Flourishing in Law: A Journey from BigLaw to Boutique Firm with Lauren Klein

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a lawyer who is thinking about starting their own firm? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer podcast, Jim and Tyson speak with Lauren Klein, co-founder of Flourish Law Group. Lauren shares her transformative journey working in a large firm to starting her own boutique firm.

Lauren provides some insight on the challenges and rewards that come with leaving Big Law and starting a small firm. One of the rewards is the focus on marketing. For small law firms, there is flexibility to focus on the clients you want to and design a marketing plan that is unique and not controlled by a larger company. Another reward that comes with having your own firm is the ability to control the delegation of tasks and create a system or workflow that works for you as the owner.

Transitioning from big law to a small firm owner can allow you to help guide new law school graduates. Most new graduates are eager to work in big firms because it means more money and more success. But, Lauren dismisses that idea in that the team and culture you have regardless of the size of the firm is what matters. Asking questions about work life balance as well as what a typical day looks should be used to make a decision.

Listen in to learn more from Lauren!

Jim's Hack: The phrase “first party data” which are the emails and phone numbers of people who consume your content. From an analytics perspective, it is important to know who is watching your content and how to connect with them.

Lauren’s Tip: Do not fall into the trap of thinking that in order to become a successful attorney, you need to be overworked, unhappy and unhealthy. 

Tyson's Tip: Just let it go. If you are having feelings of resentment or anger towards someone, just try to find a way to let it go and focus on yourself.

Episode Highlights:

• 2:57 The challenges and rewards of starting a law firm
• 6:30 The struggle of delegation
• 16:01 Experiences in big law 
• 28:19 The myth of overwork in the legal profession 

Connect with Lauren:

• Website 
• Instagram

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

Transcripts: Flourishing in Law: A Journey from BigLaw to Boutique Firm with Lauren Klein

Tyson (00:11.726)
And I'm Tyson Mutrix. What's up, Jimmy?

Tyson (00:33.29)
Yeah, our guest today is Lauren Klein. She is the co -founder of Flourish Law Group, a boutique law firm specialized in estate planning, elder law, and probate administration. Lauren has over 12 years of experience in trust and estates and tax planning, as well as an LLM in taxation from the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

and is passionate about educating our community about the power of estate planning. And we're gonna get into the rest of all this in just a little bit. Lauren, welcome to the show.

Tyson (01:17.071)
you

Tyson (01:30.767)
you

Tyson (01:52.88)
You

Tyson (02:21.2)
you

Tyson (02:35.193)
you

Yeah, so I was going to ask you, how are things now? Are you happy with your decision? How's it been?

Tyson (03:11.506)
you

Tyson (03:22.642)
you

Tyson (03:38.226)
you

Tyson (04:07.059)
You

Tyson (04:47.927)
you

Tyson (05:02.837)
Yeah, there's a lot that goes into running a law firm. And I wonder what, like, in your opinion, what do you think is the most valuable use of your time right now?

Tyson (05:33.303)
You

Tyson (06:03.095)
You

Tyson (06:48.952)
you

Tyson (07:36.721)
All right. I don't like it, but I didn't get enough.

Tyson (07:51.45)
That is, that's for sure. So you have a couple coaching programs that I want to ask you about. And so they're mindset and success coaching programs, ones for law students and then ones for lawyers. I want to talk about the one for law students. So what was the mindset behind doing that? And tell us a little bit more about it.

Tyson (08:18.573)
you

Tyson (13:35.424)
I think that's great. And so I know that this probably was not the intention, but I do wonder is there any benefit to your business from doing this where maybe you get referrals from it? Because I do think that there is a pretty clever strategy in there where you could do something like this for law students and then use that to get referrals. So I just wonder if there's maybe some residual benefits to it.

Jim (18:00.873)
Oh, the countdown never started over here. Okay, cool. Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Jim (18:10.113)
Well Tyson, I'm excited. We have a great guest for our listeners today and I'm always happy when we have mom lawyers on the pod. I think that it's a hard road to hoe being a mom and a law firm owner, but we've had so many great members do it. My wife has done it and so you want to go ahead and introduce her?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (18:37.384)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (18:50.746)
you

Jim (18:53.769)
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Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (19:03.684)
Thank you, Tyson. Thank you, Jim. I'm excited to be here.

Jim (19:09.481)
So Lauren, I want to get in our time machine and go back to the month before you went out on your own. So you were working at Big Law. You probably had lots of people saying you were living a great life, you know, had everything in the palm of your hand. Talk to us about that month before when you decided, man, maybe I should go out and do my own thing, or maybe it was longer than that.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (19:30.44)
It's a great question and I'm very happy to hop back in that time machine. So right around the time that I left Big Law and I went to start my firm was a very exciting time. And I had already done so much work and planning that when I actually pulled the trigger, made the decision to leave and start, I was so ready to go. I had spent…

Jim (19:37.403)
. .

Jim (19:48.105)
Thank you.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (19:57.352)
a year or so, you know, behind the scenes, just with my mindset, trying to trying to get myself to a place where I felt comfortable. You know, I had the skills, I had money saved up, I had investments, I had passive income coming in from real estate, you know, investments and things like that. So I knew practically speaking, I was ready to go and, you know, follow my dream. But I had to get the head to kind of catch up with that. And so it was about a year spent just working through all the limiting beliefs of who I'm

Jim (20:19.497)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (20:24.36)
to start a law firm? Why, why, you know, why me? Do I, am I really ready for this? So that last month was really, okay, go time, let's do this. Really exciting, still, still nerve wracking, but one of the best decisions I've ever made, truly.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (20:44.882)
It's been really great. So next week is our one year anniversary. So we're excited to celebrate that. It's been hard. It's a lot tougher than I expected, to be honest. We've all heard the stories, okay, now you're not just a lawyer, now you're running a business and you're doing payroll and you're marketing and you're wearing all these hats and it's true. But it's been fun. It's been a lot of fun. I feel like it reinvigorated my love of the law in a lot of ways.

Tyson (20:46.706)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (21:14.664)
and it allowed me to choose the clients I wanted to work with and choose the people we wanted to market to. So it's been great and you know talking about being a mom and a lawyer when I started the firm my youngest was I think seven months and so it's just crazy to kind of watch my kids grow three years old one years old now you know grow with the firm and it's it's been great it's the best decision I've ever made I'm so happy that I did it but it's hard you know there's no sugar coating.

Jim (21:20.187)
you

Jim (21:31.881)
. . .

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (21:43.56)
starting a law firm is is no small feat. I would say my my favorite part besides you know the

Jim (21:45.869)
Well, that's our favorite thing to talk about on this podcast are the things that make it hard. So what were the things that you've had to overcome or that you've enjoyed sort of beating back and what's sort of driven you crazy?

Tyson (21:50.199)
All right, so I've been excited about asking you this question since you mentioned this. I like the idea of having someone sit down and write a letter to their future self. So this is your opportunity to speak to your future self and give your, I guess, do the same thing you would ask the people in the law student program to do. Do the same thing and now's your opportunity to do that.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (22:04.712)
and estates just practice of law, which I love. It's the only area I've ever been and I really, really enjoy it. But I think my favorite non -legal aspect of owning a law firm is the strategizing on marketing. Okay, which clients are we going to target? How are we going to do this? And not having those constraints of a big corporate law firm and saying, we could really do whatever we want. So we've done…

Jim (22:13.193)
You

Tyson (22:25.192)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (22:28.008)
We've done a ton of webinars, we've done a lot of live in person events at parent groups and mom groups, you know, why night out? Let's go talk about what is a will versus a trust? What is estate planning? Is it only for people who have, you know, $20 million or they're 85 years old? You know, what is it in educating the community? That's been my favorite part, the marketing and the education side of things. I really, really love it.

Jim (22:43.817)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (22:52.488)
I've gotten really proficient at Canva and social media. Eventually we're going to have to delegate it more, but I do, I do love it a lot, which was surprising. I mean, definitely, you know, working with the clients, meeting the clients and getting the strategy in place, whether it's a high net worth,

Jim (22:53.545)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (23:21.648)
client who, you know, we, for example, just this week, we have a client who is dual US, Canada. So we're doing planning for them, making sure that their estate plan in the US makes sense from a tax perspective and a legal perspective up in Canada, we're going to be coordinating with attorneys up there. So the strategy side of things, you know, even for the non complicated, non complicated clients, just making sure, hey, do we understand your family dynamic? Are we drafting your documents effectively? And then,

Once we have the strategy as the lawyers, we found it's really helpful to delegate the drafting and a lot of the other tasks that we don't necessarily need to do. We're just reviewing it on the back end. And really, it's hard. It's hard to delegate and then to kind of take a step back. That's definitely not the big law model. So I've kind of had to unlearn a lot of those tendencies that I learned in big law.

Jim (24:03.093)
you

I like that way you phrase it, the things that we don't need to be doing, but and you say that we know a lot of lawyers really struggle with that delegation as you mentioned. How did you sort of get over that? How did you actually make that shift in mindset?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (24:22.12)
It's still a struggle, but I knew in that year that I mentioned, I referenced, you know, spending, getting my mindset ready. I knew that if I was going to start my own firm, I didn't want it to be a situation where it's me or, you know, I have a partner, me and my partner just

Jim (24:45.577)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (24:49.896)
wearing every single hat and struggling, you know, and not making a lot of money or, you working 18 -hour days in order to make the money that we want. I knew that's not the life I wanted and I'm very much all about being intentional and so we really designed our firm from the beginning to have

processes and procedures written down very clear. We try very hard to get our team members really engaged and know what their roles are and, you know, lead by agreement where we all agree this is what we're doing, not dictatorship, you know, like I've, that's been my relationship with many bosses in the past and I just don't, I don't think it works. It doesn't keep people motivated and loyal. And so we were really intentional about it, but that's not to say that it isn't hard. It's really tough to kind of, you know, hand a client over to someone else or hand a task over.

Tyson (25:15.228)
I loved it. I enjoyed hearing it. So very good. Hopefully you'll kind of tuck this away and then put it on your calendar to check it back in a year. So I think that'd be pretty cool.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (25:37.61)
As attorneys, we are generally A type and naturally control freaks, which can be really hard to unlearn.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (25:49.32)
you

Tyson (25:54.111)
I love it. I love it. Alright, so we do want to be respectful your time, so I'm gonna start to wrap things up. It's been a great episode. I just love hearing your story and there's a lot of great lessons in this, so hopefully people will go back and re -listen to this one because it's really good. I am going to get to our tips and hacks in a moment.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (26:08.52)
So when I got the job offer to work in Big Law, I had been practicing at that point, maybe four years. Before that, I was at a boutique firm. I was the only tax associate and I was stressed like crazy. I did not know how to take care of myself mentally, physically. I just kind of thought I had to run myself ragged in order to be successful. So I thought, okay, if I'm now accepting this job at this…

Tyson (26:20.447)
But Lauren, will you tell people how they can get in touch with you if they want to reach out to you?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (26:30.92)
big law firm making twice as much money if not more. How am I going to be able to handle that if I'm already really stressed out and don't feel like I have the tools?

Jim (26:34.555)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (26:42.184)
Adding to that, I had a really long drive. I was commuting from Fort Lauderdale to Brickle. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to take this time. I'm going to dive really deep into personal development and personal finance. Because if I'm going to go to this big firm and really dedicate my time and my life and blood, sweat, and tears to working in this big law environment, I want to make sure I'm doing it in a smart way. That A, I understand my money and my money is working for me.

I had read, you know, rich dad, poor dad in college. And I was like, okay, I think this is what he was talking about. I can be this high earner, but if I don't know where my money's going and how I'm using it, what am I doing? And then also if I don't have a good grasp on my mindset and I'm not confident and I have all these limiting beliefs and I'm just like anxious all the time, that's not good either. And we all know that's kind of the norm in the legal profession.

Tyson (27:06.242)
it. Perfect. Thank you for that Lauren. Alright I'm gonna wrap things up before I do I want to remind everyone join us in the big Facebook group go to Facebook and search MaxMillory you'll find us there. If you want to hang out with guild members go to maxlawguild .com that'll give you access to a lot of tools and resources but then also our quarterly masterminds which are pretty awesome we like to have them in cool nice places so go to maxlawguild .com you can join us there.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (27:31.048)
So I took this deep dive into personal development, personal finance, and I just wanted to be okay. But what happened, which was very surprising to me, was I, all of the sudden, like I just took off like a rocket. I was more confident at work. I was, you know, we'd sit down in these big strategy meetings for these high net worth clients, estate tax planning, and all of a sudden I was coming up with ideas. I was more focused and I was more clear. And so by getting, you know, just a good grasp on my own mindset and meditating and working out,

Tyson (27:34.056)
And while you're listening to the rest of this episode, if you got something of benefit from this, if you'd give us a five -star review, we would love it. It helps us spread the love. Jimmy, what's your Hack of the Week?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (28:00.744)
was becoming a better lawyer. I was like, oh my god, I, this is not, this was not my intention, but it was amazing. So flash forward, pandemic hits, I'm pregnant with my first son, I'm sitting in my home office, you know, like all of us were, I was working so many hours a day and I was listening to all these life coaches just trying to keep myself, you know, above water, like, like we all were. And I had this aha moment, you know, there's coaches out there for lawyers, um,

But I was like, why don't we have this for law school? You know, I think by now we've all heard the stats from it, whether it's the ABA or other organizations, the mental health statistics in law school are abysmal. They're bad, they're awful. And you know, maybe the school will come up with an initiative or a law firm will come up with an initiative and it usually doesn't do anything. And I thought, why don't I do this for law students? Why don't I create a program in a community where law students can understand their mindset, learn to dream big.

Tyson (28:31.789)
That's that's extremely valuable advice. That's really good Jimbo I don't think that anybody's come remotely close to actually making that offer or offering those advice. I think that's I think it's perfect very good Jimbo Lauren we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week It could be a quote. It could be a book could be a podcast you name it what you got for us?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (28:55.24)
set financial goals, set life goals, and have a place where we can think positively, you know, rather than you get to your first day of law school orientation and they're like, you're gonna be miserable and it's gonna suck and, you know, only look to your left, look to your right, you know, those two people won't be here in five years. That's kind of the mentality. And I said, why don't we, why don't we, you know, kind of flip the script a little bit? And that's how the idea was born.

Jim (29:19.049)
So let's go from there. So what did you do? How did you start it? And what's it looking like now?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (29:24.296)
So I started, well,

I started with a beta group of six students, it was five law students, one pre -law, and we created the program together. So there's modules ranging from designing your law school and lawyer avatar, where do you see yourself? We do an exercise that I do every year where I write a letter to myself now from Lauren two years or five years ahead of time. And I say, okay, where do I wanna be? Who am I spending time with? What am I doing? What am I wearing? What am I driving? Where am I working? And I reverse engineer my life based on where I wanna be.

Tyson (29:42.792)
We lost Jim, but very good. Excellent, Lauren. For my tip of the week, it's a good segue from yours. Just let it go. If you're harboring anger or frustration with someone or with something, just try to let it go. Just…

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (29:55.914)
in X amount of time. So we do that with the law students. We talk about money mindset and abundance and manifestation. We talk about organizing your day, your week, your semester and your law school experience. So we are intentionally moving through law school rather than just all marching towards big law or, you know, the dream job and winding up there, not even really enjoying that area of law. We talk a lot about networking because networking for me has been the biggest boost.

Tyson (30:01.992)
There's no point in harboring that anger. It doesn't benefit you. I like to think it maybe benefits them. That's probably what they want if you are angry. So just let it go. It will serve you very, very well if you can just find a way just to kind of let stuff like that go and just go on and live your life. Focus on yourself and not on other people. So that is my tip of the week. Lauren, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (30:24.616)
did in my career other than the mindset of, you know.

Grades are important, yes, but the people that you know and the relationships that you build are, in my opinion, way more important. We talk about time management, we talk about overcoming limiting beliefs, and so we created this program together, myself and these Beta students, and it really was just magical. And so now I offer this program to law students, pre -law students, anywhere. It's really affordable. We offer monthly yoga classes taught by my good friend up in Canada who is a partner at a law firm and an owner.

Tyson (30:33.896)
Great chat with you too.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (30:58.154)
a yoga company just for lawyers. So cool. We do meditation. We bring in thought leaders. We talk about money. It's all my favorite things and all the things that I think the legal industry sorely, sorely needs. And now we have a new program that we're rolling out for new lawyers as well. It's another time in that legal career where it's a huge transition. So many things come up. And I think that, you know, kind of talking about all of these same issues as you're transitioning from law school into your legal practice will be really, really

really, really invaluable.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (31:55.56)
Yeah, there are and it was 100 % unintentional. When I started the firm, I was talking to a friend of mine who's in marketing and she's like, do you know what you've just done? You've created a funnel. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And I didn't mean to do that, but awesome. You know, sounds great, especially because we do talk a lot about money, you know, in my course.

both the law school success blueprint and the lawyer success blueprint. And I'm really passionate about talking about money with law students and lawyers because I…

was basically at the, if you're looking at like the law from like a very, you know, general perspective, I was about to make partner at a big law firm. I was kind of rubbing elbows with some of the top partners in this big firm. And I realized that even though they were making a lot of money, they did not feel wealthy. They did not feel abundant. They felt very trapped by their money, by the golden handcuffs. They, number of partners relayed to me, I wish I could retire. It's just not possible for me. And I'm thinking,

you're making millions of dollars, you know, maybe million dollars a year, maybe more over how many years you've been practicing. How are you not able to retire if you wanted to? And it just, it was another aha moment in my career. It was like, oh, it's not about the money. It's about the way we look at the money and how we utilize our money. If we're only W2 workers and only making that active income trading time for money, it's, you're on this rat race, you know, and nothing wrong with trading time for money by

any means, but if we're making all this money, why don't we put our little money soldiers to work in other ways as well? And I think we just get trapped in this, we have to work, work, work, work, work, do, do, do, do, do, and we lose sight of what are we building? What legacy are we building? I kind of went off on a tangent from your question, but going back to it, yes, I guess I unintentionally created a referral source to our law firm.

Jim (33:58.761)
How has working in Big Law and like you said, almost being made partner, how has that really impacted it? I think a lot of solo firms say, well, we don't really stress out our attorneys. We don't really put a lot of pressure on people. I don't have as much pressure on myself as I did because I'm not in Big Law. How has the fact that you've been in both worlds sort of helped you guide people?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (34:24.84)
I think…

a couple of things. One, it's helped me to structure the way that we operate as a law firm and the way that I now operate just as a human being. You know, for me, work is important. It's a huge part of my identity and I love it, but it's not everything. I have many, many other sides to me. You know, I'm a mom, but many other things. I love to travel. I love to eat. I love to, you know, spend time with friends. I love to work on other businesses. My husband and I invest in real estate. There are so many things to me and to so many other things.

Jim (34:49.225)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (34:57.242)
of us, I mean to all of us really. So I think for me, you know, I kind of lost my identity in big law and now I'm moving away from that. I think that happens a lot. I also think that, you know, the billing structure in big law is not always…

ideal for efficiency for the clients. And it's a hard conversation. Even in our firm, we struggle, especially with high net worth clients, hourly versus flat V, versus percentage on a probate, what's the right way to do it? But I think coming from Big Lawn seeing like there's only one right way to do things is kind of, it's a myth. I don't know if that's answering your question. Was there something specifically you wanted me to?

Jim (35:23.529)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (35:42.632)
There's so many things I could talk about with respect to that question. Was there something specific you were thinking?

Jim (35:47.753)
No, I just think law students often think we're going to work for a big firm. And so when a lot of them end up in a smaller firm or on their own, I just wonder as students are going through your course and learning about what do they really want before they dive in. And then maybe could we also touch real quickly on how student loan debt plays into these issues?

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (35:52.424)
Good. Good.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (36:05.544)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think for, you know, for law students, new lawyers or even pre -law students kind of touching on the first question who they have, you know, and this happened to me, I got into law school and, you all of a sudden big law was the ideal, even though when I started law school, that was not my intention. But you get stuck in this, you know, this mentality. And I'll be honest,

when I worked at boutique firms before Big Law, I worked just as hard. So I think it's not necessarily big firm versus small. I think it's the team that you're on and the culture that that team creates. And so yes, when you're interviewing for your first job or two, you might have to be not so picky, but I think it's important understanding what the culture of the team is, understanding.

Jim (36:51.401)
you

Jim (37:01.897)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (37:03.272)
even when you're in law school, what are the different practice areas like? What are the attorneys in each practice areas day to day lives look like? Are they traveling? Are they spending time with family? Are they constantly in court? No wrong answers necessarily, but just knowing ahead of time what you're kind of getting into I think is really important because this is a long game. For a lot of us, we love being lawyers. We want to stay in the law. We don't want to just be in it for a few years, burn out, and then move on.

And then with respect to law school debt, we talk about it a lot. We talk about it from a mindset perspective and a practical perspective. So from a mindset perspective, I always tell students, because it's one of the first questions they usually ask me, you know, I have all this law school debt, it's stressing me out, I don't know what to do. And I say, let's just take a step back because.

we could go down the rabbit hole of law school is very expensive and wages aren't growing at the same rate. We could go down that rabbit hole, but we can't change that in this moment. So I think we should table that and think about what we can change and how we can look at things. And I always tell my students, debt is not positive or negative. It's a neutral thing. It's a circumstance.

we get to choose how we feel about it. When we're, if we buy a house and we're sitting in the house, most of us aren't like, oh man, this mortgage, this mortgage sucks. Like you're not thinking about it constantly. You're like, wow, I have a house. This is great. With law school debt, it's different. It's, oh man, it's this shackle around my neck. This is awful. It's bad. It's negative. And I tell my students, look, we can choose how we talk about our money, how we talk about our debt. Let's take a step back and just say, okay, I made this investment in myself.

I took this sum of money and now I owe it and it's an investment of myself. Let's just start there so we can kind of take that negative energy away from it and and you know that's always my starting point and then it's okay. Do you understand how much you owe? Do you understand the repayment? Do you understand your options and do you understand how much you're going to be making? Do you have a budget? Do you have

Jim (38:55.561)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (39:03.61)
you know, an understanding of how to negotiate a salary. There's so many factors that go into it and how we're going to pay it off and just being smart about it. And there's so many good, you know, financial advisors out there who will specifically help you get a game plan. We help you get a game plan, but you know, we're, I'm not a financial advisor. I'm just an attorney and, and.

someone who's passionate about this stuff. But I even bring in thought leaders, specifically financial advisors who talk about this to my students and how to get a really solid game plan. I think from my perspective, it's taking away the negativity around it and having a plan and being aware of your money, not just putting your head in the sand. That to me was a big shift for me personally, and I think for my students as well.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (40:12.264)
Oh, I love this. No one's ever asked me this before. Okay, so every year I do this at least once a year and I usually pick either a year ahead of time or like five years ahead of time. So I'll do a year. I'll do a year since the law firm's coming up on one year. I think this is gonna be a big year for us. So.

Jim (40:28.923)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (40:31.344)
One year from now, I see myself living in a new home. We have two kids, three bedrooms, and luckily a home office that I'm in, but a new home. I see myself not working on Fridays. That's one of my big goals. I see myself having a bigger team, a couple paralegals, an associate, as well as myself, my law partner, and our current team. I see myself, you know,

I haven't really done that many, I think 2025 is gonna be more of a 10X kind of year. We're still kind of growing the firm, but let's just go with it. So I would love ideally, you know, to really grow the firm, not just incrementally. And I think that's going to really force me to look at what I'm doing on a day -to -day basis and figuring out even more so what do I not need to be doing.

you know, like emails. I don't need to be in my emails, but I am. I'm in there a lot and it's a big time suck and we all know, we all know how that goes. And so really, like being very strategic on what I'm delegating, even to the point where it makes me uncomfortable. You know, you have to be uncomfortable to grow. I see myself one year from now traveling with my kids every summer.

Jim (41:29.307)
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Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (41:49.672)
So working remotely for an entire summer, I want to be able to take them every year somewhere really cool. Greece is next on my list. Go there for a summer. I want to do a Spanish immersion program at some point. So going somewhere in Latin America or back to Spain and bringing the kiddos with me. I see myself spending my time very intentionally with high level people who are smarter than me and who are doing bigger, scarier things than me so I can continue to grow.

Jim (41:51.881)
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Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (42:17.672)
And I see myself hanging out with my husband and my kids and our friends and eating really well and treating our bodies well and working out. Those are all the things that I would put and I do put in my letter to myself. I get more specific, like what am I wearing? What am I driving? You know, things like that. But for the sake of time, those would be like my big things that I would put. And it's a really fun exercise because you can kind of see, okay, if that's where I want to go, what do I need to do and what should I not?

be doing. You know, because otherwise we get really caught up in just the day -to -day. It's so easy to do. It happens to all of us, but it really forces you to stop and think, what do I need to do? Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 of this year, what do I, what steps do I need to put into place now if I want to get, you know, to where I'm going? That was fun. I've, no one's ever asked me to do that. That was really cool, Tyson. I love it.

Jim (43:15.319)
you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (43:21.554)
I have to tell you, I go back and I reread my old letters and it's so cool to be like, oh that happened and this happened and this happened differently, but you know better than I imagined, or oh this didn't happen. Why, why did this one thing not happen? It's really really cool and it helps you to…

someone said this to me recently, they they do a vision board, but they also do an achievement board, and it's kind of like that, like a mental achievement board, like oh look at all the things that I said I would do, these promises I made to myself, and then I then kept.

Jim (43:54.735)
Thank you.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (44:20.584)
Absolutely, so I'm Lauren A. Klein on LinkedIn. I'm on there all the time. I'm getting, you know, more active on LinkedIn. I'm also at Lawyer Lauren Klein on Instagram. I'm on there a lot as well. I have, you know, pages for both my wealthy lawyer squad program, which includes the coaching programs for lawyers, new lawyers and law students, all the information, and then Flourish Law Group is our law firm. I would love to connect with…

other attorneys, new lawyers, law students, even if it's just popping in my DMs on Instagram or LinkedIn and just asking me a question. I'm always here to give advice and connect with other people.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (45:33.082)
you

Jim (45:41.033)
I heard a phrase on a podcast the other day and that phrase is, first party data. First party data. And what that means is emails and cell phone numbers from people that consume your content. If you are relying on these social media platforms to be your conduit between them and you, you're going to be in real trouble if they kick you off or if they change their rules or if they start charging for that kind of stuff.

From the very first YouTube video I did back in 2013, I had a call to action and at the end of it was to try to find ways to get people to call or email our office. You've got to capture that first party data because if you're relying on middle people to get you that, you're at their mercy if they decide to change up the rules.

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (46:51.752)
I would say one of my biggest tips and it's something that I really, I live by in my day to day life is just don't drink the Kool -Aid that in order to be a successful attorney you have to be overworked and constantly stressed out and unhappy and unhappily.

It's a myth that has been perpetuated time and time again, whether it's by the water cooler or in the content that we're consuming or from your law school or your law firm. But it's just not true. And I think that it's important that we all recognize that we can have happy, joyful, successful, abundant, high -earning careers and still enjoy our lives and be happy. So that would be my biggest hack or tip for you guys.

you

Lauren Klein. Esq., LL.M. (48:20.04)
you

Thank you, Tyson. Thank you, Jim. It's been really great. Thanks for having me. It was wonderful chatting with you guys.