Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / Episode 240 | The Equinox Law Firm Business Model with Michelle Bomberger

Transcript

Episode 240 | The Equinox Law Firm Business Model with Michelle Bomberger · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:01
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What
• 0:05
  Davina: if
• 0:05
  Intro: you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve, and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's Davina.
• 0:51
  Davina: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick, and my guest today is Michelle Bomberger. Michelle believes that every business deserves to have the same strategic law advantages as mega corporations. She is the CEO and managing attorney at Equinox Business Law Group. Her experience as a business owner and entrepreneur gives Michelle unique insights into the emotional and practical aspects of owning a business and how important legal infrastructure is to growth and success.
• 1:21
  I'm super excited to have Michelle here today because I think her business model is unique and one that other, women law firm owners are gonna love to hear about. So welcome, Michelle. It's so good to have you here.
• 1:31
  Michelle: Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
• 1:34
  Davina: Good. So why don't you start out by telling us I want a little bit of your personal story of becoming a lawyer. Is it something you always knew that you wanted to do was be a lawyer as a little kid? Did you have a briefcase and a suit and Mary Jane's?
• 1:49
  Michelle: It's really funny because I saw a few years back a publication that they put together in high school. It was like a little, you know, typed out newsletter and it was senior year. What do you wanna be when you when you grow up? Where do you see yourself in ten years? And I think it said something like, I'm gonna be a corporate lawyer making the big bucks, I think is what it actually said, which is just sort
• 2:10
  Davina: of And
• 2:13
  Michelle: then my undergrad was in finance and computer applications. I did a couple years management consulting kind of process and technology consulting, and then decided to go back to school and get my MBA with a vision of working with smaller companies. The Fortune 500 companies just didn't inspire me. I wanted to work with smaller businesses. And as I was applying, the joint MBA law degree really stood out to me as a way of adding a differentiator, adding a component to my consulting that other people wouldn't wouldn't have.
• 2:43
  So I thought I would add another year to school for fun. So I never really intended to practice and coming out of school, it was middle of the or toward the end of the .com boom and burst and went to work for a small Silicon Valley law firm that burst before I started and really just ended up in business again after that. Following the Singular AT and T Wireless merger is when I kind of started the business. I had a one year old at home. I was pregnant with my second.
• 3:18
  Didn't know really what was gonna happen with that business after that merger, and so it was kinda time to to launch this business centric law firm that I kinda had sitting in the back of my mind for a number of years. And so that's kinda how I got into it.
• 3:29
  Davina: Oh, so interesting. So what was the time span from the time you graduated from law school and MBA and and opened your own firm?
• 3:40
  Michelle: About four years.
• 3:41
  Davina: Yeah. And when you opened your firm, what year did you open your firm? 2005. 2005. So it's been you've had Yeah.
• 3:48
  This long for a It has been. So did you when you opened your law firm, what was your, thought process or your reasoning behind opening your own law firm as opposed to, like, going and joining another firm or something? Was it because you had young children or was it for some other reason?
• 4:09
  Michelle: You know, I think I always had, again, this idea of being a smaller business consultant in my mind. And that was really where I wanted to be. The timing with the small children, I think was opportunistic. And I imagine a lot of your listeners have the same experience where let's just see if it'll work, right? Timing's right, the opportunity's right, and let's just test it out.
• 4:29
  And that's really what I did. Vision was how do we make law more accessible to small businesses? As you know, I'm sure you've experienced and many of us in law have experienced, know, clients typically avoid it and how do we make it more approachable? And so at the time being a business person, having my MBA sort of had helped me to lead with business focus. That was a really important piece is how do we talk to the business owners about what they care about, not what we care about as lawyers.
• 5:00
  So changing that conversation a little bit and then doing as much fixed fee work as we could. So making the fee less scary, the engagement less scary, less unpredictable, and then being really responsive. Because that's another thing that is a huge stumbling block for folks to call is they just never know if they're gonna hear back at all. They don't know, you know, how much it's gonna cost to hear back. So we're trying to just resolve those.
• 5:26
  And our clients were super, super small at the time, you know, small professional services firms, you know, individuals who were doing consulting work. And then over time, that's expanded. But really just trying to hit that market of how can we do this better?
• 5:45
  Davina: So was that your vision at the beginning or did that sort of evolve as like in the first year of working with people, you know, how can we differentiate ourselves kind of thing? Or how can we do this better? Or was it something you went into right away from knowing this was the model?
• 6:00
  Michelle: You know, the model has definitely changed over the years, but that kind of those those core elements were there from the beginning. I really felt that the there was a gap between what legal or business law specifically was providing to entrepreneurs and small businesses and what they needed. And then over, you know, the last almost twenty years now, we kind of morphed it into how do we help them be more proactive? Because even at the beginning when we started Equinox, it was still a very wait for them to call and help them when they call versus how do we get them ahead of the game? How do we get them so that when the problem shows up, it's not a disaster, it's a risk mitigation, risk analysis type response.
• 6:46
  Davina: Right. So I have questions about that. But before we go there, I wanna talk about, did you start this by yourself as a solo or did you have partners in the beginning or what did you how did you did you spring forth?
• 6:58
  Michelle: Yeah. No. It was it was just me. I remember kind of finding those places where business owners hang out. I went to a place called Women Business Owners was one of the first networking groups that I had.
• 7:08
  Again, a lot of other professionals and really, really small businesses. And then after the first year I hired a admin paralegal to support and then ended up replacing that person with a lawyer who was a mom who'd stayed at home for many, many years, had never practiced business law, and learned as kind of that admin paralegal function, then jumped into being a lawyer at the firm. Then kind of over time we've grown. But I've never We've talked a little about partnership, we've never gone down that path. I think there's an interesting sort of generational question about whether that's still appealing to a lot of young people and what that would look like in a small, small firm like ours.
• 7:49
  Davina: Yeah, so tell us how big is your firm.
• 7:52
  Michelle: Yeah, so we have five attorneys. If you include myself, I don't do as much hands on practice anymore. And then we have three admin folks in The US, meaning meaning leadership team and administrative folks in The US. And then we have a small team in The Philippines that does our kind of back end project management. So we have five folks in The Philippines as well.
• 8:11
  Davina: Yeah. So so how did you, when you first at what point did you start developing your remote team in The Philippines? Is that something that came about pre pandemic, post pandemic?
• 8:31
  Michelle: We talked about it a little bit pre pandemic and it was one of those where you feel, well, do we really need these people here? Well, we kind of feel like we need these people here. And that was sort of a mix of the different people kind of on leadership team and different perspectives from that. And then after the pandemic, again, the doors opened the way that it did for many, many businesses. Like, wait a minute, we don't have to actually be here.
• 8:55
  And so we we met more kind of full full board on that because of the way that our model works and how much data and project management happens. It really has enabled us to scale the business by having that team overseas. And then we've added some true, like, VA, executive assistant administration as well over there.
• 9:20
  Davina: I I'd be curious to your answer to this because I was just on a call earlier today, a group our group call for the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League. And one of the things that came up as a topic of discussion, which has been brought up in other calls as well before, is the concern about security of hiring people, outside The United States or even within The United States as remote workers. How do you guys handle your sort of security and confidentiality and all that kind of stuff? Because I think people would be interested in hearing that who are thinking about hiring remote workers but have that fear.
• 9:53
  Michelle: Yeah. And I think it's a great question. We have chosen to go through a firm or an agency for hiring. I know that there are a lot of folks out there that are able to be, you know, hired directly and there's I think a lot of complexity to that both from the international laws, you know, wages, taxes. So one key piece is that we're using an agency, and so our contract with them gives us at least some remedies if something would happen.
• 10:22
  And we also know how they hire. We know what they do for background checks. We know what they do for their own technology security. So all of that is a part is a really big piece of why we are confident. On top of that, we do have training for them.
• 10:37
  That's the same training that we give our own employees when they come on board around what does it mean to work for a law firm? What are the the professional responsibility requirements that we have? And that's also a part of their onboarding and their commitment to us is recognizing recognizing that. And then obviously the technology is not that different, whether it's someone, you know, in in state, out of state, or international, the technology issues, I think, kind of have come together well. But just relying on that firm to to understand who we are, that they work with multiple law firms, they understand what that those requirements are.
• 11:10
  Davina: Right. Right. Right. I I do think the the training is probably an idea that people can really latch onto and think about whether or not they can incorporate that into their law firm. Because I imagine when you started with your first VAs, you had to come up with some way to sort of communicate this to them.
• 11:31
  So is this like a video training that you go through or a live training that you go through? Or is it written documents? Or what what does your training look like?
• 11:38
  Michelle: It's a mix. So we and again, that's morphed over the years as well. We have our process documents in a tool right now called Trainual. It's a pretty easy infrastructure that kind of captures and sorts and is very searchable around processes. And so that is where a lot of the kind of core processes exist.
• 11:59
  And then for everybody who comes on board, there's a one on one in person training with our kind of ops team, with our technology team, with me. And so there's different levels of like, what do we want them to learn over what period of time? And so we rolled that out. There's probably a couple of things on video, but that's not something we use heavily, Probably something we should do more of.
• 12:19
  Davina: Yeah. Interesting. So your, I wanna go back and talk about sort of your evolution of your team. And I understand how you hired your first lawyer. You really hired her as a staffer, and then she evolved into being a lawyer.
• 12:33
  Did you have particular worries or concerns about hiring a lawyer? How long did it take you to sort of hire your first lawyer straight out hiring a lawyer as opposed to hiring somebody who's a staff who sort of evolved into one?
• 12:47
  Michelle: You know, because we grew so slowly, it wasn't a huge problem. And it's something that and I still find really challenging and that is, you know, capacity management, really understanding what is the capacity of the firm to do work versus how much work we have coming in. And, you know, obviously the work, you know, ebbs and flows, right? And so when to hire that person was always tricky because I always said to the team, I'm like, so when we're, you know, pretty consistently at capacity is when we should be hiring, but obviously we should be thinking about it before that because we know how long it takes to actually do it. So I don't have a great answer around, you know, what's the best way to do it.
• 13:34
  Because I think it's always a struggle when you're thinking about the ebb and flow of work and profitability of the company and having too much capacity is always a problem. But wanting to keep the people that are really good even when business is slower, like all of that is just, I think a natural part of being in professional services and client services. So I'm thinking it was probably 2010 maybe when we hired kind of the first lawyer outright, maybe even a little later than that. So it was just, you know, me and that the second person and then we had an admin. So there were two of us sort of who were lawyers for quite a quite a long time before we added two more.
• 14:21
  And we've kind of stuck to that to that size for a while. We have brought in more senior people and then we've done an internship program with the with Seattle U Law School and have brought in legal interns, which has been a nice way to one kind of give back and grow grow people, but also give them a chance to test us out and for us test them out before bringing them on. That's been a really fun, you know, fun engagement with the local law schools.
• 14:49
  Davina: I ask that question because one of the challenges that a lot of solo attorneys have in scaling their firm is kind of getting over that hurdle of hiring that first lawyer and sort of knowing when to do it, how am I gonna be able to pay them, what's it gonna feel like to have somebody here who may be better than me or somebody I'm gonna have to train who doesn't think like I do? So did you sort of go through any of those emotions when you went through that process?
• 15:18
  Michelle: You know, I feel like I did ease into it a little bit, but definitely over time that has been a challenge. I try to remind myself that you want people around you that are better than you, right? And when you think about, you know, what is a leader and you know, what kind of leader do you wanna be in your organization? This is again, is something that has been a work in progress for many, many years. How do we wanna show up, right?
• 15:45
  Who do we want the firm to be and who are the right people to fit for that first group of hires and even now, less so now, one of the most important things that I was looking for were people who had business experience. So people who had been sitting in business operations, as an entrepreneur, as maybe a general counsel, as a business manager, because I thought they could bring that business mindset, which is one of our most important differentiators, bring that business mindset to the table. That in and of itself is is not enough. And so focusing only on that was a problem for me. Obviously, were lawyers and they had that.
• 16:28
  But what are the other kind of cultural elements? And that's something that I I didn't do very well at the beginning, and we're definitely doing better now. And that is what is the culture of this firm? What are our core values? I had all of that sort of externally facing rather than internally facing.
• 16:43
  And I think when we shifted it to internally facing, we had a a better way of gauging fit, for our company.
• 16:51
  Davina: And that's that's interesting because that falls under the category of things you don't know, you don't know until you go through the experience. I think so many you know, especially women, high achieving women, we we're a little you know, we're we're perfectionists. We like to do things. We wanna know all the answers before we do a thing. And there's so much as an entrepreneur when you're on your own business.
• 17:14
  That is one of the sort of pitfalls, but also probably one of the great things because it helps us grow as people, is that and as business leaders is that we you're not gonna always get it right the first time that you're gonna you're gonna there's things you don't know that you don't know until you experience it. And you're like, oh, okay. Now I need to think about this differently. And I thought it was very interesting that you brought, brought up core values and talked about how you kind of had done that externally and not internally. And, that's a that's a really interesting way of putting it because I know a lot of people think of core values as a marketing message.
• 17:49
  What are our core values? Well, we want everybody to know we're excellent, you know, or whatever. And they don't really think about how does that look. Like, what do we value internally as an organization? And that's really more important because what you value internally is what's going to be reflected than externally.
• 18:08
  And so getting that right and and that changes and becomes sort of a challenge as you start adding people. Because what you core values are intrinsic. They're core to who you are as a person. So when you're solo and you're starting a business, your core values are are your values. As you get bigger and bigger and you start incorporating other people, now we have an entity that sort of has separate values than what we have.
• 18:34
  And and it's such a critical role for how we function as a business, those internal core values, because we can tell I'm sure you've read Geno Wickman's book, traction, and he talks about get it, want it, capable of doing it, and hiring people that if you ever have a problem with somebody, they don't get it. They don't want it. They're case there's one of those elements that's missing. You have to have all three to have the right butts in the right seat. And I think that's so much what core values are as well.
• 19:02
  It's you're looking at people who, do they align with my core value or or not? Do they get it? Do they want it? Are they capable of of living this way, of doing this, or whatever? So I think there's an interesting interplay there.
• 19:14
  And I love that you shared that you thought you had its core values sort of figured out, but that was really in terms of how you're messaging to prospects versus internally. What differences did you find in going through that? If you can recall, I know it's probably been a while since you've done that, but like what differences kind of came about for you?
• 19:33
  Michelle: It's funny because what we first tried to do was to say, okay, these are the external facing ones. Can we reasonably turn them internally and do they work? That was the first thing we did. So let's not change them, let's just sort of adapt and see if they fit. And I think in general that we could make that work.
• 19:57
  Like it made sense at the time. But they were also not particularly tangible and kind of behavior driven. So that's one of things that I have learned is that core values should have specific behaviors under them. So this looks like this.
• 20:18
  Davina: Right, how
• 20:19
  Intro: does show
• 20:19
  Davina: up? When
• 20:21
  Michelle: we see it, we know it. And when we see something that doesn't fit, we know it as well. And I think that's kind of what was missing until we kind of made a much bigger shift and kind of started from scratch. And so now we have three rather than five or six. So we kind of cut it down.
• 20:38
  We have business first. And so business first is about leading with business. That's both internal for us and our clients. So really thinking about what do they need, what are their goals, and how do we help them get there. Being dealmakers and dealmakers to me is moving the ball forward.
• 20:54
  So doing what it takes to kinda keep momentum That might be us proactively calling to follow-up because sometimes, you know, the client drops the ball and it's easy to be like, okay, well, they call me, I'll react. Let's keep things moving forward. But it might also be, you know, talking to the CPA or another advisor about what needs to happen. So really sort of helping to move things in the direction and keep the momentum going. And then the third is intentional, which is really about doing what we say we're going to do.
• 21:20
  And so if we have a a commitment to our clients that will respond in twenty four hours, it's really, really essential that we do that. If we have a fixed price contract, then it's a fixed price even if it turns, you know, more sideways than we expected it to. So those are the three that we've kind of landed on which have those internal behaviors. More focused on those internal behaviors than the external.
• 21:42
  Davina: Yeah. Yeah. And you really have to focus on what what it means. So if it's if excellence is your core value, then what does that look like in your business? How does that show up and how and and that really helps you attract and repel your team because you're going to attract people who align with that excellence, that idea of excellence and repel people who don't.
• 22:05
  You'll very quickly know if somebody's with you for a while and they're not performing, you're like, they're, they're misaligned with our core value of excellence. What they think is excellent is not what we think is excellent. And here's what we require for excellence. Right? So I, yeah, I love that work.
• 22:20
  I want to talk about your business model because you mentioned that you're a fixed fee. And when we're talking about growth of your team and capacity, it's very easy to understand in a billable hour model. In a billable hour model, we track time. We know how long it takes to do a project, and we know how much profit, a person an an attorney, a paralegal, someone who's billable is going to make us. And so we know we can address those profits and that capacity based on billable hours and that kind of thing.
• 22:54
  You do a fixed fee model. Tell me how you sort of, have worked it out. Do you do time tracking internally to help you decide whether or not your fixed fee is in alignment with what the services that you're actually providing, or what kind of things do you do to make that work for you?
• 23:16
  Michelle: Yeah. It's been it's been really interesting. So as I mentioned, when we first started, we did project by project fixed fee. So, you know, help me set up my company, help me write a handbook, draft a shareholder agreement, whatever that is. And then over time you have a good sense of what the average looks like because you've done, you know, enough of them that you can kind of gauge what that number is.
• 23:37
  And so that that became fairly easy for us to know that yes, every now and again, somebody's gonna go off the rails and we're gonna lose on it. But if we win on it more often than we lose on it, you know, we know what it takes. When we switched to what we call our general counsel model, that is more of a subscription or managed service provider. So if you work with an IT firm, the IT firm charges you the same amount every month to manage a specific scope of services. Often it includes some questions, but not everything, but it includes a certain number of computers or a certain number of software services or whatever.
• 24:15
  That's kind of more of what we've built. So with that, it adds a layer of complexity because it's a fixed price that's broader than just one project. It's a set of projects and all of the questions that might show up otherwise. So the way that we tailor that to the client is we do a business health assessment on the front end and that is a conversation with them about, you know, okay, you're calling us for some reason typically, what else is on your agenda? What else is on your radar?
• 24:48
  Because there's lots of things that they've back burnered and they just like, yeah, we know we haven't looked at the handbook or we know we haven't. Did this or someone's going to retire later this year? They they have these things that they know and so we put together a plan for them that includes these known projects. Again, those are more predictable, right? And then we say we want you to call.
• 25:05
  So if something else shows up, you get a nasty letter, you get an employee that comes in, you get you want to expand into a new state, just call us. It's all included. That is a little bit more tenuous as far as being able to manage it. Then we do monthly status meetings with them really to kind of keep things moving again, momentum, but also to understand what's happening in their business because they're not gonna call for something But if we have that meeting, we might hear about it and then we can kind of help them process it. And we also get to know them.
• 25:36
  We get to know their risk. We get to know how they think. So that's built on a six month forward looking contract. So they pay the same amount every month. We make sure we tackle all those projects.
• 25:47
  In order to you know, behind the scenes, obviously, there's there's a monthly monthly price, but behind the scenes, there's an a number of hours. Right? We that's how we get to that number. And so each element of that that contract has a number of hours attached to it. But we don't talk about hours with the client because if they're counting hours, they're not gonna call.
• 26:08
  We never talk about we try not to ever talk about hours. Sometimes we have to. So the attorneys know what the budget is for each of these projects the same way that we would have a budget for them if they were a standalone fixed price. And the expectation is that we stay within those fixed price budgets for each category. And with the, you know, again, sometimes it's the client, sometimes it's, you know, scope creep, sometimes it's something that's totally unexpected.
• 26:34
  We have to manage against that six month contract and month by month. So we track time so that we can just keep an eye on where the time is being spent against the different projects. And that also then gives us visibility if we need to go back to the client and say, Hey, here are our assumptions. The world looks a lot different. And the client usually knows that.
• 26:51
  It's not as though, know, like, Wait a minute. You know, I didn't realize, you know, Hey, we were going to do these things. These things have come in, they seem to be more important. We're gonna move these things around or we're gonna shift gears. So we do not have a billable hour requirement for our attorneys, but we do have a utilization expectation and utilization is a is a term commonly used in consulting and other professional services, which basically says, you know, of your work week, a certain percentage of your time should be spent on client facing activities.
• 27:22
  So I mean, by translation, is it a billable hour? Sort of. But it really helps them to balance the amount of work they're doing that's not client facing against the work that they're doing that is client facing. In big consulting where I started out of undergrad, it was like a 90% utilization rate. So that's a sixty hour work week because there's no way for you to do training and admin time tracking everything else with 90% of your time being client facing.
• 27:51
  In a small firm like ours, depending on the role, it sits somewhere between 5070%. Now, obviously you're paying a lawyer and only 50% of the time is billable. We want them doing really productive things in the other 50%. Maybe it's sales, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's some process development or research. Most of the team is at 70% utilization expectation, which is we want you to focus on client work first, but recognizing that there's all these other things in the firm that have to be done.
• 28:21
  Davina: I really appreciate you sharing that because I I think that's where a lot of people get confused in terms of, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to charge flat fees or fixed rate. And oftentimes, they do it sort of based on gut or how long it takes them to do it as a solo over time. And then they start adding other lawyers and they go, well, you know, I do things so much faster than they do things, and they're not doing any sort of tracking data of any kind to give them information about whether or not what they're charging is enough. So I appreciate you sharing the internal workings of how you sort of arrive at those numbers and what you consider and what your expectation is. You don't have a set billable hour for your for your attorneys, but you do have some measurement, some data that goes into whether or not they're performing or not performing to get the work done because the work's gotta be done.
• 29:17
  And the faster we can get work turned around, the more profit we're gonna make because we've charged a flat fee. So I think that's gonna be really fascinating for a lot of people to think about that because I think a lot of people choose flat fees because they don't wanna track time. Yeah. And I think there's some sort of data collection that needs to happen. And and when you begin to hire other people, that's where you really have to have some data collection because it's not you doing something in fifteen minutes anymore because you've done it a million times.
• 29:52
  It's somebody who's maybe done it 50 times and it's gonna take them longer. There's a lot more involved in it and stuff. And so you may need to make adjustments accordingly.
• 30:01
  Michelle: I think it's really funny that you mentioned that because I had, you know, one of my, one of my best attorneys would say to, to new folks when they came on. She's no longer working with us, but she'd say so that budget is Michelle's budget. Go ahead and add 50%. Right, exactly. I I would set these numbers.
• 30:19
  I'm like, why can't you? You know, it seems totally reasonable, but it's not totally reasonable for others. And so I do think that that's a really important awareness point for all of us.
• 30:31
  Davina: We forget how long we've been practicing doing what we're doing and how much knowledge that we've gained that we're not really aware that we've gained until we have somebody green come in and we're like, how do they not know this? I don't understand. Everybody should know this. And they were like, oh, well, I've been doing this for twenty years. This is the reason I know these things.
• 30:51
  And we kind of forget that in terms of but I think that is a good that's a really good consideration for people to think about is like, as I'm hiring people, I'm going to need to realize that these fees, they may not move as fast as I do on it. So I need to consider that and what I'm charging people. What do you think your obviously, your clients really like the model because they like the, knowing the certainty of knowing. Do you ever get pushed back on, wow, that seems really expensive. Like, you know what's involved in doing all the things I wanna do and you come back with a big number instead of coming back with, well, we'll just take a $5,000 retainer and then we'll just get more retainers.
• 31:33
  And then suddenly it's the same amount, but it's crept up on them. Right? Whereas you you gotta come in with a real number right from the beginning. Yeah. What kind of how do you has that happened to you?
• 31:46
  And if so, how do you sort of overcome
• 31:48
  Michelle: that? Happens all the time. I remember initially it was very hard for me to say a price that was higher than $500 and then it was really hard for me to say a price that was higher than $2,000 right?
• 32:06
  Davina: And
• 32:07
  Michelle: and with the general counsel, our our, you know, monthly fees range from about $2,000 to we have $8,500 a month. So depending on the complexity of client, what they need. So getting to those kinds of numbers and the ability to say them out loud is really, really, really challenging. And so the default is often, well, we could just cut this out. Well, if we cut this out, if we cut this out, we can get the price down to something manageable.
• 32:29
  We have no idea what's in their head as far as what's manageable for them. If we can get some insight around how they've used legal before, how they're currently using legal, we have a sense for are they accustomed to kind of regular use and regular lawyer bills or are they a once a year I might call for something and they're not used to that. And so that kind of helps us to tell the story. But there's a couple of things that we use. One, I mentioned the business health assessment and that is a tool that helps us to have a conversation with the clients.
• 33:05
  Anyone can go check that out, it's on our website. And it it really is hopefully a tool for them to say, oh, what is data privacy? Like I've heard about it, but I don't know if that's me. And so hopefully it's opening just a few blind spots that we can have a conversation about. And so the more that they are aware of the fact that they don't know what they don't know, the better able we are to say we can help, right?
• 33:30
  If they're the kinds of folks who are who are, you know, blissfully unaware, don't really care to be particularly aware this is never going to be a solution for them because they're not going to want to proactively grow. So we know that our customers are businesses that want to be proactive and want to grow. And so we have to just educate them on the value of legal as part of their strategic and leadership team, not just a transactional thing to minimize, which is how they typically would think of it. So knowing how to talk to them about this being a strategic competitive advantage is different. And so there's a book called The Challenger Sale and I love the Challenger Sale as a Sale methodology.
• 34:13
  And it is about not going into the client meeting and being like, tell me about your business. I should know about your industry. I should know about your business going in so that I'm not wasting your time while you download everything you need, but I can lead with, hey, businesses like yours need these kinds of things. It's typical for your industry, it's typical for your business size, for your risk tolerance. And so that book really helps to how do you go in as leading and pushing them because we, in what we do need to push them to understand legal as not just a transaction, but rather a strategy.
• 34:49
  So those are tools that we often use to kind of help open the door. But yes, we get the pushback on price all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Once had
• 34:57
  Davina: a mentor say to me that what you charge is what you can say without stuttering. And so that your 500 to 2,000 to 5 leap is that. You know? It's what you can say. You have to push yourself a little bit to try a new a price.
• 35:11
  And then when you can say that without stuttering, you know, you it's time to move out of your comfort zone. So I love that. Thanks And
• 35:16
  Michelle: for the I was just gonna add on how we tackle this is because the solution is tailored to them, we give them the freedom to say, well, let's not do that project or what if we added this project or what if we shorten the term? We give them some control over what the scope is. And because we do that, then they can see sort of those differences. And I think their control over that pricing also helps.
• 35:42
  Davina: Yeah. And I think your partnership approach, like this is we're we're here to be a business adviser to you and help you. So we here's some things we we know that you may be facing in the coming six months or a year. So let's make you aware of them and then you can make decisions about what how you wanna prioritize this, but we know it's coming. Right?
• 36:03
  We know we're gonna have to file fence in or whatever, you know, whatever thing it's coming down the pipeline they may not be aware of. So that allows you to sort of upsell in a way, but you're really doing it for their benefit.
• 36:17
  Michelle: Yeah.
• 36:18
  Davina: Yeah. It sounds like. Alright. So what what in lessons do you think you've learned as a woman law firm owner over the last, almost twenty five years and that you would share with other women law firm owners who's starting their practice and wanting to grow it successfully?
• 36:40
  Michelle: So many.
• 36:44
  Davina: You've got time, share away. Yeah. I think
• 36:51
  Michelle: it's really easy and this I think applies to any professional services, not just legal, but it's really easy to just get into the weeds and do the work. And you've, you know, most of us have heard the idea of working on the business, working in the business and yes, that's lovely, but how do I get out of the in the business to get on the business and build that time in to do it? It really is essential. I think if you plan to scale, plan to grow, to think about that from the beginning. How do I build this time in?
• 37:26
  Because it's easy for it to just get lost. I mean, I've done calendar blocking and my calendar blocking gets filled up with other stuff all the time because I don't have the discipline that I need to have to to do that. And so I would really encourage folks to do that. The second thing is I would find a peer advisory group or business coach. I've been in a number of peer advisory groups over the years and those have been really valuable.
• 37:51
  There are ones that are focused on women. There are ones that are focused on lawyers. There are ones focused on women lawyers, and there was a focus on business. And so I was always really looking for something that was very business oriented and not being in a group of lawyers because I wanted to be more consulted. I wanna be different.
• 38:09
  I wanted the best practices on the difference. So finding a group that you can show up, be vulnerable, be honest, be transparent, your tribe of people. Good.
• 38:23
  Davina: Thank you for sharing that. Any last thoughts you wanna leave us with today before we wrap up?
• 38:29
  Michelle: Just that it's it's a journey. You know, I think there's always this this mindset of that I'm going to get there and they're kind of continues to move right that that destination continues to move. I think having a system we use EOS. You mentioned traction. We we run our business on the entrepreneur operating system.
• 38:47
  Having a system, having accountability partners, and having a plan because I think that all those things are going to give you the foundation to know where you're going and have a means of getting there. I feel like I languished for a long time just sort of like I got ideas, I got ideas, I got ideas, I'm a visionary. And how do we make those happen? And people are the most important part of your business.
• 39:12
  Davina: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you made a good point about implementation. I think one of the things that I see most often with women law firm owners who come into our program is they've been taught all these strategies. They've read all the book.
• 39:25
  They've joined all the groups. They have all these strategies. But where the rubber meets the road is in implementation. And they struggle to implement because they have no strategy for implementation itself. And you really have to have a strategy for implementation because all the ideas in the world, you're not gonna get them done if you don't have space on your calendar to get them done or understand how you can get others to help you get them done.
• 39:51
  So that's definitely a a key factor that I see. So I appreciate you being here today and sharing your story because I know a lot of people are gonna be very interested in it and in your model. Tell us how we can get in touch with you. We can with your website, follow you on LinkedIn, all of those places.
• 40:08
  Michelle: Yeah. So our website is equinoxbusinesslaw.com. There's kind of a lot of information. We do regular blog posts both on on a lot of business topics and even legal compliance. So we are all businesses, and so compliance is a thing for all of us.
• 40:22
  So take a look at that. Also, can subscribe to our newsletter there. And I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So Michelle Bomberger, I'm not sure what the exact URL is, but if if you search that, there's not too many of us out there.
• 40:36
  Davina: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much, Michelle, for being here. Really enjoyed our conversation.
• 40:41
  Michelle: Thank you. Really appreciate the opportunity.
• 40:44
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.