Empowering Collaboration, Maintaining Culture, and Ensuring Accountability in a Distributed Law Firm

I spoke with Kevin Broyles, the co-founder and managing partner of FisherBroyles, a distributed law firm. We discussed how legal teams can empower collaboration, maintain culture, and ensure accountability with remote teams, the professional, personal, and financial benefits of a distributed law firm model, and best practices for driving law firm growth in a rapidly changing environment.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Kevin Broyles, the

(00:22):
co-founder and managing partner ofFisher Broyles, a distributed law firm.
Hi, Kevin.
How are you?
Good.
I'm great.
Thank you.
It's good to be with you, Ari.
It's my privilege.
I'm looking forward to this conversation.
So tell us about your backgroundand the genesis of Fisher Broils.
I started my career as a litigatorand in the late nineties got the

(00:43):
technology bug like a lot of folks.
It just so happened that James Fisherand I decided to go in that career
path at the same time, although wedidn't know one another, we both
joined within a week of one another.
An am law 200 firm to do technologytransactions, and he and I probably
joined three to four years toolate because it seems like we

(01:06):
were at the top of the bubble.
The late nineties was justa wonderful time for that.
And then we both joined around Februaryof 2000, and that seemed to be the moment
it started going downhill and afternine 11 occurred, the bottom fell out.
If you remember from mostlythe technology sector.
We had been doing all kinds of deals.

(01:28):
Private equity was throwingmoney at every idea back then.
And I invested in a lot of them.
And it seems silly now mothernature.com and the like.
But when that happened,when all of that collapsed.
Our hours went from, under 200a month to 65 a month in a good
month, and the firm startedrestructuring the technology group.

(01:53):
So at that point we just we enjoyed whatwe were doing as far as representing
cutting edge companies and entrepreneurs.
But we had to figure out how tocontinue to do it in that economy.
I had lunch with one of our best clientcontacts and he suggested that I start
my own firm and lower the rates getrid of all the unnecessary overhead

(02:15):
that drives billable rates so high.
And I sat down with Jamesand said, this is an idea.
What do you think?
And we ran with it and if James washere, he'd probably tell you yes.
I knew this would happen, butI was shocked all the way.
I was there to survive.
And that's how it all started workingfrom home, gathering a few clients

(02:35):
that we had enjoyed working with at theprevious firm and just trying to survive.
Then we found that there were like-mindedlawyers out there who wanted a radical
change in the way that law has practiced.
What were some of the biggest challengesyou faced in convincing clients and
other lawyers that this model could work?

(02:59):
It was a credibilitychallenge from the beginning.
We knew that, so we purposelyfocused on recruiting.
Am law 200 trained attorneys becauseif we wanted to do a client pitch,
we wanted the client to look at thebackground , that our attorneys brought
to the table versus the other am law 200firms they were using and think, there's

(03:20):
really no difference in the quality oflawyer here, but they're charging in
some instances 50% of the rate that I'mpaying and they have more experience.
So we did pitches, to clientswhere the other side was offering
them a fourth year associate.
And we had been practicing eight to10 years and our rates were lower,

(03:42):
and of course we didn't stack work.
We didn't have a fourth yearsupervised by an eighth year
supervised by a 25th year partner.
And clients saw the efficiency ofit, but it was still a challenge to
convince them that, it was okay tohire someone that didn't go into an
office and wear a suit every day.

(04:02):
And we got enough clients and attorneysto believe in that, , to start growing
and become the leader in the industry.
Then not to get ahead of us, butthis thing called COVID happened
and that just supercharged thecredibility because everyone was
working from home at that point.
What lessons can other firmslearn from your approach?

(04:25):
Think law firms need to understandthat fundamentally they're in
the business of being a business.
Sure you're providinga service, but you're.
Fundamentally a business, and youneed to operate as a business,
and that means trying to reduceexpenses and increase revenue.
Many times law firms tend to increaserevenue while they're increasing

(04:47):
expenses, either concurrentlyor increasing them even more.
The other lesson is tothink outside the box.
The current structure of traditionallaw firms was something that was
created over a hundred years ago byPaul Cravath, and it hasn't changed.
And it reminds me of there's this moviecalled The a hundred Foot Journey,

(05:08):
where this Indian family moves to Franceand the son's a chef, Helen Marin is
playing the French restaurant owner,and he says, he's making a recipe and
she says why would you change a Frenchrecipe that's over 200 years old?
And he said, perhaps 200years is long enough.
And I think the same thing in thepractice of law, perhaps a hundred years
is long enough to be doing it one way.

(05:30):
It is time to reimagine orreinvent the legal practice.
I wrote a book called ReinventingProfessional Services.
So your theme resonateswith me personally.
How do you maintain collaboration,culture, accountability with attorneys,
working in different locations, timezones, and even on different continents?

(05:50):
As in the legal practice likeany relationship, the primary
focus of contention is financial.
And what we have done as a baselineto create collaboration is we've
created a formula based meritocracy.
So our partners actually don'thave that financial conflict.

(06:12):
We don't have a partner who thinksI'm not getting paid what I'm owed
because that other person is gettingunfairly paid more than they are owed.
When you remove that, you createa more collegial environment among
your partners and within our formula.
There is incentives to share work.
You make more money if you crosssell and you can see exactly

(06:35):
what you're making for that.
As opposed to traditional firms where theykinda have a black box of compensation,
you're not really sure that you'regetting any credit for what you do
for the firm other than bill hours.
That's the fundamental foundation.
And then of course we havepractice groups, we have practice
leaders, we have monthly meetings.
Another.

(06:55):
Positive of the whole CID remoterevolution is that zoom and other tools
have arisen so that we can see each otherface-to-face and talk like we are now.
That has made it a loteasier to collaborate.
We also have two annualmeetings of partners.
One's a network retreat that thosepeople who want a little extra

(07:20):
networking, attend . And then wehave a full partnership retreat.
And our partners get together and wehave meetings and we have team building
time and people will golf or ride bikesor go to the cigar bar or what have you.
Then the third way is.
We have a culture and inclusioncommittee and we look for ways to

(07:42):
help partners know each other a littlebetter on an interpersonal level.
We have affinity groups thatarose out of that committee.
And it can be almost anything.
I like playing golf.
I like riding bikes.
I like knitting.
I like college sports andthose people get together.
I was just on one of those with a groupof our lawyers earlier this week, and

(08:02):
it was about business development.
They just wanted to talk about,how we cross sell and strategies
for developing business.
How do your attorneys benefit overall fromthe distributed model, professionally,
personally, even financiallycompared to what they would find at
a larger, more traditional law firm.
There's two separatepositives from our model.

(08:24):
The first has nothing to do withthe distri distributed nature.
That's just the formula based.
There's a lot more clarityinto what you're making.
You're rewarded for exactly in atransparent way what you do for the firm.
So that is a benefit to the partners.
They know that they're being treatedfairly from a distributed standpoint.

(08:45):
It's just more efficient.
You are not wasting time commuting, you tend to have more authority
because we're very partner heavy.
We have very few young lawyers.
Because it's distributed youdon't have real estate, and
we've eliminated a lot of the.
Nonsense that traditional firms have.
For instance, we're not spendingthousands and thousands of dollars to

(09:07):
put an ad in a magazine because thatdoesn't help generate clients at all.
No one hires a law firm becausethey see an ad, and at least not
anyone who's looking for morethan a personal injury lawyer.
Those are some of the benefits, theautonomy of being able to control your own
practice, the efficiency of being able towork remote and the financial side of it

(09:28):
because we've eliminated so much of thewaste that traditional law firms take on.
What advice would you give to lawfirm leaders trying to grow in
this rapidly changing environment?
I think that you haveto embrace the change.
We have been very fortunate in that wecreated a remote practice before all

(09:51):
of the technology had really startedto explode , to help facilitate that.
Now it's so much easier, whichincreases our competitive advantage.
But the overriding thing asa leader is to be transparent
to treat people with respect.
Managing lawyers is a challenge.
They're very smart.

(10:12):
They have sometimes morethan one opinion among them.
Being transparent treating them likethe professionals they are and just
operating with integrity is alwaysa good guidelines to follow, whether
you're running a law firm or a city.
Has the legal industry evolvedthe way you expected it to when

(10:33):
you launched Fisher Broils?
And how do you see it changingin the next few years?
I don't know that I had anyexpectation when we launched the firm.
It almost seems like Iget surprised every day.
If we had known that we would have so manycompetitors, if we had known that we would
be copied so much, I think we would'vebeen flattered, and we welcome that.

(10:55):
We think it adds to the legitimacyof what we're doing, that there are
so many other firms out there who've.
Copied our model.
The future though is going to be justas exciting and just as surprising.
I think especially withartificial intelligence.
It's another technological advance thatI believe supports and makes us more

(11:15):
competitive vis-a-vis a traditionallaw firm because if there's one.
Group that are more likely to bereplaced by AI than any other.
It's young associates and we don'thave a lot of those, but the financial
model of the traditional firm isheavily leveraged by young associates.
So I think they're gonna have a reckoningwhen some of their largest clients say.

(11:39):
Hey this AI stuff's pretty darn good.
Why do I have an eighth year reviewing afirst or second year being reviewed by a
25th year when AI can just be the firstor second year, and then we can cut that
layer out completely, and I shouldn't bepaying $600 an hour for a second year to
draft the initial brief when AI will doit for free or what your subscription is.

(12:03):
I think it's gonna be a real challengefor traditional firms to adapt and
continue making the kind of money thatthey've seen if they have to cut out those
first, second, third year associates.
This is Ari Kaplan, speaking withKevin Broyles, the co-founder
and managing partner of FisherBroyles, a distributed law firm.

(12:27):
Kevin, thanks so very much.
, You're welcome.
It's great to be with you.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.