¶ Managing Law Firm Growth and Challenges
How did you manage that scary step back when you see the leads decreasing ? It took us 12 months .
So last October there was a major Google algorithm update that just you know , and it hurt us bad and it was really just the culmination of maybe seven years , 10 years , of good tactics but not good strategy .
Ooh , I come back from a mastermind and I heard this I came back from a marketing conference and let's do this , and it was , it was me , and it was a lot of quick wins , right , but then they changed the algorithm and it was nothing black hat , but it was just a lot of quick wins , little tactics here and there .
And then they changed something and it's like , well , yeah , we had no real comprehensive strategy .
What's up , my friends ? Welcome back to another episode of Life Beyond the Briefs , the podcast where lawyers like you learn to live life on your own terms . Today , I'm thrilled to have my good friend , adam Rawson , back on the show .
Adam's not just a criminal defense powerhouse he's navigating the wild waters of law firm growth and all the challenges that come with it . In this episode , we're diving deep into what it really takes to manage that growth . We'll tackle everything from effective intake processes to revenue forecasting . Yes , you heard that right .
Adam shares how understanding your case valuations can transform your practice and why investing in quality SEO is a game changer . But it's not all numbers and strategies . We're also talking about the human side of growth building a strong leadership team and stepping back from day to day production to find real success .
If you're tired of living life on autopilot and want to take control of your future , you won't want to miss this conversation . So grab your headphones , settle in and let's explore how to thrive beyond the briefs with Adam Rawson .
Hey everybody , welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs , the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design . Today I have a repeat guest , adam Rawson , who's my longtime friend .
A criminal defense lawyer out of South Florida at the Rawson Law Firm has grown from a solo to a supported solo to now running one of the larger street criminal defense with some white collar mixed in but not doing white shoe big law stuff . That's a long , rambling introduction for you , adam . Welcome back to the show introduction for you .
Adam . Welcome back to the show . Yeah , thanks , brian . Thanks , love it , and that was a great intro . We do it all , but more importantly , look , it's my second time , so you're doing this . Now we're going to get this group of people . It's going to be like the SNL five-timers club .
So I don't know how many two-timers you have , but at least now I'm like ah , second time , All right , good .
So here's how this came up . Is I ? I texted adam we're recording this now on december 20th and I texted him back on the 9th , uh , saying this I'm legitimately worried that we're signing cases too fast . I know what a fucking gripe . We're up 60 year over year , uh , and you guys went through this , and I know you did , at your law firm .
How do you know when it isn't a fluke and when you need to hire the next person ? You said , well , that's a great , great question , and why don't I just come on the podcast and we'll talk about it and we'll maybe solve the problem live .
So this may be a little bit of a reverse episode where we'll be talking about my problems and the growth that you guys went through and then kind of what you're dealing with now . Good .
Right , yeah , awesome , awesome , you know . And when I saw that , first of all I was like man , hell yeah , brian , like amazing . And then I was like , well , you know more , more money , more problems , and now you just got to figure it out . It's all like a giant puzzle . And then part of me too is like , oh way to have the humble brag dude .
Oh , I got too many , too many cases . It's funny Cause I was texting with tiffany also and she's like you know glm should bring back the the too many clients , yeah thing she's like because it wasn't exactly true in the law firm at the time but it sure as hell sold when you guys had too many clients .
Yes , I remember that one maybe that'll work for us again , but but so this year , you know , know , just for background well , for background , we are up in the car crash side 60% signed cases year over year without any additional paid marketing spend , until we just turned LSAs back on in November and we're experimenting with it .
But what we solved for was intake .
Like , as it turns out , when you actually look at our lead docket information , our conversion rate sucked , and the larger problem than that , we weren't getting back to people quickly enough , and so there was this you know , kind of ghost number of cases in our qualified leads that weren't even being counted in our qualified leads set Right .
And so just by bringing that back in-house , by having somebody who's a real rock star who started this year , it's nothing that the lawyers have done , it's . You know , lauren has done a great job in marketing , but really the thing that has changed the most this year has been intake , and so we've solved that constraint .
We have all these additional cases coming through the pipeline and we're going to enter the year with probably 30% more cases on January 1st of 2025 than we had on January 1st of 2024 , and no additional people on the production side .
And so what I want help with from you is finding that balance between , like being confident that you can hire and sustain somebody who you bring on and not getting ahead of your skis revenue-wise , because if a case signs up with us today , it's not going to turn into a fee or into money for nine or 12 months and it's a little bit different .
Your life cycle in criminal is a little bit different , but those are the problems that I'm having , and so you've walked this walk before .
Yes , well , and so , especially with PI and criminal are a little different . Right , in criminal and immigration we're getting paid upfront and maybe some a little , you know , as the case is going on on a payment plan . So we kind of have that mix right .
You guys , exactly Today you're not seeing for 9 , 12 , sometimes probably 18 months , but I do think with the data that you guys have by now , you should be able to make it very reliable and predictable about when you're going to get the revenue and what that's going to be like , maybe like a cash flow forecast over the next six to 18 months based on that .
And so the first thing I would say I would ask you , brian , is do you have that data to be able to say , well , look , this type of case with these type of injuries , we can estimate low end , you know 10 , high end , 30 , right , or low end , 50 , right , and maybe put them into buckets and seeing how many you have , how many you're at , and that way at
least you can kind of forecast out some of the you know the revenue . And yes , there's always fluctuations , of course , but I think personal injury law firms , when they take the time to really get into that data . It can be much more predictable than people think .
So I would answer it this way I have that data available to me . It would be a lot of work .
So one of the things that we're doing in 25 is we're moving from Casepeer to Filevine , and I know that when we are up and running and have all of our data set in Filevine , I'll have all that data available to me right , without as much work , or at least that's what I've been sold .
No comment .
I did that part out as I'm now a paid Filevine affiliate . I did that part out as I'm now a paid Filevine affiliate
¶ Analyzing Case Value and Production Costs
. But I do know our average case values for particular types of cases . I know , for instance , that a fracture case is worth a $25,000 fee to us on average . A surgical case is worth $100,000 on average . A soft tissue is worth $4,000 on average .
Right , and of course , you're right , there's variations within that , and so the two variables to go back on is like last January , how many of each category of case did you sign and how long does each take to mature ? Again , I know that the average case is nine months , but exactly what you said like a surgical case is probably 18 on the short end .
So I can get there .
Right , and so one of the things is , you will have this and so look , we've been , we're on Salesforce and now the data that we have is really good . It's still I mean , I still want to do so much more with it , but you don't have to wait for Filevine . If you have these , you can create some EWAGs .
So we learned that in what did you call that An EWAG ? So learn something new . Basically , it's an educated , wild-ass guess . Okay , yeah yeah , but you can have an EWAG and at least have some kind of rough numbers here .
And of course , I'm sure , yeah , there's going to be variables , but I would at least start with that so you have some basic framework around to . You know , have an idea , right , in six months you know six months , are you ? Is it going to be 50 grand ? Is it going to be 200 grand ? That's coming in month six from now is it going to be 500 , right ?
What is it right ? You know months six , seven , eight , nine . You know ten of that . Right , there were basically the last . You know second , third and fourth quarter of next year , right . And then what I would also ask do you guys do a skew analysis ? Do you know how much it costs the firm to produce each case ?
No . So like most injury lawyers , I have a distinct aversion to time tracking , so I have no idea how much it costs me to produce any case .
Right , just like criminal defense are you ? They consider themselves master craftsmen , artisans , they're painting the Michelangelo with their work and they're like I can't be bothered with tracking my time . And look , when you have high-performing divas , I'm kind of on the fence about what do we do , but a lot of times just let them be them .
So what we've done in the past is we've picked one type of case or one case in particular . We said look , just track your time , start to finish . Or let's talk about the component pieces . So , for example , a DUI about how much time does it take to do a formal review hearing . That's a component piece . And we have staff time , lawyer time .
How much does it take if we're going to waive the formal review hearing and work them through that ? How much time does it take in the discovery phase if we're filing motions to suppress plea negotiations , trial ?
And we kind of again e-wagged it and then we added on a few extra hours and then we had a number from staff and attorney time and then we added another 10% just because another 10% just to you know right , just just cause . And then from there we looked at it and we took not what our lawyers would bill on it .
But what's our lawyers effectively , our effective hourly rate , or what are we paying them basically ? And so we look at it and we say , well , if a lawyer you know we assume a lawyer would bill maybe 14 or 1500 hours a year because you know we're not grinding them to death . But let's just say , a lot of people use that as an estimate maybe $1,500 .
It could be more . And if we're paying them $100,000 , you do the math and you say , well , okay , well , I'm paying this lawyer , whatever it is , per hour , the staff member per hour . And then you just go okay , so a DUI , it costs us $1,500 to produce . We want at least a 4 , 4x ri . We need to be charging minimum 6k , you know .
So that that's helped us . And look , admittedly we need to still do a better job of it and we , after two years of raises , we need to um redo our skews in 25 . But that's also something that I think for cash flow purposes , when you're trying to figure out hiring somebody new . Because it's not just the top line . Oh , we got all this revenue .
Well , what happens ? If these cases are not profitable or barely profitable , then it's not just the top line . Oh , we got all this revenue . Well , what happens ? If these cases are not profitable or barely profitable , then it's not going to help you .
How deep do you dive into the production cost in terms of factoring in origination credit ? Or I know you guys do like a nights and weekends sign up ? Bonus for your lawyers or year-end bonus . How do you factor that into the pay scale and the effective hourly rate ? If you do ?
Right , yeah , so we separate that out because that's a function of of sales and intake . So you know the marketing costs , right ? We ? We function , you know we take out and we take out the sales and intake . So really , we're just trying to look at legal production itself . And if we can hit at least a 4x , you know we can hit a 5x , right .
Think about , if we're hitting a 5x , then that means 20 of the fee is going to production . If we a 4x , you know we can hit a 5x , right , think about if we're hitting a 5x , then that means 20% of the fee is going to production . If we had 4x , 25% , let's just say you know 10% is going to intake , right ?
Or you know , and then I don't know , let's say another 5% is going to marketing . Well , that could be 40% there , right ? And then the rest will go to the firm , which will cover all the other things .
And by no means am I an expert on this , but these are the things that we've been learning and we're always constantly trying to grow and really learn about the profitability of our cases .
The way that I've kind of thought about that as we grow and scale is 20% to 25% for attorney production costs , with a cap of 40% on total case production costs . Meaning paralegal staff , overseas staff , 20% , marketing 20% you know , hey , we work in an office space with internet and then 20% profit . Is those numbers kind of track what you're aiming for ?
We're still aiming for a little bit better , because if it's 40% total production , then that's still only . You know two and a half X ROI roi , right , I believe . So if you can get that down to a third , 33 for the total pod .
But also you have to , you know , factor in , like really , what I've also been told is you know four or five x on the lawyer cost , or at least three x on the the pod cost the production , but it's three x on the lawyer cost . Or at least 3x on the pod cost the production , but it's 3x on the pod .
But it's also , let's say , the pod costs you $200,000 a year . And if you're going to go on that , well , what about taxes , insurance benefits ? So usually we'll increase that by 1.2 or even 1.25 . So usually we'll increase that by 1.2 or even 1.25 . So that 200K goes to whatever 1.1, . You know , let's say that's 250 , right .
And then you know , factoring in taxes and all that stuff benefits , and then 3X of that is 750 . So that pod needs to have a profitable firm , by and large at least should be generating 750K in top line revenue .
And are you all now exclusively pod-based ? Are you pod people now ?
Yes , yeah , yeah , We've been pod people for a little bit and we have our . Vas and stuff .
Awesome and that's what I'm going to talk about is the transition from team atmosphere , which is what I have right now , to pod people .
We love
¶ Effective Team Structure and Strategy
our pod people .
Was that butting heads ? Was that challenging ? Did some people embrace it Like , tell me about that . You lost your audio . I think that's . I think you're back .
Am I back ? Okay , all right , just jump and we'll cut it . We'll fix it , okay , all right . So , as far as the pods , what do we do with the pods ? We have a little bit different . It's not one-on-one with our pods . So the way a pod works is we have one lawyer , we have one in-house legal assistant that works with two lawyers .
So , for example , david's pod is David , he has Nikki , who's our in-house legal assistant , more of the case manager , so to speak . And then we is also part of Scott's pod . So Scott's pod is Scott , it's Nikki as the case manager as well . And so we basically think each attorney can run , should run 75 cases , ish , a case manager can run 150 .
And what we've done as well is we've swapped the VLAs . So David's VLA1 and VLA2 are different than Scott's VLA1 and VLA2 . So we have integration . So every VLA1 and VLA2 has two attorneys , every case manager has two attorneys . So we have multiple people working across pods .
It's kind of like , really , if you think about it , the case manager is kind of the head of the pod , not the lawyer yeah , we talked about this .
Yeah , you're right . Right , and so , um , just for clarity's sake , your vla one and two under david is are they also doing work for another lawyer , or does the other ?
lawyer . Okay , no , they're doing work for another and are they doing work for the same ? They both do usually . Uh , I'm trying to double , you know , I , I think I .
No , they're , they're doing work for another , and are they doing work for the same ?
they both do usually uh , I'm trying to double , you know , I , I think I think they're not with scott , whereas the case manager is , I think they might be with susan , um , with susan or armand , you know , and so we have some of that mix going on . But we also run a very team atmosphere . We're all sports people , just like you guys are .
So , you know , we I mean our staff has daily huddles every day . Well , actually , the legal department has a daily huddle every day lawyers and staff . We have a weekly afternoon , thursday afternoon meeting where we're going over , like the whole next two days on our calendar , cause every case of ours , except for our seals and expungements , is in litigation .
You know , um , you know , we have 300 cases in litigation .
And it's interesting on the criminal defense side because that seems flipped right that the lawyer is handling fewer cases than the case manager .
I mean , we didn't want to go one-to-one and that's why you know we have it , where the case manager can do that . But also remember our cases are courtroom intensive .
No , it's what I'm saying . We're in court every day . I was getting there because my mind caught up to mine .
Yeah , courtroom intensive report every day and by having the extra support with our overseas . You know , right , a lot of times it's our VL , our in-house legal assistant . Again , it's more like a case manager . They're talking to all the clients , they're running the client communication .
Our VLAs speak really good English and the ones that have been here with us for for a while , which we made the decision to use virtual staff in a legal assistant capacity , came from an Icon Accelerated Mastermind meeting about three to almost three years ago . So that was just amazing and that's been a great decision of ours .
But in order to have that staff , where a lot of them are handling more of the factory production , more of the repetitive tasks , and our in-house are more like case managers . They're moving , they're shaking , they're doing all the urgent things .
So it's a good mix , I think , and it allows us to have more stability with the team than if it was just pure one-to-one . Well , what happens when somebody quits ? What happens when somebody's sick ? We don't't have that as much . We're a lot more impervious to life's changes are you still in any legal production ? I have one case right now .
I'm very proud . I was to say you had five .
Yeah , no , I got one and and I you know , I had to reinstitute my pod because I think I was down to zero for a long time and then I like I got one . Now we actually looked at closed cases for the year and I have two closed cases for the year .
Right , so you're now going on a performance improvement plan , yes , so how has that transition been for you ?
I mean , it's pretty much been three years , though , since I've been really like , primarily out of production . I think it was September , october of 2021 . So , um , you know , I mean I've been heavy in sales , heavy , heavy in marketing , heavy in sales .
I'm trying to still get out of sales , although , you know , three days ago I had a hour and a half strategy session . That could have been 30 minutes , but I love the family so much . They're sports people .
We were talking sports all the time and you know , afterwards I'm like , oh , let me just give you a little bit of a discount , let me take some money off . You guys are great , but they were . And that personal connection . I said if I could do 20 of those a week , I would love doing that , but it's still holding the firm back .
So every year I'm trying to take something out .
You know it's funny . Just before this this I I was talking with jason epstein about exactly this , about , like you know , you and he and me , we're all really good at sales and we enjoy it . Yeah , we , you know .
Whether it's the best dollar per hour use of your time to be in those meetings is is a question , but it's also like I don't know if I had , if I had all the money in the world and didn't have to do anything . It's kind of fun talking to new people and helping them solve their legal problems .
Right , especially when it's people that I connect with . It is great , and of course , there's nobody that's ever going to promote the firm better than us . But that was the evolution to get us from a million-dollar firm to a two-million now , to a real multi-million-dollar firm .
But I truly believe , to get to an eight figure firm for us , I have to get out , and I don't want to , but I have to . How many lawyers do you have now ? So well , including me and Manny , it's six . Manny just went back into production .
We had a lawyer leave that didn't give us too much notice , so he went from five cases to 30 , 35 , and now he's whittling them down again , though it's pretty good , but yeah , I mean . So really , we have four and a quarter or so in production .
Um , it varies , but we we had a little bit of some marketing issues last year , just with some our leads were actually down , and we've solved that , and so now we're really priming for some more growth .
You know , last year was more of kind of small , last year or this year going to be a growth year , but it ended up being more of a stability year , which is totally fine .
Right . So it's interesting because that was for us . As I looked at 2024 , I was like we are going to make less money this year than we did last year and this turned out to be our best year ever .
And I'm not really sure why I was wrong because , again , if I sign up a case in January , february , it's unlikely that it's going to pay me this year and if it does , it's not going to be a very large fee . So I got to figure out why I was . I was wrong about that . But how did you , how did you manage that scary step back ?
When you see the leads decreasing , you know you can't snap your fingers and fix it , like what it took us 12 months .
So last October there was a major Google algorithm update that just it , you know , and it hurt us bad and it was really just the culmination of maybe seven years , 10 years of good tactics but not good strategy . Ooh , I come back from a mastermind and I heard this .
I came back from a marketing conference and let's do this , and it was it was me and it was a lot of quick wins , right , but then they changed the algorithm and it was nothing black hat , but it was just a lot of quick wins , little tactics here and there .
And then they changed something and it's like , well , yeah , we had no real comprehensive strategy and yeah it . It's like , well , yeah , we had no real comprehensive strategy
¶ Building a Specialized Leadership Team
and we had an agency . At the time . It wasn't working . They had no clue . We said you know what ? We're going to bring it all in-house . The team that we brought in-house wasn't the right culture fit . They couldn't fix it either . Then we went back to the drawing board and we picked .
We interviewed two of the , in my opinion , the top agencies in the legal sphere . They were both absolutely amazing . It was so hard to choose . We picked one and within two months , we switched our URL , which we needed to do . We were told we were going to do it for years and we told how it was going to be a lot of pain .
Well , it was a week of a bit of a slowdown and within two , more weeks after that . We had our full traffic back pre URL switch . Right . So we had criminal hyphen defense , hyphen DUI dot lawyer and we needed to switch it to Ross and law firmcom , you know , and all the associated backlinks and everything .
But that month , that was in August we hired them in July , we did it in August no-transcript and now you know , we have plans to continue to grow and really hit that . But overall , if you told me , you know , and we had planned for a 25% increase in revenue .
So of course we also staffed up and we , like our leadership team is , look , it's the best leadership team that we have . It's also the most expensive leadership team that we have .
So , you know , but if we lost 40% of our online traffic and we're going to finish within negative three to 5% , you know , three to 5% revenue less than we had last year , I'm okay with it , even if obviously profits down .
As the business owner and as somebody who's usually , you know , takes calculated risks and saves money for these calculated risks , okay , no problem , that's a year big deal , as long as we're on the right track .
And so we've weathered through that and I'm very pleased with where we're at and I think next year we're really primed for some growth and we're looking at acquisitions and all that stuff .
Musicians wow .
Yeah .
I feel like so , adam , I do this podcast and I say often to talk to the version of me that's three to 10 years ago , and I feel like now I'm talking to the version of me that's three to 10 years in the future , because acquisitions has been like kind of in the back of my mind but we never really had the manpower or the capacity or the mental bandwidth
to think about it .
And that's why I wanted to build a leadership team , a real leadership team . Right , we can kind of come in and be like , all right , we're starting a firm or we're buying up a solo in Miami or St Lucie , port St Lucie and we're bringing corporate in to make it the RLF way .
Because I was part of Carrabba's , the restaurant chain they opened up in Gainesville when I went to UF and I was part of that opening staff and they had all their corporate people , their trainers , their wine sommeliers teaching us about wine and everything came from Orlando and they were there for three months before and they stayed for , I think , a month or two ,
maybe two months post-launch , and I'm remembering those . You know what I learned when I was 20 years old from that .
So when you say that you bought in a real leadership team , like what , what are they ?
doing and what was their immediate past job before they came to work for you ? Right , so well it's . You know , a lot of these principles are kind of are talked in GLM too . It's like , well , when you're you know , you got two , three , 400,000 of revenue and you're hiring your first marketing person , it really kind of has to be a generalist marketing assistant .
It's hard to have that specialist . So we went from a lot of generalists to specialists .
You know , we realized , look , our previous firm administrator amazing person , but we had heard she was in charge of billing , she was in charge of managing our tech vendors , she was in charge of HR , she was running COO duties , processes and procedures , and then we had other people to handle the actual legal work .
But those things become especially in our field with our payment plans and everything . Our billing is a complete mess and it requires somebody full-time . So we found somebody who's amazing , who's in Columbia , who has experience , and now he's our billing manager and he's really good at getting the money .
And also we have the nicest person in the firm trying to get money . So you know the best thing , right , Right , so now we have somebody who's good at getting money and likes putting people's feet to the fire to get make sure we get paid . And he's working now with our fractional CFO .
We didn't have a fractional CFO before on processes , procedures , making sure that the tech is there . We went with Salesforce . Salesforce can be great , but it can also be very difficult , expensive and intimidating . We built it cheap and there's a difference .
A lot of times cheap is expensive and there's a difference between an expense and something that is expensive . And so our cheap build with our cheap vendor turned out to be extremely expensive and we should have just had a good investment or expense in doing it the right way . We brought on an agent , so that didn't work . We brought on a different company .
They were good but they didn't really have the bandwidth for us and we said you know what ? We're going to bring somebody full-time in-house , yeah , more money and revenue , but this person is also going to handle our it . So our it vendors gone . This person is going to clean up our , our train you'll . We use train you'll for our systems and we had .
You know it's great when you give employees an opportunity to build a train you'll and contribute right . Especially we're like oh great , we're doing this , build the process and then you look in train you'll and you see , well , there's eight people who have touched sections of train you'll . There's no , you know , homogenization to it . It's .
There's no branding to it . It's not the rlf way . We have these train you'lls that look so different and there's really nobody who's fully in charge of making sure new employees get these train rules , you know , in these departments . So she's also working on that . She's also a coder herself , so she's not just doing the Salesforce Like . I mean , she's brilliant .
So bringing in a specialist on that was a . You know it was a gamble , right , Because it's costing us a lot more money , but so far it's , it's been really good and I know it's going to be continually even better . So just kind of getting more specialists in these roles . Um , the one thing we didn't fill was HR .
So , um , I joked that we were going to buy a robot dog and just have it walk around the office and bark at people and you know you can pet it . No , but we just .
I didn't want to make a rush . That's not what HR does .
No , I know . Well , I didn't want to make a rush , a rushed bad hire , so we just left HR in , like the department heads responsibilities , and from the hiring part we all kind of pitch in . But ultimately the department heads handle that for now . And you know , we're looking maybe for next year for that .
I do think I would love to have an actual COO , like a pure ops person . We , you know , we're we're looking into some of those , some of those different ideas and things for next year as well . But you know , but again we have a fractional CFO that's on our leadership team . Just because he's fractional , he's spending a lot of time with us .
You know , he he zooms in on our , on our level 10s and our quarterlies , and that's helped tremendously too .
So we have about six people now . It's um . It's interesting , you know , because everybody goes through this stair step of growth and sometimes you go back down the stairs , be you know , from solo to team member to . We're going to outsource some of this stuff to outsourcing . It actually doesn't yield a very good result . I better bring it back in-house .
I'm going to buy the expensive software , but I'm not going to pay for the expensive build . That didn't work out very well . I should pay for the expensive build , and the stories are almost always the same and the lessons coming back are almost always spend more than you think you should at the time or spend more than you can afford at the time .
But but there's so many stories out there about building it this way , they're like because nobody overspends at the time .
Hardly anybody overspends at the time well , in 15 years ago I had no money at all , but I had all the time in the world and it's a bit of a mindset shift that go wow , it's . The leadership team as a whole is spending 10 hours on this . We're discussing this . That's costing us a lot of money . So , whatever it is to come in and just do it right .
It's so much better .
Yeah , perfect segue .
So so I have said for years we're going to do SEO in-house , we're going to build the expertise in-house , right Coached with Jason Hennessey for five months me , ben and Lauren on the call with Jason and I said I looked at what we're paying and I looked at our time investment in the call and then in doing all this stuff after the call and I was like Jason ,
how about if I just pay your , your agency , to do it for
¶ Enhancing Firm Growth and Networking
us ? So that's starting in 2025 also .
Right and well , and they're . They're one of the two best in my opinion . You know , I love Jason , love , love . Anytime he's on a podcast I'm listening and taking down , you know , feverish notes and his team is great .
So you know , I think it's a great choice and that's that's kind of the same thing with us , like , on one hand , you want that control , but what happens when you miss right ? What happens when you make the wrong hire right , which we did ? We had somebody and he couldn't get the job done and and also he wasn't the best core value fit .
So it's like , when you're a small company , you tend to put all your . You know , yeah , we're bringing in an employee , we're going to theoretically get more out of it , but what happens when it's the wrong , the wrong hire ? You put all your eggs in that one basket and that's why , when you look at it so , for example , we use rankings .
You know we've had rankingsio , um , you know Chris Dreyer and his team , and it was between rankings and Hennessy and we looked at it and we're like we can't go wrong with either , and there was just a few different things that we were debating .
Right , it came down to like one or two reasons and we went with rankings and we're very pleased , and I'm sure we'd be very pleased with Jason and his team as well . But when you hire one of them , you know you're getting top-notch quality .
And to pay more with one of those two companies is so much better than to go with one of the other 50 SEO companies for lawyers that might charge their niches , charging people between $3,000 and $6,000 a month or whatever , $4,000 and $7,500 a month , and it's all cookie cutter .
And for fast-growing , for firms that really want to be , you know , grow and be profitable and dominate . You know what I'm spending with , with rankings , the quotes that I got from both of them . It was , you know it was a lot of money . But so what ?
If you're going to get the best of the best and that's what we want if we're just going to do basic SEO , then anybody will do right and you're not going to get results .
If you told me three years ago I was going to spend what we're going to be spending on SEO , I would have told you crazy . Actually , at our last annual , lauren floated the idea of hiring an SEO , outsourcing SEO , and the thought went through my mind like , if we outsource SEO , what are you going to do ?
She's gotten to a point where she's done such good work on that and on our LSAs and all of the other touch points that we have that it's like man . If I can just get her to focus on the thing that she's actually an expert in and I can hire an actual SEO expert , holy shit .
And no matter what company you hire , even if it is the top tier , you still need somebody on your team to you know , in EOS language , lma them lead , manage and hold them accountable .
You have to , no matter what , because even the best agencies you know , look , they have lots of clients , they're pulled in different directions and so somebody always needs to be there really , you know , lead , managing and holding them accountable . Plus , now it could free Lauren up , like for those other things that you're saying .
Right , because if she , if you guys , are really good with LSA and house , then there's no need to pay Hennessy to do that . Maybe social media is something that's been on your target and she hasn't had the capacity to do it .
So maybe now you increase your social and what I've always said for the majority of lawyers , for social , it's just a great way of staying in touch with your herd . Everybody thinks , everybody thinks they're going to has the dreams of grandeur , of being the next , you know , instagram or TikTok lawyer superstar .
But in reality , our social or right , you can have her film , a lot more videos for you guys on YouTube and stuff . It's really just another . You know , it's a digital way , like you know , to replace or not to replace , but to supplement the mail monthly newsletters and the e-newsletters and everything else .
Yeah , I mean we have prosecutors who want to work with us because not only do they see us in court but they follow us on social .
I thought you were going to say you were sending a mail monthly newsletters .
Oh no , but I , you know I've toyed around with doing it to the judges but and the prosecutors ? I thought about it yeah .
Yeah , you know , and so I sort of see , once we are up and stabilized , and she's doing the LMA on the LMA , on the SEO , on the digital stuff , it's really reinstituting the ground game , right , because if I only were dominating the 10 mile radius around my office I would be completely happy and would have more work than you could ever fulfill , right and so .
So I think it's easy to get distracted by like , oh , we should do digital and we should pay a lot of money and rank number one , and then and then you tend to ignore the ground game stuff of like there's a whole lot of referral sources right in this neighborhood , right , and exactly .
You know we've one of our big wins of this year is we've completely revamped our referral process and you know it's , it's . We're still working through the process . We've recreated the process , and from scratch , and we're working right through . We had the help of a consultant to come in and do that .
And so you know , if Lauren focuses a lot of you know , let's say she takes 20% of her time back and can focus on that . I mean , look , you guys have your great , you know , training center . I mean , my opinion is you guys should have an event in there every single week .
I mean , there's , you know , and some , look , some people love BNI , Some people hate BNI . I'm not a big BNI fan but I recently joined ProVisors , which is a little bit of an up higher scale BNI , and we have ideas in different .
We've hosted ProVisors lawyers' lunches , group lunches in our office and actually we're under contract on a 6,000-square-foot office condo in Boca that we're going to move the main as the main base of ops .
We'll still keep our Fort Lauderdale office and part of the reason I fell in love with this office it's a bit of a rehab project but it's because we're going to have a professional video studio and a mock courtroom , slash training center , and part of it is some of the inspiration from seeing your training center .
And then my good friend , bill Umansky in Orlando has a mock courtroom and kind of combining that with my other good friend , amanda Demanda , who I heard her speak at PIMCON , which was rankings conference . Brian , you should have been there , it was in Arizona , you would have loved it .
And either the next week or the previous week . Yes , right , I'll go .
No , it was , and she spoke and she's out of Miami and her studio , I mean it's a full on TV studio . It is gorgeous . I don't know what she spends and I don't want to know , but it's . But that was inspiring to me of she's going all in with this gorgeous TV video studio , not letting I'm in a , I'm in an office right now .
That's our studio now and kind of creating something like that . Part of our vision is we want to host events there every single week . We want to let lawyers , other lawyers , use it , you know , and just use that . Come , come , come right , whatever group we're in , and also have our lawyers in these networking groups and leverage them .
So you know , now you can have Lauren who can really leverage that for you . I mean , in addition to all the GLM stuff . Like you guys , you guys could literally have a function there every single week .
I just parade people around , show off the office and you know , really and I know you guys do that , yeah , you guys can can five exit , you know well , we , we do it , we do it , but not not as often , and we we don't have a um and we don't put intentional effort towards it .
Right , we have there's a local group of knitting ladies that come in and they knit once a month and they leave us cookies and whatever there's .
Uh , there's some charity groups that we have affiliation so when they so , when they slip and fall at like big lots or or you know that's right max or marsh yeah , yeah and so , but , but you know , to that point , I don't think that we're really intentional about um capturing their information , making sure that they're on our list .
You know , we , of course we get them to . We ask for Google reviews within the ethical boundaries of Google , right ? But yeah , this is exactly right . It's like we have ideas around and if we sit here for 45 minutes , we can come up with ideas for how we could use this better .
But we don't have time to do that because we've been learning how to become seo experts for the last year and a half , when we maybe should have just been paying somebody . But but it's all , man , it is all steps in the process right .
Exactly , you learn and look who to trust , because today's you know , yesterday's hot seo vendor right is bad today and today's is bad tomorrow .
But luckily , when you have a company like Rankings or Hennessy , which they've been doing it at the highest of levels for so long , that makes it easy and of course I don't want to just make this a plug for one of them , but it is true , because what I've also seen is there's a new hot name . They get 20 new clients . They have to staff up .
They get overseas people . They don't know how to manage them . Then the quality goes down and everybody complains and nobody refers them anymore . You know , and it's this up and down , up and down cycle . But how do the lawyers really know ? You go to a conference and you see three vendors and one suite talks you into it .
And none of those guys are your account executives , and that's all that really matters right , yeah , exactly
¶ Marketing Vetting Process and Online Presence
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Oh , part of our vetting process is , we said we're meeting with our account execs , like it was all we need to meet with them . We like , yeah , we went deep on that . But luckily we have somebody on our team , laura , who's our chief revenue officer .
She's in charge of marketing and intake , but she ran her own agency so she knew how to vet them , as opposed to me , and I'm like , yeah , and she's cool , you know and and stuff , and laura's sitting there asking really all the real hard questions , so that way I can also be the nice guy this is amazing .
Thank you for the coaching . Thank you for coming back on for round number two . Put all the links to your socials , but where do you want to direct people , adam ?
yeah , I mean , you know , one of my goals for 2025 is LinkedIn . I have to be more like you , brian , and just pump my thoughts and content out there . I'm thinking , you know , working on a process to do that . So you know you can find me on LinkedIn , right ?
Adam Rawson , instagram me Adam Rawson , maybe ESQ I put that in there because I saw someone else had it and I thought it was fancy or Rawson Law Firm . I mean , google me , we're everywhere . Google me , google I know in a non-douchey way , google me , email me . It's Adam at Rawson Law Firm .
I've had so many people mentor and help me that I love talking about this stuff .