How can a lawyer represent criminal defendants and abuse survivors? Judie Saunders represents children and families victimized by powerful systems *and* criminal defendants. Check out this week's episode of Financially Legal to find out how Judie built a practice representing the marginalized against powerful entrenched systems.
Small law firm owners may not be familiar with the terms "docker," "container," or "Kubernetes." They may even be a bit fuzzy on the definition of “the cloud.” But most firms know that, along with significant opportunities, new technologies often present security risks, interoperability challenges, and significant costs in terms of time and money to vet, test, and deploy. What’s a firm to do? Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for the solo and small firm universe - at least not yet - but, a...
We all know the cliches and the tropes: Lawyers are terrible business people, lawyers went to law school to avoid math, law firms aren’t businesses, etc . . . . Many of these statements are true in some pretty fundamental ways. But they’re also really damaging. Super accountant-to-law-firms-extraordinaire, Chelsea Williams, has the remedy. Combining her dozen-plus years of accounting experience Chelsea developed a course called “ Law Firm Money Mastery .” While the course is designed to help all...
One of my lawyer mentors once told me “if you don’t like to sell, don’t be a CEO.” Many solo lawyers set out to make a difference or have an impact - not to be a CEO. But whether you want to call them CEOs or managing partners, or partners, or business owners - the fact remains that they are heads of their respective businesses - effectively, they are “CEOs.” And if you want to be a CEO, you need to get comfortable with selling. In this bonus episode of Financially Legal we dive in on sales, sal...
What started as conversations between two friends - actually a law professor and his student - evolved into a movement. Maximum Lawyer boasts a 5000 member Facebook group, over 200 hours of podcast content, two sold-out conferences, a paid community, and a course to help lawyers and firms grow. Oh, and did I mention that the prof and his former student both have successful law firms in their own right? Jim Hacking, the law professor, and Tyson Mutrux, the former student, are the leaders of Maxim...
Sam Glover, the founder of the popular legal website, Lawyerist, once told me that he started the website to complain about a practice management system he was frustrated by. He gave birth to a technology blog that’s morphed into a large and well-known legal industry website. But Lawyerist is way more than just content. There's also the free-to-join Insider program and the paid Lawyerist community, Lawyerist Lab. Lawyerist provides ongoing strategic and tactical advice to a large number of buddi...
Over the last few years, the social media landscape has become an almost impossible environment to navigate. The founder of the lawyer community LawyerSmack, Keith Lee, saw the social media meltdown coming and decided to try and do something about it. While it started out as a free extension of his popular Associates Mind blog, LawyerSmack has become a large and very active private online lawyer community. As part of our continuing series on lawyer communities on Financially Legal I talked with ...
Here on Financially Legal we often focus on the nuts and bolts of finance and economics but some the biggest obstacles to economic and business success are mental - not financial or even business-related. If ever you’ve wondered if it's your mindset that's holding you back, then this episode is for you. We dive in on mindset - and we’re doing it with someone who thinks about this deeply - Allison Williams is a Business Coach for Solo Law Firm Owners at Law Firm Mentor. She’s also the CEO and Fou...
What if I told you there was a tool that could automatically increase your firm revenue by 1%? What about 2%? What about 3%? What about even half a percent? (if you’re not great at doing math on the fly, for a firm that grosses $1,000,000/year, one half a percent is $5000). Law firms that accept electronic payments and implement a cost-shifting technology have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs and increase revenues. Shifting the costs of payment processing in a consumer-friendly, ...
There’s probably no principle more important to growing and scaling a law firm than delegation. Whether it’s identifying the tasks that need to be done, teaching and coaching others to do them, or simply letting go, you’ll be hard-pressed to grow your legal business if you can’t delegate. If you’ve ever wondered how delegation might work in your firm and how to get started, this episode is for you. The COVID-19 global pandemic has accelerated powerful trends in law firm business. Perhaps one of ...
If you’ve ever wondered how to tie together different systems in your law practice, you need to know about Zapier. Like the machine that makes Pee-Wee Herman’s breakfast in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure or the idea of the Rube Goldberg machine (a reference that dates me even MORE than Pee-Wee Herman) Zapier uses “if this, then that” logic to connect otherwise disparate systems and - more importantly - often automate mundane, repetitive tasks that can be efficiency time sucks for every law firm, but pa...
Lawyers are no strangers to tools - even technology tools - but few choose to build their own. In this Financially Legal episode, host Dan Lear explores why six firms chose to pursue a DIY path for practice management, how they went about building what they built, whether they’d recommend that other firms do the same, and what the future of practice management looks like for firms who might want to build or, at least, customize their own system. Featured firms: Asset Transaction Legal Services, ...
This episode of Financially Legal is a departure from our usual. Normally we talk about law, economics, and even finance as applied to the practice of law. Today, we’re talking about one specific legal issue that has some financial underpinnings. Specifically, the GameStop short squeeze. If you’ve been paying any attention to the news - or especially social media - over the last couple of weeks you’ve almost certainly heard the name GameStop. They’re a publicly-traded retail establishment that s...
If you’ve considered or are considering a virtual, remote, distributed or cloud-based law firm model, this episode is for you. Parlatore Law Group’s mission is right there on the website: “Our mission is to provide our clients with the highest quality legal services at a reasonable rate. We do this by removing all the barriers, bureaucracy and bloated overhead costs associated with traditional law firms, and instead focus on unleashing the energy and individual genius of the best legal minds in ...
“I was told there’d be no math.” It’s a common joking refrain for law students and even practicing lawyers. “I went to law school to help people,” so many lawyers tell me. But a firm needs to pay for you - and itself - in order to keep helping people. Let’s face it: law firms are businesses. And the better a firm runs, the more people it can help. So understanding the finance and economics of a legal services business is crucial. That’s where Kenna comes in. As an outsourced CFO to law firms, Ke...
Allen Rodriguez is a legal product development strategist who has been serving the legal industry for over 18 years. He’s currently the Founder and CEO of the law innovation agency One400 . Before that he was the Director of Attorney Services at LegalZoom, where he helped LegalZoom figure out their, now very successful, subscription and lawyer-assisted offerings. He got his start in the legal sector running operations at the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral Service. But Allen...
Nika Kabiri is a JD, a PhD a decision science consultant, a teacher, and a writer. If that’s not enough for you, just know she’s a rock star. Previously Nika was the Director of Strategic Insights at the online legal marketplace Avvo. Whether through market research, tireless and effective advocacy, or her amazing public speaking skills in that role Nika helped Avvo and the legal industry better understand the legal consumer. Nika is now out on her own doing decision science consulting through h...
Subscription-based outsourced fractional general counsel sounds like a mouthful, but it’s not really that complicated. A fixed monthly fee for part of a lawyer’s time offering business advice to a company. Beth Lebowitz believes that this model is as good for lawyers as it is for clients. In fact, she’s so committed to it that she’s founded both a law firm, Nimbus Legal, a marketplace/community, Auxana, around the model. Listen in to learn how Beth built a subscription-based general counsel busi...
Lawyers can usually think of lots of possible reasons why trying something new in your practice is “against the rules.” Megan Zavieh is a California state bar defense attorney (who lives in Georgia!) and she’s not treading lightly. Instead, she’s launching a subscription legal services offering, cheering regulatory changes related to non-lawyer ownership, and breaking down the rules around shifting credit card processing fees to clients or selling your law practice. Megan’s got some great takes ...
It’s common for dentists or doctors to sell their practices but far less common for lawyers to do so. And a Zillow-like marketplace for law practices? Forget about it. And yet, that’s just what Tom Lenfestey is doing. Tom has built his business, The Law Practice Exchange , to increase liquidity in a market for law practices and evangelize the buying and selling of law practices as a legitimate option for the development, growth, and conclusion of a lawyer’s professional efforts. Tom has some val...
Our recent podcast on how lawyers talk to clients about money inspired Gravity Legal’s own Emery Wager to think about how lawyers had talked to him about money. A client of many lawyers at Gravity Payments (our parent company), Emery came up with a list of five things he wishes lawyers would do when they talk to clients about money . We dig in on this mini-episode of Financially Legal....
Greg Garman is a busy man. One of the founders of a 20 person law firm in Las Vegas, Greg is also the co-founder and CEO of LAWCLERK, an online marketplace for freelance legal help. In this episode, Greg shared some great insights on how and why he thinks right around 20 lawyers is the sweet spot for a small law firm. He also makes a convincing case for how and why the freelance or gig economy is the path forward for both those lawyers sourcing the work and those looking to do it. Tune in to hea...
Conventional wisdom is that there are really only two reasons that marriages end: sex and money. Sex with a client is frowned on and talking about it - except, perhaps as a part of the representation - is probably not a great idea. However, conversations with clients about money can be some of the most important conversations you have with them. How, when and what you say when you talk to clients about money can have a significant impact on your personal financial and economic well-being and can...
Jacqueline Horani is a lawyer engaged in integrative consulting and plain language law in New York City. Inspired by the integrative law movement, Jacqueline is building a practice around the practice of conscious contracting, which focuses on identifying and integrating the parties’ values directly into the contracting process. She also has built a complex and comprehensive process to financially qualify her clients and then align the amount she charges to that qualification. Finally, Jacquelin...
Geri Green and Cynthia Chandler have been fighting for marginalized individuals both in and out of courts for decades. In this episode of Financially Legal we talk about how and why, according to the 2019 Clio Trends report , civil rights attorneys realize so little of what they work (20% - the lowest of any practice area) and collect for so little of what they realize (80% - third or fourth lowest). We also discuss the tremendous burden civil rights attorneys carry as they are often some of the...
Seth Bloom is the Sr Director of Attorney Services at Levelset. If you’re not familiar with Levalset, it’s a company that helps all kinds of contractors, but particularly those in the construction space get paid and focus on what they like to do. It’s most relevant for legal professionals because those contractors often file, manage, and – when things go south – litigate liens. Enter Seth and the network of attorneys he’s building to help those construction professionals sort all of that out. Bu...
Erin Giglia is the Co-Owner of Montage Legal Group. As you’ll hear, Montage was founded more than a decade ago to exploit a “gap in the marketplace between freelancers and law firms.” Since then the model that Erin and her co-founder Laurie established has been emulated, adapted and admired by firms and freelance legal business across the legal sector. Erin is incredibly insightful about how and why they built Montage the way they have, the opportunities that they saw in the market and how and w...
Kim Bennett got burned by hourly billing. She lost a bunch of money and, having come up as a young lawyer in a corporate, in-house role, the model didn’t make sense to her. One day she pitched a client on a recurring monthly fee and, to her surprise, they accepted. That’s right, we’re talking subscriptions again. But where the guest from our last subscription-based law practice, Jon Tobin, uses almost as lead-gen for his firm, Kim’s “premium” subscriptions make up the bulk of the work that she d...
I know you didn’t go to law school to manage financial books or be an accountant, but it turns out that your ability to successfully support and represent your clients is contingent upon running a sound financial business. And Chelsea Williams, founder, and head of Core Solutions Group is dropping some wisdom about how to manage your firm’s finances so that you can worry less about money and more about your clients. We also cover Chelsea’s hit YouTube video “ Four Steps to Effective Accounts Rec...
Jon Tobin is running one of the most innovative law firms you’ve never heard of. Counsel For Creators is an LA-based law firm for creatives and entrepreneurs that sells a subscription to clients. In this episode of Financially Legal, we talk with Jon about the inspiration behind his subscription legal services plan, how he made it a reality, how (amazingly) it’s morphing into a profitable, self-sustaining community, how he calls his clients members and what’s next for his bold firm.
