Building a Strong Legal Leadership Team

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zenda, and I'll be your host. 00:22 Speaker 2 Welcome back to another edition of the Effective Lawyer podcast. My name is Kevin Tully, the Chief Marketing Officer at Zynda Law Group. And with me, as always, is founder, CEO and lead trial lawyer, Jack Zinda. On this episode, we're going to be talking about executive teams and why your law firm needs one. So I almost called you Zach. 00:42 Speaker 1 I'll take it. Executive team. 00:45 Speaker 2 Jack came out of Zach. What is the role of an executive team? Take us through it. 00:50 Speaker 1 Great question, Kevin. So, you know, I think the first thing that I think of an executive team is a body or group of people that help run the organization and help make strategic decisions for the company, the law firm or a team. 01:09 Speaker 2 Great. And who typically makes up this team? If we're talking about organizations generally, so we haven't yet gotten into law firms, but what level of people are typically involved on this team? 01:22 Speaker 1 If you think of like a large company, you're typically going to have somebody that is over each department. So you would have someone who's in charge of finance, that might be a cfo. You're going to have someone who is in charge of marketing, a cmo. You could have someone who's in charge of operations, a chief operating officer. You could have someone who's in charge of hr. You will typically have someone who's in charge of sales and someone who's in charge of some sort of technical IT or software, those types of areas you want to typically keep. You'll typically see an executive team that's going to have between five and nine members. Now, obviously with the law firm, that's going to be a little different. And especially with the smaller law firm. 02:09 Speaker 2 Is it commonplace for law firms to have executive teams? 02:14 Speaker 1 I would say it's very uncommon. I think some of the law firms that are growing quickly and some of them even smaller, law firms that are having a lot of success in growing their revenue or their profitability are using some version of an executive team model. I think most don't. I think that's probably a mistake. 02:34 Speaker 2 What's the typical organizational structure at the top for most law firms? 02:39 Speaker 1 I think typically it's going to be mostly lawyers. And I think in a lot of firms, the attorneys don't think about what other roles are within the firm besides just practicing law. Someone has to be accountable for getting business. Someone has to be accountable for making sure staff is paid, that you have plenty of Cash. And then of course, someone has to make sure that the paralegals and legal assistants are, you know, executing a high level and then the lawyers are doing great legal work. 03:09 Speaker 2 So if you would. Sorry, go ahead. 03:11 Speaker 1 No, go for it. 03:12 Speaker 2 So if you would take us through the progression at Zinda Law Group. You know, obviously when you first started the firm, you were at the top, you were at the bottom. 03:21 Speaker 1 You're everything. 03:22 Speaker 2 And then you grew it. And how has the leadership team, whether you refer to it as an executive team or otherwise, how has it evolved over time? 03:31 Speaker 1 That's a great question. And you know, I think it's always important to zoom out and ask, you know, the fundamental why. And I like to ask why three times when I'm trying to get to the bottom of something. So for an executive team or a leadership team, you know, there's a few main purposes you want to have this organization. One is it can be really lonely at the top. And also you don't always make the best decisions by yourself. Even if you're bouncing ideas off someone, having someone else that you can go down that path, we can be really helpful. Number two, it's going to help you hear what's going on in the organization. 04:08 Speaker 1 So even if you're a seven person law firm and you have three people in the executive team, you're going to be able to keep track of what's going on with the other four people a lot better. If you've got a regular meeting cadence where you're talking about decisions, it's also going to allow you to communicate your decisions with other people within the organization a lot more quickly. So the first thing you know, my firm started with there was four of us and so obviously not a big organization or a big group. And in those executive team meetings, quote, unquote, there were two of us that would attend and then we would cover big decisions, things that need to happen in the firm. 04:48 Speaker 1 And I really liked the E Myth model from Robert Gerber, which is a great book, which has this idea of building out an organizational chart for when you get to the size you ultimately want to be. So you'd have like there's a chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, chief operating officer. And then as you grow, you're figuring out who is sitting in that seat and adding that additional hire and then you may or may not add them to your executive team group. Now I would be really careful and we've done this as well as on the title you give the group because you don't Want it to become a, an ego thing or a prestige thing. Because sometimes some of the best, most important people in an organization may not be at the executive team because their resources are needed there. 05:37 Speaker 1 We have attorneys that are superstar lawyers that are mission critical to the firm, but they're not on the executive team because that would be not a great use of their time. We're not talking about their cases. They don't have a lot of management oversight. So forcing them to sit through another meeting is not a great use of their time as just a lead trial lawyer. Right. 05:59 Speaker 2 So what types of topics are best for conversation at the executive level? 06:06 Speaker 1 Great question. And there's a really good book traction. I'm blanking on the author's name. 06:12 Speaker 2 Do you recall Gina Wickman? 06:14 Speaker 1 Gina Wickman. And then another one, Scaling up by Vern Harnish, which are great books that give you know, custom built agendas. The first thing that I would tell all lawyers is you are a business and a law firm. Just because you do business, you have some business practices, doesn't mean you're no longer a great lawyer or a great law firm. And I think it's really important that law firms understand that every executive team meeting, you want to cover at least the main KPIs of your organization. And for us, that's going to be, you know, profit, number of cases resolved and gross resolutions. And we're going to hit that every single time. That keeps us focused. Are we on track or off track? For what? Our quarterly objectives. The other thing you want to always hit is people issues. So new hires. 07:06 Speaker 1 Are we having issues within the organization with a certain employee? Is someone leaving? Do we have someone starting soon? Are people hearing things around the office that they want to share with the executive team? That's so there's a shared understanding of what's going on in other departments. One area that I left off that you want to typically start the meeting with is going to be with. We call it victories. And it's a way to get the group started on a positive note and a way to have the group bond together so they know something personal about one another. And that can either be a professional victory or a personal victory or both. And you want to keep it to less than a minute person. And I feel like that's a real positive way to start the meeting. 07:53 Speaker 1 So you have your segue or victories, then you've got KPIs. You may have each team member own a KPI and you want them to hit that. If that's the case. And we use a red, yellow, green model. Or if someone is green, they're on track. If they're yellow, they're in danger of missing their target. And if they're in red, that means they're going to miss their target and they don't know how to get it back on track. And this is creating a list of topics that we may talk about in the meeting. Then, if we're working on any projects as an executive team, we'll quickly hit the status of those. Are we on track, off track. And each executive team member will usually own a project. 08:36 Speaker 1 And then we'll get into the most important part of the meeting, which is what they call interaction ids, which is identifying, discussing, and solving issues. And we'll typically go around the room, vote on what topics people want to talk about, and they will provide it a list ahead of time. So let's say we're moving office spaces. Hey, do you want to move our office space from the suburbs to downtown? Let's say we're trying to decide are we going to hire another lawyer or go into another practice area or enter another state or it could even be on an important case. If your executive team is made up of all lawyers, hey, we have this really important case. 09:10 Speaker 1 We're trying to decide do we want to accept this offer, not accept this offer, take it to trial, hire this expert witness that could be on the issue list. And then we'll spend the next 45 to 60 minutes talking about the top three issues on there, going in order of priority. And then at the end of the meeting, we will recap the action items. This is really critical so everyone knows what they're going to do, when they're going to do it, and what's expected. We'll go through what are the topics that we need to communicate to any teams we're in charge of. So we call that cascading communication. And then we will end the meeting with rating the meeting, and we typically will rate it 1 to 10. And if it is less than an 8, then we ask for, you know, one phrase. 09:57 Speaker 1 It would be even better if, like, how would the meaning better if we did certain things? 10:05 Speaker 2 This podcast is presented by Zynda Law Group, a nationwide personal injury firm. For over 10 years, the experienced lawyers at ZLG have been partnering with outside counsel across the United States on all types of personal injury and wrongful death cases. With over 30 attorneys, Zynda Law Group has paid out millions in referral and joint venture fees since 2015 to learn more about partnering with Zynda Law Group. Please email us@re referralsindalaw.com we'll schedule a time for you to meet with Jack Zynda or one of our trial lawyers to discuss your case. So in that agenda, you're basically doing a health check on the business. And of course, nothing's ever perfect. So you're coming up with issues or topics for the group to talk about. 10:54 Speaker 2 You're building your issues list on the side as you progress through the agenda and then spending the bulk of the meeting going through the issues. What helps identify those top three issues for that group? I think you and I have been in meetings at the executive team level where we've decided, hey, this is an important issue, but maybe not for this room. How do you. How do you decide between the things that are appropriate for. For that group of folks versus stuff that can be handled later? 11:21 Speaker 1 That's a great point. You know, one tactic that we developed for this, which is kind of fun, is we give each team member a red card, kind of like in soccer. And if anybody in the group feels like we're getting off track, going, talking about a topic that doesn't matter, they can, you know, red card it, which means this group shouldn't be talking about this. Now, the example could be, you know, someone's upset because they didn't, you know, a staff member's not performing at a high level, and it's kind of complaining about the person versus how do we solve the problem. That might better on a departmental level, you know. Okay, why is Debbie not executing as a paralegal? Well, she's not calendaring. Right. Okay. You know, can someone train her? That's not really great conversation for the group. 12:09 Speaker 1 That's more of an HR issue. So the way I like to think of it, we only want to talk about problems that only this group can solve together and that are so important that we want everybody's time involved. And if you want to think about from a legal point of view, if it's made up of lawyers, you say everyone's, you know, at an hourly rate of $500 an hour, you wouldn't spend time talking about how do we get medical records in this case with, you know, five lawyers in the room, or, you know, the most basic thing that you may do, like how do we draft a pleading? You only want to focus on things that are going to have a major impact in the business. And there's tricks to how you could set that up. You say, what's the Dollar value. 12:47 Speaker 1 If we solve this problem, that's one way you can do it and say, hey, we don't deal with anything worth less than $10,000 in this meeting. Yeah. And there's other tip tricks, but it's super easy to slide into that mode. And that's where we came with the red cards, because it gives everybody free rein to kind of like, hey, guys, you're talking about something that is like way off the reservation. Yeah. 13:08 Speaker 2 So the discussions about snacks in the break room are for another time when you're using red cards. It just kind of makes me think about, let's call it the tone of the discussions in the room. And I don't know that tone's the right word, but sort of the character of the types of discussions that are being had. I think there's in the meetings that I've been a part of a real honesty that comes up at the executive team level that's maybe a little bit different than some of the other meetings throughout the organization. You've got a phrase that you use a lot. No sacred cows. Can you talk a little bit about how you work to keep those meetings free flowing and allowing for all opinions and topics to come to light? 13:51 Speaker 1 That's a great question. And there's an amazing book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lincione. I think it's Peter Lincioni or Patrick Lencioni. Great book that kind of talks about how to build trust within a team and how to get honest communication. And this has been a really difficult challenge for me because a couple things. One, I'm a trial lawyer and I'm naturally aggressive. And when I say things, it tends to sound like I know what I'm talking about, even if I don't. And I'm good at convincing people of my point of view. Right. Which isn't always great for making decisions, though. 14:30 Speaker 1 So what I try to do is first open myself up, make myself vulnerable, and explain to people that it's okay to tell me that I'm wrong and to give examples of when I've been wrong and try to kind of make fun of that. Those examples that gives people permission to add in. And then if I still feel like there's some blockers within the group to get that honest dialogue going, I'll try to have them come up with some examples of things that, you know, maybe I came up with that weren't the best move to see if we can get people talking about it. The other thing is you have to really be encouraging when people are Telling you something you don't want to hear, and you want to really encourage honest debate. 15:20 Speaker 1 Now, our belief is anyone can say anything within the meeting as long as it's not hurtful to someone and not attacking that individual. Right. Attacking idea is different than attacking an individual. And our expectation is that nobody takes personally an attack on an idea. And we do this methodology called White Hat, where for the first part of the conversation, nobody's allowed to criticize the ideas. It's like, there's no bad ideas. And then we'll put all of our ideas on the board and then we'll do what's called Black Cat, which means, okay, let's attack the ideas, really go after them, and then see what are the top three that we're left with. And pro con those top three solutions. Yeah, but it takes a lot of work and patience, especially I think lawyers especially to do this. 16:09 Speaker 1 And you have to be really cognizant that not everybody's going to have a lawyer personality. If you have diverse group members in the team, you know, the CFO is not going to feel comfortable debating, you know, the best trialer in the firm on a topic. And you may convince them that, like, algebra doesn't work, you know, because you're so aggressive and persuasive on it. So you have to really be careful about that, especially if you have non lawyers in the group. 16:33 Speaker 2 Yeah. So we talked about the agenda. You know, last podcast we talked about core values. And I know in that episode you mentioned that the executive team is always. The executive team meeting is always a great place to remind everyone of the core values before getting into the meeting. And that's a great kind of North Star for the group as they start to make decisions. Who drives this meeting? Because it's. It's a tight agenda. There's a lot of things that we hit. How do you, how do you think about who should drive the agenda, keep everyone on track, while also making sure that there's enough bandwidth to focus on the issues and really think of, think through the different topics that are at hand. 17:23 Speaker 1 So I would divide it up into two responsibilities. First, I would assign to either a paralegal, a legal assistant or like an executive assistant to own managing the documents and the fiscal agendas itself, kind of making sure. Does everyone have, like, the documentation needed to have the meeting? We also have a written agenda that is the same every single meeting. That's one page that's really helpful. And then I think it's better if the leader is not the one who is owning the agenda. You know, I delegate that over to my chief operating officer. And that allows me to focus more on the discussion in the strategy areas, because I'll skip areas if I don't remember. And I'm not always the best at that. I don't think it's the best job of the CEO to manage the agenda. 18:17 Speaker 1 Now, I think the CEO should help drive the conversation. And the way we pick topics is we vote. But I can always say, no, guys or gals, we're going to talk about this one because we got to solve this problem today. So it's kind of a democracy, but not really. It's still like a typical organizational structure. And my CO's keeping us on time, on track. And then if I disagree with the direction we're going in a conversation, I'll steer us another way. 18:44 Speaker 2 So how often does the team get together? And are there any variations in the agenda or the types of topics you discuss based on sort of the type of meeting you're having? So I guess what I'm driving at, to answer my own question, is the difference between weekly and monthly agendas that we use. 19:03 Speaker 1 That's great. So we treat the weekly. So we have three different types of meetings. We have a weekly, a monthly, and a quarterly executive team meeting. The weekly is 60 minutes to 90 minutes. One tip is you really want to keep these on time and you want to end them on time. I am notoriously five to ten minutes late, and I've been working really hard to always be on time for this meeting. That one is more tactical. It's like, okay, team, are we on track for our targets? What are the one to three problems that we need to solve as a group and what do we all need to know? That what happened this week? Then there's the monthly, which is typically three to four hours. And in this meeting, you're going to reaffirm your quarterly priorities. 19:49 Speaker 1 You're going to make any strategic shifts that you need to make. So you're going to talk more about, okay, this is what we thought were going to do. Looks like we're going to miss this target. Or we can accelerate. You know, for example, we've been really looking at expanding aggressively into other states. And it turns out, you know, Arizona, we've had a lot of success. So we said, hey, let's shift more of our time and energy into Arizona, even though were planning on moving to a different state next. So it allows you to kind of shift those tactics. And that's going to be a longer meeting, and then the quarterly is going to be a full day. And in that meeting, you're planning out your objectives for the following 12 weeks. 20:30 Speaker 1 And so it's kind of recapping how did we perform, what did we get done, and then what are we going to try to achieve over the next 12 weeks? And then you're going to spend the end part of the meeting putting those topics into concrete plans. So then you can spend the next quarter actually executing on them. 20:48 Speaker 2 Yeah, because the executive team is made up almost exclusively of department heads. Do you think the group is biased in any way? Now, obviously not everyone in the organization can attend the executive team meeting logistically and probably for other reasons. But are there blind spots or anything that you're keeping in mind as this team comes together? 21:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think one thing, especially as you grow, you know, when were seven people, it was really easy to keep our finger on the pulse of what was going on with everyone. When you get to our size, which is over 100, it can be really difficult to know what's going on the ground level. And I think sometimes in leadership, when you're having problems, it's easy to blame the person and not see if there's a systematic problem. So you can kind of get into group, think of thinking, oh, people aren't working hard enough or people don't care enough, when it may be a training issue, it may be a clarification issue. 21:48 Speaker 1 And I find it's easy to fall into that trap, you know, where you're kind of not seeing the best in your team at the lowest level because the people at the top aren't working with them as closely day to day. 22:02 Speaker 2 So, Jack, you know, obviously this model has worked great for our firm. At 100 people. What would you recommend to, say, a five person firm that maybe has some staff. How can they use this model at their firm? 22:17 Speaker 1 I think the first thing is I would pick the people that are in charge of different departments. I would try to have at least one or two non lawyers on it. And I would pick, you know, no more than five and no less than three people to be on it. And I would clarify to the other folks so their feelings aren't hurt. This isn't a, you know, you're the boss now type mean. This is who can help us execute on the team. And we want to have as few people in this meeting as possible to get that job done. And then I would just have that group meet on a regular cadence to solve the firm's biggest problems. And at that size, it could be case problems, it could be staffing problems, and just have a regular meeting cadence. 23:03 Speaker 1 Even if it's just two people, I think there's a lot of benefit in that to once a week we're going to go through these topics formally and talk through them. And if you're a solo practitioner, you know, find some other solo practitioners, like three or four, and then kind of do a group meeting like, hey, we're going to talk about these issues because we're the only ones that we have to talk through that. And it's a great way to solve problems with other firms that are probably going through the same struggle as you are. 23:29 Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great idea. I mean, really, this model can work for almost anybody at any size. If there are firms, lawyers or staff that are looking to get started with this and have questions, how can they reach you? 23:42 Speaker 1 Yeah, you can reach me through our website@zdfirm.com you can email me of course at Jack j a c kyndalaw.com or you know, reach out over the phone at 512-246-2224. 23:56 Speaker 2 Well, thanks, Jack. Appreciate the time. 23:58 Speaker 1 Thanks, Kevin. Good talking to you. 24:05 Speaker 2 Thanks for listening today's episode of the Effective Lawyer. You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at the zindalaw.com. As always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the pod. Thanks.