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The post From Briefcase to Boom with Scott Rose appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

As an attorney, you work hard to build your practice and serve your clients. But have you considered what would happen if something were to happen to you? This is where succession planning comes in. 

In today’s episode, estate planning attorney Steven McClelland  shared his insights on the importance of having a succession plan in place. 

Here are five reasons why every lawyer needs a succession plan:

1. 1. Protect Your Clients: If you were to become incapacitated or pass away, what would happen to your clients? A succession plan ensures that your clients’ needs are taken care of and that their cases are transferred to another attorney who can provide them with the same level of service you did.
   2. Protect Your Employees: Your employees are an important part of your practice. A succession plan ensures that they are taken care of and that their jobs are secure in the event of your incapacity or death.
   3. Protect Your Family: A succession plan ensures that your family is taken care of and that your practice is passed down to them if that is your wish.
   4. Protect Your Reputation: Dumping all your files in a dumpster instead of properly disposing of them is not only unprofessional but can also damage your reputation. A succession plan ensures that your files are properly organized and that your reputation remains intact.
   5. Peace of Mind: Having a succession plan in place gives you peace of mind knowing that your practice will continue to thrive even if something were to happen to you.

A succession plan is crucial for every lawyer. It ensures that your clients, employees, family, and reputation are protected and gives you peace of mind. So, take action today and create a succession plan that works for you and your practice. And be sure to check out the Maximum Lawyer podcast for more valuable insights and strategies to help you overcome challenges in your practice.

07:29 The importance of ending things properly.

09:22 72% of entrepreneurs do not have a succession plan

15:13 A checklist and key documents for succession planning, including a business power of attorney, agreement to close practice, and confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement. He offers to share these documents with listeners. Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcript: The Last Billable Hour with Steven McClelland

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) – So in today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Khan 2022. Keep listening to hear Steven McClelland as we share his talk the last billable hour, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:17) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast. Lawyer, podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

*Steven McClelland * (00:00:38) – This is succession planning. Before we jump into it, I am excited. I’m honored to speak. I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m originally from Kansas, so if you’re from the West Coast, you probably flew over my very beautiful home state and I’m now in Arkansas. On the screen is my beautiful wife. It took me three years to get a first date with her, three years. And finally I wore her down and she said, Sure, I’ll go on a date with you. And so it worked out.

*Steven McClelland * (00:01:12) – And as you can see, we have three daughters now, so it’s getting pretty serious and they are a ton a ton of fun. So I really when they were introducing me, I do spend a lot of time, as you know, the Tea parties and and all that fun stuff. So, yes, like Tyson, I got my private pilot’s license a couple of years ago. It’s been a lot of fun. It was kind of a fun, I guess, the unicorn space kind of thing to try something new and get around and see the world from a different perspective. Of course, my wife had a different perspective on that too, and was terrified by the idea of me flying. In fact, that really kind of got me into thinking about succession planning because, you know, you hear a lot of stories the last billable hour. So my wife was concerned. She she said, look, okay, you’re flying now, listen, what happens if the power goes out in your plane? And I thought that’s a pretty fair question.

*Steven McClelland * (00:02:07) – I said, well, I’ve learned this. The plane actually has this dual magneto system, so that doesn’t need it doesn’t need power. It can still operate if it if it doesn’t have power. And she goes, okay, well, what if the engine quits? And I said, okay, that’s a problem. Probably going to land the plane like every pilot has ever landed a plane. What goes up must come down. And and I said, Honey, a good landing is one you can walk away from. A great one is one. You can reuse the plane. Right. And so she didn’t find much comfort in that. And she said, look, I really think you need to think more about this from a succession planning. What would happen if you die? And I thought that’s fair. So that was kind of the the reason I thought I need I need to delve into this. I need to put together a plan. And I know succession planning is not that hot of a topic, right? It’s not something that we get excited about, right? Everyone’s here to learn how to grow their practice, their thinking about how to get more employees.

*Steven McClelland * (00:03:05) – Right? Vas efficiency, all that good stuff. But the truth is, Stephen Covey said you got to start with the end in mind. We do that when we implement a new system or a new app, and I can’t think of a more end than actually the end, right? And I was surprised by how much we actually spoke about death earlier in the discussion this morning. It’s something that we all have to address. And I guess as an estate planning attorney, we have far horizons, right? We are always thinking about contingencies and the what ifs. Right. That’s really what gets clients into the door. That’s what they appreciate, the fact that that we do have a plan. So here we are. It’s not to be morbid, but just to give some clarity on our lives, in our practice. If you do estate planning, this is just a great add on that you can share with your your clients. So here is a dumpster. In a lot of ways, my state is very, very unique.

*Steven McClelland * (00:04:00) – The attorneys, there is some glory that they simply die in the courtroom or die at their office. I don’t know if your states are like that, but we have people that just will not give it up. We had a gentleman in my community. He was an attorney and he was dying of cancer and was taking clients two weeks before he passed. This is just kind of a common thing I see. I don’t know all the reasons behind it, but I don’t want to be working in my 90s as another gentleman is. I think at some point you got to go on to different different pastures. So we’re going to talk about that particular succession plan. But I have to tell you, if we can go to the next slide, that the reason I am here is because of a succession plan. Many of us stand on the shoulders of giants that preceded us. It could have been a mentor. It could have been some other attorney that you worked for. And that is Jim there in the middle.

*Steven McClelland * (00:04:53) – He was the giant whose shoulders that I stood on. He brought me on in law school to do estate planning. Didn’t even know what state planning was when I was in law school, and he taught me everything he knew. And he had mentioned, well, I had this rare form of cancer that could come back in a few years. He said About 5 or 10 years. And sure enough, I remember the fall day. He came into the office. He said, Stephen, I just got back from the doctor and they said, My cancer has come back. It is terminal. And they gave him about a year to live. And so it’s a conversation that you have with someone but is hard to swallow, right, to how that works. And so he basically said to me, he said, look, I have a year left. I want to spend it with my family. I want to travel until I get sick. I don’t want to turn this over to you. All of it is yours.

*Steven McClelland * (00:05:45) – And that was we did the same practice area, but that was a lot to enter. Emotions to substitute counsel on all these cases, to send letters to the clients and his past clients. At that point, it really wasn’t really about me. It was about, you know, helping him, you know, transition. And for him, the ability to walk away, the ability for him to spend time with it was worth more than anything, right? The fact that he could do that, there was no amount of money I could have paid him for that. He just wanted time. That’s what he wanted. And I was able to do that. And one of the interesting things in the state of Arkansas, he sent a letter to the bar and said, look, I’m dying and I need to surrender my license. They wouldn’t allow that. They wanted him to go in front of a judge to declare that he was was dying. And and he brought that letter to me. This is ridiculous.

*Steven McClelland * (00:06:38) – I don’t have time to go see a judge to tell him I’m dying. Will you just send him a death certificate? And that’s what we ended up doing. It was kind of a weird system. I don’t know why they needed it, but in our state, that’s the way to do it. That he taught me how to say goodbye. Does that make sense? But I’ll never forget, on this day, on September 18th, 2020, my wife said, Hey, husband, can you take the crib and take it to the dumpster? We’re done having kids. And I was so elated after three daughters, I thought, that’s enough, right? And so I get to take this this crib and disassemble it and throw it away is very therapeutic for me to do that. And as I’m giving the utility bill to the lady, I see a woman. I thought I recognized her. I wasn’t quite sure, but it wasn’t until I got up to the dumpster. I looked inside and I saw all these banker’s boxes, like, what are these banker’s boxes doing in here? And I looked a little bit and some of them had toppled over.

*Steven McClelland * (00:07:29) – And I realized that this was all firm files from an attorney who was retiring and the check statements were out, you know, just duplicate checks and the client names. And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, if you were a thief, this would be a gold mine, right? This particular attorney did a lot of adoption work, which I think is pretty private information and dealt with a lot of kids. And I thought, this is terrible, right? We have things like shred it in Arkansas. Don’t think that we don’t have those kind of companies. They actually come to your office and do this for you. So I couldn’t understand why you would think she would know better. You know, how you end things does matter. And she was married to the judge in town. And I’m thinking, you guys have got to know better than this, right? But essentially what they did was they dumped all their files and they don’t even live in the state anymore. They just got out. Right. So to say this is bad is to say that Titanic sustained a little paint image, Right? This is not the way to run our practices.

*Steven McClelland * (00:08:27) – This is not the way to set up the next person for success.

Speaker 1 (00:08:34) – The Guild is maximum lawyers, community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a guild member, you’re granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason, who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential. During the hot seat sessions. You’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you’re facing in your practice. For a limited time, you can get your ticket at the lowest earlybird price head to max law events to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming Guild mastermind.

*Steven McClelland * (00:09:22) – Statistically speaking, a rocket lawyer did a study back in 2017 and found that 72% of entrepreneurs do not have succession plan. And I imagine that number is probably around the same amount of attorneys, right? We are so busy in our practices and doing things and we’re trying to implement new systems, right? That we forget about having a plan in case something dies.

*Steven McClelland * (00:09:49) – There’s a great quote. I worked for an attorney many years ago and he said this. He said, It’s not the practice of law, it’s the administration of law that’s difficult. That’s basically what maximum lawyer is. It’s the administration of law, not. Of practice of law that we need help with. Right? No one’s telling you how to file family law cases. It’s the administration. And and this is part of that administration component. There’s two main things you got to worry about. You got to worry about incapacity and death. Right? I don’t know which one is worse. I had a funeral director tell me it’s better to be seen than viewed. I don’t know if that’s true. But in this context, literally, as I was preparing this, one of the attorneys in town had some type of a stroke and ran off the road and hit a tree, had to be airlifted to a hospital. Right. And he was out for for three weeks. And he was a solo. I don’t know what his plan was, but you got to be careful.

*Steven McClelland * (00:10:44) – There is short term and long term disability that’s beyond the scope of this presentation. But those things can happen suddenly, right? Like an airplane falling out of the sky is pretty sudden. And like my partner, you know, he had some indication he had a year and a year goes by pretty quickly. The truth is, no one in this room knows when they’ve seen more sunsets than they’ll ever see. Right. We don’t know if had a crystal ball would be amazing. I tell you exactly what to do. Those expiration dates that were given to us, you just don’t know, right? So you got to have some type of plan as you’re planning. You got to prepare for four different individuals. The first is you got to think about your employees, right? Many of them have stuck with you. They’ve helped you. Some of them are associates. You know, their main concern is, do I still have a job? For me, one of the ways I try to set them up for success is to make sure that my payroll is set 3 or 4 months in the future.

*Steven McClelland * (00:11:42) – I like to do that because I’m lazy and I don’t like to do it every month, but it’s already set. So if I did die on the way home and they’re at least going to get paid for 3 or 4 months, I don’t know if they’ll they’ll actually work. But they got money coming in, right? So you got to have some income in the bank to do that. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but, you know, they’re going to have to find another job eventually. Right. Put a reference letter for him. You know, dear future employer, if you’re reading this, I’m sad to report that I’ve passed and cannot highly recommend so-and-so has been a great employee. Put that in your file so they have something. I mean, how impressive would that be to their new employer to know that was the reason why they left. Simple takes, you know, five minutes. Do it for all your employees. Your clients are also concerned, right? Because they have legal matters.

*Steven McClelland * (00:12:28) – They’ve paid your retainers. They have case files and confidentiality. So I mentioned in my bio, my wife’s a medical provider and very smart, very brilliant. But when it comes to law, she has zero interest, right? She would not even know where to begin. And having done a state planning now for ten years, talked to thousands of families, okay, the number one goals my clients have are I don’t want to leave a mess for my family. That’s their number one goal. And the number one thing that children say, you know, is I don’t even know where to start. Right. Is no plan. Those are the two scariest things to hear. I don’t know where to start. Right. So you got to think about your family for them. You got to think about how to make it simple. When I was a solo, I had an agreement with an attorney in town that he would take over my case files. Right. And I know the struggle is all of us think, well, that attorney doesn’t do as well as I do.

*Steven McClelland * (00:13:26) – Right? We all think that. And that kind of prevents us from reaching out to them, that no one could take care of the clients the way that we do. Right. But the truth is, cemeteries are full of irreplaceable attorneys, right? Your clients will go somewhere else. They will find somebody else. Right? So you’ve got to make sure that you have an attorney that can help with that transition, a process. Also, third parties. You got utility accounts, right? You got to pay them to keep the lights on. Right. And so our our firm uses one pass and we heard about it. I really like it because you can set up manage folders. And so for the utility accounts, they have all that information. They’ve got notes in there, so I can share that with them and updated as need be. Right. It’s just a great way if I die, they’ve got access to those things. So what can you do today? I think, number one philosophy, you got to impress upon your people to have all the files in such a way that if you died, if they died, that somebody could pick it up and be able to take that file and work it.

*Steven McClelland * (00:14:22) – Okay. And so encourage them not just to put notes in there, but the question is, what are we waiting on and are we waiting on a deadline or are we waiting, waiting on the court? Are we waiting on, you know, a client to get us something? So there’s something in there about how the the next step in the case file very, very important. Make sure your accounting is up to date so someone has access to to that information, list your utilities. You got to do that. Make sure all your hearings are on the calendar. I don’t know why, but but some some attorneys have different systems. And I’m like, you got to put it all in one place. Right? Because that that was helpful to me because when I. Filed motions for all the hearings that were said on my partner’s calendar is very simple to do that, right? I had access to his calendar. I already mentioned setting up a payroll 3 to 4 months. But the bottom line is it’s about mindset.

*Steven McClelland * (00:15:13) – It’s about talking about it, thinking about it and doing a plan. Many of us, the problem is we want a perfect plan before we do anything right. And a lot of times that just it doesn’t happen. So my advice is a good succession plan that is done is better than a perfect one that never gets done. Right. Don’t let your families be the ones who say, well, this is what dad or mom wanted, right? This is how they wanted it to go. Put it in writing. It takes a little bit of time. And so the key documents. So at the end of my next slide, I have a QR code where if you put your name and email address, I’ll email you my documents, redacted it. But of all these documents for you, okay. To give you a head start, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, but it is for informational purposes only. I’m not warranting it’s going to work in all states. But the first thing is a checklist.

*Steven McClelland * (00:16:06) – What does your family and in my case have an associate attorney? What are the first things that they have to do? Prioritize that for them. Break it down so they know who to call and they have that information. Okay. Number two, a business power of attorney. So if I have a stroke, very common in my family. Elder men have strokes when they’re 75. Right. So I’m probably not going to be flying a plane in my when I’m 75 have a business power of attorney so that my employee, my associate, she has access to the bank account, she has some access. We set up a separate firm expense account. But the main one, I’m the only one that’s on there. Okay. I foolishly asked. I asked the bank. I said no. Can I put a beneficiary on this business account like a pod? We do that a lot of times in estate planning. And she laughed at me and she said, Well, businesses don’t die. I thought, Oh, I didn’t think about that.

*Steven McClelland * (00:16:55) – So you’ve got to have a power of attorney. You’ve got to have documents that allow for your people to access that account. Okay. Agreement to close practice. This was important into December. Every year we’re cash basis, so we have to pay taxes on what’s in our account. Kind of stinks. But in January, you have retained earnings, right? And so I worked out an agreement with how much of that retained earnings is part of the buyout to my wife. Does that make sense? I didn’t want that all to just go to the firm. But there’s significant amount of money in there and I didn’t want that just to think, oh, that’s all yours, right? To have that buyout now, it’s not perfect, but the fact that my wife doesn’t have a bunch of grief, it was definitely worth it. I got a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement and a letter from the attorney to clients, which is very helpful. I want to set up my associate for success. So there’s a letter that says, Hey, I have died.

*Steven McClelland * (00:17:47) – I have the utmost confidence in my associate and you’ll love working with her. And I appreciate you being a client. I can’t tell you a better way to set someone else up for success. So I thank you all for your good attention. I hope that helped. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Last quote I have for you It’s not the load that breaks you, it’s how you carry it. And I love Maximum Lawyer because it teaches all of us how to carry that load just a little bit better. So don’t ever hesitate to reach out to me. Thanks.

The post The Last Billable Hour with Steven McClelland appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to start your own law firm? In this episode, guest Audra Doyle shares her journey from being an elementary music specialist to becoming an immigration lawyer and opening her own firm. Audra talks about the stress and high caseload at her previous job, but also the invaluable knowledge she gained from it. 

She also shares how she had to pivot during the pandemic to get more clients, including using social media platforms like TikTok — growing a massive following. Then losing her TikTok account … 

Audra shares her journey of losing her entire staff and starting over to build her team up again. But the most valuable lesson she shares is about mindset and staying focused on what is most important for the firm. No matter what happens.

Audra shares how she manages to stay positive through exercise, living in the moment, and setting boundaries. Tune in to learn more about the importance of mindset and how it can help you achieve your goals, even when you need to hit the restart button, again. 

Episode Highlight:

02:13 Audra talks about her journey from 2007 to 2019 when she opened up her firm

06:48 The stress and high caseload at the immigration firm, but also the invaluable knowledge Audra gained from it

12:95 Audra talks about her experience with posting on TikTok, losing her staff, and hiring new case managers instead of paralegals

18:46 Managing anxiety, including exercise and living in the moment, and the importance of setting boundaries

19:03 Audra shares her vision for her firm, including the goal of having a team that allows her to be the CEO and possibly hiring another attorney

20:27 Audra talks about the importance of mindset in running a law firm and how it affects the numbers

Jim’s Hack: Make a button on the homepage of your cell phone to open Pipedrive and check your numbers. Check numbers once a day – the more you check the more you make. 

Audra’s Tip: Answer common client questions in pre-made FAQ videos so all you have to do when a client emails a question is send then an email template with a video that answers the question for you – saving you time! 

Tyson’s Tip: Read the book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport

Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

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Transcript: Starting From Zero Again and Again with Audra Doyle

Jim Hacking:
And welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I’m Jim Hacking.

Tyson Mutrux:
And I’m Tyson Mutrix, what’s up Jimmy!

Jim Hacking:
Oh well, you know Tyson, life is good. Summertime, summertime, my daughter just finished eighth grade today, it was her last day of school. The boys are, two of the three boys are home for the summer so life is good.

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s interesting to me because like our kids… They started summer school today. So they were out last week. And they’re not gonna go the whole summer, but we wanted to get Jackson especially acclimated to middle school because it’s a big deal. So they’re gonna go a couple days this week and then maybe a couple days next week and then periodically throughout the summer whenever we need a little bit of childcare coverage. But yeah, you’re right, life is good. It’s exciting.

Jim Hacking:
You want to go ahead and introduce our guest today?

Tyson Mutrux:
I absolutely do. I’m very excited about our guest. She is Audra Doyle, and she is the owner slash attorney of Doyle Law in Atlanta, Georgia. Open since 2019, her firm focuses on family and employment-based immigration law with a special focus on self-sponsored employment-based green card applications. Audra has been practicing immigration law since 2007 and is a recipient of the AILA Pro Bono Benefactor Award, and we’ll get into more later on. Audra, thank you and welcome to the show.

Audra Doyle:
Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here and hope you guys are doing well.

Jim Hacking:
Thanks, Audra. Hey Tyson, your mic is a little low. It’s like.

Tyson Mutrux:
Is that better?

Jim Hacking:
Much better, thanks.

Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, yeah. Thanks for letting me know.

Jim Hacking:
Sure. So, Ms. Audra,

Audra Doyle:
Yes.

Jim Hacking:
it’s great to have you on the show finally. It’s way overdue and Tyson and I have both found your positive nature and your sense of humor and your. Approach to life to be something that we really enjoy and we like we like having you in the guild and just hanging around But for those of our listeners who don’t know you Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that story from 2007 to 2019 when you opened up your firm?

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely. So yeah, 2007 became a lawyer and I knew halfway through law school that I wanted to practice immigration law. I specifically knew that the type of cases that were my favorite and I’m lucky enough to have been able to stay in that field the whole time, which is US immigration, family and employment based cases. Particularly, I enjoy working with folks who are sponsoring themselves. So scientists, entrepreneurs. artists, musicians, all those types of people that don’t have a job where they would be able to be sponsored by an employer. That is my niche. I just love it. And one thing that I love about immigration law is getting to meet so many interesting people from around the world. So it really does check all my boxes. So 2007, I started out with a boutique law firm, you know, had a high client load. downtown Atlanta, corporate job, and I was pretty burnt out by 2009. So the opportunity came for me to go back to a smaller law firm, smaller setting, where I had complete control, or I would say 90% complete control over the clients that I chose and the clients that I was gonna work with back into my niche again. And so I took that job in 09. My boss retired in 2019 and I actually purchased her law firm, which was wonderful because I purchased the goodwill of the firm. It was 20 years old by the time she retired. I had that wonderful client base. I had a Rolodex of connections and that really helped me to open my own law firm based on what I had already been doing with many of those clients. So from 2019 until now, It’s been Doyle Law and I have also really enjoyed being a firm owner. So I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to do things that I’m interested in and that I’m not bored with my job at all.

Tyson Mutrux:
So this is not your first career, this is your second career,

Audra Doyle:
Correct.

Tyson Mutrux:
so tell us about that, what’d you do before, and then what was the transition like?

Audra Doyle:
Well, I asked my husband, hey, am I going to be allowed to tell the story of how I became a lawyer? He said, yeah, go ahead and tell them. Okay. So my husband and

Jim Hacking:
Thank

Audra Doyle:
I

Jim Hacking:
you.

Audra Doyle:
met in music school. We are both music majors and I was an elementary music specialist. So I have a specialist certification, taught elementary school music for five years, and that was my career. I knew it all along. That’s what I wanted to do. Well, two music teachers in the family is one too many. And we discovered quickly that with the school systems, we were never gonna be able to work even remotely close together. So one of us had to do something different. And one day for my birthday, he signed me up for the LSAT. And he gave me an LSAT study guide. So

Jim Hacking:
Wow.

Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, that’s fantastic.

Audra Doyle:
that is how that

Tyson Mutrux:
Yes.

Audra Doyle:
happened. He said, well, you never got around to signing up, so I just went ahead and signed up for you. Okay, fine. I’ll take the LSAT. So I passed, of course, and got into a few law schools. And another thing, here’s the thing about my life, never say never, right? So I said, oh, I’m never moving to Atlanta. I don’t want to live in the big city. Well, here I am. Because the next phase was, where am I going to go to law school? I got a scholarship to Georgia State University. So I had signed up for the University of Georgia. I called them. from my school that I was working at said, hey, I’ll bring you my deposit this afternoon. Round about lunchtime, I get an emergency phone call while I’m teaching. They’re like, Mrs. Doyle, you have an emergency call and run up the hall. So you know schools, the halls are very long. So, you know, going up the hall, it’s Georgia State. And they’re like, hello, we would like to offer you a full scholarship to come to Georgia State. So I laughed and thought it was a joke, but it was real. And that’s how I ended up in Atlanta. going to Georgia State and, you know, immigration law just kind of fell in my lap as well. I took an internship and discovered I loved it. So that’s my journey.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s awesome.

Jim Hacking:
When you, that is an awesome story. Go ahead, we’re gonna add something, Audra.

Audra Doyle:
Yeah, I just said I’m not mad at him for signing me up for the LSAT.

Jim Hacking:
We had a friend in law school whose wife bought herself a red Mercedes without telling her husband. So I think signing someone up for the LSAT a little bit better than

Audra Doyle:
Yeah,

Jim Hacking:
that.

Audra Doyle:
absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
So talk to us about your life at that immigration firm that you were at, the big firm. What did you learn that you liked? And what did you learn that you wanted to do differently when you ever were to open your own

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
firm?

Audra Doyle:
Well, I ended it on a good note, but as I said, the stress was just so much that I knew I could not make a career out of it. For employment-based immigration in the larger law firms, usually you’ll have customers who are big corporations and you’ll be dealing with, for example, working visas, you’re going to file 10 to 20 working visas, maybe in a month and So the caseload was very, very high. I also did not get to choose my caseload. So even though I, as a lawyer, would feel that the case was not strong enough, I was directed that I had to go make it happen. Even if the facts are bad, the law is not on our side, etc., that’s what the client wanted. So I felt like I was pretty constrained and what I could advise people to do and the types of cases that I thought were… good to be filed with immigration. And the hours were just really long as well. The commute was really long. And after a while, I was burnt out. Now, what I learned at that firm was invaluable. I discovered that I really like the technicalities of immigration law. It gave me a very, very deep well of knowledge. that I still use to this day. So I’m very thankful to have worked there and to have had that experience.

n

Tyson Mutrux:
Audra, what do you think now that you’ve got some years under

Audra Doyle:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
your belt, like what do you think if you were to go back and do it all over again, what do you think you would have changed about how you’ve done things? If anything, maybe you’d be doing it the exact same way. I just wonder

Audra Doyle:
Hello.

Tyson Mutrux:
because now you’ve got some experience under your belt, right? So I just wonder what you’d change.

Audra Doyle:
I think one thing I would change is I would want to open my firm sooner than I did. I wish that I could have opened this firm maybe 2012 or 2013 instead of 2019. Because I feel like I’m just getting started, even though I’m in the middle of my career. I’m just getting started as a business owner three years in. And I feel like I would have been further in my career, in my business. you know, than if I had started earlier. So that’s one thing I would definitely change. As far as the field, I love it. One thing about being an immigration lawyer, it doesn’t translate very well to other things. So, you know, if I wanted to add a practice area, I think it would be, it would be a lot of work to go out and learn another practice area at this point.

Jim Hacking:
Audra, I was wondering if you’d be willing to share sort of where your clients come from and then if you could tell your TikTok story if you’re willing.

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely. And I have big news about the TikTok story. So I’ll share that at

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Audra Doyle:
the end. Okay. So I would say it’s half and half at this point. My clients definitely are those referrals, all those relationships that I’ve made from the old firm. And then the other half, I have had to be really nimble. I have had to get savvy. And I started doing that in 2020 when business just about dried up. I had to… I had to pivot, figure out how to get clients because people were just not calling. So I decided, first thing was to post something on Facebook every day. Started doing that. Then I heard about TikTok and I saw these dancing lawyers on TikTok. That’s not me. You will never catch me dancing on TikTok. But I thought, you know what, I have something to say. I have information to share about how to get through this process. the right way, the wrong way, you know, do’s and don’ts of immigration. So I said, I can make a 15 second video. And it’s so easy. With your knowledge area, it is so easy. You could sit here and talk here for eight hours about what you know. And so it was easy for me to figure out how to break that down into a 15 minute clip, smile, be engaging, look at your clients. And I figured out that yes, I can do that. So I started posting one TikTok every day, one Facebook post. one TikTok and I dedicated myself to that. Jim, previously, while I was still at the old law firm, I had opened a YouTube channel. So that was already underway. So I noticed that my TikTok channel blew up. It was really amazing. I think I had like 65,000 followers on TikTok and then they shut my channel down. It was horrible. It was last fall. was receiving cold calls, about half of my cold calls were coming from TikTok. So that deep sixed my cold calls right there. It was really terrible. And I had to once again pivot. Um, so I opened up another channel. I figured out what was the problem. And I think it was putting my business phone number on the TikTok channel. So heads up everybody. I’m pretty sure that’s why they shut me down. They kept saying, you’re listing personal information. And I kept one. What are you talking about? And I’m pretty sure it was the phone number. So I have learned and I never post my phone number now on the TikTok videos. And so far I have not had another video taken down. But the big news is that as of last night, I’ve reached 10,000 followers on the new channel.

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Audra Doyle:
So I’m so excited about that. It doesn’t mean anything, but it was just a personal goal to try and come back from zero. And it feels really good.

Jim Hacking:
You have such a great attitude though. It’s just, I mean, Tyson, we say it all the time, just Audra’s a very positive person and I think that story exhibits it nicely.

Audra Doyle:
Thank you. Thank you. There.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s huge.

Audra Doyle:
And let me share with you. My life is not all hearts and flowers. I have, to be completely honest, I have dealt with anxiety. I’ve dealt with depression. And I’ve had to figure out, what do I need to do to help myself? So just sharing with everybody out there, if you’re seeing that you’re struggling in some way, it’s OK to go get help. And I’m coming from a family where that was taboo to even say that I need to go talk with someone. But it’s 2023, it’s not taboo anymore. And it has really helped me to grow as a person to seek that help.

Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I’m glad you said that because I am going to ask you about something tough that you did have to go through. And that’s if you’re comfortable talking about it is you losing your entire staff

Audra Doyle:
Yes. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux:
nin 2022 and going through that. So what was that like and how do you rebound from it? Because that’s not easy.

Audra Doyle:
That was pretty awful. It was pretty bad and it was shocking. I was not expecting it to happen. I had my paralegal, he was fully trained, he was amazing. And another law firm in town hired him away. I had my executive assistant who was also amazing, but her career is in the movies. And so she got a job at a movie studio. So I was like, of course, please go. The other one, she said, oh, my brother wants me to work with him. Of course, go with it. So each person, you know, it was nothing wrong with the firm because I wanted to see, you know, is there anything going on wrong here that’s making people leaving, but I truly don’t think there was. Life just happened. And it sucked really bad because I had to hire a whole new team starting in I think around April is when they all started. So I was starting from zero. And once again, it’s kind of like taking a step backwards. You know, you’ve got momentum in your firm. Everybody knows their job. Everybody knows how to do things. Everybody knows how to talk on the phone. To zero, nobody knows anything. So last year, for the whole year, I feel like I was training and getting people up to speed. And I think, Jim, you can speak to this. You know, training in immigration paralegal takes quite a while. So one thing I noticed, and I’ll talk about my team in a minute, is that In 2022, 2023, paralegals are very hard to find. I don’t know if you guys have experienced that, but boy, it is so hard to find good help. So I had to be very creative. I hired case managers instead of paralegals because I had to have somebody just doing the work, making the copies, printing the documents, drafting the forms. It’s like, okay, we can get some case managers in here. I’ll be handling the paralegal work and just try to make it work until I find a good paralegal. It never happened. I never found a qualified ready to go fully trained paralegal. So I in this winter spring 2023, I decided to change what I’m asking for. And I said I want to hire a case manager posted it on deed will train the goal is for you to become a paralegal. No experience necessary. I got so many applicants of people who want to be a paralegal. They have zero experience, no immigration experience. And I found a gem. But she had never been a paralegal. So my previous ad wasn’t working. She never applied. But she actually went to law school in Brazil. So I know she’s got the legal mind that I can train and turn her into a paralegal one day.

Jim Hacking:
We’ve had the exact same experience. We’ve run the same job posting, one as an admin, one as a paralegal, but the description is exactly the same. It’s the title of paralegal that puts people off because they think they need to have a paralegal certificate.

Audra Doyle:
Exactly. Yep. It was just a ghost town with applicants. And then I made the change, said, you know, we’ll train. You can start from zero. I just need to have somebody with the brain cells up there that can, you know, learn and grow and be willing to do some tough things with immigration. And I found somebody that I really hope is going to stay with me a long time.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today, Audra Doyle, immigration lawyer extraordinaire out of Atlanta. Audra, talk to us a little bit about your mindset. Like how, you talked about anxiety and depression and I think a lot of us have suffered from those kinds of things, but how do you sort of on a day-to-day basis keep yourself balanced and keep that positive attitude that we’ve seen for so long?

Audra Doyle:
trying a lot of different things. So if something’s not working for me, I know that I have to move on and try something different. So Jim, I actually took a note from you. Something that I started doing when I get home from work is I go get on the treadmill. Just take myself a nice 20 minute walk, decompress, and it really clears my head. So right now, exercise is something that is helping my mindset, helping me to stay grounded. Another thing that I try to… do a couple of things is I try to live in the moment. I’m not looking towards the future and worrying about what might happen tomorrow. I’m just focusing on what can I do today? What can I do in this moment to move myself forward, my firm forward? If I’m with my family, I’m in that moment with them. And I try to turn off the lawyer brain and the business owner brain. That’s very hard to do, but I really try to make a conscious effort to do that. The last thing that I learned through therapy and a lot of reading is I made boundaries for myself. I’m from Georgia. I am a woman. There I was taught that there are no boundaries and anything that anybody tells me to do, that’s what I need to go do, right? I was not, I don’t think I gave myself permission to say no. And these days I have boundaries. I know, you know, I can’t do everything. And I give myself permission to say no. to not take on difficult cases, to make sure clients are staying in their lane as we say, and it has just made my life a lot more peaceful.

Tyson Mutrux:
I love that. And again, I just love your positivity.

Audra Doyle:
Thank

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s

Audra Doyle:
you.

Tyson Mutrux:
always just great. So what’s on the horizon for you? Do you have these big grand plans of having this massive immigration firm or are you wanting to sort of stay smaller? What are your plans for the future?

Audra Doyle:
I have a really clear plan and vision, and I’ve been open since 2019 and I haven’t met it yet. So until I do that, I don’t want to make my vision any larger. So I want to have my firm to a place where I do not have to physically be here, telling everybody what to do all day long. That’s the goal. And now I feel like I have a team where I can start to really push towards that goal. And that will want to give myself more freedom. to be the finder and not the minder. And I remember that old podcast you guys did, those three things, finder, minder, grinder. So last year I was just grinding it out. This year I’m minding a lot more. And in the future I would like to be the CEO. I want to be looking over the firm and possibly even have an attorney to start signing the forms instead of me. Because if I’m the only attorney here, I’m never going to be able to let go of everything like I need to. So I think after this paralegal really takes off, the next hire for me should be another attorney.

Jim Hacking:
I know that you’re going to be joining us at the mastermind

Audra Doyle:
Yeah.

Jim Hacking:
in Denver and I’m excited about seeing you talk to us a little bit about your mindset when it comes to personal development Sort of joining the guild, you know mindset stuff like what? What what’s your frame of reference when it comes to trying to decide whether or not to do something like that?

Audra Doyle:
That’s a great question, Jim. And that is the reason I actually signed up for the Guild Mastermind in July, because I really debated, do I really need to go? Do I really need to work on my mindset with Dr. Selk? You know, oh, it’s not a technical guild thing. But I thought to myself, you know, honestly, if my mindset is not right, I can see the numbers go down every single time. And I’ve noticed that when I am the most focused, You know, I am good with myself. My firm functions at its best. So I thought, you know what, actually mindset for me seems to be what I need to focus on next. Because in this job, you can get lost in the day to day. I was telling Tyson, you know, before we started that today I had a bunch of mushrooms pop up. You know, you look out in the yard at night, there’s nothing, you look out one minute later, there’s mushrooms everywhere. Well, that’s how the day went. And so dealing with all those little issues has taken my mind off of what is on my calendar, what I need to be focusing on, making my YouTube video, new business development. And so if I can’t step back and see that and see, all right, I’m down here in the weeds, I need to step back again, and I need to stay focused on what is most important for this firm. and it is very easy for me to get off track. So hopefully this summer, I’m gonna find some more tools to help me.

Jim Hacking:
That’s going to be the clip that Becca is going to take off and put in the social feed.

Audra Doyle:
of the pressure.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I love it. So it’s funny to say that about the mindset because I never would have believed it. I was like, there’s no way that it has that big of an effect. But since I’ve been working with Jason, it’s got a massive

Audra Doyle:
It,

Tyson Mutrux:
effect. It definitely starts with mindset

Audra Doyle:
yeah, and another

Tyson Mutrux:
completely.

Audra Doyle:
thing, you know, I’ll be open and honest, is procrastination. I think a lot of us procrastination goes hand in hand with anxiety over being perfect. And I definitely have that disease where I want it to be perfect. And then when I know it’s not gonna be perfect, or, you know, just is really hard to execute. So I’m looking for more tools to help me not, the good is better done. then the perfect is not done. And I really want to focus on those types of things with Dr. Silk this summer.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. I can’t

Audra Doyle:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
wait. Well, we are at time, so we’re going to wrap things up. I’ve really enjoyed this. So this is great. It’s sad that we’re going to wrap things up, but I’ve really enjoyed it. So I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. There’s a lot of great information being shared on a daily basis, on an hourly basis. So join us there. If you’ve not, just go to Facebook, search Maximum Lawyer. If you want a higher level conversation, go to maxlawguild.com with people like Audra. MaxLawGuild.com and then you’ll have the opportunity once you’ve joined to join us at the Quarterly Masterminds and other things like Jason Selt coming in the next couple of months Nice little retreat out in Denver, which is awesome We also had the Zapathon and we’ve also had the video workshop that Jim put on which was amazing And so join us there go to MaxLawGuild.com and then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode If you’ll give us a five-star review, we will greatly appreciate it. Audra What’s actually I did it again Jimbo Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week? That’s twice today. Jim, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking:
Speaking of the guild, we had an interesting discussion in the guild the other day. It was one of the, I would say newer members, I think, was asking about how often law firm owners should be looking at their numbers. And different people chimed in. And just for what it’s worth, I have Pipe Drive set up so that I can keep track because I’m sort of responsible for signups and intake. And so I have it all tricked out so that I have it now. It’s just a button on my iPhone. I made the webpage a button in Safari so that I can look and see. Exactly what the numbers are as far as you know new new leads in how many contracts were sent how many were signed? How many people paid that day? So to me it’s it’s sort of at least once a day kind of a thing Where you need to be checking your numbers daily? I think and the more I will say this the more I’ve checked my numbers the more money I’ve made So I used to not want to check my numbers at all and say I’m not a numbers guy I don’t want to know about this stuff, but Certainly as you get bigger and bigger, you really got to start paying attention to this stuff because it can be really important for cash flow and other reasons.

Tyson Mutrux:
Everything you need to know is in the numbers. So I agree with you, Mba. All right, Audra, now it’s your turn. What is your tip or hack of the

Audra Doyle:
Okay,

Tyson Mutrux:
week?

Audra Doyle:
nthis is hopefully a very helpful tip to everyone. I got tired of answering the same questions all the time. So what I did was made a series of videos on YouTube and they’re unlisted, so they’re only for my clients, and it answers common questions. So a client will say, oh, I’ve got a biometrics appointment coming. What’s going on? What do I have to do? Click video done. And I have a template email. I put the video in there so they can read it, they can see it, they can hear it, and their question will be answered. And it has really reduced my time in answering those everyday questions.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. Very good stuff. Mine is from the book. I talked about the book. on the last episode, but this one’s from that book. It’s from Cal Newport, and it’s a way of reducing distractions and eruptions, making your day more efficient, and it’s a very simple thing. I don’t know if you all use Audra, if you use Slack or something like that. I think Jim, I think you use Slack, but I don’t know about you, but I bet you get a bunch of messages throughout the day. And so something we’ve started is, we just started this week, so we’re in the beginning stages of it, but we’re implementing office hours. has office

Audra Doyle:
Yes.

Tyson Mutrux:
hours and they’re at different times and they’re not at the same time. And so if someone needs something, they’ll hold on to their questions or comments or concerns and they’ll reach out to you during that time. And so I’m looking forward to it at the amount of distractions going down. I think will be awesome. And so it’s just a, I look forward to lower anxiety is what I’m looking forward to, but office hours.

Jim Hacking:
I was just wondering about this the other day. Do you know, like, could I say, like, from 10 to 12, everybody’s Slack is parked and idle, or, like, can we do that as a whole firm, or do what everybody has to do it individually?

Tyson Mutrux:
Um, I, I think you could do, I mean, you could do that if you wanted to, you can do whatever you want, but yeah, uh, I, I actually think that that’s a really smart idea there are, uh, there’s a, there’s a, uh, a strategy it’s called XP. I can’t remember what it stands for, but he talks about in the book where. Like. What they do is when they show up to work, they set eight hours. And they’re all coders. And so for them to be in Silicon Valley and only working 40 hours a week is actually quite low. But what they do is they come in, they lock in. Like they’re working from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. or whatever the hours are. And they’re not sending messages. If they wanna talk to someone, they actually have to go and physically walk over and talk to them. But it’s kind of what you’re talking about where they’ve like for a certain set of hours, in. And so yeah, you could absolutely do that. I think it would be harder for your leads team to do something like that because of calls coming in and all that. But I think for other teams, absolutely. They just lock in. They’re working for that time. There’s like zero interruptions. That’s good. So I think that’s a good question. But Audra, thank you so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate it. It’s always a pleasure talking

Audra Doyle:
Same.

Tyson Mutrux:
to you.

Audra Doyle:
I enjoyed this so much. Thank you guys for asking.

Jim Hacking:
Bye, Audra.

Audra Doyle:
Bye-bye.

Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. Bye, Audro.

Jim Hacking:
Bye, Tyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
See ya.

The post Starting From Zero Again and Again with Audra Doyle appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you struggling to attract clients to your law firm? Are you finding it hard to stand out in a sea of competitors? Nicole Christie, a lawyer and one of the speakers at the MaxLawCon 22. Nicole has some advice for you: niche down!

Nicole shares her personal experience with starting her own law firm and struggling to be found on Google due to offering too many services. She emphasized the importance of niching down and becoming an expert in a specific area of law.

Here are five benefits of niching down your law firm:

1. 1. Build a Strong Reputation: By focusing on a specific area of law, you can become known as an expert in that field. This can help build your reputation and make it easier for clients to find yo
   2. Gain Referrals: Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. When you become known for your expertise in a particular area of law, you are more likely to receive referrals from satisfied clients.
   3. Target Specific Groups: By narrowing down your area of practice, you can target specific groups of people who are more likely to need your services. For example, if you focus on immigration law, you can target immigrants and their families.
   4. Increase Sales: When you become known as an expert in your field, you can charge higher rates for your services. This can lead to increased sales and revenue for your law firm.
   5. Build Confidence: When you are an expert in your field, you are more confident in your abilities. This can translate to better client relationships and a more successful law practice.

Niching down your law firm can have a positive impact on your success. Don’t be afraid to focus on what you are good at and become known as an expert in your field. Master one area of marketing at a time and consider speaking engagements and free conferences as a way to get your name out there. Happy niching!

Episode Highlights:

00:38 Nicole, discusses the benefits of niching down in a law firm and shares her personal experience with finding her niche. She also provides examples of different niches within the legal field

09:04 Nicole discusses the benefits of finding a niche in the legal field and shares her personal experience

13:48 Tips on marketing a niche law firm, including leveraging social media, advertising to churches, and mastering one marketing strategy at a time Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Nicole:

• • Website  
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  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin 
  • Youtube
  • Twitter

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcripts: Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Nicole Christie as we share her talk. Niche Your Way to Notoriety. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:17) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Nicole Christie (00:00:38) – All right, so I say niche, but you’ll say niche. Okay. So we’re going to go forward. So I want to apologize. I had a lot of thoughts that came after this slide, so we’re going to pop through some of them. But today I want to talk to you about niching and we want you to get to a point where you can take your law firm from being this all and what do they call it, a jack of all trades, master of none, to actually niching down to something that can be lucrative for you.

Nicole Christie (00:01:05) – So when I started my law firm, I was all excited. Actually, I quit my job after working for this state for 20 something years. And the very next day I got up and said to myself, Are you crazy? You quit your job. What are you going to do now? And then I thought, Nope, I have a law firm. I’ve opened up my law firm, I can do this. So I decided to build my own website. I don’t recommend it, but, you know, I thought I don’t have a lot of fun, so let me just do what I can do. I got on Wix. I figured out quote SEO. I tried to do little links. I did what I could and I made it go live. And so I, you know, it made it go live. I did all the things that I needed to do in terms of getting connected with people. And then I decided to Google myself. And I want you all to share in this experience with me.

Nicole Christie (00:01:55) – So I want you to Google yourself. You can take out your phones. I know Jim said, don’t have them out, but just for this moment, take out your phones, go to Google. But I don’t want you to cheat. You need to search incognito. Google researches you. They know what you’re doing and know what you’re looking for. So I want you to look up incognito, search for your law firm type of area of law. I don’t want you to do your law firm name. Do the area of law. If you have multiple areas of law, pick the one that makes you the most revenue, the one that you enjoy the most, the one you’re known for. And I want you to Google yourself. So once you do that, just look up so I can know that you’ve done it. We do not have to share, so try it for your area. Also, the other key is try incognito for your particular area. Don’t do it here, but just for your particular area.

Nicole Christie (00:02:47) – I’m from Hartford, Connecticut, so I would look up DCF attorney, Hartford, Connecticut, Incognito, if you can do it. So when I did it, you know, again, I went on Wix and it said, you know, you’re alive, You can be found. And I Googled myself and I started scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and like, where am I? And I could not find myself granted. Yes, I did the website. And one of the things that that taught me is if I couldn’t find myself, my clients can’t find me either. So when people when you’re looking for whatever it is you want to buy, whatever the service is, you’re going through the Google search and buy a raise of hands. How many are going to hire somebody on the second page? None of us. We’re going to hire somebody from the first page. And it isn’t the easiest thing to get on the first page of Google where they’re at the top, where they’re at the bottom, where they’re in the middle.

Nicole Christie (00:03:46) – It is not the easiest thing, but one of the things that I discovered is that by narrowing down my areas of practice, I had probate, I had DCF, I was trying to do family, I was trying to do a couple of other things that was representing churches. I was doing a lot of things. And so last year I did this particular presentation and I didn’t get to finish, so I figured this would be part two. But I want to quickly go back over this. Some of us are doing law just in this way. So we represent Saint Louis. That’s your county, that’s your area of law. But some of us are literally driving to other counties. And I would just say that these are the counties represents other areas of law. So I’ll take Cass. We’re driving from Saint Louis to Cass sometimes in our brain, sometimes actually doing this, trying to do criminal law, because criminal law is where we think we have some more money. But yet we’ve opened up on doing estate planning and we keep doing this constantly.

Nicole Christie (00:04:44) – And what’s happening is that we take a lot of time, we take a lot of effort. And what I also find is that we don’t actually become good at any one thing. So I like what I call the county approach. We just looking at Saint Charles, we’re looking at these different counties and these are different sectors. So I don’t want you to think of niching as only one kind of case that you do. It can actually be an area of law. And also, we were talking about it in our mastermind group. It can also be people you can focus on a particular set of people actually read a book about marketing to churches. If you especially if you live in the Bible Belt. I remember driving to Texas and to visit some family and we got there on a Sunday. We went to the grocery store and I’m like, Where are we? I’m from the northeast, seven days a week. They’re all the same. We do everything every day of the week. And I looked around and there was no one in the grocery store.

Nicole Christie (00:05:36) – It was like I went to church. They all go to church. And that is a whole area that people don’t really tap into. So when I think about marketing and I think about niching, this is what I came up with. And I call it my DCF County doesn’t represent everything, but these different sections are all sections that I concentrate on. So it helps you to develop a real good elevator pitch when you can say, I help people dealing with DCF, I help people dealing with child protection, that’s it. But when you have five different areas of law, I help people dealing with real estate, then I do some business. You have lost me after the third one because at this point, I don’t know what you’re actually good at. I don’t know what you concentrate on. I don’t know if you can actually help me with my kind of case. When you niche down, now you become the expert. And it’s interesting. Not only will clients find you, but then other lawyers will find you to talk to you about it.

Nicole Christie (00:06:32) – That actually had lawyers say to me, you know what? Why don’t I just give this case to you? Because it’s too complicated. They don’t want to deal with DCF. DCF in our state is one of the largest entities to deal with. And so what I want to encourage you to do and think about your niche in terms of the big things that you can do with this one particular area of law, something that I don’t know. Does anyone here do business law in the area of construction? All right. So I met someone who does deconstruct and I didn’t realize that that was a whole business in and of itself. He’s the guy that breaks down everything. So when they’re getting ready to build on a particular land, he’ll go in and break it down or he’ll go into a building and gut it out. That’s a whole particular niche because he had waste issues to deal with. He had his issues to deal with, he had contractors to deal with. So you can actually develop a whole giant area of law when you think about your particular niche.

Nicole Christie (00:07:30) – So don’t be afraid and think if I niche down too far, I’m not going to make a lot of money. We doubled in our sales just by niching down. And for us right now, what we’re trying to do is be able to reach as many people work on our processes. But if you’re not worried about the kind of law, remember trying to do estate planning. And I took on a trust and I’m like, What am I doing? I don’t know about the act. And I just it was nerve wracking. But I can go into court the very next day on an order of temporary custody. Read the affidavit in five minutes and know exactly what I need to do. And it’s confidence building. Alexis just talked about imposter syndrome. It helps your imposter syndrome when you actually know what you’re talking about, because then now you’re not an imposter. You know exactly what you need to do.

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Nicole Christie (00:09:04) – And so where I left off last year is this is where I want to pick up. Now that you have figured out your world, you figured out your county. You want to actually try to stay within your county limits. Think about what it is that you do and don’t let people tell you, Oh, you should take on this other kind of case.

Nicole Christie (00:09:21) – Don’t you want the money? I had someone tell me, Don’t you want the money? No. If it’s going to make me not look good, I’m going to step into something I don’t know how to do. And I’m not going to do a good job. I’m telling you, your clients, they’re going to Google everything. I love when they tell me I’ve done my research. Where what law school did you go to? What law books did you read? But I did my research. Don’t you think? Actually, had I call them my co counsels. So you have your client, but then you have their relatives giving them all kinds of instructions. I call them this actually a secret co-counsel. And one of my secret co counsels told my client, well, you know, courts. Close down and judges go on vacation in the summer. I said, Honey, if the judge goes on vacation, there’s somebody else to come in in the place. And I know this court system. So when you have that confidence, you can go up against your co-counsel who are giving your client’s advice all behind your back.

Nicole Christie (00:10:16) – And so when you figure out your niche, don’t forget that list. And I remember when I started out with my law firm and I told people that I’m opening up my law firm, you know, was word of mouth. But I remember I had foot surgery and I knew I had to take two weeks off from work. And I planned it. I literally planned it. I did the foot surgery and I sat with my foot propped up and I just came up with names. I went through my phone, I text people, What’s your address? What’s your email? And I went through a list of names. Keep those names. Those are names that are going to help you. I still get cases from that original list, people who just know people who want to be supportive. Even your haters just put them on there. Well, you know, I don’t know how to do that law, but I think she can do it. I don’t care how they refer you. I don’t care if they put a little salt in what they have to say.

Nicole Christie (00:11:06) – But if they send the person over to you good enough and you can give them the thank you card with whatever salt you want to return. But I say return with the positivity because it’s not worth it. And there’s another section that what I decided to do after I did this list and at some point during Max Law and just doing with the actually listening to the podcast and hearing about doing YouTube videos, I started doing YouTube videos and you know, you set it up and I literally just use a webcam. I don’t have I bought all this equipment and I still don’t use it. I just use the webcam, but I make videos and I will sit down and talk about just what I know. And I loved when, you know, I’d asked him, what should I do? What should I say? Just talk about what you know. But if you are all over the place and you’re going from estate planning and you’re going to criminal and then you’re doing some business, you only know a little bit of all of those things.

Nicole Christie (00:11:57) – But if you concentrate in one particular area of law and one type of person, I met someone yesterday who does family law, but he only represents women who are in abusive relationships or married to narcissist. And I’m thinking with the narcissist movement, as I would call it, going on, he’s got business coming in day in and day out. So think about it in terms of where you can go, what kinds of things that you can do within that particular niche. And it also leads you to and I’ll just stop here to answer interject, it leads you to the types of people who deal with those kinds of laws. So for me, I do child protection. So that means I’ve gotten cases from social workers. You get to know court staff and court services officers. I had one call me and she personally said, I need to send you this case because I know you will do a good job. And also, when you niche down, that’s what ends up happening. You do a very good job for people.

Nicole Christie (00:12:54) – Then the word of mouth gets out. I also get to know nurses. You get to know doctors, you get to know teachers. So you think about your small little world, but there’s these people and you can actually target your marketing, your even your digital marketing to be able to land on pages that are people that are teachers, people that are doctors, people that are therapists, Because at some point in another and people think with child protection is, quote, a poor man’s kind of activity or, you know, type of case not true, because little Johnny, no matter if he lives in a mansion or he lives in an apartment complex, he’ll go to school and say, mommy drinks every night. And I am very scared. It doesn’t matter. DCF will go to whoever’s home, so don’t limit yourself. Think about the world of people that your clients will come in contact with. And so in doing the YouTube videos, I’ll talk about that. I’ll talk about what happens with a therapist.

Nicole Christie (00:13:48) – I’ll talk about what happens with a doctor. We also decided to branch out and do some cases with divorce. Dealing with DCF, people will use DCF as a weapon. So keep that in mind. And so lastly, and I’ll skip this one, think about social media. And again, if you keep that message in your mind constantly, you will be able to put that message out there. You’ll be able to have a focus. And one of the things that I found, my Google ads are incredibly cheap because I’m in Connecticut and I have a niche that very few people are going after. My Google ads are incredibly cheap. We did a display ad and they showed me and they actually showed me the graph. They said that it was like $0.07 or up to $0.10 a click because it’s DCF, it’s a narrow niche. So it’s another great way to try to leverage your marketing dollars when you do. Those clicks are very, very expensive. So I would consider niching down to maybe a group of people, niching down to maybe advertising to churches, especially if you do PE.

Nicole Christie (00:14:51) – If you get on the good side of a pastor, he will say, Oh, you need to hire attorney Christy. We like her. He’ll get up on the pulpit. And say we need to hire Attorney Christie. We like her and they’ll send that information out. And then pastors go to pastors conferences. Well, you know, we got a girl here. She does a really good job. You should give her a call and they will put your name out there for you, complete free advertising. And again, especially if you live in the Bible Belt, those are packed. Churches get in front of a mega-church, do a conference. If you do estate planning, do some free conferences and do some free speaking for churches, and that will help you get your name out. And also, if you’re going to do different types of either social media, whatever the areas are, try to master that first, try to master one at a time so you don’t leave yourself kind of half doing things If you want to start with doing speaking engagements, stick with that.

Nicole Christie (00:15:46) – If you want to start to do social media, stick with that. If you want to tackle Google ads, hire somebody and then stick with that. All right. So that is my time. So if you do need me in any way, shape or form, please give me a call and let me know. And I hope that you got something out of this. And please try your best to niche down. It is a great way to get your name out there. Thank you.

The post Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

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Evelyn Ackah, a successful immigration attorney from Canada, joins Tyson and Jim to share her experience and advice for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Since starting her own firm, Evelyn has faced a variety of challenges and has come out on top. 

Here are some key takeaways:

• • Be Agile: When starting her firm, Evelyn had to make quick adjustments due to adopting twins on her own. She started her firm in just three weeks and had to juggle her personal and professional life. She emphasizes the need to be agile and make adjustments and tweaks to improve the business rather than throwing everything away and starting over.
  • Mindset Matters: Evelyn believes that mindset is critical in achieving success. She had to shift her mindset to overcome challenges in her business and become more optimistic. She encourages attorneys to adopt a mindset of an owner rather than an employee mindset.
  • Diversify Your Services: While Evelyn has a successful niche practice in immigration law, she also recognizes the need to offer complementary services such as wills and employment law to her clients. She suggests adding additional service offerings rather than branching out into unrelated areas.
  • Treat Your Practice Like Your Own Business: Evelyn encourages attorneys to build personal relationships with clients and own their files to develop a mindset of an owner rather than an employee. She also recommends taking advantage of the marketing and business development training provided by big firms to develop necessary skills for running a successful practice.

Overall, Evelyn’s experience and advice provide valuable insights for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Whether you are just starting out or looking to expand your services, Evelyn tips can help you achieve success. So take her advice and get started on your own journey today! Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

01:03 Starting her own law firm and practicing immigration law in Canada and the US

04:26 How COVID-19 has affected her cross-border immigration law practice and how she had to diversify her practice to recover from the decline

08:28 Practicing law in two different countries and how she hires a US attorney for green card and permanent residency applications

10:18 The day-to-day work, including team meetings, consultations, and business development

17:04 The impact of COVID-19 on her business and discusses the importance of diversification in practice areas

18:25 The importance of offering complimentary services to clients, such as wills and employment law, to insulate her business from ups and downs

20:20 Advising big law associates to treat their practice like their own business, building personal relationships and owning their files, to prepare for going out on their own

Jim’s Hack: Jim recommends the book “The First 90 Days” for a systematic approach to onboarding new employees beyond the first few days. 

Evelyn’s Tip: Use restream to reach all the social media platforms. 

Tyson’s Tip: Use Steve.ai, a website that generates animated videos by plugging in a script with a free version.

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Evelyn:

• • Website 
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook
  • Twitter 
  • Youtube

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Building a Successful Law Firm in Two Countries with Evelyn Ackah

Jim Hacking:
Oh, Evelyn, it’s great to have you. Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about your experience since law school, what you did, and then when you started your firm, and then we can get into deeper issues.

Evelyn Ackah:
Sounds great. Well, I’ve been practicing law since 1999. I used to be a corporate lawyer in Toronto for a couple years and hated it. And I moved into corporate immigration at a big five accounting firm. And ever since I’ve been practicing Canadian and NAFTA US corporate and personal immigration law. And I became a partner at a big law firm and moved to Calgary, Alberta And then I started my law firm 12 years ago. When I had my children, it was necessary to do some adjustments, and so I started ACCA Business Immigration Law so I could have more flexibility and more time with my family.

Tyson Mutrux:
So we’ve heard this story quite a bit, where you’ve got someone that’s worked for a bigger firm and then they go and they do their own thing. So what’s that life change like?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh wow, you’re doing everything yourself. I mean, having come from a global law firm and all of a sudden you’re doing your marketing, you’re doing your BD, it’s just a very different model. But I was always really entrepreneurial even in the big firm. And I marketed across the firm as well as externally. And so I knew already that I would be pretty successful because I already was doing a lot of those things, like my own firm. So it made it easier when I exited. Basically almost all my clients came with and I just opened my own door.

Jim Hacking:
nLet’s talk about those days leading up before you left your old firm and then the days right after you started. Talk to us about how that went. I’m sure it was a little bit stressful to see if the clients were gonna join you. Walk us through that if you could, Evelyn.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I think for me it was, I was adopting twins. It just happened to be on my own at the time and it was crazy. And I just, as soon as I was advised that I was going to be selected as an adoptive parent of like newborns, it was like, let’s make some changes quick. So I literally started my firm in three weeks. And so there wasn’t a lot of like planning. It was just kind of find a great space that was a shared office space and they had to do the notifications, you know, that the lawyers let them know where you’re leaving, all of that, and then it’s up to the clients. I wasn’t overly concerned because immigration is so specialized, as you know, Jim, that even if you’re in a big firm where they do corporate and litigation and everything else under the Sun and securities law, they only know you, and at the time, there were a very small number of immigration lawyers in that large firm, so I didn’t worry too much because I felt like a lot of them stayed the other sides of the practices that they were using, but they came with me for immigration. And so it was starting from nothing, boxes everywhere, hired my first paralegal probably within a month, and just kept going.

Tyson Mutrux:
So I’m really curious to see how things since like COVID has ended, how things have changed because I feel like in Canada, things stayed closed a little bit longer. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But how has that had an effect? And I also, I know very little about immigration, but I have heard that Canada is more restrictive when it comes to immigration than the United States. So

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
how has that affected your business since COVID, since

Evelyn Ackah:
Well,

Tyson Mutrux:
2020?

Evelyn Ackah:
you know me and you know what I’m kind of doing and why I’m in the Guild and how great it’s been for me so far, but COVID really hit me. And it was really a bit of a shock. I wasn’t expecting such a decline. The borders were closed and as a cross border, this is really what I call myself, a cross border lawyer, doing immigration into Canada from everywhere in the world and then doing into US just for Canadians. that’s not happening. So a lot of my corporate clients who were bringing executives and skilled workers to the US, that stopped and into Canada from the US that also stopped. So we were focused on a lot of things like permanent residence, criminality applications, things that were processed at the consulate but not at the port of entry and it really affected our practice. We went from our best year to a decline and then another decline and was the worst year, it finally hit us. So we’re in a rebuilding stage where now we’re having like a fabulous year, but I don’t even know how to explain it because the borders have been opened longer than the last few months, but it’s taken a while for us to recover from that and made me think about how to diversify my practice, what can I do to ensure this doesn’t happen again, that type of thing.

Jim Hacking:
I think sometimes as law firm owners were a little slow to react and I’m wondering when was it that you realized during that three year period you just discussed that something was wrong.

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, I knew pretty quick and I spent so much time and money in marketing. Whereas a lot of law firms and lawyers were just like retreating and just like, oh my God, we’re going to die and we’re closing shop. And especially in immigration, at least in Canada, people were really freaked out. People were leaving or they were shutting their doors or whatever. I was spending more money on marketing. I was trying to make sure we could be found. I was pushing harder. It was just incredible because I wasn’t getting the kind of results I would normally from that kind of a financial and time investment. And that’s what was really frustrating. It was like, what’s happening? I couldn’t control it. I didn’t understand what was taking place. And it was unprecedented. So I didn’t really know what else I could do except keep hustling, keep working harder, and marketing everywhere.

Tyson Mutrux:
So every time I’ve talked to you, it seems like you have a really good positive team environment. And so what do you… And maybe I’m wrong, but it definitely does seem like that. So what do you do in the firm to make sure you foster that sort of environment?

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I can’t say it’s perfect, you know, being an owner is challenging ups and downs. And sometimes I’ve made bad hiring decisions, for sure. I’ve learned over 12 years. So for me, I really want to find people who get it, who understand that this is a business and that I’m here to help them grow and learn. And they’re also here to learn from me and to help contribute to the success of the firm. And so really a big team focused approach. as I recognize somebody doesn’t have that mentality, you have to make decisions. I don’t want anything to impact the group. Right now there are about 12 or 13 of us and everybody is very supportive of each other. We work hard, we can count on each other and that’s really important to me that they take ownership of their roles and the firm. So it’s not perfect. I’ve spent a lot of time and money on team retreats and books and development for everybody and for myself as a leader. but I think it’s a constant work in progress. And as the firm, one thing I’ve learned over the years is the firm does as well as the leader is doing and that everything comes back to me. And so no matter how much personal work and self-help and reading and courses and training, at the end of the day, my attitude, my presence, my behavior, my expectations of myself impact everybody else and the quality of the firm. So mindset is really, really important.

Jim Hacking:
That’s awesome. Talk to us a little bit about the experience of practicing law in two different countries. I mean, that’s, I think some people will freak out about practicing in more than one state. Talk to us about what it’s been like practicing under the jurisdictions of two different systems.

Evelyn Ackah:
I love it. I mean, I just, I think it’s kind of, again, I was working at a big accounting firm and we were helping global companies cross the border. And when I need to, of course, I hire, I bring on a U.S. attorney. I don’t do any green card, anything permanent that needs to be submitted into the government centers, we don’t do. But what I love about being able to do port of entry work is that you get your answer right away. So as somebody on a quick start for Colby, I like to know that I can finish an application if my team does it in two days, the person’s got their work permit, I feel a sense of accomplishment and I’m happy and move on to the next. So I like the port of entry because you’re not dealing with as much bureaucracy, you’re not waiting months and months and years for a decision. And it also allows you to prepare your clients and give them that confidence that you’re on call. text me as long as the officers are good with that at the border if there’s a problem and I can get involved and advocate if needed for them right then and there. So they feel confidence knowing that I’m available if needed. So it’s been really interesting. I mean, I should do my US bar. It’s one of those, I’m going to do it. Then the kids came. It’s like, oh, I’m going to do it. And now there are 12 and I’m like, oh my God. I literally just have to write one exam in Massachusetts and I would be an attorney. in the US, so unless it becomes urgent or critical, I’m happy being a member of ALA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and doing Canadian immigration. It works for me.

Tyson Mutrux:
You know, it’s funny, as much as I’ve talked to you, I still don’t think I’ve got a really good grasp on what your day-to-day looks like. So what does your day-to-day look like? How much of inside the business stuff are you doing versus on the business?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m really working hard to get out of the day to day. And we actually have a family trip planned to Africa, to Ghana in a couple months for two and a half, three weeks and we’re preparing for that now. I wanna make sure people will be able to do it all without me. So I would say my day to day is mostly spent doing team meetings. We do huddles with our remote team and in office team And so my goal, one of the things I want to really think about is how can I remove myself from doing them at all? And I do have the highest conversion rate, but it’s also, it takes time and I don’t want to be responsible to be doing them all. So my days are probably, I would say, 30% reviewing, signing off on applications, and the rest is business development, marketing activity, and what else? And consultations.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today is business immigration lawyer, Evelyn Acca. We’re so happy to have her with us. Just as an aside, if I tell my son Yusuf that you’re going to Ghana, he’s gonna wanna go with you. That’s high on his list of places he wants to visit.

Evelyn Ackah:
We’ll take him.

Jim Hacking:
Yeah, he would

Evelyn Ackah:
My

Jim Hacking:
love

Evelyn Ackah:
husband

Jim Hacking:
it.

Evelyn Ackah:
is coming for the first time and he’s going to be one of the few white people there that my kids, when we first went, they were like, we saw three white people the whole month we were here. So

Jim Hacking:
Right.

Evelyn Ackah:
it’s so, and they were seven. So it’ll be fun. It’ll be a fun trip.

Jim Hacking:
That’s fantastic. So it’s been fun to watch. You’ve been in the guild for a while now, but not too terribly long. And it’s, it’s great to see the difference between where you were when you came and where you are now. And you were excited to post about your great first quarter of 2023 in the guild the other

Evelyn Ackah:
Thank

Jim Hacking:
day.

Evelyn Ackah:
you.

Jim Hacking:
Can you talk a little bit about that part of the journey?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I mean, I think mindset really plays a big part. And I was starting to get a little down on things that weren’t working. You know, you’re like, you’re doing all these things and it’s not working, and you’re like, what else can I do? And so I joined the guild, I think, in like the summer, late summer of 2022, and it’s been great. I mean, it’s just a wonderful, positive group of people, really supportive. And I think I just had to shift my mindset tweaking things as opposed to like throwing it all away and starting over. So the biggest thing I’ve done, I think has made a big difference, is improved our intake. We’ve got, we use Lomatics and we finally got it all done working automated and that’s a big time investment. So I spent a lot of time last year getting that up and running fully and then we have our two and a half client engagement people. They’ve been great. And then the other thing we did was really focus on SEO because at Accolaw, We’ve got tons and tons of content. And so paid ads like Google, PPC, whatever, wasn’t working. And I was spending lots of money every month and nothing was really… Those were not really capturing the leads we needed. And so the SEO changes we’ve made over the last few months have been really critical. They’ve moved us up in many, many markets, which has led to more people finding us and allowing us to help more people with immigration.

Tyson Mutrux:
So you mentioned mindset and how much do you think of our success and how we do things and how we run our firms has to do with mindset? Is it a small thing or is it a big thing? And I don’t want to lead you too much on that. Maybe it’s not a big thing to you, but I am curious because you said you kind of got over that a little bit. So what is it about mindset and how do you think it has an impact on what we do?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I think it’s really important. I think I was just starting to get kind of down about the last challenging couple years. And it starts to just be a part of your personality almost a little bit, right? And so I think being optimistic and seeing success again and feeling like, okay, we’re back on track. But I think mindset is probably like 75, 80% of it. I really do. And even though I felt like I was being positive, they were still apart, and it was like, oh, but the border, oh, you know, COVID, oh, COVID, COVID. And it was just felt like this crutch or this reason to be excusing what had occurred. And when I finally just let that go and I said, forget that, let it go. We can’t keep talking about COVID anymore. That’s not the reason what things are not working. And so just slowly kind of building up and building out of that, crawling out of it, really seemed to help. and tweaks really that we needed to make that has really affected how the whole team is feeling about how we’re doing. We’re having our team quarterly retreat next week and it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna be talking about the quarter, what worked, what didn’t work, getting ideas from the team, we’ve been doing a presentation with our HR consultant on communication across the team, making sure we know how to deal with conflict. If we don’t agree how we communicate and let it go, I don’t you don’t want people to hold on to things because we’re gonna get bigger and so we need to kind of come up with agreeing to our standards of communication that work for everybody. So Yeah, I just I think mindset is critical and the team’s mindset has to also be on par with the leaders mindset

Jim Hacking:
I think you generally have a very positive attitude. I love talking to you. You get me pumped up talking about being a lawyer and about running the law firm. I’ve loved having you in the group. And I just think that the sky’s the limit for you. So my question though is, if you could go back now to March 15th, 2020, when that to me, that’s the date that COVID really hit. That’s when I knew about COVID being a real thing. We were, of all things, we were scheduled to take a family trip to China that spring break

Evelyn Ackah:
Wow.

Jim Hacking:
that and then we had to cancel a trip to Disneyland. So if you could go back to March of 2020 and whisper in your ear what would you tell yourself?

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm, that’s a good question. I think I would just tell myself it’ll all work out. And probably pivot. I felt like I pivoted quickly. I mean people were working at home, boom, because we already had remote people working. We have technology. That was not an issue. I think I would tell myself maybe let’s look at another practice area sooner than later. I would think about diversification. law, should we bring in a tax person? Those are the complementary practices to my practice. Usually, should we do wills in estates? Like, I think I should have considered maybe a little bit faster. I mean, nobody knew how long we think it’s a few months, and then it’s, you know. But I think it really made me think about what else I could have been doing to help our clients more, as opposed to kind of freaking out about COVID and what the impacts were to the border. you

Tyson Mutrux:
nSo I want to talk a little bit more about the diversification part of it. So generally, and maybe I don’t understand what you mean by it, but generally that goes contrary to what Jim and I recommend when it comes to niching down, right?

Evelyn Ackah:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
That means you’re probably adding on additional product offerings or service offerings. So tell us what your thought process is on this, because I want to get it from your perspective. Because here’s the thing. You may be 100 percent right that that’s what you need to do. I’m just curious. I want to hear more about it.

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, well I feel like, of course I love what I do and I wouldn’t be doing it for 23, 24 years if I didn’t, but this experience, yes we need foreign workers, we need workers. Canada and the US, we clearly need highly skilled, educated people and there’s an aging population. Everybody thinks I’m going to be swamped forever and that would be great if I was swamped and busy doing immigration. But I do think one of the things I think about is what else can we provide to our clients when they come to Canada or the US. So things like, do they have a will now that they’re in Canada? They bought a house, they have children. So just kind of complimentary supports, not to take away, because I am very much like you, you need to niche. And I niched really quickly. I loved it, and that was clear. But I feel like I don’t necessarily have to do it. But right now, we already have a wills associate who’s working on contract. So we’re starting to market that practice to help our existing clients who don’t have a Canadian will, for instance. Employment law, a lot of times you bring people and something happens and they need to talk to an employment lawyer, I refer those out. Perhaps that’s another contracted, you know, of council relationship. Again, I’m not trying to do more, but I’m trying to be able to offer more to clients and also help us insulate ourselves a little bit from the ups and downs. And that’s kind of what I’m thinking about.

Jim Hacking:
Evelyn, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show, as you know, is going out on your own and that there are a lot of people who are afraid to do that. And a lot of people are, though, in traditional fields that sort of lend themselves to going out on your own. And I think the greatest reluctance that I’ve seen so far from people wanting to go out on their own are ones who are at big firms. There’s a lot of perks to being in a big firm. There’s a lot of

Evelyn Ackah:
Okay.

Jim Hacking:
financial stability and support that you get. who maybe are listening or have heard or are thinking about going out on their own, what advice would you have for those people?

Evelyn Ackah:nI think you need to treat, I mean for me I was already in niche practice in a big firm and I was a senior associate and then I made partner and I think I treated my clients and my practice like my own little firm in a big firm. And I think it’s really important if you’re in a big firm that you treat it like it’s your own business. And that really helped me because I marketed across the firm, I marketed externally. internationally, Evelyn did Canadian immigration law, you know, and created work. And when you help a lawyer, you save their client’s butt or whatever. They love you forever because you have come through, you know, and that’s what leads to the, you’re basically marketing and business developing internally. So I feel like big law associates should be thinking about their work like it’s their own and building those personal relationships, making sure they’re the ones that talk to the client. They’re the ones that meet the client. practice area and that they own the file, like they treat it like it’s their own. I think that mindset really helps because you’re going to be doing that on your own and so you might as well start sooner. And that’s one of the areas that I love about immigration, things I loved was unlike corporate law where you needed tons of people and you didn’t really have autonomy, with immigration law I had a lot of autonomy as an associate. I literally, nobody knew what I was doing, very rarely. You know, maybe there’s one or two other lawyers across the whole firm. I owned the file, I had autonomy. I could come and work as late as I needed one day and I could go home early the next because I wasn’t on a deal with 20 other associates. So there’s a lot of freedom in that and that’s why I think people should niche in the big firm. Figure that out. You know, not just be a general corporate lawyer, figure out your niche and then it gives you more autonomy and it makes it easy, I think, to be more portable.

Tyson Mutrux:
you button wouldn’t work.

Evelyn Ackah:
Hehehe

Tyson Mutrux:
So, all right. So, Jim and I know an attorney and she’s, her name is Debbie Champion. She worked for a firm in St. Louis that long ago had a bunch of people left, right? And then people are getting laid off afterwards. And she left with the group that took the bulk of the business. And I wonder if you’ve got any advice or if any war stories when it comes to, and I really want you to speak to like that introverted attorney. It’s like, well, I don’t need to bring in my own business. I just want to, and I don’t want to work on that side of things. What advice would you have to that attorney? Because I 100% agree with you, but I think there is that attorney that says, well, I just don’t want to do that.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
I don’t know what to say to that person because I think that you’re really working as an employee and less like an owner. And even as a junior associate and a senior associate, I acted like an owner. And I think that’s really important. The partners saw me even sometimes saving their clients’ butts and they were like, whoa. And so they were treating me earlier like a partner because I operated that way. and whatever was important to them, the numbers, the hours, whatever, those became important to me. And I think you can’t just sit there and look to be fed and keep your head down. Those are the people sometimes that are the first to go because you’re not indispensable from a business development perspective. So even if you’re an introvert, what I love about big firms is they give you so much training on marketing, business development, all of those things to make sure etiquette, whatever, how to dress, so that you know how to go out and be appropriate and to be able to represent them well. So I feel like you should be taking advantage of all of that. Otherwise you’re going to be somebody who’s a grinder or somebody in the back mining, but those are the people that I think go first when there is a, you know, a downsizing, unfortunately.

Tyson Mutrux:
nout and thanks for that. I just want to make sure people heard that from someone that’s done it before because I think it’s an important thing. But, well, Evelyn, this is great. I’d love to be able to continue talking to you. I do want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to begin to wrap things up. Before we do, I want to make sure that I remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Go to Facebook, search Maximum Lawyer and join us there. And then if you want a more high-level conversation with wonderful people like Evelyn, go to maxlawguild.com and mind giving us a five-star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps spread the love. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking:
I think we as law firm owners do a varying degree of successful job of onboarding new people. And this book, The First 90 Days, is one that Adela has used and we’ve used it with our leadership team on sort of onboarding beyond the first three days. You know, I think a lot of people might do some training, then they shadow for a day or two, and then they say, okay, go swim. And this book really sort of sets out a systematic way of making sure that you get that training that Evelyn was just talking about, that whatever training you want your team to have, that that you’re being sort of more purposeful about it, more systematic about it.

Tyson Mutrux:
I love it. It’s good advice. All right, Evelyn, we always ask our guests to give a tip or heck of the week. What you got for us?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, goodness, I wasn’t as ready for this, I think. One thing I really love is Restream. And I moved away from StreamYard to Restream probably a few months ago. And what I love about it is it lets me do LinkedIn Lives, it goes to every social platform at the same time. It’s really easy. And so we’ve been using that and moved away from the other ones. So people might wanna check it out. It’s not very expensive, kind of get out a little bit more without having to repackage anything and and make sure that everybody can find you on social media.

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s funny, I have a restream and I have not used it. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. And I got it whenever it was… It was like one of those websites where you like, when they first launched it and like you have like a license forever. I have a license, I don’t pay every month.

Evelyn Ackah:
Thanks for watching!

Tyson Mutrux:
And it’s so it’s basically free now and I don’t use it. So maybe I need to look into it more. So you think it’s better than StreamYard?

Evelyn Ackah:
I do. I mean, I’ve been seeing some of the little challenges that have been coming up with you guys in Streamy Art and I think I suggested it. So you might want to try it and see.

Tyson Mutrux:
Okay,

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux:
I’m going to have to play around with it. I’ve got basically a free one, so I’ll give

Evelyn Ackah:
nI’m gonna

Tyson Mutrux:
it

Evelyn Ackah:
ngo.

n

Tyson Mutrux:
a shot. But mine, my tip of the week is it’s steve.ai. And I don’t know if you’ll have seen this, but you can create really easy animated videos or videos in general just by plugging in the transcript. It’s steve.ai. And there’s a free version. I was playing around with the free version. You can upgrade to premium to remove the branding and stuff, but it’s really cool. in a script and then it took, I don’t know, 45 seconds. I plugged in the script and it generated an animated video that people spent a lot of money on. It’s really interesting. No, it’s

The post Diversify, Adapt, and Thrive: Strategies for Building a Resilient Law Practice with Evelyn Ackah appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you struggling to keep your star players in your law firm? In today’s episode Michael Urbina emphasizes the importance of keeping your firm’s star players by intentionally working through a few things with them. 

Such as:

• • Building genuine relationships with employees to creating a positive work environment

• • Working with your employees to see what makes them the most productive 

• • Finding out what motivates your star employees. What are their goals? 

What about involving employees in key decisions and providing them with a sense of control over their work-life balance? Firms could be open to alternative work arrangements, such as a four-day workweek or flexible hours, to accommodate their employees’ needs. By doing so, employees feel like they are a part of the firm and are more likely to buy into its vision.

If you’re having trouble retaining your top talent, take a cue from Michael and start investing in your employees today! Listen to episode 524 of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast for more of a deep dive into this topic. 

Episode Highlights:

03:50  The importance of understanding what motivates your star players and how to compensate them beyond just salary

05:57 The importance of offering benefits to employees and how it can affect the perception of the firm

10:00 The importance of flexibility in the workplace, including working from home, alternative schedules, and instituting a four-day workweek

12:02 The importance of being honest and transparent with employees about the firm’s goals and financial position

14:03 Valuing employees’ opinions and creating a comfortable environment for them to feel like they can talk to their employer

17:39 Opening the books to everyone in the firm, from leadership to the newest employee, during an end-of-year retreat

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Michael:

• • Website
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin
  • Youtube 
  • TikTok

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Michael Obina as we share his talk. Keep your star players. You can also head to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Speaker 1 (00:00:16) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Merix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Michael Urbina (00:00:37) – If you haven’t watched Ted Lasso, you totally should not just because it’s hilarious, but because it actually has a lot to do with what I’m gonna talk about today, which is essentially a football coach in the United States takes a job to be a soccer coach in England, even though he has no idea about it. But his approach works because essentially he engages and motivates the stars of the team to kind of, you know, get to approach of working together and combine and, you know, be all happy go lucky, you know? So essentially what we’re gonna talk about today is keeping your stars and based on everything that’s happening right now in the, you know, marketplace. Everybody wants to talk about recruitment and how can I get people to work for me and how can I, you know, fill these positions. But I think another big problem is that there is all these problems with people in the positions because people are losing individuals and if you’re losing your individuals, you’re gonna have to then go to the recruiting market.

Michael Urbina (00:01:29) – So the best way to not have to recruit is to keep the good people that you already have. And if you don’t think that that’s a problem, I can tell you right now that in the last couple of days, almost every conversation from lawyers even, you know, within this particular community is like, Hey, so how do you try to hire people and recruit? They’re like, look at another law firm. Maybe someone is looking for an opportunity and you may want to think about stealing your competitors associates. So how do you stop that from happening to you? That’s essentially what we’re gonna talk about today. So briefly, these are part of my stars, okay, in our team. All right? Two of them are here today. My wife is here today and she’s not in the picture. My bad. I should have totally added that. I’ll probably pay for that later.

Michael Urbina (00:02:13) – So if anybody has extra room in their hotel room, please let me know cuz I might need your help late, okay? But essentially these are the people that have been with us for five years plus and I trust them blindly and everything that they do. I don’t second guess the things that they do. And it’s because not only do I give them the room to be themselves, but I try to make sure that they’re happy, that I, they have a good work-life balance and everything that we’re gonna talk about today, you know, I try to practice what we preach. So three critical keys to making sure that you keep your stars, you have to care about them. And I know that sounds like oh well of course I have to care about them, but no, no. If you look at it, and I actually Googled this before we came, one of the biggest reasons why people started quitting their jobs was during the pandemic.

Michael Urbina (00:02:56) – Their quote was, my boss doesn’t care about me, period. It wasn’t necessarily that they were getting underpaid and whatnot. And if you’re bored by my talk, you can actually Google it right now and you’ll see that the first thing that pops up is low pay. But all the other reports are like, you know, the culture sucks. You know, like my boss doesn’t care about me. It’s literally a bunch of other things that it’s not just pay, sure we’ll talk about pay and that’s an important part of it, but there’s a lot more to go than just if you’re paying someone well enough or not. The other thing you have to think about is find out what they really care about. I have some of the stars that are here that are not really driven by money. They want more time off, they want flexibility. I have an employee that literally lift an hour from us and the minute we’re able to get a new location and she was able to cut her commute to seven minutes, she was like, I don’t care if you cut my pay as long as I can just be here, I’m happy with that instead.

Michael Urbina (00:03:50) – A lot of times we assume that’s like, oh no, just pay them more. Just pay them more. No, you have to really dig deep and find out exactly what it is that drives them what it is that keeps them happy, you know? And the last thing is find out how they’re most productive. And I think that’s a key part also because sometimes you have someone a star that is fantastic at their job and you might think like, Hey, this person might be a good fit for a different position or a higher position or a promotion and then you move them up without necessarily gauging their interests or durability. And I’m telling you from experience, we have one of our stars who is not here today by the way, so that’s why I’m gonna talk about it. Essentially we try to move her up into a different position and that was not her thing, but we didn’t actually address it with her.

Michael Urbina (00:04:29) – This was years ago. We didn’t address it with her like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing this. How do you feel about it? De are you okay with it? Instead we’re just like, we love you, you’re great, you’re gonna move up to this. And all of a sudden her productivity just went way down because that was not her thing. So you can’t try to fit, you know, a square peg in a round hole if it doesn’t work. So you have to really figure out what are their goals, what are they really motivated by? Maybe they like doing something menial, but that’s crucial to what you need to do. Okay? So just keep those things in mind. So we’re gonna talk about five things that I think are very important to make sure that you keep your stars engaged in your firm. Like I said, we have to talk about salary.

Michael Urbina (00:05:06) – Why? Because at the end of the day, people need to live, right? And unfortunately over the last couple years salaries requirements have gone up because there’s more demand for people. All these other individuals, all these other firms are having to, you know, fork out more money to be competitive. My proposal to you is that yes, salaries are important, getting paid as important, but that’s not the only thing. So sometimes people are like, well I don’t have the cash to be able to pay this person on all this money. You know, that’s fine. Then think about other things that you can offer that can compensate for the fact that you may not be able to pay someone high six figures or whatever the situation is. I will however, encourage you to rethink what you think is the average salary. Cuz a lot of times you have conversations with people and they’re like, yeah, I mean like an average salary for an attorney start is like $45,000 and like in 2000 maybe you put in 2022.

Michael Urbina (00:05:57) – It’s all very different also your market. We’re in Atlanta, very different situation versus you know, some towns in Texas, even here in Missouri was looking at it yesterday. It’s very different. So you have to consider at least what’s the average, you don’t necessarily have to go above the average if you have a well-rounded package. Now the other option is you can give bonuses, you can do incentive plans, you can actually engage them in your firm’s goals and give them as an incentive like hey we hit our goals, this is what you get. So you actually get them to buy into the program and vice versa. You actually get them a little extra cash as you go. So meaning you win, they win. Okay? The other thing is benefits in 2022, if you don’t have some type of benefits, you’re gonna get a one star and people are gonna talk about the fact that you are either cheap or you’re not really caring about your people or you’re not genuine.

Michael Urbina (00:06:48) – Okay? If you can’t afford a super robust benefits package, that’s fine, but there’s also a lot of different options and a lot of different things and I just list some of them there that you can look at that may not cost you an arm and a leg, you just have to shop around. Health insurance, it is expensive but we talked about it yesterday actually. Some people like to give a stipend because they think it’ll be better for them. The problem is that there’s that feeling of security from the applicants that are like, I’d rather just get the health insurance versus the stipend because it just gives me that sense of security, you know, and control all over the situation. And unfortunately let’s face a lot of people, you give them a stipend, they’re not gonna go buy health insurance, they’ll go buy something else, they’ll put it into like their YouTube channel thinking that they’re gonna be influencers and they won’t pay for the health insurance.

Michael Urbina (00:07:33) – So you guiding them along that way creates, you know, a certain level of security in them. 401ks, pension plans, those things are not as expensive as you think it might be. I was actually kind of shocked when we started shopping around looking. I was like, this is not that bad. It can be, you can find some people, will absolutely destroy your budget, but you can also find ways that it’s something you can offer employees, keep them happy at the same time. Not necessarily break the bank and not have to create this insane payroll for yourself. PTO expense accounts and gas and things like that. There’s an ongoing trend right now with unlimited pto, right? And there’s a lot of firms that are moving that way. A lot of businesses that are moving that way. I’m not saying that you have to do that, but it, a lot of times people are like, well we give, like I’ll use, there’s this nonprofit in Georgia that’s like you get 10 days PTO after a year of work.

Michael Urbina (00:08:21) – Nobody wants to wait a year to get 10 days off. Like you have to really reevaluate that because everyone is moving to give unlimited or some sense of extra PTL days. So you really have to think about whether you’re offering a PT os competitive or not. We actually did something that I had no idea was gonna work out this beautifully, but years ago for our attorneys, because we have to move around so much for courts, I was like, the firm will pay for your gas and guess what? You might think that I’m an idiot now because gas prices are high. But guess who’s happy that they don’t have to pay for gas. Our attorneys. And at the end of the day, it’s a fraction really of everything that’s happening. But they’re happy that they don’t have to worry about that. And it’s not just to go to court. I’m like if you have to fill up your tank, you fill it up with your expense account period. But that little thing alone is like, okay, I save a lot of money on gas on that part. I may not get paid a million dollars a year but I get this incentive. You know,

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Michael Urbina (00:10:00) – And then you have work-life balance, which brings us to point number three. Okay? Flexibility is not just about working from home and anyone that thinks that working from home doesn’t work, it may not work for certain individuals, it may not be a situation that you wanna do all the time, but you cannot sit here with a straight face because during 2020, Maxim lawyer kept doing all, you know these meetings virtually we completely shut down our practice for three months and everyone worked from home and we actually grew substantially during that time. We talked about Alexis, you know, growing during 2020 as well. We can talk about stories all day about people that grew while working from home. So we cannot use that as a crutch saying, well work from home doesn’t work. It may not be ideal for every single one of your employees, but you have to find an alternative.

Michael Urbina (00:10:44) – It may be that you let them come in two hours earlier and leave two hours, you know, earlier in the afternoon so they can go pick up their kids or whatever the situation may be. Another thing that we do that I can’t take credit for that was my wife’s idea was that we instituted a four day work week. So essentially we divide the office and two teams, some people have Monday off, some people have Friday off and those four days that they work, they work 10 hours, they complete their 40 hours, they have a three day weekend every weekend plus their pto. And every time I talk about this I always get like these faces like that sucks.

Speaker 0 (00:11:17) – They love it

Michael Urbina (00:11:18) – And they’re super productive. Absolutely super productive. So it may not be something you can institute immediately, but you should think about something like that in terms of providing them the flexibility of work-life balance. Because if you do the Google search that I told you, the number one thing that you’re gonna find aside from culture is work-life balance. So people will sacrifice, you know, a little bit of salary to be able to actually enjoy their life a little more. And I can tell you a story that there’s actually, you know, another competitor if you wanna call it from where we are, that it used to be the go-to where everybody wanted to go. But because the work-life balance has become unbearable in that place, people are turning down high six figure offers. Cause they’re like, yeah you guys work us to death. We’d rather go somewhere else than get paid less.

Michael Urbina (00:12:02) – And some of those attorneys came to work with us. So because we provide something different. You know, the other thing I want to talk about is creating a buying culture with your team. And once you offer those benefits, once you really rethink about being genuine about your work-life balance, how do you make sure that you maintain that buy-in from your team? Cause it’s not a, it can’t all be a gift. There has to be some kind of, you know, return in terms of how the firm is going forward. And what I’ll challenge it is, is that you need to be brutally honest about everything. And I mean everything like think as gross as it sounds, open kimono, like you have to be super honest about where your firm is positioned, what your, all your goals are and everything that is going on with regards to your firm.

Michael Urbina (00:12:45) – If you have a leadership team like we do, we talk about this on a weekly basis as to where we’re at. Are we hitting our revenue goals? Are we hitting all other goals? And that sounds terrifying, the fact that you’re gonna open your books and do a presentation about what went out and what. But think about this way, if you don’t give your team a roadmap as to why you’re asking them to buy in to hey we should get more Google reviews. Hey we should, you know, I need you to make sure that we get those NPS scores in. Like then if you don’t tell them why that’s important, if you don’t show them why the firm will do better unless you open the kimono, you know, to them it’s just like, oh my boss is just being greedy. Oh I don’t understand why I need to do this.

Michael Urbina (00:13:26) – You need to be like, this is the reality of the situation. Yeah we’re doing good. However, if you want to grow with us and continue to be provided opportunities to grow, this is where we need to go. But if you just tell them for the sake of telling us like, hey, we need 400 Google reviews by the end of the year. Why they don’t know that, they don’t understand why that’s important. So you need to be brutally honest to be open and a lot of people will think, well they’re gonna leave not if you did everything else that we talked about cuz you’re being honest, you’re not hiding the ball and you’re being generous in the way of what you try to offer them. So that creates loyalty. Involve them in key decisions. A lot of times people are like, hey this and this is happening with such employee, what do you think?

Michael Urbina (00:14:03) – I’m like, I’ll leave it up to you if it’s something that I don’t feel super strong about, give them the opportunity to make decisions. Vice versa. If you’re gonna make decisions, like if we’re gonna change something in the firm, a system, you know, a program, whatever, it’d be like, hey I’m thinking of doing this. What do you think? You know, when we changed our SEO company and our marketing company was like, you guys, I’m thinking about doing this. What do you guys think about this? And sometimes they’re gonna give you value to make sure that you understand your position, but more importantly they feel like they’re a part of your firm and they buy in because you are valuing their opinion. They’re not just a pawn or a cog in the whole situation. You know? And again, the same thing is with our leadership team.

Michael Urbina (00:14:44) – They’re here, they were here last year. It’s not like I’m afraid like oh they’re gonna learn stuff and they’re gonna do their own thing. Why If we can build it together and you’re like super, you know, like you legitimately mean what you say. There’s no reason that you know, you should have that fear. Okay. And the last point I wanted to make is personal and business relationship development. Say my wife is in this one so I’m not totally in the doghouse, you know, but you have to create, you know, like I said at the beginning, a genuine relationship with your employees. You don’t have to be best friends, that’s not what I’m saying. But you have to create a situation where they feel comfortable with you. Where if there’s a problem that they have that they honestly feel like, hey I can talk to Michael about this and I know he’ll understand X, y, z, you know, and I’m not gonna take anything personal.

Michael Urbina (00:15:28) – It’s just a situation where you have to really address things as they go. And I also have a saying like, you know, my parents run a business and they love to hire their friends to be, you know, their workers. People feel different about that. I do, I have the opportunity that I don’t believe in hiring family, but except for my wife she just, she she, she comes with the firm is the fact that there’s nothing in the rule book that says that you cannot have, you know, a friendship or a personal relationship with your employees after they become, you know, your workers. And some of you may be making faces like, oh that’s a bad idea. Not really. Again, if you create that same level playing field, if you’re open about your situation and you open about yourself and you’re truly genuine, there’s really nothing now don’t go doing crazy illegal things that will get you sued.

Michael Urbina (00:16:10) – But you know, make sure that you try to be open and honest and provide a situation for them that they feel, you know, like they can grow in your firm. That they have opportunities and that more importantly there’s really not much out there that will be offered to them that will be different or they may want to look for other opportunities, you know, and if they do, you wish them well cuz you never know, they might try to go somewhere else and come back in like a week. Okay, the last thing and I’m kind of jealous of Alexis that thought about putting a picture of Michael Scott and I’m totally gonna change some of the words here. So where it says, would I rather be fear or loved easy? Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love and scratch the me I will put my firm. Okay. And that’s all I got for you guys. Any questions? Promise?

Speaker 4 (00:16:56) – Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:16:58) – When you went to a four day work meeting, uh, did you share the hours so that they still work like 40 hours or

Michael Urbina (00:17:05) – So? We did shift the hours. We went from doing a nine to five to doing an eight to six so they could do the 10 hours completely. The beautiful part of that additional was the fact that we actually had extended hours that we didn’t have before but we weren’t overworking anyone so everybody got an extra day but the firm was open longer, clients were happier, the firm was happier. It worked out. In

Speaker 5 (00:17:25) – Terms of opening your books, uh, to your, uh, I I think you mentioned your leadership team, right? Do you do the same for your associates?

Michael Urbina (00:17:35) – For everybody? For everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone.

Speaker 5 (00:17:38) – Gotcha.

Michael Urbina (00:17:39) – From me all the way down to the last person that joined the firm and we don’t do it like on a month to month for the entire firm. We do like a end of the year retreat. We’re like this is where we ended up, this is where we’re gonna be next year. And we share with them, you know, key facts as we go. But we can’t do that same level of, you know, dissecting all the time cuz it’s just too time consuming. But we do a two day retreat at the end of the year where we literally just dissect everything. This is how much it went in y’all snacks, this is how much you win. And you know this because it’s important for them to understand that all that money that we’re making is not going to my pocket or to my boat or anything like that. It’s going to making sure this project continues to hum along. I

Speaker 5 (00:18:19) – Agree with pretty much everything that you said. I was just gonna know if you’re trying to figure out um, you know, what to pay some of your staff or um, attorneys. Obviously every market is different but Colorado recently passed a law that requires every job at to post a full salary range and benefits like on on the ad. So if you go out to like Indeed or any of ’em and look into Colorado market, you can see what pretty much every firm, Penn, pretty much everybody. And then you kind of try to adjust for your market.

Michael Urbina (00:18:47) – Yeah, I think that’s critical because especially nowadays people don’t like to post a range. But then sometimes you see people that do, they’re like, I’m looking for an attorney, I’m looking to pay between 30 and 50,000 for five years of experience. Nobody’s then they’re like, I don’t know why nobody’s applying. You’re ad . That’s why.

Speaker 5 (00:19:04) – What kind of professional development do you do for

Michael Urbina (00:19:06) – Your team? So we have a coach. She not only meets with me individually, she also meets with our leadership team. She is actually aware of everything that’s happening within our firm. She gives us ideas of things that we can do with them as well. We do our own research and kind of between the leadership team like designate like hey, so we want to do this kind of like every other month we’ll do some kind of team building thing. They went cooking like a, what was it called? Like team building with taste or something and they all cooked meals and competed about it. I couldn’t go without something else, but we did bowling. Like we always try to find things that align with our core values but something that’s fun for them and they understand that it has a purpose. So we do that at least every other month.

Michael Urbina (00:19:44) – Aside from talking about goals and things like that. Yeah, so we use RingCentral, which you may or may not like it, hate it, whatever. For us it works. We have different channels obviously just like Slack. I feel like it’s a little bit easier cuz it connects to our phone system. And because we also have a hybrid team, we have substantially large overseas team that works virtually. It’s easier for them to connect and like they can pick up the calls and transfer in within the system. For us it’s working. I’m not complaining and we’re probably gonna stick to it, but we just communicate everything through there. But we also have like a overall firm channel and then we have like an in-person employees channel. So it’s like when it’s a message specifically for the people in house, then we tell them. So we try to make sure that everybody gets constantly communicated, everything that’s happening and if so-and-so is leaving, I mean we just say it, Hey, so-and-so no longer works with us. We wish them well. Like don’t hide it, just say it. Thank you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:20:41) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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As a law firm, managing emails can be a daunting task. With multiple team members receiving and responding to emails, it’s easy for information to get lost in someone’s inbox. In this episode,  Jim and Tyson discuss the challenges of email management and offer tips and tools to streamline the process.

One of the ideas proposed was routing all emails through one person in the firm, similar to a receptionist. While this may help with team communication, it could also create a full-time job and raise scalability concerns. 

Jim’s Hack: Mindset shift: Don’t be too quick to jump out of a team. Exit teams slowly. 

Tyson’s Tip: The hosts also recommend the book “A World Without Email” by Cal Newport for more tips on improving email management. By finding ways to streamline email management, your law firm can avoid information silos and work more efficiently.

06:49 What if you route all emails through one person in a law firm? 

08:12 The problem of having one person responsible for emails and the benefits of using team inboxes

13:29 Tips on how to streamline emails, including setting up filters and reporting spam

16:03 The problems with routing emails through Filevine and the benefits of using Zoho Team Inbox for email management

Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Email Management in Your Law Firm?

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Merix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome, do the show.

Jim Hacking (00:00:22) – Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim Hacking,

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:25) – And I’m Tyson Mu. Well, what’s up Jimmy? You got your baseball, you got your St. Louis Cardinals garon, which is fantastic. I like it. It’s good.

Jim Hacking (00:00:33) – Even though they’re neither fantastic nor likable, they’re in the basement. There was actually booing at Bush Stadium last night, which freaking never happens. That

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:42) – Never happens.

Jim Hacking (00:00:43) – The team’s a mess. Nolan Anado looks completely lost. I think the coaches all need to be frog marched down Market Street. I think that this team had a lot of potential. They got no pitching over the off season, and they’ve driven it into the ground. You

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:58) – Know, the weird thing about baseball though, you, you can switch things up really quickly and things can just turn on a dime.

Jim Hacking (00:01:04) – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie The Natural, but when the nights were really bad, they brought in the sports psychologist or some equivalent kind of a quack. And I just remember he stood up in front of the team and he goes, losing is a disease as contagious as syphilis. And then they would show clips of the Knights playing poorly. And, and that’s what I think the Cardinals are going through. And I think there’s a metaphor for us in owning a law firm with it. I’ve been thinking about it that, you know, sometimes you get in that funk and then it seems like the funk piles up on each other. And you know, I was talking to my therapist yesterday about all the stuff that piled up on me the last couple weeks, and it, it is like, dude, there’s 10 things. There’s 10 things.

Jim Hacking (00:01:44) – My house is under attack. We’re renovating the whole house. We just got done with Ramadan. We’ve got all these things that we could, you know, we had to let someone, we, we parted ways with someone here at the firm. And just like, if you let all that stuff pile up, you can really get into a nasty rut that can be hard to get out of. And I, I feel like I’m coming out of it, but man, it can feel just like that clip in the movie where it’s just like, you just can’t catch a break.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:10) – You gave me a wonderful segue into something I gotta bring up, but I’m, I’m gonna ruin the segue. I don’t care. But I know what you mean because the, as you know, I’ve been sick since like last week and I missed two days of work. Like I’ve never missed two days of work. And it, like, it had me down like I was sleeping and it was like a lot of sleep. But, um, it is one of those things like when you’re laying in bed for that long, you’re like, you just think about all these things feel like he’s just piling on top of you. It can be tough sometimes, but the other thing way I was gonna ruin your segue is of all the teams, our two boys, all right, of, of all the teams that they got assigned the names, do you know what teams they got? Baseball teams they got?

Jim Hacking (00:02:48) – Oh yeah, the Yankees.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:50) – Yes. Jackson’s team. The Yankees.

Jim Hacking (00:02:52) – Who would be the other one? The

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:53) – Worst of all The

Jim Hacking (00:02:54) – Cubs?

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:55) – Yes, the Cubs. We got the two. We got the two that you want. It’s just, we got both of them. So Yankees and Cubs, like, gosh dang it. But both of ’em seem like they’re pretty good, so I’ll take it, I guess. Anyways,

Jim Hacking (00:03:07) – That’s funny. When I coached, when the kids were really little, the first time I coached ’em, they were the tigers. So when I ordered their hat, I got ’em a D but the D didn’t look like the Detroit hat. And it just looked like a dumb D and everyone was like, these are the tigers. Why do you have a D on their hat? So my son loves to tease me about that.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:24) – I like it. It’s good. I went to one of the last Detroit Tigers games. I don’t think it was the last, but in the old Tiger Stadium. It was so cool. We sat in left field when the ball would go up. You couldn’t see, you couldn’t see the ball. It was so, it was like that. It was just such a poorly designed stadium. It was really cool. If any of you listeners have ever been to it, you know how cool it’s, cause like, all these like triple Deckers, you know, it was really cool. But people were like ripping chairs up. People were ripping things off of the chairs like it was, cuz they were about to, they were gonna destroy it like a week after that. So

Jim Hacking (00:03:53) – I saw a game there, I was by myself. I went to a screenwriting conference, if you can believe that. And I bought a ticket and I was in the third row, but it was the first two rows go down underneath the ground level. So in the third row, my eyes were at the level of the feet of the first basement. It was the craziest thing. It, I’ll never see a game like that again. It was bizarre.

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:16) – It was weird. That one’s weird. And then Oakland, I went, I, I went, I saw a game by myself in Oakland and it was awful. The worst. It is the absolute worst. I saw one in Minnesota, the old twin stadium. That one was awful. Not nearly as bad as Oakland though.

Jim Hacking (00:04:31) – The real worst one is the Tampa Bay, the juice box. It’s the worst. It’s a multi-use place. It’s rusty, it’s gross. It’s not good. That’s

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:40) – Crazy. All right, let’s move on to I, the thing I gotta bring up. So when this airs, this is June 13th and our next in-Person Guild event. I wanna make sure I, I mentioned this because prices go up in about a week. The the next in-person guild event is Thursday, July 20th, and Friday July 21st at Venture X in Denver, Colorado. And the reason why we, we wanna make sure we mention this because that’s why you gave me a perfect segue. We’re kicking off the workshop. It’s led by performance coach Jason Celt. He’s kicking off the event. He’s not gonna be there the entire time, but he’s kicking off the event and it’s gonna be followed by a mastermind where each member is gonna be able to take a hot seat. It’s gonna be a, a really, really cool event. Last chance early bird tickets are on sale through June 30th. Prices gonna is is currently 1197. It will then go up to 1597. So make sure you get your tickets. Go to maxilla events.com. Maxilla events.com. Well

Jim Hacking (00:05:42) – That is a great segue because the St. Louis Cardinals need to bring Jason Salt back. They don’t need to bring that guy saying that losing is a disease as contagious as syphilis. They need Jason Cel back to bring some mental toughness to that team because they are not mentally tough.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:56) – I am curious to see if that would change things that would be interesting that he was their performance coach the last time they won the World Series. So,

Jim Hacking (00:06:05) – Last two

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:05) – Times. Last two times. Exactly. So, I mean, I don’t know if that’s something that Jason would want. He seems like he’s doing all right by himself now. But, um, all right, let’s get to the topic of the day. All right, so let me give you the framework cause I wanted to talk, talk this through with you. Cause I wanna give what your thoughts are. I put an idea into the Guild, oh, last week I think. And here’s the idea. And this is not a now a new idea, right? This is not something that I came up with. This is just an idea. We use team inboxes now and frankly, I, the teams don’t like using it. They like using their own email. And my post in the guild was basically, what are your thoughts on routing? All emails. Okay. All emails through one person. Okay.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:49) – All emails. Like you do a receptionist, okay, you treat it like you would do a receptionist and then that receptionist then routes things through, tasks could be created or whatever. That was the question. I got a lot of interesting feedback. A lot of people do things that are very similar. There’s a lot of different apps apparently don’t allow you to do that. I know that we could do that with, with Zoho, Zoho, uh, team inbox. We could do that. You could set tasks right there from within Zo and it’d be easy to do. But I’m also reading this book, which I’m gonna, it’s, it’s near my tip of the week, you know, spoiler alert. But it’s a world with that email. It’s by Cal Newport. You may have already read it. I know you’re a huge Cal Newport fan, but I want to talk through the way we do email because it is a huge burden every single day. And so I just wanna get your thoughts on ways we could redo email.

Jim Hacking (00:07:36) – Okay, that sounds like a good topic.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:38) – All right. So I personally would love the idea of actually, I personally love the idea of the team inboxes where everyone sort of gets all the information for their team. It’s sort of difficult when it comes to court notifications because when you do that, you get, like if you have three people on a team, I guess you only have one attorney. But if you have two attorneys assigned to the case, then you would get the notifications would go into different team inboxes. And that’s kind of, that part’s kind of frustrating. But ultimately I think it would, I would love for all email to go through in one place. I just, that might be like a full-time job by itself just doing that.

Jim Hacking (00:08:10) – Why do you want all the email to go through one place?

Tyson Mutrux (00:08:12) – That way there’s one person that’s accountable for it that can then assign tasks based upon it. Here’s one of the major issues that I’ve seen, especially when it comes to attorneys leaving. So discovery comes through that person’s email. Okay? If that person does not then move it into the file, like they should have, or let’s say that they haven’t even left, let’s say they’re still with the firm, they’ve not added it to the file and we’ve got a deadline coming up and a case manager’s trying to work on the discovery. Hey, where’s the discovery? Hey, I can’t get a hold of such and such. Um, cuz they’re in court today. The deadline’s in two days and I really need to start working on this. It gets sort of locked into that email. And if you have it in more of a team setting, it’s gonna allow, whether that’s in one email or in like multiple team inboxes, more people are gonna have access to it. That way it’s not locked away in one person’s email or just the fact that there’s communications with adjusters or attorneys on negotiations. If that note has not been added to the file, that’s a problem. So I’m trying to solve the information being locked away in one person’s inbox where people can’t get to it.

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Jim Hacking (00:10:06) – So, I mean, first of all, I think File Vine does a great job with the dedicated case address to make sure that that doesn’t happen. So once everybody gets used to using that email address, it’s like a blind CC into the file. And the problem is therefore mostly solved. I’m worried about relieving everybody of that responsibility when all it really takes is yelling at them until they do it every time. Right? So I just think, I mean, how would this work? You’re saying that it, it’s not a cc matter, a cc email, it’s the actual communication goes through some gatekeeper.

Tyson Mutrux (00:10:43) – You could set these up where when you send the outgoing email, it looks like it’s from you. So there would on outgoing email, it’s, there’s no problem.

Jim Hacking (00:10:52) – One of you and I are trying to settle a case over email over the course of a day. I mean, I gotta go find it each time it comes in. Well

Tyson Mutrux (00:10:59) – See this is, I’m, that’s why I’m glad we’re talking this through. This is the

Jim Hacking (00:11:02) – Dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.

Tyson Mutrux (00:11:03) – So the centralized one wouldn’t work in, in the team inbox. It would work actually, cuz it’s, you’ve only have a few people that are assigned to that team inbox and that’s what we have currently where Yeah, you just go on the team inbox, it’s right there. So it’s not like it’s the cent. I That’s a good point with the, that’s a huge flaw though, with that team inbox. It’s a really good point. So, so I’m, that’s why I wanna talk this through. So this is good. I

Jim Hacking (00:11:23) – Often come back in our firm to this analogy that I, I don’t know where I picked it up, but you know like have you ever heard that thing, like if you’re in a restaurant and somebody’s choking or there’s a fire, like you don’t say, hey somebody call the police. You point to one person and you say, lady, you call the police dude, you get a towel for their head. Dude you do this like when no one is responsible, ultimately responsible, you know, there’s big problems, right? So I think that I understand the problem that you’re having, but let’s say you have one attorney who’s hoarding attachments in their email, that’s a problem. I just don’t know that the solution is the right one. That’s what I’m saying.

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:03) – I think that’s a good point and I have heard that before and I think that that’s right. The counterpoint to that would be is that there would be one person, one person assigned to it. But I think that that the centralized inbox, it seems like it’s a really monumental task. It’s rethinking things so much. I don’t know if it’s doable. It sounds like there’s a lot of people in the guild that do do that by a lot. About five to 10. It’s sort of this response that look like people actually do it. I would love to see how they do it cuz I, the one point that you gave me already is a really good point. Like, here’s

Jim Hacking (00:12:34) – Another one. How many team members do you have?

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:36) – I think we’re a total 24.

Jim Hacking (00:12:38) – And how many emails on average would each team member receive in a given day?

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:42) – A bunch. I don’t know. I know I personally get, I dunno, it’s like one 20 or something like that. It’s crazy.

Jim Hacking (00:12:47) – So say a hundred now you probably get more than most people, but let’s say somewhere between 50 and a hundred. So let’s say 75 times 24 people that’s in one day. I don’t think this is a scalable plan. I think you’re gonna set yourself up for some real problems later on because even if the person is working their ass off and using automation as much as they can, you’re talking about a torrent of email. I just don’t know how this scales. I think if it’s, if it’s a one attorney and their paralegal and maybe an admin, yeah, maybe. But beyond that, I mean we have 55 team members, you know, and we have email in all different kinds of places. I just think it’s really important that you find a better way.

Tyson Mutrux (00:13:29) – No, I, I agree. So let’s take the, the centralized inbox and let’s scrap that idea for a second. Cause I do wanna see how other people do it. Cause I, I’m not convinced that that’s the way of doing it either. I do wanna give people some pointers on like sort of streamlining their emails because we all do get a bunch of emails because I think hearing us brainstorming this idea might be helpful. But I think also give them some takeaways too. But most of us use Gmail as like our, we use Google Workplace You do too as well, right? Yep. I do want to tell people like if you all get regular emails, you can set up filters and if you find yourself forwarding emails to certain email addresses on a regular basis, which that does, I mean you can actually set up filters, uh, that will catch those emails and automatically do things with them and then archive ’em so you don’t have to worry about it or delete ’em.

Tyson Mutrux (00:14:12) – So just keep that in mind. I uh, I don’t do this with you as Jim, but some people I subscribe, they put me on their list of emails and I didn’t really subscribe for it. It’s just subscribe to it. I don’t wanna read ’em. So I just have them automatically deleted instead of subscribe to it just so I don’t hurt their feelings. But so like there’s things like you can do, like things like that with filters too, I think. I think it’s a really easy way of, of minimizing your inbox and doing things that you wanna do with them. But let’s change gears with Team Inbox because wait, can

Jim Hacking (00:14:41) – I just see something real quick about that? Besides unsubscribing is I’ve been reporting people for spam because if, if like the people that drive me the crazy the most are AVO reps. They’re the worst. Head hunters are really bad and, and I, I think they have multiple email addresses and they send me all this stuff all the time. And then I gave money to the D N C one time and they’ve sold my email address, 8,000. I get an email from every candidate everywhere across the country and I just knock ’em as spam if I didn’t sign up for it. I’m not, I mean that’s the best way to keep it out of the email in the future.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:14) – It’s a really good point. I’ve been doing that too fairly recently. I, I held off for many, many years not reporting to spam, just unsubscribing and like I just got sick of it because it is, they they just, it’s the email like, hey,

Jim Hacking (00:15:28) – Got a minute.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:29) – Yeah, you got a minute? Yeah. Quick question. Podcast guests all the freaking time. And it’s just them cuz they get paid to do it, right? They get paid to promote it and then they’ll email me five times, Hey, did you see my previous email? Hey, did you see my previous email? Yeah, that’s the worst. And I’m like, okay, now, now you’re spammed. Okay. That’s what you are. So that’s, yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah. And and for, for those of you that have not heard our previous episodes on like actually having a VA that handles your email inbox and all that, you should check that out. But alright, so let’s switch over to Team Inboxes. It sounds like you’ll don’t use any form of team inbox, right? No,

Jim Hacking (00:16:01) – Other than the feed and file Vine. Okay,

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:03) – Let me tell you the problem with file by fee. When it comes to this, the email, there’s two major problems that I have with it. One, it’s the formatting. If I were to cc the file on it and if I needed to print that email off, cuz like sometimes we do like, for like bad faith like setups, we need to print off that email and it looks, these look official, it doesn’t look very good inside of File Vine. If you try to do that, that is a problem. And then the other one is, is that when e when those emails, it doesn’t solve the problem whenever those emails come in because they’re not CC’d and we’ve had attorneys where they’ll, they’ll say, Hey, uh, I saw that your client’s email was on was you know, CC’d I removed it from this thread. And so we, that’s, that’s a fairly common thing that we see when we try to cc the file.

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:48) – It does happen quite a bit. I wanna get your thoughts on though, addressing one little issue we have. So the team inbox is fantastic, it’s great, uh, from my perspective, but we do have hesitation when it comes to adoption. The good thing about Team Inbox is that you can cc the team inbox whenever you want to. You can email out whenever you’re emailing out. So for example, like Red team mf injury.com is one of the team inboxes. So if I’ve got that for Red team, those emails can come into Red team, you know, court notifications can come into Red Team and if I want to email Jim Hacking, I can just say it’s from Tyson mf injury.com and then whenever they reply to it, it’ll actually come to my email and not the red team email. And that is a, it’s a haunted little thing.

Tyson Mutrux (00:17:30) – Another cool thing is too is that whenever there’s a lot of cool things about it, like, but if I send the email and it’s from the red team inbox and then it, they respond to it, I get alerted the other team people, uh, on the team don’t get alerted, which is kind of cool. Where I’m, I I know it’s for me the problem is, is like people, they seem to seem to really like their Google email. So do you have any suggestions on adoption, getting people to adopt it because it is a fantastic product. It gives you a lot of options. There’s a lot of features on, on Zoho team invites and I just wonder what your thoughts are on, on getting that adoption. It is a valuable tool. Well, I just want to, I want to increase adoption. So

Jim Hacking (00:18:06) – You yourself are on teams right now, you’re a participant in a team or two?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:10) – Yeah, so I can jump in cause I’ve got admin rights. I can jump into multiple emails or team inboxes if we need to.

Jim Hacking (00:18:16) – Okay, so let’s say Anthony Anthony’s on a team or two,

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:19) – He’s on one, he’s on green team mf.com. It’s that one inbox.

Jim Hacking (00:18:22) – So does that mean that every email that comes to Green Team Anthony sees

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:27) – In that team inbox Yes.

Jim Hacking (00:18:28) – Even ones that aren’t addressed to him?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:31) – Correct.

Jim Hacking (00:18:32) – So now Anthony’s checking emails that don’t apply to him.

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:35) – Yeah, but I, what I would optimally, I think what I’d want is, is that the case manager is in charge of reviewing it and then assign them out. And so one person is responsible for that inbox and not, and that’s not how we’re doing it currently, just so we’re clear. But one person is responsible for that inbox and then we would probably have it as the case manager.

Jim Hacking (00:18:53) – And then I guess the point I’m trying to make is what percentage of time are people spending looking at other people’s emails inside the group?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:59) – Probably not a whole lot because they’re all, they’re all team related because they’re all the people on that team. You, you have three people on that team that are, that are assigned to that inbox. You got a litigation assistant, you’ve got a case manager, and then you got an attorney. That’s it. So they’re all related to cases like that are on that team.

Jim Hacking (00:19:15) – But like if the legal assistant is setting up a depo time with a client, does the lawyer then see all those emails?

Tyson Mutrux (00:19:24) – Currently? Yes. Optimally no. Like, so what would happen is, is that that would be dealt with by the case manager and then it’s tagged to that client. So then it’s archived and we’ll never see it. And you can also, you can assign emails. So I Jim, if you were like on my team, I can assign that email to you and then you won’t see the other ones. You can just look at the ones that are only assigned to you. So if I go into that team inbox, you don’t have to look at all the other emails. I can go, okay, I only wanna see the ones that are assigned. It’s just a tab, boom click assigned to me, boom. These are my emails that I need to address and nothing else

Jim Hacking (00:19:55) – And that means to get those team emails that have been assigned to me. That’s not happening in Gmail. That’s happening somewhere else.

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:01) – It’s happening in Zoho team inbox. Yeah.

Jim Hacking (00:20:03) – And that’s part of the headache of getting the adoption that you wonder about.

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:07) – Yeah, I think what it would take is us switching over almost completely. And that’s a big problem.

Jim Hacking (00:20:11) – I wonder if you’re not creating more work by trying to create less work, it seems, I think at the very least right now it seems like a push, if not a little more extra work. I mean, what’s the big problem with letting adult people handle their own email and then notifying people when they need to?

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:28) – It’s just the information being locked away is what it is. Um, not everyone on the team knowing go what’s going on with the file because it’s in that person’s email, they don’t make a note on it or they don’t cc the file or the doc,

Jim Hacking (00:20:39) – Why don’t you lose your shit the next time that happens and make a mockery of everybody involved who did not upload the documents to where it belongs and say, if this happens again, you’re all fired. Because

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:50) – That’s not my style style. I need to bring Jim Hacken

Jim Hacking (00:20:53) – Yours in mine. I’m teasing, but you know what I mean. I mean it seems like you’re taking on this monumental task to solve a relatively minor problem that could be solved with a little bit of coaching and a little bit of guidance.

Tyson Mutrux (00:21:04) – Okay. Uh, feedback. Tegan, I’ll love to talk this through a little bit more. We do need to wrap things up cause both of you, you and I both have huddles, uh, coming up so we can talk more about this later. I appreciate the combo. Before I wrap things up, I wanna remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. A lot of great information being shared there. Uh, if you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild. Go to max law guild.com if you wanna join us in Denver and then later this year in Miami. And then our own little retreat that we have, roll teaser there, max law events.com. You can join us there as well. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking (00:21:40) – You know, I’m a 10 quick start and I love to get excited and jumping on to next things. Don’t be too quick to jump out of a team. Don’t be too quick to abdicate responsibility or connection to a team. I’ve spent the last 90 days or four months with my intake team and I have a connection with them that I haven’t had in a really long time. I’m gonna be much slower in how I exit this time than I was the last time. And I just think that it’s easy to sort of adopt this mindset that, oh, well this thing’s humming along so I can go over here and go do other stuff. But I think across our firm right now in every department, we’re seeing that sort of the leaders of those departments need to be a little bit more connected than I thought. So be deliberate and be thoughtful in how you let go of connection in whatever department you’re responsible for.

Tyson Mutrux (00:22:31) – I love it. That’s good advice. And then I already mentioned this, but my tip of the week is a world without email reimagining work in an age of communication overload by Cal Newport. So check it out. Hi Jimmy. See you brother. Bye bud.

Speaker 0 (00:22:44) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

The post Email Management in Your Law Firm? appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

If you’re a business owner, you know how important it is to rank high on Google’s search results. But with the recent proximity update, things have changed in the local search world. In this episode, Seth Price shares his insights on how to navigate Google’s proximity update and improve your local search rankings.

According to Seth, the proximity update has rebalanced factors and made proximity to the searcher a significant factor in local search rankings. But don’t worry, there are ways to counteract this update. One strategy is to diversify your risks by having multiple office locations. By doing this, you’ll increase your chances of getting found in different areas and improve your local search rankings.

Another strategy is to take advantage of new features in Google My Business profiles, such as posts and neighborhoods. By doing this, you can improve your rankings and get more visibility. However, Seth cautions that just because Google is doing something doesn’t necessarily mean it will work.

Seth emphasizes the importance of having an authoritative site and an office location to accelerate local search rankings. He also suggests focusing on signage and ensuring that the building you choose is not already saturated with competitors in your field.

So, if you want to improve your local search rankings, make sure you listen to this episode and implement these strategies. 

Episode Highlights:

00:40 Google’s proximity update and its impact on local search rankings

04:03 The local ranking factors that Google considers

07:12 The importance of having multiple office locations to counteract the effects of Google’s proximity update 

10:15 The importance of service areas in local search rankings and how they can help counteract the reduced radius from the home office 

16:02 The impact of Google’s proximity update on local search rankings and the importance of having satellite offices

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Seth:

• • Website 
  • Twitter
  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin 
  • Youtube 

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: How to Improve Google’s Local Search Rankings

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Seth Price as we share his talk proximity update what it means to you and how to leverage it. You can also hedge in the Maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video now to the episode.

Speaker 0 (00:00:19) – Run Your Law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Nutrex. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Seth Price (00:00:40) – Today, in my limited time with you, I wanted to give you an update of what is going on with Google and its proximity update. For many of you, December was the first time that you had seen the local search world change. We’re used to algorithm updates for organic search, the things that come below the three pack. But the three pack, which is below the ads and above the organic, had stayed very stable for a very long time. And December of last year was the first time that things moved. And for many people in this room, this was actually probably, it could be upsetting, but for many people here, it’s actually probably positive. If you were the market dominator in his space, this could be something that would be tremendously upsetting. Bill Umansky, a friend of the uh, his group here is a guy who called me up the next day and said, oh my God, what do I do?

Seth Price (00:01:36) – I got one office in Orlando and this is what we’re talking about today, what Google did in December and how it affects the distance people are from your office when you’re searching and what you can do about it. So basically if you are dominating, you dominated less. So if you, you’re a smaller player that wasn’t dominating, this could be an opportunity, right? So what do we see? The first was sort of a graphic change where we just saw stuff below to the side of the map. Big deal. That’s not gonna make or break anybody, but it was just sort of the first noticeable difference. Hey, something is happening, right? But what we did see was for people that before in November for example, this is from Sterling Sky who dominated a market. This means they were number one in the three pack two for most of their geography.

Seth Price (00:02:22) – All of a sudden they controlled less of it and all of a sudden there was less green and more colors that we don’t want to see here. This is uh, Washington DC and you could see that overnight things went from mostly green to a lot of colors that we don’t want for personal injury lawyer, for injury lawyer and for accident lawyer left is before right, is after. This is what we saw going on. So Google acknowledged it. Google doesn’t give us a lot of information for those of us who geek out on digital and are trying to play the game and get every possible advantage. Google said, yep. In fact, we are rebalancing factors and we’re trying to figure out how we can give people, they’re always trying to figure out the best way slash make the most money. But this update was reevaluating the distance of somebody searching from where it is.

Seth Price (00:03:12) – My colleague Melini who speaks on this a lot, she always talks about the example of pizza near me. You don’t really want the best pizza PR likely 45 minutes away. You want something that’s gonna get to you quickly and hot Google is kind of applying that near me to its search algorithm, which is a big change cuz before if you were hypothetically the dominant player in in Arizona divorces, you could have a huge geography for that three pack. All of a sudden it was narrowing where it would show you velocity. This is over time showing you how much in this period of time we saw the, the legal industry in particular saw huge, huge bumps during this time and giving basically this is over an extended period of time. On the far right it shows you how much velocity we were seeing and how much change was going on.

Seth Price (00:04:03) – Okay, so here are the local ranking factors and you have, you know, Google my business profile signals, review signals, the key highlighted in blue on the left proximity to the searcher, what is your distance to the office? And that is something that before was less of a factor. All of a sudden this has been turned on its head. Okay? So we are basically trying to figure out if Google is looking at proximity, what do you do about it? Cuz you know, if you have a single office, this is something that is problematic and you now all of a sudden have less of a radius, which means less population is gonna see your results in the all-important three pack. But this is something that we had seen coming for those that had heard me speak before we’re, we’ve talked for a very long time about multiple office locations and diversifying risks so that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

Seth Price (00:04:52) – For a lot of reasons this is a good thing and it is something that every time Google is adding new features to the Google My Business interface or Google business profiles as I call it now, we are looking to take advantage of as many of those as possible. So when they do this and they give you the ability to do things, you want to be able to take advantage of it. So if Google is starting a feature on neighborhoods, we want that. If it’s posts, people, anybody here do posts once a week in your Google My Business, you’re able to put something there. A graphic might be something that you wanna highlight, an event, whatever it is, it’s up for one week. For the longest time it wasn’t really focused on by Google, but over time they’re like okay, we want to incorporate that. And now it’s an analytics.

Seth Price (00:05:39) – So that’s now an important touchpoint. The flip side would be those of us who were on Google Plus back in the day, it was a precursor when they were trying to fight with Facebook for you to spend time there, it was a wonderful platform, but by the end of the day it was just a bunch of marketers and Google ended up shutting it down. So the thing is, if Google’s doing it, we want to participate, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna work. So here with posts was just, they put it out in 17 wasn’t all that exciting but present day the posts are being crawled and the search terms can improve rankings, which is something that was not really the case back in 17. But once Google said Yeah we’re gonna make a go of it, we wanna make sure that we’re there. So this is the proximity before and after and actually brought, I believe this is a St.

Seth Price (00:06:23) – Louis example. So this is an example of a dominant player from the suburbs who couldn’t get, if you look on the left hand side, any love downtown for immigration. Whereas on the right, if you had something like visa lawyer, you could. And the difference being that in the Google my business profile, there are pull downs for criminal lawyer, injury, lawyer, immigration lawyer, but not for visa lawyer. So when you’re going up against a direct competitor who does something specifically, it will be harder for injury lawyer. But if you’re doing something catastrophic at upstate New York and you have something very specific, it would give you an advantage because a player that’s further away that has injury lawyer could stop you but not if it’s something that’s unique to you that you’re doing that others aren’t fighting for. So this was basically the point that we proved, which was a, a pin on the map.

Seth Price (00:07:12) – An office downtown within two weeks took an authoritative site and pushed it. So if you have an authoritative site and you said, you know what, I really want to be in Rockland County right now, it’d be very hard to get love in Rockland County digitally, but if you put an office there with an authoritative site and everything behind it, that is gonna accelerate. And that’s not new news, but I’m using this to show the importance of that office location. So what is the strategy of getting additional offices right? Because that’s part of the, one of the ways to counteract this proximity search is to have an east side and a west side or a suburban and a downtown, et cetera. No executive suites. Theoretically, if you have a legit suite at Regis with an office and a door and you keep a lease and you have pictures, if it gets suspended, you could get it back.

Seth Price (00:08:02) – My advice is not to play that game, particularly if it’s something that you’re just, you know, saying, Hey here Regis here are eight offices, let me put them everywhere. That would be awesome. It doesn’t work. And over time we’ve seen sweeps where they all get wiped out. I just talked to ’em on the way in. When your thing gets suspended, it’s a painful moment. It may come back, but why take that risk signage? The more signage the better. And then this is what’s tricky about any office, not just a a Regis space, but if you say you want to do injury and let’s say you’re gonna go and you wanna be able to find something in Rockland County to put an office in. If you put something at the same address as somebody else doing injury, either it’s gonna prevent you from being seen or prevent them from being seen if you’re become the dominant player.

Seth Price (00:08:46) – So making sure that whatever building you’re going into isn’t filled with people doing the same type of lot in that address next door is fine but in one address, Google does not generally allow two of the same type of lawyer there. So find somebody doing criminal or immigration but not the same type of law as you. So basically when you’re doing this, this is not to be taken lightly before you sign a lease, think about this and figure out is this something that’s gonna be seen? Cause it’s not competing directly against somebody else. A and then B, are you sure that this is something that will have a chance at visibility? You don’t wanna spend all this time and money and not have a chance at visibility.

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Seth Price (00:10:15) – So the local service areas, this is the second way that we have gone about trying to deal with this proximity update. So you have your main pin on the map at your home office and you have a a geography around that. We’ve seen that reduced with the proximity search. There historically have been service areas and something that Google really didn’t focus that much on and it didn’t help with search. But these service areas for instance, if you were a garage door company, were important because it doesn’t, you don’t really care if you were a garage door is broken where the company is located, you care, is a van gonna come to your house and service you? And if it’s too far away they won’t. But if it’s part of a service area, they will. So Google started testing these service areas as something, but it wasn’t helping us as lawyers.

Seth Price (00:11:00) – So here are the examples of service areas and if you’re looking at a, I believe it’s Houston on the right, that what you’re dealing with are different neighborhoods that before this DC on the left, that these different areas are areas that may not mean anything to you, but to Google it means something. So while you may say you have a Houston address, they are gonna look at this like it is, no it’s not Houston, it is this, you know, springs area or whatever neighborhood it’s in. They’re looking at areas and grouping them together. So basically 2018 came in 2019, we don’t see pins anymore. We’re seeing groupings of areas and 2019 up to 20 service areas can be added to your Google business pages. Google my business was the way we said it for a long time and I, it’s kinda hard to stop saying it, but basically you now have the ability just like the pull down to say that you do injury or criminal, you can now say where do you service?

Seth Price (00:12:01) – So here’s an example, Houston, the different areas, Houston Gardens, garden Oaks, these are area and clusters where you can say yes, even though I’m not closest to this, I still service this area. And these are the beginnings of what we want to see in order to counteract the fact that you can’t get as large a radius from the home office by just putting a pin on the map. So basically in 2020 this is something that we didn’t see and nobody else could, you know, there was basically studies out there saying hey this is not moving the needle at all. You could put all the service areas you want but it’s not gonna make you any money. And this is an example of April, 2020. It’s showing that if somebody was in a particular area, the service areas was not getting you any greater love. The physical location got you loved but nothing else.

Seth Price (00:12:50) – So the local service area timeline, basically the summer of 2021, Google started identifying where you were. You didn’t just say that you were in Atlanta, you were in Century Center or in New York it’s saying that you were in White Plains. It’s determining where you are. Westchester is not allowing you to say the area that you’re in. So basically pre proximity update, you can’t alter this proximity, you only rank where X is. But that’s what’s no longer the case. And that’s the takeaway from today’s talk, which is that with service areas now, and this has literally happened in the last couple months, you can now do a land grab for additional real estate beyond what you have from just that one office. So that if you’re a player with an office in Albany and you say, Hey I want this greater surrounding area, this is gonna allow you to fight to get additional eyes.

Seth Price (00:13:45) – And here is an example. So on the left we’re seeing what happened post update where the entire left side became non-green, meaning you’re not in the three pack. What we saw was by adding service areas in, you’ll see on the right that as you are gonna see a number of green in the upper left-hand corner, this is significant because it is nowhere near the office or the pin on the map as I call it. But areas that have direct competitors, this is not gonna work. So that if in, you know, if a neighborhood near you, you have a direct competitor doing what you have with a pin on the map, you will not likely compete against them. But if there is geography where your competitors are not by listing the service areas, you can gain that real estate back that you lost with the proximity update. So that is what I have to say. I’m happy to take any and all questions. No

Speaker 3 (00:14:41) – I was just looking at our business profile sees listed multiple locations. Does it matter? We have three seven

Seth Price (00:14:53) – As many as there’s no to max as many as you could reasonably argue. And also understanding that if there’s a neighborhood which is saturated with lawyers, this is not gonna have a huge effect. But the ones that are not, we wanna be able to pick up that real estate because Google is saying, hey, if it’s close we’re gonna show it. But when there’s not a great answer, we’re falling back on this.

Speaker 3 (00:15:14) – My business still want the aerial block cause I have the trading but it always bumps

Seth Price (00:15:21) – Beyond. Great question. You know, it was a huge factor pre-up update it seems like it’s less of a factor, but if you can get it, I still love it. And that, you know, again, I can’t tell you the like exactly how much it matters but, and I can’t tell cause and effect because so many people race to it pre-up update. But if you look in my market, uh, for personal injury, I move to it and two of my biggest digital competitors move to it. And when you do a search, that’s what you’re seeing is you’re seeing the people with trade and with the exact match answers. You don’t want it to be spammy. Anything you can do and depending if you’re an injury, it’s the most competitive people are gonna fight you. Family let’s say is in the middle, you know, trust and estates, nobody really cares.

Seth Price (00:16:02) – So god bless and go for it. But make sure you do it right and do in case you do get the suspension, have all the information to show this is a legitimate name was the question in the back. So yes, satellite office, that’s why I talked about it before in in the presentation. But I would say that it’s not a panacea, you’re not gonna get everything. But if you’re on the west side of town and you have no presence on the east side of town, you don’t even have a chance. So there’s also a pull and tug. So the area that you saw that did not have the green on the after is the area where there’s a high density of lawyers. DuPont Circle in DC has a huge number of personal injury lawyers. So we’ve sort of punted and said okay, we’re gonna give up on this little tiny, you know, 10 block area and we want to be able to get the power of everything else.

Seth Price (00:16:48) – That said, I could put an office there and fight there. But then I’m also building, that’s the the one sort of dirty secret of all this, which is not pretty, which is you now need to start reviews all over again for another office. Good buddy of ours had five offices and you had the same review posted at all of ’em. Bad thing Google will take it down. Could you get away with two from a single person? Possibly. But building reviews from scratch for new offices is not nothing. So you want to be able to do this but it’s gonna take a lot of effort. It’s hard enough getting reviews in one office now you got 2, 3, 4, 5 offices over time. Yeah. You know that that happens from time to time. It is frustrating and very often you wait and they eventually come. There are other times when there is something wrong pinging the Google support is helpful, it is clunky and we don’t have full transparency. So

Speaker 3 (00:17:35) – You’re saying that, I mean best practice to a physical location and had service areas do that address

Seth Price (00:17:44) – Correct? I mean additional offices is good too, but if you don’t have the resources to do that or that’s a limiting factor, whether the reviews are otherwise, that’s the conclusion that we have is that it will get you maximum value for the offices you have. My time is up, but I thank you very much. I’m here. Blue Shark has a booth outside if anyone wants to talk to anybody, but I’ll geek out on this with anybody who wants to talk. Thank you.

Speaker 0 (00:18:05) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

The post How to Improve Google’s Local Search Rankings appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Have you ever considered building a niche law practice? Ashley did just that and has found great success in her niche dental law practice. Ashley’s unique background as a former legal assistant turned attorney and touring musician has given her the confidence and skills to build relationships with clients and create great content for social media.

Ashley’s decision to pivot from litigation to a niche dental practice was driven by the pandemic and a desire to explore other areas of law. She took advantage of a regulatory sandbox in Utah and used social media and referrals to bring in clients. Ashley’s workshops with dental lenders, brokers, and CPAs have also been successful in bringing in clients.

Now, Ashley is looking to expand her dental practice around the country by hiring attorneys in other states to work as of counsel. Her niche dental law practice has been lucrative and has led to many referrals from lenders, brokers, and other professionals in the dental industry. 

If you’re considering building a niche law practice, take a page out of Ashley’s book and use social media and referrals to bring in clients. And don’t forget to create great content that showcases your expertise and builds relationships with clients.

02:17 Working as a paralegal for 10 years before attending law school 

05:28 Pivoting from litigation to a niche dental practice, including the challenges of working during the pandemic

08:15 Bringing in clients through social media and referrals

09:21 Niching into dental law practice

11:24 Utah’s regulatory sandbox, which allows non-lawyer ownership in law firms and sharing of referral fees

18:29 Expanding her practice around the country by working with attorneys in other states

19:15 Struggling with creating content 

Jim’s Hack: Using Pip Deck cards to come up with story structure. Pipdeck.com

Ashley’ s Tip: Email hack: Check your email 3 times a day for 30 mins each time. 

Tyson’s Tip: Bill.com for employee budgets – a credit card on steroids.

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Ashley:

• • Website 
  • Instagram
  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Building a Lucrative Niche Dental Practice with Ashley Smith

Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast. Your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. I am James Oliver hacking the third

Tyson Mutrux
hole that’s going on. I’m Tyson Mediatrix. I like the upbeat pneus that you have today. That’s great.

Jim Hacking
Well, when you’ve been recording all day, and you’re going to continue recording all day, you got to get pumped up and I just went for a nice walk. It’s cold here again, it was warm the other day it just dropped. So although it’s not like where our guest is in Utah, where I just heard they’re still getting pummeled with snow. My friend in Utah tells me that you might be able to ski on the Fourth of July. Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux
it’s looking like it this year. That is absolutely crazy. I had a call with someone yesterday, actually. That’s in Utah. And in the background, there was a snowy mountain. I’m like, Where the hell are you? He’s like, he’s like I’m in Utah. I’m like, Oh my gosh, wow. I was not used to that. That’s That’s crazy. So well, let’s introduce our guest today. It’s Ashley Garvey. Smith. It’s interesting. She has a really interesting story. She was a lily illegal assistant for 10 years before attending law school. I mean, how often do you see that that’s pretty incredible. In short, as a litigation attorney for several years, but discovered particularly during the pandemic, she adds in her bio that litigation was not her preferred practice area and 2020 actually took advantage of a unique opportunity led by the Utah Supreme Court called a regulatory sandbox in which certain relaxed regulations allowed applicants to provide innovative legal service models that might not be permitted under traditional rules. She took this opportunity to build a niche dental practice, which I’m really interested in talking more bags. I’ve heard about them during the mastermind, but she developed this dental related legal practice where she helps dentists transition their practices, which is a really cool thing. And I’m sure you’re going to talk more about that. So But another interesting thing is before becoming an attorney, Ashley was also a professional musician who toured with bands across the country. She loves to use her freedom as her own boss to travel with her husband and two boys. So very cool story. Ashley, welcome to the show. Thanks so

Ashley Smith
much for having me.

Jim Hacking
So Ashley, we were talking before we came on about the fact that you worked as a paralegal for 10 years or 11 years. And I did it for two before I went to law school, we were congratulating ourselves on what great lawyers former paralegals make. But talk to us about the experience of working in law firms before law school, how it made you a better law student, if it did, and then how it led to you becoming a lawyer.

Ashley Smith
Yeah, so I actually never had any intention of being in the law. I’m from a very small, very conservative town in Utah. And so frankly, I didn’t know any female lawyers, I didn’t know any lawyers, particularly any female lawyers. I didn’t even know any women who had a college degree. And so it just wasn’t on my radar. But I got married when I was about 20 years old. And my first husband passed away in a helicopter accident, almost two years after we had been married. And that experience, I mean, having a spouse or a child or you know, a loved one die. It does a couple of things. I think, first of all, it makes you realize life is really short. And so you have to do the things that you want to do. And I think the other thing it does is it makes you a little bit fearless. It’s like, hey, if I could overcome that, and I can go through that I can pretty much do anything. And so after that happened, I just thought, Well, I never had any intention of going to college or, you know, having a career. I just thought we just grew up and we were moms. And that’s what we did. And so I ended up going back to school after he passed away, I was actually going to be an English teacher. And while I was going to school, I got a job as a legal assistant at a litigation firm. And so while I was there, I started becoming very interested in the law. And frankly, I saw some attorneys come in and I thought, Well, if that guy can do this, then I can do this. And so, so I actually was a legal assistant for a while. And when I graduated college, when I got my degree, I actually ended up finding out that I so I met my second husband several years later, and my last year of college, I found out that I was pregnant with my first son. And I found out that the LSAT was on my due date. And so naively I just thought, well, I’ll just take the next LSAT, you know, the one two months after I’ll have a two month old and study for and take the LSAT. Well, that didn’t happen. And so about five or six years later, I finally ended up taking the LSAT so I was not a traditional student. I actually had two kids, when I decided to finally go to law school. Wow,

Tyson Mutrux
that’s incredible. I didn’t know much of that. So that’s interesting. And thank you for sharing that I want to talk about, man, there’s so many topics I want to talk about now, especially but let’s talk about the career choice, that career change you pivoted in? What were the factors that led to that. And I know that COVID had us doing a lot of internal thinking, right. But what were the other factors? And maybe that was the main factor. But what were the factors that you took into consideration said, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m changing completely what I’m going to do. And you’re

Ashley Smith
talking specifically about, like when I finally was an attorney, and I chose to go from litigation, right. So during the pandemic, you know, Utah was a really strange political climate during that time. And so there were actually a lot of law firms that were still requiring people to come into the office and remote work just wasn’t an option for I wouldn’t even say just law firms, I think just some businesses in general. And I’m because you know, Utah is a very conservative state. I think, initially, it wasn’t taken very seriously. And so kids were out of school, and I had to find a way to homeschool my kids, and still go into the office every single day. And I had an hour long Well, it was a 45 minute long commute. And so I had to commute into the office, and still find a way to homeschool my kids. And on top of that, I just was realizing, you know, I was a professional musician. I was a performer for a lot of years. And so I thought, I’m gonna love litigation, I’m going to love standing up in court and performing. And you realize in litigation, it’s not so much about that. It’s more fighting with other attorneys, and trying to meet deadlines. And especially as an associate, it’s doing all the grunt work, you’re not doing a lot of performing in court, because you’re not the one that’s trying the cases. And so for me, it was a grind. And I had two kids, and I was trying to homeschool them and trying to be a litigator, learning how to do depositions. I mean, you guys do this now. And you know, the first time we had to do a deposition over zoom, and it was just such a disaster, and trying to do hearings over zoom. I mean, it was kind of nice, because you didn’t have to, you only had to dress halfway in order to do the hearings in the depositions. But it just was a grind. And it just didn’t jive with my personality. And so on top of that I worked for a very, it was a very traditional mid sized law firm, they didn’t even have a case management system, they didn’t have a document management system, there was no embracing new technology at all. And so it was really frustrating and new ways to practice law, they wouldn’t even let me do things on a flat fee basis. And so it was all hourly. And it just was really frustrating because I didn’t have a voice. And on top of that, I could see these innovative ways that we could practice the law that they weren’t embracing. And so finally, I just thought, you know, I’m bringing in so many clients to this firm, I wasn’t getting paid a commission on any of the clients I was bringing in. And I thought if I just open my own firm right now, I could make more money than I’m making at this firm.

Jim Hacking
So let’s talk about that. How were you bringing in clients? And how did you continue to bring in clients once you decided to go out on your own.

Ashley Smith
So I was bringing in clients, I feel like I’m pretty good at you know, interpersonal relationships and building relationships. So I wasn’t doing a lot of marketing. I mean, some of my marketing was, honestly Facebook posts and Instagram posts, but every time I would do an Instagram post or a Facebook post, I would have someone reach out and say, oh, I need your help with my business, or I need your help with my estate planning. So at the time, I was doing litigation, but I really also wanted to move toward business organizations and contract and estate planning. And so I was pretty good at putting posts out there on Instagram and Facebook. And then I would just get referrals. And so I was getting so many referrals that I had to turn them away because frankly, I was putting in so much time. But I wasn’t getting the benefit because I wasn’t getting any kind of commission from the law firm. And so I knew that I could draw in clients just based on my relationship and based on referrals. But as you know, once I actually started my law firm, and I wasn’t doing a lot of marketing, I realized there’s a lot more that I actually have to do in order to keep those clients coming in.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so let’s talk about this. That your dental. I don’t know what you call it. Dental law practice. Yeah, whatever the hell you call it, right. So tell people what that is. I think it’s a really clever niche. I really do and so tell people what it is.

Ashley Smith
So what I do is I help dentists buy and sell their dental practices. And then also I help them on the management side as well. You know, I help them manage their practices with just like their associate contracts and things like that. I don’t do any medical malpractice. So it’s really just on the business end. So I help them with the formation and I help them with the actual transition and the management And what I learned is it’s an actual industry, this dental transition industry is its own kind of microcosm. And so they want lawyers that have done dental transitions before, because there are some weird, specific nuances that once you learn those, they’re kind of similar across the board and all dental transitions. But in this industry, there are lenders, there are brokers, there are dental transition coaches, and they want to work with lawyers who know what they’re doing, too. And so during the pandemic, I had a friend approached me who is a dental buyer coach, I mean, that’s all he does. And he does really well. And he writes books on how to buy a dental practice. And so he approached me and he said, Hey, I have all of these clients that I have to refer to an attorney, you know, have you. And essentially, it’s just mergers and acquisitions. You know, it’s very similar with just weird dental nuances. And he said, I really want to refer them to someone who knows what they’re doing, and someone who has done this before. But I’d like a referral fee. Well, as we know, we can’t give referral fees to non lawyers for in most states, I mean, so in Utah, that was the case. But right around the pandemic, Utah implemented what they call a regulatory sandbox, where they started relaxing some of the rules you had to apply, and you had to tell them exactly what you were doing. And one of the rules that they were relaxing is you could have a non lawyer owner for your law firm, and they could own a majority or a minority, it didn’t really matter. But it was a way that you could share referral fees. And when they actually started that they actually were doing bear referral fees. So they were just saying, Hey, we’re gonna relax the rules so much that law firms, you can pay chiropractors, a referral fee. And they ended up finding out that was not a great idea. And so they reeled that back a little bit, and they said, Okay, instead of just bare referral fees, you have to have like some ownership in the actual law firm, or in the business, it didn’t even have to be a law firm. So you can have a law related business that’s not owned by lawyers. And the whole purpose of this regulatory sandbox was, initially, let’s provide access to justice for more people. And so what they started seeing was people wanted to do these, like divorce clinics, where you go in, and if it’s a, like a pretty amicable split, you have someone who is not an attorney, helping you fill out the documents. And then if you need an attorney, or you need a mediator, they work there in that clinic and in that business, and it’s the same thing for you know, criminal law, and things like that. And so they’re like, We really can be innovative here, you know, we can expand the way that we practice law, we can make it more innovative, we can implement technology. And so when I saw that opportunity, I thought, Well, I had this guy, he wants referral fees, he gets all of these clients. And on top of that, he can help coach my clients who are buying a dental practice. And in turn, you know, he owns 7% of my firm. So he gets 7% of the profits. And it works out great for both of us. Frankly,

Jim Hacking
I’m really struck by the fact that you were mentioning how conservative Utah is. And I guess I should have been more aware of that than I am. But I’m wondering, why do you think this happened there? Like, what was it there? And then also, what has been the reaction to you and your practice from other conservative Utah lawyers?

Ashley Smith
This is a great question. It was so interesting that Utah was the one that came out. So Arizona did this first. So instead of having a regulatory sandbox, Arizona just came out and said, Hey, you can have non lawyer owners for your law firm. So they didn’t even do like a regulatory sandbox where you had to apply, you can just do it in Arizona. And there is a specific judge here in Utah. And I mean, he leans not as conservative, his name is Justice humanists. And he doesn’t lean quite as conservative. And he really wanted to spearhead this effort. And so he got a group of people, and they call it like the innovative office. And they said, We want to be at the forefront of this. We think this is going to be the future of law practice. And let’s make Utah at the forefront of this. And so I think it was really him. And what I will say is, man attorneys didn’t like it. They did not like these attorneys in Utah, and there is still a lot of pushback, because they’re essentially saying this is just a way to, to give referral fees, without, you know, having some kind of ramifications. What I will say is I have to report quarterly to the Utah Supreme Court. And so, you know, I have these reports. They have a way of monitoring us. And so there’s a lot of oversight, and we’re still in this regulatory sandbox. So we’re being monitored, making sure that we’re I’m following the rules as far as what the regulatory sandbox requires. But man, I think in every, like Utah bar journal, there’s some article from some attorney who just hates the idea. And there’s still so much pushback on this. So

Tyson Mutrux
nI think it’s a fascinating thing going on right now. And I’m sure it’s gonna spread from state to state, and there’s gonna be different variations of it. But I think it was really smart of you to sort of jump in and take advantage of it. But I want to talk more about the niche part of your practice, though. So what have you found like, what’s your been your experience when it comes to niching down to such a narrow niche, it’s a very, very narrow niche. So what have you found when it comes to the toy business standpoint? Like what’s been your experience with it?

Ashley Smith
Yeah, and I want to say I was really resistant to niching down. And I have to tell you, I listened to maximum lawyer for probably a year before I joined the guild. And there were so many episodes where you talked about niching down. So I was resistant to it, because I thought, well, I can do estate planning, I can do business law, and then I can do these dental transitions. And what I found is I couldn’t focus on the dental transitions. But here’s the thing that dental transitions, they’re so much more lucrative than these other practice areas. Because it’s dentists, they’re willing to pay a little bit more because it’s a very, you know, dental transitions in itself is a very niche industry. And what I found is because I focus on it, I get referrals from the lenders, I get referrals from brokers, I get referrals from brokers who have been on the other side of the deal, because they’re like, you know, it was so easy to work with her because she knew what she was doing. And so most of my business is completely referral based, because I am in that industry, and I’m in that niche. And so, I’ve been able to kind of let go of some of the estate planning and some of the smaller bits like, Hey, will you draft this contract with me and it’s going to be like a $600 deal. And I, I mean, $600 deal compared to a $7,500 deal. It’s kind of a no brainer. So I’ve just found that as I’ve niched down, I can be in the industry. And so I put on workshops, where I’ll have, you know, older dentists who are thinking of selling their practice. And we do quarterly workshops, where I work with a dental lender, a dental broker, a dental CPA, and me as a dental attorney, and we put on these workshops, and I mean, it’s easy to get clients that way.

Becca Eberhart
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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast our guest today Ashley Garvey Smith, she’s a lawyer for dentists and for dentists selling their practices, actually, are you just practicing in Utah, you’re practicing around the country. So I’ve

Ashley Smith
actually expanded my practice around the country. And I have to say, this was because of Tyson. And because of this he recommended this is that I contact attorneys and other states and have them work as of counsel. And so I pay them their hourly rate to ensure that we’re complying with any state law. But this is transactional law. I mean, you know, a lot of times these contracts are going to look the same, there are going to be weird state nuances. There are also some where the dentist is selling their real estate. And so I need to have a real estate attorney in that state to help with the closing. But I’ve been able to expand there are some states I just won’t touch because I don’t want to mess with that. I don’t want to mess with their, you know, potential bar issues. So I’ve been able to work with clients in most states,

Jim Hacking
actually, how do you create content? I understand you get a lot of speaking engagements and talking to dentists and people in transition. But how are you actually creating content around this awesome niche of yours?

Ashley Smith
Well, I wish I could say I was really good at doing that. When it comes to doing videos. I mean, extremely self conscious. And so I have a really hard time putting myself out there. We’ve created an Instagram account, which is at the dental attorney. And I actually have just hired in fact, I just hired yesterday, a guy to help me with videos and so he’s going to come to my office next week and we’re going to do a bunch of videos to put on YouTube and my YouTube channel is at the dental attorney and same with tick tock which is the dental attorney, but I’m going to be honest there is not a lot of time I’m out there right now. And so I actually, I’m hiring him to help me with the videos. And then I’m actually hiring a like a social media and marketing manager, which I just got in contact with her today. And I have decided it’s time to actually spend the money to put good content out there. Because if I am going to expand into other states, it’s going to be important to be able to get good content out there. It’s I think it’s easy for me to get clients here in Utah. But since I’m expanding, putting good content out there is going to be essential. And I don’t think I can do it without someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

Tyson Mutrux
So I have somewhat of an odd question, maybe. Have you seen any benefit in your legal career from your musical career? Like from traveling around? Like, have you seen any benefits from that? I mean, I’m really curious about that.

Ashley Smith
Yeah, I think definitely, because it’s like I said, I was a performer, and I’m really good at relationships. One on one, I’m good at communicating one on one, like, Guys, I’m so insecure when it comes to doing videos, because it feels like I’m not talking to anybody, it just, it feels like I’m kind of speaking into the void. But being on stage, and playing music in front of 1000s of people has helped with the confidence. And so being able to go and just talk to people. And I think a lot of it also kind of stems from going through, like the death of a spouse where you’re like, you know, I went through that I can do anything, there’s really nothing that I can’t do. And I think sometimes we really hold ourselves back, we let fear get in the way because it’s like, oh, well, what if I fail? Well, nothing is guaranteed tomorrow is not guaranteed. And so the way I look at it is you just go out there and you just freakin do the thing.

Jim Hacking
One idea that I have. I mean, this seems like a perfect niche for a podcast. Like, if you could talk about legal issues that come up with dental practices, you could have that person, that’s your partner who’s an expert in selling practices, you could talk to former clients, potential clients, people that would refer you business, I just think and you could even do without video, and you have a great voice, you sound like a TV reporter to me. So thank you, I think it’d be well received. And you know, it’s not going to have a huge audience, but the people that watch it are really gonna love it.

Ashley Smith
nWell, you might be surprised to know, there are probably like five or six different podcasts out there that focus just on dental transitions. One of them is done by an attorney in Texas. And then actually my partner does have a podcast. And so we did one whole season that was just the legal aspect of dental transitions, which was like 10 episodes, but he has five seasons. And only one of those seasons focuses on the legal aspect of dental transitions. So I’ve thought about that a lot. And I think, honestly, now that I have this very nice microphone that both of you had recommended that I think I could probably do a podcast and start that as well. And now that I’ve hired other people to do some other things in the firm, I think ramping up, you know, it’s been two and a half years that I’ve been doing this, but now I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like I can do a little bit more marketing and put out good content that way. I love it.

Tyson Mutrux
All right, well, we are up against our time. So I’m gonna start to wrap things up. Before I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group go mad, go to facebook.com and search maximum lawyer and the search box and you’ll find the group. And then if you want a more high level conversation with people like Ashley, you can go to max law guild.com. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind leaving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,

Jim Hacking
I hack of the week comes from a company called PIP decks and PIP decks makes these little boxes of cards and the cards help you come up with stories to tell about your practice. And so there it is, there it is. So we’re both Facebook. We’re clearly both Facebook and Instagram product purchasers. Because I got mine through Facebook from James Schramko. But it is helpful in helping you formulate the structure of a good story. And we’ve used it a few times and the content was well received.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. It’s kind of fun to be able to mix and match about the different ideas. And so it’s pretty cool. I recommend that as well. All right, Ashley, we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack you got one for us.

Ashley Smith
I do this has been a game changer for me. And it’s an email hack. And my hack is you check your email three times a day, you give yourself 30 minutes to get to inbox zero and you don’t peruse you just quickly look at the email and respond. Don’t use your email as a to do list. But get to Inbox Zero even if it’s just replying and saying, hey, I’ll get to this. But I respond to every single email within 24 hours. And I do it at 10am 1pm and 5pm. And I’m at inbox zero by the end of the day.

Tyson Mutrux
I like it. It’s good. I would definitely support that. So that’s really good stuff. So my recommendation is it’s a financial product. The reason why I’m feeling uncomfortable about recommending is we use a company called bill.com. Now it’s called bill and they had a lot a lot of our payments for like like paper checks, electronic payments, all that kind of stuff. It’s pretty nice. They have this product called Divi, and allows you to set up multiple cards for your employees. And they’ll have budgets, you can give them budgets limits. And it gives you a lot of functionality. And I’ve had a couple of meetings with them. And we actually started using them. It’s actually pretty cool. And so it’s kind of like a credit card bill on steroids. And so it’s a really cool thing, a lot of functionality. So it’s something that we’ve been using for a short amount of time, but it’s still cool product. All right. Thank you so much, Ashley, really appreciate it. I’m glad people get to hear about your story. I learned some new things about yourself. It’s really cool. Thank you so much.

The post Building a Lucrative Niche Dental Practice with Ashley Smith appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.