You can’t bill for waking up on the middle of the night. You can’t bill for sitting in front of your computer willing to smash your keyboard because someone isn’t listening to you.
They’re just not worth it.
In this episode, Jim, Tyson and Randall will try to identify bad clients, and explain why it’s a good idea not working with them.
As many of solo practicing lawyers, Randall has the “good” struggle of not having enough time to do everything. He’s in a point in which he may need to add an associate or an assistant. He’s having trouble letting things go that he SHOULD let go.
Every client is not created equally and there are some clients who really aren’t worth 5 times what your normal fee would be.
So, how do you identify those clients? With experience. When somebody calls you and something just doesn’t feels right about what they said, or something about how they’re talking to you just doesn’t feel right, something doesn’t line up; just go with your gut.
“I have a great case!”… No you don’t!
Bad clients can crowd out good clients, they leave you without energy to deal with new clients or with actual good clients. Re-allocate your resources from all the bad places to good places.
Randall’s Tip: You need to stand a lot of time on https://lawyerist.com/ reading a lot of articles. Free information for people who want to go solo.
Hacking’s Hack: Google Sites. It allows you to build internal or external facing websites, and you can use it as an intranet. Very easy to use!
Tyson’s Tip: A book; “What to Do When it’s Your Turn (and it’s Always Your Turn)” by Seth Godin. The Domino Project; 1st edition (December 1, 2014).
It’s inspirational and motivational.
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
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Transcript: Randall Ryder: The Bad Clients You Don’t Take will be the Best Money You Never Made
Randall Ryder
Every client is not created equal. And there’s some clients that really aren’t worth five times what your normal fee would be. And what I meant by that is you can’t build for waking up in the middle of the night. You can’t build for sitting in your computer wanting to smash your keyboard because somebody isn’t listening to you. You can’t bill for all that crazy stuff that you know, bad clients. They’re just not worth it at the end of the day.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right away. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome
Jim Hacking
to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting metrics. What’s going on Jim?
Jim Hacking
Oh, we’re excited to have a good guest this week. His name is Randall writer. He’s an attorney from Minnesota. Randall. Please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure.
Randall Ryder
My name is Randall writer. I’m a consumer rights attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’ve been doing consumer rights for about eight years now. I sue debt collectors and they harass people. I help people with student loan issues, and I defend consumers in debt collection lawsuits. I also have the privilege of teaching a couple of classes at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota law school.
Jim Hacking
How did you get into consumer rights? And how did you open up your own practice, Randall?
Randall Ryder
Good story. It’s very good story. Actually, I graduated law school in 2009, which to people who don’t know what that means, that was either the height of the legal crash or the bottom of the legal economy, depending on how you want to look at it. And I was offered a position as somebody’s first associate. And he happened to do some consumer rights work. And I started working for him. And I really liked it. So I pushed the firm, sort of more in that direction. And after a year and a half, he wanted to go a different route. And he offered me the opportunity to essentially buy the firm. And you know, with only having a year and a half of experience. I didn’t know any better. So I said, Sure. Let’s go for it.
Tyson Mutrux
Brain. I’m just curious. I like to ask people this, like, what do you think’s your biggest struggle right now?
Randall Ryder
I guess I would call it a good struggle right now, which is I don’t have enough time to do everything. I’m at a point where I may need to add an associate or an assistant. And I guess I’m having trouble letting some things go that I probably should let go. And what I mean by that is I still answer my own phones, I still schedule everything myself, I still do all my books. I do all my own marketing. And I need to start strategically letting some of that stuff go. So that’s by far my biggest struggle.
Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s kind of common, don’t you think? Jimmy? We hear that from a lot of people. Right? And
Jim Hacking
I don’t know if you know this, but I happen to work with my wife. She just started working with me. We went to law school together and graduated in 97. Back when associate pay started at $110,000. But yeah, we were talking last night. And she said, Jim, you like to say that you want to let go of everything. And you know the importance of letting go of everything. But you don’t let go of anything. So it was sort of a kick in the teeth to hear it that bluntly. And I think that I have more of a struggle with not trying to do everything myself or manage everything myself. And I totally understand where you’re coming from.
Randall Ryder
Yeah, I mean, it’s tough. And you know, one of the biggest, one of the most common things that people say is, you know, why do you answer your own phone? And my common responses? Well, that’s how I get clients. You know, I will admit that, you know, I do still spend, I guess I’ll say spin my wheels talking to some tire kickers. But I can unequivocally say, you know, I don’t know, three or four times in the last month that because I answered my phone instead of somebody else. Those people immediately became clients. It’s such a, it’s a catch 22. You know, I have not sold that rental quite yet.
Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s actually a good segue into the topic of the day. It’s actually the article that you wrote, It’s the bad clients you don’t take will be the best money you never made. Just wanted to give a quick summary of what that was about.
Randall Ryder
Sure. I mean, that’s something that it takes a few years to figure that out. Every client is not created equally. And there’s some clients that really aren’t worth five times what your normal fee would be. And what I meant by that is you can’t build for waking up in the middle of the night. You can’t bill for sitting in your computer wanting to smash your keyboard because somebody isn’t listening to you. You can’t bill for all that crazy stuff that you know, bad clients. They’re just not worth it. At the end of the day. I mean, I would take 10 good clients that pay me half of my normal rate as opposed to one bad client that’s going to pay me five times that because at the end of the day, it’s just not worth it. Our jobs are too hard and the situations we deal with are too stressful. So when you add that into the equation, just too much,
Jim Hacking
Randall, do you feel like having been out now for a few years that you’ve gotten better at spotting those people? And sort of how are the ways that you go about trying to identify people that might become problematic?
Randall Ryder
Sure, the short answer is yes. I look at my current roster of clients. And, you know, if I’ve got 30 or 40 clients, there’s maybe one client that I think is bad. As opposed to when I first started, you know, I’d look at my case roster and say, No, I don’t want to call that person No, not that one. That that one, there’s a, there’s kind of a good one. You know, a lot of the hallmarks are pretty easy. And I think I kind of bullet pointed, some of them in the article. I mean, that I think the simplest litmus test is just go with your gut, you know, when somebody calls you, and something just doesn’t seem right about what they said, or something about how they’re talking to you just doesn’t feel right, or something doesn’t line up. I mean, those are like, I’ll call them cracks in the foundation. And those usually, those almost never take care of themselves. As the case progresses, those cracks usually get bigger and bigger. And the next thing you know, the house is falling down, and you’re the one standing inside trying to hold it up.
Tyson Mutrux
I think it’s funny, Randall in your bullet points. My favorite one actually may be surprising to you. It’s longer they say, it’s a great case. Those are usually the worst cases, whenever they call it Oh, it’s a great case. It’s a great case, it’s probably because they’re now begging you to take the case. How do you deal with clients whenever they’re calling you? And they say, Oh, I’ve got a great case. And you’re trying to softly tell them, you don’t want to represent them? How do you deal with that?
Randall Ryder
I would say that, you know, softly talking to people is probably not my strengths at this point, especially because I don’t have enough time in the day anymore. I am pretty direct and pretty to the point when people say things like, you know, I’ve got a great grace and they start rattling on, there are times where I constantly find myself saying, okay, stop, you know, excuse me stop talking. I need to ask you some questions here. So I can understand what’s going on. You know, why do you think you have a great case? You know, I don’t even know what’s what’s happening here. So, you know, to answer your question, how do I deal with it softly? If I’m being what I would consider polite that day, I will usually say something like, I’m guessing you think that because there’s a lot of information on the internet. And unfortunately, a lot of that information isn’t very good. So you know, let me ask you a few questions, so I can understand what’s going on here. And I can decide if it’s something that I can actually help you with. That would be my polite version. When I’m not in a great mood. It’s usually something like, stop. You know, I need to know what’s happening here. Tell me about this. Tell me about this. You know, when did this happen? What happened next? And I guess, to segue to one of my other bullet points, I still laugh when I get these voicemails, which is something like I you know, it’s 859 on Thursday night, my name is John Smith, you know, I’ve got a great case, call me back right away, you know, here’s my phone number. Again, you know, phone number entered a great case, call me back right away. That is there, like 18 Different red flags in that voicemail. You know, you’ve got the person who’s calling after hours, they won’t even tell you what they’re calling about. They’re just sort of self identifying, as I’ve got a great case in the hopes that a lawyer will say, Oh, great case, Oh, I better scrambled to call him back right away, because otherwise I’m gonna lose out on this great case. And nine times out of 10. They’re not even cases that I handle. It’s, you know, some bizarre, totally bizarre scenario that I’m not sure any lawyer actually handles.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. You know, in my world with dealing with immigrants, one of my signs is when clients come in with bags of papers that are all sort of scattered and skewed. And when they tell me, you know, Money’s no object, and you know, I want to take this all the way to the Supreme Court or whatever, those are always signs. And another one I think, is when people come in bad mouthing their current attorney, I think that that it’s sort of like someone who has an affair, if they have an affair on their spouse, they’re probably gonna have an affair on you. So I find that with, you know, a lot of clients like to come in and badmouth their attorneys. And if you sort of dig deep as to what objectively the attorney did wrong, sometimes they did get bad representation, but a lot of times, they’re just the kind of people that are going to be mad at every attorney.
Randall Ryder
Yep, I completely agree. And, you know, I guess sort of latching on to something you said, because I do a lot of plaintiffs work, one of the most common things people say, kind of, like you said is they’ll come in and say, it’s not about the money. You know, it’s about the principle to me. And for a while I fell for that, and then magically, halfway through the case, you know, when they were getting presented with what I would consider rather reasonable settlement offers, the answer was, that’s not enough money. So in my book, you telling me it’s not about the money. It’s actually completely about the money at the end of the day. So that’s an absolutely great red flag. And then your last thing, in terms of other attorneys, I’ve definitely add that and those people terrify me usually, because they won’t tell me they have an attorney until I’ve, you know, been talking to him for 20 minutes. And they say, Well, you know, my attorney right now says I shouldn’t do that. And I’m like, what? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on what’s happening here? You know what? It’s exactly what you said, I’m like, I need to back away slowly from the situation because something not right is happening
Tyson Mutrux
right now. Yeah. And I think that a big part of what you’re talking about is you spent this time talking to them, and they haven’t told you that they have an attorney. And then you spent this 20 minutes just explaining what you do how you do it, and then they tell you, and they’re wasting your time. And that’s what I wanted to ask you back. Because a big part of your article is bad clients can crowd out good clients, I think that’s a great, the probably the best part of your article, you want to talk about how the effect of taking on these bad clients can now just it kind of pushes your good clients to the side.
Randall Ryder
Yeah. And I mean, again, like a lot of the points I’m making, I do, unfortunately, think it takes some time and time, some experience to really understand some of these ideas. But it’s something that I dealt with a lot in the early days in my practice, which is you find yourself spending, who knows, maybe you’re on the phone with a bad client for an hour, and you get off the phone and you’re mentally drained and mentally exhausted. And you open up your inbox, and you’ve got three emails and two voicemails from potential new clients, or, you know, and even worse, you know, you get emails from opposing counsel on another case, that’s, let’s say, it’s a good case, but there’s some contentious issues. And again, you know, I would find myself just so mentally burned out, I’d be like, I’ll just them later, I’ll get back to them tomorrow. You know, at the end of the day, or the end of the week, you take a step back, and you’re like, Well hold on a second year, like I’m allocating my resources in all the wrong places. Because this mental drain of dealing with, you know, this problem client, it’s just pulling me down. And again, if even if you assume you’re getting paid the same amount, it’s still just not worth it. Because it’s just draining your mental resources.
Jim Hacking
Randall, how do you be a solo? How do you handle like the idea of bouncing things off of other people? Or how do you like relieve the stress of dealing with clients? Like, do you have people that you talk to? Or do you have any strategies for that?
Randall Ryder
You know, the two things that I am very adamant about her, I have been sharing office space with a bunch of other consumer rights attorneys, you know, if you can surround yourself with other attorneys, not only that are good attorneys, but that do if not the same thing, you do at least something similar to what you do, that has really helped me walk into somebody’s office. And I say, Look, I’m dealing with this, that it ended. And then I stopped myself and say, forget it, I know what I need to do. Especially now I would say, 95% of time, I’m answering my own questions. That would be number one. And number two, my gym is right across the street from my office. So there are lots of days where I used to go to the gym every day afterwards. Now there’s days where right around lunchtime, I just go to the gym and work out for a while. Because with the amount of work that I’m doing these days, there’s just days where it’s too hard to plow through for seven or eight hours just sitting in a room by yourself, just dealing with people’s stressful situations.
Tyson Mutrux
Rachel, I’m just curious, how is your office set up because we’ve had multiple guests on and some people have your traditional office, whether it’s their own office, and they’ve got a receptionist and a paralegal and a legal assistant. And then you have other people like Lee Rosen, who he’s got all these attorneys and staff that worked for them. But they don’t have these main offices. They’ve got several offices, but they usually don’t have people in those offices. For the most part. I think, Jimmy, you know a little bit more about this than I do. I think that some of them, they have their staff with maybe a receptionist or something like that, but they don’t have their attorneys there. There’s multiple ways of doing it. But how is your office set up? Do you have a receptionist or an assistant, I know you office share, but how’s it setup?
Randall Ryder
I think there’s about I want to say five or six attorneys, there’s probably seven or eight rooms. So the empty rooms or conference rooms. When you walk in, there’s a waiting area with the TV and magazines and chairs. And there’s a doorbell that says please ring the bell. And we all just sort of take turns answering the door. Everybody has their own office, there’s no receptionist for anybody. So like if somebody rings the doorbell, you know, everybody presumes that if you have an appointment scheduled, then you should answer the door. And if not, then somebody will sort of randomly open the door. And I just have a normal office. I mean, I’ve got I meet with clients in my office, I almost never meet with them in the conference rooms. That’s just sort of my personal preference, because I like I like having people come into my little world because it’s got, you know, I’ve got my computer. I’ve got some artwork. I’ve got pictures of my kids. I’ve got my kids artwork. I mean, I want them to see me as Oh, you know, Randall is a normal person. He’s got a nice Good luck in family. He looks like the kind of guy that I would like to have work with me because he looks like a normal person just like me. So I have a normal, regular office, I’ve thought about getting rid of my office and doing a virtual office. But you know, our kids are still, I suppose my son’s and he’s in preschool, even preschool was in kindergarten now. I like the mental change of going from my house to my office and having a place where I can say, this is where I do my law talk and stuff. And this is where I get most of my work done. So I’m a pretty standard, normal office guy.
Jim Hacking
We connected with Randall after we’ve came across that article that we’ve been discussing on the lawyer. So I’m wondering, Randall, if you could explain to our listeners what the lawyer is does and how you got involved with it.
Randall Ryder
Sure, Morris, I’m not sure what their current tagline is, I but I know it’s a great resource for solo and small, firm attorneys. It’s a website that has all sorts of articles and other resources for attorneys. I mean, I tend to write about being a young attorney being a young solo attorney, although my beard is turning from salt and pepper to mostly salt these days, which is sad. I got involved with lawyers, because the attorney that I worked for right out of law school, Sam Glover, he had just, he was basically sort of restarting lawyers at that point. So I was his first associate. And I was also writing articles for them back in the good old days, which was six or seven years ago now. And now they’ve really blown up. And that’s what Sam does full time. Now. I actually have four or five employees at this point. So lawyers does a, I write for them. I don’t get paid for quick on my posts. I just plug it because I think it’s a great resource. And I think there’s lots of good articles, especially if you read the ones written by me, because I tend to think that I usually write pretty good stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s definitely a cool website. It’s not a boring website. I think it’s actually pretty neat. Like one of them. I’ve got it up here right now. And one of them is 10 legal theme lines to bring to your next holiday party, which I think is pretty cool. Yes, you have things like that. You’ve got a podcast link and all that. So things great. Yeah, Rachel, this is the time where we kind of give the listeners a tip, Jim gives them a hack of the week. So is there any sort of resourcing sort of book podcast tool that you use in your practice that you would recommend the listeners that they use?
Randall Ryder
You know, I wish I had just talked about lawyers all that time, because one thing that I will tell, I meet with a lot of people that want to go solo, and one thing I tell them is, you need to spend a lot of time on lawyer is reading a lot of articles, because there’s lots of really good, free information on there for people that want to go solo. And I have heard from a lot of people that have made it, you know, the best thing I did was take your advice and spend a bunch of time on lawyers reading all those articles, because there’s just so much good stuff on there. And it’s not stuff that you’re typically going to find on your Bar Association’s website, because it’s written. I mean, it’s realistic writing. It’s written from people who are in the middle of it writing stuff as it happens. That’s
Tyson Mutrux
a good one. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
So I have been floundering around trying to figure out how to set all of our procedures up. I know, my wife is a real big fan of binders. I know Tyson you use YouTube videos. So I don’t know if you know this Tyson. But Google has updated its, its Google Sites. So Google Sites allows you to build internal or external facing websites, and you can use it as an intranet. And I think that’s what we’re going to do. As far as putting all of our documents and videos, it’s so easy to use, they’ve really made it much more user friendly. It’s almost all click and drag. It’s really a phenomenal free resource. And I think that’s what we’re going to start using. So I’m excited about that.
Tyson Mutrux
So I actually have Google Apps for Business. I’ve been using it for a couple of years. And I like it and I set up an intranet site. And I was I was a little bit worried about security, does that bother you at all?
Jim Hacking
It’s nothing. For instance, the one we’re working on right now is for citizenship. So it’s not going to have anything external facing. It’s just you know, here’s the link to the forms that we use. Here’s our checklist. Here’s a video on how Adela prepares the forms, that kind of thing.
Tyson Mutrux
I think it’s a good idea. I think I’m gonna steal your idea, because I haven’t revisited that site a long time. So I’m gonna check it out. Let me know how it is. I maybe I’ll let you test it out first and see how it works. And then I’ll I’ll kind of follow your lead that we’re sure alright, so my tip of the week is actually a book by Seth Godin. I don’t think that we’ve done this one yet. Jimmy, we I know we’ve talked about the podcast he was on but he’s got this new book out called What to do when it’s your turn and it’s always your turn. A friend of mine Chris Feeny gave this to me and he hated the book and it’s because it got a lot of pictures and stuff like that it and you know me Jimmy like books with pictures. So it’s actually a really good book. It’s kind of an inspirational book. It’s kind of a motivational book. And you can really turn to any page and just start reading. And it just kind of gives you a little bit of a kick in the butt if you need it. So I think it’s great. It’s like, it’s called What to do when it’s your turn. And it’s always your turn. It’s by Seth Godin. The weird thing is, you can’t just go and buy one book, I don’t think he sells them in packs of like three to 10. It’s kind of weird. So if you go to his website, it’s like 60 bucks or something like that. I remember there was buy this one was for free. A friend gave it to me, but you’re not going to buy just one. I don’t think so. Just keep that in mind whenever you’re going on there. But that’s my tip of the week.
Jim Hacking
It’s a great book. Yeah, I’ve had that. I bought 10 of those. I’ve been given out to people. I must have skipped you. But I did give them to a lot of different people. And he says that’s his last book that he’s not writing books anymore. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But
Tyson Mutrux
that’s what he said. That’s a good one. If if it’s his last, it’s a good one. Randall.
Jim Hacking
Thanks so much for being on the show. We really appreciate it.
Randall Ryder
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. It’s been a pleasure. And thank you again for having me.
Tyson Mutrux
So it’s been a lot of fun. So we’ll make sure we tweet out your article too. So more people check it out.
