In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Lawyer Steve Bardol. Steve runs a family law practice in Webster Groves. They will go through his career, internet strategies, struggles and objectives.
http://bardollaw.com/about-2/stephen-j-bardol/
Hacking’s hack: A hack for writing copy. A 3 F’s slogan. When you’re thinking about how to convey that you understand what your clients are going through:
Feel. I understand what you feel.
Felt. I felt that way before.
Found.I felt that way until I found this solution.
If you use this as a mindset in coming up with copy, it will really help your Marketing.
Steve’s tip: Send a gift to your referral sources. KEY.
Tyson’s tip: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, by Mark Manson
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Transcripts: Steve Bardol: Family Law Entrepreneur
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m paying interest.
Jim Hacking
Based on my friend, we have one of your former law school classmates on the show today, I’m very excited to hear his tale of how you goofed off all through law school, and barely made it through. So without further ado, we welcome our good friend, family law attorney extraordinaire Steve Bartel to the show. Hi, Steve.
Steve Bardol
Hi, guys. How you doing? I’m doing well. I’m great. Good.
Tyson Mutrux
I love how you did a little drive by insulted me, Jimmy and then just kept going. Give me a slot. That’s good. That’s clever. All right, Steve. So I know you quite a bit. You and I are really good friends. So and I didn’t actually know you’re on the podcast until about an hour ago. So tell the listeners just a little bit about yourself and your firm. Sure, first, thanks
Steve Bardol
for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. And big fans of the podcast and bulky guys, obviously. I have a family law practice in Webster Groves, which is the central part of St. Louis started it up. When I got out of law school I was doing it was a not a great time to find a job. And I was somewhere in the middle the bottom part of my law school class, which leads to really having trouble finding a job at a big firm. So I ended up doing some back review, trying to figure out what I want to do temp type of work. And then I decided I would just start my own practice and see how that went and get some experience on my own if I wasn’t going to get it somewhere else. So about a year, maybe a little less. After getting out of law school, I decided to start taking clients, I met with my first client on my couch in my old apartment in the Clayton area, then got some office space at the time. I think it was Jim here actually, who helped me find the office space and went from there and it kept building. Steve, I
Jim Hacking
know it has really grown. And one of the things that I’ve really admired about you and your firm is that you really have done a good job with your website. And we had on a great guest last week on the show, will Ed from Cleveland, and he was talking about how the internet is not dead, and that most lawyers have given up way too early on the internet. Could you talk a little bit about what you’ve done on the internet? How you sort of found your way to it? And then how was working out for you? Oh, gosh,
Steve Bardol
yeah, I mean, it’s something that’s very important. I think these days, it’s still shocking to me how many attorneys you go, and they don’t have a Google map filled out or don’t have a website at all. And you’re just trying to find contact info for opposing counsel to call them. I think one of the most important things that attorneys can do, particularly if you’re starting your own thing is to educate yourself on SEO and web stuff. When I first started my practice, I had gotten a website with find law who I’m not a particularly big fan of. But the one thing that that did is it forced me to educate myself because I was paying them about 2500 bucks a month. And it wasn’t particularly you know, you say the phrase it pays for itself. But paying for itself usually means you’re having to do the work to make the money for it to pay for itself. So to some degree, you’re breaking even when at the time I was getting lots of experience because the website was bringing things that you really have to educate yourself. So I started doing a lot of education, I switched companies, like companies that I’m with now and had a bigger hand in what I do. I told them what I wanted. As far as the design to the website, I do a lot of my own content on the website. I send them content, they will add it but you do have to educate yourself. One of the websites, I’d always gone to SEO Mo’s MOC, which has a lot of information. And now the website ranks really well in St. Louis ranks really well for local, I educated myself a lot as far as local links and how that works. There’s a lot of little things you can do to boost your website since you join local organizations and things like that, and they link back to your website and that boosts you locally. And that’s still I think one of the number one factors as far as your website ranking locally is where you are looking at it that so if somebody in Webster Groves is looking for an attorney and I have a strong local presence there, then my site’s gonna show up locally. But one of the ways to have a strong local presence online is to have a link from the Chamber of Commerce in your local town or have a link from the Better Business Bureau is a really strong link and things like that. The My favorite part about your website is actually your bio, or we talk a little bit about your bio and why you wrote it the way you did. I wrote it the way I did. I actually went to a workshop with zeros in here you guys have had on before and talked about he used to be kind of more Family Law, but he’s become more of a just running your own law firm pet guru. But I went to a workshop. And the first thing he did was he went a round the room and had everybody introduce themselves. And then he kind of gave us all speech about how terrible we all did. And except for one guy who had told a little bit more of his story and show some vulnerability, this guy when he introduced himself and talked about how much he had been struggling lately, that has some health problems. And it was true that you really had connected with this guy. So when I went back and wrote my bio, you know, particularly since I’m a younger guy, it’s one of those things that, you know, try to do something a little bit different, because this listing all your qualifications probably isn’t really connecting with anybody. And they’re just glossing over. So at least if you have a story, and show some vulnerability, and maybe connect a little bit with whoever’s reading your page, it might be helpful. And that’s, you know, a lot of attorneys kind of missed the boat on that whole idea. If you still go to plenty of attorney websites, it’s just, you go to the homepage, and it’s just pictures of the attorneys talking about some awards that they’ve won, which usually is something they paid for. I mean, as you guys are both aware, and then, you know, it just lists their accomplishments. But if you really tell a story, connect with them provide lots of quality information on your website website to be more successful. We’ve talked a little bit about how you create your own content now and moving away from find law really sort of freed you up to do that, and to make it more personalized. What?
Jim Hacking
What’s the process you use to create new content? And how often are you creating a new user content calendar,
Steve Bardol
I do not use a content calendar, it’s the practice has become so busy, it’s more on the weekends, when I get a chance to sit down, I’ll look through the areas of my website that need filling in or as far as long tail searches, which is for people who don’t know that that’s when people are typing in longer questions into the, you know, internet on Google when they’re saying something like, how long does it take to go through the adoption process, for example. So I might put a page that specifically fits that. And when you start going, after you have some content built up on your website, then I’ll go through and try to think of things that clients asked me or something that I’ll write down after a client meeting as far as client questions and try to do an actual page on that, then it will show up for those longtail searches. And that’s a good way to get a lot of traffic on your website that can lead to a good client here and there, it might not be the most popular page on your website, but it fits exactly what a potential client is looking for, then you’re probably going to have a good chance to get them in the office,
Tyson Mutrux
teach some of our listeners or people that are going to be graduating from law school, or they’re just at a law school. And so you started right out of law school. So when you talked about that process, and just some of the resources that you that you had to utilize, because you know you had you didn’t have the experience.
Steve Bardol
Absolutely, it’s one of those things that can be very scary. Obviously, in my situation, I didn’t have much of a choice I, I wanted to get some experience. I was doing temp work, and I just had to do it. And it was obviously terrifying at times, but you get through it. I think one thing that I say to attorneys that are thinking about going out on their own that is important is it’s not black or white or 100. Zero, there’s a lot of gray area, you’re not gonna make $0. So when you go out on your own, you might struggle for a while you might struggle for a long while, but you’re not going to make $0 You’re gonna find some clients, even if it’s your mom referring you cases. And then if you’re doing the things you need to do, eventually you’re going to build a niche and build yourself up to where you can make at least a decent living. And if you’re lucky, and you keep building your practice, then you can obviously make a very good living. So when I first started, I had some friends, I had plenty of friends that had just graduated Tyson and Chris Benny and a lot of other people in town that were different firms and some of my close friends were at another family law firm down the road. And they’d kind of send me their cast off cases and help me out if I needed help building reform or working through cases. And they were not great cases, not particularly lucrative cases. But that’s how I started getting family law cases at the time I started out kind of as a general practice, but pretty quickly, it was a lot of the litigation type cases coming in criminal and family. So as time went on, it just narrowed down. So I immediately did get a website, built the websites, went through find law went through and make sure all my profiles are filled out online, make sure your information is consistent online. I do all the social media profiles, make sure all that stuff is out there. And then as I built the practice, I also built a good referral network and that starts out slowly that’s not something you’re going to build overnight. You know initially What I’d recommend is, you know, finding some attorneys in town a mentor to it doesn’t have to be somebody that’s 50 years older than you or anything along those lines. It can just be someone from your law school class, he’s already doing that type of work or, or just somebody to talk to you on a regular basis. And as time goes on, a lot of my referrals come from people I’ve had cases with or no at the courthouse and things like that. And eventually it builds. And it also helps that a lot of attorneys don’t like doing family law. So I get a lot of referrals that
Jim Hacking
way. We’re speaking today with Steve Bartel of the Bartel law firm LLC, Steve, what kind of unique issues are there or things that you notice about being a family lawyer when it comes to marketing?
Steve Bardol
Yeah, you know, as far as family law goes, I, there’s a couple different types of clients or certain cases, when it comes to marketing, certain cases, like adoptions where the clients are very well educated, and they’re going to do a ton of research on it. So I think in most situations, it’s important for your website, in your marketing materials to be very specific to your area to show that you have knowledge in, you know, the St. Louis area, for example. And then there’s some other clients who are just going through emotional crisis, where they’re just getting online and looking for answers real quick. And something on your website might have to draw them quickly or connect with them. Like I said earlier, I think an easier way to connect with someone is probably just to give them information right away, the format of my website is set up very differently than a lot of websites where you go to the main page, and there’s just resources right away. And I also have a button on the website at the top that just says start here. And that’s one of my favorite pages on the website, as it goes through basic questions, how does it work? How much does it cost, things like that. And I think that’s important for people to get up front. So they feel like they have a lot of information and might call quickly, particularly the clients who are going through crisis, it’s important to, you know, give them a lot of information. That’s what they’re looking for, you know, if you compare it to, let’s say, you have a small medical problem, the first thing you’re going to do is get on Google and Google, you know, having a foot problem. So when you Google that you’re gonna look it up. And what you’re gonna start looking for is answers to your question, you’re not going to look at, you know, a long biography of some guy who practices medicine, curing your foot problems. So I think it’s important to remember that they don’t really care what your accomplishments are. So much, I mean, they will find out later and look at your qualifications later in their search, that’s not going to be the first thing they look at.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s really good information. That’s actually really your website’s off, and it really is set up for conversion. I really do like it. Our Steve, I want to shift gears a little bit and actually ask you about some decisions that you were just thinking about making. Within the last year or so you’re talking about maybe adding criminal defense, will you talk a little bit about that decision making process and really where you stand now, sure,
Steve Bardol
I’ve always had a little bit of criminal defense in my practice, I am on the overflow list for the public defender’s office, which means if they have conflict, they send out cases to a list of people in town until a long list of every now and then I get a case. And then I’ve always done a little criminal on my own. To be honest, it helps keep the sanity as far as dealing with family law all the time, which is an extremely stressful practice area. And I also think it’s not a bad idea, your marketing needs to focus toward one area. But if you have a secondary one that’s somewhat complementary, and particularly in the litigation area, I think it gets you in front of different judges meeting different attorneys. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, in that sense to get a little experience in a different area. But as far as marketing, it’s obviously good to focus on one. Yeah, you know, I’ve gone through, it’s a constant battle with me as far as how long I want to be doing family law, and what that will look like down the road and the amount of stress that it adds to my life and unbelievable, unbelievably stressful. So I’ve toyed with the idea of adding other practice areas, I’ve toyed with the idea of shifting practice areas. The problem is figuring out the hurdles as far as a new website, rebranding yourself online rebranding yourself with your referral partners? You know, it’s very challenging, I guess, when you’re dealing with referral partners to market yourself for multiple areas, which is something you guys obviously talk about all the time and something that is true and practice is, everybody’s mind compartmentalizes things very easily. So it’s something you have to explain your referral sources what you do and that family law then that’s what they’re gonna remember you for if it’s more of a general practice, then you’re proud Looking at not getting a ton of referrals from anyone, because they’re not sure what this meant to you. And people also want to spread around their referrals. So they want you to be their family law guy or up their criminal guy. So in that sense, yeah, a lot of my criminal work does not necessarily come from referral. And it’s obviously a smaller part of my practice. And I think you guys can chime in. But it’s, it’s obviously tough to add another practice area unless you’re going to completely start going in that direction.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I think it’s definitely difficult to go halfway into a new practice area. And I think you’ve been wise to at least market yourself as a family lawyer only. I think that’s really boosted your refer ability. And a lot of for a lot of the reasons we talked about a lot on this show. Going along those lines, as you talk about expansion or other things, I know that you set up yourself as a solo, you don’t have a partner, and you’ve had associates at times, can you talk a little bit about the growth that you’ve experienced since you started and sort of what your mindset has been when it comes to growing your firm?
Steve Bardol
Sure, as far as growing the firm, initially, it was just me. And then I hired a part time receptionist paralegal within the first year or so, which was probably way too early. And I ended up getting rid of her because she was not busy enough, and not particularly helpful for where I was at, I just didn’t have enough business for it the summer following, that, I ended up getting a summer intern from a slew law school. And that was pretty helpful. Number one is helpful, because you don’t have to pay much. And number two, it’s helpful because you know, they’re going back to school at the end of the summer. So if you don’t need them anymore, you don’t have to have the stress of making sure that somebody stays employed, and you’re taking away somebody’s job if things don’t work out. So I did that that summer. And then that intern worked for me periodically throughout the school year, but not every day by any means. The next summer, I ended up getting another intern. And then right after that, I ended up hiring my first summer intern as my first associates. And she ended up being with me for about a year. At that point, she ended up moving out of town. And I hired the second summer intern that I had had as her replacement. So and she’s my current associate Katie, who does a great job. After Katie had been there for a couple months, we kept growing to the point where we needed some help as far as administrative things. And we ended up hiring my current paralegal, Julie, who works three to four days a week and does a great job. And now we’re considering hiring another associates. Sometime here soon, the issue we’re having Jim, as you’re aware, are building spaces, something that our landlord is potentially trying to rehab, you’ve already moved out of the building. And I am trying to figure out where I am moving to because it’s something I need to figure out if I’m going to expand the firm, which is something I’m going back and forth on. And it’s something that I really need to look at the numbers, you know, something that Lee Rosen has an article on as far as how much you should be making per employee as far as gross revenue, and there’s numbers that should dictate as far as when you’re hiring. But I also want to take advantage of the fact that businesses coming in at such a high rate that we potentially need to utilize that opportunity.
Tyson Mutrux
Lee Rosen’s website is great, especially if you’re a family law attorney, he breaks things down just like that for you. It’s really fantastic. Any even if you’re not a family law attorney, it’s really good. But Steve, other than the the move that you’re having to go through, what’s your biggest struggle right now?
Steve Bardol
Yes, my biggest struggle on a daily basis is just dealing with having so much going on. I mean, it probably is at the point of hiring, but it’s, you know, dealing with client communication, I’ll have 30 or 40 phone calls, at the end of the day that I need to return my shifted, it’s where I only take phone calls, at the end of the day, a lot of times just because it was becoming so constant that I couldn’t keep up with it. emails constantly going off trying to get the legal work done. And then also trying to juggle the actual going to court and, and running the business and all the different aspects of a business have any associated help with that I’ve handed off a caseload to her which she is managing well, and having the paralegal helps to hand off some stuff with her. But at a certain point, my caseload probably needs to reduce itself. Because in the end, if you’re the attorney handling the case, then clients want to talk to you. They don’t always get to talk to you because your time is, you know, there’s only so much time to go around. But there are certain legal issues that probably you can only handle as the attorney I probably over exaggerate how many of those are things that only I can handle, which is obviously a struggle for a lot of attorneys, but it’s something that I’m still working on trying to figure out how to keep that all together. And honestly, it’s such a stressful practice area that sometimes it’s just a lot to handle all the people who are unhappy and call feeling unhappy and might be something where another staff member might relieve a little bit of that.
Jim Hacking
That’s a great point and brings up an issue. You know, I’m often happy. Every time I come even close to a family issue, I’m often happy that I don’t do family law. And I know it’s very stressful, you’re dealing with people, sort of in the worst moments of their lives, at least on the divorce side. How do you handle like giving yourself brain space and getting away from things? And how do you go about sort of just finding space for yourself?
Steve Bardol
That is a good question, Jim. At times, you know, I will end up just setting up a day where I’m not taking any client meetings, or I’m not going to be in court. It’s very hard I, you know, a lot of people don’t think of family law as necessarily trial lawyers or top level litigation, but you’re truly in court every single day. I mean, it’s something where judges, you know, know, the family law attorney so well, because you’re in front of them every single day, you’re up there every single day, which is tricky, because then you’re in court, a lot of mornings, and the rest of your day gets shoved to the afternoon. So when you add and returning all those phone calls, there’s very little time. So sometimes I will try to shut it down. I try not to return emails at night, I try to do more of the business type stuff at night, take full advantage of the weekends, I do think that moving phone calls to a certain time of day, if you’re not taking phone calls throughout the day, is a good idea. So lately, what we’ve been trying to do is return phone calls around four o’clock, unless it’s a phone call from a judge or an opposing counsel people waiting to hear back from. And I think that you have to just find time to relax and take a breather, and networking, I think does help too, because I think you hear other attorneys going through, you know, the same types of problems and stresses. So, you know, not only does it build business, but it also helps to cope with running a practice going to lunch and seeing your friends and networking.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, Steve, so we’re coming up against the time and we’re gonna get to our tips. And then Jimmy’s hack of the week before we do I swear, remind everyone to go to the Facebook page, join the Facebook group, interact with us there, there’s a lot of good information that we spread around. And then also, if you like what you’re listening to make sure you go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and give us five star review. Jimmy with Dragon week.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so I know that a lot of our members don’t necessarily enjoy writing copy and coming up with content that sort of is directing people towards thinking about hiring them at least and sort of how do I come up with that, and I heard a pretty good slogan, a three F slogan. So when you’re thinking about how to convey that you understand what your clients are going through. It’s a three F program. So the first step is feel, I understand how you feel so conveyed to them that you understand how they feel. And then next is felt felt as I felt that way before. And the third is found. I felt that way until I found the solution XYZ. And I think it’s a solution that can work for you. So I think that if, if you use that as a mindset and coming up with copy, it’ll, it’ll really help your marketing.
Tyson Mutrux
I think we just found new blog posts for Jimmy to write up for us. What do you think me? Sure thing. All right. So Steve, you know the routine, what’s your tip of the week? Yes, as far
Steve Bardol
as a tip goes, I, you know, one thing that I’ll do is my referral sources, I will pinpoint something that is of interest to them, and then send them a gift. Jim, for example, I’d sent him a book, I think it’s maintained in Bob’s book, one year for sending referrals my way I think another time I’d gotten Jim card to the running big river running because I know that Jim likes to run and stay in shape. So those are the types of things that I think can help you with referral sources. If it’s a little bit more personalized. Also, I send a bottle of wine from wine.com to certain referral partners, if I know that they like wine or something along those lines.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s a really good tip. I like that people like it and gift. So to sort of add on to that was a bonus. Something I will do if I’m reading an article. And that said these are Jim, I think I’ve sent these to you, Steve is if I think it’s an article that one of my friends or referral partner partners would want to read, I’ll actually pair that out a little note on it and then then mail that to the referral partner. And so it’s, it seems to be pretty effective. My typical week is actually a book. And I’m not going to say the actual title of the book because what the either bleep this episode or put the expletive title on there, I’m not going to do that. But it’s the subtle art of not giving an F and it was actually Scott shooty a personal trainer in Colombia told me about it. And it’s it’s a really good book and it’s it’s about what you might think it is if you think about the title, but it really does sort of break things down into some no nonsense explanation. So I really recommend it. It’s a really good book and it’s sort of a mindset shift. So I recommend it, guys anything else? I don’t think that will touch you next week.
