Shawn Hamp is the President and lead counsel for the Law Offices of Shawn B. Hamp, P.C. He has practiced for over 19 years with an emphasis in criminal law. As a former prosecutor, Shawn Hamp handled all types of criminal cases including, DUI/DWI, Drug, and Homicide cases. He brings his experience and dedication to serve those individuals in Northern Arizona accused of committing serious crimes.
Today we share his presentation, “Running a Remote Office” from MaxLawCon 2019.
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Transcript: “Running a Remote Office” with Shawn Hamp
Unknown Speaker
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.
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the show. In today’s episode, we’re throwing it back to a presentation from Max law con 2019.
Shawn
Our presenter, Sean HAMP, is a DUI and criminal defense attorney whose practices are in Arizona, but lives in Ohio. Shawn teaches us about working remotely and working profitably, let’s get to it. I’m glad I have the privilege of speaking to you at the end of the conference. Folks, I’m here I want to thank Jim and Tyson for putting this on. And I came last year to the maximum lawyer conference and got to meet Jim and Tyson. And they’re the real deal. And it was really sweet. And I got to meet a lot of good folks last year, got a lot of great ideas. And I think that’s the value of this conference is when you pick brains, and talk to other people. I love seeing you folks again this year and many new ones this year as kind of funny. When it came to the conference last year, I went on social media said hey, I’m really jazzed about coming and I put a put a thing on Twitter, or Facebook is like, Hey, I’m leaving CVG I’m going to be in St. Louis and can’t wait, you know, you know, put something up on there. So I get into town. And I get to go to the welcome conference that Jim and Tyson put on it was a nice spread. And I got to meet Jim and Tyson. And Jim is like, let me get this straight. You flew in from CVG? Mike. Yeah, yeah, I flew in from CVG. Because your practices in Arizona, Mike. Yeah, my practices in Arizona. Tell me that is how does that work? So I get that a lot. And I get that in this conference, because I have to explain it to everybody, but I’m gonna try to do my best. So I don’t know if you folks all know, anybody from the West Coast. All right, great west coast in the house. So I didn’t know where Cincinnati was. All I knew was W care P and Cincinnati. But I had I met my beautiful wife in Kingman, Arizona. She was waiting for bar results from a she’s an intern at the public defender. I was a prosecutor that became defense attorney. As a defense attorney. I saw her in court. I always wanted to do my best job whenever she was in court. So eventually, we got married. We had our first kid, and she always wanted to move back to Cincinnati. And I told her I said, you know, we could do that, you know, let me get financially independent. We can do it, you know, I’ll start over. Right? Like I can find the job. We can, you know, wave in or whatever. We could start over. And that was like we talked about it over the years and we were like then we had it you know, we had a kid or like it’d be nice, you know, we live in Kingman Arizona kingman’s Like Radiator Springs. You know, that’s what kingman’s Like right, a little bit bigger. But we have doc and Sally and all of them. But we’re like, it’d be nice if you raise your kid and some rice in some good schools and like, yeah, yeah, you know, we’ll do it. We’ll do it. Well, back in October 2014. My wife and I flew from Phoenix, to New York City. And we were gonna go, go catch a show, go fancy restaurant, do something in New York City. And we fly cross country. And we get off the plane at JFK. And my wife turns on her phone, and she’s getting messages from her parents. Her mom, she again, that’s just from her sister. And the message was that her dad, who’s a retired firefighter, he worked on a ladder truck. He was a roofer part time. He had fallen off a ladder, organize building, retired three weeks in the fire department fell off the ladder and became paralyzed, can’t paraplegic. That was October of 2014. So my wife and I decided, it’s like, look, life’s too short. Let’s make this happen. Let’s move back to Cincinnati. Let me be close to my family. Let’s raise our kids let them go to private schools like we did when we were young. Let’s raise them. Let’s do it. So that was the decision because everybody a lot of people asked me that like, well, I didn’t move back to Cincinnati. Well, I do that. That’s why is a family decision. But the challenge was is that business in Arizona, and you can see there, you see there’s our home in Cincinnati or in Ohio. Oh h and then we got Arizona over there on the left with a little courthouse. And there’s that plan that said Delta plane that I take to Arizona, back in the day it was every six weeks. And last year it was three times three days, right. So that’s what I do. But before before I moved, I had to make some plans to go out there. Now, I’ll tell you what, you know, three years ago, it was three years ago, this July, when I drove cross country on old route 66 and drove through St. Louis, and have my pap ease barbecue. That’s when I that’s when I moved. And that’s when this all started this this just cross country experience. Back then it was kind of like really weird concept working remotely working virtually. Now. It’s kind of accepted, like people get it now, back then. Not so much. I had to keep explaining it at dinner parties. You know what the heck I was doing. But now it’s more accepted. And I think Richard Garnett, I was getting ready for his presentation. He described this concept as having a click and mortar business. And the my bought my model is I have a real physical office, I have real physical office. I have real lawyers. i This isn’t like a virtual thing, or, you know, I have a product or something. It’s like we really were criminal lawyers. I’m not, you know, we’re not writing contracts and stuff we have I have boots on the ground that are going to court. This is what I call the last stretchered cause the click and mortar model. I want to show you a little bit more about my office, because I just want folks to kind of wrap it around their heads what I’m talking about, if you’re not from Arizona, but I’ll show you a map came in. Like I said, that’s where I started, that was my first job. That was my first office. Then I got I figured out a little bit of the SEO game, got some shared office space and Bullhead City, Lake Havasu. You guys heard Lake Lake Havasu, that’s my jurisdiction. That was my home county. And then we expanded into Prescott got a space, a co space over there. And now this year since Max law Con last year, and after I learned all the things about systems, about scaling, all that stuff, all that good stuff. I’ve been having profits that go up 20% every year. And last year was a great year, we added Flagstaff, Arizona, to our office this year. And I have a partner, that helps me run that. So I have two staff offices, and three co spaces. And that’s my team. Really proud of it. I have three associates. And I have two of them. And given the title of a partner. They’re non Equity Partners in my firm. And you know how I did it was I had a plan. I had a big plan of how I was going to do it. Because when we got the news about my father in law, and his accident, and by the time we in October 2014. And then when we finally moved in July 2016, I put in some steps in place to figure it out how I was going to do it. And basically, I hired a partner, I hired somebody who I felt like I was cloning myself. And I compensated that partner, and I trusted her to do the court work. And then I also figured out which courts in rural Arizona, but actually let me phone it in. And I basically figured out that I would call into court, you know, Ohio’s three hours ahead, work out the time differences, work with clients over the phone. And, you know, a lot of you folks might be thinking yourself, well, how do you deal with the Office consultations? How does that all work out, I get that, you know, I’m in Arizona, you got the Grand Canyon, you got Flagstaff got I 40 You know, lots of tourists, lots of people from out of state. They didn’t care that I was signing them up over the phone. So it’s been that way, and I knew it was going to be that way when I left. And that’s how I did it for a long time was like I figured out which courts I could phone it in. And then I figured out how to efficiently manage my docket so that I can fly out to Arizona every six weeks. And that worked really good. But there was one things are going great. Things are going great. My firm. And I got a lot of efficiencies going on. I’m figuring it out. And I’ll tell you one of those trips. I came out to to McCarran in Vegas. And I tell you what, even if you’re just doing it six every six weeks, Flying Cross Country really sucks. And taking red eyes back really sucks. And you know, that night that the jet lag the next day is terrible. And I remember getting off the plane at McCarran and I got off the flight and it landed about a PM. And I knew because I did the flight the flight every six weeks. Like I knew that there’s another flight going back to Cincinnati An hour later. And they said to myself, like, Man, I miss my wife, I miss my kids. I wish I could just go on that flight back to Cincinnati. And that’s when I said, You know what, I’m gonna hire an associate. I did just it worked. It was easy, young, smart guy, I was handling misdemeanors by phone for crying out loud, traffic tickets, criminal tickets, were sign up lots of business, lots of serious felonies with my partner. And I just handed it off to him, said, Here you go, and it worked to collect. So you know, it’s just that leap of faith that y’all gotta make at some points in your business where you got to trust it with other people. And you know, that’s what I trust, I trusted it, let it go. And it worked, you know, knock on wood. So, you know, I think some people want to know about maybe some of the nuts and bolts before I left to Ohio, I like I ditched my physical server, my $3,000 Dell server, I ditch that thing scrapped it, I went all cloud, you know, got that’s when I got my case. For the first time. I got, you know, we were we were using G Suite for Gmail and all that stuff. But you know, we got gotten, in my case, a kick the server when all cloud, I bought my team, all Macs, because I didn’t want to mess with it issues. Mac’s are reliable. I got a Nest Cam for the lobby, a nest thermostat, so people don’t crank the thermostat too much when I’m not there. And that’s how we do it. You know, the thing is, though, is that you all can do this, you all should be doing this. You all should be having associates doing your work? Most of you probably do. I’m probably preaching to the converted. All of you should have associates you do it. Obviously associates can do the work. You got the technology. This is how you run a law firm. Now, you’re doing this now, it doesn’t matter. If you’re in the same city or a different state or cross country, you can do it. Now. I just want to point out, and that’s that’s because you’re working on your business, not in your business. And now I don’t do any legal work. It’s all marketing. It’s all administration. It’s all intake. That’s what I do. That’s how I make it work. That’s how I make money and make a good amount. I’m good with it. I’m happy with it. And get to my next slide. I just want to I want to encourage you that you can do it. This is Tom Martin, you probably heard of him. He runs a tech company. But before that he had a firm in Los Angeles. But he moved to Canada because his wife’s from Canada. And he did not he did an episode on the law on entrepreneur about that. You have Megan’s availa. Podcast celebrity, right. Y’all know her. She does ethics work. She’s from Georgia. Her practice is solely in California. And before she moved to Georgia, she was in Australia, running her practice. Regina Edwards, she was on a Generation Y podcast. She runs a divorce firm in Atlanta. And she lives in Arizona, and I checked on this. She’s inactive in Arizona. Nothing. I’m not licensed in Ohio, I didn’t even I didn’t mention that. I’m not licensed in Ohio. So you could do that. And these are three other examples. You do that now. So I want to thank you all for listening to me. I’m thank you for the opportunity to share it with all of you. I’m happy to do I’m happy to let you now. But my story is and thanks for for having me. Appreciate it.
