Latest / The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers / Build a Law Practice You Don't Dread on Monday, with Brian Glass

Transcript

Build a Law Practice You Don't Dread on Monday, with Brian Glass · The Wellness Esquire Podcast: Happy, Healthy, Successful Lawyers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody who was in a car crash in Illinois is reading your LinkedIn post.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: You're doing it wrong.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: But most of your content should have absolutely nothing to do with the law.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: We spent three weeks in Italy last summer.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: The firm ran kind of by itself.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: What can I pay to buy back some time?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Monday has to bring work that you want to do with people that you want to do it with.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have email on my phone.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I recommend it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_04: All right, I'll take it off my phone.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_04: You convince me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, hello, and welcome to the Wellness Esquire podcast, where we are happy, healthy, and successful.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So are you the Ocean Shitty Weatherman?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm gathering from your Instagram.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Only for that weekend.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my my social media is like I go down these rabbit holes and I'll post seven times in two days, and then I won't again.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I seem to be like half decent at during when I find interesting things to say, at getting um people to watch and stick around on the video.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was great.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I found out about the the play set, the the jungle gym.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: How else would I have known about that?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: That that yeah.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um are you are you on the East Coast?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not well, actually, right now I am, but I'm not usually.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this week we're in uh in an Airbnb in Miami.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped living anywhere about a year and a half ago.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and we had been in Santa Barbara, and now we primarily beach hop around the world.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, very cool.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's phenomenal.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we were just in Costa Rica for about a month.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we were in Spain for a few weeks before that, Greece for a couple months before that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then when we're done with this week in Miami, we are headed back to Costa Rica because that is where the jungle is and the dancing monkeys are, and it's our favorite mornings.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's our favorite place in the world for mornings.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have kids?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we we so this is always people's thing of ah, you can do this because you don't have kids.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we know people who have kids and they do some form of it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're portable.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: No, I was just gonna ask you how you did it if you had kids.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you that yet.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, but I actually I know people, um, I mean, even my my IT guy, he traveled with his family when his kids were growing up and they homeschooled, and now his kids are like, you know, I think they're late teens, early 20s.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And their their difficulty in life is in with relating with their age peers because they're so much more worldly, and I think that's an amazing problem.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, this is one of the one of the few regrets that I have is that we never really explored homeschooling.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Now, my firm is in Fairfax, and we don't so I don't know that there would really be an option um to pick up and travel the way that you are anyway.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: But um, and I and I certainly don't know that we have, my wife and I have the attitude and the temperance to homeschool kids, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: But but my kids are now in eighth grade, sixth grade, and third, and from what I hear from them, you you spend less than two hours any given day actually learning anything.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I could put in two hours of learning stuff and then we could go live the rest of our lives.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: We actually so the reason we're in Miami this week is we kind of tacked this on to having been in Philly this past weekend.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: My husband had a Wharton reunion, and one of his classmates they started homeschooling their kid uh, I think in the last year or so, because of exactly what you just partly exactly what you just said of just like you're not really learning that much, and they have a really bright kid who was just bored out of his mind.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they've now, I mean, you know, there's there's so many programs that most of us don't know about, but there's so much that's like AI.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know the right the best way to frame it, but it it's you know, AI kind of driven and enhanced programs that just make learning so much more appropriate for the human you're actually engaging with.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So like their kid is doing so much better and is advancing so much faster than he would if he was in a class with kids at all different ages.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, so there's there's a zillion ways.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really know about them, but I know people who do.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's very cool.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: Very interesting.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I run my firm from whatever beach I happen to be on.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_04: Good for you.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me about the firm.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I like I work with um businesses across industries to help them grow strategically and avoid the avoidable fires.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to get in early and um get really integrated into the team and help them understand really the overlap between business and legal, which is often not understood or delayed until you think you've got, you know, the budget.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I launched a couple years ago.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I never, it wasn't a actually I saw that you and I have uh some health care interest in some way.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I saw you had a uh that was part of your law school.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: You had a um oh I took a class in law school.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see a lot of like, ooh, awards for like health law, something or other.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to law school specifically for health law, um, which is part of what I still do now.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: It had been my complete focus, and now I find it much more fun to work well beyond that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I realized over time that I was just getting kind of bored, stuck in one area, even though it's still a pretty diverse field.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now it's much more about like, what's the business?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: What are you trying to achieve in the world?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do I like you as a client?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I'm very mission-oriented, and so I find it much more fulfilling to work with clients who are and to not, you know, to kind of silo it for myself in that way as opposed to the ones you tend to in legal practice.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's fractional general counsel, but also sounds like fractional operations, maybe.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and I do, you know, just um flat fees for contracts, you know, smaller projects as well.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's often like the gateway into the fractional piece.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I I overall enjoy more like being part of something as opposed to being pulled in for this one-off thing that like I don't really know enough about your business to help you really achieve your goals.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can help you a little bit, but um, you know, there's it's so frustrating when a client comes in and you're like, oh my god, if you brought me in earlier, you could have avoided all of this mess if only you knew it also didn't have to cost, you know, a leg and arm, like leg and an arm to to do that all the time.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Or to, you know, there's a way to do it within your scope and budget when you're super small.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: Is it just you or you have a team?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: So stop asking questions in a minute.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I this is become a hoot.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Some some of these uh I I get interviewed first and then I'm like, we gotta switch this.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's fun too.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's I I have some attorneys that I contract work to, and I and I'm growing.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: When I first launched a couple years ago, I was like, I said to my husband, like, just me, keeping it small, solo.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he laughed at me.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he was correct, because he does tend to know me better than I know myself.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my vision now, which I only like pretty recently accepted for myself, that my my vision for the firm is to become the home for lawyers who love what they do, are really good at what they do, and want to practice on their terms.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And but then who don't want to own their own firm or run their own firm.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's like micro-entrepreneurship.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's with a mix of, you know, if you want to bring your caseload in, fantastic.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to go out and get clients, fantastic.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you also just want to work on what I or other people are bringing in, also fantastic.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if this stage of your life means that you want to work this many hours versus this many because you just you've got other interests, you've got kids, you've got health stuff, you want to travel.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's insane the way we've decided, you know, there's one way to do this, and it has to be if you're not doing it this way, you're not successful or you're weird.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, there's sure you're aware, there's so many lawyers who leave law because they just can't figure out the way to do it in a way that aligns with who they are.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: But there are so many options if only if only people knew and if only we made it easier for people to find them.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's also a lot of what the wellness esquire is about.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: My my aim with that is let's transform the industry.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be this way.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can do it in a way where we're happy, we're healthy, we're successful all at the same time.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Our practices fit into the lives that we want.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Happiness matters.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these kinds of crazy things.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's like um anathema to law school.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So and you know, so when I when I come across through the magic of LinkedIn often, um, you know, lawyers like you who are talking about doing things a little bit differently, differently, meaning like your personal life matters, your family matters, you know, this isn't the only part of your life.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's so exciting for me.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to get those stories out because it often feels, you know, whenever I meet a new lawyer who's, you know, kind of often it's they've just discovered the wellness esquire or my posts.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the time I'm like the first person they've come across, the first lawyer they've come across who's being authentic and vulnerable and doing things differently.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, oh my God, I felt alone so so alone and I don't know how to do this.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's already a big enough step to acknowledge that you want change, then to have to figure out well, okay, what does change even mean?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I find the people and the resources and the help to actually help me identify what that change is specifically and then implement it?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's too much.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can get all of the stories out there and all of the people who, you know, do the consulting and the coaching and the fill in the blanks, like it can be so much easier for everyone to build the kind of practice they want again inside the life that they want.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you're one of those people, so I want to talk to you about that.
• 10:54
  unknown: Cool.
• 10:54
  unknown: Cool, cool.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: What do you want to talk about?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: All sorts of things.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wanna I I often start with asking lawyers what led you to go to law school and then to end up doing the kind of work that you do now.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I I have that question for you with the twist of it looks like you're one of nine kids, and it seems like you had the good fortune of your dad was a lawyer who already knew some of this stuff that we're talking about.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, how how did he know you wanted to go to law school and do the kind of work?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then how did your dad's kind of you know, it uh the way he was practicing impact your view of all of that?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so uh I never seriously considered doing anything else.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so I and I get that question a lot.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how did you know you wanted to go to law?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you go to law school?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I never seriously considered doing anything else.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe it's a failure of my parents to expose me to anything else.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Although I'm the only one of the nine who's a lawyer, so everybody else um you know was at some point exposed to other things.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh I can remember being in um being in college and I studied philosophy because I because I was like, well, it doesn't matter.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm gonna go to law school and I wanted to be a trial lawyer, and I didn't really know what that meant.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I uh except that I wanted to be in a courtroom, I like being on stage, I like making arguments.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um but my sense was as a as uh knowing that was my path, it really didn't matter what I majored in.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: It turns out that's like a mistake.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like should have should have majored in business or some kind of math or hard science or something like that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And if I were going back um 20 years now, I I would have.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so I don't I wish I had a great origin story for like why do you want to be a lawyer?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: I just never really considered anything else.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then when I got out of law school, actually my my goal was not to work with or for my dad, at least for a while.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um I worked, uh I worked for about four or six months at a general practice firm where uh everything that you have described about the way that most lawyers are is like that's what that firm was, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um no life outside of uh outside of the office, bill everything.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and and I got when I got hired on at that firm, they had contracted with like this um one of these legal insurance products, and they were getting$5,000 a month from the legal insurance product, and my salary was$5,000 a month, so it worked out.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um but like primary objective was to figure out a reason why the client's uh problem doesn't fit within the terms of the contract, and we can bill them for something.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is not an interesting way it could be introduced to the facts of law, and I could never figure out billing.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so the switch to personal injury happened pretty quickly, but it happened because the guy whose office was upstairs from my dad was looking for an associate at the time.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so I went and I worked for him um for 10 or 11 years.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: In the beginning of my practice there, yeah, he's uh well, he has always been half Korean, but in the beginning of my practice, his client base was like 75% Korean.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so and all the staff was fluent, and I didn't speak a lick of the language.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I didn't have to talk to any clients.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: I would just do the work and do the work.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: So that that was really interesting.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's an interesting way to practice because talking to clients is the thing that takes up the vast majority of the time in most practices.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so I I kind of learned on those cases without really having to do a whole lot of guidance of clients.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: But I went to go um work somewhere else because I wanted to make my own friends and my own way of doing things and my own reputation.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I did that for about 11 years in the same city where my dad practices and where I practice now.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then in 2019 I came over and joined his firm.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So what what made you decide, hey, I want to work with my dad?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: So like three things happened in the same uh at the same time.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Dave and I uh we had a lawyer who left or a staff member who left, and we decided not to expand into the office space next door.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and my dad was expanding into another uh larger space where we are now, and he had the space.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then my wife uh with our third had like a really, really hard uh delivery.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: Ended up in the ICU, he was in the NICU for 10 days.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it and you had this brush with mortality.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, well, my dad's 65, and if I never if I want to practice with him ever, this is the time to make that change because with the space issues and the people issues, like it just made sense.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's why I made the change in 2019.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember we, you know, we had this lunch before we um made the decision where we were both like, well, what if we do it for three months and it turns out that we don't like it?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: We can always go back and separate.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um but yeah, that's that's why I had those three things that kind of came together in my life in 2019 and had the mortality brush.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so decided it was time.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Did you already understand at that point that the happiness component of life and practicing was important?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have the experience of going through, you know, the standard approach that often leads to burnout?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, a lot of people talk about just different variations of misery.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Had that been part of your experience?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think you would I think you would be hard-pressed to find the a lot of plaintiffs' personal injury career lawyers who feel burnt out.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um the the trial lawyers, yes, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: The medical malpractice lawyers who are in weeklong trials several times a year.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um but the longest case, I I tried one medical malpractice case that was 12 days.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: Other than that, the longest case I've ever tried is two days.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the most cases I've tried in a year is probably six, and a lot of them were one-day bench trial kinds of cases.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so the hours are very different because the model in the personal injury space is not, well, my hourly rate is X, and so I need to bill 16 hours in order to collect 12 in order to pay for my seat.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um the model in the injury space is how can I get good at marketing and acquire larger cases, and good at systems, and operate those cases efficiently, and good at sales, and not miss any of the cases that are coming through the funnel.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's a lot of uh operational levers that you can pull that result in more money and more people and better processes that I think leads to a much lower number of plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers having the burnout than you know, criminal public defender or hourly uh hourly lawyer, certainly not you know, big law or family law.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like the emotional drain of being a family law lawyer, I can't even imagine.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so uh I don't think that we have it all that bad.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there are plenty of people whose lives are harder than the plaintiff's personal injury lawyer.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard I've heard that before.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: That uh there I've I've had other conversations where with lawyers who, when they were looking around for like, I'm not okay, what are what does it look like for other lawyers?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like when the when I find a lawyer who seems to be happy and thriving and not falling apart, what's their practice area?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And often the answer has in fact been personal injury, which isn't the right road for everyone, but for some it is, and that's really great to know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Did you I think if you were if you were betting, like your greatest odds of being happy and not burnt out are probably in plaintiff's personal injury.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: No, there's plenty of starving plaintiffs personal injury lawyers, right?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: Who who haven't figured out how to market, who haven't figured out how to sell, who haven't figured out how to attract good talent to the team so that they don't have to do everything.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um but you have a much better opportunity in this space than you do, I think, in just about any other place uh of the law, except that, you know, and I've said this for probably 15 years, that in the next five to ten years, self-driving cars are gonna eliminate my practice area.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Hasn't happened yet.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: But maybe that's coming somewhere down somewhere down the pipe.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you feel about that?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'll find I'll find something else to do, but it probably won't be law.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: I so I have a coach who uh who's been my my business and my personal coach for five or six years, and every time it comes up, he's like, well, so what are you doing to prepare for um uh for for that?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're gonna learn AI law, are you gonna learn products liability?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Are you gonna learn workers' compensation?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Man, I'll go I'll go take my skill set and I'll go do something else, probably.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: How has your definition of success evolved over the years?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: How is my definition of success?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um You know, is I think as you are a young lawyer and you are initially paying off debt, it's like let me let me pay off the debt, and then it's like let me put some money in this account.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you you reach this um you reach kind of a pivot point where you used to trade all of your time for money, and and now you're like, what can I pay to buy back some time?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that for me has been has been the big uh big shift.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: I know that you uh you travel all over the world.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: We spent three weeks in Italy last summer.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: The firm ran kind of by itself, um, and I checked in from my computer and email and our and our CRM.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like that the ability to do that uh and not be tied to the desk from nine to five, five days a week, um 48 weeks a year is that is success now.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Freedom.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: How did you learn?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Freedom's such a freedom's such an interesting word, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: Freedom, free, free, you know, freedom from and freedom to.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: Freedom from the desk, but then what the hell are you gonna go and do with your time, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: So what would you do if you didn't have to work?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um sit on a beach all day, maybe, but most people who reach that point and who've had had the success where they can go and sit on a beach and do nothing, are bored sitting on the beach and doing nothing.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, which is which is back to like what's the purpose behind that's driving uh what you actually want to do.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the way that we live and make our decisions now, and a lot of the reasons.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: That we travel the way we do and live the way we do is we don't want to feel like we need a vacation to escape from our lives.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the way I build my practice, I don't want to feel like I have to run away from it and I have to take a vacation and then feel like, oh my God, oh God, it's you know, vacation's almost over.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is awful.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, today's Sunday night.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want tomorrow to be Monday.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've talked about like, you know, build build your practice and build your life the way that so that you don't you're you can look forward.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've said look forward to, but at least so you're not, you know, feeling awful about tomorrow being Monday.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: So how have you been able to achieve that?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think I've I think I've stumbled into it because as as I'm listening to you ask that question, like, well, you have to have well Monday has to bring work that you want to do with people that you want to do it with, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, back to like picking your practice area.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you did not want to solve red car hit a blue car with you know neck and back, and maybe some shoulder injury and maybe maybe a concussion, if that's not the problem you wanted to solve every Monday.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter how free you can be as a personal injury lawyer, you're not going to be happy.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so so that I think I've stumbled into that.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: I've stumbled into the thing that is easy for me and seems hard to a lot of other people.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is luck.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um the other the other half of that though is doing it with people that you want to do it with, uh, and being able to attract a great team, compensate them appropriately.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: And and just like you know, it isn't terribly exciting for us to earn 10, 15, 20% more year over year over year.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's got to be something outside of that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there's got to be something outside of the raises and the bonuses for the team as well.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so that like, what's the mission?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: What's the thing that we can do that's that's different um than everybody else?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that like the greatest thing that can happen for me is if I get a great employee who's worked somewhere that sucks for a while.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: If this is not their first job, the people who come to us where it's their first job, I I don't think they appreciate the amount of flexibility that we offer them.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but somebody who's coming from you know a clock in, clock out kind of law firm, they're staying forever.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you want people to know that this is that this is different, be able to appreciate that this is a good lifestyle.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, we we do the best that we can to make the work interesting for everybody who's in the office.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: We utilize pretty heavily uh overseas VAs and um and AI so that we take the mundane thing out of you know out of the American uh employees workforce uh jobs.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um because, for instance, it's very hard to hire somebody in the U.S.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: to do medical records requests for 40 hours a week.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: That is it's just a boring job.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so we use VAs in the Philippines to do that.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it's still a boring job, but the pay scale is much higher than they can earn doing just about anything else in the Philippines.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so we have worked hard to push down the not down the pay ladder, but down the ladder, the um the mundane and the routine tasks, both through the use of VAs and through automated messages and and AI and communications within the firm, so that the team gets to do interesting stuff.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's important that the team has autonomy and and and has interesting problems that come in and try to solve on Mondays.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually kind of interesting to me how infrequently I hear people talking about the importance of the work being interesting.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe everyone just knows it innately, but I wonder how often people don't even realize that they're they're becoming exhausted and disliking what they're doing because they've ended up doing too much of this mundane, mundane work.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe sometimes at least part of the answer is not just what can I offload, how do I delegate, but you know, I I think about it as what energizes me and what drains me.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the ratio's gotta be right.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: The ratio's gotta be right.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here's the flip side of that.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: The greeter at Walmart never goes home and thinks about his day at work.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he he never brings, he never brings his problems home.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I was just I was running this morning thinking about the um, you know, people start law firms or they go and become entrepreneurs so that you can have freedom, right?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: But you you you were never you're never not thinking about your law firm.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I and as and it's probably true of people who don't, lawyers who don't owe law firms also, you never not thinking about the work, but that's that's the other side of the sword of doing the interesting work.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you might solve a problem in the shower or on a run or anywhere, and then you can't stop thinking about it.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: How is that for you?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because for some some people would think of that as I can never turn off.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: For other people, it's this is really interesting for me, and you know, it yay, it pops into me, and I get the answer when I'm you know playing tennis.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Depends on the day.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: Depends depends on uh it depends on the day, and it depends on whether you have arrived at the solution or you're still thinking about the fact that you have a problem.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have strategies for making sure that you do have time for your brain to shut off and do other things and and not be in work mode?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um probably not really.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the uh I have strategies for not doing work.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, blocking your calendar, or like I I leave during the spring and the fall, I leave at 4 o'clock almost every day to go coach youth sports.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so you, you know, I'm not getting on a client phone call at 345, that might bleed over.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I can't prevent myself from thinking about a problem that I was trying to solve at 345 while I'm driving to the next thing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: It just you just can't.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what are the what are the things that have helped you build your law firm in such a way where you feel like you can, in a no-big deal way, take off and coach, you know, youth sports at four o'clock, and you've got you've got the right people, you've got the right clients, you've got the right structure.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: I listen and I consume a lot of business content that's outside of the legal space.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so one of my I haven't listened to him in a while, but Alex Formosy, I think, is uh probably had the greatest influence on how I think about marketing and sales and operations, right?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so if I'm talking to other law firm owners who who are identifying a growth problem, it's like most law firms have one of three constraints.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: You're not generating enough leads, you're not doing a good enough job of selling those leads, or you're not, once you've signed the client, able to get all of the widgets across the assembly line and poor analogy, but whatever.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can't get the production done fast enough, right?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and hourly lawyers, you have a collection issue, and and there's some other things, but primarily it's uh attention, attraction, getting somebody to sign a contract, and doing the work, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so you can only really solve for one of those at a time, and always at least one of them is a problem.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: And and we have been really deliberate about like what is the current major constraint on the business and what does a business need in order to solve that constraint so that we can go on to the next thing.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, if you increase um leads and you are good at sales, well then you're gonna have a production problem, which is kind of where we are, my firm is right now.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: We have more work than we can crank out in um as fast as I would like us to crank it out.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: But when we solve that, we'll be back to like, okay, how do you go and get more leads?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I think being open to the idea that ideas come from everywhere and and I consume an inordinate amount of business content.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think so many lawyers don't really understand how to operate their law firms as businesses?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um Well, I think a lot of a lot of lawyers in in our generation do because we came up during a uh period of time where that information was everywhere, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: If now if you were uh so I'm 43, if if I were 50 or 60, it would have been harder during the formative parts of my career to consume all that content because podcasts really didn't exist, right?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um there were business books, but there there weren't nearly as many of them, and Amazon didn't bring them to your house in two days.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and you and and YouTube really wasn't a place where you could go and and learn.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: And online courses were not really a thing.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there were there were info marketing businesses and and binders and conferences, to be sure, but I think we have the benefit of way more information than lawyers who are 10 or 20 years older do.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a favorite nugget that you've learned from a business podcast like Alex's that you've that's been like an enormous game changer for you?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I don't know.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: A favorite, I don't know.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um no, I'm not really good at that.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm good at in context.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: I could spit it back to you, but I don't really have favorite things.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of building your operations so that things run smoothly, people aren't wasting their time, you've got automations.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: How how do you think about sort of the steps, the steps you take to make sure that things are running efficiently and then you're taking the pause periodically to reassess and adjust?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: So well, the first step is is measurement and figuring out where you are right now.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like get on the scale and find out how fat you are, right?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so in in a personal injury practice, there the stages are you know they were you're in a car crash, uh, you're in medical care, um, we send a demand package, we we go and get all the medical records, and then we send a demand package, and then we negotiate with an insurance company, and then we either settle the case or we don't, and just a couple of different tracks after that.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: But um identifying all of the stages in that process where we are taking too long, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the first things I did when I joined the firm in 2019 is my my brother, who was in college at the time, I had him do like an Excel sheet audit of all of our cases, identifying how long did it take from the day that the client was done with medical care to the day a demand package got out the door.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then we just worked on making that window smaller.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: How long did it take between the day that we sent a demand to the insurance company and the day that we either settled it or filed a lawsuit, right?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: And and work on making that smaller and not letting cases run three times uh the normal number of days.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's that's the first step is identifying every step in the process that you actually have control over.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a hormonesy thing, right?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like you don't have control over everything, but you you got control over more things than we would like to tell ourselves that we do.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so, what can we make faster?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um earlier this year, we set a goal where we wanted to have uh our average days from the day that a client was done with medical care to the day a demand went out the door to be 40 days.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: We were maybe at 60 or 65, which in my mind is too long.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but one of my one of my paralegals uh like ran the numbers, and she's like, Okay, actually, the reason that it's taking so long is because the client isn't getting back to us.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we've done everything that we can, but the client e clients either aren't responding.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: The primary reason for a case to go much longer than that was the client wasn't answering our questions or the client wasn't reviewing the demand before it went out in enough time.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, you don't you don't control everything.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so for that goal, we went back and we said, okay, like the 40-day average is no good, but what if we set a percentage of cases under 40 days and we made that the new target?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's the new target.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you also you talk a lot about marketing, and you joined your dad's marketing, le legal marketing company a few years ago.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think about legal marketing doing it well?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um depends on the niche.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: The the primary thing is that people have to know you, like you, and trust you.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um now, that maybe that's not true.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um outside of digital marketing, right?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: In in digital marketing, it and especially in personal injury digital marketing, it needs to be, it's like whoever's the the top result and whoever answers the phone the fastest.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you would be shocked the number of people who will sign a retainer agreement after a 12-minute conversation, not even with a lawyer, with with the intake people.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's I don't know why people do it, but they do.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you're gonna play in that game, you have to be very good at returning phone calls and you have to be very good at sales.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: Outside of that, um, our largest cases and our best cases always come from referrals.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's how do you build no like and trust, not actually with the end user, not with the consumer, but with your referral sources.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: With we we would call it your herd, your hundred people that would show up at your funeral, right?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um how do you how do you remind them that you're an injury lawyer?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh or or whatever, whatever your niche is, and how do you remain interesting um to them?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: So that's I I think there's really two things.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's yes, you have to be good at digital marketing if you want to run a practice like that, but you can run a practice without hardly any digital marketing.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then the the primary thing is like how do you get people to know, like, and trust you, which most lawyers are not good at, because most lawyers don't want to bring their personality into any of their marketing, um, which is why so much lawyer marketing is generic and crappy.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so how do you guide lawyers to start feeling comfortable and frankly safe bringing their personality and and who they really are into their marketing?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's really hard to do.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's really it's really hard to convince lawyers um that it's safe to do that and that that you can do it in a way that isn't gonna get you made fun of at the courthouse.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, especially with especially in social media.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so the the thing I would say is like you have to pick a medium that you actually like creating content in, whether it's podcasts or LinkedIn or social or TikTok, Instagram videos, or blog posts, or like whatever.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't like the medium, you're not gonna do it.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh if it feels like a chore, you're not gonna be the one who can produce content in that medium.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh but then once you find something, just creating consistently is important.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: And and yeah, you have a lot of lawyers you have to tease out of their shell.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: When I first started posting on LinkedIn, I wasn't even in a role where I was bringing in where I needed to be bringing in clients.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that wasn't even on my mind on my radar of what if I show who I am and I then can't get business.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I certainly didn't own my law firm at that point, so it was that was definitely not in my mind.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I got comfortable, I mean, it was terrifying at first to start posting, and then it just became kind of natural and no big deal.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it still kind of shocks me sometimes that the the I'm so open with what I share and just very, very personal.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it's about law and my practice.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Most of it is about who I am and my story, my background, where I come from, what I believe in, those kinds of things.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it often still shocks me the level of, you know, that that brings in clients.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's, you know, I think we we, you know, in law and and beyond talk about, well, people want to work with people they like.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how are you gonna know if you like someone you don't get to know them if you don't show up as who you are?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really glad you you said it that way because actually nobody is consuming LinkedIn or any other social media because they want tips about how general counsel or or family law or what to do after a car crash.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I see people I I see people on LinkedIn like, here's what to do after an Illinois car crash.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like nobody who was in a car crash in Illinois is reading your LinkedIn post.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: This is not you're doing it wrong.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um so that's that's what I think a lot of people get back.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now you have to remind people every once in a while what you do.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but but most of your content should have absolutely nothing to do with the law or or your practice area.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you balance it for yourself?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you even think about is there do you have a strategy?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Are you at this point just like, nope, I yep, okay, you just you just have something interesting to say, you say it, and people will get what they get.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean early I made a commitment I was gonna post every day for a year.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: That was um that was probably four years ago now, four or five years ago.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so that's how I did it early.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: And now we were talking about my Ocean City Weatherman um videos on TikTok.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: I do it when I have something interesting.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um because uh because nobody wants to read things that aren't interesting, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're talking about how long should a podcast be or how long should a YouTube video be.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: It should be as as long as it is interesting, and the same thing applies to everything that you're posting online.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: If it's not if you don't have something to say, it's okay to not say anything.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: But I I really I I really don't think very much about it, oh, it's been nine posts since I've reminded the world that I'm an injury lawyer.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: I should say I'm an injury lawyer.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um that just kind of happens organically when it needs to happen.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think, you know, people people somehow the algorithm works to find to for people to find you.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: They follow you, they like your vibe, and sometimes they're like, oh, who is this guy?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Who who's this Brian guy who talks about all this stuff that I'm you know, what does he actually do?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: How does he make a living?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then it comes on the rate, oh, I actually I do know a personal injury lawyer.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Huh.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's at least that's how it happens for me, I think.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: They they find the personal stuff, they get interested in who I am, and they're like, she probably makes a living somehow.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Wonder what she does.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how it works.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: Or they or oftentimes they aren't the ones who who become the client.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like your your fans, I think, are less like are more likely to refer you somebody than they are to ever become a client.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned that too.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, and that's actually something interesting that I've learned about marketing is you know, you might not be directly reaching the person who's gonna reach out for you for work.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: You just you had said something earlier about, you know, just how do you make sure that people know what you do?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not necessarily the people who are gonna hire you who need to know what you do, it's the people in your orbit who do so that they people in their orbit can find out sometimes.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's where most of our marketing dollars go.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: So our we have two practices.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mine is the car crash practice, and most of our direct mail marketing dollars that isn't going to former clients is going to chiropractors and doctors who treat injury patients.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the other vertical is this long-term disability appeals practice.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, my dad runs that.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in that practice, we market to financial advisors and uh and estate planning lawyers and um uh and and advisors to doctors because our best our best clients are you know, doctors, lawyers, other high-income professionals.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so we want to be talking to the people who are um thought leaders or influence leaders to the clients that we want.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: But nobody is thinking about a car crash claim or a long term disability claim unless they actually have that problem, and most of the world doesn't have that problem.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: And funny enough, when I was uh you know stalking your site and and you know, then which led me into learning a bit about your dad, and I saw that he did LCD claims, and I thought, oh, I actually might have.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: A client for you, and this is you know, it's what what are all the threads that we can pull to get to know each person a little bit more, and then where does that lead us?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: How how do you mentally manage that?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like your your network of referrals.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have I don't have a good strategy for this?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: I would not say that I have a good system for that.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have recently come to terms with recognizing that I am a wildly naturally organized person that can handle a lot internally.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: That is not the same thing as systems.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't actually have that currently set up in such a way where I could just tell someone who works with me, you know, oh, go look at this, you know, that's where you'll find it.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on that.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, and now with what we have with AI, like Claude's making a lot of this easier.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm and and one of the things I'm I'm I'm building Winston, which is my legal practice management software that I I'm making my law practice so much easier, and I will be starting to demo soon.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm I'm thinking about how do I solve that problem that you just raised?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you manage that whole referral network and the whole and all the orbits through that in some way?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's it's a lot.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it is hard to understand, you know, especially as your network grows, you know more and more people, which is amazing.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and you want to be able to, so a lot of it lives in my head is really the answer.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not a good long-term plan.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I I have a little bit of that built into Winston, but it's not, it's not where I want it to be yet.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it just comes from like these conversations and even just thinking about like what are all the layers that I haven't even figured out yet that can then enhance how the product works so that we're not keeping all this stuff in our heads and so that we can really grow.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I this is one of the things um, you know, I've I've seen you also post about, you know, how just building that structure so that you can.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about being able to take a vacation and being able to really leave and let go and have things not rely on you and having the right people and having the systems in place.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: So and so many lawyers struggle with that.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: This fear of well, if I'm not there, nothing, you know, it won't be done.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not only might it not be done my way, which we all have to get comfortable with, but too much lives in all of our heads because we don't have the tools for all of it.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's tough.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um we a AI is helping.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um but uh but just like you, I'm not a very uh well, I'll I won't I won't include you in this, but I'm not a very structured thinker.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: I can't I have all these plates spinning in my head, but I can't put it down and and put it into an organizational detail.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um now if you give me organizational detail that's like a B level, I can take it to an A, but I can't do it from my brain to the paper.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then maybe we should chat because I I it's in my head.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: My mom's a professional organizer, so we are like organizing humans.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's actually been in a way one of my challenges with turning it into the structure because I can get so far without needing that.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I just recently got to a point where I was like, oh, it's actually I can do it, but does that mean I should be doing it all in my head?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as I grow intentionally, most of it should not live in my head because then my my team, they don't live in my head.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: So then too much has to be owned by me.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very intentionally trying to figure out how to dump everything out of my brain and you know, in into a format that anybody could walk in and say, Oh, I got this.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's in process.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's it's it's really, really hard in the law because you know, every rule has an exception, and every exception has an exception, and everything depends on the facts.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I I have found that to be really challenging.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so the way that we set up our systems in the firm is the the team can do probably 85 or 90 percent of the injury work, and then there's a 10 or 15 percent that has to have a lawyer on it.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, I was working with with Claude on this as I was trying to delegate.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: I got two um new young newer young lawyers in my office now, and I'm trying to set up these training plans for them and trying to structure like what are they doing and what are the paralegals doing and how do we differentiate?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and um you know the question that came up was okay, what are the things that only the lawyer can do?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: And there's there's actually very few.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um advice to clients, valuing cases, litigating, and there's probably one more, and it obviously it's gonna vary depending on practice area.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um but if you can get everything else out of your head and and into somebody else's lane, it frees you up to do a lot more actual lawyering.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know what you said about in law, everything, you know, there's the rule and the exceptions, exceptions, exception.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's that is often what's tough.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's, you know, even when it's not about the law itself, it might be like when you have, you know, a client that has this thing going on.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: In my case, sometimes it's, you know, I'm I've got a client that's got something that's, you know, a personal thing going on.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's affecting something about the way that we handle something just to be sensitive and compassionate, you know.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's all these pieces.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you, whether it's the law or the relationship, how do you make sure that everybody's plugged in?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you know, AI is making a lot a lot of that more manageable, but it's it's still new.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: It all still has to be figured out.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think I tend to think that one of the things that holds a lot of law firms back, and that I'm really intentional about not allowing me to be held back, is I think we too often don't allow ourselves to pause and understand what just happened, whether it was good or subpar, and make some sort of note and adjust as needed.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so easy for us to just be like, ooh, things are moving fast.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I got this other thing to do.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is important, that's urgent, whether it's actually urgent or not.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't really tend to take the time to like slow down, get strategic, and make the changes and bring in, ooh, that went really well, let's do that again.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let's how do we do that?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do we understand what just happened to make it something that can be repeated?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Don't like how I did that, don't like how we handled those pieces.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have to really do it, you know, a retro and understand why it went that way and allow it to not happen that way again.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I put a lot of intention into okay, yeah, I feel like I have to do that new thing, but if I don't do this right now, I won't be able to do the future stuff better.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: Conflating the urgent with the important.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think email and has made this worse, and text has made this worse, and and of course, my uh software management uh client management system can do both.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_03: Can text an email and from that, right, you get responses right back.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: I was I was just telling one of our young lawyers today, like if you get an email from a client, and you and if you can't solve the problem in one email back, you need to get on the phone because there's an emotional uh intelligence component to it.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you you might not be speaking the same language, either legal or emotional, as as the client.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's so easy to misinterpret what's coming across uh the email.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: And but it's but you get you get one and it triggers you, and it's very you like tap the response back and you you hit enter.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then as soon as you hit send, you're like, oh, I shouldn't have said maybe all of that.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, I think that that pause is pause is very hard to do.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Pause is very hard to do.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I mean with the email, I I don't have email on my phone.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I gotta do that.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I recommend it.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: How do you um how do you do dual factor authentication?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like is that actually a problem?
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the thing where you sign in something and it says uh we send a code to your email?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean you know this problem.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean I no, because I I mean I have authenticator apps on my phone.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I do have text on my phone if you know sometimes that if I need you know text as the answer, I have it.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I also have text on my computer.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if email is needed, I use it on my computer.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_04: All right, I'll take it off my phone.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's it that's the thing that's been holding me up, which is stupid, because I I could always just put it back on if I've learned that this is actually a problem.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but that's the reason that I haven't been haven't done it.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then I find myself like at the gym.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, checking, checking email in between sets at 7:30.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I'll I'll clarify, it exists on my phone, but it's not logged in.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there have been, I think, three times in maybe as many years where like, for example, and I've I don't think I've ever needed it for work for the law firm.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was one time where something around traveling overseas, I realized something about a visa situation was, I don't know.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: There was something and I needed email, and I was like, oh thank God, I actually can log into my email, but I don't know how to get in.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a whole ordeal to figure where do I have my password stored on so it exists like in case of bizarre and uh not really happening emergencies.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've put a lot of work though into my relationship overall with my phone.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't, I mean, I I for the most part don't use it as a smartphone, except where it comes to like apps that are related to my training, my like my personal training, physical training.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Other than that, it's in like music and podcasts, but I'm not using it to like all the other reasons.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I can give you all sorts of tips about this.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've got yeah, and I would love to, and I I feel like my success of this episode is how do we some people really benefit from having email on their phone, and I've had this conversation with a lot of lawyers, and some lawyers feel like that's the thing that helps them operate more flexibly.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, you know, this is all about do what's best for you.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: But for a lot of us, having the email on the phone means we're never taking a break.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I one of the reasons that I find it better for, I mean, it's better for me just as a human, but I I prefer engaging with my clients on the computer because everything's important.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to rush through my response.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I see.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be doing it while I'm, you know, running to the airport and you know, standing on mine board and just like, what should I do?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I want the focus and the intention.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want the distraction from, you know, oh, I'm bouncing from this, so now I'm thinking about this.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want you, I want my answers to be thoughtful, intentional, paced.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay, good stuff.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is there anything else that you want to share that we haven't talked about around the way you have built your practice to fit into the life that you want for yourself?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: Not really, and I'll tell you, I gotta do that.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and we're like three seconds.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so no, I I you know, uh honestly, Ariella or Ariela?
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ariella.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: Ariella.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for asking.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, I I feel like I lucked into where I am.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I could tell you here's the you know, here's the three-step process to primarily I don't know, primarily the thing is has been setting um setting a goal and telling people about it.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's how I ran marathons, it's how I ran ultras, it's how we went to Italy.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I drunkenly one Thanksgiving said next summer we're going to Italy for three weeks, who's coming with us?
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then now that I now that I've that's in the universe, like I You have to.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be the guy who said that and then didn't go.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I I don't know.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think setting the intention and then telling people about it is really important.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I wish I had more to offer on on the how.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: But that that's uh I have a hard time translating the how because it because it has in many ways felt easy to me.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be hard.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's this weird thing that I think a lot of us as lawyers and high performers have of like doing it right means it has to be hard.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't make it hard, I didn't try hard enough, or I'm just like I've had to learn this too, that even the way that I practice, it doesn't have to be the most like niche area, the hardest thing, the most trend, the most complex.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can it can be something that comes easily to you that you're just naturally good at.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can have fallen into it.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't make it any less.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, way to go that you know, it has come easy for you.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: And now you've got these learnings that you can share with others, and others can learn.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's fantastic.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having this conversation.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: This was wonderful.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_02: That was a lot of fun.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Take care, let's keep in touch and I'll teach you how to have no uh email on your phone.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: All right, cool.