October 7, 2024 • 30 mins
Alay Yajnik is the Founding Partner of Law Firm Success Group, Host of the , and author of Staffing Up: The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top Talent.
Alay’s firm enables law firms and attorneys to grow their income, take more time off, and reduce their stress. They equip their clients with the clarity, capabilities, and confidence to build their Perfect Practice: the income they want, the time off that they need, while dramatically reducing the stress that is wrecking their quality of life.
Law Firm Success Group applies proven business growth principles in the areas of Business Development, Hiring and Managing Teams, Marketing, Strategy, and Time Management to solo and small law firms.
Connect with Alay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alayyajnik/
Visit Law Firm Success Group: https://www.lawfirmsuccessgroup.com/
Alay’s Book: Staffing Up: The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top Talent
On This Episode, We Discuss…
Alay’s firm enables law firms and attorneys to grow their income, take more time off, and reduce their stress. They equip their clients with the clarity, capabilities, and confidence to build their Perfect Practice: the income they want, the time off that they need, while dramatically reducing the stress that is wrecking their quality of life.
Law Firm Success Group applies proven business growth principles in the areas of Business Development, Hiring and Managing Teams, Marketing, Strategy, and Time Management to solo and small law firms.
Connect with Alay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alayyajnik/
Visit Law Firm Success Group: https://www.lawfirmsuccessgroup.com/
Alay’s Book: Staffing Up: The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top Talent
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- How to Master Time Management for Better Work-life Balance
- Overcoming the Billable-hour Mindset
- Secrets to Hiring Top Talent
- His book Staffing Up: The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top Talent
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If we take all the constraints and put him aside,
and take all the fears and the doubts and the
skepticism and put it aside. What is the law firm
that the owner wants to have or the owners want
to have? What does that really look like? And that
gives us the destination. And then once we have the destination,
that's where we want to go, then we can figure
out the best way to get there.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Barsono, 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 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me ale yaj Nick, who is
the founding partner of Law Firm Success Group. He's also
the host of the Lawyer Business Advantage podcast and the
author of Staffing Up, The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top
(01:02):
Talent LA.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Eric, thanks so much for having me on the podcast today.
It's great to be talking with you again.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
For those who don't know, I was on LA's podcast
a couple of weeks ago and we had a great chat.
But he's got such a great background for our audience,
I thought it only made sense to have him over
here and run him through the paces and see what
he knows.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
So thank you for joining us, and.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Let's start with a little bit of that background that
lines up really well with our audience.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Sure you did a wonderful job of introducing me. I
guess the only thing I would add to that is
that we actually work with the owners of law firms.
Think two partners are less. These are small law firms, solo,
single owner or two partner firms all across the country,
and we work with them really, as it says in
our name, to really build an amazing law firm so
(01:55):
that they can have law firm success on their own terms.
It's been awesome doing this work for over a decade now,
and I'm blessed to have a fantastic team of coaches
who work with their clients alongside myself, and it's a
lot of fun and super worthwhile work. I think one
of the things that gets overlooked a lot is attorneys
(02:17):
do life changing work. I mean, they really do. If
someone is working with an attorney, they're dealing with a
huge personal problem, or they're dealing with a huge business problem,
or both. And even though attorneys do that amazing, life
changing work, oftentimes they don't end up experiencing the benefits
of that hard work. They're working too hard to not
taking time off and not taking care of themselves. They're
(02:38):
not having a lot of fun, and that's a tragedy.
And really excited to be able to help them address
those things so they can have full, rich lives. That's
why we're here.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, that's a really good point. It reminds me of
us saying I heard years ago, which was the three
most stressful phases of a person life would be a.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Death, a move, or divorce. I would like to insert
in number four a lawsuit. You know that that has
to be one of the most stressful things.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
And I always tell people that, you know, most people
have never hired an attorney before. It's a very stressful
and intimidating process. And I think part of coaching is
just letting attorneys know that. And what I mean by
that is you and I are so close to this,
and attorneys are so close to you. Kind of take
for granted that this is a really intimidating process for
(03:27):
somebody to go through. So having a coach like you
and able to not only talk about the business side
of things and how to run a really good law firm,
but also the human side and the psychological side of
dealing with those clients. So do they feel comfortable reaching
out to you and you can establish a really good
relationship from the beginning. So with that, could you give
(03:50):
kind of an overview of the type of law firms
that you work with and how you're able to come
in and streamline things and make a difference, you know,
in a very short time.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, that's a great question, Eric, thanks for asking. As
they said, we work with firms two partners are less,
all across the country, all different practice areas, and there's
a couple of things that they're typically trying to address
when they look to bring us on board. One of
the things they're looking to do is they're looking to grow.
They're looking to grow for a couple of reasons. They're
looking to grow because the owners will make more money.
(04:22):
They're looking to grow because they want to have a
greater impact, and they're looking to grow because they want
to really increase their reputation. So that's one of the things.
The other thing that they want to do, and we're
actually seeing a lot of this more is they want
to grow, but they can't. They can't because they're already
maxed out. They're exhausted, they're working nights, they're working weekends.
(04:43):
Their team is not if they have a team, their
team isn't performing the way that they want them to,
and so they end up carrying a lot of the
load for the firm they work while they're taking time off,
and they're like, Yeah, I would love to grow, but
I can't. Like it's a terrifying thought. And so we
usually end up working with attorneys that are leading law
(05:06):
firms and falling into one of those two categories.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And when you're.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Taking a law firm from where they're at to where
they want to be, or just say hey, let's set
a goal of twenty percent, there's a lot of puzzle
pieces that you could move around. And I think that's
intimidating to people because you might be talking about hiring
or setting aside a budget to market, or becoming more
efficient technology wise so that you can operate cleaner and
more efficiently do you.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Have kind of a set process.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
So if someone's listening to this and go, God, this
is exactly where I'm at. I want to grow. You know,
I've been in the same place for five years. Where
do I start? What type of advice would you give
or can you give us maybe an example of a
law firm of one to two partners that you kind
of took through a process.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sure, First of all, if if someone's listening to this
and they're stuck and they want to grow, but they're
not sure how I mean, give us a call. Well
we'll spend over an hour with them free of charge,
and you know, see if we can help them out
on that call. Yes, we do have a process, and
the process really starts with figuring out you know, if
we take take all the constraints and put them aside,
(06:11):
and take all the fears and the doubts and the
skepticism and put it aside, what is the law firm
that the owner wants to have or the owners want
to have, What does that really look like? And that
gives us the destination. And then once we have the
destination that's where we want to go, then we can
figure out the best way to get there. And I'll
give you a quick example, Eric, since you asked. We
(06:32):
work with law firm owners who want to grow all
the time, and they say, okay, well, I really want
to grow my firm to seven figures or rate figures.
We hear that a lot, but I don't just want
to grow the firm. I want to grow the firm
while working forty hours a week and taking you know,
two to four weeks off a year. So those are
the goalposts that we set for ourselves, and then beyond
that we start to figure out, okay, well, what's getting
(06:54):
in the way and lack of growth could be so
many things right. One thing could be they don't have
a good digital marketing strategy, in which case part of
it might be okay, well, connect with Eric and his team.
It could be that their time management is off, they're
wasting time, or they're investing time in the wrong places.
A really great example of this we were working with
(07:17):
a firm. One of the partners was just struggling to
meet the billable targets that we had set and he's like,
I can't do it. I can't do it. I just
keep getting, you know, one thing after another, and I
just at the end of the day, at the end
of the week, I just haven't met my targets. Well,
we identified a couple of things. His billables jumped by
forty percent in a week. You know what it was, right,
(07:39):
this is silly. He did two things. He shut his
door when he was billing, and he put his phone
on do not disturb when he was billing. That's it,
And just those two things drove a huge impact to
the firm's top line and to his addressing his frustration,
having him hit his goals. And so depending on the situation,
(08:01):
we can come up with an appropriate strategy. Because one
size doesn't fit all. That's the one thing I've found
is that what we do is everything's customized, so it's
all one on one. There's no group curriculum or one
size fits all approach. To get the fastest results, we
come up with programs and topics and structures that are
(08:23):
specific to individual attorneys. So out of all of our
let's say, business development tactics, we've got a whole raft
of those, We're going to pick the two or three
that are really good fit for that attorney, a really
good fit for their practice, and a really good fit
for what they're trying to do that way they're set
up for success.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
So one of the things you mentioned I think is
important to most people. Some people are just workaholics and
that's all they enjoyed.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
But this work life balance and be able to grow
and at the same time, you know, take the like
you said, the two weeks off a year. How is
that something that you work through with a law firm, Like,
how do you set their goals to put chart them
on a path for growth and then allow them, you know,
or give them the ability to take off time that
(09:08):
they desperately need. But as an owner, you might not
always give yourself. You know, you sacrifice first before you know.
You'd never tell your employees you can't take two weeks off,
but as an owner, a lot of times they kind
of put that burden on themselves.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, I think that's where having a coach comes in,
because once we set the goals, then we're going to
hold them accountable to those goals and we're going to
come up with a plan for them to take that
time off. So, just to give you a quick example
for your listeners, one of the biggest mistakes that I
hear is attorneys will tell me yeah, you know, I
want to take time off, but now is not a
good time. And when it's a good time, when things
(09:44):
are a bit slower, that's what I'm going to take
time off. And Eric, you can guess when that slow
time is, right, Yeah, when they're not billing. Yeah, well never,
because if they're not billing, they're out there bringing in business.
It's just never a good time. And so what we
do is we flip that. We say, look, if you
want to take time off right, let's open up your calendar.
(10:05):
Let's block out your vacation right now. Doesn't have to
be next week, it could be next month or six
months down the road, but we're going to block it
out in our calendar. And once that happens, now for
the attorney it's real. And then they start to plan
for it, and they start to come up with solutions
to all of the little things in their mind that
told them they can't do it. They come up with
(10:26):
backup strategy so if someone calls and they're not available,
who's going to handle it? They come up with a
strategy around if you know, how am I going to
avoid being in court during that time? They come up
with solutions to all of these problems once it goes
into their calendar. So that's a really powerful tip.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, it's a great tip, and it reminds me of
some really good advice I got right out of college.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I talked to a guy who used to be on
Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You know, I was twenty one years old and wasn't
making anything, and he gave me some great life advice
as he goes, look every month, pay yourself first and
spend the rest. He goes, I don't care if you're
putting one hundred and fifty dollars away. Take that money
out forget about it. Act as if it doesn't exist.
And I think that's what you're saying with this time
is block off this time on your calendar. That's your
(11:11):
time that does not exist to you for work time.
So if someone says they want to plan something on
September twenty second, and that's your vacation, that time just
doesn't exist anymore. And when you go through that mental exercise,
like with me financially, even you know, when I was
twenty one and I need an extra one hundred and
fifty bucks to go out and have fun with my friends,
it just didn't exist to me because I'd already set
(11:31):
that aside. So if you can be disciplined in doing
that strategy mentally, now you can go operate during your
work hours as hard as you want to work, your
twelve hour days, your fifteen hour days, whatever those are is,
but you really set aside that time for yourself. So
and I love the examples, like these real world examples of.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Law firms that you've worked with. Is there a common
mistake that you see.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Like when you walk in, you go, I'm you know,
here's my first question. I almost know off the top
of my head with their answer is going to be,
is there something you commonly see with a you know,
one to two person law firm that they're all making.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
There's not one, but there's a couple. And one of
the big ones is they're not investing their time in
the right places. And I mean the owners of the
firms aren't doing that. And we have a diagnostic tool
we use called the twenty ten to five rule, which
basically lays out about how many hours our clients should
be spending in three big categories. Client facing time so
(12:33):
a baillable time, business development and marketing, and law firm
administration twenty hours a week of client work, ten hours
a week of business development and marketing, five hours a
week of law firm Atman, you had that all up,
it's about thirty five hours a week. It's a pretty
good work schedule, and we use that as a baseline
diagnostic to see where they're investing their time. So that's
(12:54):
one thing. The other thing is, and this is a
big part of my book and why I wrote it,
is they haven't hired enough. They are working way too
hard and they need to hire their staff, or if
they have staff, they need to make sure that staff
is performing at a level to take more work off
of their shoulders because they're just you know, overdriving. And
probably the third thing is eric they don't really have
(13:17):
a plan. I mean, they may know they want to grow,
but they're really flying by the seat of their pants.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, and I think I see some of that with
the law firms. Are there specific KPIs that you want
every law firm to measure because you know, what you're
saying makes sense. You know, if you're just used to
going into the office, you know, when you are super
small as a law firm and growing, you kind of
did everything and as that law firm grows. Are there
(13:45):
specific things that you want them to measure and kind
of goals, little goals and different departments that you set
up for them.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, there are. So we customize those goals depending on
and you know what what the client and we decide
we really want to measure, try to keep it between
one three different things. If we're measuring more than that,
it can get really overwhelming for the attorney because these
you know, these are two partner law firms or less,
and so they don't oftentimes have you know, a huge
(14:18):
department that can measure the KPIs for them. But some
of the common things we look at We look at revenue, right,
that's an easy one. We look at time again, how
much time are they spending billing, how much time are
they spending marketing, how much time are they spending in
that men we will look at their sales pipeline, so
(14:39):
lead generation, close rate, and if you know one of
those things is off, sometimes we'll ask them maybe maybe
call your firm and work through that, especially in the
lead generation side. And then the other big one and
this is a little bit more on the accounting side,
but it's super important is tracking accounts receivables, and if
(15:01):
someone is using quick books or some software, there's an
account's receivable's aging report that you can pull that basically
tells you how much money clients owe you. You've already
built for it, they owe you this money, how much
money they owe you, and how overdo it is. And
sometimes firms don't pay close attention to that, and they
(15:22):
can rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars and accounts
receivable money they're owed from clients but haven't collected for
one reason or another. So those are some of the
common KPIs that we look at, but we also create
customized ones for the client to measure a specific goal like,
for example, how much time did you work this week?
(15:45):
Or another one that we track it's a binary one
did you work this weekend or not? Yes or no,
and we can start to see a streak being built.
So we also record KPIs around habits if that's what
we need to do.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, And the other one thing you know that you
hear in business?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Would you know do you want to work on your
business or in your business? And you know, for anybody
who hasn't heard that, you know, working in your business
means you are doing the work. You're doing everything from
you know, accounting practices to helping to manage intake you
know in your business and then on your business is
really from an outside inlook, you're kind of managing your business.
(16:23):
And the goal I think for most people is to
be able to work more on your business. So you
do have more free time to do more visionary thinking,
or you have time to think about that next marketing
campaign or that next hire.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Is that something you go through.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
That's oftentimes the real benefit of clients meeting with us
is it's the one time they have in their week
where they're working on their business. The rest of the
time they're in trial or the meeting with clients or
the managing their team or what have you. But when
they're meeting with us and the work that they do
in between our sessions, which we try to minimize that,
but there is some of that. It's all working on
(16:59):
their business, and we try to set it up so
it's quick wins. If you work on something with us,
you're going to get a return on that investment quickly,
and it's not like you have to grind away working
with us for six months before you see a return.
All the stuff we do is usually high return stuff
in pretty short order.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Now, I want to pivot to something else that is
really important in growth, and that would be staffing up,
which is also the title of your book. So can
you give some advice you know, human resources hiring new people,
you know, I think is extremely challenging.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I had, you know, one stint in.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
My career where I did a little bit of hiring
and I was terrible at it. I just was I
just believe the best in people. You know, if someone
tells me they're going to be great at the position,
I just believe them. So I'm not a good person
to do hiring. What advice do you give law firms
when they are staffing up, when they are trying to grow,
when they're hiring for And I was about to say,
(17:59):
keep as if, But when you're in a small lall
from every position is really a key position.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Can you shed some light on that?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, And the reason I wrote the book, by the way, Eric,
is I didn't see any of this anywhere else, and
so I was teaching my clients to stuff over and
over again, and I decided, you know a lot of
people can benefit from it, So let's put it all
into a book, and it's not audible if you prefer
audio books. It's also on Amazon. One of the big
mistakes I see is that they wait too long to hire.
(18:28):
And the reason that's an issue is then when they
do try and hire somebody, there in panic mode they're like,
I need someone now, and so they're not as discriminating
about the kind of person they're bringing in, and so
they just bring in a warm body, and of course
what follows is a complete disaster. The other issue that
happens when you're overwhelmed and trying to hire is you
(18:51):
don't have time to train the person. So you could
bring in this superstar candidate, but if you don't have
time to train them and set them up for success
and allow them to ramp up, they're going to quit
and leave. And so that's, you know, mistake number one
is waiting too long to hire. Mistake number two, and
this one's maybe a little bit more subtle, is not
(19:12):
having a hiring pipeline. And what I mean by that is,
you know, when you have a sales pipeline, you've got
potential clients that work through the process of you know,
a lead to a consultation, to then you signing a
feed agreement. Hiring is kind of the same way in
that you want to have a pipeline of candidates even
if you're not hiring. These are the people who you
(19:33):
think about and say, you know what, if I could
just wave a magic want, I'd love to have this
person on my team. I may not have a spot
for them yet, they may not want to come over
here yet, but they're going to be on my short list,
so that if something happens and I am in a
position to hire, I can reach out to that person
and we can have a pretty short conversation and then
(19:56):
maybe bring them on board or ask them to refer
me someone who they know, because that short list of
people are probably going to know other amazing people that
can help you in a variety of different positions. So
that's the second thing, and the third mistake that I
see attorneys make is when they do you bring that
person on board, they just open up the fire hose
and hit them with everything. And that is challenging. And
(20:19):
so one of the pieces of advice and one of
the things we work through is create a non boarding plan,
or if you don't want to do that at the
very least give them a couple of tasks to master.
Think of the tasks that if they mastered it would
help you the most, one or two, and have them
do that as they're getting started. Once they've mastered those tasks,
give them more. And that way you're not going to
(20:42):
overwhelm the new employee. They're going to be set up
for success. You're not going to have to train them
on as much, and you're both going to develop confidence
they in you and you and them, so that once
they've mastered those tasks which are going to help you,
just by doing those two things, you're in a good
position to do more.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So and that's all great advice, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And I don't think anybody would argue that hiring good
people is a best practice, but you just lay to
all the reasons out, all the reasons why sometimes it
doesn't happen. And you know, being super busy and trying
to hire somebody and trying to train somebody at the
same time is not a good you know formula. So
I think having a plan like you've laid out, and
(21:22):
I assume that a lot of these steps are walked
through in detail in your book, having that plan will
allow you to set yourself up for success so that
you invest less of your time, are more productive with
the training, and that person becomes a value added player
a lot sooner than if, you know, you just kind
of wing it, which you know none of it. We're
(21:44):
not talking about you know, Fortune five hundred companies who
have you know, you know, fifteen hundred page documents that
walk people through you need to be really efficient, right,
can you explain a little bit about you know, maybe
an example or two. Let's just say one of your
clients comes to you and says, got I really think
I'm ready for a new paralegal or to hire, you know,
(22:04):
bring another attorney on. What does that look like in
real life?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sure? So the first thing we do is we make
sure that that's actually who they need to hire. And
one of the big questions I get from firms is, look,
I don't know who to hire and I don't know
when to hire them. So we answer those questions first,
and then when it comes to actually building out the
hiring strategy, it starts with the job description like, Okay, well,
if you want this person to come on board, great,
(22:32):
what are they going to do? And so we create
their list of tasks together, and then we have to
put it into a job description. And the reason that's important.
It's important for legal reasons, of course, but the right
job description is a really persuasive ad that can get
a really good potential employee to apply. It's way more
(22:52):
than just responsibilities. It is, you know, talking about the firm,
talking about all the benefits, and oftentimes attorneys overlook a
lot of those things. So we sit down with them
and make sure that they build a job description that
is as persuasive, engaging, and really captures the full benefits
of that position. Because with small law firms, they're competing
(23:14):
for the same talent that big law is competing for,
and they're going to be outgunned on price, they're going
to be outguned one resources. And so the one thing
they have that they can compete with is you know, flexibility, benefits, culture,
all of those things, and those are things that oftentimes
don't make the job descriptions. So we want to make
sure those are in there and put in there properly.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yep, that's great advice. I want to shift gears one
more time to technology.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
You know, we're kind of living in this age where
you know, there's so many different resources, and a lot
of them are built specifically for law firms so they
can be at an advantage that they weren't able to
be at ten years ago or even less.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Is there certain technology.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
That you like for these smaller law firms, whether that's
practice management.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Software or AI tools.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Anything that you really help incorporate And is it something
you push on law firms or is it something that
it only is a good fit for the right law firms.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Well, we don't try and push anything on firms. We're
always trying to figure out if it's the right fit first,
and then we'll work with the client and figure that
out together. One of the pieces of software that being said,
one of the pieces of software that we do, let's
say require, but we strongly recommend, is practice management software.
It has gotten so good these days and it is
(24:40):
so important in running a firm that I think if
there's an attorney that owns a law firm that doesn't
have practice management software, they're at a significant disadvantage. The
one that we recommend more than any of the others
is CLEO. The reason for that is it's one it's
sort of like the Microsoft Office of Practice Management software,
(25:00):
so it's a safe choice. The other reason for that
is they have Cleo Grow, which is a way to
actually track leads through the process. Most practice management software
starts when a lead becomes a client, but Cleo Grow
actually tracks the leads before they become a client, which
is a lot of the information we're looking for when
(25:20):
we're looking at their sales and marketing process.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, and I'm familiar with Cleo. Not a sponsor of
the podcast, but I think correct me if I'm wrong.
They also have larger packages you can grow into. So
Cleo Grow I think is good for a smaller law firm,
but if you happen to get bigger and bigger the way,
I understand that they actually have other packages.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
That you can grow into.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Again, not a sponsor of ours, and I'm not promoting them,
but I know that they have a law firm specific product,
and like you, I think people just need practice management software.
So you know, it doesn't have to be Cleo. It
can be somebody else. But I can't tell you how
many law firms I work with it have an Excel
spreadsheet with you know, five different color codings on them,
(26:05):
and I just don't think that's the best way to
really track the growth of your firm. You also have
your your own podcast, The Lawyer Business Advantage Podcast. Somebody
wants to jump over and listen to episodes there, what
are they going to find?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, so we bring on all sorts of guests, yourself
and other consultants that are working with law firms. We
also bring on a lot of law firm owners. And
really the idea for me behind the podcast was there's
a lot of people that are out there that are
not never going to become, you know, a coaching client
for me, or the timing isn't right. But i mean,
let's face it, owning a law firm that is a lonely,
(26:47):
lonely road. It's tough and sometimes you just need some
ideas and some inspiration to enable you to take that
next step. And that's what the podcast is dedicated to doing.
So we bring on consultants with fantastic ideas. We bring
on law firm owners with ideas of their own as
well as their own stories about how they've grown. We
(27:09):
drop one episode a week. We're also now on YouTube
if they prefer video, want to put a face to
the voice. But yeah, the podcast is going great. We've got.
I think we're on episode one hundred and fifty plus
we might be closing on two hundred by the end
of the year. And it was recently rated as one
of the top ten lawyer podcasts, so that was exciting.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, that's great, and I can attest to you doing
a great job on your interviews. And yeah, I think
podcasts now are just like books. You may read a
two hundred page book and you get one or two
concepts out of it that you can immediately employ. I
think podcasts are amazing because you know you can get
the same type of benefit out of it. You can
also somewhat multitask. You can listen to a podcast and drive,
(27:53):
and I would not suggest that for a book. So,
with all the things we've talked about, LA, we kind
of wind things down here. Is there anything that we
left out? Is there is there something that you want
to share with the audience, either you know a best
practice that you do or some type of a trend
that's happening right now that you think would benefit the audience.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
The only think about that for a second. Yeah, So
one of the things I think the easy answer we'll
be talking about AI. I'm not going to talk about
that here today, though, I'm going to talk about something different.
And this is really old fashioned and it's really old school,
so I hope you all enjoy it. My personal belief
is that time is our most precious asset. We can't
(28:37):
get more of it. It's perishable, so when it's gone,
it's gone forever. We can't you know, we have to
use the time that we have, and it's also an
amazing equalizer. Every single one of us has the same
amount of time during the day, same twenty four hours.
The only difference is how we use it. So if
I could give everyone that's listening to the podcast one
(28:57):
piece of advice, and this doesn't just apply to growing
affirm supplies to everything. Make sure you're investing your time
in the right places, use your time wisely, and be
really comfortable with the choices you're making when it comes
to where you're spending your time.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Yeah, I think that's great advice. You know, I've been
a victim of it myself. You know, if I think about,
you know, sitting down and starting my day, you know,
just coordining off certain sections.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Of the day for certain work.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Like you gave an amazing example of that, with someone
with billible hour, shut your door, put your phone on,
do not disturb you know, that is your billing time.
Really take it seriously and even scheduling in things like
break time. I'm going to go for a walk, I'm
going to go sit down and have lunch, you know,
let your mind escape for a minute.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
So Ale, I.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Really appreciate you sharing a bunch of your wisdom. Thanks again,
and hopefully we can run this back again another time.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Thank you so much. Eric, really appreciate the time and
thank you so much for having me on the podcast today.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Thanks 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.
If we take all the constraints and put him aside,
and take all the fears and the doubts and the
skepticism and put it aside. What is the law firm
that the owner wants to have or the owners want
to have? What does that really look like? And that
gives us the destination. And then once we have the destination,
that's where we want to go, then we can figure
out the best way to get there.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Barsono, 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 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me ale yaj Nick, who is
the founding partner of Law Firm Success Group. He's also
the host of the Lawyer Business Advantage podcast and the
author of Staffing Up, The Attorney's Guide to Hiring Top
(01:02):
Talent LA.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Eric, thanks so much for having me on the podcast today.
It's great to be talking with you again.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
For those who don't know, I was on LA's podcast
a couple of weeks ago and we had a great chat.
But he's got such a great background for our audience,
I thought it only made sense to have him over
here and run him through the paces and see what
he knows.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
So thank you for joining us, and.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Let's start with a little bit of that background that
lines up really well with our audience.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Sure you did a wonderful job of introducing me. I
guess the only thing I would add to that is
that we actually work with the owners of law firms.
Think two partners are less. These are small law firms, solo,
single owner or two partner firms all across the country,
and we work with them really, as it says in
our name, to really build an amazing law firm so
(01:55):
that they can have law firm success on their own terms.
It's been awesome doing this work for over a decade now,
and I'm blessed to have a fantastic team of coaches
who work with their clients alongside myself, and it's a
lot of fun and super worthwhile work. I think one
of the things that gets overlooked a lot is attorneys
(02:17):
do life changing work. I mean, they really do. If
someone is working with an attorney, they're dealing with a
huge personal problem, or they're dealing with a huge business problem,
or both. And even though attorneys do that amazing, life
changing work, oftentimes they don't end up experiencing the benefits
of that hard work. They're working too hard to not
taking time off and not taking care of themselves. They're
(02:38):
not having a lot of fun, and that's a tragedy.
And really excited to be able to help them address
those things so they can have full, rich lives. That's
why we're here.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, that's a really good point. It reminds me of
us saying I heard years ago, which was the three
most stressful phases of a person life would be a.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Death, a move, or divorce. I would like to insert
in number four a lawsuit. You know that that has
to be one of the most stressful things.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
And I always tell people that, you know, most people
have never hired an attorney before. It's a very stressful
and intimidating process. And I think part of coaching is
just letting attorneys know that. And what I mean by
that is you and I are so close to this,
and attorneys are so close to you. Kind of take
for granted that this is a really intimidating process for
(03:27):
somebody to go through. So having a coach like you
and able to not only talk about the business side
of things and how to run a really good law firm,
but also the human side and the psychological side of
dealing with those clients. So do they feel comfortable reaching
out to you and you can establish a really good
relationship from the beginning. So with that, could you give
(03:50):
kind of an overview of the type of law firms
that you work with and how you're able to come
in and streamline things and make a difference, you know,
in a very short time.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, that's a great question, Eric, thanks for asking. As
they said, we work with firms two partners are less,
all across the country, all different practice areas, and there's
a couple of things that they're typically trying to address
when they look to bring us on board. One of
the things they're looking to do is they're looking to grow.
They're looking to grow for a couple of reasons. They're
looking to grow because the owners will make more money.
(04:22):
They're looking to grow because they want to have a
greater impact, and they're looking to grow because they want
to really increase their reputation. So that's one of the things.
The other thing that they want to do, and we're
actually seeing a lot of this more is they want
to grow, but they can't. They can't because they're already
maxed out. They're exhausted, they're working nights, they're working weekends.
(04:43):
Their team is not if they have a team, their
team isn't performing the way that they want them to,
and so they end up carrying a lot of the
load for the firm they work while they're taking time off,
and they're like, Yeah, I would love to grow, but
I can't. Like it's a terrifying thought. And so we
usually end up working with attorneys that are leading law
(05:06):
firms and falling into one of those two categories.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
And when you're.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Taking a law firm from where they're at to where
they want to be, or just say hey, let's set
a goal of twenty percent, there's a lot of puzzle
pieces that you could move around. And I think that's
intimidating to people because you might be talking about hiring
or setting aside a budget to market, or becoming more
efficient technology wise so that you can operate cleaner and
more efficiently do you.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Have kind of a set process.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
So if someone's listening to this and go, God, this
is exactly where I'm at. I want to grow. You know,
I've been in the same place for five years. Where
do I start? What type of advice would you give
or can you give us maybe an example of a
law firm of one to two partners that you kind
of took through a process.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sure, First of all, if if someone's listening to this
and they're stuck and they want to grow, but they're
not sure how I mean, give us a call. Well
we'll spend over an hour with them free of charge,
and you know, see if we can help them out
on that call. Yes, we do have a process, and
the process really starts with figuring out you know, if
we take take all the constraints and put them aside,
(06:11):
and take all the fears and the doubts and the
skepticism and put it aside, what is the law firm
that the owner wants to have or the owners want
to have, What does that really look like? And that
gives us the destination. And then once we have the
destination that's where we want to go, then we can
figure out the best way to get there. And I'll
give you a quick example, Eric, since you asked. We
(06:32):
work with law firm owners who want to grow all
the time, and they say, okay, well, I really want
to grow my firm to seven figures or rate figures.
We hear that a lot, but I don't just want
to grow the firm. I want to grow the firm
while working forty hours a week and taking you know,
two to four weeks off a year. So those are
the goalposts that we set for ourselves, and then beyond
that we start to figure out, okay, well, what's getting
(06:54):
in the way and lack of growth could be so
many things right. One thing could be they don't have
a good digital marketing strategy, in which case part of
it might be okay, well, connect with Eric and his team.
It could be that their time management is off, they're
wasting time, or they're investing time in the wrong places.
A really great example of this we were working with
(07:17):
a firm. One of the partners was just struggling to
meet the billable targets that we had set and he's like,
I can't do it. I can't do it. I just
keep getting, you know, one thing after another, and I
just at the end of the day, at the end
of the week, I just haven't met my targets. Well,
we identified a couple of things. His billables jumped by
forty percent in a week. You know what it was, right,
(07:39):
this is silly. He did two things. He shut his
door when he was billing, and he put his phone
on do not disturb when he was billing. That's it,
And just those two things drove a huge impact to
the firm's top line and to his addressing his frustration,
having him hit his goals. And so depending on the situation,
(08:01):
we can come up with an appropriate strategy. Because one
size doesn't fit all. That's the one thing I've found
is that what we do is everything's customized, so it's
all one on one. There's no group curriculum or one
size fits all approach. To get the fastest results, we
come up with programs and topics and structures that are
(08:23):
specific to individual attorneys. So out of all of our
let's say, business development tactics, we've got a whole raft
of those, We're going to pick the two or three
that are really good fit for that attorney, a really
good fit for their practice, and a really good fit
for what they're trying to do that way they're set
up for success.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
So one of the things you mentioned I think is
important to most people. Some people are just workaholics and
that's all they enjoyed.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
But this work life balance and be able to grow
and at the same time, you know, take the like
you said, the two weeks off a year. How is
that something that you work through with a law firm, Like,
how do you set their goals to put chart them
on a path for growth and then allow them, you know,
or give them the ability to take off time that
(09:08):
they desperately need. But as an owner, you might not
always give yourself. You know, you sacrifice first before you know.
You'd never tell your employees you can't take two weeks off,
but as an owner, a lot of times they kind
of put that burden on themselves.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, I think that's where having a coach comes in,
because once we set the goals, then we're going to
hold them accountable to those goals and we're going to
come up with a plan for them to take that
time off. So, just to give you a quick example
for your listeners, one of the biggest mistakes that I
hear is attorneys will tell me yeah, you know, I
want to take time off, but now is not a
good time. And when it's a good time, when things
(09:44):
are a bit slower, that's what I'm going to take
time off. And Eric, you can guess when that slow
time is, right, Yeah, when they're not billing. Yeah, well never,
because if they're not billing, they're out there bringing in business.
It's just never a good time. And so what we
do is we flip that. We say, look, if you
want to take time off right, let's open up your calendar.
(10:05):
Let's block out your vacation right now. Doesn't have to
be next week, it could be next month or six
months down the road, but we're going to block it
out in our calendar. And once that happens, now for
the attorney it's real. And then they start to plan
for it, and they start to come up with solutions
to all of the little things in their mind that
told them they can't do it. They come up with
(10:26):
backup strategy so if someone calls and they're not available,
who's going to handle it? They come up with a
strategy around if you know, how am I going to
avoid being in court during that time? They come up
with solutions to all of these problems once it goes
into their calendar. So that's a really powerful tip.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, it's a great tip, and it reminds me of
some really good advice I got right out of college.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I talked to a guy who used to be on
Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You know, I was twenty one years old and wasn't
making anything, and he gave me some great life advice
as he goes, look every month, pay yourself first and
spend the rest. He goes, I don't care if you're
putting one hundred and fifty dollars away. Take that money
out forget about it. Act as if it doesn't exist.
And I think that's what you're saying with this time
is block off this time on your calendar. That's your
(11:11):
time that does not exist to you for work time.
So if someone says they want to plan something on
September twenty second, and that's your vacation, that time just
doesn't exist anymore. And when you go through that mental exercise,
like with me financially, even you know, when I was
twenty one and I need an extra one hundred and
fifty bucks to go out and have fun with my friends,
it just didn't exist to me because I'd already set
(11:31):
that aside. So if you can be disciplined in doing
that strategy mentally, now you can go operate during your
work hours as hard as you want to work, your
twelve hour days, your fifteen hour days, whatever those are is,
but you really set aside that time for yourself. So
and I love the examples, like these real world examples of.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Law firms that you've worked with. Is there a common
mistake that you see.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Like when you walk in, you go, I'm you know,
here's my first question. I almost know off the top
of my head with their answer is going to be,
is there something you commonly see with a you know,
one to two person law firm that they're all making.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
There's not one, but there's a couple. And one of
the big ones is they're not investing their time in
the right places. And I mean the owners of the
firms aren't doing that. And we have a diagnostic tool
we use called the twenty ten to five rule, which
basically lays out about how many hours our clients should
be spending in three big categories. Client facing time so
(12:33):
a baillable time, business development and marketing, and law firm
administration twenty hours a week of client work, ten hours
a week of business development and marketing, five hours a
week of law firm Atman, you had that all up,
it's about thirty five hours a week. It's a pretty
good work schedule, and we use that as a baseline
diagnostic to see where they're investing their time. So that's
(12:54):
one thing. The other thing is, and this is a
big part of my book and why I wrote it,
is they haven't hired enough. They are working way too
hard and they need to hire their staff, or if
they have staff, they need to make sure that staff
is performing at a level to take more work off
of their shoulders because they're just you know, overdriving. And
probably the third thing is eric they don't really have
(13:17):
a plan. I mean, they may know they want to grow,
but they're really flying by the seat of their pants.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, and I think I see some of that with
the law firms. Are there specific KPIs that you want
every law firm to measure because you know, what you're
saying makes sense. You know, if you're just used to
going into the office, you know, when you are super
small as a law firm and growing, you kind of
did everything and as that law firm grows. Are there
(13:45):
specific things that you want them to measure and kind
of goals, little goals and different departments that you set
up for them.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, there are. So we customize those goals depending on
and you know what what the client and we decide
we really want to measure, try to keep it between
one three different things. If we're measuring more than that,
it can get really overwhelming for the attorney because these
you know, these are two partner law firms or less,
and so they don't oftentimes have you know, a huge
(14:18):
department that can measure the KPIs for them. But some
of the common things we look at We look at revenue, right,
that's an easy one. We look at time again, how
much time are they spending billing, how much time are
they spending marketing, how much time are they spending in
that men we will look at their sales pipeline, so
(14:39):
lead generation, close rate, and if you know one of
those things is off, sometimes we'll ask them maybe maybe
call your firm and work through that, especially in the
lead generation side. And then the other big one and
this is a little bit more on the accounting side,
but it's super important is tracking accounts receivables, and if
(15:01):
someone is using quick books or some software, there's an
account's receivable's aging report that you can pull that basically
tells you how much money clients owe you. You've already
built for it, they owe you this money, how much
money they owe you, and how overdo it is. And
sometimes firms don't pay close attention to that, and they
(15:22):
can rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars and accounts
receivable money they're owed from clients but haven't collected for
one reason or another. So those are some of the
common KPIs that we look at, but we also create
customized ones for the client to measure a specific goal like,
for example, how much time did you work this week?
(15:45):
Or another one that we track it's a binary one
did you work this weekend or not? Yes or no,
and we can start to see a streak being built.
So we also record KPIs around habits if that's what
we need to do.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, And the other one thing you know that you
hear in business?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Would you know do you want to work on your
business or in your business? And you know, for anybody
who hasn't heard that, you know, working in your business
means you are doing the work. You're doing everything from
you know, accounting practices to helping to manage intake you
know in your business and then on your business is
really from an outside inlook, you're kind of managing your business.
(16:23):
And the goal I think for most people is to
be able to work more on your business. So you
do have more free time to do more visionary thinking,
or you have time to think about that next marketing
campaign or that next hire.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Is that something you go through.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
That's oftentimes the real benefit of clients meeting with us
is it's the one time they have in their week
where they're working on their business. The rest of the
time they're in trial or the meeting with clients or
the managing their team or what have you. But when
they're meeting with us and the work that they do
in between our sessions, which we try to minimize that,
but there is some of that. It's all working on
(16:59):
their business, and we try to set it up so
it's quick wins. If you work on something with us,
you're going to get a return on that investment quickly,
and it's not like you have to grind away working
with us for six months before you see a return.
All the stuff we do is usually high return stuff
in pretty short order.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Now, I want to pivot to something else that is
really important in growth, and that would be staffing up,
which is also the title of your book. So can
you give some advice you know, human resources hiring new people,
you know, I think is extremely challenging.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I had, you know, one stint in.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
My career where I did a little bit of hiring
and I was terrible at it. I just was I
just believe the best in people. You know, if someone
tells me they're going to be great at the position,
I just believe them. So I'm not a good person
to do hiring. What advice do you give law firms
when they are staffing up, when they are trying to grow,
when they're hiring for And I was about to say,
(17:59):
keep as if, But when you're in a small lall
from every position is really a key position.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Can you shed some light on that?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, And the reason I wrote the book, by the way, Eric,
is I didn't see any of this anywhere else, and
so I was teaching my clients to stuff over and
over again, and I decided, you know a lot of
people can benefit from it, So let's put it all
into a book, and it's not audible if you prefer
audio books. It's also on Amazon. One of the big
mistakes I see is that they wait too long to hire.
(18:28):
And the reason that's an issue is then when they
do try and hire somebody, there in panic mode they're like,
I need someone now, and so they're not as discriminating
about the kind of person they're bringing in, and so
they just bring in a warm body, and of course
what follows is a complete disaster. The other issue that
happens when you're overwhelmed and trying to hire is you
(18:51):
don't have time to train the person. So you could
bring in this superstar candidate, but if you don't have
time to train them and set them up for success
and allow them to ramp up, they're going to quit
and leave. And so that's, you know, mistake number one
is waiting too long to hire. Mistake number two, and
this one's maybe a little bit more subtle, is not
(19:12):
having a hiring pipeline. And what I mean by that is,
you know, when you have a sales pipeline, you've got
potential clients that work through the process of you know,
a lead to a consultation, to then you signing a
feed agreement. Hiring is kind of the same way in
that you want to have a pipeline of candidates even
if you're not hiring. These are the people who you
(19:33):
think about and say, you know what, if I could
just wave a magic want, I'd love to have this
person on my team. I may not have a spot
for them yet, they may not want to come over
here yet, but they're going to be on my short list,
so that if something happens and I am in a
position to hire, I can reach out to that person
and we can have a pretty short conversation and then
(19:56):
maybe bring them on board or ask them to refer
me someone who they know, because that short list of
people are probably going to know other amazing people that
can help you in a variety of different positions. So
that's the second thing, and the third mistake that I
see attorneys make is when they do you bring that
person on board, they just open up the fire hose
and hit them with everything. And that is challenging. And
(20:19):
so one of the pieces of advice and one of
the things we work through is create a non boarding plan,
or if you don't want to do that at the
very least give them a couple of tasks to master.
Think of the tasks that if they mastered it would
help you the most, one or two, and have them
do that as they're getting started. Once they've mastered those tasks,
give them more. And that way you're not going to
(20:42):
overwhelm the new employee. They're going to be set up
for success. You're not going to have to train them
on as much, and you're both going to develop confidence
they in you and you and them, so that once
they've mastered those tasks which are going to help you,
just by doing those two things, you're in a good
position to do more.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So and that's all great advice, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And I don't think anybody would argue that hiring good
people is a best practice, but you just lay to
all the reasons out, all the reasons why sometimes it
doesn't happen. And you know, being super busy and trying
to hire somebody and trying to train somebody at the
same time is not a good you know formula. So
I think having a plan like you've laid out, and
(21:22):
I assume that a lot of these steps are walked
through in detail in your book, having that plan will
allow you to set yourself up for success so that
you invest less of your time, are more productive with
the training, and that person becomes a value added player
a lot sooner than if, you know, you just kind
of wing it, which you know none of it. We're
(21:44):
not talking about you know, Fortune five hundred companies who
have you know, you know, fifteen hundred page documents that
walk people through you need to be really efficient, right,
can you explain a little bit about you know, maybe
an example or two. Let's just say one of your
clients comes to you and says, got I really think
I'm ready for a new paralegal or to hire, you know,
(22:04):
bring another attorney on. What does that look like in
real life?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sure? So the first thing we do is we make
sure that that's actually who they need to hire. And
one of the big questions I get from firms is, look,
I don't know who to hire and I don't know
when to hire them. So we answer those questions first,
and then when it comes to actually building out the
hiring strategy, it starts with the job description like, Okay, well,
if you want this person to come on board, great,
(22:32):
what are they going to do? And so we create
their list of tasks together, and then we have to
put it into a job description. And the reason that's important.
It's important for legal reasons, of course, but the right
job description is a really persuasive ad that can get
a really good potential employee to apply. It's way more
(22:52):
than just responsibilities. It is, you know, talking about the firm,
talking about all the benefits, and oftentimes attorneys overlook a
lot of those things. So we sit down with them
and make sure that they build a job description that
is as persuasive, engaging, and really captures the full benefits
of that position. Because with small law firms, they're competing
(23:14):
for the same talent that big law is competing for,
and they're going to be outgunned on price, they're going
to be outguned one resources. And so the one thing
they have that they can compete with is you know, flexibility, benefits, culture,
all of those things, and those are things that oftentimes
don't make the job descriptions. So we want to make
sure those are in there and put in there properly.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yep, that's great advice. I want to shift gears one
more time to technology.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
You know, we're kind of living in this age where
you know, there's so many different resources, and a lot
of them are built specifically for law firms so they
can be at an advantage that they weren't able to
be at ten years ago or even less.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Is there certain technology.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
That you like for these smaller law firms, whether that's
practice management.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Software or AI tools.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Anything that you really help incorporate And is it something
you push on law firms or is it something that
it only is a good fit for the right law firms.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Well, we don't try and push anything on firms. We're
always trying to figure out if it's the right fit first,
and then we'll work with the client and figure that
out together. One of the pieces of software that being said,
one of the pieces of software that we do, let's
say require, but we strongly recommend, is practice management software.
It has gotten so good these days and it is
(24:40):
so important in running a firm that I think if
there's an attorney that owns a law firm that doesn't
have practice management software, they're at a significant disadvantage. The
one that we recommend more than any of the others
is CLEO. The reason for that is it's one it's
sort of like the Microsoft Office of Practice Management software,
(25:00):
so it's a safe choice. The other reason for that
is they have Cleo Grow, which is a way to
actually track leads through the process. Most practice management software
starts when a lead becomes a client, but Cleo Grow
actually tracks the leads before they become a client, which
is a lot of the information we're looking for when
(25:20):
we're looking at their sales and marketing process.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, and I'm familiar with Cleo. Not a sponsor of
the podcast, but I think correct me if I'm wrong.
They also have larger packages you can grow into. So
Cleo Grow I think is good for a smaller law firm,
but if you happen to get bigger and bigger the way,
I understand that they actually have other packages.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
That you can grow into.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Again, not a sponsor of ours, and I'm not promoting them,
but I know that they have a law firm specific product,
and like you, I think people just need practice management software.
So you know, it doesn't have to be Cleo. It
can be somebody else. But I can't tell you how
many law firms I work with it have an Excel
spreadsheet with you know, five different color codings on them,
(26:05):
and I just don't think that's the best way to
really track the growth of your firm. You also have
your your own podcast, The Lawyer Business Advantage Podcast. Somebody
wants to jump over and listen to episodes there, what
are they going to find?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, so we bring on all sorts of guests, yourself
and other consultants that are working with law firms. We
also bring on a lot of law firm owners. And
really the idea for me behind the podcast was there's
a lot of people that are out there that are
not never going to become, you know, a coaching client
for me, or the timing isn't right. But i mean,
let's face it, owning a law firm that is a lonely,
(26:47):
lonely road. It's tough and sometimes you just need some
ideas and some inspiration to enable you to take that
next step. And that's what the podcast is dedicated to doing.
So we bring on consultants with fantastic ideas. We bring
on law firm owners with ideas of their own as
well as their own stories about how they've grown. We
(27:09):
drop one episode a week. We're also now on YouTube
if they prefer video, want to put a face to
the voice. But yeah, the podcast is going great. We've got.
I think we're on episode one hundred and fifty plus
we might be closing on two hundred by the end
of the year. And it was recently rated as one
of the top ten lawyer podcasts, so that was exciting.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, that's great, and I can attest to you doing
a great job on your interviews. And yeah, I think
podcasts now are just like books. You may read a
two hundred page book and you get one or two
concepts out of it that you can immediately employ. I
think podcasts are amazing because you know you can get
the same type of benefit out of it. You can
also somewhat multitask. You can listen to a podcast and drive,
(27:53):
and I would not suggest that for a book. So,
with all the things we've talked about, LA, we kind
of wind things down here. Is there anything that we
left out? Is there is there something that you want
to share with the audience, either you know a best
practice that you do or some type of a trend
that's happening right now that you think would benefit the audience.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
The only think about that for a second. Yeah, So
one of the things I think the easy answer we'll
be talking about AI. I'm not going to talk about
that here today, though, I'm going to talk about something different.
And this is really old fashioned and it's really old school,
so I hope you all enjoy it. My personal belief
is that time is our most precious asset. We can't
(28:37):
get more of it. It's perishable, so when it's gone,
it's gone forever. We can't you know, we have to
use the time that we have, and it's also an
amazing equalizer. Every single one of us has the same
amount of time during the day, same twenty four hours.
The only difference is how we use it. So if
I could give everyone that's listening to the podcast one
(28:57):
piece of advice, and this doesn't just apply to growing
affirm supplies to everything. Make sure you're investing your time
in the right places, use your time wisely, and be
really comfortable with the choices you're making when it comes
to where you're spending your time.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Yeah, I think that's great advice. You know, I've been
a victim of it myself. You know, if I think about,
you know, sitting down and starting my day, you know,
just coordining off certain sections.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Of the day for certain work.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Like you gave an amazing example of that, with someone
with billible hour, shut your door, put your phone on,
do not disturb you know, that is your billing time.
Really take it seriously and even scheduling in things like
break time. I'm going to go for a walk, I'm
going to go sit down and have lunch, you know,
let your mind escape for a minute.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
So Ale, I.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Really appreciate you sharing a bunch of your wisdom. Thanks again,
and hopefully we can run this back again another time.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Thank you so much. Eric, really appreciate the time and
thank you so much for having me on the podcast today.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Thanks 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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