Latest / The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers / How to Build a Law Firm When You Have No Experience and No Confidence - with Bradley Miller

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How to Build a Law Firm When You Have No Experience and No Confidence - with Bradley Miller · The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wellness Esquire podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Ariella and I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation with Brad Miller.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I invited Brad onto the podcast because of all the crazy things.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: He feels very strongly that lawyer happiness is essential for personal and professional success and success for the client, too.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Brad is a lawyer who tried a bunch of different areas of law until he found one that felt right.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: For him, that's MA for small businesses.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't set out to be the solo lawyer that he's pretty much always been.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: He went in that direction because he had to.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now he wouldn't have it any other way because it gives him the freedom to be who he wants to be and to live the way he wants to live.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Brad and I share similar views on the billable hour, and we talk about his transition away from the traditional billable model to a value-based model that feels good, and that he teaches other lawyers to develop for themselves.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We also talked about making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, where confidence actually comes from and how to achieve success.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: In case you've ever wondered or doubted if you could live the life you wanted while being a practicing lawyer, Brad shows that the answer is yes, you can, because the decision is yours.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're gonna love this one.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, can you hear me?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have had my sound all the way down as I said, yay, I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you heard that.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Good, how are you?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was just listening uh earlier today to your episode with Patrick on the New Fangled Lawyers podcast, and which I loved.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I originally connected with Patrick because I had gone uh I had two months in a row when I did a full week each month of a like true digital detox.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: The first time was like sort of on purpose, and then like discovered how desperately I needed it, and then the second time was more on purpose, and I came back from that and I was speaking with uh my friend Jordana Confino.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know her.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's one of the she she's a formerly practicing lawyer and is like leading so much of the charge around like, hey guys, there's a better way to do this.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she's very focused on positive psychology.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her about my d digital detox experience and how much I was like, I hate my phone.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to use it.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: What if I didn't have a smartphone?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how would that work?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, especially as a lawyer, and she said, Well, you know, Patrick does it, you should talk to Patrick because he doesn't have a smartphone.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I just love this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's anyway, that's that's how I know who he is, and I love the you know, all those kinds of conversations, and uh so that that was part of my prep for you today.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to get into uh the things that I think you you you talk about more on LinkedIn, uh, you know, with lawyer happiness and why all that is important.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get to that, tell me, why did you go to law school in the first place?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I went to law school because I wanted to be a judge.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened there?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're not a judge.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a judge, no.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I am very far from it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I saw what judges actually do.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I got to see what a judge's life is like every day in a courtroom and dealing with with what they do, and I realized that that isn't actually what I wanted to do.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what I saw on television and made me think I want to be a judge is not reality.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So how far into law school or your early career did you start to understand, oh, this thing that I thought I wanted to do, don't want to do that at all.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now I actually have to figure out what I'm gonna do because that's not the end goal anymore.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Probably a year or two in to practice.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I get after I had some some opportunities to actually get in in court and get in front of judges and kind of get a little bit of a sense for kind of what their routine and that kind of stuff was like.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And just realized, oh, not what I saw on TV, and I don't I don't think this is a good fit.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I I launched my own firm about two years ago after having practiced for a while.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I am always amazed by people like yourself who started practicing on their own right after out of law school for whatever reason.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me about that, why you started practicing you know on your own, and and just what was that like for you?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And how did you have the courage to keep going every day?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm sure you were making some mistakes.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't have not so I started practicing out of law school because I couldn't find a job and I needed money.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to pay for rent, I had student loans, I had bills and things like that.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so my girlfriend, my at the time is my wife now, said, You need to figure something out because you know I had a couple interviews, but none of them went anywhere, and I was just sitting there and she's like, You we need to do something.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, see maybe take a couple, see if you can get some some legal work or something on your own, and and we'll go from there.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how it all started.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I kind of like to tell people I was kind of a reluctant solo.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it wasn't my choice, you know.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was choice, but it wasn't like my first choice of what I would have wanted to pick.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and again, god yeah, being a judge, like you know, you don't start with a as a solo, you get into a small firm or something, and um and so so it started off that way, and um I'd made many, many, many mistakes, and I continue to make mistakes today.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm definitely You're not perfect now?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's so weird.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not, I know.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Surprised, surprise, but um no, it's it's early on I was still kind of looking for that job.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, all right, this is kind of a temporary thing.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a solo because I couldn't find anything, but as soon as I find something, then you know we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna take the jump.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I um for a couple years early on, maybe third or fourth year in a practice, I actually partnered up with two other lawyers who one of them was a law school classmate, and the other one was another lawyer who was about the same out of the same amount of time as we were.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we did that for two years and that kind of fell apart.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um at one point I was part of a virtual law firm for a couple years and that kind of fell apart.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've done some of council work for a while, but it all kind of comes back to I just enjoy the the the freedom, the flexibility of making my own decisions, of saying I don't want this client or I want this client.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want to charge them this or that, I want to run things this way or that way, I want to be able to get my daughter off the bus.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, things that, you know, if I was working in a firm, I would not have as nearly as much say over.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I want to stick a little bit longer with this first phase of, you know, you're fresh out of law school, you're on your own.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: How did you even know what you could do or what you could try to do?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, did you have the confidence that you felt like, ah, I know how to do this?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't I remember myself fresh out of law school.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember, you know, it took me a couple of years to finally even get the courage to be vulnerable enough with other people that in a way that led me to understand that we didn't learn anything in law school.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It you know, to really feel equipped to actually practice.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And but you you you just started.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I had two so I had two advantages.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: The first one was that I did, I was um for my third year of law school, I did the legal clinic.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually got a chance to uh represent clients.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had, you know, got a chance to do a simple will.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had to do, you know, some criminal defense work.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I got some of these other things already.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, all right, I've done some of this basic stuff already.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the very that was the first one that really gave me the confidence on the practicing side that hey, I can do this, you know, because I've done it before.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other thing that I had was that that law school classmate that I ended up partnering with, um, he had already planned on going out on his own out of law school.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So once we kind of took the bar and we were in that kind of dead zone waiting for results and all that kind of stuff, well, I was waiting, you know, like, okay, I'm gonna put resumes out and all that kind of stuff.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: He was practic planning on getting his prep his firm going.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually went and spent time with him and kind of, you know, he was going through the things and we kind of chatted a bit.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I had nothing else to do at the time, you know.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of hung out and I learned kind of from him how he was doing things and and saw what he was doing.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I started practicing, I got an office right across from the hall from him, and so I could see day to day what he was doing, and I figure, you know what, if he could do it, I can probably do it at least half as well.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, might as well, you know.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: At what point did you feel like, oh, I I know what I'm doing?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can do this.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing it, but now I feel like, oh yeah, this is a good idea.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I'll keep going.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, I suppose I could be the joke of I still don't feel that way.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I don't think it was necessarily a moment.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was just more of it just kind of happens, and next thing you know, you can look back and you I've been doing it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, like how did you think about the business of law?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: How to set up your just you know, the the non-practicing part, because that is so much of running your own firm, and it's critical.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and this is where it helped to have that that classmate across the whole because that's a lot of what we did is he was like, All right, I need to have you know, I gotta set up, I gotta get an office, I gotta get utilities in my office, I need a phone, you know, internet, uh, what kind of software do I want to use?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all this kind of stuff.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, malpractice insurance.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the bank with him when he set up his bank accounts for the firm.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I was there and kind of we chatted and talked about all these different things.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I got to see him do it and kind of walk through it with him.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So then I like, all right, well, I've seen it once.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can do it myself.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now I just use the same software he uses, I use the same bank that he uses, and I just kind of did the same thing he did.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, you know, it was just easy to just kind of copy, mimic what he was doing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And where did you start finding clients?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So my first two clients were from law school classmates.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one was a law school classmate that was getting married and had an issue with their venue for their for their reception, and so I helped with that.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the other was a law school classmate, his sister, ended up uh having the traffic kind of a DUI issue.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I helped, I helped represent her on that, and that's kind of where it started.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just kept going.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of go from there.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you were you what what was your billing model from day one?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the first the first uh days that I started out, it was hourly because that's what everyone did.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what I was told to do.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so again, I base it off of what the guy across the hall did, and he billed$175 an hour, I think it was.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, all right, he could do it$175, I can do it for$150.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I set out at$150 and started doing hourly billing for the first few years.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you start out intentionally, it sounds like being a bit lower than your friend?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, confidence.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this was I was kind of a reluctant solo here, so it's not really what I wanted to do.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I didn't have the confidence of, you know what, I can do this, I can take these clients in this work.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he did uh his big thing was family law.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, well, family law is gonna be a little bit higher because of just the kind of thing, issues you have to deal with, the people and things.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in my head, I'm telling myself that along with the confidence issue, you know, a little bit lower makes a lot of sense.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So how have your how has your confidence and your awareness of confidence evolved over the years?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So confidence comes from competence, so just getting good at things.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that comes from repetition.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just been doing things.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the more you do it, the more reps you get into it, the better you get.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then you start getting confident.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, look, I did a pretty good job here.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I got them the result that I that they wanted, or you know, I was successful on this.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you just kind of see that, and that's just evidence.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, I can do it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I I got this, and and that just builds and builds.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in the early days when you you would have been making probably even more mistakes than you know you do now, whether it's you know, with the client work itself or just with the business model and figuring everything out.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: How how did that impact your confidence?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then what was your kind of internal process for going, all right, well, not gonna do it that way again, but I gotta do stuff tomorrow, so gotta get up.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: It just yeah, just having to do it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's just knowing that I needed to pay the bills.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't really have much of a choice.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, again, I could sit and wait and hope that the phone would ring by somebody saying, Hey, we want to offer you a job, but like I I, you know, that's not paying, you know, rent.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's not taking care of student loans.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I just kind of had to to do it and push through it.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: At what point were you like, oh, this solo thing actually works well for me?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm gonna stop waiting for someone to call because this is actually what I want to do and the way I want to do it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so the ironic thing is that after I started, so I the f you know, the first, you know, I just had those kind of first time of clients or whatever, but I was like, all right, I'm gonna get an office.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I got an office across the hall from that classmate, and so then I had to go get furniture, right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's just kind of such an empty space.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to get a desk and I need to get all this stuff, and and I had to put it together, you know, because I'm not gonna, you know, I can't afford to buy a big, full, big piece of furniture, so I have something I have to put together.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I before that happened, I was sitting on a cart table, you know, a cart table and chairs, sitting in this empty office, basically, with my laptop sitting there, you know, trying to make things work.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had my my dot my office furniture ordered, I had the phones, lines, and stuff like that, everything else like set up, and then I actually got a phone call from somebody I had interviewed with asking me if I was still interested in the job.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, I'd already made the leap, I'd already kind of got all stuff set up, and I'm like, unfortunately, you're too late.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you talked to me three or four days ago, it'd be different.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I just got further and I'm putting it together, so yeah, but I'm sitting here on the floor right now, putting my desk together, so I I can't help at this point.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I mean that kind of got it started, but I I think honestly, it wasn't until six, seven years in, maybe even longer than that, that I finally was like, alright, I'm gonna stop looking for, or kind of have in the back of my head that this is just a temporary gig and just start saying that you know what this is what it is.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if something comes up, I'm open to discussing it.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm gonna be very particular about it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not just gonna jump into something because it presents an opportunity to get out of this being solo.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna make sure this is actually a good fit for me and what I'm looking for.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think you you actively didn't want a solo practice?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Part of it is the confid confidence, I believe.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um some of it is I'd never really envisioned myself as a solo.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'd always envisioned, even in law school.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting in the library with some of my classmates, and we're talking about, you know, once we got our once we graduated, we were all gonna, you know, go off and maybe work on firms for a couple of years to get some experience, and then we're all gonna get together and build a firm together.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was always that idea in my head that there would be a firm, that there'd be other people I'd be working with, and I never really thought, considered, had a desire really to practice on my own.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I liked having others around and be able to bounce ideas off of people, and um you know, that's just kind of not what I thought, you know, I was going to be doing as a solo.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: At what point did you start reconsidering the billable hour model?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I started having issues with it a couple years into my law practice.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I would look and was like, all right, the first time I've done this, it takes me, I don't know, three hours to do.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: The next time I want to draft this document or do this research on this topic or whatever, it takes me two and a half hours.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the next time it's you know, two hours and 15 minutes, whatever.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I do it, I get a little bit quicker because I now I have a template.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have the research done.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I just have to, you know, review it and update, make sure that's still good law and all that.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and I was like, this doesn't make sense.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I getting paid less when I'm actually doing things quicker?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I'm actually doing things better and I'm getting paid less.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the first time I didn't know what I was doing, you know, it's probably an awful document that I drafted.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: It might have barely made, you know, got accomplished what I needed to.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: The next time, a little better, you know, I learned something, made a couple tweaks to it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I got to this same thing, I would tweak it, I'd make it better, I'd use my experience, I'd you know, things that happened, you know, mistakes that I made that I realized afterwards, I could make those changes.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so every iteration got better and better and better.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But yet, because I was doing it faster, I was charging the client less.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was, you know, I was getting paid less, you know.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how is that fair to the client, the first client, who's paying all this money for an inferior product, versus the latest one, which I'm gonna done a lot quicker for a better product, they're getting all the benefit and they're paying less.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why that didn't make sense to me?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of where it started.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this just doesn't make sense logically to me.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I why am I doing this?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's kind of where it began.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Did you at that point start exploring other models?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: What was what was your process for just going from, well, this is the only way, what else would we do?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: to okay, now I'm kind of frustrated to a model that you have now, which may maybe why.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go ahead.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was started, yeah.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was when I started doing a little bit more criminal defense.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I started my practice doing whatever walked in the door and had a paycheck, you know, had a check in hand and what to pay me.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I take the work.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I started as I started shedding off different practice areas and things, I kind of ended up doing criminal defense work, some juvenile appointed kind of work with that in civil litigation.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for the criminal defense work, a lot of that work is already done flat fee.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I knew that that was a lot of attorneys were charging a flat fee for this.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm gonna represent you in traffic court.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have a ticket you want to help get rid of, I'll charge you, I don't know, 500 bucks, let's say, you know, to help you with this.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and that made a lot of sense to me.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm charging you up front, um, or I'm telling you at least up front what it is going to be, and then I get paid.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's gonna be.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it made a lot more sense than than than trying to do it by by the hourly rate for that kind of stuff.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just realized, hey, this is a better a better way to do it.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I started getting some business clients, people that wanted me to help set up an LLC for them.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that worked really well with the flat fee too.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as I started getting more into that work, I started enjoying that work more than I did the civil litigation or the criminal defense work.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was just kind of a natural progression that that kind of work was just leading right towards more flat fee.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw as way that I can get rid of the hourly completely then that way.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so tell me about the way you price your services now and how you get to the what your process is for developing those fees, and then communicating that through a proposal to the prospective client.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So my practice area right now is predominantly kind of main street MA work.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So helping um business owners sell their businesses, helping people buy into a new business, an existing business out there.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And also I work for some franchisees, kind of the same thing, kind of getting set up.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything that I do, I do on a flat fee, and it's all based on value.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the very first conversation that we have is what I like to call a value conversation, and it is talking with the client and finding out what is what is the potential value that you're gonna get from working together.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we uh it's it's a long, it's a lot of questions.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's asking things like, you know, first of all, it's finding out what they what they need, obviously.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is this something that is kind of within my areas?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can I actually help them with?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do they need what I'm what I can help with?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: But then from there, it's things like, you know, what kind of pain is this issue or is this situation live, you know, giving you?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what is the time issues on you?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is this something that needs to be done quickly?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something we have a time to work on?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what happens if we don't address this right now?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're looking to if they're looking to sell their business, um, you know, if I don't if you don't hire me now, what's the alternative to that?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're gonna do it on your own.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe you have to, um, nowadays you can look, you know, throw it into Chat GPT or something, but back then.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: When I started, you know, you know, you looked up on Google, maybe.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you found maybe a draft of something that might be there.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or maybe you had to kick it down the road a bit, you know, but what are the what are the alternatives to having me and working together?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: How much is this paying for you?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, how important is this to you?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a business that you're looking to buy because you want to um pass it on to your kids?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do you want to grow this business and have something to pass on?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it that you're just looking to buy a competitor out?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's all these things, you know, their expectations and their goals and all this kind of stuff kind of goes and builds into a picture of what their situation is.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um because what I'm ultimately doing is I'm pricing the client.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean, I I because I'm narrowly focused, I know what 99% of this representation is going to look like.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know how we're gonna start, I know how it's gonna end, I know what kind of things might come up.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what's gonna happen, you know, surprises and things pop up, but I can pretty much know within again 99, 95% certainty of the type of issues that might pop up while we're working together.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can take that, I can take the size of the deal, you know, um what side are they on, are they buyer-seller, you know, the other sides, all those kind of things.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I can come up with a number for them.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I can figure out what is the kind of the value that they're seeing out of this for me to help.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what is the, and that's kind of the top top number, what is the least amount that I would have to get that I'd be willing to do this work?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a threshold somewhere that if you get less than it, it's not really worth it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be grumbling about it, you're not gonna feel like you're covering your your your expenses and all that kind of stuff.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just what are my expenses, because there's also a subjective um sense of value to you.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is my time worth to be doing this work?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so coming with that, then that's the floor.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then the price is gonna be somewhere between those two numbers.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what do I think would be fair?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is something that I think that the client would be a good exchange of value for the client?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I come with that price.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is all done after I've got off the phone with the client.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do any of this work while I'm on the phone.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I go back and I sit and I calculate, like, okay, what is this gonna feel like?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then I sit with it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I sit there and tell you, like, what is this?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Does this feel like it's the right price?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Does this feel like it's too high?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Does it feel like it's too low?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is this just right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where where are we at?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to listen to my body and kind of what how what kind of feeling I get from it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if it is a situation where I'm like, oh, that's oh, the easy, easy buy, you know, that totally gonna take it that.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: That probably means it's a little bit too low.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um if it's to the point where I'm like, that's kind of right there on the edge, I'm not really sure, maybe a little uncomfortable.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: To me, that's a good indication.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably right where I want to be.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right where it's a little uncomfortable, but it's not the client's gonna say, yes, please, here's my credit card, take it right away, because that's a sign of not charging enough.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I come with the price and I put it into a proposal for them.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I type up, here's what the situation is as I understand it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, here is what um you know, what we've talked about, here's what's important to you, here's what your objectives are, and here's what um my proposal would be.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna help represent you in in this aspect of of this matter, and here's the price.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have questions, let me know.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're ready to go, we can get started.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I I loved about the way you what one of your posts about this, that I um just the reason I asked about it was it looks to me like you've really transitioned from like the very formal, you know, letterhead type of proposal to just like an in-email casual, lay-friendly thing that the prospective client could just read, understand without you know, struggling, and just and it just feels easy and normal.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: What made you switch from like, no no no, we're supposed to do it this fancy way and have a fancy letterhead and you know, sign it all formally, and you know, there's this right way to do it to like, no, I'll just like write like a person and put it in email.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, yeah, I mean, I never really wrote the formal proposals.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, early on, the phone it was a dur on the phone conversation, I'd be like, all right, so here's what I'm gonna charge.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that was every single time I undercharged when I did that because then I started getting afraid of like, well, if I say what something it's gonna be too high, and then they're gonna say no, and I don't want to do that, and I just feel uncomfortable, and so that I would charge less.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I did so much work for much less than what the value was.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not even I look back and I just shake my head and in disbelief that I charged that low on on different things.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've never really done formal, a formal, like, you know, all bullet bullet pointed out and stuff like that.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when I started to put it in, when I said I'm gonna take this offline, I'm not gonna talk to them on the phone, I'm not gonna give them a price, then um, this is something I'm gonna have to that I'm gonna send them later, you know, after I've had time to sit with that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I, you know, it it started off even really, really informal, basically like, hey, here's the price, let me know.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then it kind of evolved as you know, a little more formal.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I kind of again, I'd put here's kind of my understanding of the situation um because I want to make sure that there's no misunderstandings, that I didn't um take it things the wrong way, that maybe I felt this was more important to you than than it really was.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because I've had that before where I misunderstood, you know, how important something was.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I don't really care about that.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't, I don't care about I just want it to be done fast, or I don't want been cheap, or whatever.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't, you know, so I write that out so I can be confident that that's the case and give them a chance to correct it if that's not right.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: If like, oh no, that's not at all.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's an opportunity.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's been an evolution, it's definitely not been a a flick of a switch.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's just kind of as I do it, just like um, you know, getting more comfortable practicing in general, the more I do it, the more things I can add, I can tweak and make things better, you know, based on the things I'm learning as I'm going.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Will you allow a client to negotiate your price?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and did you ever?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: When I start, especially when I was talking, would I be on the phone with a client and I'd say, here's what it is, and then they'd be like, Oh, well, how about we do this?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had quite a few clients that um their culture was to negotiate and haggle.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's what they that that's just their culture.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, like you're at the market or something, you're haggling over a loaf of bread or something.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was just the way they were.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: And because I was on the phone with them, they would engage in that, and then I would get sucked into it, and I would start again charging too little.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they'd say this, and like, well, maybe how about a little bit more, you know, and no.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, though, it the price is what it is, and if they want something less, if that's more than they're willing to spend, then we look and see how can we change the scope of what we're gonna do.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: What helps you assess if a client is the right fit for you?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: The conversation.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's it's you know, first of all, do they follow the instructions as far as um setting up a time to meet, to talk, to provide, you know, basic information for me?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I ask them, hey, I'm gonna send you a link to fill out this form so I can get some contact information, you know, I get your name, I can get via their side, you know, things like that.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do they do that or not?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do they are they responsive or do they ghost me for a time and then come back all of a sudden and like, oh yeah, sorry about that.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's been three weeks.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's let's, you know.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's just kind of how comfortable is the conversation with them.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are we able to have a conversation like this?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or does it feel very um like I'm on a formal presentation, you know, or that I'm being interviewed?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like if it's the point where I'm like, I feel like I'm I should be here with an interview, like a suit and tie on, um it might not be the best fit.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like I may not be the best lawyer for them because I do not work highly formal, you know, like if they're going to a bigger law firm.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm I'm a lot more casual with things.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if that's not what they're looking for or that they're doesn't work with them, then you know there are other firms out there that they are probably gonna be better suited at than me.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Were you always always comfortable with that mentality of not every client is gonna be the right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, no, yeah, I think you have to throw into it.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, especially go early on.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I like I said, I had basically took anybody that had a you know an active credit card or was willing to write a check.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I kind of took just because I needed the money and I was always afraid of I'm not gonna have enough.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where the next client's gonna come from.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if I don't take this one, there may not be one tomorrow.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if I don't take this one, I don't have any money I can put towards paying my rent or paying for my you know my groceries or whatever.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was just a confidence.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was a a mentality that you know, I had to take everything and I get and I had to kind of hoard it because whatever I didn't get, somebody somebody else was gonna get and I wouldn't have, you know, it was it was lack.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Has your own sense of self-worth and the value you offer been like what's that role been in you know, going from I'll just take anyone who will pay me to no, that's my number?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's just yeah, they go in and they they go in hand in hand as you get more confident as you do it more.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you start to feel like, hey, you know what?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have value.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've done this now how many times?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot of different things, different, you know, I've looked through different contracts and dealt with the situations before.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you just start to feel a more comfortable in your skin.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, I can do this for you.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can charge more because I bring more to the table than what I did when I started out.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about happiness and why lawyer happiness is important.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And hydrating.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And saying hydrated, that's correct.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um lawyer happiness is important because it's a problem in the legal profession.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are too many lawyers that are unhappy, they're unfulfilled, they are facing depression, substance abuse problems, um, because they are in a situation where they don't enjoy what they're doing.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: They feel that they're stuck.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when you are not happy, when you're stuck, when you are depressed, when you're all these things, you're not going to be putting your best work forward.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so not only does that obviously hurt the lawyers themselves and their lives and their happiness and all, it hurts the people around them, you know, their families, um, their staff, but it helps hurts the excuse me, but it hurts the clients because they're not doing their best work.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you're tired and you're never feeling you're not feeling well, you know, or you're coming in because you're hungover because you, you know, drank away your issues the night before, you're not going to be able to do your best work for your clients.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're doing a disservice to them.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're not getting what they deserve for the money they're paying you.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's important that you know happy lawyers lead to happy clients.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to first focus on those happy lawyers and what we can do to make them have a better, um, a better life, a better practice, because the law as it is right now, the legal profession is not friendly to the individual lawyers.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think about helping you do help lawyers become happier and build more fulfilling, healthier practices.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you start?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very good question.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it's through I you know through putting things out LinkedIn, letting people, you know, throwing putting these ideas out there that there are other ways to do things.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that if you're happy or not you're unhappy in your practice, that is not just the way it is.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're working long hours, if you find that your weekends are filled with client work and you're never spending time with your family, that is not just the way that it is to be a lawyer.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are other ways you can do things.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then just by being an example, by saying, hey, look, I am not doing it that way.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not working long hours.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't work late at night or on weekends.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I get my daughter on and off the bus every day.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are other ways you can do it, and you can be happy and you can be successful.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you can still be a lawyer and a successful lawyer that's helping you and serving your clients.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the boundaries that you set in your own life so that you can be a happy lawyer that serves your clients well?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: So my um my phone stop turns off every day at five o'clock.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are very, very few things that would be considered really an emergency, um, especially in my practice, but really in many practice areas as well.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's very few things that are real true emergencies.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Your client may feel that it is at the time, but they're not actual real emergencies.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I like you know, I like to say that if it's an emergency, the first call should be 911, not me.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there are there are some um you know, some practice areas where there's an exception.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if the police are knocking at your door and you don't you're like, I don't know what to do, okay.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: That that's one thing.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, if someone's you know trying to do physical harm to you, and you know, whatever.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Again, call 911 first those situations, but there are very few things that really would necessitate you know an emergency call or whatever.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: So five o'clock, my phone turns off, it goes right to voicemail.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um most of the time I uh try to avoid checking emails after that pime as well.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't sit and I don't scroll, I don't really do work on my phone.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked to talked earlier about the idea of uh not having a smartphone.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do have an iPhone, but I don't really do work on it.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I answer, I mean it's my primary phone, so my my firm line goes through it, but I don't sit there and I don't respond to emails and do things on the phone.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't, you know, I I I don't do work on my phone.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't write emails and I want to know why don't you work on your phone?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, first of all, it's just because it's really hard and is annoying to do on this on a little phone.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I much prefer like the an actual keyboard and computer, and like I just feel it's just too limited to things I can do.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like even now, I'll if I have to write somebody a message for some reason I will tech type it up on my computer and I'll copy and paste it in my thing because I don't want to have to try to do with my thumbs and all that kind of stuff.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's just so that's one way.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I I don't want to be tethered to my phone.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want the phone to control my life.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I want to be able to know that after hours, after five o'clock, if it rings, it's probably somewhere that I know or it's junk.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna be a client situation because that's gonna go right to voicemail.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna be checking my emails because again, it's not an emergency.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: It can wait till the morning.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't really see any reason to be focused on having this in my face the whole time because I can't, I gotta get it, you know.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's no reason to do that.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want to have a life, I want to spend time with my family, and after five o'clock, that's family time.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when clients first start working with you, how do you get them set up to know your communication, you know, policies and boundaries so that you can have the successful relationship where they know what to expect?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it starts with just picking up um on the signs during the initial conversations of how needy of a client they're going to be, how demanding they're going to be of my time.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you know, if they seem that they're going to be trying the one kind of client that's going to be calling me at seven o'clock every night and saying, why I need this tomorrow morning first thing, you know, if those signs are there, those are red flags to me, this may not be a good fit for me.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: This they may be better working with somebody else.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but otherwise, it's just in the interactions I have with them while we're working together.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they send me an email during the day.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sitting here waiting for it to pop up and you know getting back within five minutes.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I may see it pop up and I will, all right, cool.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe and I'll come back to it an hour or two later.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I don't respond right away.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't set the expectation that if they email me, they're gonna get an immediate response.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or same thing with the phone.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: If they call me, it's it goes to voicemail.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna as soon I'm not gonna call them back right away.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna do that as soon as I can, you know, especially if it's something important, but I'm not going to be the person who is always on my phone, who is always available.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just show it through my actions.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and if they again if they start having problems with that, then maybe we talk about is this really the right relationship working together?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't really run into that problem.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And some of it's my practice area.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: The nature of my practice area doesn't re you know, the the clients tend to be a little bit better because they're business-oriented people.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they understand the ideas of business hours and family and all that kind of thing.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I just kind of show them through my behaviors and kind of train them really, I'm not gonna respond right away.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna be available right away.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you can try, but you're not gonna get a response.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they quickly stop expecting it and trying it.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: As you're talking about all this, the word that keeps coming into my mind is is just how freeing.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I I have a very similar approach with my my you know, use of or lack lack of use of my phone.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um another one of your posts that I absolutely loved is you talked about um the freedompreneur.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is a freed empreneur and how does one become one?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's actually a uh a word that I kind of wish that I would have come up with myself.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I saw it, I don't know, a month or so ago.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, somebody used that term, and I'm like, ooh, I really like that idea.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's it's the idea that rather than I'm work, so it's an the entrepreneurial mindset, you know, kind of working for yourself and and whatever.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's not that we're doing it because we want to build this big business and we want to know this big practice and grow it and make all this tons of money.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's only so much money that you really need to be able to the things that you want to do.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the idea though is what you're doing is you're trying to create a life that gives you freedom, that allows you to spend your time in whatever way that is most important to you.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: If that is with your family, if that is traveling, I know you do a lot of quite a bit of traveling.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, whatever it is that's important to you, realize that that is really what I'm trying to build this business, this law practice for.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's so that I can say, I'm gonna stop work at five o'clock every day.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm gonna take a two-week vacation and no one can get a hold of me.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's building your business to allow you to do that.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: And for some people, that may be being strictly solo.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some people may require some of some help.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to build up a business big enough so that you can hire maybe an assistant or an associate or something like that.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it is not just kind of building to build, growing to grow, which I feel like a lot of a lot of people are.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: They just say, Oh, I gotta grow, I gotta make my practice bigger and get you know all these things.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't really know why they're doing that.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just because that's what they think that they're supposed to do, or people say, Hey, you gotta grow.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we celebrate the grow.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that you really want out of life?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: How about you focus on that and not worrying about the rest of it?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, don't focus on the money, focus on the other stuff, and then you know, the money that you do goes towards that, you know, because at some point he said there's a limit on what you need.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's gonna make you happy?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: You we mentioned before, we had been listening to your episode on Patrick's The New Fangled Lawyer podcast, and another thing I loved that you talked about is how much your identity is not wrapped up in you being a lawyer.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's been your evolution around that?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, did you used to really identify strongly as I am a lawyer, and now you're kind of like I practice law, but I am I am just me, I'm a I'm me, I got kids, I got a family.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and so when I was also sorry, part of sort of facilitating that freedompreneur lifestyle.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was in law school, I felt that because I was a law student, that that made me special.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I was going to be a lawyer, and the lawyer was a noble kind of profession, and that kind of made me better than at some other people.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of my mindset um back in law school.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so the whole time I felt kind of you know like I was a certain kind of thing, and it carried over to when I started practicing.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I will say that not being a job and having to go out on my own was a little bit humbling, and so kind of you know, hit knocked me back on a little bit on that off my pedestal.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, uh for you know, going into core.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: And wearing a suit and tie and getting to go through security quicker and all this other kind of stuff that you know kind of a privilege as a lawyer kind of puts you as like, hey, I'm somebody special.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a big deal here.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: And as I practiced, as I started to get away from doing litigation, I didn't do court stuff anymore.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I met clients, uh, you know, lots of times clients at restaurants, coffee shops, as opposed to having an office where I had people.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um it I I kind of realized and kind of that these people were no different than I am.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um that I just had a specific knowledge in an area that they didn't, but they had specific knowledge in areas that I didn't.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if they had if they were trying to start a business, a technology business, you know, I didn't know anything about the technology.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: They were experts in that.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they had their own expertise and knowledge and things.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so um working with these individuals, getting to know them better, I think really helped kind of take away that I'm on a special person, I I'm better, or whatever kind of a mentality I kind of had.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: The more that I started, so I worked, started working from home, I want to say it's about 2012, and no longer had an office.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is really when it it kind of really started because I didn't have other people I was seeing on a daily basis.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have other lawyers I was dealing with.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most of my practice had was transitioning to working with businesses.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there was no court, there was no um, you know, none of that kind of fancy lawyer stuff that you think of.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I spent most of my time at home, you know, with the animals by myself in an empty house, basically.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's very easy to kind of see myself as something else and not really think of myself as a lawyer because you know, I'm in a desk and I'm wearing a t-shirt, I'm wearing shorts.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm, you know, it's a Tuesday afternoon, I'm sitting here and I can go for a hike if I want, or for a walk, or whatever.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um and it just kind of developed over time that that started becoming less and less of who I saw myself was as because of my environment and kind of how I practiced.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it wasn't a typical law practice, a law firm that everyone kind of associates um with the practice.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then other parts of my life started to become more important, you know, obviously becoming a husband started becoming more important to me.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I had my daughter was born, becoming a dad for her started becoming more important, and and just realizing, you know, taking a step back and thinking what is actually important to my life, you know, and it is this thing and this thing and this thing, and that's what I want to be kind of focusing myself on.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then none of this stuff is ever a flight switch moment where like one moment I feel one way and the next it's another.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of an evolution.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one you know, you start at this point, and then you know, somewhere on the line, it's kind of like going from hot to cold.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, you know, where is it where is it's hot the water hot, where is it's cold, if you gradually change it.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the same thing.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, I'm like, well, I guess looking back at it, I'm don't really see myself as much of a lawyer now, um, you know, where I did back then.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of happened sometime.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that I for I have found it very freeing, I think in a similar way, to go from finding it to be really important to have an identity as a lawyer to just practicing law is one of the things that I do.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the more it's just one of the things that I do, I find the more confident I am around it, the better I am, and the more expansive my whole life becomes because I also feel like, oh, I'm I'm actually like so many things, and now I can tie all the pieces together, and and and I have found that the more I free myself to do other things, I'm able to then bring that into my law practice, which is then just an enhancer.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, completely.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the things that you do on a daily basis to take care of yourself?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, you can you can know that taking care of yourself and prioritizing your family is important.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you just do it naturally.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when you are running your own business, there's a lot to do, and it's all it all falls on you.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you you gotta take some very intentional steps to actually make sure that you are taking care of yourself.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I am very like you said, the the key is being intentional, and I'm I'm becoming more and more intentional about what's and it goes kind of kind of so I'll back up a little bit.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it stems from again reevaluating my values.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: When I really took the time to sit down, and this happened right around the pandemic time, actually 2020, I think.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: When I really sat down and listed what are really my values, what are the things that are actually really important to me in my life?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat down and I went through an exercise to kind of come up with one, come up with what my top, you know, handful of values are, and looked at the list, and the very first thing on the top of my list is my own personal spiritual growth.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, followed by my family and serving others.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those are kind of my top three things.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of sat back and realized that hey, my growth, my, you know, these they're really important to me.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I really want to spend time on.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if I just let things kind of go as they go as they do, I know my law practice is going to take over because that's what had happened for the first however many years of my practice is it all kind of went organically, it all kind of was responsive or reactive to things, and um it's very easy for it to take over everything else if you let it.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's I know a lot of problem a lot of lawyers end up having is before you know it, you don't have any other time to do things because you get so busy to practice.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: The more time you have available, the practice kind of fills that space up.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so it's just being very intentional about what do I want to fill that space up with.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um that I need to make sure that I spend time for taking care of myself in ways.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't I don't, you know, go to the gym and things like that and spend a lot of the time like I know some people um do.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's kind of this the things that I feel are important for me going hiking, getting out of nature, um, sitting in silence.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, sitting on my back deck and just kind of sitting and staring at the trees.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those are the things that for me are important to be out of to myself.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, being being more intentional about the kinds of foods that I eat.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, trying to minimize, you know, the junk food, the fast foods and things, and try to do more cooking and and eating better foods and stuff like that that um I know is making is better for me and is important to me to be able to really live up to that value that I'm trying to um that I'm trying to have.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else we haven't covered that you want to share about your own law journey, your journey with well-being and growing your practice and and setting and and maintaining boundaries, um, or about the legal industry in general and what you what you what you wish would change and and you know the way we do things now.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's so many things that I think could be changed for the better for for lawyers.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a lot of things that are going to be changing, uh, that are changing right now.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um AI is forcing it upon many lawyers.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um the way that we practice today is obviously different than the way we practiced this five, ten years ago.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's gonna be different than the way I think we practice next year, maybe even in six months, um, because I think how quickly things are actually moving.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we have to focus on what's valuable to our clients more so than what's going to uh take the most time that we can build the most time on.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have to reevaluate the law firm structure.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make sense to have you know the pyramid with having your senior partners up top and then your juniors and your associates and staff?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense anymore?
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of overhead that you're dealing with here, and a lot of these people are not providing value, you know, um, and to the point where clients aren't gonna want to pay for that anymore.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: There we're we're seeing that already where clients don't want to pay for associates to be trained and to learn.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so when you're still bring AI into the mix, what do you even need the associate for in the first place?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: If the AI can do this very similar work, um, but it could do it quicker and could do it much cheaper.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then the question is, then how do we train future lawyers then?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because right now we train them by, you know, you start as an associate and we throw a lot of stuff at you, this entry-level work, a lot of research and basic drafting and you know, going through due diligence work or discovery and all that kind of stuff.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, kind of getting your hands dirty and all of it, and then you kind of work up to the strategy levels and whatever.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens when we don't need the associates in that background level anymore?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do they learn how to advise clients on a contract if they've never gone through it and had to work through the contract themselves?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: If they just put it into, you know, AI and the AI pops something back up to them.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do they know if it's going to help their client?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And how are they gonna explain it to their client what it's going to do for them and how it actually does what they are asking it to do?
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's just a lot of things right now that's going to happen, um, along with just the idea that lawyers start looking out for themselves better, um, that the way things were, the way you know the law firm, kind of the end-all be all as it's kind of treated it, is not the case anymore.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can do things completely different if you want.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can work as a solo by yourself, you can travel, you can work remotely, um, you know, you can have yourself and you know, virtual assistants around the different places around the world, or you and a bunch of AIs can can have a law firm ball by yourselves.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's you can do it however you want, focusing on whatever is important to you.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do it the way that you know it's always been done, or everyone else is doing it.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can actually do it the way that makes sense and is best for you.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what I think the most important messages, probably for lawyers to take from this is you control what your law firm and your life looks like.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you just kind of let it go, the law practice is going to take over and you're gonna be dealing with whatever you get.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to spend more time with your family, if that's important to you, if you want to have spend time on your hobbies or on you know your per yourself, self-care and all these kind of things, you can do that.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: You just need to take the time to make the choices that allow that.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, put the boundaries in place, protect those things that are important, um, and create the law practice that gives you all those things that you're looking for.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's technology, there's other you know, there's other tools out there that you can use to make that happen now.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you just have to believe that it that it's possible.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this conversation and for the way you're showing up in the world and in our industry, demonstrating that it is possible.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: And here's just one of the many, many ways.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right, amazing.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you got a ton of value from this conversation, and that you will check out the links in the description to learn more about the guest and the wellness esquire.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you take even just one minute to do something for yourself today.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe right now.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Drink more water, say no, call a friend, do something that makes you happy, have a 30 second dance party, find something to make you have.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Also, be sure to subscribe and send the podcast to a colleague.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not yet connected on LinkedIn, please fix that.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know you.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.