September 9, 2024 • 31 mins
Jon Lassiter is the President of Lassiter Management Partners.
With over two decades of hands-on experience working alongside CEOs, Jon has shaped the future of numerous companies. As the Founder and Fractional COO at Lassiter Management Partners, he serves as a trusted advisor providing strategic guidance and invaluable insights, empowering business owners to make informed decisions and solve complex problems.
Lassiter Management Partners is a premier Fractional COO firm, grounded in the fundamental principles of trust and integrity. Their mission is to serve as a strategic advisor to business owners, offering tailored operational solutions that drive success.
Connect with Jon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-w-lassiter/
Visit Lassiter Management Partners: https://lmpconsulting.co/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
With over two decades of hands-on experience working alongside CEOs, Jon has shaped the future of numerous companies. As the Founder and Fractional COO at Lassiter Management Partners, he serves as a trusted advisor providing strategic guidance and invaluable insights, empowering business owners to make informed decisions and solve complex problems.
Lassiter Management Partners is a premier Fractional COO firm, grounded in the fundamental principles of trust and integrity. Their mission is to serve as a strategic advisor to business owners, offering tailored operational solutions that drive success.
Connect with Jon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-w-lassiter/
Visit Lassiter Management Partners: https://lmpconsulting.co/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- Actionable Steps to Improve Efficiency in a Law Firm
- Implementing Standard Operating Procedures
- Addressing Equity Partners’ Concerns
- Improving Back-office Operations
- Surprise Audits on Trust Accounts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My approach is kind of step back and I ask
some questions and I listen, and I get a lot
of information from sort of that what I call my
discovery session. Talk to me about what's working, what's not,
what's your vision, what's your roadblocks from getting there? And
then I've got some things that I go in and
I investigate in the firm so I can get my
(00:21):
hat around it and make sure that we're putting the
right things in place, the right strategies.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersano, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast. Today,
my guest is John Lassiter, who is the president of
Lassiter Management Partners, LLC. He is a fractional COO and CFO.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
John. Welcome to the podcast, Eric, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I look forward to our conversation.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, I do as well.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And you and I have talked several times, so I've
got a little bit more background on you than a
lot of my guests. But I'd love for you to
share some of that background with the audience and then
we can kind of go into what led you to
what you're doing today.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sure. So I started out right out of college working
for a full service automotive advertising agency in the accounting department,
working under the controller, so taking advantage of my business
background and love for numbers and finance. I worked there
about eight years, worked my way up from the accounting
(01:47):
sort of accounts payable clerk if you will, through the controller,
working directly with the CEO, and really loved sort of
having that one on one strategy interaction, having a seat
at the table, really guiding where the firm was going,
and seeing the impact that I was making on the firm.
(02:07):
My family and I moved to Georgia. It's about nineteen
years ago, and I really wanted to hone in on
my analytics, financial analytics skills and modeling skills. So found
a job as a director of VPS. No director of finance,
I'm so sorry, director of finance with a media I'm
placing buying agency here in Atlanta where the Home Depot
(02:30):
was the main client and a lot of my role
was helping them minimize the impact of shifting their marketing budgets.
So an example of you missed one or two national
TV spots, that's several million dollars. I created systems within
the media team to really reallocate the spend across other mediums,
(02:52):
so we really cut down on the impact of their
sec reporting moving money from one quarter to another. So
that put me over at the home depot campus like
twice a month, working through that both with the finance
department and with the media team so they could keep
all of their calendars and spend in line. So we
worked there for about two and a half years and
(03:15):
got into a role that really sort of put me
in place where I'm at today. I ended up getting
a role where I was working with a husband and
a wife. He ran a market research company when I
first started, and she ran a corporate and intellectual property
law firm, two completely separate entities. They shared office space
and two different management approaches, types of strategy, cash flow management,
(03:39):
all of that very different. So for about fifteen years
I went from director of finance to chief operating officer
for the two firms, growing them and pivoting them. The
law firm from a single member equity partner to five
partners that we ended up merging it into a service
(04:00):
firm out in Denver, Colorado, to the market research company.
Going from traditional market research think like surveys, whether that's
in person, online, telephone focus groups, to building a location
based analytics SaaS product that we sold to large format
destinations think shopping center, cultural destinations. So defining that, what
(04:23):
was success with that, What resources do we need? Building
out a whole development team in house, to setting goals
and strategy around an entire department we never had before,
to launching a product, to pivoting that product as regulations changed.
We started out with using cellular data and then moved
over to more refined GPS data and sort of worked
(04:47):
with those two companies, those two managing are those two
CEOs or managing partner, and then the additional partners that
we brought on over those years and throughout several economic
own turns and upturns and what that meant to each business.
So that's sort of what put me on the trajectory
of being a fractional COO slash CF.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So that's pretty extensive history and you're working, I'm assuming
with a lot of big numbers at that point in
your career.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
How did that help.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You now for working as more of a fractional CEO
fractional COO.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
For law firms.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So it helped me understand working with the law firm
and bringing in different partners, the types of ways that
I communicate, the types of data that I prepare and
walk through my analysis is very different from one partner
to the next, from one company to the next. So
having that ability to work through that with that one
(05:52):
firm really helped me put me in a place today
where my approach is kind of set back and I
ask some question and I listen, and I get a
lot of information from sort of that what I call
my discovery session. Talk to me about what's working, what's not,
what's your vision, what's your roadblocks from getting there? And
(06:15):
then I've got some things that I go in and
I investigate in the firm so I can get my
head around it and make sure that we're putting the
right things in place, the right strategies, standard operating procedures, growth,
any of those aspects that is holding us holding that
firm back from reaching those goals. It's usually around just
(06:36):
a few areas that are stopping that, whether that's talent
or again strategies, standard operating procedures, et cetera, even down
to some things with some financial controls. So that's that's
really what helped me get through that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, and you know, my assumption is probably about ninety
eight percent of law firms out there are running inefficiently.
But if you were to ask the attorney how are
things going, I doubt the answer would be terribly inefficient.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
So I bet when.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
You when you look at a law firm, there are
probably several things that you see the same mistakes over
and over.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Uh do any of those come to the top of
your mind?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Because, like I said, you know, I've even found this
with myself, where if someone's you know, upfront with me
and gives me some constructive criticism and I think about it, go, well,
that's right, I didn't even realize I did that. So
what are some of those long, toll long polls in
the tent for a lot of these law firms that
they don't even know that these things are holding them back.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's interesting that things that I've come across that are
very similar. It's a lack of key performance indicators KPIs
how are you measuring success? And that resonates all the
way down to who you're recruiting. You know, do you
know the profile of attorney that's successful for your firm,
what school work for you, what don't? What you know
(08:02):
big firm experience versus in house versus some combination of that.
You'll see some themes across recruiters because those recruiters probably
stick to a similar profile of candidates that they're serving
you up. So having that type of data in data
points is extremely helpful as you're looking at growth, as
(08:23):
you're looking at utilization. The other things that I see
are standard operating procedures and being able to point to
them or how am I going to find this? I
get a lot of let me search my email, or
we're going to hit our document management system. Everybody should
know where they are and which things have and sop
(08:43):
governing them. Those are the things that I see a lot,
and then sort of this lack of oversight in the
back office. So that's from your marketing, your accounting, your
sometimes your client intake, depending on how the firm is structured.
And there's a lot of inefficiencies there that I've uncovered
(09:04):
and helped to really optimize the operations of the firms.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
There are some firms that I talk to and the
reason I said ninety eight percent because this is.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Very rare where they just speak differently. So I was
actually on a call this.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Last week with a law firm, you know, big personal
injury firm, and they threw out numbers. They go, this
is how many leads we get from our Google my
Business office in downtown. Here's how many from our Google
my Business or our satellite office. Here's what my PPC
numbers are. My lead costs is this, my conversion costs
is this? And they just systematically walk through numbers which
(09:44):
you just mentioned, which would be a KPI and there's
no part of that.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Now that's just one part. That's just the marketing part.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
But what you're mentioning with the back office and some
of these and I don't know if there's certain tools
that you want to put in place, or if there's
just certain oversight that need to be looked at on a.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Weekly or a monthly basis.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
But when I speak to law firms that talk like that,
I get excited because I'm like, all right, this person
gets it. They understand that if they put this input in,
what the output needs to be for them to keep
doing that. So yeah, so I just I don't know
if you can expand on that, But those are the
things that I see with like a well oiled machine,
(10:23):
where a law firm that runs like a business.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
They hit the nail on the head. Running a law
firm like a business is a huge trend, and that's
where I'm adding a lot of value, bringing my expertise
in handling everything from operations, finance to tech and really
zeroing in on those things. So some of the areas,
and it's different by law firm. I mean, I've got
(10:48):
a personal injury law firm. They don't track their hours.
So how am I going to look at overall efficiency
and profitability per project? So I'm looking at how long
have you engaged in that project? You know, let's say
you signed on this client back in twenty twenty and
it settled in twenty twenty four for I don't know,
(11:11):
half a million dollars and you got your twenty or
thirty percent of that. What does that look like? You know,
what's your cost over that period of time to run
that type of type of case? You know, then you've
got others that do track time, and you know, let's
say class action lawsuit type firms, they're definitely tracking their time.
(11:33):
That's going to impact their loadstar and what they're going
to get out of the settlement in the end. So
that's an area where we can really drill down and
look at practice area, managing partner, originating partner, and even
get into things like what systems, what court systems did
this get into to the judge to see are there
(11:55):
areas here? While it's hard to replicate that, we at
least know when we have this case, we're in this
district court, and we're going to get this judge the
last nine times, this is what happened to us. What
can we do there to try to optimize that. That's
the level of analytics that I'm working on with one
of my clients right now that they've not had any
of this type of clarity. And so there's two equity
(12:17):
partners and six or seven non equity partners and they're
all bought into this data and using that to move
the needle on the firm down to I touched on
this just a minute ago. The profile of as they're
bringing in legal fellows. As they're bringing in associates, what
are the things that they see from those attorneys that
were successful with the firm? Where did they come from,
(12:41):
What type of experience did they have. Did having big
firm experience or some combination of big firm experience or
government in their case experience really helped that person be successful?
And then what traits? What traits do they come in
with that you know are near impossible to coach into
some body to making sure as we're going through the
(13:02):
recruitment process that we're looking for those things. And then
all the financial and everybody's got a little bit different
of what they want to look at. I've got some
equity partners. It's like, if I've got cash in the
firm at the end of the month, I'm happy as
can be. I've paid myself and we're good from a
cash flow standpoint for the next X number of months
whatever their comfort zone is. To others that are like,
(13:22):
I want this projected out, you know, two three years
down the line, based on what we're going at now,
what's our run rate, what's our cost and you know,
where do we need to be conservatively and when we're
hitting those numbers, then what can we do with that
profitens and advise the firm.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So what you're talking about there, I assume the partners
get really excited about when you're digging into those numbers
and you're showing them positive growth or you know, this
is a this is a chess piece. We need to
move here because we've got the dumbers behind it. But
my question is how much of this change? How much resistance?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Since do you get to this change in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So if if I'm an equity partner in a law
firm right now, and I go, god, you know, I
do have an inkling that I'm a little bit inefficient
and this stuff sounds interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
I know I need it.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Are we looking at and I know it's not a
one week you know, ramp up period or how how
is that introduction of all right, all right, let's look
at all of our data. Are we even collecting the
proper data? Like maybe there's no data to even look
at it because I'm not collecting it. So how does
that work? I guess in general for when.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
You come into a firm, well, the equity partners that
engage with me are ones that want to move the
needle and they want to know how to move the needle.
So they're usually the ones that are the successful ones.
I've got a few where it's crazy. It is keeping
up with their hours, which is either you do it
or you don't is a hard thing. So there are
(14:51):
pieces that we work on with them. So it doesn't
highlight that when we're sharing the data across the firm,
because they've got it, they just haven't put it in
the system yet. But for the most part, I don't
see that as the challenge. The challenge is in some instances,
it's it's how the data is presented. It's what data
is important to this equity partner versus this equity partner.
(15:13):
In some situations, you've got some that are like John,
give me the reader's digest version, and this is at
the same firm. And you've got another one that's like,
I need to know the details. How much did we
pay AT and T last month for our wireless or
how much do we pay last month to our marketing
agency and what did we get out of that. It
really runs the gamut, and that's where it's like, Okay,
(15:35):
in this meeting, we're going to focus here. You and
I are going to have a one on one and
I'm going to go down all the way to the
details that you want to get you comfortable and if
we need to set strategies and processes around those things,
let's talk about it. And that's worked really well even
within one firm that's running, you know, with two different
equity partners with different needs.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, and is all this data is being collected? Are
you using specific tools? Are these off the shelf tools?
Do you have tools that you use or are these
tools that the law firms need to be you know,
you know, brought up to speed on on how to
use them. Because I assume that you're trying to pull
(16:18):
in a lot of different information, you know, so there's
obviously billing information, and there's there's collections, and then you've
got time efficiencies.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
There's so many different inputs.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
What are you using to spit out information on the
other end that's actionable?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
As I'm sure you're very aware, firm management systems run
the gamut on their reporting capabilities and what do they
have in their firm management software. I've got some clients
that all the financials are on QuickBooks online and all
the firm management stuff is in their own firm management system.
So it is a lot of combining data. There is
(16:55):
no off the shelf tool, So it is getting to
the data that I need and then manipulating that in
an Excel or an access. If it's a lot of
data to get down to the points that I need.
And I mean, this isn't like I'm presenting to you know,
doing waterfall chorts or anything like that. This is let
(17:16):
me get to the high level analytics that is going
to be bite sized that I can put in front
of the equity partners that I've got a thirty minute
meeting on that we can go through. But when they
ask the questions, you better believe I've got the backup
and I can drill into it while I'm on the call.
And that usually doing that once or twice, I don't
get those questions anymore. So it is there is no
(17:38):
off the shelf. It's a lot of my experience and
pulling data together within an Excel or an Access. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
One of the things you mentioned before, which I've heard
a lot more and more now along with the running
a law firm like a business, is talking specifically to
law firms or building up a business with an exit strategy.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
This isn't something I heard.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Of, you know, fifteen twenty years ago when I very
first started in this.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
And there's two things I see now.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I see lawyers that are like, all right, I'm thinking
about retiring, I want to sell my business.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
And then there's a legacy option.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
You know, where they have you know, kids or cousins
or somebody that they want to pass it on to.
And I would think, if you're trying to sell your
business to another law firm or lawyer, have them having
this type of these types of numbers and these processes
in place is an enormous advantage and probably mandatory.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
In most cases.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Absolutely. I can tell you so one of my clients,
I'm actually going through that right now. They have a
vision of selling the firm in the next five to
seven years. And I can tell you one of the
biggest things that I've run into, and this is not
just this client, this is actually with three or four
of my clients. Their CPA's accountants are doing the bookkeeping
(18:53):
and they are basically attached the bank statements, credit card statements,
and all of that to the financial systems, whether that's
there for management software or to quick books online and
they're giving the categorization a cursory review. There was one
where to your point about making sure the numbers are
(19:14):
in order, somebody's going to look at your financial statements
two to five years from now and ask questions. I
found over forty thousand dollars worth of expenses in their
member equity account that shouldn't have been there, that was
classified incorrectly or wasn't paid attention to as those as
those transactions were flowing into the system. This is a
(19:34):
common theme. I've seen three different CPA firms where their
bookkeepers are doing this and not giving that level of
a review, and I found thousands of dollars in expenses
that are miscategorized. I found issues where they're taking prepaid
expenses that should sit on the balance sheet until that
case is settled, sitting and being recognized as they're moving through.
(19:58):
So it is that expense comes along, it's hitting the
expense account on the profit and law statement that is incorrect.
Now it is risk mitigation of am I going to
get auditated. Is the IRS going to catch this? I understand,
but it is part of the IRS code that you
should not be recognizing those expenses until that case settles,
until you withdraw, until perhaps you even with the settlement,
(20:22):
you lose. Those are the sort of the triggers that
allow you to recognize those expenses. So getting in and
doing a deep dive in the finances and making sure
your processes in the and your accounting department are correct,
that you've got a bookkeeper that not only understands gap
generally accepted accounting principles, but actually implements it. I mean,
(20:43):
if you've got the bookkeepers or accountants at a CPA,
you would expect that they're following that because you know,
when the CPA gets the books, Well, my team's done this.
I don't have to deep dive. I've worked with CPAs
in the past where I'll send them the trial balance
and they will question transactions as they should. John, Why
was this coded this way? John? Are you sure these
(21:04):
six transactions should be in this general ledger account versus
this one? That's what you want to be paying attention to.
So when you do get to that we're going to sell,
we're going to merge, we're going to do growth through acquisition.
That your financial statements are clean.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, that actually reminds me of something else that I
think has really gone front and center, which.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Would be these IOLTA accounts or trust accounts. And this
is major.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So for anybody who doesn't know, if you're listening to
this as an attorney, you probably know this, but you know,
in California there were two major cases that made national news.
One Girardi case and I think that he had bar
complaints going back thirty.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Years about some of these trust accounts.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
And then the other big one was Michaelabanati, you know,
was made famous by the Stormy Daniels case, and he
got caught with some of these trust violations. And what
this is triggered now is huge black eye for the
Bar associations for not catching it earlier. And now they're
doing some of these surprise audits on trust accounts, and
these trust accounts need to zero out, you know there
(22:12):
and there's a lot of mistakes that are made, and
ninety nine point nine percent of them are innocent mistakes,
but that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
If you get auditive matter, your.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Books need to be Now you I'm sure know a
lot more than about this than these, so I'll tee
you up. But that's something that I've seen a huge
increase in in the last, I don't know, six.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
To eight months.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah. And to take that California thing one step further,
if you are a law firm that has clients in California,
whether you have an office there or not, you are
supposed to buy law set up an IOLTA account in
the state of California, and they require a three way
reconciliation process. So your firm management system that can be
(22:52):
one way if it is separate, and you've got an
accounting system that could be the second way. The third
way they want it into some sort of ledger that's
in Excel, and all three of those have to be
tied out every single month to the penny you're one
hundred percent correct at the end of the day. Those
lawyers that are practicing in California and particularly but other
(23:14):
states have to sign when they renew their bar dues
that they are following those trust account or i ALETA
account processes and procedures, and most of them just sign
away and not think about it. Two of the law
firms that I work with that have either offices in
or clients in California, they ask me every year before
their attorneys signed, John, are we in compliance with this?
(23:35):
And it's my job to work through with the accounting
department to make sure the answer to that is yes.
But as I do monthly closed and create a month
in close package, I am always checking on the balance sheet.
Does my cash account for IOLTA match my liabilities account
to the penny every single month, and that we have
a ledger. Some systems, the firm manager systems are great
(23:58):
and they have a whole trust model and it takes
it all the way down to the case or the
matter of the client. Those are fantastic. Others don't, and
you have to make sure you've got those systems in place.
So you know, if five a million dollars in my
trust account, how much of that is this client, this
client and this client and inflows and outflows per client
(24:20):
tracked in detail.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
And the way I understand it is the you know,
the pound of prevention or the ounce of prevention is
worth the pound of QR. Meaning if you are ahead
of this and you're doing it all properly and you
happen to get an audit, you know, really clean and simple.
But if it's simple disarray, you're gonna I mean, I
know there's forensic accountants out there that have to be
(24:45):
hired to go in and do kind of an emergency
audit and make sure that they can account for that.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Down to the penny.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah. Absolutely, the biggest thing that I see that's the
miss is your interest coming in and going out to
the state bars and not not being tracked correctly, and
and that's a quick way that your cash account and
your liability account'll be different. So making sure you've got
the right process in place to where those always tie
out every single morment.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
So I want to kind of go out on something
positive now that we've talked about, you know, trust accounting
and being audited. But one of the things you know
that anybody who's going to engage you is because they
want to scale. You know, we're they're they're they're looking
to grow higher, people be more profitable. So if you
could leave our audience with something on you know, the
scalability of maybe just a couple of tips or you know,
(25:34):
tease a couple of things that you know, you would
actually have to dive in more to lay out that
roadmap of how to scale a law firm.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Absolutely, So what I've done before with the firm I
worked with for nearly fifteen years and what I've done
with two of my current clients is data driven approaches.
Where are the this could be multifacet practice series if
that's the type of firm you are, type of clients
clients in general, managing partners, equity partners, associates, Where are
(26:05):
we having the most traction? Data privacy is a big thing,
whether you're trying to protect your companies or you're suing
companies over data privacy. How do we grow based on
areas that drive revenue and are profitable? So doing the
level of analytics that I touched on earlier to really
drill into those different areas. And it's like, yeah, we've
(26:27):
got this great litigation team and I'll go and do
my analytics on it. And it's like, yeah, but you're
running just above cost with that because of different structures,
because of different old compensation models that are making this,
you know, not work for you now. So either fixing
that or figuring out how we go forward from there. Then,
once you've got your growth strategy based on data laid out,
(26:50):
how are we going to grow? Are we growing in
a single market or a couple of markets they're already
established in chances are we can grow through hiring and
recruitment processes again, making sure you've got that right framework
for the associates, attorneys, partners and all of that that
are going to be successful at your firm. The other is,
and this is a couple of new clients that I'm
(27:11):
working with, growing through acquisition because we're going into new markets.
So you talked about some of the firms just a
couple of minute ago that are wanting minutes ago, that
are wanting to get their firm ready for sale or
they're thinking about it in the future, and you've got
this firm that's just hot on growth. There could be
some great synergy by bringing those two firms together through acquisition.
(27:32):
They've got to know how in the market. They've got
the name in the market, they're already established. You add
a new market, you add all of that revenue as
long as the firm is running profitably. Those are the
areas and the approaches that I work with my clients
on growth and sustainable growth. And sometimes we've had to
have the hard conversations with even equity partners. Hey, here's
(27:56):
where you're at against your goals and it's been this
way for two years. We either put a plan in place,
or we have another conversation that's taking this a different direction,
And are my clients like the fact that I can
have that so they're not necessarily the bad guys. We've
all sort of gotten behind the data and this isn't
something just new that it's like, hey, here's John, this
(28:17):
new guy, and by the way, you know you're down.
So those are sort of very quick, overarching approach that
I would take to and have take to grow and
scale law firms. Yeah, it's hard to argue with numbers.
You know, things can get personal. If someone goes I
feel like you're not pulling your weight. But if you
can show months worth of data, they kind of speak
(28:39):
for themselves. I'm sure the person still doesn't take it great,
but it's really going to be something that they can swallow,
you know, absorb, and then you know, make changes on.
I want to be personal in this because sometimes there's
life things that come up. Yeah I was down this
year because you know, my dad got sick and I
had to take care of them for two months. Okay,
I'm not going to deem you for that life. Last year,
(29:00):
we as a firm decided to support you in that.
Then this trend that I'm seeing is really because of
this life thing that happened. Then let's talk about where
we're at now, and how are you recovering from that
personal situation that it took you your focus away? You know,
are you rebuilding your pipe? Are you doing these things? Okay, great,
(29:20):
let's set some goals and let's make sure we continue.
So this isn't an impersonal approach. I definitely do take
those aspects under consideration as well.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
And are these meetings like I'm sure that the cadence
is different for everybody, but it is typically like monthly
meetings with you and the partners where you know, you
present the data or and they kind of present some
of their their you know, here's what I'm working on,
and everybody kind of has like almost a board meeting
about the firm.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
There is a once a month sort of board meeting
with all the partners, and then for sort of the
with my role as the fractional COO CFO getting on
my engagement with the firm, I do a regular cadence
meeting with the equity partners who am I reporting to
and working with at least once a week, sometimes with
some of my clients. If there's departmental things that I'm overseeing,
(30:10):
like accounting. We'll have a separate touch point through the
week that's just focused on that aspect of the firm.
Marketing as well. I've got a client that's looking to
build some technology, so I'll be working with a development
agency and having a separate meeting with that. So it
does run the gambit. Well.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Great, you are definitely a wealth of knowledge. I think
anybody could benefit from a conversation with you. So, speaking
of which, what's the best way to get a hold
of you.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The best way to get in touch with me is
via email John at LMP Consulting dot co or look
me up on LinkedIn John W. Lasseter and all of
my contact information is there.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Excellent, John, thanks for spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
This is great, Eric, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast, presented by
Market my market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
My approach is kind of step back and I ask
some questions and I listen, and I get a lot
of information from sort of that what I call my
discovery session. Talk to me about what's working, what's not,
what's your vision, what's your roadblocks from getting there? And
then I've got some things that I go in and
I investigate in the firm so I can get my
(00:21):
hat around it and make sure that we're putting the
right things in place, the right strategies.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersano, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast. Today,
my guest is John Lassiter, who is the president of
Lassiter Management Partners, LLC. He is a fractional COO and CFO.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
John. Welcome to the podcast, Eric, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I look forward to our conversation.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, I do as well.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And you and I have talked several times, so I've
got a little bit more background on you than a
lot of my guests. But I'd love for you to
share some of that background with the audience and then
we can kind of go into what led you to
what you're doing today.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Sure. So I started out right out of college working
for a full service automotive advertising agency in the accounting department,
working under the controller, so taking advantage of my business
background and love for numbers and finance. I worked there
about eight years, worked my way up from the accounting
(01:47):
sort of accounts payable clerk if you will, through the controller,
working directly with the CEO, and really loved sort of
having that one on one strategy interaction, having a seat
at the table, really guiding where the firm was going,
and seeing the impact that I was making on the firm.
(02:07):
My family and I moved to Georgia. It's about nineteen
years ago, and I really wanted to hone in on
my analytics, financial analytics skills and modeling skills. So found
a job as a director of VPS. No director of finance,
I'm so sorry, director of finance with a media I'm
placing buying agency here in Atlanta where the Home Depot
(02:30):
was the main client and a lot of my role
was helping them minimize the impact of shifting their marketing budgets.
So an example of you missed one or two national
TV spots, that's several million dollars. I created systems within
the media team to really reallocate the spend across other mediums,
(02:52):
so we really cut down on the impact of their
sec reporting moving money from one quarter to another. So
that put me over at the home depot campus like
twice a month, working through that both with the finance
department and with the media team so they could keep
all of their calendars and spend in line. So we
worked there for about two and a half years and
(03:15):
got into a role that really sort of put me
in place where I'm at today. I ended up getting
a role where I was working with a husband and
a wife. He ran a market research company when I
first started, and she ran a corporate and intellectual property
law firm, two completely separate entities. They shared office space
and two different management approaches, types of strategy, cash flow management,
(03:39):
all of that very different. So for about fifteen years
I went from director of finance to chief operating officer
for the two firms, growing them and pivoting them. The
law firm from a single member equity partner to five
partners that we ended up merging it into a service
(04:00):
firm out in Denver, Colorado, to the market research company.
Going from traditional market research think like surveys, whether that's
in person, online, telephone focus groups, to building a location
based analytics SaaS product that we sold to large format
destinations think shopping center, cultural destinations. So defining that, what
(04:23):
was success with that, What resources do we need? Building
out a whole development team in house, to setting goals
and strategy around an entire department we never had before,
to launching a product, to pivoting that product as regulations changed.
We started out with using cellular data and then moved
over to more refined GPS data and sort of worked
(04:47):
with those two companies, those two managing are those two
CEOs or managing partner, and then the additional partners that
we brought on over those years and throughout several economic
own turns and upturns and what that meant to each business.
So that's sort of what put me on the trajectory
of being a fractional COO slash CF.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So that's pretty extensive history and you're working, I'm assuming
with a lot of big numbers at that point in
your career.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
How did that help.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You now for working as more of a fractional CEO
fractional COO.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
For law firms.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So it helped me understand working with the law firm
and bringing in different partners, the types of ways that
I communicate, the types of data that I prepare and
walk through my analysis is very different from one partner
to the next, from one company to the next. So
having that ability to work through that with that one
(05:52):
firm really helped me put me in a place today
where my approach is kind of set back and I
ask some question and I listen, and I get a
lot of information from sort of that what I call
my discovery session. Talk to me about what's working, what's not,
what's your vision, what's your roadblocks from getting there? And
(06:15):
then I've got some things that I go in and
I investigate in the firm so I can get my
head around it and make sure that we're putting the
right things in place, the right strategies, standard operating procedures, growth,
any of those aspects that is holding us holding that
firm back from reaching those goals. It's usually around just
(06:36):
a few areas that are stopping that, whether that's talent
or again strategies, standard operating procedures, et cetera, even down
to some things with some financial controls. So that's that's
really what helped me get through that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, and you know, my assumption is probably about ninety
eight percent of law firms out there are running inefficiently.
But if you were to ask the attorney how are
things going, I doubt the answer would be terribly inefficient.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
So I bet when.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
You when you look at a law firm, there are
probably several things that you see the same mistakes over
and over.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Uh do any of those come to the top of
your mind?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Because, like I said, you know, I've even found this
with myself, where if someone's you know, upfront with me
and gives me some constructive criticism and I think about it, go, well,
that's right, I didn't even realize I did that. So
what are some of those long, toll long polls in
the tent for a lot of these law firms that
they don't even know that these things are holding them back.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's interesting that things that I've come across that are
very similar. It's a lack of key performance indicators KPIs
how are you measuring success? And that resonates all the
way down to who you're recruiting. You know, do you
know the profile of attorney that's successful for your firm,
what school work for you, what don't? What you know
(08:02):
big firm experience versus in house versus some combination of that.
You'll see some themes across recruiters because those recruiters probably
stick to a similar profile of candidates that they're serving
you up. So having that type of data in data
points is extremely helpful as you're looking at growth, as
(08:23):
you're looking at utilization. The other things that I see
are standard operating procedures and being able to point to
them or how am I going to find this? I
get a lot of let me search my email, or
we're going to hit our document management system. Everybody should
know where they are and which things have and sop
(08:43):
governing them. Those are the things that I see a lot,
and then sort of this lack of oversight in the
back office. So that's from your marketing, your accounting, your
sometimes your client intake, depending on how the firm is structured.
And there's a lot of inefficiencies there that I've uncovered
(09:04):
and helped to really optimize the operations of the firms.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
There are some firms that I talk to and the
reason I said ninety eight percent because this is.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Very rare where they just speak differently. So I was
actually on a call this.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Last week with a law firm, you know, big personal
injury firm, and they threw out numbers. They go, this
is how many leads we get from our Google my
Business office in downtown. Here's how many from our Google
my Business or our satellite office. Here's what my PPC
numbers are. My lead costs is this, my conversion costs
is this? And they just systematically walk through numbers which
(09:44):
you just mentioned, which would be a KPI and there's
no part of that.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Now that's just one part. That's just the marketing part.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
But what you're mentioning with the back office and some
of these and I don't know if there's certain tools
that you want to put in place, or if there's
just certain oversight that need to be looked at on a.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Weekly or a monthly basis.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
But when I speak to law firms that talk like that,
I get excited because I'm like, all right, this person
gets it. They understand that if they put this input in,
what the output needs to be for them to keep
doing that. So yeah, so I just I don't know
if you can expand on that, But those are the
things that I see with like a well oiled machine,
(10:23):
where a law firm that runs like a business.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
They hit the nail on the head. Running a law
firm like a business is a huge trend, and that's
where I'm adding a lot of value, bringing my expertise
in handling everything from operations, finance to tech and really
zeroing in on those things. So some of the areas,
and it's different by law firm. I mean, I've got
(10:48):
a personal injury law firm. They don't track their hours.
So how am I going to look at overall efficiency
and profitability per project? So I'm looking at how long
have you engaged in that project? You know, let's say
you signed on this client back in twenty twenty and
it settled in twenty twenty four for I don't know,
(11:11):
half a million dollars and you got your twenty or
thirty percent of that. What does that look like? You know,
what's your cost over that period of time to run
that type of type of case? You know, then you've
got others that do track time, and you know, let's
say class action lawsuit type firms, they're definitely tracking their time.
(11:33):
That's going to impact their loadstar and what they're going
to get out of the settlement in the end. So
that's an area where we can really drill down and
look at practice area, managing partner, originating partner, and even
get into things like what systems, what court systems did
this get into to the judge to see are there
(11:55):
areas here? While it's hard to replicate that, we at
least know when we have this case, we're in this
district court, and we're going to get this judge the
last nine times, this is what happened to us. What
can we do there to try to optimize that. That's
the level of analytics that I'm working on with one
of my clients right now that they've not had any
of this type of clarity. And so there's two equity
(12:17):
partners and six or seven non equity partners and they're
all bought into this data and using that to move
the needle on the firm down to I touched on
this just a minute ago. The profile of as they're
bringing in legal fellows. As they're bringing in associates, what
are the things that they see from those attorneys that
were successful with the firm? Where did they come from,
(12:41):
What type of experience did they have. Did having big
firm experience or some combination of big firm experience or
government in their case experience really helped that person be successful?
And then what traits? What traits do they come in
with that you know are near impossible to coach into
some body to making sure as we're going through the
(13:02):
recruitment process that we're looking for those things. And then
all the financial and everybody's got a little bit different
of what they want to look at. I've got some
equity partners. It's like, if I've got cash in the
firm at the end of the month, I'm happy as
can be. I've paid myself and we're good from a
cash flow standpoint for the next X number of months
whatever their comfort zone is. To others that are like,
(13:22):
I want this projected out, you know, two three years
down the line, based on what we're going at now,
what's our run rate, what's our cost and you know,
where do we need to be conservatively and when we're
hitting those numbers, then what can we do with that
profitens and advise the firm.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So what you're talking about there, I assume the partners
get really excited about when you're digging into those numbers
and you're showing them positive growth or you know, this
is a this is a chess piece. We need to
move here because we've got the dumbers behind it. But
my question is how much of this change? How much resistance?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Since do you get to this change in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So if if I'm an equity partner in a law
firm right now, and I go, god, you know, I
do have an inkling that I'm a little bit inefficient
and this stuff sounds interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
I know I need it.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Are we looking at and I know it's not a
one week you know, ramp up period or how how
is that introduction of all right, all right, let's look
at all of our data. Are we even collecting the
proper data? Like maybe there's no data to even look
at it because I'm not collecting it. So how does
that work? I guess in general for when.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
You come into a firm, well, the equity partners that
engage with me are ones that want to move the
needle and they want to know how to move the needle.
So they're usually the ones that are the successful ones.
I've got a few where it's crazy. It is keeping
up with their hours, which is either you do it
or you don't is a hard thing. So there are
(14:51):
pieces that we work on with them. So it doesn't
highlight that when we're sharing the data across the firm,
because they've got it, they just haven't put it in
the system yet. But for the most part, I don't
see that as the challenge. The challenge is in some instances,
it's it's how the data is presented. It's what data
is important to this equity partner versus this equity partner.
(15:13):
In some situations, you've got some that are like John,
give me the reader's digest version, and this is at
the same firm. And you've got another one that's like,
I need to know the details. How much did we
pay AT and T last month for our wireless or
how much do we pay last month to our marketing
agency and what did we get out of that. It
really runs the gamut, and that's where it's like, Okay,
(15:35):
in this meeting, we're going to focus here. You and
I are going to have a one on one and
I'm going to go down all the way to the
details that you want to get you comfortable and if
we need to set strategies and processes around those things,
let's talk about it. And that's worked really well even
within one firm that's running, you know, with two different
equity partners with different needs.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, and is all this data is being collected? Are
you using specific tools? Are these off the shelf tools?
Do you have tools that you use or are these
tools that the law firms need to be you know,
you know, brought up to speed on on how to
use them. Because I assume that you're trying to pull
(16:18):
in a lot of different information, you know, so there's
obviously billing information, and there's there's collections, and then you've
got time efficiencies.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
There's so many different inputs.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
What are you using to spit out information on the
other end that's actionable?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
As I'm sure you're very aware, firm management systems run
the gamut on their reporting capabilities and what do they
have in their firm management software. I've got some clients
that all the financials are on QuickBooks online and all
the firm management stuff is in their own firm management system.
So it is a lot of combining data. There is
(16:55):
no off the shelf tool, So it is getting to
the data that I need and then manipulating that in
an Excel or an access. If it's a lot of
data to get down to the points that I need.
And I mean, this isn't like I'm presenting to you know,
doing waterfall chorts or anything like that. This is let
(17:16):
me get to the high level analytics that is going
to be bite sized that I can put in front
of the equity partners that I've got a thirty minute
meeting on that we can go through. But when they
ask the questions, you better believe I've got the backup
and I can drill into it while I'm on the call.
And that usually doing that once or twice, I don't
get those questions anymore. So it is there is no
(17:38):
off the shelf. It's a lot of my experience and
pulling data together within an Excel or an Access. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
One of the things you mentioned before, which I've heard
a lot more and more now along with the running
a law firm like a business, is talking specifically to
law firms or building up a business with an exit strategy.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
This isn't something I heard.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Of, you know, fifteen twenty years ago when I very
first started in this.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
And there's two things I see now.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I see lawyers that are like, all right, I'm thinking
about retiring, I want to sell my business.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
And then there's a legacy option.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
You know, where they have you know, kids or cousins
or somebody that they want to pass it on to.
And I would think, if you're trying to sell your
business to another law firm or lawyer, have them having
this type of these types of numbers and these processes
in place is an enormous advantage and probably mandatory.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
In most cases.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Absolutely. I can tell you so one of my clients,
I'm actually going through that right now. They have a
vision of selling the firm in the next five to
seven years. And I can tell you one of the
biggest things that I've run into, and this is not
just this client, this is actually with three or four
of my clients. Their CPA's accountants are doing the bookkeeping
(18:53):
and they are basically attached the bank statements, credit card statements,
and all of that to the financial systems, whether that's
there for management software or to quick books online and
they're giving the categorization a cursory review. There was one
where to your point about making sure the numbers are
(19:14):
in order, somebody's going to look at your financial statements
two to five years from now and ask questions. I
found over forty thousand dollars worth of expenses in their
member equity account that shouldn't have been there, that was
classified incorrectly or wasn't paid attention to as those as
those transactions were flowing into the system. This is a
(19:34):
common theme. I've seen three different CPA firms where their
bookkeepers are doing this and not giving that level of
a review, and I found thousands of dollars in expenses
that are miscategorized. I found issues where they're taking prepaid
expenses that should sit on the balance sheet until that
case is settled, sitting and being recognized as they're moving through.
(19:58):
So it is that expense comes along, it's hitting the
expense account on the profit and law statement that is incorrect.
Now it is risk mitigation of am I going to
get auditated. Is the IRS going to catch this? I understand,
but it is part of the IRS code that you
should not be recognizing those expenses until that case settles,
until you withdraw, until perhaps you even with the settlement,
(20:22):
you lose. Those are the sort of the triggers that
allow you to recognize those expenses. So getting in and
doing a deep dive in the finances and making sure
your processes in the and your accounting department are correct,
that you've got a bookkeeper that not only understands gap
generally accepted accounting principles, but actually implements it. I mean,
(20:43):
if you've got the bookkeepers or accountants at a CPA,
you would expect that they're following that because you know,
when the CPA gets the books, Well, my team's done this.
I don't have to deep dive. I've worked with CPAs
in the past where I'll send them the trial balance
and they will question transactions as they should. John, Why
was this coded this way? John? Are you sure these
(21:04):
six transactions should be in this general ledger account versus
this one? That's what you want to be paying attention to.
So when you do get to that we're going to sell,
we're going to merge, we're going to do growth through acquisition.
That your financial statements are clean.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, that actually reminds me of something else that I
think has really gone front and center, which.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Would be these IOLTA accounts or trust accounts. And this
is major.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So for anybody who doesn't know, if you're listening to
this as an attorney, you probably know this, but you know,
in California there were two major cases that made national news.
One Girardi case and I think that he had bar
complaints going back thirty.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Years about some of these trust accounts.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
And then the other big one was Michaelabanati, you know,
was made famous by the Stormy Daniels case, and he
got caught with some of these trust violations. And what
this is triggered now is huge black eye for the
Bar associations for not catching it earlier. And now they're
doing some of these surprise audits on trust accounts, and
these trust accounts need to zero out, you know there
(22:12):
and there's a lot of mistakes that are made, and
ninety nine point nine percent of them are innocent mistakes,
but that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
If you get auditive matter, your.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Books need to be Now you I'm sure know a
lot more than about this than these, so I'll tee
you up. But that's something that I've seen a huge
increase in in the last, I don't know, six.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
To eight months.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah. And to take that California thing one step further,
if you are a law firm that has clients in California,
whether you have an office there or not, you are
supposed to buy law set up an IOLTA account in
the state of California, and they require a three way
reconciliation process. So your firm management system that can be
(22:52):
one way if it is separate, and you've got an
accounting system that could be the second way. The third
way they want it into some sort of ledger that's
in Excel, and all three of those have to be
tied out every single month to the penny you're one
hundred percent correct at the end of the day. Those
lawyers that are practicing in California and particularly but other
(23:14):
states have to sign when they renew their bar dues
that they are following those trust account or i ALETA
account processes and procedures, and most of them just sign
away and not think about it. Two of the law
firms that I work with that have either offices in
or clients in California, they ask me every year before
their attorneys signed, John, are we in compliance with this?
(23:35):
And it's my job to work through with the accounting
department to make sure the answer to that is yes.
But as I do monthly closed and create a month
in close package, I am always checking on the balance sheet.
Does my cash account for IOLTA match my liabilities account
to the penny every single month, and that we have
a ledger. Some systems, the firm manager systems are great
(23:58):
and they have a whole trust model and it takes
it all the way down to the case or the
matter of the client. Those are fantastic. Others don't, and
you have to make sure you've got those systems in place.
So you know, if five a million dollars in my
trust account, how much of that is this client, this
client and this client and inflows and outflows per client
(24:20):
tracked in detail.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
And the way I understand it is the you know,
the pound of prevention or the ounce of prevention is
worth the pound of QR. Meaning if you are ahead
of this and you're doing it all properly and you
happen to get an audit, you know, really clean and simple.
But if it's simple disarray, you're gonna I mean, I
know there's forensic accountants out there that have to be
(24:45):
hired to go in and do kind of an emergency
audit and make sure that they can account for that.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Down to the penny.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah. Absolutely, the biggest thing that I see that's the
miss is your interest coming in and going out to
the state bars and not not being tracked correctly, and
and that's a quick way that your cash account and
your liability account'll be different. So making sure you've got
the right process in place to where those always tie
out every single morment.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
So I want to kind of go out on something
positive now that we've talked about, you know, trust accounting
and being audited. But one of the things you know
that anybody who's going to engage you is because they
want to scale. You know, we're they're they're they're looking
to grow higher, people be more profitable. So if you
could leave our audience with something on you know, the
scalability of maybe just a couple of tips or you know,
(25:34):
tease a couple of things that you know, you would
actually have to dive in more to lay out that
roadmap of how to scale a law firm.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Absolutely, So what I've done before with the firm I
worked with for nearly fifteen years and what I've done
with two of my current clients is data driven approaches.
Where are the this could be multifacet practice series if
that's the type of firm you are, type of clients
clients in general, managing partners, equity partners, associates, Where are
(26:05):
we having the most traction? Data privacy is a big thing,
whether you're trying to protect your companies or you're suing
companies over data privacy. How do we grow based on
areas that drive revenue and are profitable? So doing the
level of analytics that I touched on earlier to really
drill into those different areas. And it's like, yeah, we've
(26:27):
got this great litigation team and I'll go and do
my analytics on it. And it's like, yeah, but you're
running just above cost with that because of different structures,
because of different old compensation models that are making this,
you know, not work for you now. So either fixing
that or figuring out how we go forward from there. Then,
once you've got your growth strategy based on data laid out,
(26:50):
how are we going to grow? Are we growing in
a single market or a couple of markets they're already
established in chances are we can grow through hiring and
recruitment processes again, making sure you've got that right framework
for the associates, attorneys, partners and all of that that
are going to be successful at your firm. The other is,
and this is a couple of new clients that I'm
(27:11):
working with, growing through acquisition because we're going into new markets.
So you talked about some of the firms just a
couple of minute ago that are wanting minutes ago, that
are wanting to get their firm ready for sale or
they're thinking about it in the future, and you've got
this firm that's just hot on growth. There could be
some great synergy by bringing those two firms together through acquisition.
(27:32):
They've got to know how in the market. They've got
the name in the market, they're already established. You add
a new market, you add all of that revenue as
long as the firm is running profitably. Those are the
areas and the approaches that I work with my clients
on growth and sustainable growth. And sometimes we've had to
have the hard conversations with even equity partners. Hey, here's
(27:56):
where you're at against your goals and it's been this
way for two years. We either put a plan in place,
or we have another conversation that's taking this a different direction,
And are my clients like the fact that I can
have that so they're not necessarily the bad guys. We've
all sort of gotten behind the data and this isn't
something just new that it's like, hey, here's John, this
(28:17):
new guy, and by the way, you know you're down.
So those are sort of very quick, overarching approach that
I would take to and have take to grow and
scale law firms. Yeah, it's hard to argue with numbers.
You know, things can get personal. If someone goes I
feel like you're not pulling your weight. But if you
can show months worth of data, they kind of speak
(28:39):
for themselves. I'm sure the person still doesn't take it great,
but it's really going to be something that they can swallow,
you know, absorb, and then you know, make changes on.
I want to be personal in this because sometimes there's
life things that come up. Yeah I was down this
year because you know, my dad got sick and I
had to take care of them for two months. Okay,
I'm not going to deem you for that life. Last year,
(29:00):
we as a firm decided to support you in that.
Then this trend that I'm seeing is really because of
this life thing that happened. Then let's talk about where
we're at now, and how are you recovering from that
personal situation that it took you your focus away? You know,
are you rebuilding your pipe? Are you doing these things? Okay, great,
(29:20):
let's set some goals and let's make sure we continue.
So this isn't an impersonal approach. I definitely do take
those aspects under consideration as well.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
And are these meetings like I'm sure that the cadence
is different for everybody, but it is typically like monthly
meetings with you and the partners where you know, you
present the data or and they kind of present some
of their their you know, here's what I'm working on,
and everybody kind of has like almost a board meeting
about the firm.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
There is a once a month sort of board meeting
with all the partners, and then for sort of the
with my role as the fractional COO CFO getting on
my engagement with the firm, I do a regular cadence
meeting with the equity partners who am I reporting to
and working with at least once a week, sometimes with
some of my clients. If there's departmental things that I'm overseeing,
(30:10):
like accounting. We'll have a separate touch point through the
week that's just focused on that aspect of the firm.
Marketing as well. I've got a client that's looking to
build some technology, so I'll be working with a development
agency and having a separate meeting with that. So it
does run the gambit. Well.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Great, you are definitely a wealth of knowledge. I think
anybody could benefit from a conversation with you. So, speaking
of which, what's the best way to get a hold
of you.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The best way to get in touch with me is
via email John at LMP Consulting dot co or look
me up on LinkedIn John W. Lasseter and all of
my contact information is there.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Excellent, John, thanks for spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
This is great, Eric, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast, presented by
Market my market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
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