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Are you taking your solo lawyer practice seriously?

The 5 signs that you are not taking your solo lawyer thing seriously

1. You answer your own phone.

• It telegraphs to potential clients that you’re really not that busy.
• It telegraphs that you don’t have enough business going on to be able to support someone answering your phone.
• It demonstrates you are sort of desperate for the call.
• It keeps you from doing good work. It distracts you.
• It is a lack of time management.
• Clients are expecting a receptionist. It’s more professional.

2. You have a non professional email account.

• You need to look professional. Be professional.

3. You meet with potential clients at Starbucks or Panera.

• It telegraphs you are small potatoes, and that you don’t make enough money to spend money on an office, or you don’t care enough.
• You need an office. Because of what it represents, because of the privacy.

4. You lower your fee when pressured by a potential client.

• Set a fee which is fair to you and fair to your client.
• You don’t wanna be dealing with client who are looking for the lowest cost denominator.
• It telegraphs to clients that we as lawyers will fold to others when dealing with another attorney or the government.
• It sets the tone for the relationship. Clients could end up bossing you around.
• People are smart, they are gonna try to get the best deal possible.

5. You offer many practice areas in your website.

• This telegraphs that you will do anything.
• It shows you don’t have the systems nor the expertise built out to handle a particular matter.
• How can you target with so many practice areas!?

Hacking’s Hack: Don’t work at home, work in the office. Stop looking at your phone, emails, to-dos, etc once you get out of the office. This will give you time to be with yourself and your family. Read books. Spend quality time with your kids.

Tyson’s Tip: The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies. By Chet Holmes. Portfolio; Reprint edition (May 27, 2008). The best book on how to run your business.

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Transcript: The 5 Signs

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. This is episode 15. I’m one of your hosts, Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson nutrix. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
I said, my friend, how are you?

Tyson Mutrux
I’m good. I just got back from a run. So I feel good. Nice. Do you run into that?

Jim Hacking
No, I got a 5k tomorrow. So today, we’re talking about the five signs that you aren’t taking this whole solo lawyer thing seriously. And I’ll tell you how this topic came to my mind in a little bit when we get to one of the points. But I thought that having sort of a little bit of structure to the podcast might be good. We’ve been talking about this off and on. So I think that this is a great topic for us today.

Tyson Mutrux
You came up with the list, I’m gonna give you the credit. But if anybody has any problems with it, email, Jim, and yell at him, although I do agree with every one of them. So I’m gonna blame you and give you the credit at the same time.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, I will say that I thought it was a little bit harsh the way I framed it. I think that’s okay, though. We’re trying to push people a little bit to be their best. So I think we get a pass on that.

Tyson Mutrux
I agree. So what’s

Jim Hacking
number one? All right. Number one is you answer your own phone. I think that answering your own phone as a lawyer is a real problem for several reasons. Number one is I think it Telegraph’s to potential clients that you’re really not that busy. Number two it Telegraph’s that you don’t have enough of a business going to be able to afford someone to answer your phone. Number three, I think it demonstrates that you’re sort of desperate for the call. And I think it also, number four takes away from your ability to do good work that if you’re jumping to answer the phone every two minutes, or whenever someone calls, you’re really beholden to the phone. And I think that it really keeps you from doing good work.

Tyson Mutrux
The two main takeaways for me is that one, it’s a lack of time management on your part. Because most of us probably if you’re listening this podcast, you probably are busy, because there’s a reason why you’re listening to this podcast. The other thing is, it’s you already kind of touched on it the perception that the clients have of you, you may tell yourself, oh, the clients like it thing, get a hold of me. But you know what the vast majority the clients, whenever they call, they’re expecting a receptionist or somebody answering their phone, because it’s more professional. And it just gives them a better feel of who they’re dealing with.

Jim Hacking
I mean, I don’t take any unplanned phone calls. If someone wants to talk to me on the phone, that’s fine. I’m happy to talk to clients, I generally don’t talk to potential clients on the phone. However,

Tyson Mutrux
when you told me that really surprised me, because I don’t answer my phone, obviously, and I don’t take unscheduled phone calls from current clients and a lot of other people. But I’ve got two exceptions. And that is if I get a call from a judge or a court clerk, sure, or and the other one is new clients. So and that really surprised me when you told me that a while back that you don’t take new calls from clients, but you’ve got those systems in place. There’s a reason why because you have someone screening it and then setting up your appointments, right?

Jim Hacking
Yeah, if I spent all my time answering, I mean, our phone rings here, literally, and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but it literally rings, you’re probably 30 times a day. Sure. So if I was taking phone calls, even from potential new clients, that’s at least 10 of them. So I think that would just be really distracting. And we do, you know, it takes a little bit for our systems to kick in for our front desk person to know how to screen the case. But there’s a whole protocol that he goes through where he asked them, you know, their basic information, what their legal issue is. And then and only then do they get to schedule a time to see with me, I think it’s really important to distance yourself from that. I think that I got a lot of this from Dan Kennedy. He’s very rigorous about that. About You know, not making yourself available. 24/7 about batching your phone calls and using your phone right time,

Tyson Mutrux
I think you and I both use call scripts, you got yours built into Infusionsoft, I just train my people on it. And now they’ve got it memorized. It’s basically if this than this if this than this, but this kind of culture in a way. There’s something that I’ve been reading in the Ultimate Sales Machine where he teaches his employees, the top six questions to do this the top five things for this. So he gives them these kind of like mnemonic devices on how to remember things. And he tests them on it. And something that I’ve been thinking about doing with my employees on phone calls is like the top six questions, you ask a potential injury client, things like that, so that they can screen those clients for me to basically do the same thing you’re doing. Without me implementing that though. I’m not going to feel comfortable with them doing it. But if I think if I put that system in place like you have, I think that’s an easy way of doing it as long as you you’re giving them the questions to ask. They basically checkbox checkbox checkbox, okay, they meet these requirements, scored and scheduled for an appointment. I think it’s a great way of doing it.

Jim Hacking
Yep. Because what you want when you’re doing your intake with new clients, you just want to study stream of people who are ready, and other proper kinds of clients for you don’t want to have to be wasting your time with people who, you know, I would say, we get a fair number of calls here for kinds of cases that we don’t do. And we either send them to you or to someone else that’s appropriate. Right? I think one of the problem with answering the phone is that sometimes people think, Oh, it’s just a quick call, I only have one quick question. Let me just hop on the phone with Jim and ask him this, and then I’ll be able to move on. That’s not how we’re doing it. I don’t mind helping people. I like to help people, that’s sort of what we do. But given out free advice, or advice over the phone, that’s going to prevent them from ever becoming a client, I also think it’s gonna prevent them from ever taking you seriously, is a legal services provider.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And I think the I can’t read the number, I think the average phone call is 10 minutes or seven minutes or something like that. So if you did that, with every single person, your entire day has been eaten up. So you make you make a really good point. If you spend your time answering the little small questions, you’re gonna have no time to do anything else. And so I think you’re right, I think that’s important. I go with number two. Alright, number two. Number two is you have a Gmail or Yahoo email account or something like Hotmail or whatever. I think that was a very smart way to point out, a lot of that just has to do with do you look professional? I think, are you taking this seriously? And now anytime an attorney gives me a Gmail or Yahoo account? I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s part of it. It maybe you don’t understand technically how it works. But if you pay someone 10 bucks, 20 bucks to fix it. It’s easy to do. It really is. It makes all the difference. I mean, I would be a little sheepish. If I were to give a client a Gmail address as my professional address. I think that that’s, it just seems unprofessional.

Jim Hacking
The one that really gets me is I don’t know, I but when I see sbcglobal, dotnet, I just go crazy when a lawyer has that in their email address. I don’t know why I take that personally. But it’s actually yesterday, I was dealing with a client on a case that I’ve sort of taken over an immigration case where I sued the immigration service for this guy who has been waiting for four years for his wife to come from Pakistan. And he hired me to go ahead and file that lawsuit. And I didn’t know that he had a prior attorney involved in the State Department was referencing some Gmail address. That didn’t make sense. It had no link to my clients name. And I was like, Who the heck is this person? And the person, the client said to me, Oh, that’s my old lawyer. So I just like, wow, I mean, you’d like he said, I mean, you can you can get a domain name of whatever you want. And you can use whatever address you want. So there’s really absolutely no reason for it. I guess the one, the one caveat would be for people that have really, really old email addresses like they’ve been using that for years and years, but I think he I think there’s easy redirects, where you could start using your old email, and you could get both emails in one account, well, keeping your old one but starting to use a new one, I think you got to phase that out. If

Tyson Mutrux
you have a Gmail account, you can actually you can do that. So you can, you can have unlimited number of emails, like whenever you send an email out, it shows whatever email you want. So I, in my firm account, I’ve got my matrix law firm account. However, in my personal Gmail account, I can also scroll down and choose, I think I’ve got six different domains, Thyssen at you know, I think he wants S D STL. Injury lawyer.com. Or the one the DWI alert, or GM or STL. DW, I learned a bunch of those where I used to be able to use those. And I still could have I wanted to so that whenever they’re getting that email from you, it looks like it’s from a actual dedicated, firm email, which that’s all you really need. You don’t have to go and set up a special account if you don’t want to, even though I think it’s important to keep a business account separate from your personal account,

Jim Hacking
once the reasons. Anything else on that.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, one thing you just mentioned the sbcglobal that this is something funny I want to talk about, I helped Matt frei with his judicial committee campaign. And it’s funny because we had access to all the email addresses for people in St. Louis area. For lawyers, yes, all lawyers. And the vast majority had their own firmer firm accounts. But then number one was Gmail, then it was Yahoo. And then it was sbcglobal. Net, which I really surprised was surprised by that other would be like Hotmail or something like that. But there’s a bunch of attorneys with the SBC global.net email address. So I don’t know why

Jim Hacking
it takes such a front to it. I mean, I think it’s a clunky address. I don’t know. I know

Tyson Mutrux
I need to it’s it is it’s funny, Eric Thompson gives that to me. I’m like, why don’t you just change the setting? No. sbcglobal is I mean, is it like a really old is like internet

Jim Hacking
and Southwestern Bell, man. So it’s like part of AT and T It’s like, it’s that old? Fast. Crazy. So he maybe we should start a company helping lawyers get real domain. This

Tyson Mutrux
is a good idea. Although we wouldn’t be focusing, we wouldn’t be taking our own advice. So number three is number three, go ahead.

Jim Hacking
You meet with potential clients at Starbucks or Panera?

Tyson Mutrux
Ah, man, this is a rough one. And here’s the thing. There are some attorneys that are willing to jump out of their office and meet their client wherever, which I think is a bad idea. You meet all of your clients in the office, right?

Jim Hacking
Yeah, but that’s the main reason we have the office of Whereas we could do what we do anywhere.

Tyson Mutrux
So I mean 95 to 99% of mine in the office the in that’s I think that’s rare for personal injury attorney and most personal injury attorneys will tell you, Oh, I’ve gotta you gotta you gotta hustle. You gotta get out there. Now you just get their own leads you’re getting those billboard clients are you get in the ones that are going to be too demanding, aren’t going to come to you. If they’re seriously injured, I’m obviously gonna go meet with them somewhere. So they don’t have to come into the office. But other than that, I’m not going to stop my day just to run all the office on the schedule appointment at my office at a convenient time for both of us. It just screams desperation, doesn’t it? I mean, no, no, what that when you’re meeting them at Starbucks and doing errands,

Jim Hacking
I totally get that in the personal injury context. There’s times where you’re gonna go to the hospital, you’re gonna go to their house where they’re rehabbing. And when I was doing personal injury, I certainly did that from time to time. It’s a service for the clients, and it helps you, you know, helps them. But I guess what I’m talking about are more regular visits, where like, you’re sort of just planning to meet with you. I mean, one time I was at the Panera and Brentwood, and some dude, who is he wasn’t it might not have been a lawyer, but he set up. He had his laptop, and he had two monitors on his on the table at the Bread Company. And I have seen lawyers meeting with clients. And I’ve more importantly, I’ve heard lawyers. Yes. Clients at the Bread Company. Yes. And that’s the real problem. I mean, put aside ethics. And obviously, there’s ethical problems with you know, talking to people in public about their legal issues. There’s huge issues related to that. But just I think you’re right, I think that the desperation of it, and again, it Telegraph’s that you’re sort of small potatoes that you don’t make enough money to spend money on an office. And or you don’t care enough, and you know, there’s office space, you can rent, there’s relationships that you can develop with other attorneys just to use your conference room. I think all that stuff is fine. I just think that you just are signaling. I think a lot of the things we’re talking about today are signals, signals to potential clients signals to other attorneys, that you’re not in it for the long haul. You’re not committed to this and you’re not, you know, pushing yourself to really excel.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that was actually just last week at a Starbucks and Clayton, the one on why down and Hanley, and I’m literally three feet away from this other table where this attorney is meeting with a client. It’s a divorce client, and they’re talking about the divorce. And I could not believe it. I just could not believe I was hearing I can hear every single thing they were talking about. They were talking about how the husband was hiding money, all this stuff. I was just like, what what do you not get about me being three feet away from you? Like this is insane. And it wasn’t like I came and sat down next to them. They came down and sat next to me it does talk about a divorce isn’t saying, Well, we are number four. Yes, sir. Oh, this is one of my favorites. You lower your fee when pressured by a potential client. Go ahead. Tell me what you got. Tell me your thoughts.

Jim Hacking
So my wife is from Egypt. And if there’s anyone who knows how to haggle, it’s my wife. And she is brutal. One time, her mother and I were at a bazaar and her mother wanted a handkerchief and the handkerchief was $20. And her, her mom offered $1. And she and the salesperson went into this back and forth, I think without ever talking, just showing each other numbers either with dollar bills or with the person’s hands. And he was just clicking that it wasn’t enough. And I think they eventually sold it for $4. So my wife has forbidden me from lowering my fees. And it’s been a great excuse for me, she says point to those pictures of the four kids over there and say you’ve got to feed those kids. And then if you come home, having lowered your fees, you’re in big trouble. And I say all that jokingly, I think that it’s very important that you set a fee for yourself, that’s fair to you fair to them, I think I would encourage people to be on the higher side of the average, I think you don’t want to be dealing with the clients who are looking for the lowest cost denominator. And I think we even talked on this podcast. The other main reason I don’t like lowering my fee is that you know, we are advocates, and we should be forceful advocates, and we want our clients to be confident in us. And I think that if right out of the box, they balk at a fee and we fold to them not only do I think that Telegraph’s to them that we will fold when dealing with other like for you negotiating with another attorney and for me dealing with the government. I think it also sets the tone for the relationship where they’re going to sort of bossing you around and set the tone of the representation and I think that’s a very dangerous place for lawyers to be

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and I think some attorneys they’re not willing to discuss these over the phone because that same reason they want to get them in the room I’m okay with discussing fees over the phone with clients but whenever they asked me over the phone will such and such says I’ll do it for this amount and I’ll say okay, well hire them. You primarily see it with least for me with criminal defense stuff. You do yours more on a flat fee. So you probably see a lot more than I do. Just because I do a lot more personal injury now, but it’s really fun even with personal injury. And it’s only your clients that you refer to me that do this to me, because usually they are from another country and they’re used to haggling. They will stare me in the face and I’ve gotten really good practice because your clients and so now I feel like I can I can stare down the best people. And Jim Hall. I’m not gonna say his last name. But you know, I’m talking about he looked me straight in my face. And Marwan was sitting right next to him. And he looks at me, he says, Well, will you take a listen? I said, I looked at him. I said, No, I don’t lower my fees. And he’s just stared at me for 30 seconds, like, didn’t say a word. And I had that as a sign. This is what kills you. Yes. And so I learned my lesson from your clients. And so I just sat there and looked at him. And he did it again. He said, You won’t know your feet. I said, No, I don’t know my feet. And then he went did the policy again. He said, It looks amazing. Okay. And that was it. They okay, they signed the contract. But it’s just, it’s really fun. It’s a, they’re gonna sign with you most of the time. If you reduce your fee, you’re just leaving money on the table. Because they’re, they know, they know, there’s a lot of desperate attorneys out there. And so they’re gonna do that. People are smart, okay, they’re smart. They, they’re going to try and get the best deal possible. Yeah, that’s at your expense.

Jim Hacking
But you’re right, it does take some skill and some expertise and some experience and doing it because that silence after they ask you, it can be painful. And you probably want the case. So you probably jumping around it. But I think you just sort of have to steal yourself and say going in I mean, I just um, completely matter of fact about I don’t I don’t actually do this or apologetic. I was like no, I don’t do that. No way.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And here’s other things, you say, I worked really hard. In my cases, I’m not lowering my fee. For that reason, I put a lot more work in these other attorneys. And they’re there and I call them the $500 attorneys on the criminal stuff. Because there’s these guys will take any case for $500. But they’re going to touch your file twice. They’re going to they’re going to take your money, and then they’re going to plead you out. That’s it. And so that’s what I tell them, I say listen, we put a lot of work into these cases, and so I’m not going to reduce my fee. And they get it. I mean, they understand it. They’re just trying to get a good deal. Which you can’t blame him. No, no, I don’t blame him at all. I just gotta you get a resist it. Go for number five.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, so this is one that we’ve touched on in the past. But I think it’s important again, on that telegraphing message or the signals that you’re sending out. And that is number five, you offer six or more practice areas on your website. So certainly there are law firms that handle lots of different kinds of cases. But hopefully there aren’t lawyers who, on their website say that they do six or seven. I mean, I was on a website the other day, there’s a guy, he had 12 practice areas of practice areas. And so to me, that just screams you know, what does that phrase master of note, what is it? It’s

Tyson Mutrux
a jack of all trades Master? Yeah, and

Jim Hacking
that’s exactly what it is. I mean, I think you’re just telegraphing that you’ll do anything that walks in the door, that you’re not discriminatory about what kind of cases you want, or what kind of clients you you want. I also think it shows that, you know, you don’t, you probably don’t have the systems or the expertise built out to handle a particular matter.

Tyson Mutrux
I’ve talked to some attorneys about this. And the reason that they put a lot of practice areas, even though they may not take all of them, as they tell me that is because it makes their firm look bigger. And although the size of your firm may be important to some clients, those may not be the client you want. That’s one thing I want to tell you. The other thing is, is doesn’t matter if it looks bigger or not, you’re you have no marketing message. And so if you’re trying to create a target market, how can you target them, the shotgun approach doesn’t work, you have to, whenever they come to your website, you have to strike a chord with them in some way. And usually, that’s a lead magnet, that’s not we do a bunch of things, it’s some sort of lead magnet, and to create a lead magnet actually has to be something specific to your practice area. So it’s really even though you think is an attorney and ego thing. Yeah, this is gonna make my firm accused because I do all these practice areas, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you’re the client, you have to have a targeted message towards your client to draw them in to get them to contact you.

Jim Hacking
I don’t really see how listing lots of practice areas, if there’s only one attorney makes your firm look bigger.

Tyson Mutrux
I’m not saying I agree with that. But that’s the response I get from people. And I agree with that. I think that people see through and say, Hey, this guy just wants to look back and have a look at the attorneys on his websites, just him. No one else. So it’s not a big firm.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, the only way I think you could do multiple practice areas is if you had a website devoted to each practice area, where you’re de emphasizing the attorney, you’re emphasizing the practice area and writing lots and lots of information about that one particular practice area, a bland website that has a laundry list of practice areas is going to do nothing, nothing in SEO and you’re gonna get punished for it because no one’s going to hang out on your website because it’s just as general as can be.

Tyson Mutrux
Okay, so let’s say that someone calls you for an immigration case, right? And it’s clear from your website and all your marketing materials that you just do immigration. However, let’s say that that same person has met with the guy that has 12 practice areas on his website, you’re going to be able to use that to your advantage. I said, Listen, it’s all I do. I don’t I don’t, I don’t waste my time with other stuff. It’s impossible to know all practice areas, it’s hard to know more than two. And you’re going to leverage that, and they’re gonna hire you. If it’s between you and them, they’re gonna hire you. That’s what’s going to happen, because that’s all you do this your main focus area. Right? Nice. I think this is actually a really good list. We covered all five, right? We did,

Jim Hacking
we’re done. Wow. Hack, you are really going to be surprised when I tell you what my hack of the week is.

Tyson Mutrux
Okay. For the last two weeks,

Jim Hacking
when I leave the office, I shut down my computer, which I never do. And I do not look at email, or social media, after I get

Tyson Mutrux
home on Friday, every day, every day, okay, so

Jim Hacking
I am I am no longer looking at emails at home before I go to bed or in the time between when I’m home with my kids and having dinner. And I don’t look at it again until I get back to the office. So the two changes I’ve made are not looking at my phone after I leave the office. And the other one is not looking at it at all in the car, sitting at stoplights, and all that stuff. And the mental space that I’ve had has really increased and really feel like well, first of all, I’m actually doing something at home called reading books. Which I have been complaining about that I can’t read books because I can’t focus because they don’t have enough time. I’ve made it through half a book and I’m back on Gary Vee, the asker. Gary Vee book. I’m halfway through that. So I have rekindled my love of reading and and I’ve been spending better time with my kids and I’m a lot less jittery and distracted about what’s going on at the office when I’m at home.

Tyson Mutrux
Okay, I like I am actually shocked by that. That’s really surprising me that would explain why whenever I send you text messages, you don’t respond to me. That makes perfect sense. Okay, my tip of the week is one I just kind of touched on the Ultimate Sales Machine is a really incredible book. It is by Chet Holmes. Yes, gentlemen. Thank you. Chet Holmes, he is I think most of you have heard of Chet Holmes. And I honestly, I don’t like listening to him speak. I think he’s just too, just too much of that rah rah stuff. But his book is actually he he gets he gets down to the point whenever he’s talking about things he truly taught. Have you read the book yet?

Jim Hacking
So I did read the book. I think I’ve even mentioned it on this podcast. And the thing that I said is if I could implement everything in that book, in the 12, week, year, if I did those two things, I don’t need anything else. It’s a brilliant book. The only bad thing about it is the title. Oh, I

Tyson Mutrux
agree. I agree. I think that is its

Jim Hacking
base. Its way off base. It’s a great book on how to run your business. It’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever read. I actually listened to it. And then I bought it in hardcopy, so I could mark it up. It’s, it’s a tremendous book,

Tyson Mutrux
you know why the name of the book is Ultimate Sales Machine. So we’ve talked about this before. It’s why Ben Glass marketing is really good marketing is what it is. He Ben Glass talks about a lot of other things, not just marketing. But if people know that the the lifeblood of a firm is bringing in those clients. And so that’s why he calls it the Ultimate Sales Machine, even though it’s somewhat misleading. That’s what gets people to buy the book. But I’m glad I’m glad that that’s what it was. And Jim Manning recommended it to me, he would think, as well, but it draws people in, but it’s it’s a great book on how to run a company. I mean, just in general, from hiring employees, to answering the phones to managing your time it

Jim Hacking
and the team building and working on projects together. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, it’s such a good, good book. So over the last two weeks, we were implementing some of that stuff. I’ve implemented the dream Manager Program, which is from another book, but they go hand in hand with a lot of this stuff. So it’s, it is really good. And I’ll talk about the train Manager Program is another podcast, but it’s all I got, man.