Today we’re sharing a live from the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group with Jim Hacking and a panel of 5 guests including Shawn Hamp, Josh Goldstein, Chelsie Lamie, Marco Brown, and Megan Zavieh who share their experiences and opinions on operating a remote office.
Watch the recording here.
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Transcript: “Opening a Remote Office” Facebook live panel
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome, Judy show.
Jim Hacking
All right. Well, everybody, thank you for being here. I’m very excited about this. And the great thing about having maximum lawyer is, when you have something that you’re struggling with, you can get experts on the show, even those with US flags behind them, and get get them to give you advice about the things you’re wanting to know. And I’ve been working with Megan, especially. But I’ve talked to I think most of you about running an office remotely. And Marco was asking questions in the big group the other day. So I said, Hey, let’s have a jam session. We’ll go for an hour on Thursday, and we can talk about it. So why don’t we go around the horn, and everyone can talk about sort of how they got into the experience of having a remote office Marco, you can maybe talk about what you’re thinking about. And then and then we can sort of riff off that I know Marco has questions. And I probably still have some remnant questions, but I thought that this would be a good way. So Chelsea, you’re on my screen first, why don’t you start us off?
Speaker 3
Sure. Hey, thanks again for having me. Well, I started, I built a team, and systems and processes that allowed me to work remote from anywhere in the world. And I noticed around 2008 teen looking back to 2010, I was traveling about four to five months out of the year total. And based on that I decided, you know, I had all the systems I have the processes, the procedure, the people that what if I can do it five or six months out of the year? Why can’t I do it? 12 months out of the year, you know, why am I continuing to shove six people into 1000 square foot building, or space and pay rent and, you know, feel guilty that I’m not there sometimes. And so it just it just was a natural progression. For me if I could do it for five or six months out of the year, I knew I could do it for 12. So in 2018, I moved to Mexico, I’m actually in our Mexico home right now. And this is where I have run my Florida personal injury law firm exclusively since 2018. I still travel a couple months out of the year abroad. But it’s just this is where I live. Now this is where I’m raising my kids. This is this is my life. And I used to pre COVID I think we’re going to hear the term pre and post COVID a lot today, pre COVID, I was going back at least once every four to six weeks for about a week. But during COVID and in the aftermath of COVID orders, we’re continuing with COVID I really don’t have to go back at all anymore. Everything that I’m doing is virtual. I do have two trials set for January and February back to back. But I have a sneaking suspicion with the COVID numbers in my state of Florida, that those are not going to happen in person. So we’ll we’ll see what happens.
Jim Hacking
Great. Thank you, Chelsea. And I mean, that all of you have been on the show before. So that’s fine. And I didn’t specifically ask Chelsea but she covered it anyway, when you when you guys go go ahead and talk about who you are, what kind of practice area you have, where you live and where you practice. Okay, so Shawn, let’s go to you next.
Shawn
Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me. My name is Sean Hamp. I am a criminal defense attorney with a practice in northern Arizona. And I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I have lived in Cincinnati for four years. I moved in 2016. Essentially, I decided to move to Ohio because my wife’s from Ohio. And she always wanted to move back back home. So back in 2015 2014, we started actively planning on moving back back East. And back then I basically developed a bit I basically bought some it some cloud software, so I could practice remotely. I also started to figure out which courts in cases I could handle remotely by calling in and phoning it in. For a lot of cases. I also made some key strategic hires. Before I moved, I hired an experienced attorney to join my practice. What after I moved essentially what happened was, I would travel back to Arizona about every six weeks to do court hearings, but I thought I was gonna scale back my practice. But what ended up happening is I ended up growing my practice and I basically grew my practice to the point now where I’m essentially like a managing attorney, handling the administration, the intake and the marketing work for the firm. So I think that working remotely is is basically allowed allowed me to grow into my position, where I’m essentially, you know, the managing partner for the firm. And I now have a 10 employee firm. I scaled up from two attorneys up now or to five. So we’ve essentially instead of scaling back, we ended up growing. And I think I would, I would credit the fact that I don’t since I don’t practice law full time, I would credit the growth to my firm, to the fact that time to grow the practice and handle intake day to day. So pre COVID. Well, I’d say this when I was at when I was actively practicing law, I would travel back to Arizona every six weeks, once I hired an associate that essentially replaced me myself. I started going back to Arizona, like once a quarter, quarterly. Since COVID. Is is hit this year, I only went back to Arizona one time during the pandemic. And I’ve only been Arizona twice this year for my practice. And I guess I don’t know when I’m going to fly back to Arizona because of the pandemic. I was hoping to do it this winter. But I don’t think it’s counting. It’s happening. So I’m hoping things get better in the spring. And I’ll get to use my airline miles and but that’s essentially my story. Thanks.
Jim Hacking
Thanks, Shawn. All right. So let’s go over to Megan’s ova Megan. And I met on stage at Clio a while back. And she’s been a great resource for those of you don’t know, she’s a lawyer for lawyers. And she’ll tell you about her practice. But Megan, tell us about where you live and your practice. And and I’ll just give a plug out if you have any kind of California ethics questions, Megan has been extremely helpful for me. She has not charged me nearly enough for the value that she’s given me. But I really appreciate you being with us, Megan. So go ahead.
Speaker 5
Oh, thanks for having me, Jim. So like Jim said, I am a lawyer for lawyers. I represent other lawyers primarily facing state bar disciplinary action in California. But also, that’s not Jim’s problem. The other part of my practice, which is really fun, is helping lawyers who are trying to develop something new. And it really runs the gamut, things that are not traditional brick and mortar law, local serving law practices. As soon as you get outside that area, there’s all kinds of ethics questions that lawyers have. So I advise lawyers on how to do things their own way and differently, which is what I’ve done a lot of myself. So I was born and raised in California. But when I did my federal clerkship in New York, and then worked there for a long time, hold big law securities litigation. So I’m admitted in New York and New Jersey, and then moved back to California, thinking that I was going to continue working for the big firm. And that was when the recession was hitting in, I guess it was end of 2007, beginning of 2008. And I had the opportunity to start representing lawyers at the State Bar started out as a personal issue for someone close to me. And I went, Wow, I actually really, really love this work. And then we moved to Australia. And so I was like, Well, okay, I really love what I was doing. And now we’re halfway around the world. So I started my virtual practice. Before, it was really a thing that we didn’t talk about virtual offices, the State Bar lawyers knew I was in Australia, and the judges knew I was there. And they basically, were doing me a favor letting me appear by phone all the time. And it was it was just not really something that people talked openly about. But then I moved from Australia to Georgia. And that was kind of when we realized we were never going back to California. So I thought of trying to work in Georgia. And that’s when I learned that in the south, the State Bar disciplinary system is super genteel, and they’re like, Oh, you have a complaint. Let’s see if it’s out. And if you work it out, like oh, we’ll just destroy any record of there ever having been a complaint. And that’s so awesome for practicing lawyers. And it’s really terrible for someone whose practice thrives on basically a really intense prosecution process, which California has. So I’ve continued to work for California lawyers. It’s now been eight years that I’ve been in Georgia, I have no intention of leaving Georgia. And so I also have no intention of changing my practice. So it’s a long term commitment at this point to a virtual practice to California. I used to travel some, it got less and less basically, as I got better at my job, because I found that there were more appearances I could do by phone, and a lot more that I could accomplish without actually being present. So I pretty much only traveled to California for trials, which were infrequent and occasionally settlement conferences. If I was being ineffective, I found and I felt I needed to be there. So already my travel was relatively minimal. And I had perfected the day trip to both San Francisco and LA, which was kind of nightmare but much better for my family. If I wasn’t away overnight. Now, even trials are being held remotely by zoom. I know others in my field are also moving out of state, but continuing to practice there. And we’re giving a lot of feedback to the State Bar court about how great this is to do it by zoom. And I really hope that when the world is completely back to normal, we still get to do this by zoom.
Jim Hacking
That’s interesting. So this is sort of actually helped your practice become more flexible?
Speaker 5
Oh, it’s great. I mean, I used to see a trial coming down the pike and be like, Hmm, do I really want to take this case like that it was a big consideration, beginning of, of 2020. We, my assistant, and I made some goals for the year and one line item was how many nights away from home because that’s a big strain. I have four young kids, and it’s just, it’s just a pain when I’m away. Well, obviously, I’ve rocked that goal. But like my husband was saying, just the other day, I have two more trials coming and like, you know, I don’t love trial work. It’s not the thing that really floats my boat. And I was like, great. I got more trials, because yeah, but you get to do it from the basement like Hello, take on all the trial work you want now. So it has worked out well for my practice this year.
Jim Hacking
Nice. All right. Let’s go to Josh Goldstein.
Speaker 6
How’s it going? Everybody? Yeah, so I’m Josh Goldstein, and I practice immigration law. And I live here in Los Angeles, in the hills of Los Angeles. And for it’s interesting, because when I signed up to be on this call, I thought it was pitched to me as how to open an office somewhere else. But when I saw the notice, it says how to have a virtual office. I think that’s a very interesting distinction. When I made the decision to move from Boston, to California. And even before the pandemic, I sort of thought of my firm as having to branch offices, to brick and mortar kind of offices where people would come in, and there’d be a physical office and with the pandemic, to some degree, I think everyone’s office is virtual. If you pay attention to the pandemic, and you take it seriously then, to some degree, everyone’s virtual, but I made the decision to move from Boston to California for really, for personal reasons. My wife got pregnant, and we just gotten married. And we had a terrible blizzard in Boston. And I had gone to college in California, and I had a client in California, and I just, I had been in the same building in Boston since 2003. And I moved, I guess, in 2015. And I just wasn’t unhappy in Boston. Personally, I just sort of had this itch. Like, I kind of want to kind of live somewhere else, you know, I want to try this out. And I, it seemed so daunting, because this is a cool resource, like Jim said, when he opened up but I mean, in 2015, who Who do you? I’d have no one to run this by because there’s no, like, I didn’t know anybody that had ever done anything like this. And so I kind of had to make it up on my own, which is what I’m still doing. But now I have an office in Boston and office in California, and my entire office is virtual. So everybody’s working from home with laptops. And you know, we we don’t meet with clients face to face. I had someone recently who, just this week I really wanted to take on her case. And she said, Look, I want to hire you. But I just I have to meet you in person. I don’t feel comfortable doing this over the phone. And I said, well, sorry, I’m not gonna meet you face to face. I don’t want to get the Coronavirus. I don’t want you to get the Coronavirus. I take it seriously, super seriously, I have a family of a lot to live for. So take your money and your case that I want and go away and go hire someone else. And then she hired me.
Jim Hacking
Of course she did. Nice. Thank you, Josh. All right. So our next guest is the one who started this whole thing. And I’m going to turn it over to him. He’s always hard to get an opinion out of him. I’m sure he’ll be quite the wallflower and not be willing to ask any questions. But Marco is a very successful family law attorney in Utah and Marco, I’m basically going to turn it over to you to ask the questions that you wanted to ask. I’ve assembled the brightest minds, I know on these things. I’m only here as a facilitator and someone who’s opening an office. I haven’t even done it yet. But I’m opening an office on January 1. So I’ve done a lot of the work yet, but I can’t I can’t give any logistical tips, though, once it’s up and running. So that’s why I wanted to get these smart people here with us. So with that, Mark, why don’t you tell everybody about yourself and what you’re thinking of doing? Okay,
Marco Brown
thank you, Jim. Thank you very much for putting this together. This is fantastic. It’s such a great resource for everybody. So yeah, my name is Marco Brown. I’m a divorce attorney in Salt Lake City. I started this in 2010 with absolutely nothing and have made this work through lots and lots of hard work just like everybody here to the point where like Shawn, I do not do the day to day cases anymore. I, I own the law firm and I run the law firm. I have legal teams that do the work. And one thing I noticed is just personally, why is that the kind of ideology of this, I have some satellite offices here in Salt Lake. So there are some cities about 40 miles away north and south and open offices there. And they do okay, but they’re not doing great. And it’s harder now for me to get clients in those cities than it was for me to get clients in Salt Lake when I first started Salt Lake, so I thought it was spending money on this. And I thought to myself, well, maybe this isn’t the best play for me maybe the best place to go to a different state in the largest metropolitan area and compete there, right. It’s counterintuitive, but maybe that’s the way that I should go because this other thing isn’t working. So the question I asked about starting offices was really okay, how do I do this? Because I never tried it before. And really, it’s a logistical question for for me, like, how do you make this work? I mean, I’m to the point where I don’t even know if I have to be barred in these different states, because I know that large firms do this sort of thing. And not all the people are barred and like how does that function? So that’s really what I’m trying to get out of this is like the how to have the whole thing. And as I’ve, as I’ve looked at it, it seems like other people have the same sorts of questions. So I, I’m, again, thankful for, for the panel to discuss this. But I guess we can start there. Other than, you know, federal where you can practice anywhere, if it’s state specific, do you have to be barred in every state as the owner of the law firm? Or do you just have to have somebody there in the law firm that works, that is barred in the state?
Speaker 6
I can take, take it away at this. So immigration is a quirky issue in practice area, because it’s a federal administrative area of law. And there’s a Supreme Court case, Florida bankruptcy attorney was practicing in the State of Florida State Bar tried to shut him down. And he’s and he went, took it to the Supreme Court. And he won, I think it’s Sperry v. Florida, I’m not sure. But basically, if you have a federal practice, like immigration or bankruptcy, then you can practice in a different state with subject to restrictions and so on. And you have to follow the state ethics. But I think that’s a question that depends on State Bar ethics. And I think it’s great idea to get an attorney who specializes in state ethics, to give you some advice on how it works in your jurisdiction. And I mean, like, if you’re going to open an office in state X, and you live in state, why do you How are you? Have you passed the bar? Are you licensed in that state? Can you get admitted through reciprocity or some other means? And if not, then I think you want to run it by a lawyer who really knows these issues? That’s what I would do. Like,
Jim Hacking
can you talk
Speaker 5
about that? Yeah. So I mean, Josh was absolutely right. To the extent you know, there’s an actual state that you’re going to operate in, you know, I always recommend that people get ethics advice, specific to that state. And April is the organization, the National Organization for ethics lawyers, the Association of Professional Responsibility lawyers, and their websites, aprl.net, you can find a directory there of lawyers who do this work state by state, and then what type of work they do, because, believe it or not, there’s a ton of sub specialties within ethics. And like some people do admissions cases, some don’t some give opinion letters, some don’t. So that, you know, first off is always where I would start. But generally speaking, it’s doing the work in the state where that matters in terms of bar licenses. So you can own a firm, be the sole owner have all the profits come to you, without being admitted in every state in which the firm operates. So long as the individuals doing the work in those states are licensed to practice there. So if you’re serving the clients in Utah, and you’re practicing Utah law, then those people have to be admitted in Utah, then if you have a New Mexico office, and that’s where you live and work and you’re barred there, then you can do substantive work there. So generally, that’s how it works. And we’re seeing that, from a regulatory perspective, when we’re discussing non lawyer ownership of law firms. That’s obviously a big hot topic in the ethics world. And we have non lawyer ownership permitted already in DC, it has been for a long time, and now it’s, it’s changing, the landscape is changing Arizona, Utah, perhaps at some point California, starting to change those rules. And that leads to the very question, really, that you’re posing as well, what if Now, what if a non lawyer partly owns a firm and it’s fine in the jurisdiction where the firm is headquartered and where that person lives? But now they opened a satellite office in a state where non lawyer ownership is not permitted, can they share in the fees that come from that state? And so that’s really where we see this being an issue that people are really talking about more than just lawyers owning a practice in another state because people don’t like I don’t I just I guess wasn’t too sexy when it was just lawyer lawyer, but now that we’re talking on lawyer ownership, suddenly that issue has blown An up into kind of a hot topic. And so far what we’re seeing is so long as it’s okay. In that headquarters where you live in work as the non lawyer, partial owner, it’s going to be okay for other fees coming to you from states in which that type of ownership arrangement is not permitted. But I think that just sort of highlights that this is an issue to discuss with someone in the states where you’re going to operate to ensure that it’s okay.
Speaker 6
One more thing I would add is there are some practical considerations aside from ethics. Like, for example, in US District Court, in Federal District Court for the Central District of California, they have a very specific local rule that permits who can appear in that court, and they don’t want any, anyone who lives in California who does not have a local law license to step foot in that court. So you can’t get admitted pro hac, DJ, you can’t nothing. And so I get a lot of cases in federal district court in DC, where the attorneys will just refer transfer the case to Central District of California. And I have no ability to represent the clients directly because I’m not licensed in California. I am seeking a license in California, and I somehow passed the bar and waiting on my final paperwork, which seems like it’s taking really takes a very, very long time as Megan can speak to. But yeah, I mean, there could be little quirky things like that, that you have to think through.
Marco Brown
Okay, so I’m hearing on the state specific question, you have to go in and really get with a, an ethics lawyer in that state to determine exactly what the ownership rules are and things like that. Now, a follow up question to this is, Shawn, I think he had referred to the fact that he’s doing consults and if that’s incorrect, the you correct me. But that’s kind of what I do at this point. That’s the last thing that keeps me physically present in the office is doing consults. So doing consoles, is that considered the practice of law? Then maybe Megan can can speak to this, from what she knows that consider the practice of law in these in the states that she knows about,
Speaker 5
generally speaking, yes. I mean, unless all you’re doing is gathering information, you know, we see that like with, you know, sending a paralegal to do an intake interview. Well, they can’t give legal advice. So that’s not practicing law. If it’s done, right. It’s just gathering information. I think most of us not really what we mean when we say we’re doing a consultation are usually providing feedback or giving some guidance, some advice. So it is practicing law. Now, that leads to the follow up ethics question being like Shawn’s talking about being in one state and your practices in another and your clients state where you’re barred, where you maybe you have a physical office, maybe you don’t, but you’re practicing law of that state in which you’re licensed. And your back just happens to be in a different state while you’re on the phone or on zoom with the person you’re talking to. So not in person consultations, but anything remote, which, I mean, honestly, I think I tell people this eight years ago, when I was doing this from Georgia, even if I was around the corner, there’s really no point in us sitting down across the table, we don’t need to. And nowadays, everyone seems to be doing these things remotely. So then it really becomes a question of that state where you are sitting, do they care that you’re sitting there while you’re practicing the law of the other state for some in the other state remotely. And generally speaking, most states don’t care. Florida is the notable exception, banner headline, always joke about the Disney World parents, you know how many of us have been to Disney World and taken a call or reply to an email on our phones. While we’re there. We’re not licensed in Florida, while Florida has taken a super hard line view of that, at times, I don’t know of any Disneyworld parents who prosecuted for the unauthorized practice of law firm stepping outside of space and getting on that call. But that has been their general approach. Most states, it’s really they just kind of can’t be bothered. Their residents aren’t impacted their state laws not impacted. It’s just generally not a thing. You’re not going to blessing of the State Bar, you’re not going to get one of them to say, oh, no, you’re fine. I’m sitting here in our state, but it’s just not something that they tend to take an interest in. That’s right. That’s right. Yes, sir. That’s great.
Speaker 6
Let me add one thing that I think might be give you a sense of an example of a state ethics rule that I’ve been very mindful of California and Megan can speak to this. If you’re not licensed to practice law in California, then the way that you communicate that to third parties and clients and other people, you have to make sure that you communicate that you’re not licensed in California. So on my email, it says not licensed in California. And on social media. It says not licensed in California. On my website, there’s a giant disclaimer this was not licensed in California, and in my representation agreements, etc. Everything says not licensed in California, because I want to make it abundantly clear to everyone and to state are a console that, you know, I’m not holding myself out as a licensed attorney who’s licensed in the state of California. Now, in your state or wherever you’re doing this, there could be other rules that are not like that. But it’s just something that came up. And people always ask me, okay, well, what does this mean, you know, and you have to talk about it, which is why I’m seeking a California law license. But
Shawn
arco, I wanted to share with you my experience with expansion, I decided to expand a few years ago, and I basically came up with a non equity partnership with an attorney I known for, since I started practice that he essentially was in the neighboring one of the neighboring counties. And he was very familiar with that, those counties and those local courts. So it was a very strategic partnership, when I did my expansion, to make sure I hired somebody who, you know, they weren’t going to be the face of the firm, but they are going to have the know how and experience in those local courts. And I felt it was very easy for me to scale up my marketing, because, you know, I had such a good online presence. And, you know, it just seemed like a natural fit to geographically expand to the other parts of the state. But for me, it was very important, since I wasn’t I wasn’t even in Arizona is important to have another attorney on the ground, who was very familiar with those courts. So from a marketing logistically perspective, I felt it was important for me to have, you know, a, an attorney on the ground who could could handle it. So, you know, because you mentioned about going into other other counties in your state, and now you want to make a play to go to different state, but I essentially I expanded by going into neighboring counties, and then I just made some key hires, to fulfill to to man those offices and staff those cases, and, you know, I was able to, you know, is able to take advantage of some things like, you know, like your IBO five star rating, or 10, star rating or whatever. I mean, that follows you, whether you’re in whether you’re in Arizona, or Ohio or wherever you open your practice, your Bible ratings gonna follow you and whatever other ratings you have out there in the in the Internet are going to follow you are going to help help scale up your practice. So that was my that was my strategic decision, when I decided to expand was to make sure at a key hire. And that allowed me to grow my firm, to have the role that I have in it, like as you experience yourself. So, you know, that was a strategic decision I made when I was expanding.
Marco Brown
Okay, great. So how does how does everybody handled consults on this topic? How do people handle consults, when they’re that far away? Because I, I’m an in person guy. So there any tips for for kind of expanding that either to use Zoom? Or you’re just really good on the phone? How did you get that way? I think I think that’s probably something that a lot of people are going to want to know.
Speaker 6
I mean, I can speak to that, just from my experience. I mean, right now, I’ve been basically working from home and my whole staff is working from home. So the notion of meeting someone in person to do a consultation is not something that I would do because of the pandemic. So I don’t do that. Even if somebody lives across the street, it’s going to be get on Zoom, or I can do it by phone. And, you know, if people don’t feel comfortable with that arrangement, and they want to meet me in person, then they gotta hire someone else, because I’m not doing that. So I think to some extent, my practice has become virtual because of the pandemic, regardless of my location and the client’s location. I mean, what’s the difference? If I had the the interactions are all a virtual for me anyway. So that’s the way I’ve approached it.
Speaker 3
I’m essentially completely removed myself from that. And I know that seems crazy to remove yourself from new clients, but it’s really worked and allowed me to scale my law firm, super quick, over the last three and a half, four years, I hired a new client advocate because you know, nobody wants to hear that the intake person is calling them they want to hear that the new client advocate is calling them. So I have an awesome new client advocate. And she’s responsible for answering the phones signing up talking to potential new clients, signing them up. And we when we went virtual in 2018, we sent everybody home every team member myself that new client advocate paralegals everybody went home to work. We secured some virtual space and it’s ridiculous. It’s like 50 bucks a month. 100 bucks a month to have lots of different addresses in different neighboring counties. And you know, the availability to rent Got a conference room for, you know, an hour here and there as needed for a very low rate. So our new client advocate answers the phones directs those calls. And then if it is an actual new caller, she can immediately go into the script, we have a 300 Plus page PowerPoint, that is my operations manual that tells each person how to do their job from start to finish with incorporated mergeable forms. And so she knows exactly what to say, for different cases, what questions to ask what information she must obtain what document She must get copies of, and we do everything before COVID, she was probably I’d say signing up about 70% of people in person and one of our setup in one of our virtual spaces. But once COVID hit, I immediately shut down any in person meetings, because I did not want to be responsible for a team member contracting the disease and then taking it home. And, you know, that’s just you know, forget the work comp issue is just a moral issue I didn’t want to mess around with so she now does 100% of our intakes completely online, either phone, or zoom, we utilize Docusign. We utilize email if we have somebody who can’t figure out Docusign. But it’s pretty simple. We’ve only had one person who couldn’t figure it out, and we made it work. So my advice is to remove yourself as much as possible. What I tend to do is if it’s a good time for me, and because we have a very intricate calendaring system, my team knows exactly where I am pretty much every minute of the day. Well, I can’t call Chelsea now because she’s driving the kids to school, and there’s no reception in the jungle. Whereas if you know, they know between 9am and noon, the kids are in school, and I’m sitting here getting some work done so they can give me a call. So they know when they can reach out and they can with pretty good accuracy. Tell the caller Okay, now that I’ve gotten all this done, would you like an opportunity to speak with Chelsea? And of course, yes, they do. And then she gets them on the phone, I’m on the phone, maybe 30, possibly 60 seconds maximum, giving them the quick 32nd down and dirty about how the case is going to proceed and what they can expect and what the timeframes are. Do you have any questions? Of course they don’t, because my new client Advocate has already done an awesome job explaining everything, they feel like they know me from the website, the videos, you know, talking to the new client advocate, then they got the 30 seconds with me on the phone. And sometimes that’s the last time I speak to them at all, if the case settles and we don’t go into litigation, I never even you know have to talk to them that you know, for their for their deposition or for anything else. They’re just excited at that point to get their money and to close their case and to and to move on with their life. So my advice is as much as you can to remove yourself. And I know that’s very counterintuitive. I used to meet with every single new client, every new perspective I talked to on the phone, and it ate up tons and tons of my time. And I found that you know, outsource it or you know, giving that or delegating that to my new client advocate, I have not lost a single person over it. And you know, we’re keeping everybody safe through COVID By not meeting in person. And my numbers just continue to go up. And when people think that you can’t get on the phone with them because you’re in trial or you’re talking to another client or you’re doing a deposition that raises your value. I think the attorneys who are answering their phones and are constantly available, that sort of lowering your value in their eyes.
Jim Hacking
Running your own practice can be scary whether you’re worried about where the next case will come from feeling like you’re losing control of your growing firm are frustrated from being out of touch with everyone working under your license, the stress can be overwhelming. We will show you how to turn that fear into a driving force of clarity, focus, stability and confidence that eliminates the roller coaster of guilt ridden second guessing and mistake making to get you off that hamster wheel for good.
Tyson Mutrux
Maximum lawyer and minimum time is a step by step playbook that shows you how to identify what your firm needs and how to proactively get it at every stage of the game. You’re prepped and excited for the inevitable growth that will follow. Name the lifestyle that you want. And we’ll show you how to become a maximum lawyer and minimum time. Find out more by going to maximum lawyer.com forward slash course.
Shawn
arco you know before I ever moved, I was always doing consults on the phone. And I never did in person consults. Because if I got like one or two no shows like that was the end of it. Like I wasn’t doing any more in person consults. And with criminal defense people pretty much make a decision right away. And they don’t want to wait till they have to come in and do the consultation. So for criminal defense, I’ve always done them by phone for 13 years. And recently, I also figured out unfortunately that my conversion rate it didn’t seem to matter whether I was doing the console or my staff was doing it. So I follow Chelsea’s advice is to remove yourself. I remove myself in situation because I don’t think it necessarily you know improves the conversion rate. I only do it if I think on a case by case basis if I think it’s going to help you know make the conversion make make the sale, so to speak. I’m not on the front line of the intake process, I have an intake receptionist, an answering service and an intake specialist who’s also my office manager. And between the three of us, you know, we kind of work work the intake the leads, and then, you know, if I get involved, it’s usually because I’m sending him a quick tax, like, Hey, I got your message, I want to help you. Or I do a call, if it’s a if it’s a really good case, high value case. And I think that’s what’s going to let that’s what’s needed to cinch it. You know, I’ll go ahead and make that phone follow up phone call. But ultimately, it’s going to be, you know, one of my partners are my associate associates that are going to handle the case. So at some point, I have to hand it off to them anyway. So it’s my experience.
Marco Brown
Okay. What’s the best hire you made when you were making this transition to, you know, having these offices in different places? Like, what was that one thing, I could not be without this person that I hired.
Speaker 3
Like, I just talked a lot, but I’ll jump back in. So every, every person I hire is my best hire, if they’re not my best hire, they’re not getting hired, I have a very small team on purpose. The woman who is currently running my pre litigation department started for us in 2016, sweeping our floors for $12 an hour. What we saw in her was intelligence, grit, loyalty, and an extreme hunger to raise her family to a better level. And once we saw how smart she was, and that she could learn fast, and that she had great ideas, and that she was way under utilized in her current role we’ve started or an intake, and then once she shot from intake to pre lit to the head of our pre lit department, within three years, it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. But then I look back, and that’s my CEO, as well. You know, my CEO started as my pre litigation paralegal in 2008. And I saw again, in her loyalty, intelligence, you know, hard work ethic, just just everything that that that I knew would help me to build an amazing firm. And she went from being our pre litigation, paralegal to being my chief operating officer now. And I just, I would just give her more education, more training or support, more, you know, job duties, encourage that growth, reward with increased pay reward with, you know, you know, awesome treats and benefits. And then my litigation associate, I’d never had an associate. I’m like, doing a little happy dance over here, because I just got my first associate, a couple months ago, she was my paralegal. She was my litigation paralegal. From 2013. Again, I saw in her, you know, just raw intelligence, you know, good attitude, hard work, loyalty. And I knew that if I just kept investing in her, it would pay off and it did after, you know, six or seven years working for me, she had three kids back to back, you’ve got her a bar tutor got her to pass that bar. And she’s now basically essentially running up until two pretrial motions. She’s completely running my litigation department. So you know, every person we have, we hire very, very slow. We have a very intense hiring process that involves multiple phone interviews, pre COVID, it involves multiple in person interviews, a lunch with me a dinner and drinks with my team. Chemistry is everything. You know, attitude is everything hard work, and loyalty is everything. So my advice is to just hire extremely slow, really focus on not experienced so much, but as raw talent and motivation. Because I think, you know, John Morgan said it you can’t teach hungry.
Speaker 5
I was just gonna answer offer my two cents. I didn’t have anybody working with me for the longest time. I was honest people that all my friends were like, You need help. You need help. And I was like, no, no, I’m fine. I’m fine until I was like a week after not fine. And I, when I went to hire my first team member, I struggled with the hiring process, never done it before whatsoever. One job, I ended up hiring two people through the process, it was just like, oh, both of these I need to hire well, when didn’t last very long fired, or shortly thereafter. And what I learned from that was that the person who can really help with this unusual way of working, you know, it’s obviously gaining a lot of traction, but this is still not, this isn’t what people think of with a law firm. It’s the person who believes in it, who’s like, Oh, that is a weird problem we weren’t expecting here, let’s find a creative solution to it. The one that didn’t work out with me was just resistant to the whole thing. It was like, um, but this doesn’t fit my brick and mortar way of working. Oh, but you know, this is a problem. That means we shouldn’t be doing this. And so just having somebody open, who’s determined to help solve the problems, to me, that’s the key hire regardless of where they fit into your organizational structure. It’s that belief in what you’re doing and willingness to solve the problems. And so the person who, who said, who was, you know, that first hire is still with me, I routinely tell her, please never leave me. And her job has evolved. So similar to what Chelsea was saying, you know, I had this idea of the help I needed. And then she actually spotted new roles for herself. And she’d be like, Do you realize this could be better, and I could help with that, or this could be better. And actually, I can’t help with that. But I know who can. And so it wasn’t a job title. It was an attitude.
Speaker 6
Let me add something as well. My associate who’s been with me for a long time, is really crucial part of my firm. He said to me the other day, he’s like, I don’t really want to work remotely. I don’t like it. I want to be in an office with teammates in person. And I really respect what he had to say. And I share in many ways share that feeling. But I don’t think the pandemic is going to be over anytime soon. And maybe the vision that I have for the firm, I don’t really know. But it might just be that virtual is the way to go. And, and yeah, I mean, there are some real disadvantages to being completely virtual. And I get it that being in an office has lots of advantages, but I don’t know, it seems like kind of an antiquated notion, and they see a lot of drawbacks to it. So I don’t know what the solution is. So on
Jim Hacking
that note, how do you guys handle sort of like building camaraderie, and team, the team approach with people who aren’t in your same physical space?
Shawn
We use a lot online instant messaging in our office. We use Google Chat. I think it’s the name of the product. It’s like their Slack channel for Google. And, you know, our whole office is built off pretty much off the G Suite and in Google products, but we essentially have chat rooms, we share office news, case, news, we share new clients. So that’s how we stay in touch it because it’s not you know, I’m I’m across the country, but then I have the have different I have basically two manned staff offices, actually three, three staffed offices in Arizona. So they’re not all together in the same place. I mean, they’re dispersed across the state. So we stay in touch, basically, through incident communication. And that’s how we do it. I mean, it’s like, you know, virtually, we’re in that space, like my head’s in Arizona all the time, in these chat rooms. And that’s how, you know, we’re in the same place. So Shawn,
Marco Brown
how do you hire? I mean, do you go back to Arizona to interview people? Or how do you do that?
Shawn
So my first, my first partner, who I think was my key hire, you know, I recruited her when I was still in Arizona, then my first associate, after her, we basically did some online videos, I think, I don’t know, Zoom wasn’t a thing, then I think we did some G Suite or just a video, I did a video interview, and I think I’ve done some interviews where I sat in on it, and they actually put like, a laptop in the conference room, and I was appearing by video and, you know, set a load of people by that, by that way. So, you know, we did that as well. So but my first associate, yeah, either attended by video in the in the conference room or the associate, he was living in other part of the state. So we interviewed him by video. So I mean, you know, that other stuff was like so freaking, like, such a freaking novelty, you know, year or two ago, you know, now it’s just, it’s just the way in the world. You know,
Speaker 3
if you don’t mind, I want to jump in. Because y’all know, I’m crazy, crazy passionate about law firm culture. And the reason I feel like my team has been so successful, and we’ve had the great growth that we’ve had is because I really do focus on team building and culture. So my advice are, you know, sort of four point so I do daily check ins, weekly check ins, quarterly check ins and a yearly check in so to speak. Our daily is done via discord. So we can just everybody can chat. Same thing as slack and you know, all the stuff that that’s available. There’s lots of different products. So we’ll just you know, everybody’s on Okay. Does anybody need any help with anything today? Does anybody see any big problems, any deadlines, we all need to come together to meet and then weekly every Monday, we start off but 9am getting everybody on a zoom call? And I purposely spend the first 30 minutes of that Zoom call talking about nothing but personal stuff. I share any personal stuff I want to share. I asked how everybody’s weekend was You know, people will ask questions of each other what’s what’s going on in your life? How is you know that house you put up for sale? And it kind of seems counterproductive and counterintuitive, right? So we’re paying how many people how many dollars an hour to have a personal phone call for 30 minutes. You know, that seems crazy. But it’s not what’s crazy is not doing it. And then everybody does it individually, four times, or six times over with the other six people in the office, because people need to connect, and we happen to be an office full of women. But even if there were men in there, people have a need to connect into into bond. So we spend, you know, it’s a lot cheaper for me to spend 30 minutes letting everybody get their story out about their weekend, and whatever’s going on with them. And then the next 30 minutes of that Monday meeting, we transition to business. It’s also a great transition to let everybody know, okay, we’ve done the personal stuff. Now we’re all good. Now we’re focusing on business, let’s finish this, this meeting with business and then everybody goes on about their business, nobody needs to catch up and fill anybody else in six times over throughout Monday. So really does save money even though it seems counterintuitive. Quarterly, I fly back at least once a quarter for an in person bonding event, whether it’s a spa day, it’s an axe throwing it’s lunch, you know, we just spend the whole day you know, just having a good time and just just being together and focusing on that bond. And then yearly talked about it on the the max law podcast, I set an annual revenue goal. And if we meet our annual revenue goal, I take my entire team and a plus one on an all expense paid 10 day trip anywhere in the world that they all agree on. So you know, it was supposed to be Italy, it clearly did not happen. We had to pivot to Hawaii. And the year before it was Thailand, and the year before that it was a Hawaiian Islands. So you know, we just, that’s just a big thing that that really motivates everybody to even though they’re at home, they’re not sitting there watching likee Ricki Lake reruns eating bonbons, they are busting their butts because they know their trip to Tahiti next year is on the line. And it’s based on how hard they work every day. So that’s just my two cents, yay for team culture.
Speaker 6
For me, I think building the team culture and maintaining that has been a challenge because my firm has not been virtual until the pandemic. So we had a physical office in Boston, physical office in Los Angeles, I live in Los Angeles, I go back to Boston periodically. And you know, that team in Boston, they’re in that office every day working together, and it’s great. And then I show up, I’m making decisions. And I feel a little disconnected from that. So it’s a struggle. But now everybody’s remote. And I have three, three staff who are not even in Massachusetts, they’re elsewhere, and people are dispersed. But still, I think it is not easy when all of your actions interactions are remote. I mean, sure, communicating is fine. You have email, you have slack messaging, tools and stuff. But I think developing that personal rapport is a delicate thing to create. Right?
Shawn
We had a, we had to cancel our annual Vegas gathering, we’ve done that for a past couple years, we got to do some top golf, go do a CLE. Big dinner in Vegas, we had to cancel that this year. And then we’re canceling our Christmas party this year, I’m gonna have to come up with some sort of zoom, happy hour thing. But in normal years, that’s what I would do is we’d have some big gatherings to get together, and I’m gonna have to add X throwing to the list. I think that’s a good idea.
Speaker 6
One of the things that I would do in my office is we would we would often get lunch together. And I would order in lunch, and we would all sit down and chat. And so I tried to create a virtual version of that, and I kind of copied John Fisher, for his mastermind, they would go to these amazing dinners, and John has great tastes and restaurants and, and so I said, okay, just we’ll order food for you from wherever you want. And we’ll eat together in on Zoom. And it seems like that’s 2020 for you, right there. I mean, that’s the best you can do. Right? DoorDash or Uber Eats, whatever. We’ll do that and we’ll hang out. Alright, so I’ll just
Speaker 5
throw in there because I feel like all of you have done a bunch of in person things when you can. We didn’t even before COVID And so it’s a little bit different. We’re all virtual and intended to stay that way. So I haven’t even met most of my team in person, my assistant I have because she happened to be traveling through town one time, and we have lunch. So what we do is most of our communications on Slack like you’re all saying, you know that instant all day long, just being in touch with each other. But we have a standing call once a week on the phone, not video, because frankly, video just gets tiresome as everyone gets zoom fatigue, even before it COVID. We didn’t do it by video, I interviewed that way. But the weekly calls just by phone. And similar to what Chelsea was saying, we catch up, my assistant was living in an RV for the last couple of years. And so it was like, Hey, where are you? What time zone? Are you in? What happened with the RV this week? You know what broke down? Where do you go hiking. And so we always have that catch up. But there was something about just having a phone call, like even sometimes you like I really don’t have anything to talk to you about. Yeah, me either as far as business, but let’s hop on the call anyway, it was just a nice way to touch base. As far as the whole team, we have done a couple of zoom things, even pre 2020. Like I sent Starbucks gift cards to everybody one time and we did a coffee. So having something in person now and then or an in person or on on video, where you’re sharing an experience of some kind is fun. And of course, for all its crummy parts. 2020 has seen a boom in our ability to do some cool online stuff. So I think it’s an opportunity to kind of start to embrace some of that. I recently learned that the Spy Museum in DC does kid’s birthday parties. And I think they do adult things too. Or you hop on for an hour, I was reading a thing recently about a virtual escape room where you all get on Zoom, and you actually direct someone in the escape room of how to get out. Like there’s just a lot of really cool things you can do now for team building that, frankly, would never have been developed if we didn’t have COVID. So there’s a lot of opportunities, even whether you don’t want to get together in person because of COVID. Or it’s not possible, or you just don’t want to because your team isn’t like that.
Jim Hacking
All right, so thank you, Megan, we’re gonna have to go ahead and start to wrap I’m going to ask everybody. One last question. We’ll go around the horn, other than what we’ve already discussed. What’s your best piece of advice for Marco and I, as we embark on this project of having a second office out of state? I Joshy. Go ahead. I know you’re ready.
Speaker 6
Yeah, I mean, I think I don’t mean to be a downer. But I think you should think carefully about why you are doing this. What’s your motivation? What’s driving you to do this because having an office that’s in a completely different part of the country, from where you and your family live, is going to add some incredible complexity to your life. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it it yet. But I’m just saying you want to you want to be very clear about what you’re doing. Sort of like, it sounds really cool to have a celebrity client, right. But then when you actually get a celebrity client, it might not be very cool. And I know like a lot of times I’ve had to go to Boston, and I’m away from my kids, which is really, actually it’s really great to be away from my kids, but only for like one day or two days. But after that, I mean, it’s just a such a pain and the flight is six hours. So I’m not bitching about it, because that worked well, for me. And I’m glad that I did this. But you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to this, and you want to be very clear about why you’re doing it, I think,
Unknown Speaker
okay, cool. How about Chelsea? Sure.
Speaker 3
I think I would say, focus before you grow, if you can focus on your firm’s culture. Because if you don’t have a very tight knit organization where everybody is working together to achieve one goal, when you try to grow, build, do something in a completely different state halfway across the United States or for me across the world. And, and you’re not everybody’s on board, not everybody’s 100% on board, knowing where we’re all rowing this boat to, if you can’t do that, with what you’ve got now, tempting to do that well expanding is going to be is going to be a nightmare. Not saying you can’t do it, but I think it’s going to be a lot more difficult. So I would say before you grow, sort of shrink back for a little for a second, and make sure that you’ve got the right people, the right processes. And as Josh said, the right plan. And then once you know you’re solid, and you’ve got the right people in the right roles and the right processes and procedures, and you’ve got the culture that’s tight, and everybody’s rowing the boat in the same direction. That’s when I would go ahead and do something huge, like starting another firm in a different state.
Unknown Speaker
Awesome. Megan? Yes,
Speaker 5
my tip is actually really just simple. And that is when you’re going to live in one place and work elsewhere. Get a virtual address in the place that you want to attract clients to. And it’s an incredibly cheap thing to do. But when I started my practice, like that wasn’t I don’t know that it wasn’t a thing at all. It did exist because we were in Australia and we had a virtual address in Texas to receive our US mail. So I know that the existence of those services I was already there. But I was working in Georgia, trying to attract clients in California for a while before I realized that what I really needed was a California address. And so all the money you can spend on SEO and every other form of marketing, forget it, get a California address. And all of a sudden, oh, although says I’m in California, and someone’s searching for a California lawyer, they find me. And so there’s actually a lot of problems like that. So that definitely you should do. But also, there’s other problems like that, that have really simple, cheap solutions. So don’t assume everything’s going to be hard, you just may not you know, you’ll run into a problem, you just may not see yet the really simple solutions.
Jim Hacking
Nice. Alright, Sean.
Shawn
All right. Well, I want to thank everybody for allowing me to be on this panel, it’s real honor to be on the panel with the rest of you virtual law firm owners, but I, you know, what I’d say is, to someone that’s thinking about doing this, I know that you can, if you want to scale up, if you’re not trying to scale down, if you’re trying to scale up, you know, just grow your firm to the point where you gave yourself the position that you want. And that’s what I’ve done with my practice, you know, I’m not doing the day to day, and it allows me to have the lifestyle that I want. Because I’ve grown my firm to the point where I can manage, you know, my position. So if someone wants to grow if they’re trying to scale up, and that’s one reason why they want to have virtual firms, then I would my advice is to try to plan your growth, so that you could have the lifestyle that you want from your firm. Thanks.
Jim Hacking
Awesome. Well, let’s, let’s go ahead and wrap. Thank you, everybody, for being on the show. Marco, I’m gonna give you the last word.
Marco Brown
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say other than Thank you very much for doing this. I think this has been great to learn from everybody. And I hope I’m able to incorporate it as we expand. And what we do is really interesting work just as attorneys, but the ability to do this and to not be physically present anymore, I think is a serious game changer in in the United States as attorneys and I always tell people this that as I go around, and I travel because that’s how I deal with my stress. So I’m stressed a lot right now because I can’t travel. But as I go around, I travel and talk with attorneys in other countries, I realize how good we have it. As attorneys in America, we make a lot of money, we’re well respected. We’re not bureaucrats, for the most part. Like it’s amazing what we have, even in Italy, where I go all the time. And Chelsea one day, we’re gonna buy a house over there and kind of do what you’re doing. They don’t make a lot of money. They’re in a very bureaucratic system, and they don’t have the abilities to do what we do here in American, this the things we’ve been talking about here. So we’re all significantly blessed, and I’m just really happy to learn from everybody and to use this in the future.
