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Today on the podcast you can catch Seth Price and Jay Ruane on Maximum Growth Live with special guests Nalini Prasad and Allison Williams!

In this episode Nalini fills us in on a monumental shake-up in the world of online digital marketing that you’re eligible for as a law firm owner!

Seth and Jay also join Allison Williams of Law Firm Mentor. The Law Firm Mentor provides business coaching to help law firm owners stop the chaos and get to a level of efficiency that will give them a dramatically more successful firm as well as a life with more free time. Allison weighs in on the struggles and benefits of hiring your very first associate. 

All MGL videos can be found under the Maximum Growth Live! Tag in the Facebook group.

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Transcript: Maximum Growth Live with special guest Allison Williams

Unknown Speaker
welcome to the podcast edition of maximum growth live. The number one program for lawyers who want to grow their practices. Each week, our hosts Seth price and Jay Ruane tackled the fundamental questions about how to grow the profit and profitability of your law firm to watch the program live. Submit your questions and hear the latest episode tune in every Thursday at 3pm. Eastern on Facebook for our live show maximum growth live is a production of maximum lawyer media.

Unknown Speaker
Well, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Thursday, August 6, maximum growth live show brought to you by maximum lawyer as well as blue shark and firm flex. Here at max growth live, we talk all about growing your firm. And today we have two fantastic guests with us. First up, we’re going to have an aleni who’s going to talk about a monumental shake up in the world of online digital marketing. And then later in the show, we’re going to have Allison Williams with us, the law firm mentor. And first I want to find out from my friend over here, Seth price. Seth, how’s your week? Go? And have you been? How are you helping your firm grow this week?

Seth Price
You know, it’s the emotional roller coaster continues, we think we finally got our intake. The good news is intake is back. And we have we have the need for that great team. And that as the volume comes back, you need to make sure that the you have that ability to get the cases in. But understanding that the people who are answering the phones are going through the same emotional rollercoaster that you and I are going through, and that it takes extra effort, I think to make sure that you’re not losing anything from people who are going through those ups and downs.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, managing the team is is has been critical through this whole process, really just checking in with everybody. I think it’s important, but we’ve got a jam packed show today. So first, first up is going to be Malini I want to bring her in. But before we do that, let’s have a quick word from our sponsors. And then we’ll come back with aleni. Live here with us today. Thank you so much. Hey, and we’re back with our good friend aleni. Illini, there have been some wonderful things that happened in the last week. But before we get to you, Seth, why don’t you give us a little of the history of Google, and ads and everything that’s going on, because what we’re seeing right now is going to tremendously change the online digital marketing world. And I think we need some context. And then Alena can tell us what she’s learned over the last couple of days.

Seth Price
Sure, for those of us that have been playing this game, for a while, we’re used to seeing paid ads at the top, some form of map or local and then organic. And over the years, the organic keeps getting pushed further and further down. As Google tries to monetize more and more, right, we’ve seen three ads go to four, we’ve seen the local section pop in with up to seven spots when it first launched a seven pack down to three, increase to four with a paid ad, and then three organic ish places in the three pack all of these different things going on where Google is trying to figure out how to give that user experience. Now, one of the things that sort of a legacy of this was that Google attempted Google Plus. And Google Plus was their version of sort of what we think of today as Facebook, you could share things you could collaborate, it was a pretty slick platform that never took hold. The only people that took hold on it were people like ju me and other marketing geeks, and it became almost like a wasteland of marketers and SEOs rather than a genuine social experience. So Google pulled the plug on that, leaving the Google My Business, which is really the backbone of what we now see, in the three pack. I was invited out to an event that Google held at Torrey Pines, for SEOs and marketers, where they laid out what we are now seeing in these local service ads. The impetus for this originally, besides making more money was in areas like locksmiths and home improvements, there was a ton of spam. Back in the day, if I wanted to find a locksmith in DC, and I Googled for one, it would literally give me one in the middle of an intersection. It was complete nonsense. And so what we’ve seen Google do is say, hey, how do we determine what is real and what’s not. So they do these guarantee a Google guarantee giving people an increased sort of level of comfort with almost a second level of PPC or a first a primary PPC, before PPC and that’s what we’re seeing rolled out now there’s an announcement that is a $50 a month product reminds me of the AVO upgraded or enhanced price. I’d like to see with Yelp as well, where you can get rid of your competitors ads. That’s what it felt like. But all of the data, they’ll have Malini talk about it that we’re seeing so far is it really just looks like this is the gateway to lawyers being able to do these local service ads above the PPC giving Google more paid real estate before the three pack before organic?

Jay Ruane
Okay, so then that gives us a little bit of the history the lady, why don’t you tell us about, you know, what you’re seeing currently? And how lawyers are able to implement it?

Allison Williams
Yeah, absolutely. And so also want to add one little thing to the history as well. You know, we’ve been speaking all of last year, and around May of last year, Google came out with the ability to test these LSAS for only immigration and only trusted estate in two markets, San Diego and Houston. So a lot of what this LSA local service ads is, is exactly the buzz that you kind of heard about in 2019. May, right. So what we’ve seen since Friday, is that Google finally released this ability to all law firms, and I looked at the long list, and it’s even IP law. So you should if you have a legal practice, you should be eligible at this point. With all Google things, when they come out with a new item, there’s going to be glitches, right? So they say, Hey, full steam ahead. And it mean, it’s you’ve heard me say it a million times, every time there’s a new feature, there’s gonna be issues. So even when you go to the support page right now, and you click eligibility, check edge eligibility. It’s a 404 error. Google’s doing that, right? They’ve got so many people trying to apply right now. But I can give you the rundown of here is what is the most important items to have together. And you’ll understand why it’s so important because the school will guarantee sets that isn’t add, and you can hear how great that placement is, it’s all the way at the top. But the reason that it’s called a guarantee as well, is because Google sticking their neck out on the line. And they’re actually saying, if the consumer does not have a good experience with you, they will actually refund for the services up to an amount. And so for law firms, that’s going to be a lot bigger, right than it was for the polymers. And that’s why they started with that. Right now on their website, they say up to $2,000 of of services. But if Google, if you as a business, were sticking your neck out, and you’re about to pull money out of your pocket and give it back to someone, you’re making sure that you are sticking your neck out for the right kind of businesses, right. And so that is why the application process and the requirements are so severe and serious, right. So the things that you need to do are give all of your life information. But on top of that the three main ones are one, a criminal background check of every single employee that you have, right? And there might be ways around that. But right now, that’s kind of what they’re looking for upfront. They want to see your legal malpractice insurance information, how much are you covered for, and then they also want you to be able to talk about your verification with your state bar association. So whatever kind of professional licenses that you have, those are the three biggest ones. I know, it’s a lot to get together. If you haven’t started the process yet, now is a good time to get that stuff together. We’ve seen some people maybe get through already. But there’s the majority of people are still waiting for the application to be processed even before they even hear from anything. The first step two is to create a local service ad account. So I’m going to send a link in the chat here during this right now. So you guys can see how and where you need to go to create that first step. And then what the items are that you need to get together. But again, it’s not going to be easy to get guaranteed because they’re sticking their neck out for you. And at the end of the day, I’ve had a lot of people ask me questions about, Oh, am I going to be competing with, you know, who am I competing with? It’s local, right? So you are only competing against other law firms in the local area. It’s literally the three pack but it is now a paid version above that, and even above the paid. So that’s kind of what we have right now you’re going to see a lot of blogs come out with a lot of unknowns. And that’s because Google’s got a lot of glitches right now itself. But what we do know is that it’s going to be a paid situation that is very similar to what you saw back in May 2019. And we’re going to be monitoring it. Right. And I

Seth Price
guess what’s frustrating is Google has been so bad through this pandemic Google support, as Jay has lived through and others have lived through has been atrocious and trying to correct wrongs. You know, there’s money behind this. So presumably, there’ll be some more, but we’re already seeing the normal Google glitches that come with all of this. And understanding that, you know, we’re all scrambling, but it’s not like anybody’s sitting there already with Google ads, you know, showing in this sense. And I would just take tell people to take a deep breath, get your stuff together, put it through the process, and that, you know, we expect this is going to be several weeks, if not months before everything’s ironed out.

Allison Williams
Yeah. A couple quick like examples to have, you know, some of these glitches that we’ve seen over the course of the whole entire last year is when they came out with the test back in May 2019. They also for like a week offered the ability for you to put yourself on a waitlist. And we automatically did that for a lot of firms, right? That waitlist button disappeared after a week, I can tell you for a fact that now that this has been announced, we got no notification for any of those people that were on the waitlist. So it’s not like they were really letting you be on a waitlist. Also back in January, I remember specifically standing in NTL when someone said, Hey, look at this, look at the Google support page, it now says that it’s available for legal for lawyers, like you could in the drop down. Literally, I got home three days later, and I looked at the drop down and legal was gone. So they’ve been playing with things for a while. And who knows, like how real this is at this point, and how much longer it’s going to take for them to really get the three pack rolling. So

Seth Price
great. I’ll leave it with this. This is more of an aspirational way. If you look at things, Google has done their algorithm, they’ve done some pretty cool stuff to figure out what’s legitimate, and what’s a kid in their parents basement trying to compete, the one place they’ve not done a great job has been with local look, spam still works in the name of a firm, there are a lot of things about the local three pack in particular, that have never gotten to the higher levels that you would expect from Google. And there’s been a lot of criticism of Google, my wish here was that this process, if you went through, it would somehow allow them to differentiate. Because if you dig into the three pack on any given day, there are random spam listings. Some are bots from Russia, some are, you know, competitors, doing stuff with exact match. If you look in Maryland for like nursing home or workers comp, it is amazing how much spam are in those listings. And you can you know, we work with our own team with consult, trying to thin that out. And it’s like the ocean, it keeps on coming. My wish, which I’m not even sure it’s going to happen is that this process, if you go through this much of a pain in the ass to put all this trust factors together, that somehow they’re going to use that to prevent the spam listings from infiltrating into the three pack and making that a more valuable, useful place. But again, we just don’t know how that’s gonna roll.

Jay Ruane
Yeah, so I was setting up my LSA account, right? And they said, Oh, we can’t find your business on Google Maps. And I’m like, I have 100 Plus Reviews, how can you not find me? It’s my name. It’s as simple as that. I mean, it’s my name in this logo. So I actually, you know, said, Oh, well, if you need help, here’s a phone number. I call it the phone number. They’re like, this is AdWords support. I’m like, I’m calling about local service ads. They’re like, Oh, we don’t do that anymore. That’s shifted to a new department. And the phone number that you just called, isn’t credit. I’m like, I’m on your signup page. And this is the phone number. It says to call. And the guy’s like, yeah, we can’t help you. We were told if people call in about local service ads, say we don’t support that anymore. And so I called four different times got the same answer. And on the fifth one, I got a phone number for the new local service ads department, because somebody, I guess, must have finally said, We need a number to tell these people because they’re screaming at us on the phone. So it’s just interesting.

Allison Williams
That’s gold now to you. You will the golden ticket, you’ve got the number for sport.

Jay Ruane
I have it. I have it. And if you listen to the very end of this show, and give me five stars, I’ll let you know what that phone number is. How about that? How about that?

Allison Williams
One? One last thing, too is the question that I’ve been getting as well, what is this due to my Google My Business, the organic tool, my business? Does that mean that I no longer have to pay attention to that? Because now I’ll be in the top of, you know, the top of the page with a paid ad? And no, absolutely not Google, my business is still going to be the foundation of whether or not you know, your ad will show you need to have some sort of juice in that Google My Business in that business profile. And so what you’ve been doing all these years of building up your reviews and all that good stuff, it’s going to have some sort of ranking factor within whether you should show up in the top three, across all of the other competitors in your local area. So no, to not stop doing the fundamentals. Right.

Seth Price
And this is this is going to be an evolving conversation, Jay, we’re going to be going for, you know, for weeks, if not months or years on this, but it’s the beginning of an interesting chapter. And just want to make sure that we get as much information to everybody as possible.

Jay Ruane
Yeah, I think it’s certainly going to change, you know, how people approach their business. If you’re going screened up top, then AdWords, then maps, you know, you’re going to have to spend a lot of attention because you’re going to want to really increase your ranking for your organic stuff, so that you’re there because it seems like more stuff might be pushed to page two. And you know, that’s certainly not a place that you want to be. You want to be on page one. So a team that can help you with SEO, I think is going to become even more important in the new paradigm. So that’s certainly something that I think we need to pay attention to. So Lindy, thank you so much for being with us. We love having you on our show every week. I did have a suggestion for are a topic that I’d like to bring you back next week on, I’m going to put it in your ear. Now, let me know if you think it’s good. You know, we get solicited all the time as lawyers for to be in a directory, you know, there’s NCL, there’s there’s the established ones. But then there’s the elite peanut butter eating lawyers have, you know, the Delmarva Peninsula. And, and for only $499, you can get this plaque but in our directory and BLS stuff, so what directories are good for SEO purposes? What are good for, you know, and then what are just bogus, you know, money grabbing, you know, situations, because I think that’s important for people to understand that. So if maybe you can give us some help next week show talk a little bit about that. I think it’s something that I think people can finally understand. Because I’m so sick of seeing people say, Hey, I got this award, and I got that award. And it really doesn’t help their bottom line, but placates your ego? I mean, if you want to spend $1,000, or $500, to feel good for an hour, so I guess that’s good. But I think there’s better things that you can do with your money, don’t you think?

Allison Williams
Yeah, that’s a great topic. I’ll be very happy to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly next week.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, no leaving. So that’s gonna be it for you this week. We’ve got Alison coming up next. I’m going to let you go. We’ll take a short break. I’ll be able to switch up the cameras bring Allison in. And we look forward to seeing you on that topic next week.

Allison Williams
Sounds good.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you so much. Right. Thanks.

Seth Price
We’re excited to have Allison Williams here with us today. One of my favorite lawyers, built a firm in Short Hills, New Jersey family law practice, seven figure practice bunch of lawyers, has a coaching program that is just phenomenal. She has broken down many of the fundamentals that are needed to help people get from A to B, and thrilled to have you here today, Allison,

Unknown Speaker
thank you for having me, Seth, I’m happy to be here with you guys, too.

Seth Price
So Jay, has been focusing a lot recently on helping people in the growth we talk a lot about growth, the highest levels, but for most people that that pressing question that comes up off the bat is when do I hire the first associate? And Jay, you’ve given a lot of thought to this, I’d love you to sort of help formulate what we’re looking for Allison to help us with today. Yeah, so

Unknown Speaker
thanks, Allison, thanks for being here. I love the blue glasses, I’m wearing my blue glasses set did not get the memo. But really what we what I’m what I’m looking at really sort of drive into a little bit deeper, is the issue of when is the right time to hire that first associate? You know, we’ve heard some people like Lee rose and talk about there’s a financial number and you bet you base it on strictly on data. So you can go to the next level. Other people say, Well, it’s an ego thing. And and we all know that that may not be the best time to hire when you want to be able to say you have an associate, other people say, well, there’s work I just simply don’t want to do because I’m just illusioned or disheartened with that part of my practice. But what we’re trying to do is help people get to that point where they can make the right decisions for hiring on the right factors. So perhaps you can help us sort of with your experience, how should a lawyer approach hiring their very first legal associate, not sports staff, but an attorney?

Unknown Speaker
So that’s a very interesting question. And I get that question a lot. And so I will say it’s actually a combination of all of the things that you just mentioned. So the first thing from a, from a numbers perspective, I always tell people that they usually have more work than they realize that they have. And they’re often in denial about how much work there is available to delegate to an associate. So the first thing that I always tell people is, once you believe, and just based on your tracking, it doesn’t have to be something scientific. But just looking at your caseload, if you’re not getting to 25% of the things on a daily basis, over at least a one month time period, that are on your plate, it’s time to hire. And that’s a really good feel like that, it’s gonna feel like it’s too much. But the reality is work expands to fill the pie that’s available. So what tends to happen is, you get into the habit of kind of what I what I call, like skimming the ocean, right, you just barely do enough to keep your clients happy. So you don’t commit malpractice. And so you don’t have a grievance. But the reality is, if you were going deep into the work and actually doing all the things necessary in a file, you’d be able to do a lot more work you just don’t have the time to. So when you hire somebody, not only do you give them that 25% that’s on your plate, but you give them a little bit more than that. And then that work starts to expand. So you have more than enough to feed somebody when you’re at that point. Now, as to the issue of I don’t like certain work, there is a value of owning a business versus owning a practice. When you own a practice, you’re in practice, which means anything that comes in that can feed you, that’s what you’re doing. You’re chasing checks. When you own a business, you are creating more of what you desire. And if they if the purpose of being in business is to do that, that it makes no sense for you to take in grunt work that you don’t enjoy and keep yourself doing it simply because it’s easier for you to do it yourself than to hire somebody to do it for you. But I’m very much a big proponent of business owners enjoying the work that they do, and not keeping the crap that they don’t enjoy just because it may give you more dollars and cents today, that that’s going to stop you from scaling tomorrow. And then the third thing you talked about was kind of the idea of, I’ve got the work that I enjoy, I’m doing it a little bit because I want to, you know, I have a financial setpoint, then there’s the ego issue. And while I would never advise somebody to go higher for your ego, there is something to be said for the fact that lawyers tend to be more status oriented, they tend to be more ego driven. And that is not always a bad thing. I built a very successful multiple, seven figure business based on my ego, my ego wanted to have more, I wanted to have a big presence, I wanted to be reputation. And that’s what I chased. But in chasing that I created jobs, I created economic security for myself and my team, I created something valuable for our community. So it’s not always a bad thing that you think about your ego, you just can’t make your decision solely based on that.

Seth Price
Pack some of the things you talked about there, Jay and I talk a lot about how we’ve each decided over time to add lawyers and Jay has always been the conservative side where he’ll hold on to the last possible minute,

Unknown Speaker
I don’t hire, it’s painful now.

Seth Price
And you know, I’ve taken the attitude very often, which is probably why I’ve scaled is that if I can somehow get that person in the door, even if it’s not super profitable, as you’re sort of talking about that 25% Just enough so that you’re not underwater, you know, taking them on the come knowing that the marketing will catch up, or that you’ll put money into the marketing in order to develop that person. They’re adding to that I believe, wholeheartedly that if you don’t like doing a certain vertical, getting that to somebody else, assuming that you can trust them to do it, you know, awesome. When you talk to people about that shift one to two, is their you know, you know, if you get that extra time, so you’ve you now have the attorney, so that work is off your plate, in theory without, you know, minus supervision, you need to do have it. Is there an idea of what you expect somebody to do with that newfound time in order to build the firm so that you’re not working to sort of pay their salary, but rather building a bigger pie?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I mean, the first thing that I want to do is go to who you should hire, because that is going to naturally go into what you should be doing with that newfound time. I never tell somebody to hire a baby lawyer with the first hire. That is like the critical mistake that lawyers always do. They’re like lawyer, the younger the lawyer, the cheaper they are, and thus I can afford them. But the reality is, you can hire somebody who is more experienced and build them out at a higher rate, or get higher quality production off of them. So you save yourself the time of having to supervise, yes, you have to ethically supervise, but you don’t have to rewrite the letters and teach them how to communicate in court. All that time, that’s fair now goes into marketing. That’s how you build a business. So you have to be able to have clients to serve, you can’t serve clients unless you have them in your doors and you have to get them in the door. And your time going out and creating as much product and content as you can. And then mass producing that that’s how you get to be known. So and a lot of people think that that’s like a years long practice, the reality is everything that you do with marketing should never be a one and done. So if I’m speaking somewhere, I’m speaking I’m recording it, I’m transcribing it, I’m posting it in multiple places, it’s always going to be a mass produced product no matter what it is. And as soon as you do one thing, you have seven or eight different pieces of marketing content that you can then use to get into the hands of other people. And the hungriest lawyer is the one that’s always going to build the fastest. The reality is, unless you are out there hunting and seeking and true and truly pursuing the work, the work isn’t going to come because you have a sexy website, no matter how great the websites are, that you build that and you’re just you’re not going to build it simply because people see you, you have to be pursuing it. So part of that pursuing is getting out in front of people, making relationships with people, letting everybody know that you do what you do that you do it well, and most importantly asking people for business, the number of lawyers that are out there that don’t directly say to somebody, Hi, my name is this is what I do. And I am looking for clients to serve in the area of family law, criminal law, personal injury, just asking sometimes it’s all you have to do. You can be in line at the grocery store and talk to somebody and they know somebody who needs the service that you have. But if you don’t open your mouth, they don’t know that you need it fed

Seth Price
really locked locked there. You know, I know from my personal preference, I’ve always subscribed you’re not trying to start with that third, fourth year minimum to eighth year those those solid middle years where you’ve skipped the malpractice and you’re on to somebody who’s in sort of the that that mid level associate type type world. You know, something you said though, is that you You have to use that time for marketing. And one of the traps I think some people fall into is if you don’t like that, then that associate can be brought on. But if you don’t, you may just be taking work off your plate. But if you don’t do the marketing, the pie won’t get any bigger and your economics, you know, profit margin wise, you’re just gonna go down,

Unknown Speaker
right. And there’s some marketing that’s available for all lawyers, whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. So I tell people, what kind of like the classic example is, I have evolved into somewhat of an ambivert. But I used to be very, very introverted. And I would go into Bar Association rooms and say I was supposed to network because my boss told me to. And by the end of the night, I had a cocktail in hand and I had blood in the other hand, from where I would like dig my nails into my wrist, I was so pensive and uncomfortable. And that did not make me successful at marketing. But as soon as somebody said, Hey, you can get in front of all these people and deliver a message and they don’t get to have a conversation with you, because they’re like, over there. I was like, okay, great, I can do the thing where there’s some space between me and that person. And just like I had to prepare to get better in court, I had to prepare to get better at speaking. So once you learn how to get better at speaking, more people were attracted to your message. So you had an easier route. And that works for me, it doesn’t work for everybody. But there’s something out there for everybody, everybody just has to find their thing.

Jay Ruane
I’m raising my hand right now, because housing, that’s me, I am more comfortable on a stage in front of 1000 people than I am in a group with three, I would so much rather be out there. And I don’t have a problem. I just that is so much. And that’s really, I mean, I can remember being two years into my practice, and giving a giving a presentation on DUI defense, because that’s what I did to my state bar. And I’m looking at it. And I opened with a joke that I was looking at it all the faces of people who had not hired me two years before that. And now I’m teaching them something. But that really became my way of building my reputation was getting out there as a young lawyer and giving presentations on stuff that I had learned and stuff that I was using. So I think that’s a great tip for people is that there are ways you can market even if you don’t necessarily like the one on one type stuff. But I want to

Seth Price
Allison, I want to come back to you on something because you are sent out as an associate I’m of mixed minds of whether or not you really want your associates out there. Do you want them out there doing the work and executing on turning clients? Or do you want them out there at the Bar Association’s I have found unless the person is a rock star, they’re not going to bring anything meaningful in and you’re sort of building their exit, not that I don’t want to support lawyers, and not that I wouldn’t wish them well and have them. I have attorneys in my firm who are presidents of the DC women’s Bar Association, we’ve taken those, but those are usually special people that have hyper incentivize deals, the average associate that you’re going to have, and I hate the word associate, I’d like everybody to be a partner so they can sell better. And we’ve talked about that offline. But I am torn between whether or not you really want to build up because the three of us here, yes, we can work a room, we can do a speech, but the average person you’re getting in probably is not going to be successful and bring meaningful business. Do you want to put your effort there or not?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so I think that’s a great question. And the answer is the answer that most lawyers give, it depends. So at the time that I was sent out, it was really because my Managing Partner saw something in me and do. Okay, I got her to the point where she works a courtroom, I can get her out and she’ll naturally connect with people. And when that didn’t happen, I found another route. But the reality is for your right, most lawyers, even the ones that are hungry and hustling are going to bring in $100,000 book of business. And the reality is, I can go create a million dollars a lot faster and easier than one of my associates can go out and create 100,000. Yeah, so I’m not going to take my time, my money and my effort in cultivating that in somebody who doesn’t already have the drive to create it, because the reality is that they have the drive to create it, and you don’t help them create it. They’re just missing opportunities for your law firm, whether they leave or not. Because if they really want to do that they’re gonna leave to go get it cultivated somewhere else. So you cannot create a policy that says I’m going to try to squeeze my humans to keep them as if they’re your property because the ABA says on average lawyers term every four years. And frankly, I think it’s only going to get faster because even if you build a rock solid culture, everything is not for everyone. And people don’t always know what they want until they get there. Now, in terms of what you’re building for your culture, I do think that there is a value of saying the company is going to produce the work for you. One of the benefits that you have as being an associate or being an employee is the fact that you don’t have to go out and hunt to get yourself fed. You have a salary, you do quality work, the quality work as an expectation of the job. And there are some things that you can do to kind of up the ante a little bit to get some additional compensation. But for the people that are hungry and hustling those people like you said you need to create a compensation plan that’s going to get those people really going out and hunting for the work. And if you keep them happy, and a good place to work, they’re ultimately going to stay with you because they’re not going to get a sweeter deal somewhere else. And now they’re already going to be acculturated. So

Seth Price
another guy, I think a lot of that comes down to exactly what you’re saying and how you compensate. And that something Jay and I have talked a lot about, I’ve seen the mistake, I see a lot of people on that first hire where they don’t take your advice they take the person who’s a law clerk becomes an associate, at the lowest possible dollar and 50,000 a year, let’s say, depending on your market might be 60, might be 40, whatever it is, you get somebody in the door cheap, they learn a ton, you give them $5,000, more, at the end of that first year, the market may see them as worth 20 or $30,000. More, you know, almost like have net, you don’t see them in that light. And I see a huge turnover early on, which if you’re okay with is great. But that pain of training over and over again, has a huge cost. So it’s tough because, you know, let’s say you hire somebody at 50, you can 55 A year later, the market is gonna see him at 75 or 80. If they’re well trained by you, and you’re like, What do I do now? And that I think is something that people have to think about when they bring people in is what is the state? Like? How are you going to incentivize to keep somebody rather than taking all of your great energy and training and producing something for the market?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so part of that is about the training. And part of that is about the decision. But I think one of the things that most lawyers lack is communicating the value to the employer to the employee. So you know that what you’re paying is competitive, you know that you’re offering them something extra by taking them to association meetings and letting them get their their feet wet, or letting them get published or giving them exciting cases that they’re not going to get in other places, they don’t know that. It’s our responsibility. Just like when you’re selling a prospect, the prospect has to perceive your value to hire you, it is not their job to instinctively get your value, because you’re so fabulous, it’s your job to communicate your value. So the same thing applies with your employees, right, they are in a way choosing to purchase you, they’re choosing to buy into your firm every day that they come to work. So you have to let them know, right? When you talk about what your business is what they’re doing, people don’t want to own a job, they want to own a piece of what they’re creating, especially lawyers, because lawyers are very, we did not go out and get this very difficult degree, and get this very challenging job with all of the stress and all of the frustrations and all of the ethical rules, we didn’t go get that so that we could make a nice wage, most people had something greater that they wanted to do. And if you don’t play to that, if you don’t let people know, listen, I’m not just giving you a check here, unlike firms down the street, I’m going to teach you x or unlike, you know, firms across the road, I’m going to contribute towards certain expenses for you, I’m going to give you a certain experience of work, people will ask right your associates, you know, it’s been a long time for us. But you know, think about when you were an employee, right? You were always out there in the marketplace, right? You can’t keep your associate in the office, you know, just behind closed doors, they’re gonna go out and interact with other lawyers and other lawyers are going to be talking about their experience. And lawyers tend to be more negative minded. So they’re going to talk about what’s wrong. And then when your associate encounters that they’re going to hear, huh, over here, you’re getting paid peanuts, I’m getting peanuts. Plus, over here, you’re not getting to go out of the office other than to go to court, I’m getting to go on bar trips, I’m getting to have exposure to things, they don’t realize that value, you have done yourself a disservice because you have essentially expected them to know what you are worth and people just don’t function that way.

Seth Price
You know, again, this is something Jay and I spend countless hours talking about. But what do you want? Do you want somebody like I would love if my attorneys all went out and generated their own work in addition to what we gave them. But what I have found is that very often the person who makes a good practitioner may or may not have that drive. And are you good with that saying, You know what, I am going to let this person just do that to come back to your original point. So that you can go out and build that if there was interest, that’s great, and sell them on the value. But understanding that if you try to get as my law partner says round peg square hole, if you’re trying to do it, just to check the box, it won’t work, you’ll take them to the first meeting, but they’ll sit in the corner and you’re not going to work the room versus where you’d be better off saying hey, you sit here and produce, you know, produce work product, and I’m going to make sure you have a percentage of upside. You know that that keeps it competitive, and not even like not doing the pretend dance that everybody will be a rainmaker To me that’s something I’ve struggled with. I know Jay, we’ve talked a lot about this. What are your thoughts? That’s on knowing when it really isn’t going to be the person who does that. And not, you know, if they don’t want to do it, and you’re not going to pretend that it’s something they should be doing.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so I think what I should be clear about is when I talk about getting your lawyers out of the office, I’m not talking about solely for the purpose of generating clients, there is a value depending on your practice area, you know, it varies like just like me, in criminal defense, you need to have a relationship with the prosecutors, you need to have a relationship with the judges, family law is my primary practice area. And in family law, it is very much about brokering the best deal. And you do that through relationships with other lawyers. So a lawyer who does nothing other than sit in an office and draft paperwork is not very valuable to me, because shitty paperwork, pardon my French with a great relationship can get a great deal for a client, beautiful paperwork with all of the perfect legalese in there, and all of the citations and all of the thorough legal arguments that half the judges are not going to get around to reading doesn’t do much. So there’s, you have to figure out where your assets are with your people. And then you have to use them to the fullest extent of what they can bring to the role. And you’re right, most of them are not going to be bringing in a whole bunch of clients. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have a great, there’s a greater value to you if they’re able to network and have certain relationships with certain judges so that they can get a higher premium on what they say in a courtroom, that they’re not going to be able to get a better deal if they’re able to have the right experts, and know how to say things in a certain way to the experts based on knowing those people. And so family law is just a very social area that really is the capital of our practice area. But in other practice areas, personal injury, real estate, you’re going to also have to have some level of relationships. So those relationships is really what I’m talking about brokering not necessarily the business generation side,

Jay Ruane
you know, I, when I ever interview anybody, I talking to my partners, we always try to cast our associates 50% legal ability, 50% personality and relationships, because I say 50% of what we do is practicing relationships, and 50% is practicing law. So it’s great to hear other people’s other people have that that same mindset.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and look, and the reality is, you spend a lot of time with these people that we work with, right? If I don’t like you, that’s probably okay. Because I don’t have to spend so much time with you. But my team has to like you. So as a part of my interviewing process, I’m the last person who has to sign off on somebody, there’s layers that, you know, before they get to me, they get to everybody else. And there are people that have come into my office that others that I love the resume, and I love the screening phone call. But then they came in and met with people and they rubbed some people the wrong way. I said, well, listen, you’re going to be the one training I’m not me. So you don’t like they’re going to be my headache. I’m not bringing them in.

Seth Price
Let’s get family law specific for a second. You know, I’ve tried to scale a bunch of different practice area verticals in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and family law has been one of the most challenging for me, you know, the family law lawyers present company included, it’s a difficult role, because you have to deal with the nonsense of your client, the opposing client opposing counsel, and the people that end up in this long term that takes a heavy toll is that how do you balance the person who has the bedside manner to deal with your own client, but still the battle, you know, readiness to be able to go to battle for these people? It seems that it’s a difficult thing to bring together as one that other areas of practice, you have what you’re battling outward against the prosecutor, but the rest of your world is sort of feeling client relations. Here, you have a lot more, it’s much more dynamic. Have you found that that is a more I mean, you have compared to others, but it seemed like a very difficult puzzle to put together at scale.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so I’ve never had this question before, ironically, and I get interviewed by marketers, for family lawyers and by by coaches for family lawyers. But what this is what I would say about it, it is a very unique blend, a person who is a family lawyer, but one of the things that we don’t get as much of in the family part is trial work. And I am a trial lawyer, I spent most of my career trying cases people knew that when I showed up, it was time to fight. I didn’t want to negotiate, I don’t enjoy negotiating. So one of the things that I would always do, wherever I worked is I would say, Here you go figure out pick up and drop off at whatever time and then when that breaks down and somebody’s ready to have a trial, you come find me because that’s what lights me up. Other family lawyers, most family lawyers don’t like that. So when I go looking for somebody, if I was to hire someone like me, who has a little bit of an octane, we’ll say, who likes to have that fight who gets that high that adrenaline rush and seeks that that person is probably not going to work for you or middle class America who needs to divide up to kids a house and a pension and needs to negotiate out a lot of the issues because a court is not going to give you the trial time or when you get to trial time it’s going to be after the people have run through all their money. So Do you have to find people that are octane enough to be able to be zealous advocates not weak, they can’t be soft and mellow to the point where they don’t have any ability to have a gumption about themselves for the client. But you also can’t go to the other end of the pendulum, and there’s that middle ground. And every once in a while, yeah, you get somebody like me who has a little bit of all of it, right, I can negotiate if I have to, I don’t like it, but I will, I like to go try the cases, if I can’t go try the cases, I still want what’s best for my client. So you have to you have to gauge people’s personality, where they fall. And unfortunately, because family law is very interpersonal, judges don’t like to try the cases, they really pressure you to settle, you’re gonna have to find people that want to do that, if you want to find if you want to staff up a family law firm. And then you need to have a couple people that are kind of on the either end of it, right? The people that are so mellow, that they’re really the mediators, they play the middle, they know how to broker deals with being nice and soft spoken and passive and laid back and easygoing, and people like them, and you have to have like, you know, a couple pimples. So if you think about it, just like a bell curve, you’re gonna go for the far end of the bell curve that’s really laid back the far end of the opposite. And that’s really, really rambunctious, we’ll call it and then you get that spread in between. And you have to have enough of that so that you can move people around when personalities clash, when asset structure becomes an issue. So level of complexity becomes a concern, and you have to get people that have more experience in that area. So I mean, it’s a process, but it is building it like one step at a time. And every time you add a person, you take yourself that much further out of what’s necessary.

Seth Price
You know, we could go on forever, Jay, get the last question.

Unknown Speaker
So really what I sort of want to come back full circle and, and ask you a question, sort of wrap this up? Do you believe that a law firm or a lawyer or a solo lawyer can be satisfied just being a solo lawyer, and be able to get what they want out of this practice? So many people seem to want to grow and scale because they think that’s what’s required of them. But I have found that maybe taking a step back and not being as big as other people are, is maybe the right path in your coaching? Have you run into people who’ve come to the realization? I’m good, I just wanted other things because other people had them. But it’s not necessarily what I had. And I want a little talk about that sort of mindset. Because I think it’s important for people to to really know what they want, and how do they get there? How do you help them get there is really the last question I have for you.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so that’s a great question. Jay, one of the things that I would say is that most of the people that I encounter that say they don’t want to grow, are running away from growing. In other words, they have screwed it up so much, they’ve cost themselves so much money, it’s mentally exhausting, they don’t know how to manage people, they don’t want to try anymore. And they just accept that they should be solo. And that’s the only way to be happy. Those are the vast majority of people that say I don’t want to grow. But there are people that want their creativity, want their money, want their efforts put somewhere else. So in other words, they want to have the practice, but that’s not really what’s feeding them, right. And they make most of their money through passive income investments, like you know, you know, either day trading, which really isn’t passive, but you know, they have, they have a skill for that, or maybe they’re investing in real estate, so they’re making the money somewhere else. So you can definitely have that desire. And if you have that desire, we can help you create that. But the way that you are never going to be truly happy is if your business requires you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you might not have to add other lawyers, but you do have to add other humans, you need somebody to process the mail, you can’t be the one who’s pushing the paper and stuffing the envelopes and creating the legal arguments and generating the clients and marketing the firm like there’s only so many hours in the day. So whether you’re going to be outsourcing the legal work, which tends to be a more profitable way in the short run. Once you get over the hump of getting everybody in a role. Once you start outsourcing legal work, you can start making scale of a few $100,000 with a higher as opposed to 10 or 15 or $20,000 with a higher but if you want to be that tech, you know the tactician and you want to be doing the work, then you have to outsource that other work the you know, the legal secretarial work, your your marketing activity, you have to get the right people that are processing your phones and your intake, but you’re still going to have to get those functions running without you and systematize so that when you are loitering, you’re loitering and when you’re not loitering, you’re able to go on vacation without everything falling apart.

Jay Ruane
Yeah, I think the myth of the lawyer with a legal pad and a pen to run their practice is is a myth. It’s historical, and it’s not what we live in the world today.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, definitely. At least not but that’s a great thing though, because now people can lawyer from anywhere in the world, and they can access their electronic files from anywhere in the world. And they can send things out to their clients without having to physically be at a place where they’re able to get access to a mailbox. So there’s a lot of value in the technology. And people just have to learn how to leverage it. And they have to be willing to in order to create freedom for themselves. But yeah, you can do that whether you are super solo, or you have a big team, you have to decide what you want, but you shouldn’t run away from it. Just because you screwed it up in the past, you should get some help.

Jay Ruane
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Alison. Seth, I’ll leave it to you.

Seth Price
No, no, we’ll can’t can’t wait to have you back. It’s always great. Check out Alex at the law firm mentor on Facebook. If you get an opportunity here speak, I changed my world and gave me great ways to think so thank you so much for being Allison,

Jay Ruane
what’s your website for the listeners and the viewers so that they can get to it if they want to connect with you?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me here. It’s been awesome. If anybody wants to reach me, you can reach me at law firm mentor.net online.

Jay Ruane
Awesome. Thank you so much. Allison, thank you for being with us today. We’d love to having you can’t wait to have you back.

Unknown Speaker
All right. Thanks a lot, guys. Bye.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, well, that’s gonna do it here for us at max growth live. As always, if you want to take us along with us, you can get us on our podcast, which is a podcast edition of this show. through any one of your podcasting platforms, Spotify, Apple, podcasts, Google podcasts, whichever one is your favorite, you can get that for us. If you have a question, please let us know below, we’ll happily address your questions in future segments. Like I promised, here is the number for local services, ads setup, it is 650-260-5700. That’s the number I got from the people at Google to contact them about your local service ads. We’ve got a bunch more great things coming up. But Seth, I’m going to leave it to you to end the show. Take us out.

Seth Price
Now look, a lot of things changing, keeping an eye on what’s happening, knowing it’s not a day to day thing. But if we’re looking at q4 q1 of next year, local service ads certainly gonna be playing some piece of that puzzle. And great to hear from Allison. She keeps her finger on the pulse of that early law firm growth. And it’s not easy. It I remember for ourselves, you’re taking a leap? And I think the question is, can you take a calculated leap of faith rather than one that just drained you of resources? So my gut is like most things in life is somewhere in between waiting to the last minute like you guys do? Probably not right? For most people being as aggressive as we have been overtime, probably, you know, not right. But when you know that you see that on ramp and you know that work is coming, that’s going to be more than you can handle. The key is can you get yourself to the point where you’re not sapping yourself of either resources or profitability by adding somebody but rather getting yourself to the point where you can expand your marketing pie and allow it to be monetized through that additional person. That’s the sweet spot. Yeah. And

Jay Ruane
you know, in listening to Allison’s points today, and knowing you for the years and the things that you’re saying, I’m thinking to myself, boy, I created so much more work for myself than I really needed to if I, if I hired a couple of years later, instead of taking those, you know, green lawyers right out of law school, that type of thing. I didn’t know that ABA statistics about lawyers changing every four years. I kind of wish I did, because if I look back at my history, I’ll see that but you’ve given me some great advice over the years. And I certainly, certainly need to listen to you, Seth a little bit more, when you say hey, stop what you’re doing, and try it this way. Because I think that’s very helpful. And you’ve been a mentor to me and, and to a lot of people. So thank you for that.

Unknown Speaker
So with that this has been a guy, good, I’ll give you the last ride

Seth Price
back, you put a Facebook post the other day about playing the PPC game 11 years ago. And it’s like, you know how much things have changed. It’s no longer as it’s no longer I would say is easy. But there it is, is gotten much more technical. And I feel that having these discussions where we can talk things out that the mistakes we made before, didn’t have the same consequences as when you’re paying 50 $60 a click. Whereas before that might be a lead, the world has changed and it’s become more competitive, and that looking for the different angles in order to make a buck becomes that much more. So I’m thrilled to have this conversation with you on a weekly basis.

Jay Ruane
Awesome. And I’m looking forward to hanging out with you again next Thursday set so for that, we’ll say bye. And we’ll see you next Thursday on another edition of maximum growth live.