This week we’re sharing a Virtual Town Hall we hosted Live on Facebook in the Maximum Lawyer group. Kira Fonteneau, Billie Tarascio, Alycia Kinchloe and Elise Buie with Jim and Tyson, discuss what they’re learning about the legal profession from current events.
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Transcript: “Virtual Town Hall 2” with Kira Fonteneau, Billie Tarascio, Alycia Kinchloe and Elise Buie
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome, Judy show.
Unknown Speaker
In today’s episode, we’re sharing our second virtual town hall meeting featuring special guests Kyra fontanelle Billy tercio, Alicia cashflow and Elise vewy. With Jim and Tyson, this group discusses what they’re learning about the legal profession from current events. Let’s get to it. All right,
Jim Hacking
well, welcome to the people that are here for our second Coronavirus townhall we have a great set of lawyers here with you today besides Tyson and myself, we have Billy tercio, Alicia Kincheloe, Kira fonte, no and Elise buoy. Hello, ladies, how are you? Hi. All right. So Billy, since I your one person I can actually see on camera. Besides Kira was let’s start with you. Tell us how your last three weeks have been
Unknown Speaker
a roller coaster, the last three weeks have been a crazy roller coaster. The good news is that this week, so last week was dead this week, has not been said this week. But everybody got their stimulus check. And I have had this Thursday, I think I’ve already had 12 consultations this week. And people are hiring. But their ability to make that $5,000 deposit isn’t quite there. So I’ve been taking a lot of $2,000 deposits, and then they’ll get the rest to me within 30 days. So that’s the story of of my life this week, and probably the last couple of weeks.
Jim Hacking
So for people who don’t know, you talk a little bit just real quickly about your practice and sort of what and then how that plays into the three weeks that you just outlined for us.
Unknown Speaker
Sure. So I’m a family law attorney in Phoenix, Arizona, I own Modern Law, there’s six attorneys, we do only family law. Up until this week, our leads had been down from on average of about 120 a month down to like 75. So huge, immediate hit. But we kind of all anticipated that everybody went into shock and shut down. And now I think people are, you know, kind of coming around to a new normal and figuring out okay, what do I do? How do I move my life forward. And many of the people that I’ve met with this week, aren’t necessarily like new divorces, they had stuff in the works in, you know, October, November, December, January, but they still needed to kind of shut down and take a break before they could figure out how to move forward.
Jim Hacking
Awesome. All right, Kara, tell us a little bit about your practice and how your last three weeks have been thanks.
Kira Fonteneau
I am an employment lawyer. So we’ve been busy. And I only represent employees. And so this last few weeks well, and just a little bit of background like I am sort of a solo and I had inherited a practice through a split with my former law partner that was very, very busy. And so I had been going through a year of like huge transition trying to figure out how to, like, assume eat this whale. And so the last three weeks, I’ve actually been a welcome respite, because I didn’t have any court. And I can just kind of start focusing on my practice and what was going on in my practice, but the calls have been non stop. You know, folks, when you see 22 million people lose their jobs? Well, a lot of those are going to call an employment attorney who represents employees. So we’ve been getting a lot of calls, not all of those calls are ones that are actionable. But for us, it has been an opportunity to provide some information in it even in times when we know they can’t retain us for later on developing credibility when things do come back. So and we anticipate obviously, that it’s going to get very busy and in a way that’s actually actionable for us in the next month or two, as people start to discriminate against people as they lay people off. So yeah, we’ve been busy. And I think we will continue to be busy.
Jim Hacking
And how was your transition into working outside the office with your team.
Kira Fonteneau
So this is interesting, because I had already kind of I had one foot out of the office door before so I do have a physical location, we actually shut our office down before the state of Alabama did, which is not shocking, because they barely wanted to shut down anyway. And before the federal government started to kind of do things we shut our office down before, but I actually have a pretty large contingent of my workers who are offshore anyway. And so it was really only taking two people home. And so we’ve been fine. Like it really hadn’t done much to me now. The biggest problem for us was that my husband also came home Come to work in my daughter’s here. And so we share an office in our house. And that doesn’t work in a law practice. So I had to create this space here for me to have some private space that we were rockin. We were already almost 100% paperless. And all we had to do is pick up some equipment and move into a different space.
Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. All right, so next up, the next person I can see is Elise buoy. Elise, how are you? How are things in Seattle? You? You were fresh off the podcast this morning. So everybody just got it. For those of you who who listened, they got to hear your awesome story. How have you been the last three weeks?
Unknown Speaker
We’ve been good. We were you know, virtual before this happened. So the firm’s been virtual, since we started in 2015. And there’s about nine of us total, both, you know, attorneys and independent contractor people. And so we’ve been good. And I mean, I was kind of prepared for more of a downturn thinking that a lot of people really wouldn’t want to either start a family law matter or you know, there’d be some downturn in replenishment of trust accounts. And we have not seen a downturn fiscally yet, we do see a downturn somewhat in some calls are more like, you know, people maybe not wanting to really get started. And so we’ve been experimenting with different things to kind of help people, you know, either do some legal coaching or just kind of get them in the queue. People have been paying less retainers, but I’m finding we’re getting a lot of those. And I mean, I’m looking to hire right now, which is a funny time to hire again. But we, you know, it’s been pretty busy. And I just saw a news article that Boeing is going back to work. So that’s huge for us. We get a lot of Boeing, people. And so we’ll see. I mean, you know, I’m still prepared for the bottom to fall out. I don’t know, but it hasn’t. So we’ll just keep on, keep on going.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, for us, we you know, we’re an immigration law firm. And we set out goals at the beginning of the year, weekly goals for revenue, and knock on wood. We’ve hit it all three weeks since we’ve went inside. So that’s been good. And my sort of threshold and when I’m gonna start worrying is whether I’m making hitting my numbers from last year. So if we can sustain totally the numbers we were at last year, we had stretch goals at the beginning. And so knock on wood so far, we’re doing okay, I guess. How has it been this week? Because I’ve seen like, Billy, I seen an uptick this week. Have you? Have you seen an uptick this week? Elise,
Unknown Speaker
actually, this week, is lower for us than last week. As far as money in the door. As far as clients in the door for us, this week has probably been an uptick. So it’ll be interesting to see, we’ve been getting more people who are now wanting to start a divorce this week. Yeah, I mean, I’m noticing that we’re finding a lot of people are getting more stressed, you know, the, the level of the time this has gone on. And I mean, I’m noticing that with my own team, you know, when I’m checking in with them, I feel like they’re having, you know, issues that they’re dealing with, you know, that maybe they weren’t dealing with initially. And so, I don’t know, I mean, I’ve been I mean, I do all our consults. Currently we’ve been doing an experiment. And so now I’ve started actually, I start all my consults, asking them how they’re doing in the pandemic, and with the quarantining and really talking to them about how they’re doing. And that has been interesting, because I’ve definitely heard from my consults, people are much more stressed today than they were a week ago or 10 days ago. I mean, we here in Seattle have been I mean, I think we’ve been officially quarantine since like, maybe I don’t know, the state shutdown on March 20. But I mean, the bulk of us have been quarantined since like, I mean, I’ve been quarantine since March 1, most people have been quarantine since about March 5. So I mean, we’re, we’ve been doing this longer. You know what I mean? Like, we’ve been at it pretty long, it feels like,
Jim Hacking
yeah, for sure. Billy, at least has talked about sort of the conversation she’s been having with her, her team, how have your conversations with your team been going?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, I mean, I’ve got a team that’s really mixed, you know, I’ve got I’ve got anxious people who are anxious, you know, they’re generally anxious. And then this makes them, you know, a lot more anxious. And then I’ve got people who are laid back and maybe they shouldn’t be a little bit more anxious, doing a little bit more home there. Maybe they’re a little bit too messy. And then, you know, there’s people who are who are struggling with distractibility at home and managing their children and their workflow. And so, I mean, our themes right now are how do we be flexible with hours and with duties and with supporting one another? And how do we be supportive? How do we like just take our foot off the gas a little bit because my I’m always like, let’s go, let’s push and like how do we take a little bit of that? pressure off, and like wrap each other in love and support and get through this. That’s what I’m trying. And it’s it’s everybody’s doing pretty darn well. They’re happy to be part of this team, they, they really, really appreciate leadership, we had a retreat and and I did a kind of an update on our plan, because we always have a plan, but the plan has been revised. And in light of the coming recession and pit that people are taking, and everybody just really appreciated having me acknowledge that and tell them what the plan was.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, for sure. And how are you sort of measuring you’re gauging everybody’s productivity,
Unknown Speaker
hours and dollars? So one of the things that I’ve started doing that we didn’t do before, we’ve always looked at this weekly and our weekly meeting, but now I haven’t even daily in a Slack channel, where the office manager is just reporting, how many hours are we tracking? And how many dollars are we billing, and there’s a challenge out there for my team to just track your time, even if you’re not billing it, just track it. Because the more we can track, the more we will be able to build. So that’s how we’re gauging productivity.
Jim Hacking
Kara, how about you how how’s your team rallied or not rally during all this?
Kira Fonteneau
So interestingly enough, like they have been more proactive than I would have expected. I think from my perspective, we since we already had two remote workers, the two who were inside the office, have made a huge effort to show me they were productive, right. So they, we we use Microsoft Teams, but I get check ins from them. And they say, Well, I don’t really have anything else. Is there something you need me to do right now? They’re giving me the feedback to say, you know, I could step out of my office a few weeks ago and look in your face and see if you were doing something I know you can’t do that. Tell me if there’s something else you want me to do. And the other thing too is when they realized that it was not my intent to to slough them off, that I think they really kind of said, Okay, well, I’m gonna show her that I am productive, because I know that there are people who are laying people off. And so I think having good staff who want to continue working and see the kind of writing on the wall in the in the economy has been really helpful. And my remote workers have always been that way. Like, I can do this other thing for you. I know how to edit video, like let me know what I can do. But to see my my US base folks do that has been really heartening. And you know, we had a conversation with them at the very beginning and said, Look, we’re gonna ride this out together. We’re not letting anyone go, we still have business to do we have cases that are in litigation, and I’m here to support you. And I know that I’m going to continue to work hard to make sure we can bring this money in. And so, you know, we’ve been really lucky, I haven’t had to, you know, look over anyone’s shoulder. Now mind you, our software, my tracks people’s time automatically, so I can kind of see if people are working or not, if I want to and track that productivity. But I’ve never once had to do that they have been right on top of thing.
Tyson Mutrux
Go ahead. Yes, we have a question. From Travis stuttered. And I, before I get to that, Jim, I gotta say this is my favorite view of you because I can barely see you. So Travis? Speaking of hiring, would anyone consider doing that before back in the office? If not usually remote, under normal circumstances, need to replace someone but can’t figure out how to make that work for training, etc? Who wants to take that?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I will since I just hired a bunch of people. Okay, what do you want to go ahead?
Kira Fonteneau
Oh, I was gonna say I hire people virtually all the time. Since half my people are in Manila or somewhere there abouts. I don’t see any reason why you cannot hire someone virtually, you still need to have contact with them. And before you do that, what I normally do is sort of, I send them with a series of emails that are very short, but that require response and see how quickly they respond to me and how responsive they are and how thorough they are in their responses, before I will interview them, and then I see if I like them and hire them. And then with training, I took John Fisher’s book power of a system. And I shamelessly plagiarized a bit of it, but tailored it to my firm. And so there is a bible of ways to operate my office. And so I send them it’s in my team’s channel and I send them there to read it. And I pay them to go read over how we do things for a day and a half like just all you got to do is read this and then I’ve done loom videos to explain processes and then They can watch those. And then I spend an hour or two a day for about a week, just sitting with them as they work through the work. And then we set up times to touch base. And it has worked every time with my folks overseas, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t work the same with someone who was onshore.
Jim Hacking
Elise, you wanted to chime in on that as well, well, I
Unknown Speaker
mean, we have a really similar approach. So I mean, I do a very similar thing, I create this dropbox folder that has all the important information they need. And I create it for each person, so they have their name on it. So they kind of feel like they own it, and it’s, you know, kind of like their desk. And so, and I put in all kinds of things, you know, both like operations manual, and anything that would apply to their work videos that I’ve done about the processes. And then I also put in a bunch of like, my goofy, you know, like, mindset stuff, or just other information that I think would be helpful to them. And then we go through it, and we meet, and we have this little system where we sit down, and we go through it for about a week. And but they’re also billing at the time, like, I have a thing where the first week, they built eight hours, the second week, you know, when I give them a project to work on the second week, they’re billing 12 hours, my goal is that in those first two weeks, they’re covering, you know, a month of their, of their work. And so it works pretty well. I mean, I on boarded three people during this pandemic. And so, I think it works pretty well, I think having an onboarding process is really, really helpful. And we do a thing where you know, because we do have virtual, so we all work from home. So I mean, I just have this like email that I send out to my team, like my payroll person, my admin person who’s going to get them supplies, my IT guy who’s going to hook them up with all the equipment and, and I just say, you know, we’re hiring this person, here’s the email introduction, go to it. And they all know, like, what is their part? And so they get them all the equipment, get them all set up. And by the time I get to them, they kind of already feel really welcome, you know, because they’ve had this whole team of people forming them and you know, getting all the information information.
Jim Hacking
I’m really happy to hear how well everybody’s doing. And I know that that’s not unusual. We had a great meeting in the guild on Tuesday or Monday with the guild members. And a lot of people were talking about their mindset and their approach and how they’re, they’re really pushing themselves and pushing their firms. But I’m sure we’ve all had conversations at the same time, with lawyers whose practice areas completely dried up, who are really struggling. So I’d like to go around the horn, maybe starting with Billy, Billy, I know you work with a lot of law firms in your coaching capacity. And I’m wondering, what kind of conversations are you having what what are you hearing from people on as far as struggles that they’re having sort of keeping the lights on and keep keeping their hearts in it?
Unknown Speaker
So like area of law wise, what I’m hearing is that PII and criminal attorney, an immigration attorney, and attorney, are not getting new clients. I don’t know why immigration, I’ve moved that. And it makes sense. You know, people aren’t driving, so they’re not getting a lot of accidents, and people aren’t outside, so they’re not committing lot of crimes. And I think that it’s really stressful. And I also think it matters, like where you’re at in the country, like there are people in places in the country who are severely locked down, and it’s cold, and it’s wet, and it’s gross. And they leave the house to go to the store once every two weeks and come back and disinfect. And they’re living in a different environment than Arizona is experiencing. So like the Arizona isn’t experiencing that it’s 75 out. Everybody’s riding bikes, they’re hiking, they’re on walks, they’re happily distancing strolling outside. It’s not all that locked down. I’m in my office with one other person who’s been here for the last two weeks, everybody else is at home. So like the level of stress that we’re experiencing isn’t the same. So I think that like you’ve got personality issues, you got area of law issues, you’ve got how much cash flow somebody has. And then there’s the stupid PPP loans, which I think you’ve caused more stress than relief. But that’s, that’s what I’m seeing
Unknown Speaker
the least. How about you?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I’m finding I mean, here in the Seattle area. I mean, though I personally am not in Seattle. Right now. We’re in our little house in the woods away from Seattle. But, you know, in talking with other attorneys here, I mean, there’s definitely an impact, especially in criminal law. I mean, I know several criminal law attorneys who that has been a real issue. And Seattle I think is similar to what Billy is saying. I mean, people are just, it’s beautiful out like we’re having I mean, this is one of our best times of the year. You know, Seattle is beautiful in the spring after this horrible winter. And so people are out and they’re just kind of enjoying the beauty around them and I mean, obviously, I just think though it is a huge difference in where people were the day before this all got shut down. You know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of us have at times operated on a very razor sharp edge, you know, where if we weren’t having business coming in the next day or the next day, I mean, things would have toppled. And I think every single one of us, I would think, at a time have been like that, at some point. And I mean, people who I think have been operating like that, and who can are counting on that next dollar coming in to make that payroll. I mean, this has been horrendous. And I mean, people are, I mean, it’s, it’s horrible. I mean, I have heard some horrible, horrible stories about, you know, different firm owners and what they’re going through. And I agree with Billy, totally this whole loan thing. I mean, I have felt really bad because I personally was not a huge fan of the whole loan thing. Like, I was just like, No, I’m gonna figure out how to do it without the loan. And I did all my modeling. And I actually worked with an attorney the other day, I was showing him all my crazy models about what if we get $0 in and how do we cut our expenses? And, you know, I mean, Lee Rosen, probably can hear me and, like, talk about his just whole idea of how do we shrink down on a moment’s notice. And I mean, I think that I’m hoping that some of the things we can learn from this are some of those skills in and not getting ourselves so burdened by so many expenses, and realizing that sometimes being able to really bring it in and get it down as low as possible is such a relief, you know, in people who have these long term contracts and these things, they’re they’re having, I really feel for them. And obviously, I’m probably really biased because we are virtual, it’s so lovely not to have to pay real estate costs. And I mean, I’m like, just happily paying my staff, you know, and I don’t have to worry about about that.
Jim Hacking
Looks great. At least I think that’s all good stuff. Kyra Tyson, I recorded a podcast, which we haven’t released yet. On Wednesday, it was 10 things we’ve learned in the early days of the Coronavirus, and sort of either about our firm or about the practice of law or about what we’re observing with other lawyers. I’m wondering if you had to answer that question, what are one or two things that surprised you or that you learned about yourself or about your firm, since this whole thing hit?
Kira Fonteneau
So I think, you know, it’s really interesting, it reaffirmed for me something I’ve been beginning to learn a sense about 2016. And, you know, people don’t know this, I was the first public defender of Jefferson County, and I went in and started the office, we didn’t have one here took $10 million out of the system, the legal profession started to hate me, because employers were losing money. I did it for three and a half years, made a ton of enemies and found myself unemployed in July of 2016, just out on my tickets, didn’t have a thing, went through a period of mourning, in which I lost 15 pounds in a week, didn’t eat, wouldn’t leave the bed, you know, got some counseling said, Okay, we got to get out of the house, and you got to start moving. And having gone through that period, where you feel like everything that more you is been taken away, taken away. When we got to this situation, and it became uncertain. It didn’t faze me as much. And what I learned about myself and about my practice is you can’t strand me, you cannot take everything away from me, I can work, I always used to tell people I worked at the Cheesecake Factory once before, I’ll do it again, my kids get to eat. And so I think what I look at this, the biggest thing is that, you know, all that metal that I thought I was testing in 2016, it was strong, I was fine, I am fine. Now I might not be able to, you know, do the the Italian vacation that I had planned to go to in May, I may not be able to do that. And when things open back up, I might have to be more, you know, austere than I would have been. But I learned that I can do it. And the second thing is that I am grateful. And I think a lot of times when we see these situations where it feels like the world is coming down in in on us, and that we’re losing this financial security or we’re losing this thing. We’re forgetting about the nine year old who looks up to us and we’re forgetting about the spouse who cares about us and we’re forgetting about the things that we really, really have that make us a whole human being the things that actually matter. So if they take this whole Law Firm away from me, I might have bad credit for the first time in 44 years. All right. So I have bad credit people have had I before, I will still have an amazing nine year old and a husband, and I will still have friends who I love and I will still have my dignity. I will not this will not define me. So if I had two things to do, those are the those are it, you can do this, you will get through this. This is not the worst day of your life. It feels like it. But it’s you will bounce you will be fine.
Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. Kira. I really appreciate appreciate that. I really appreciate your your outlook on that. Billy, how about you? What what are some things you’ve learned about yourself or that have surprised you with what we’re going through here in 2020?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I mean, nobody saw this coming. It’s such a I mean, okay, people didn’t see it coming. But coming right down today, like did I know in January, that like the whole world would shut down? No. But I kind of agree with Kyra. There’s nothing that that can happen that we can’t deal with. They’re resourceful educated, like smart people and every situation, bull markets, bear markets, they all present opportunities. And so if we’re willing to be flexible, and not be paralyzed by anxiety decision will be fine. So what surprised me I have an amazing team. I have a team that believes in me more now than they did before. Because all the things I told them they had to do that maybe they didn’t want to do have made them better today, because now they have systems and they use the technology. And I might be a little annoying because I’m super progressive compared to other lawyers, and I push them really hard to be great. And to be uniform. But this will save us and so I’m really happy that I have this this great team and and that we get to do this together. That’s awesome.
Jim Hacking
By the way, I forgot to mention that we have some first class lady cussing lawyers in this podcast group right. Here, no, not you, Kira, the best presser Kira. Any cussing, so I’m sorely disappointed. Hopefully, by the end of the show, we’ll get some F bombs in here. And on that note, I’ll turn to Elise. Now, everybody can hear your whole story on today’s podcast. But going back to that point that Kira made, which I think is so important, and it’s really, really helped me to think about all the hard things that I’ve been through in life, and to tap into that as an energy source. As we soldier through this, you know, I know that you’ve been through Katrina, just Saturday gave you a huge shout out today, talking about your resiliency. Somebody earlier in the in the week, was wondering whether you were the female version of Tom Hanks or Forrest Gump, like you were always in a bad situation. First thing Katrina, dealing with divorce and dealing with Seattle, you know, I was learning I was paying attention to Corona, because of you because of what was going on in Seattle. And you had the insight from the experiences that you had before. That, you know, I just want to thank you that helped me pay attention here. My wife is like, how did you see this come in more than I did? Where was I? Where was I? And it was because I was listening to you in Seattle. And I saw and that Elise is being really extreme, she’s just being so she’s just, she’s just like, she’s got this shit figured out. She knows that she’s got to swing into action. And that I remember early on, you had like, cut out your credit card expenses, you and your husband sat down and had that meeting. So talk to us about the resiliency of living through Katrina and all the other things that you’ve gone through, and how that’s played into where you are right now on the 16th of February of April 2020.
Unknown Speaker
Well, it’s so similar to what Kira was saying. I mean, we got this, like, we can do anything. And I think after going through Katrina, and just, I mean, the shit of Katrina, and what I was dealing with at the time with my axe, no money evacuating, like, I mean, it was wild. absolutely wild. But I mean, in that situation, you know, I became just like Kira was saying, I mean, I looked at my four children. I mean, I had a three year old, a six year old, a nine year old and an 11 year old. I mean, I had these four little ones looking to me, and I remember thinking like, I mean, this is no time for their mom to fall the fuck apart. So I mean, their mom needs to like get herself together. Oh, look, Alicia is here.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
good job Alicia and Tyson
Tyson Mutrux
was it means really?
Unknown Speaker
Well, and I just think that I mean, at the time, I got this stupid motto that I literally said almost every day, and it sounds so silly, but I literally was like, I can do it. And I mean, it turned into my password for everything, it turned into everything. And I literally told myself all the time, like, I can do it, I can do it. And it became I mean, where I believed it. And I literally got to the point where I was like, Well, fuck, I can do this, like, Okay, so we’re gonna, you know, not have any money, we’re going to deal with the IRS, we’re gonna move again, I mean, all the things and but I just knew that. I mean, I was always going to be the person I was going to be, I had my own values, my own integrity, that was never going to be taken away. My kids look to me for, you know, all the things. And they needed me to be resourceful. But they more important than that they needed me to see hope in their future. And if they had seen me be hopeless, I can’t imagine what that would have done to them. And so I always felt like my optimism and my resiliency was directly for their psychological health. And, and I see it now even with my 17 year old, I mean, I have no idea what’s happening next year with him at school. I mean, because we’re at this house, we have a house in Seattle, he’s got a dad in Seattle, like, I can’t be exposed to this virus, I have medical things. So I mean, we’re literally talking about does he go live in Seattle? And do I not see him for a year? I mean, how do we handle this? Like, we’re having all these conversations around that. And, but it’s so good for him to see to see the thought process to understand our family values, and to see how we make decisions. And I said something to him the other day, I was like, Okay, we’re going to have this meeting. And he was like, Mom, why don’t you just decide this shit? Like, why do I have to go to a meeting? And I was like, Well, you don’t, I’m like, if you don’t want to be a part of this, and he’s like, Well, I kind of trust you. He goes, you kind of have natural disasters down pat. Then I was like, Okay, fair enough. You know, but I think that, that gives me a lot of strength, I guess to know that all my little people in my family, you know, really need me to be hopeful. And they need me to be a problem solver, and a solution finder, not a complainer and not a whiner, and not somebody who has self pity. Like, I mean, I hate self pity in my children. So God helped me. They’re not gonna see it out of me.
Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. All right, Alicia, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. We took in a lot of intestinal fortitude to get you here. Thank you for not giving up till everybody who you are. And the question that we’re kicking around at the moment is, what are one or two things that you’ve learned about yourself? Or your firm? Since the Coronavirus first hit?
Unknown Speaker
I agree. So yeah, thank you guys for having me, Jim and Tyson and waiting patiently for me to figure out all my tech issues, I’m gonna just blame it on the streaming that my kids are doing recently. So I’m attorney I’m based out of the Philadelphia area, I’m just outside of Philly, and McGorry County, which has been one of the hardest hit places in terms of cases in the state of Pennsylvania. Our kids stopped going to school on I believe, march 10. It was the day before Ron at the time, my son’s birthday. So they’ve been out since that time, we’ve been adjusting well, the courts are closed for the most part. And I work in about three different counties. So there’s a little bit different in each county, we’ve been kind of adjusting to that, in terms of the firm have kind of had an opportunity to hear what some of the other ladies were mentioning about the status of their firms. It’s I would say it’s pretty similar. It was there was kind of a lot of clients calling initially about you know, what’s happening, what’s going on? What do I do with my kids? Do I have to do the exchanges? My, my child’s other parent is an essential worker or frontline worker, you know, what, what options do I have? And then the other part has been that didn’t slow down for a bit. I think people were just really worried when businesses shut down. I own another business. Aside from the law firm, I own a hair salon that I just purchased in September. So I’ve been kind of dealing with both of those businesses at the same time kind of going down, and my employees and both, but right now, I will say this, because definitely I’ve seen an uptick, kind of like what Billy was saying, in clients. So seeing the same thing. I’ve seen clients who were like on the fence for divorce, maybe months ago calling and saying I’m ready. I know if they got their stimulus money and they’ve just had enough and they’re ready to move forward. But I am seeing an uptick in that. So it’s, you know, a lot of it is really just kind of dealing with what comes at you right? You know, I think being in the business that we’re in dealing with families all the time you kind of learn how to separate the emotion from what is going on and get things done. If I had an opportunity to listen to LCSW podcast today, it was great, absolutely great. But I had a situation with my youngest son, where I was in a hospital for two months when I was pregnant with him. And it was just, I just started having complications. And that forced me to slow down that forced me to figure out how to do things. I was managing a firm for about 150 employees. And I was, you know, the managing attorney, I was having a quarterly meeting from my hospital bed. And that kind of got me in the frame of mind that you can kind of figure out what you need to figure out, you have to be able to compartmentalize what you need to do, you learn how to prioritize, but you still figure out how to get things done. So this is not quite the same. But I have a little bit more freedom than I did the shot two monitors for two months, but but there’s some similarities that you can draw from there in terms of getting what you need done.
Jim Hacking
That’s good stuff. You know, I’ve been I’ve been thinking about your, your hair salon. And, you know, I got called into duty helping my wife with some of her hair issues. I didn’t have to cut hair. But pretty scary. My kids had quite a laugh. They came in and they saw me and my pink gloves, and I was doing my work. And here’s a question for you, Alicia. So I believe that barbers and hair salons are going to be super busy whenever this reopens, right. So what are you doing now, both as a hair salon owner and as a lawyer, during the slow time to sort of get ready for when things ramped back up.
Unknown Speaker
So we are so with with both we’re kind of looking at kind of just taking things in chunks, like I know, as soon as the doors open, people are gonna be flooding in, we’ve gotten messages and every time they kind of push back, when we can open, we start to see more appointments kind of come in. So I can see like my online appointments coming in, and then a change and go back to whoever the due date is. I know that’s happening. I had just hired two stylists that we’re going to start the weekend after we had to shut down business. So I’ve been in contact with them. I’ve still been kind of putting out feelers in terms of hiring for people to kind of start that weekend. So I still been interviewing people virtually. And then they’ll come in for the demos whenever we can kind of open up. So it’s really just kind of planning for that first influx, and then understanding that there’s gonna probably be a dip. So just kind of keeping a real good eye on that. I think it was, I think, Billy, I think you were saying I think on your part of your episode you had with Clio, you were talking about chunks of time, or maybe it was Aaron talking about chunks of time looking at three months and six months and nine months and 12 months, and trying to kind of figure out what you’re going to do in each of those kind of chunks. And then instead of looking at what was going on for the next year, that’s hard, but looking at it for that’s the same thing I’ve been doing for for the law firm really is just saying, How do I break it down? So I’m not overwhelmed. Being flexible enough.
Jim Hacking
We did a survey of the guild, or the overall maximum lawyer membership about what they wanted to hear from you ladies about the most. And the number one vote getter was sort of how do I plan for the next 90 days? So that’s a that’s a great point, Alicia, let’s kick it around. Maybe Kira, could you go next and talk about how you’re looking at the next 90 days.
Kira Fonteneau
So I actually hired somebody yesterday. And what I decided to do is like, Okay, we’re going to be shut virtually for the next six weeks. And so we are actually using this time as planning time. And so what we’re gonna do is we are going through our CRM system, cleaning up our forms, getting the processes down and practicing the process. So that in 90 days, we are ready to go. And so I’m actually using this time as an investment period in the firm. And it kind of reminded me of this when I was at I was at Costco Saturday morning, and people were lined up. It was before they were open. They were lined up waiting to go inside. And what did I see Costco doing? They were repaving the parking lot. You know, the Costco was like, we we don’t get this opportunity where we can repaint the parking lot at a time when people would normally be here. No, we can do it at 8am. Now because we can’t have as many people in our store. So we’re going to pave the parking lot right now. So the Fazzino firm is paving the parking lot right now. So that in six months, we’re ready to go back up and I had had a plan to hire an associate in June, I may still go ahead and do that. And what I did was I said okay, this is an opportunity for me to separate the wheat from the chaff. I’m going through my cases. These are the cases I’m kicking to the curb. I don’t want to deal with these people. They’re they’re annoying me and we’re not going to be their lawyer for much longer. I’m kicking them out of this, this practice. Then I’m going through my files and I’m separating a b c files and saying these are the files that we’re going to love on for the next three months. So even if we don’t get another case in, we’re going to get more money out of the cases that we wouldn’t Weren’t we have in our office than we would have if we didn’t, you know, if we were just still taking cases like we like we used to. And then we’re saying, okay, these are the cases, we’re going to take this time. And we’re going to look at the cases and say, I know I’m looking at my numbers, these are the ones that give us the most money, I’m going to tweak my marketing to get more of these cases. So I started with, you know, I just picked the thing. And I said, Okay, well, now I’m going to go live every day and talk. And I’m going to start to build my social media presence so that in six months, I have more people who follow me on social. And then the next thing I decided to do was go ahead and clean up my CRM. And so I’ve been working on that this week. And so each week, it’s like a 12 week plan, just like was that 12 work week year thing each week is something to take that next three months somewhere else. So I think that when we if you talk to me in July, I’m only going to be doing civil rights cases and employment discrimination cases. And whatever the two hottest areas are for employment discrimination. And for me, it’s the I think it’s that I’m going to be going after high income earners in my cases, as opposed to low income earners in my cases. And so I don’t have to take as many cases, I don’t have to worry about that. I’m going to focus my time on a handful of 24 cases that are just damn a fucking amazing, instead of the 180 cases that were laying laden with trash that I’ve been trying to wade through for the last two years. So I think the first thing is, this is an opportunity, whenever you have these blinding opportunities, it’s when you can look at like your law partners and say, I don’t like these motherfuckers I’m getting out of this fucking practice. Okay? Maybe happened. Okay, because these are, these are the times that show you your blind spots and show you your weaknesses. And so now’s the time to drink it in and let it happen, let it wash over you and cut the wheat from the chaff and say, You know what, there’s not enough time on this earth. If I die, you know, in six months, I don’t want people to say I last six months, I spent dealing with this fucking asshole, but I could have been dealing with something else. So I don’t know. It was that was a rant. I have them on periodically.
Jim Hacking
Billy, how about you? What are you focusing on for the next 90 days?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I want to echo a little bit of what Kira was saying, like, so I started thinking about what his family law looked like after this, you know, we’re gonna have this global recession, where there’s gonna, it’s gonna look a lot like it did in Arizona in 2008 2009 2010. You know, what did that look like? And there’s gonna be a lot more lower income, lower cost divorces? Do I want to serve that market? I know how to serve that market? Do I want to serve that market? Or do I want to serve the higher end wealthier market because the middle class is going to shrink? And I don’t want to serve the lower cost market. I have a second company that’s legal doc prep that can do that. So what do we need to do now? To set us up to be ready to take on complex, complicated faces? How do we raise the quality of our legal services, just like Kira was saying. And so what we’re doing right now is once a week, we’re meeting a group of attorneys who pour into cases to really increase the level of knowledge that everyone has elaborate and to become better litigators and better attorneys.
Jim Hacking
Police ask this question of you, and then Tyson is going to take over after you answer. Well, it’s
Unknown Speaker
interesting. I mean, we are, it’s like Billy and I decided to do the exact same thing. So we didn’t discuss it. But that is exactly what I have been doing is really thinking about, you know, what is this going to look like next. And in my mind, too, this is a huge area for collaborative law in the family law world. And so I mean, I have really been pushing and talking about, you know, like, Guys, the court is close to stop fucking using them as a crutch to make your family decisions like now’s the time to you to step up and be a real parent, figure out how to work this out and not have the black robe decide things for you. And so I’ve been really, really focusing on that with our clients, and just in general, and in various board work I do and things like this is a time for collaborative law, to just take center stage and do what they do best, and help people learn to make better agreements and make decisions. And the other thing I’m doing is pouring into my team, the education piece. I mean, I’m like, I have a new associate and I was like, Okay, I hope they’re doing that trial. Advocacy, you know, family law. Trial out because I’m sending you to that, or we’re doing this like I am, I am bombarding them with just like Billy was saying education so that they will up their game. And you know, there’s some educational programs that are long and tedious. And in a normal scenario, people wouldn’t really buy into them. But now I have, I think my team members where they’re like kind of psych, that I’m willing to send them to something, you know, do some virtual training, where they’re learning about high asset, you know, divorce and various, and there’s going to be a lot of new stuff out there about all the asset, you know, variations that we’ve seen in the stock market, and just so really trying to pour into my team from an education standpoint, to up our game, because we’re gonna have all kinds of Amazonians needing divorce here in Seattle.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so I’m gonna jump in. And I’m going to ask you a bigger a big picture question. And so we can we can speculate about when when other courts going to reopen Wednesday, everything else going to reopen, but mine’s a little bit different. It’s sort of the topic of this talk. And it’s, I mean, what’s the impact of all this going to be on the legal profession? And so I’m really just curious what you all think. So I’m going to, Alicia, you’re the one that’s on the screen right out for me. So, like, what do you what do you think this is? What impact is this gonna have on our on our profession? Because that’s a big freakin question.
Unknown Speaker
I think that it’s going to speed up a lot of the advancements that it should have made a while ago, where a lot of people were kind of taking their time. And I mean, like courts, or organizations or associations, were really kind of taking the time. A lot of people in groups like this, you don’t have been pushing for us to be able to do teleconference hearings, or things like that. And of course, we’re really reluctant to do it. Again, I’m mostly in Philadelphia County and I work with part of a committee that’s been trying to get us to be able to do e filing even for Philadelphia, for the family court, some of the other courts can do it, Family Court can’t do it. There’s a lot of things that were just kind of prohibiting us from moving forward, I think that this is going to push us in the direction because obviously, like sometimes when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do got to make it really uncomfortable for you, and then you have to do it. And I think that that’s where we are, I think that what’s gonna end up happening. So it’s gonna be a lot better in some ways. I think that there’s going to be some growing pains, because there always are, when things like this happened. But I think that it definitely is going to push the courts to do what they need to do. I think there are a lot of firms now who are reevaluating what they were able to do, again, probably people in the maximum lawyer group, were kind of ready for this, a lot of us understood the technology, we need to be able to run our practices a little bit more flexible, and more flexible fashion. But there are a lot of brick and mortars, who are not able to do that, who are still going into the office right now, to be able to do what they need to do, those firms are going to have to catch up or you know, they’re going to have to go another way. But I think that generally it’s going to, I think when things kind of settle down, it’s going to be good. And I hope that we learn some lessons from this, and we don’t just kind of figure it out and then go right back to what we were doing before.
Tyson Mutrux
Billy, what do you think?
Unknown Speaker
I love that. I totally agree, I also think that we’re gonna see a lot of lawyers retire. And that this is going to be a real opportunity for lawyers who are not ready to retire, to figure out how to take that business support those, those lawyers on the way out, maybe come up with a model that allows us to compensate them when they decide to retire. So the market is going to really shift first.
Tyson Mutrux
I agree, Kira, you’re up next, what do you think?
Kira Fonteneau
So I really think that we are going to become a lot more virtual just as a practice. So I have a litigator. And the biggest thing that may have flipped the switch for a lot of lawyers is that like I can take a deposition from my office. I don’t have to travel to Louisiana, because the witness is in Louisiana. And it’s now getting the other side. I litigate against big companies all the time, and they try to like bury you all so and so is in, you know, Baton Rouge, I’ll see you down there and they’re like taking their money, you know, and oh, you need to have a video deposition, okay, we’re gonna drop $1,000 for the videographer, and you’re gonna just be there with your little paper transcript, and I’m like, but we’re gonna do it on Zoom, and I’m gonna record it. And so, you know, now it’s like their clients are going to realize that they have been, like, messing with them and charging them too much money to do things that they could have done virtually before. And it’s going to level the playing field between plaintiff and defendant quite a bit. I think we’re going to fit like even talking to these big companies who do these court reporting things who are trying to charge me for a videographer to you know, to to record my Zoom deposition, and I’m like, No, you know, we’re not going to do that. And so it’s really starting to say, this economy is not going to support you charge me an extra $1,000 to hit play on Zoom. It’s just not going to do it. And I’m not paying that. And so, you know, I think it’s going to level the playing field for plaintiffs and defendants, I think it’s going to make us because people can’t afford to pay these things. These, these vendors who are given us lawyer up charge are going to have to just go the other way. So I just think the tech is really going to take over what we’re doing.
Tyson Mutrux
I hope you’re right, I think you’re wrong. But I actually have a lease going last for a reason. Because you’ve been through this before. And Charlotte Christian asked this question, which I find is really I find it really interesting. It’s, will it speed up? Or will everybody go back to comfort levels? And so at least what do you think? Are we gonna advance like everyone else has said, are we gonna go back to the norm? You’ve been through this before? What do you think? Well,
Unknown Speaker
I mean, what I think is, I think it depends on the person. I think those people with a growth mindset and who see this as an opportunity, rather than just a crisis, we’ll actually pivot and move forward and make things better. I think those people that kind of have a fixed mindset, and are really not able to see the positive and the blessing in this will actually go back to their norm. And I think we’re gonna have a bigger divide between those two groups. I mean, I really think that something like this allows us to truly dig deep, and see what is important and what’s not. And, I mean, I hate to harken back to Hurricane Katrina, but I have to tell you, like, evacuating from my home. And, you know, and living away from my home for a full year in my home was my it was my grandparents home, then it was my home. So I mean, I had gone to this home every day since I was six years old. I mean, this was my home. Like, I mean, it was very much, you know, a part of who I was. I mean, I was, you know, this was the community I grew up in, literally being away from that home for a year. And then coming back into the home, we literally just walked through, and I was like, well, obviously, we can throw away all this shit. I’m like, if we haven’t looked at it in a year, we don’t need it. And so I mean, it was literally like this most amazing reset button on for us as a family to be like, Why do we have all this? I mean, it was fascinating. And I’m finding with this thing, since we are now forcing this move to this new house that we didn’t mean to force right now. I’m like, Oh, my God, we don’t need any of that stuff we have in our Seattle house. I mean, we’ve been here since March 1. And I literally can’t even explain to my child, what clothes I wanted out of my closet. I was like, Oh, forget it, just box them up and give them away. And it’s like, Okay, fair enough, mom. But I mean, it really, I think can be a reset, where you really do figure out what actually matters. And I mean, I think that, I think it’s for those that will take the opportunity. I mean, this is going to be one of those pivotal moments in your life that you will look back on as such an amazing thing. It won’t be horrible, but you just have to get through it.
Tyson Mutrux
All right, that’s a good segue into the last question. This is gonna sort of be a lightning round and to give you all a second to think about it, I’m gonna call on Jimmy first. What is everyone’s one piece of advice to get through this, Jimmy? You’re up first. What’s What’s everyone what’s your one piece of advice to everybody?
Jim Hacking
It’s the same advice I’ve been given from day one which is flood your mind with positive stuff, do not give into doubt, do not give in to fear. If you need to read your holy scripture, if you need to listen to uplifting podcasts if you need to meditate if you need to exercise, this is not the time to cut that in half. This is the time to double that. So my tip is double that. Go all in on kindness go all in on above. Support your team support your friends and be a leader. The leader that only you can be
Tyson Mutrux
cool. Alright, I’m gonna go from left to right on my screen. So Kira, you’re up next.
Kira Fonteneau
So my advice is to stay hooked into your tribe. Like if you might have more than one tribe, like I have my my tribe that I text message all day who are lawyers around here I have my tribe that I talked to on Mondays and Fridays at eight o’clock in the morning. And you know, on a Zoom meeting with some people I know hear
Unknown Speaker
those pretty good tribes. You like it? You want to be a part? Yeah, you should be.
Kira Fonteneau
But stay into those people. Like don’t let this social distancing. Make you feel like you’re by yourself because you’re really not. We’re all at home in our own in our own houses, but we are not alone and there are people But if you’ve had a feeling like you couldn’t do it or that this was some shitty shit, and they’re having that feeling too. And so, you know, I’ve got a group of folks who I text message all day we send memes back and forth, we never text message this much before this happened. And we get on a zoom and we drink and where they drink, I don’t really, but and then we talk and we give each other shit. And and that makes me feel connected. And I think we can’t let this opportunity to be connected to the people who are important and reach out to people who we haven’t reached out to you before.
Tyson Mutrux
Belly, you’re up next, what’s your one piece of advice,
Unknown Speaker
find routines that promote wellness for the basics. Sleep, well eat well get exercise, get enough human contact, and find a routine that’s different. But that is still feeding all of the basic aspects that your soul needs.
Tyson Mutrux
Perfect. And Alicia, your last.
Unknown Speaker
I love what everyone says I will say yes to all of that. But I would say take this as an opportunity to get the rest that you needed. A lot of us running businesses and having families would always say I wish I had to have me or I wish I had more time. If I had more time I would do this. We’ve been blessed with more time right now. And I think we have to take advantage of that. And to add on to that I would say kind of journal every day journal and kind of keep track of what’s going on how you’re feeling, what you’re accomplishing. So that when you get through this, you look back at it.
Tyson Mutrux
I love that great advice. All right. Thanks Kyra Elise. Billy, Alicia, Jimmy, everyone else watching. Hopefully I said everybody’s name. Thank you so much for joining us and giving your great advice and your inspiration. It’s been amazing. Thank you all and have a wonderful day.
