you said, mostlaw firms grow one or two
attorneys at a time over maybe atwo or three year period.
You, in the first eight months,hired eight attorneys.
Now, was it practice areaspecific I'm going to get a
defense specific attorney.
I'm going to family lawspecific attorney or was it just
(07:48):
Well?
Speaker 1 (07:48):
we started with family law because that's what I
knew.
So our first three attorneyswere family attorneys.
But then we're getting criminalcalls, we're getting estate
planning calls, we're getting PIcalls, we're getting liquor
license calls.
We were getting everything andsaying yes.
Yeah, we were saying yes toeverything.
Calls.
We were getting everything andsaying yes.
Yeah, we were saying yes toeverything.
If you were willing to put yourcredit card down, we would
(08:12):
welcome you as a client and infact, I think our fourth lawyer
was a criminal defense lawyer.
So, anyway, we're making lotsof money on paper but no bottom
line.
In fact, we're losing moneybecause it was just a mess.
The firm was a mess internallybecause we were trying to grow
too fast and do everythingrather than focus on one thing.
So 18 months into it, we werejust discouraged and felt like
(08:32):
we're ready to quit.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Quite honestly, that's such a.
It's such an interestinginflection point where you've
shown your ability to grow.
We can hire attorneys, we canget leads, we can bring revenue
in.
We're not making any money yet,but we're going to figure it
out.
At what point you mentioned 18months in, you were frustrated.
Was there a moment or a day ora month you remember saying I
(08:57):
can't do it like this.
We got to change.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I think it was our third legit bar complaint.
Bar complaints are very scaryfor lawyers.
We don't want them ever.
We had three not for me but forother lawyers in the firm in
one, in one month.
Now they were all turned out tobe kind of you know nothing
complaints.
They went away, they weren'tvalid.
But that third one was like manwe are and that doesn't even
(09:22):
include the upset clients thatdidn't complain to the state bar
right, it's just goals that areelevated to that point.
And that's when I knew we needto do something and that was
about November of 2015.
And I remember there was thisguy named Lee Rosen and he was a
he's kind of a famous guy inour world.
He was kind of one of theinitial kind of gurus in family
(09:43):
law and I had been following hisfollowing his stuff for a while
.
So I reached out to him and Isaid, hey, lee, would you be
willing to meet with us and kindof answer, help us, like figure
this out.
And he said sure, and I go okay, how much will that be, lee?
And he's like that's 10 grand.
I'm like it was like a puckerup moment.
We're like, oh, we got to dothat.
(10:03):
But I just trusted his wisdomand what he had built there in
North Carolina.
So Tony and I got on a plane,went right down to South Beach
in December of 15.
And we met with him and it wasabsolute mind blowing, opened
our eyes to incredible ideas andthoughts that we never even
imagined.
(10:23):
And we took copious notes, likepages of notes over a seven
hour time period, recorded theconversation, left there, went
directly across the street intoa Starbucks and said, okay,
we're going to blow the firm upwhen we get back and we're going
to do this.
We're going to do it like inrecord time, because we were so
frustrated with where we are at.
And, um, we got back.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
so motivated to do something about it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, when you're losing money it can really be a
strong motivator.
You don't want to lose moneyanymore.
So we got back on the plane,came back and told our our
attorneys.
It took a couple of weeks forus to kind of get the
communication right, figure outhow we're going to do it.
But we came back and say here'swhat we're going to do.
And you know, we had half ourclients, 40% of our clients,
(11:08):
left because they weren't familylawyers and we were going to
focus just on family law andwe're going to go to fixed fee
and we're going to investheavily in technology with
Salesforce.
We made all these kind ofcornerstone decisions in a span
of about three weeks and comethat was in December, so
February 1st, we flipped over tofixed fee and we've been fixed
(11:28):
fee a hundred percent since thenfor new clients and away we
went.
It was painful, we had to.
We had to refund 40% of ourclients, yeah, and pay severance
to attorneys.
So it was a really expensiveproposition to do that pivot.
But we were really convictedthat if we focused on family law
and we were, we worked on beingthe best we possibly could be
(11:50):
in that, you know, specialthings would happen.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
So I want to live in this moment for a minute.
Right, you decide to completelychange your entire business,
your entire law firm, which I'msure is not very common.
You did it in record time, inthree weeks.
If you could go back and do itagain, are there some key
learnings in there?
If someone is listening to thisand they have a multi-practice
(12:15):
firm and they're thinking, orhave been thinking about
focusing it down into a singlepractice area, what lessons can
you share from that pivot thepositive and negative that you
learned during that time?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, and looking back on that, we went from chaos
to even more chaos for a coupleof weeks.
So we kind of had to get deeperin the mud and the pain, so to
speak, before we could come outof that.
And you know, for stubbornnessor impatience or a combination
of all those things, we just wecommitted to doing it really
quick.
Now, I don't think that's thewisest thing for every firm, but
(12:50):
I didn't like losing money, Ididn't like where we were going
and we just felt like let's pullthe bandaid off, let's rip it
off and just do it.
So I think that resolve wasthat's that served us well,
tyler, over the years, thatresolve of we're going to do it,
here's what we're going to do.
And we had teammates thattrusted us.
(13:16):
I got to stress that we had acouple of lawyers, holly Mullen
in particular, who's one of ourmanaging partners today.
She was with us then and Iremember just some of the
skepticism as I went to her andsaid hey, holly, you're an
amazing attorney.
You've been doing hourly yourwhole career.
I'm going to ask you to dofixed fee.
She's like we're in family law.
Do you realize?
You can't do fixed fee familylaw?
I'm like, no, but here's how Ithink it might work.
And a couple of days of hernoodling on it, she's like, yeah
, let's give it a shot.
And I think we also providedsome baseline comp.
They wouldn't fall below justto get their buy-in to help us
(13:39):
give that a shot.
So I think the lesson was wewere resolved and committed to
it.
We didn't want to burn the ship, so to speak.
We're going to go all in on itand that worked.
But the key I appreciate this alot, as I know you do about
just focus, focus, focus.
When you focus your whole firmbehind one practice area, you
can build everything around that, it, it, it benefits the
(14:01):
clients significantly and itbenefits you as a lawyer your
bottom line, obviously becausenow you're, you're able to
really serve clients in a betterway.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So that's incredible.
It's just crazy to think howfar you've come since that
moment as it relates to pivotingfrom fixed fee or from hourly
to fixed fee.
What was that transition likefor the lawyers you mentioned?
Holly, you know being an hourlyattorney your whole career now
(14:29):
having to move to fixed fee.
Was that an easier transitionfor other attorneys and for the
clients?
Did they understand all that?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Give us some more perspective on that kind of
fixed fee mindset.
Well, I'll answer from theclient's perspective.
They liked it and loved itimmediately.
Okay, especially because of howwe were quoting them, because
they were about a third of wherethe fees needed to be.
So they loved it.
Now, that's the good news.
I'll get that out of the wayfirst.
The bad news is it took us yearsof a learning curve, a painful,
protracted learning curve, toget it right, and so I'll
(15:02):
highlight the major lessons fromthat experience.
One is that we did notappreciate the difficulty it
would be to change our internalmindset to go from hourly to
fixed fee.
Yeah, hourly is done on areactive basis.
That's how the law is practiced.
In hourly you react to what thecourt you react to, your client
(15:24):
react to the other side.
There's very little proactivepushing cases along.
Some lawyers do it more thanothers, okay, but it's usually
going to be done by the court orone party's urgency to be done.
So we had to change our practice, mindset and habits, and that
took years and years to figureout how to do that.
So that was in, that that partwas there, and then it took us a
(15:46):
long time to figure out how tosell it.
I mean, so we switched in 16.
We didn't start figuring outhow to sell it until about 2021,
22 is when we really startedfiguring out how to sell it.
So it took that long and weeven started a quote sales
program in 18.
So it took us from 18 to 21,trying different things till we
got the messaging right to sellit.
(16:07):
So those two factors alone arereally difficult for lawyers to
adapt to, and it wasn't easy.
I don't want to paint it likeit was easy.
It can be done, but it's achallenge.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Every time I talk about our law firm and I talk to
other attorneys and I tell themthat it's fixed fee, the
reaction is very similar.
It's always like well, thatcan't happen, or how did you do
that, or there's no way that canactually work.
And it's fun to see thereaction as you or Tony explains
it to them on how you wentthrough these iterations and
(16:43):
different pricing models tofinally get to where you are
today.
And so I got to believe thatsomeone listening to this is
saying the same thing, likethere's no way that works.
So can you dive into a littlebit more on what those lessons
learned were during thedifferent pricing kind of
conversations and iterations youhad?
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah.
So I'll start with the resultthat we're enjoying today.
Okay, so we have 27 lawyers and100% of our cases are fixed fee
.
So we have 27 lawyers and 100%of our cases are fixed fee.
Now, within those cases, weonly do divorce and paternity
and post-judgment on either ofthose cases.
We also do some prenups andsome mediation, but that's
basically the same stuff.
(17:22):
So we don't take other casesoutside.
We don't do adoption, we don'tdo CHIPS cases, things like that
, and our lawyers on averagecollect average collect north of
650 a year.
So the results are strong.
From just a dollar and metricstandpoint, our client scores
are incredibly high.
I don't know.
(17:43):
We do NPS to check our clientscores and right now it's in the
mid-70s For family law.
That's unheard of.
Disney is below mid-70s.
So we know our clients love it,our lawyers love it and the
results speak for themselves.
Okay, so that's what's happenednow to get there from 16 to 25.
So this nine year period, thethe first lessons that we had to
(18:07):
learn was just getting thequoting down because we were
quoting way too low.
But you don't know you'requoting too low until you get
six months or a year into thecase, or some cases are like
three years old on a $2,000initial flat fee and we didn't
figure that part out.
So we eventually figured outhow to quote a lot closer to the
(18:28):
value of what we weredelivering, something more in
line with an effective hourlyrate.
That took us years to figurethat piece of it out.
Then we initially also brokedown our fixed fee cases into
stages.
So like a divorce, for example,would have three stages kind of
a negotiation stage, a kind ofa litigation stage where you
(18:50):
kind of you're more arguing withstuff and you're needing
outside help from the court.
Then you have a trial stage.
That's kind of how they allbroke down and it was based on
events and sometimes the eventwould happen in four months,
sometimes it happened in ninemonths.
Well, that didn't work becauseyou know now you're doing nine
months of work in one case andfour months on the other.
So we had eventually come to thepoint where we figured out how
(19:11):
to do it on a time-based, wherewe would promise clients certain
amount of work done andwhatever in a time period and
then that would trigger the nextstage and it'd still be three
stages roughly negotiation,litigation and trial would be
how we would do it.
So that took us a while tofigure that out, but that was.
You know.
I'm sharing that here becausethat was our.
That was a major turning pointfor us to solve that and
(19:34):
understand how to do that Rightand well.
By the way, tyler, if anyone isinterested in knowing more about
this, they can go tojsterlinghughescom where we
actually put up our retaineragreements.
You can, like, rip thoseretainer agreements down,
download them and figure out howwe do it and, you know, copy
those for your, for your stateand for your for your practice
there too.
So that was just on the codingand the sales side of of the
(19:56):
experience for clients.
The other lesson that it tookus a really long time to
understand was how proactive wehad to be, because if a client
did not feel we were reallytrying to push their case along,
when we would say, hey, youknow, client, your first stage
is over, now we're going to gointo the next stage of your case
, we have to be able to showthem hey, we really tried to get
(20:18):
it over with in this stage.
We couldn't.
And then now it's going to bethis next fee, which is a big
fee, and you know that took ussome time for us to understand
how to do that for clients, sothey could feel not great about
it but at least understand.
Yes, you did what you could andcouldn't get it over with, and
that's not within your control,so we're going to go to this
next stage.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
That's wild.
It's interesting that it tookso many iterations and obviously
you're feeling the benefit ofthat now, but for our listeners,
this success is is never astraight path, right.
It takes these iterations andthese the the motivation to
continue to improve and polishon what you're building.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, it's definitely zigzag.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Okay, so now let's take it from the attorney
perspective, as they werelearning this new model and they
were dealing with consumers.
One thing you mentioned was thereactive versus proactive.
Right now, our attorneys wantto get the cases done.
They want to push thingsforward so that they can
continue to grow and move on tothe next one.
How was that mindset, mindshift felt within the firm?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Um, well, within the firm, initially our attorneys,
especially the new ones, they'regoing to say the, the objection
we commonly hear as well whatif the other side wants to delay
things and slow things down?
And that's a valid concern andit does happen.
Okay, that definitely doeshappen.
It doesn't happen as much as weimagine it'll happen.
(21:50):
It happens a lot less than that, but it happens and we have
ways to kind of push thingsalong.
We also have some, some wordingin our agreement that to help
the client out, that if it'sclose to a resolution at the end
of a stage, we can extend it by30 days and it's not the full
fee for the next stage.
So there's certainly we'regoing to try to work with the
(22:11):
client and make sure that we'redoing right by them.
So there's some ways that we dothat too.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Love it.
We're going to have an entireseries.
So, if you're enjoying whatwe're talking about, we're going
to continue talking about Jeffand Tony's journey as they've
been building Sterling.
But, jeff, I want to focus inon a few just overarching
lessons learned over the last 11years, starting from nothing,
building it to where you aretoday, having to re-engineer the
(22:40):
entire firm a few years in.
What are some things that youwant our listeners to take away
as they're building their ownfirm?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
want our listeners to take away as they're building
their own firm.
Oh boy, let me go back to thebeginning.
So when Tony and I startedSterling Law, we came in with
the mindset that we wanted toscale it and grow it.
That's fairly unusual and it'sprobably not relatable to a lot
of our audience because, likemost lawyers would start a
practice usually a solo practiceand then they just begin to
build it and grow it from there.
(23:13):
And so for those that are inthat I just described, that are
in that situation, which are,which are most of our audience I
I encourage and I get thisquestion quite a bit, tyler,
from attorneys that are wantingto take their practice from a
solo or a one or two attorneypractice to grow it beyond.
That is, honestly.
It starts with yourself.
(23:34):
You have to be able tosuccessfully lead yourself
before you can lead others, andin my particular case, I go.
I went back to my years when Ipracticed law and I would drive
back and forth the court I welive in a.
My office was in an area thatwe were in a tri-county area and
(23:54):
each county courthouse was 25or 30 minutes away, so I had to
make that trip every day,sometimes twice a day, and I use
that time to do nothing butlike listen to books on CD back
in those days and I had to getto the point where I could lead
myself before I could grow andlead others.
So attorneys that are lookingto grow their practice, you got
to first start with can I leadmyself?
(24:16):
I can.
If I've mastered that, or atleast got to a point of
proficiency there, then I canpass that along and give that to
others and help lead the firmas well.
So starting there, I think, islike step number one lead the
firm as well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So starting there, I think, is like step number one.
We, on our law firm interviewseries that we have on our
podcast, I often ask thatquestion of like, what was it
like going from a solopreneur tobuilding a firm and having
multiple people at your firm andmultiple attorneys, and the
mindset shift that has to happenfrom being able to control all
(24:50):
the outcomes and build all theprocesses to now having to let
go of the vine a little bit anddelegate and set a culture and
build a culture with a firm.
I think that's what you'resaying right as your firm grows,
as your business grows, youhave to change and grow yourself
.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and I think probably the hurdle that trips
up the most is that willingnessto delegate and let control,
especially of work product,cause we as lawyers we're, we're
proud of our work product.
We put a lot, we put obviouslyseven years of schooling into
getting the skillset to be ableto deliver that work product,
plus the years of experience,and it's really tough to give
(25:26):
that up.
And that is the most commonlimiting factor for lawyers in
growing and building their firmis willingness to let others
take over, do the work, not doit.
As well as you make mistakes,you be patient with the mistakes
, train them through that, equipthem through that.
And frankly, a lot of folks arethey're just not prepared for
(25:46):
that, they don't want to do that.
And frankly, a lot of folks arethey're just not prepared for
that, they don't want to do that.
It feels so wrong and so off tothem that they would just
rather not do that.
And there's certainly honor inthat.
No problem with that.
Just understand that if that'swhere you want to be, you won't
be growing your firm a ton, andthat's great too.
One or two or three attorneyfirms can be amazing.
So growth isn't everything, Ican assure you that.
(26:09):
But if you really want to growit, you've got to be able to
delegate and let others screw itup.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's right.
There's this whole narrativethat they don't teach you how to
run a business.
In law school, they teach youeverything except that, and so
having to learn that on the flyor through mentors is definitely
a shortcut.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
It is for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Love it.
Jeff, really appreciate yourtime, excited to continue this
conversation and continue todive into the Sterling story and
learn more about yourexperience in building this
amazing law firm.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's been fun talking to you, tyler.
It's also weird for me, sittingin this seat on my show with
you, to get to be interviewed.
So we're looking forward to thenext couple episodes on this
series.
I know Tony's coming in,probably in the next one here,
to talk about.
What's unique about Tony'ssituation is that he's a
non-lawyer and he brings arobust skill set from a
(27:07):
marketing and operationsstandpoint, and obviously you'll
see why I chose him as my firstpartner in this, even though
he's a non-lawyer.
So he's going to have a lot tooffer.
And then from there we'll beadding in Jeff Kerlin, who's our
current president, to share onwhat we've done over the past
few years and how he's kind ofshaped the firm in the way that
he has, and then some otherfolks on our team.
So I'm looking forward tosharing this with everyone as we
(27:29):
move forward Awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Thanks again, appreciate it Cool, thanks D.
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