In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Billie Tarascio a family law attorney who runs her own law firm: Modern Law. They will go over her firm and her business paying special attention to how she analyzes and track data, the systems to do it, and how she implements all this to run her law firm.
“I felt like we were so busy, but yet there wasn’t as much money in the bank as I wanted, and that led me to start thinking more like a business owner and mapping out processes and figuring out key performance indicators.:”
3 KPIs:
Sales
Productivity and Customer Service
Finance
About Billie:
https://mymodernlaw.com/team/billie-tarascio/
The Firm:
https://mymodernlaw.com/
Hacking’s hack:
Slow down your sales process: “we only need to be ready to receive someone when they’re ready to hire us”.
The more we slow it down, the more deliberate we are, and the less pressure we put on them, the more often that they’re gonna hire us. Don’t seem desperate.
Billie’s tip:
Look at your campaigns again and make sure that they are asking for the right questions and not being pushy, and we are not just talking about how good we are, but instead we are addressing our clients needs so we can be there for them.
Tyson’s tip:
A book.
Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World (Que Biz-Tech) by Peter Shankman
https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Service-Rules-Social-Biz-Tech/dp/078974709X
//
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Transcripts: The Business of Law ft. Billie Tarascio
Billie Tarascio
And then once I started measuring what we thought were our key performance indicators, it just sort of becomes an addiction because there’s such a massive impact on your business when you start making decisions based on data. So that now we’re just, we’ve been doing it, we’ve been measuring and making decisions based on data for at least the last three years. And now we’re diving in even deeper, using probably a business intelligence dashboard and getting even more disciplined about the data we’re collecting and making decisions based on that data.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right away. This is the maximum layer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking, and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum ROI Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson matrix Jimmy sound a little hurry this morning.
Jim Hacking
Well, I thought we were recording a little bit later in the morning, but it’s all good. It was a good weekend and a Happy Father’s Day to you. It was a nice time to be with everybody with my dad, my daughter had a baseball game, we went to the Cardinals game last night and they won. So all as well,
Tyson Mutrux
Happy Father’s Day to you and everyone else out there that the Father. So it’s funny. Today is the first day that I’m using these air pods to record and so Billy is as well. So I’m curious what people think when it comes to the sound quality. I really liked these air pods. They’re pretty cool. Pretty excited. Jimmy, do you have airpot?
Jim Hacking
I do. But at the moment I’ve lost them. I don’t know exactly where they are. So I have to try to find
Tyson Mutrux
that is like my biggest worry about these things is like because they’re like such a little small case. But anyway, let’s get to our guests of the week, Billy to Raphael she is a family law attorney, the name for firm, which I think is really cool. Is Modern Law. Billy, welcome on the show.
Billie Tarascio
Thank you. Good morning. Happy to be here.
Jim Hacking
Billy, tell us a little bit about how you came to start Modern Law and your sort of your background into how you started your firm.
Billie Tarascio
Sure, I graduated law school in 2005. And I think I was always drawn more to the business aspects of law. Even at that time, it was pretty obvious that there was this fundamental problem that we had all these people, especially in family law, who needed assistance, and all these lawyers who didn’t have enough work. So for the first probably four years out of law school, I worked for other firms, and I did some contract work, I had a baby my third year in law school. So I didn’t want to you I didn’t ever really want to do the big law thing. And I’ve just been studying the business of law and fun, opened in Arizona in 2009, with a completely low cost limited scope model all pay as you go $99 an hour. And it’s just simply evolved. From there, I ended up starting a software company and developing a document automation software that was forward facing for self representing litigants. And they ended up kind of learning that the low cost model that I started really, really won’t work unless you have a massive volume, and probably outside money for law firms. But it probably will work under the right conditions. But now our firm looks a lot more like most firms look in a more traditional sense. But I have also the illegal doc prep company, in addition to the law firm that does offer the lower cost options.
Tyson Mutrux
Really, you were very data driven. You sent us a very detailed oriented email, which I thought I was very impressed by. Tell us how you you sort of teased how you got into the talk a little bit more about how you got into the numbers part of it. Sure. Well,
Billie Tarascio
it was sort of accidental, I like most lawyers was struggling to figure out what was up which advertising sources were actually bearing fruit and bringing in people which employees were performing well beyond simply what the numbers were, as far as their revenue went. I felt like we were so so busy, but yet there wasn’t as much money in the bank as I wanted. And that led me to start thinking more like a business owner and mapping out processes and figuring out what were those initial key performance indicators being. And then once I started measuring what we thought were our key performance indicators, it just sort of becomes an addiction because there’s such a massive impact on your business when you start making decisions based on data. So that now we’re just we’ve been doing we’ve been measuring and making decisions based on data for at least the last three years and now we’re diving in even deeper, using probably a business intelligence dashboard and getting even more disciplined about the data. We’re collecting and making decisions based on that data.
Jim Hacking
Billy talked to us about the mechanics of gas Bring the data what are you using to do that? Sure. Well,
Billie Tarascio
when we started, it was simply an Excel spreadsheet. And my office manager would pull data from places like Clio, or practice management software, and QuickBooks Online. And other sources like she might go directly to Avo, to look at what their report says, or other places are, we measure Net Promoter Score and conversion, for intake. And so she would go to all these different systems in Fusion SAS, to get all these different pieces of data and put it into a uniform spreadsheet that measured both the individual performance of each employee and the firm performance. But as time went on, that got more and more cumbersome. And other interesting things started happening. And we found that this year, for instance, I really started looking at our intake numbers, we were getting roughly 120 leads per month, and usually about 15 new clients. So I was very interested in learning more about those 105 people and where they went and where they came from. So I had two dedicated intake people. And I started asking, really looking at what is the percentage of leads that they’re getting that they’re scheduling for an appointment, and how many of those show up and week after week, we started talking about these numbers, and one person ended up having much better numbers than the other person. And they’re both really highly dedicated people really driven. And the person who, whose numbers were not as good, she was scheduling, maybe 40% of the leads that she talked to, and the other person was scheduling 70%. So she started really looking at what was going on. And she found that the person that was getting these 70% numbers, actually just wasn’t putting in all the leads. She only put in leads that ended up scheduling. And the lesson we had there is that when we rely, when we’re very clear about what data we’re measuring, we create incentives for people to maybe not follow the processes because they need the data to reflect what they think it should reflect. And now we’re moving into a place where we’re using a business intelligence dashboard that will connect directly with all of these systems that I discussed, and actually display the data for us real time so that we’re not relying on the office manager running numbers. We’re not relying on humans putting the right information into the spreadsheets the way I need them to. And it’s going to make it a lot easier for us to see in real time what’s going on.
Tyson Mutrux
Billy, is this a dashboard that you’ve created yourself? Or is it something that’s out there on the open market that listeners can can look into? And then on top of that, what KPIs Do you focus on.
Billie Tarascio
So it’s kind of a hybrid of both, you can get business intelligence dashboards, but then they need to be customized for your practice. So that’s, that’s what I’m doing. I’m working with a an existing technology that is a business intelligence dashboard, and then doing the necessary programming to make it work for us. The key performance indicators that we’re looking at, I break down into sales type, key performance indicators, productivity, type, key performance indicators, and then financial key performance indicators. And I include customer service, or how happy our clients are the number of reviews we’re getting in the productivity piece. So I think that there’s a lot of information out there on the sales component on the conversion component, it feels like we’ve been talking about a leaky funnel for a long time now, and especially with with PII attorneys, who know really the value of of a client. So I think there’s a lot that can be gained from looking more at productivity, key performance indicators. And I think if we really look at how long it takes on a mass level, to, let’s say, draft a summary judgment or do a particular component of a case, and we can get a whole lot better at moving to a flat fee model, which is a big deal for family law, with certainty without the guesswork that comes with it right now.
Jim Hacking
Billy, you just threw so much out there that I have about 10 questions right off. Sorry. No, no, it’s really it’s really good. The question I was going to ask before you started telling us all that wisdom was, what would you say to our listeners or lawyers who say, I just want to practice law, I don’t want to have to worry about all this stuff.
Billie Tarascio
I understand. And I think that that’s valuable. One of the projects that I’m working on is with partners trying to figure out how to create a system for people who just want to practice law. There are not I love this, I am obsessed with the business of law and pricing models and management models. I love it, but most don’t do So can we work together to aggregate data to aggregate best systems and, and to create a system that we can simply plug into solo and small law firms so that the lawyers who just want to practice law can just practice law. And those of us who want to geek out on the business of law can do what we do?
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, I’ve got to ask you this question, because I’m sure that 90% of the listeners have this question right now. Do you practice law or at all? Or do you just focus on the business side of things,
Billie Tarascio
as as this year, I am not practicing anymore. And this, this was a shift I made in 2018. But up until then, from, you know, 2009 until 2017, I did both. But I never had a full caseload. I always from day one, had other lawyers, because I knew what I wanted to be working on was, was more business than law.
Jim Hacking
And how was that transition going this year for you? How did you finally put the nail in the coffin on actually handling cases,
Billie Tarascio
it took a lot of foundational work to get the organization in a healthy enough place, because family law is so people driven, more so than processed, driven, both with employees and with consumers. So it was it was hard, not gonna lie. But over the past several years, we’ve been able to put a foundational structure in place that really works well. And it was a pretty seamless transition, when I actually did step out and start practicing.
Tyson Mutrux
So for the people that want to get to where you are, when it comes to that, what’s your advice to those people? Well, I
Billie Tarascio
think we can probably put people in two camps, the people who really want to, to who love business. And for them, I think there’s so much great information out there about experimenting and agile functions and lean models and using things like scrum principles, to experiment to get your firm in a place that you love. Not all law firms need to look the same. And then for those who want to practice law, I think what we will see very soon, and it’s something that I’m working on, and I’m positive that other people are probably working on it as well. There will be plug and play law firm models where you can just practice law, where your your leads come to you, your systems are configured for you, your dashboards are set up for you. You’re getting reports and agendas to run your meetings. And you can just practice off.
Jim Hacking
As you started implementing these key performance indicators and your tracking methods. What were some of the surprises for you?
Billie Tarascio
There were so many, and they were so fun. The first revelations came from a conversion number, we were giving away free consultations at the time, it was probably 2014 2013. And we were so busy one month, things had just been slamming and humming around the office. And I got to the end of the month. And my revenue wasn’t all that impressive. But I was really excited for my office manager to put together the dashboard for me. So I could see how we had done. And when she did, we found that we had given away 103 free consultations, and seven people had hired us. And I didn’t know what our conversion should be. I had no idea no one was talking about for a family law firm in Phoenix, what an ideal conversion rate should be. But I knew that seven out of 103 was was absolutely abysmal. And we had so much room for improvement. And that that led to the first experiment which was okay. We’re offering free phone consultations right now. And we’re really hands off really non pushy. Let me give you all the resources, we have this free technology company that will give you what you need. Okay, let’s stop that right now. We’re not going to do that anymore. Our options are we can have either in person free consultations, or paid in person consultations, or paid phone consultations. But we’re not going to do what we’ve been doing. And that pretty quickly, within the next few months led to us doing paid in office consultations. And that was kind of a game changer. That’s when we really decided okay, who are we going to be who we want our clients to be with stop giving away massive amounts of time. And then with that came also the hiring of our first dedicated intake person. Those were the first major shifts that happened when we started measuring.
Tyson Mutrux
Now I’ve got a two part question and they’re not really related. I just want to get to questions. And the first question is, do you think that same model when it comes to charging for the consultation makes sense for personal injury law firm? The second part of it is I just want to talk once you’ve talked about how you hired an office manager and what to look for.
Billie Tarascio
Okay, so let’s talk about consultations first. I don’t I think that one of the things we need to look at is really understanding our business models. And there are probably best practices and ideal numbers for personal injury practices and for criminal practices and for estate planning practices. And these consumers are in different positions. I think I don’t know for sure, but I think for personal injury attorneys, your clients have nothing to lose. They’re not paying you, my clients need to come up with usually $5,000 to hire. But your clients don’t necessarily need to come up with any money. They just need to have the right case. So your big challenge is how do we get people who have the right problem calling? And when they have the right problem? How do I make them like me, and trust me as quickly as possible? So I think what most pa attorneys do, and because p is so much money in it, and the vast majority are the vast, it seems like the biggest challenge for Pio lawyers is getting the right client once you’ve got them seems like the workflows pretty standard. So know your intake and sales process probably looks a whole lot different from my intake and sales process. Bill, your
Jim Hacking
website is tremendous. I really liked the layout of it. It’s not very Billy centered, it’s firm centered, and it’s information centered, I noticed two things on your site that I really liked. I was wondering maybe you could comment on. One is that you have a sample attorney client agreement that you use. And you also have a lot of information with a flat fee calculator to let potential clients see all the different options that they have. When deciding how to go through a divorce, whether it’s working with you or doing it themselves. I’d love to hear your mindset on why you provide that information freely on the web.
Billie Tarascio
Well, our sales strategy is to be as valuable to consumers and as relevant to consumers as possible. And to provide better information and to know their problem better than anyone. That’s our sales strategy. And we’re it’s kind of a fundamental part of our offering, and it’ll never change. So the question then is, how do we do it. And we do it in a ton of different ways. Right now we have Facebook live workshop a couple times a month that go through the entire process and give away just a ton of information that then goes on YouTube, and it goes on our website, and it creates valuable content and hopefully builds our reputation. The same thing is true for things like a flat fee calculator or a sample fee agreement. How do we get so much information to people that they don’t have any questions? Nothing is a surprise, because that’s what makes people trust us. I had an experience I was in Ireland last week. And I stayed in a bed and breakfast for the first time. And what I found there was a day of different protocol. We didn’t know what I got there with my friends, we got there kind of late, we rang the doorbell ring every single room. And it was awkward. And the introduction was awkward. And we were supposed to order breakfast, but nobody told us like where to have breakfast, or it was just a very uncomfortable experience. And when we went to go leave, the lady was annoyed. She was annoyed with us. She was like, Well, why would you leave? Why wouldn’t you say goodbye. And we’re like, we didn’t know where everything’s closed. It’s early airport. And the the lesson is that when people are going into a situation they’ve never been in before, they need to be told what to expect. We need to have everything lined out for if I wanted to follow the bed and breakfast protocol. I just didn’t know what it was. And I think that’s true for a lot of our clients as well as we tell them, here’s the fee agreement, here’s what to expect. And when you come into the office, this is what’s going to happen. They’re just a lot more comfortable and ready and willing to hand over that $5,000.
Tyson Mutrux
Man, that was a lot of good information right there. So you use a word that I’m sure some attorneys cringe by whenever you say it, and I love the word sales. And you’ve used it quite a bit. So I want you to address that part of it getting over the idea of the word of sales. Talk about that a little bit.
Billie Tarascio
Well, the moment that happened for me was the moment I looked at the fact that we have had seven new clients and 103 free consultations. I did the math on how much like that cost me and attorney time and what our what our average value was for the clients we’re bringing around the time and it was just it was painful. And at that point, I was done with this idea that we don’t have to have a sales process we do. We’re not different from any other company. We have something of value that we want to provide consumers who need us and if we don’t adequately communicate that value to place where they want to hire us, we will never help them. All of this lovely experience and wisdom and guidance that we want to bring to people, we have to show them and tell them in a way that they understand what that is. So that we can then do our job and pay the people that work for us and pay our bills. It’s okay, right now, our profession, to me is in trouble. We’ve got a legal needs survey that the ABA did recently that says there’s 86% of people don’t get the legal help they need when they need it. And it’s not just because of cost. It’s because of all sorts of things like fear of the legal system, or not knowing they have a legal problem. And then we’ve got attorneys who by and large, don’t make the money they want to make and are not living the lives they want to live, we’ve got all sorts of problems statistically on the lawyer side. So we as an industry are failing. We’re failing ourselves, and we’re failing our consumers. And so this idea that we’re somehow above sales, is one of the reasons that we as an industry are failing to live up to our obligations to society and to our consumers, I would just encourage people to sort of get over it and move on. And let’s get better at what we do.
Jim Hacking
I love that call to action for not just our listeners. But for all lawyers, I really agree with what you’re saying, I think that so many people just want to sit back and think that the cases will come and DON’T WANT TO HUSTLE. And you really do have to hustle. And you’re not just hustling to make money you’re hustling because you want to help as many people as possible. I’m sure in Arizona, like in every other state, there are just lots of people who need divorce attorneys and family law attorneys I, you know, in immigration, every now and then we come across people who have divorce angles to their marriage based Green Card cases. And I was with a couple this weekend, and we were talking through how the non citizen might be able to keep this green card, if they ended up getting divorced. The couple was still amicable and it reminded me one that I don’t want anything to do with family law. And I tried to stay away from as much as I can. But but it’s true. I mean, you know, we have an expertise, and we have value to give. And so to not share that is selfish, I think in putting aside, putting aside the financial rewards of it, just think, especially with something like immigration or family law, where you’re dealing with people’s emotions and their real lives, and then PII too, you know, it’s just, we have, we have this little light, and we have to let it shine. I know that sounds cheesy, but I really believe that the point that you make is a good one. And I think that then you have to take it to the next level. So you could just sit in your office, you could have started your firm back in 2007 2008. And just been Billy and just done it all by yourself. And you could have done everything. And you saw the wisdom right out of the box of getting other people to help you with the legal work because you wanted to expand your firm and to make as big of an impact as you couldn’t I have two offices and and I anticipate that you’re going to have more and that you’re going to continue to grow. And and that’s that’s how this all works, I think.
Billie Tarascio
Yeah, I mean, I think we should be proud about the services that we’re offering. And if we’re not if we’re not really ready to own what we do. And that’s all sales is all it is, is communicating what we do and being confident in our ability to help those who we can really help. We don’t have that down. We’re really missing something big.
Tyson Mutrux
Billy, when you think about your day, what is something you struggle with the most?
Billie Tarascio
I struggle most with? Management of people, the nitty gritty details, I kind of love to live in the visionary, higher end business place. And the truth is that business with employees is built up over a whole lot of details. A whole lot of listening to problems and coaching people and mentoring people. And for me, that is the hardest part.
Jim Hacking
That’s a tough one for sure. Building next week. On Tuesday, I’m going to be speaking to a group of law students. On Thursday, Tyson is going to speak to that same group of law students, these are third years who are taking a class on law firm management if if we dropped you into that class on Wednesday, and you had a few minutes to spend with some some law students who are about to graduate here in 2018. What kinds of things would you say to him?
Billie Tarascio
I would talk to him about technology. The technology that we have available to us right now is critical. I would talk to them about how the business of law in the law firm model that existed 30 years ago is gone. The Internet has changed everything and so we don’t really have any mentors. So it’s it’s right now that we’re creating what will be The future for lawyers and for consumers of law. And there are so many technological tools that are designed to help with efficiency and processes. And being able to read data, that it’s a tremendous opportunity that new lawyers have right now, if new lawyers right now can embrace and get to know the technology that’s available, and be able to implement that within their own firms or within other firms, that might be one of the best ways for them to become valuable. That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that as technology gets better and better at answering people’s legal questions, our value as lawyers comes from our humanity, the more we can check in emotionally, the better we can communicate and fully embrace human emotion, the more valuable we will be to our clients. I love
Tyson Mutrux
it. It’s a great message. All right, Billy, we want to be respectful of your time. So I’m gonna wrap things up here. Before I do, though, and I want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group, there’s a ton of other attorneys just like Billy on there, sharing all the nuggets of knowledge, it’s a really great place to learn. Also, if you will, please go to our iTunes and give us a five star review. And wherever you get your podcasts, it really does help spread the word. We really appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
Before I get to my hack, I really want to thank Billy, this has been a great episode. I wish we could talk longer. I think Billy should have her own podcast. I’d really hope that next year. I don’t know, Billy, if you notice, we have a conference every year and we line up speakers for the conference. And I think you and your analytics and the way that you think about things would be a great asset to the conferences. We’re gonna start working on next year’s conference here pretty soon. So we’ll certainly send you an invitation to that.
Billie Tarascio
I love this podcast, so much information.
Jim Hacking
That’s great. That’d be great. Okay, so we’ll follow up with that for sure. So my hack of the week is to slow down your sales process to slow things down. And what do I mean by that? Well, you know, obviously, I think we all know, we don’t want to be that pushy guy, or gal who’s any other business card at every event that they can try to tell everyone about how great they are. But what I mean is that we only need to be ready to receive someone when they’re ready to hire us that there are people who are all on the spectrum as to when they’re ready to hire an attorney. And so much of our marketing is about getting them in now have the phone ringing. And then as soon as they ring as phone rings, we pounce and then we run them through our email sequence our gauntlet of all these ways that we’re going to bug the shit out of them until they actually hire us when in fact, I think all we have to do is be receptive. And I also think that the more we slow it down, the more deliberate we are, and we and the less pressure we put on them, the more often that they’re going to hire us. I think that too often, we get perceived as being desperate or wanting to just sign up as many cases as possible, when in fact, if we’re sort of more laser focused, and just let people come to us when they’re ready, it goes a lot better this last couple of weeks, I’ve been working with our intake team, to really try to ratchet that stuff down into just, you know, have conversations with people on the chat. My main intake person was sort of just rushing in pushing people to try to go to a console, go to console, go to console and and I said just ask the next question. Just act like they’re standing in your doorway of your office. And you have a question and answer a question and answer just sort of like volleyball or tennis and just let them come to you because we’ve all got plenty to do. And the harder it is and the more deliberate we are. I think it makes people want to hire us even more. Great advice.
Billie Tarascio
I just want to piggyback on what Jim said, many of us made our sales materials and maybe our nurture campaigns quite a while ago. And it, it probably makes sense to take a look at those and look at it again now through a new lens and make sure that we are asking that next question and that we’re not being pushy, and we’re not simply talking about how great we are. But instead we’re really addressing our client’s needs so that we can be there for them when they are ready.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. All right. So my tip of the week is sort of, I chose one book that is customer focused, because really he talks a lot about customer facing stuff. And the book is by Peter Shankman, customer service new rules for a social media world. Things change rapidly and things have changed rapidly. So this is a really good book and the world that we currently live in just customer service in general, but also when it comes to social media. But Billy, thank you so much for coming on. This was a great, great episode. There’s so many great little pieces of information. Thank you for coming on.
