Diversify, Adapt, and Thrive: Strategies for Building a Resilient Law Practice with Evelyn Ackah

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Evelyn Ackah, a successful immigration attorney from Canada, joins Tyson and Jim to share her experience and advice for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Since starting her own firm, Evelyn has faced a variety of challenges and has come out on top. 

Here are some key takeaways:

• • Be Agile: When starting her firm, Evelyn had to make quick adjustments due to adopting twins on her own. She started her firm in just three weeks and had to juggle her personal and professional life. She emphasizes the need to be agile and make adjustments and tweaks to improve the business rather than throwing everything away and starting over.
  • Mindset Matters: Evelyn believes that mindset is critical in achieving success. She had to shift her mindset to overcome challenges in her business and become more optimistic. She encourages attorneys to adopt a mindset of an owner rather than an employee mindset.
  • Diversify Your Services: While Evelyn has a successful niche practice in immigration law, she also recognizes the need to offer complementary services such as wills and employment law to her clients. She suggests adding additional service offerings rather than branching out into unrelated areas.
  • Treat Your Practice Like Your Own Business: Evelyn encourages attorneys to build personal relationships with clients and own their files to develop a mindset of an owner rather than an employee. She also recommends taking advantage of the marketing and business development training provided by big firms to develop necessary skills for running a successful practice.

Overall, Evelyn’s experience and advice provide valuable insights for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Whether you are just starting out or looking to expand your services, Evelyn tips can help you achieve success. So take her advice and get started on your own journey today! Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

01:03 Starting her own law firm and practicing immigration law in Canada and the US

04:26 How COVID-19 has affected her cross-border immigration law practice and how she had to diversify her practice to recover from the decline

08:28 Practicing law in two different countries and how she hires a US attorney for green card and permanent residency applications

10:18 The day-to-day work, including team meetings, consultations, and business development

17:04 The impact of COVID-19 on her business and discusses the importance of diversification in practice areas

18:25 The importance of offering complimentary services to clients, such as wills and employment law, to insulate her business from ups and downs

20:20 Advising big law associates to treat their practice like their own business, building personal relationships and owning their files, to prepare for going out on their own

Jim’s Hack: Jim recommends the book “The First 90 Days” for a systematic approach to onboarding new employees beyond the first few days. 

Evelyn’s Tip: Use restream to reach all the social media platforms. 

Tyson’s Tip: Use Steve.ai, a website that generates animated videos by plugging in a script with a free version.

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Evelyn:

• • Website 
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook
  • Twitter 
  • Youtube

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Building a Successful Law Firm in Two Countries with Evelyn Ackah

Jim Hacking:
Oh, Evelyn, it’s great to have you. Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about your experience since law school, what you did, and then when you started your firm, and then we can get into deeper issues.

Evelyn Ackah:
Sounds great. Well, I’ve been practicing law since 1999. I used to be a corporate lawyer in Toronto for a couple years and hated it. And I moved into corporate immigration at a big five accounting firm. And ever since I’ve been practicing Canadian and NAFTA US corporate and personal immigration law. And I became a partner at a big law firm and moved to Calgary, Alberta And then I started my law firm 12 years ago. When I had my children, it was necessary to do some adjustments, and so I started ACCA Business Immigration Law so I could have more flexibility and more time with my family.

Tyson Mutrux:
So we’ve heard this story quite a bit, where you’ve got someone that’s worked for a bigger firm and then they go and they do their own thing. So what’s that life change like?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh wow, you’re doing everything yourself. I mean, having come from a global law firm and all of a sudden you’re doing your marketing, you’re doing your BD, it’s just a very different model. But I was always really entrepreneurial even in the big firm. And I marketed across the firm as well as externally. And so I knew already that I would be pretty successful because I already was doing a lot of those things, like my own firm. So it made it easier when I exited. Basically almost all my clients came with and I just opened my own door.

Jim Hacking:
nLet’s talk about those days leading up before you left your old firm and then the days right after you started. Talk to us about how that went. I’m sure it was a little bit stressful to see if the clients were gonna join you. Walk us through that if you could, Evelyn.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I think for me it was, I was adopting twins. It just happened to be on my own at the time and it was crazy. And I just, as soon as I was advised that I was going to be selected as an adoptive parent of like newborns, it was like, let’s make some changes quick. So I literally started my firm in three weeks. And so there wasn’t a lot of like planning. It was just kind of find a great space that was a shared office space and they had to do the notifications, you know, that the lawyers let them know where you’re leaving, all of that, and then it’s up to the clients. I wasn’t overly concerned because immigration is so specialized, as you know, Jim, that even if you’re in a big firm where they do corporate and litigation and everything else under the Sun and securities law, they only know you, and at the time, there were a very small number of immigration lawyers in that large firm, so I didn’t worry too much because I felt like a lot of them stayed the other sides of the practices that they were using, but they came with me for immigration. And so it was starting from nothing, boxes everywhere, hired my first paralegal probably within a month, and just kept going.

Tyson Mutrux:
So I’m really curious to see how things since like COVID has ended, how things have changed because I feel like in Canada, things stayed closed a little bit longer. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But how has that had an effect? And I also, I know very little about immigration, but I have heard that Canada is more restrictive when it comes to immigration than the United States. So

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
how has that affected your business since COVID, since

Evelyn Ackah:
Well,

Tyson Mutrux:
2020?

Evelyn Ackah:
you know me and you know what I’m kind of doing and why I’m in the Guild and how great it’s been for me so far, but COVID really hit me. And it was really a bit of a shock. I wasn’t expecting such a decline. The borders were closed and as a cross border, this is really what I call myself, a cross border lawyer, doing immigration into Canada from everywhere in the world and then doing into US just for Canadians. that’s not happening. So a lot of my corporate clients who were bringing executives and skilled workers to the US, that stopped and into Canada from the US that also stopped. So we were focused on a lot of things like permanent residence, criminality applications, things that were processed at the consulate but not at the port of entry and it really affected our practice. We went from our best year to a decline and then another decline and was the worst year, it finally hit us. So we’re in a rebuilding stage where now we’re having like a fabulous year, but I don’t even know how to explain it because the borders have been opened longer than the last few months, but it’s taken a while for us to recover from that and made me think about how to diversify my practice, what can I do to ensure this doesn’t happen again, that type of thing.

Jim Hacking:
I think sometimes as law firm owners were a little slow to react and I’m wondering when was it that you realized during that three year period you just discussed that something was wrong.

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, I knew pretty quick and I spent so much time and money in marketing. Whereas a lot of law firms and lawyers were just like retreating and just like, oh my God, we’re going to die and we’re closing shop. And especially in immigration, at least in Canada, people were really freaked out. People were leaving or they were shutting their doors or whatever. I was spending more money on marketing. I was trying to make sure we could be found. I was pushing harder. It was just incredible because I wasn’t getting the kind of results I would normally from that kind of a financial and time investment. And that’s what was really frustrating. It was like, what’s happening? I couldn’t control it. I didn’t understand what was taking place. And it was unprecedented. So I didn’t really know what else I could do except keep hustling, keep working harder, and marketing everywhere.

Tyson Mutrux:
So every time I’ve talked to you, it seems like you have a really good positive team environment. And so what do you… And maybe I’m wrong, but it definitely does seem like that. So what do you do in the firm to make sure you foster that sort of environment?

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I can’t say it’s perfect, you know, being an owner is challenging ups and downs. And sometimes I’ve made bad hiring decisions, for sure. I’ve learned over 12 years. So for me, I really want to find people who get it, who understand that this is a business and that I’m here to help them grow and learn. And they’re also here to learn from me and to help contribute to the success of the firm. And so really a big team focused approach. as I recognize somebody doesn’t have that mentality, you have to make decisions. I don’t want anything to impact the group. Right now there are about 12 or 13 of us and everybody is very supportive of each other. We work hard, we can count on each other and that’s really important to me that they take ownership of their roles and the firm. So it’s not perfect. I’ve spent a lot of time and money on team retreats and books and development for everybody and for myself as a leader. but I think it’s a constant work in progress. And as the firm, one thing I’ve learned over the years is the firm does as well as the leader is doing and that everything comes back to me. And so no matter how much personal work and self-help and reading and courses and training, at the end of the day, my attitude, my presence, my behavior, my expectations of myself impact everybody else and the quality of the firm. So mindset is really, really important.

Jim Hacking:
That’s awesome. Talk to us a little bit about the experience of practicing law in two different countries. I mean, that’s, I think some people will freak out about practicing in more than one state. Talk to us about what it’s been like practicing under the jurisdictions of two different systems.

Evelyn Ackah:
I love it. I mean, I just, I think it’s kind of, again, I was working at a big accounting firm and we were helping global companies cross the border. And when I need to, of course, I hire, I bring on a U.S. attorney. I don’t do any green card, anything permanent that needs to be submitted into the government centers, we don’t do. But what I love about being able to do port of entry work is that you get your answer right away. So as somebody on a quick start for Colby, I like to know that I can finish an application if my team does it in two days, the person’s got their work permit, I feel a sense of accomplishment and I’m happy and move on to the next. So I like the port of entry because you’re not dealing with as much bureaucracy, you’re not waiting months and months and years for a decision. And it also allows you to prepare your clients and give them that confidence that you’re on call. text me as long as the officers are good with that at the border if there’s a problem and I can get involved and advocate if needed for them right then and there. So they feel confidence knowing that I’m available if needed. So it’s been really interesting. I mean, I should do my US bar. It’s one of those, I’m going to do it. Then the kids came. It’s like, oh, I’m going to do it. And now there are 12 and I’m like, oh my God. I literally just have to write one exam in Massachusetts and I would be an attorney. in the US, so unless it becomes urgent or critical, I’m happy being a member of ALA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and doing Canadian immigration. It works for me.

Tyson Mutrux:
You know, it’s funny, as much as I’ve talked to you, I still don’t think I’ve got a really good grasp on what your day-to-day looks like. So what does your day-to-day look like? How much of inside the business stuff are you doing versus on the business?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m really working hard to get out of the day to day. And we actually have a family trip planned to Africa, to Ghana in a couple months for two and a half, three weeks and we’re preparing for that now. I wanna make sure people will be able to do it all without me. So I would say my day to day is mostly spent doing team meetings. We do huddles with our remote team and in office team And so my goal, one of the things I want to really think about is how can I remove myself from doing them at all? And I do have the highest conversion rate, but it’s also, it takes time and I don’t want to be responsible to be doing them all. So my days are probably, I would say, 30% reviewing, signing off on applications, and the rest is business development, marketing activity, and what else? And consultations.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today is business immigration lawyer, Evelyn Acca. We’re so happy to have her with us. Just as an aside, if I tell my son Yusuf that you’re going to Ghana, he’s gonna wanna go with you. That’s high on his list of places he wants to visit.

Evelyn Ackah:
We’ll take him.

Jim Hacking:
Yeah, he would

Evelyn Ackah:
My

Jim Hacking:
love

Evelyn Ackah:
husband

Jim Hacking:
it.

Evelyn Ackah:
is coming for the first time and he’s going to be one of the few white people there that my kids, when we first went, they were like, we saw three white people the whole month we were here. So

Jim Hacking:
Right.

Evelyn Ackah:
it’s so, and they were seven. So it’ll be fun. It’ll be a fun trip.

Jim Hacking:
That’s fantastic. So it’s been fun to watch. You’ve been in the guild for a while now, but not too terribly long. And it’s, it’s great to see the difference between where you were when you came and where you are now. And you were excited to post about your great first quarter of 2023 in the guild the other

Evelyn Ackah:
Thank

Jim Hacking:
day.

Evelyn Ackah:
you.

Jim Hacking:
Can you talk a little bit about that part of the journey?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I mean, I think mindset really plays a big part. And I was starting to get a little down on things that weren’t working. You know, you’re like, you’re doing all these things and it’s not working, and you’re like, what else can I do? And so I joined the guild, I think, in like the summer, late summer of 2022, and it’s been great. I mean, it’s just a wonderful, positive group of people, really supportive. And I think I just had to shift my mindset tweaking things as opposed to like throwing it all away and starting over. So the biggest thing I’ve done, I think has made a big difference, is improved our intake. We’ve got, we use Lomatics and we finally got it all done working automated and that’s a big time investment. So I spent a lot of time last year getting that up and running fully and then we have our two and a half client engagement people. They’ve been great. And then the other thing we did was really focus on SEO because at Accolaw, We’ve got tons and tons of content. And so paid ads like Google, PPC, whatever, wasn’t working. And I was spending lots of money every month and nothing was really… Those were not really capturing the leads we needed. And so the SEO changes we’ve made over the last few months have been really critical. They’ve moved us up in many, many markets, which has led to more people finding us and allowing us to help more people with immigration.

Tyson Mutrux:
So you mentioned mindset and how much do you think of our success and how we do things and how we run our firms has to do with mindset? Is it a small thing or is it a big thing? And I don’t want to lead you too much on that. Maybe it’s not a big thing to you, but I am curious because you said you kind of got over that a little bit. So what is it about mindset and how do you think it has an impact on what we do?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I think it’s really important. I think I was just starting to get kind of down about the last challenging couple years. And it starts to just be a part of your personality almost a little bit, right? And so I think being optimistic and seeing success again and feeling like, okay, we’re back on track. But I think mindset is probably like 75, 80% of it. I really do. And even though I felt like I was being positive, they were still apart, and it was like, oh, but the border, oh, you know, COVID, oh, COVID, COVID. And it was just felt like this crutch or this reason to be excusing what had occurred. And when I finally just let that go and I said, forget that, let it go. We can’t keep talking about COVID anymore. That’s not the reason what things are not working. And so just slowly kind of building up and building out of that, crawling out of it, really seemed to help. and tweaks really that we needed to make that has really affected how the whole team is feeling about how we’re doing. We’re having our team quarterly retreat next week and it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna be talking about the quarter, what worked, what didn’t work, getting ideas from the team, we’ve been doing a presentation with our HR consultant on communication across the team, making sure we know how to deal with conflict. If we don’t agree how we communicate and let it go, I don’t you don’t want people to hold on to things because we’re gonna get bigger and so we need to kind of come up with agreeing to our standards of communication that work for everybody. So Yeah, I just I think mindset is critical and the team’s mindset has to also be on par with the leaders mindset

Jim Hacking:
I think you generally have a very positive attitude. I love talking to you. You get me pumped up talking about being a lawyer and about running the law firm. I’ve loved having you in the group. And I just think that the sky’s the limit for you. So my question though is, if you could go back now to March 15th, 2020, when that to me, that’s the date that COVID really hit. That’s when I knew about COVID being a real thing. We were, of all things, we were scheduled to take a family trip to China that spring break

Evelyn Ackah:
Wow.

Jim Hacking:
that and then we had to cancel a trip to Disneyland. So if you could go back to March of 2020 and whisper in your ear what would you tell yourself?

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm, that’s a good question. I think I would just tell myself it’ll all work out. And probably pivot. I felt like I pivoted quickly. I mean people were working at home, boom, because we already had remote people working. We have technology. That was not an issue. I think I would tell myself maybe let’s look at another practice area sooner than later. I would think about diversification. law, should we bring in a tax person? Those are the complementary practices to my practice. Usually, should we do wills in estates? Like, I think I should have considered maybe a little bit faster. I mean, nobody knew how long we think it’s a few months, and then it’s, you know. But I think it really made me think about what else I could have been doing to help our clients more, as opposed to kind of freaking out about COVID and what the impacts were to the border. you

Tyson Mutrux:
nSo I want to talk a little bit more about the diversification part of it. So generally, and maybe I don’t understand what you mean by it, but generally that goes contrary to what Jim and I recommend when it comes to niching down, right?

Evelyn Ackah:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
That means you’re probably adding on additional product offerings or service offerings. So tell us what your thought process is on this, because I want to get it from your perspective. Because here’s the thing. You may be 100 percent right that that’s what you need to do. I’m just curious. I want to hear more about it.

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, well I feel like, of course I love what I do and I wouldn’t be doing it for 23, 24 years if I didn’t, but this experience, yes we need foreign workers, we need workers. Canada and the US, we clearly need highly skilled, educated people and there’s an aging population. Everybody thinks I’m going to be swamped forever and that would be great if I was swamped and busy doing immigration. But I do think one of the things I think about is what else can we provide to our clients when they come to Canada or the US. So things like, do they have a will now that they’re in Canada? They bought a house, they have children. So just kind of complimentary supports, not to take away, because I am very much like you, you need to niche. And I niched really quickly. I loved it, and that was clear. But I feel like I don’t necessarily have to do it. But right now, we already have a wills associate who’s working on contract. So we’re starting to market that practice to help our existing clients who don’t have a Canadian will, for instance. Employment law, a lot of times you bring people and something happens and they need to talk to an employment lawyer, I refer those out. Perhaps that’s another contracted, you know, of council relationship. Again, I’m not trying to do more, but I’m trying to be able to offer more to clients and also help us insulate ourselves a little bit from the ups and downs. And that’s kind of what I’m thinking about.

Jim Hacking:
Evelyn, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show, as you know, is going out on your own and that there are a lot of people who are afraid to do that. And a lot of people are, though, in traditional fields that sort of lend themselves to going out on your own. And I think the greatest reluctance that I’ve seen so far from people wanting to go out on their own are ones who are at big firms. There’s a lot of perks to being in a big firm. There’s a lot of

Evelyn Ackah:
Okay.

Jim Hacking:
financial stability and support that you get. who maybe are listening or have heard or are thinking about going out on their own, what advice would you have for those people?

Evelyn Ackah:nI think you need to treat, I mean for me I was already in niche practice in a big firm and I was a senior associate and then I made partner and I think I treated my clients and my practice like my own little firm in a big firm. And I think it’s really important if you’re in a big firm that you treat it like it’s your own business. And that really helped me because I marketed across the firm, I marketed externally. internationally, Evelyn did Canadian immigration law, you know, and created work. And when you help a lawyer, you save their client’s butt or whatever. They love you forever because you have come through, you know, and that’s what leads to the, you’re basically marketing and business developing internally. So I feel like big law associates should be thinking about their work like it’s their own and building those personal relationships, making sure they’re the ones that talk to the client. They’re the ones that meet the client. practice area and that they own the file, like they treat it like it’s their own. I think that mindset really helps because you’re going to be doing that on your own and so you might as well start sooner. And that’s one of the areas that I love about immigration, things I loved was unlike corporate law where you needed tons of people and you didn’t really have autonomy, with immigration law I had a lot of autonomy as an associate. I literally, nobody knew what I was doing, very rarely. You know, maybe there’s one or two other lawyers across the whole firm. I owned the file, I had autonomy. I could come and work as late as I needed one day and I could go home early the next because I wasn’t on a deal with 20 other associates. So there’s a lot of freedom in that and that’s why I think people should niche in the big firm. Figure that out. You know, not just be a general corporate lawyer, figure out your niche and then it gives you more autonomy and it makes it easy, I think, to be more portable.

Tyson Mutrux:
you button wouldn’t work.

Evelyn Ackah:
Hehehe

Tyson Mutrux:
So, all right. So, Jim and I know an attorney and she’s, her name is Debbie Champion. She worked for a firm in St. Louis that long ago had a bunch of people left, right? And then people are getting laid off afterwards. And she left with the group that took the bulk of the business. And I wonder if you’ve got any advice or if any war stories when it comes to, and I really want you to speak to like that introverted attorney. It’s like, well, I don’t need to bring in my own business. I just want to, and I don’t want to work on that side of things. What advice would you have to that attorney? Because I 100% agree with you, but I think there is that attorney that says, well, I just don’t want to do that.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
I don’t know what to say to that person because I think that you’re really working as an employee and less like an owner. And even as a junior associate and a senior associate, I acted like an owner. And I think that’s really important. The partners saw me even sometimes saving their clients’ butts and they were like, whoa. And so they were treating me earlier like a partner because I operated that way. and whatever was important to them, the numbers, the hours, whatever, those became important to me. And I think you can’t just sit there and look to be fed and keep your head down. Those are the people sometimes that are the first to go because you’re not indispensable from a business development perspective. So even if you’re an introvert, what I love about big firms is they give you so much training on marketing, business development, all of those things to make sure etiquette, whatever, how to dress, so that you know how to go out and be appropriate and to be able to represent them well. So I feel like you should be taking advantage of all of that. Otherwise you’re going to be somebody who’s a grinder or somebody in the back mining, but those are the people that I think go first when there is a, you know, a downsizing, unfortunately.

Tyson Mutrux:
nout and thanks for that. I just want to make sure people heard that from someone that’s done it before because I think it’s an important thing. But, well, Evelyn, this is great. I’d love to be able to continue talking to you. I do want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to begin to wrap things up. Before we do, I want to make sure that I remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Go to Facebook, search Maximum Lawyer and join us there. And then if you want a more high-level conversation with wonderful people like Evelyn, go to maxlawguild.com and mind giving us a five-star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps spread the love. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking:
I think we as law firm owners do a varying degree of successful job of onboarding new people. And this book, The First 90 Days, is one that Adela has used and we’ve used it with our leadership team on sort of onboarding beyond the first three days. You know, I think a lot of people might do some training, then they shadow for a day or two, and then they say, okay, go swim. And this book really sort of sets out a systematic way of making sure that you get that training that Evelyn was just talking about, that whatever training you want your team to have, that that you’re being sort of more purposeful about it, more systematic about it.

Tyson Mutrux:
I love it. It’s good advice. All right, Evelyn, we always ask our guests to give a tip or heck of the week. What you got for us?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, goodness, I wasn’t as ready for this, I think. One thing I really love is Restream. And I moved away from StreamYard to Restream probably a few months ago. And what I love about it is it lets me do LinkedIn Lives, it goes to every social platform at the same time. It’s really easy. And so we’ve been using that and moved away from the other ones. So people might wanna check it out. It’s not very expensive, kind of get out a little bit more without having to repackage anything and and make sure that everybody can find you on social media.

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s funny, I have a restream and I have not used it. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. And I got it whenever it was… It was like one of those websites where you like, when they first launched it and like you have like a license forever. I have a license, I don’t pay every month.

Evelyn Ackah:
Thanks for watching!

Tyson Mutrux:
And it’s so it’s basically free now and I don’t use it. So maybe I need to look into it more. So you think it’s better than StreamYard?

Evelyn Ackah:
I do. I mean, I’ve been seeing some of the little challenges that have been coming up with you guys in Streamy Art and I think I suggested it. So you might want to try it and see.

Tyson Mutrux:
Okay,

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux:
I’m going to have to play around with it. I’ve got basically a free one, so I’ll give

Evelyn Ackah:
nI’m gonna

Tyson Mutrux:
it

Evelyn Ackah:
ngo.

n

Tyson Mutrux:
a shot. But mine, my tip of the week is it’s steve.ai. And I don’t know if you’ll have seen this, but you can create really easy animated videos or videos in general just by plugging in the transcript. It’s steve.ai. And there’s a free version. I was playing around with the free version. You can upgrade to premium to remove the branding and stuff, but it’s really cool. in a script and then it took, I don’t know, 45 seconds. I plugged in the script and it generated an animated video that people spent a lot of money on. It’s really interesting. No, it’s

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