In this episode, Jim & Tyson interview Jeff Horn, owner and principal of Horn Law Group, a firm that specializes in family and divorce. Hereunder Jeff tells about why he focused in family and divorce law, and his two books: Shock Proof Divorce and Shock Proof Family Law. Tune in as they talk about how having processes for everything in the office has helped workflow, the challenge he took in breaking a comfort level and how you learn through experience, and his aim at recruiting lawyers that only want to be family law practitioners to partner with them and grow geographically.

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This week’s episode is made possible by the support of Blue shark Digital, which provides cutting edge Digital Marketing marketing for law firms.

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Topics:

About Jeff
- Attorney in Tom Rivers, New Jersey
- Principal lawyer at Horn Law Group
- Three lawyers,three staffs including a recent hired marketing manager
- Six letterhead firm
- Inspired by MaxLaw and mastermind experience
- Has own podcast The Bold Sidebar Podcast
- Lawyer second career
- Participation in strategic coach, unique ability.
- Find talented people to do everything else, including marketing
About Jeff’s firm
- Best clients come from referrals
- Spend money on digital world
- Hired Blue shark digital to revamp their website
- Direct mail advertising to people who need their services
- Workflow wise, have processes for everything in the office
- Have over two hundred written processes
- Telephone free council, a go giver service
Why family Law?
- When started on practice, family and divorce came in through the door
- Smart lawyers didn’t want family and divorce
- More and more cases
Jeff’s two books
- Jeff’s “Bang for the buck” is love writing
- Shock Proof Divorce Started it in 1998 and finished it in 2005
- Shock Proof Family Law Tightening up of his first book
- Get an idea, put it in blue folder, and once there is a pattern start dictating
Where Jeff will be in three to five years
- Resource book “Traction”
- Doing vision tracks
- Recruiting lawyers between thirty and seventy that only want to be family law practitioners
- Partner with them in their offices to grow geographically
- Do back end business at headquarters giving them the opportunity to do their own practice
- Have five branch offices
About Jeff’s podcast
- Commited to do more human connecting
- One two one conversations recorded and put out to the world
- Has somebody to do the editing
What challenges Jeff the most
- Breaking comfortable level
- Hiring marketing manager and associate when there is no money
- Small practitioner should believe in himself and be patient
- Grow out of cash flow problems
- Hard once you have seen comfort zone
- Jim > “It’s all about putting yourself in more difficult situations and taking risks
- “If you fail at something, it’s not failure, it’s learning”
Advice to lawyers
- Take free way out for learning
- Mindset training
- Listen to podcasts
- “Invest in yourself because your two hundred grand is just a tip of the iceberg for what you are going to spend to keep up”
- Run harder, technology will run into businesses
Tips for sales or closing the sign up of a case
- “People buy for own reasons,not because they think we are smart”
- Pretend it’s first day in practice
- When people ask questions don’t give a law school answer.

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Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Jim’s hack: Book "Tiger Tactics”: Powerful Strategies for Winning Law Firms by Ryan McKeen, Billie Tarascio, William Umansky, Theresa DeGray and Jay Ruane. Will have them on MaxLaw with tactful practical things.

Jeff’s hack: Reading book “The courage to be disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi - Some highlights > “You are not a victim, you are not in competition with everyone else during competition with yourself to be your best sales” “Do what you do for your community” - Look at the practice of law

Tyson’s tip: Eliminate least profitable activity from your life and start doing more profitable activities

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim & Tyson interview Dayne Phillips, a Criminal Defense Attorney at Price Benowitz LLP. Listen as Dayne tells his story about meeting Seth Price and how he affiliated with him, having the best of both worlds, working as a solo with a big firm backing him up.

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Topics:

- Transitioning into a solo practice

Found The Maximum Lawyer Podcast

- - Listened Seth Price and John Fisher’s episodes
- Becoming a lawyer at Price Benowitz LLP
  - Started a conversation with Seth and John
  - Went to meet Seth
  - Started working as an employee of a big firm but as a solo in South Carolina
  - The best of both worlds
- The entrepreneurial spirit is in the DNA
  - His Grandfather opened up one of the first well driller business in South Carolina
  - Made the risky decision and took the leap
- Seth Price and John Fisher
  - Something special about them
  - Wanting to help others do well
  - Selfless giving
  - Providing information above the fold
- The mindset in the affiliation
  - First was all about trying to use BluShark
  - Meet with him personally in DC
  - The possibility of a partnership
- The impressive process of Price Benowitz LLP
  - Client intake
  - Follow up
  - Inhouse accounting, marketing, all handled in house.
- Advice to other attorneys in a similar situation:

Never hesitate to reach out to someone for help

- Dayne’s set up and arrangement
  - His own website
  - His own marketing with PB logo
  - Highlighting himself and his local and personal branding
- The advantage of having a big firm backing
  - Trust
  - Confidence
  - Extra backing as a selling point
- Seth’s managing style
  - Full confidence
  - Liberty
  - Not micromanaging
- In the future

Expanding to other practice areas

The Maximum Lawyer Conference 2019 is coming!

Jim’s hack: A Reddit Ask me anything! Hop on a topic that’s in the news!

Dayne’s tip: Accurate mileage reports. All in the palm of your hand. https://www.mileiq.com/

Tyson’s tip: The Glympse app; if you want somebody to know your ETA.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim & Tyson interview Brooke Moore & Laura O’Bryan of MyVirtual.Lawyer, an entirely online law firm. Listen as they go over their business model set up! Mindset, marketing, lessons learned, biggest struggles and more!

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Topics:

- Overview about their firm
  - MyVirtual.Lawyer is an entirely online law firm
  - They offer non traditional services: limited scope representations
  - Customize the entire experience based on individual’s needs and their budget
  - Remote interactions through software: client portal
- Differentiation from traditional practices
  - Litigation in family law
  - Outsourcing
  - Technology
- Feedback from clients
  - Always positive
  - No pushbacks
- Lessons learned
  - Trial and error
  - Finding the right technology
  - Pivot - We have to try it and see if it works and if it doesn’t we pivot
  - Flexible in services and technology
- Automation time savers implemented
  - Practice manager software
  - Thinking our intake tools with our documents
  - Intake forms
  - Automation
- Empowering clients

Tech stack

- - Website with calendar system built into it
  - Acuity Scheduling
  - Stripe
  - Free video softwares for consultations
  - Practice Panther
  - Docusign
  - Armor Text
- Marketing the virtual practice
  - UPS box for SEO purposes
  - Marketing not specific to a location
  - Social media marketing
- Arrangement with lawyers
  - Law firm in Arkansas
  - Licenses to use the brand in the states that it is legal
- Division of labor
- A team made of women
- A portable career
- Where do they see this going?

Expanding to other states

The mindset

- What it is that clients need and how can we do it better?
- Improvement and growth
- Implementation of new ideas
- Planification
- Working in the business and on the business

Jim’s hack: An app, Airtable. A database that also lets you collaborate and store documents inside the collaboration. It’s like a Google Sheets on steroids.

Brooke’s tip: Try to be as efficient as possible because that is going to free up time and push and move forward.

Laura’s hack: Don’t be stuck. Push the boundaries. Have a good work/life balance.

Tyson’s tip: Time maximization units. Don’t let more than 3 minutes go by without doing something really productive.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this pop-up episode, Tyson interviews Paul Lee, the Director of Business Development at The Expert Institute. The Institute connects attorneys with expert witnesses in all specialty areas. Listen as they go over what The Institute does and how it can help lawyers and law firms.

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Topics:

- What the Institute does?
  - Streamline the entire process from the start when a potential client walks through the door; reviews, screening, experts
  - Offices in Dallas, NY and Los Angeles
  - Their team of physicians should be viewed as an extension of your firm
  - Partnership program; unlimited access to their suite of services
  - Focus on experts who work on their specialty; true experts
- Transparent as possible
  - No contracts
  - A technology software that connects lawyers with true experts
  - Research team

All kind of experts

- - The institute will find the best expert for you
- The Challenge Study
  - Extensive check on the experts they provide

Detailed reports on opposing experts

Billing
- Subscription based service
- 6 months trial
- Pricing accordingly
- Payment receipts
Paul’s direct dial 3014992445
The landing page: THE EXPERT INSTITUTE
[email protected]/

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this Pop-up episode, Tyson interviews Marisa Portuondo, a solo practitioner from Miami, FL. Marisa owns Portuondo Law Firm and focuses on business law and property damage. Listen as they discuss about hiring the right person and go over the different processes and techniques they use in their law firms.

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Topics:

Difficulties about hiring
- Including instructions in job postings
- Indeed.com
- 1 of 40 followed instructions in job posting
- Experience VS instructions
Requiring cover letter
- Require a pdf cover letter
Awesome Indeed functions
- 3 different proficiency quizzes
- An audio test for people who should use a lot the phone in their jobs
Other platforms like Craigslist and ZipRecruiter
Generational hiring
- Skills
- Technology
- Using paper
- Using the phone
Training up and coming younger generations these skills
- Attorneys now are doing a working interview to see how they handle things
Hiring process:
- Hiring someone who comes from a company, who is already trained
- Put XYZ in subject line; follow instructions
Tyson’s Process:
- Follow instructions in job post
- Submit the job application before the interview
- Personality test
- Pre interview questions and rate themselves
- Second interview in coffee shop: interactions with other people
- Third interview: stand up presentation in white board: teach us something
- Skills assessment
- Tests from Atticus

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim & Tyson will go over a list of 6 reasons why Jim’s firm is transitioning away from Infusionsoft to another softwares.

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Topics:

Jim and Tyson’s history with Infusionsoft
- Maximum Lawyer wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Infusionsoft
- Discussions about running a law firm

The list:

Infusionsoft is at the end of the day, build for Marketing; it’s really clunky when it comes to run a law firm off of it
The sales pipeline itself and using the sales pipeline to try to show a client’s movement (Infusionsoft opportunities) in the during unit through the process of a case is extremely difficult
Infusionsoft is not keeping up with it’s competitors
Infusionsoft is expensive
Immigration is not that strong as other softwares when it comes to Immigration
The Infusionsoft Conference (ICON) got canceled. It was the best conference we’ve ever been to

Jim’s hack: Take a look on what you are doing and all the pieces software you are using. It makes you analyze where you are spending your money and what’s most effective. And be open to looking at other things, other pieces of software that might do things a little better.

Tyson’s tip: Tyson had urgent need of an answering service and he’s been using ReceptionHQ. They really pulled through.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Karen Caffrey a licensed professional counselor and a lawyer; Karen went from the practice of law to the practice of therapy mainly counseling lawyers. They will go over the importance of wellbeing and health for lawyers, the mindset of wellbeing, and how that wellbeing can be achieved. Also, how therapy works and how it can help your personal and business.

“You can’t be a good lawyer if you are not a healthy lawyer.”

Karen’s web site: http://www.karencaffrey.com/

What does it mean to be healthy?
It’s multifaceted, there’s a physical aspect, a spiritual aspect, a work aspect and a mental and emotional aspect...

Lawyers are reluctant to go to therapy
Because of 2 things: first, stigma; the fear of how are they going to be judged, and the second is fear on confidentiality.

The business of law and psychotherapy
“The nexus between the business of law and psychotherapy Is a lot of the challenges lawyers face in having a good business of law come from psychological reasons.”

“Who we are as people, directly impacts who we are as lawyers and who we are as business owners doing the business of law.”

Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!

Hacking’s hack: Whenever you can take a day off of the week. Unplug yourself: get away from the phone and the computer, the office.

Karen’s tip: Put your wellbeing on your radar screen and to do this by diaring it. You can dairy it every day, and spend 5 minutes talking about your wellbeing. Prioritize your wellbeing.

Tyson’s tip: Productivity - A website: Activtrak: https://activtrak.com/. It allows you to plug in yourself, your partners and employees, and it shows your productivity level.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Jay Ruane. They will go over his background, his role in his firm and how he managed to grow and improve it, paying special attention to his Adwords experience and strategies. If you want to start using adwords and pay per click or improve your strategy, this episode is for you.

“Start small, figure how it works, and then grow from there.”

The firm

Actually, Jay is more of an administrator of the firm than ever before, but he is still in the business, he does some court appearances from time to time.

Jay's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jayruane

Some of the topics:
The importance of content:
“We’re no longer advertising generic terms out there to drive people to information on our website, because people are finding our website organically based on all the content that we have”

A big mistake:
“One of the biggest mistakes people make, especially when it comes to adwords is thinking that more money is going to get them better results. That’s a misunderstanding of how the adwords auction system works.”

“There’s a tendency to wanna have the widest net, but the widest net doesn’t necessarily catch the fish that you want.”

How to build ads:
“We need to get in the mindset of the consumer. And those are the ones that are going to get clicks; the ads that resonate with the people who are facing the problem that needs a lawyer..”

How do you tell if an ad is working?:
“One of the things we like to use ourselves is, we direct the ad to a specific landing page on our website that is more sales oriented than our organic pages.”

Facebook vs Adwords:
“Facebook is great, but you have to have the right approach to facebook. You can’t expect it to give you the same type of results as pay per click because it’s just not built that way and the people aren’t there for that.”

Marquis Jackson’s episode:
https://maximumlawyer.com/podcast/legal-hope-pop-up-episode/

Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!

Hacking’s hack: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier. how to be a good coach in an office setting!

Jay’s tip: Curate your negative list on Google. Go back and take a list of the 100 top baby names for the last 50 or so years. Male and Female. Because a lot people in this field may hear that their friend got arrested for a DUI. If they are not the person who is looking to hire you don’t want to be advertising to them.

Tyson’s tip: Check out Ryan McKeen’s book: Empower Yourself: A Practical Guide to Connecticut Personal Injury Law.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson will check in on what’s going on with both of their practices, talk about MAXLAWCON and go over the Sales Prevention Department List; 10 things lawyers and law firms do that prevent the closing of sales.

First, Jim and Tyson will discuss about case management and catch up meetings, Tyson will go over the importance of synergies in a partnership and then they both will go over the difference between own generated leads and referrals of Personal Injury Attorneys.

Also, they will go over next year’s conference. Lessons learned and a lot of improvements! It’s going to be awesome!

And then, our topic; The list of The Sales Prevention Department:

1. Not having a live and empathetic person answering the phone.
2. Not returning calls or taking too long to call a lead.

“When you think about all the money that you spend to get the phone to ring, to not maximize what happens after when the phone rings it’s just waste of money.”

3. Having a slow sales process.

“They never love you as much as they do on the day that they sign you”.

“If you can stop them from looking for other attorneys, then you have done 90% of the battle. Get them to sign the contract”

4. Being too salesy AKA too much “whiskers”.
5. Brand and generic marketing.
6. Not having the knowledge base for the types of cases you’re advertising for.
7. Not following up on clients after an initial phone call.
8. Hiding the ball or over promising; being disingenuous.
9. Not being crystal clear on what it is that you do: NO REFERRALS.
10. Being afraid of walking away from the table.

Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!

Hacking’s hack: No external information until 11am!

Tyson’s tip: Talk to every person as if you never gonna talk to them again.

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group or like us on Facebook and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

Do you want to get on the show? Shoot us an email or message us!

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

Topics:

About Jeff’s firm

Where Jeff will be in three to five years

Advice to lawyers

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