In this episode, Jim and Tyson talk to Will Norman, a member of Maximum Lawyer’s Facebook group who is going through some career changes -he is going on his own!- and he needs some advice.
Will’s been practicing criminal defense for about 5 years, and has been around it all his life; almost all of his family is in the police. He has a practice with an old partner but recently there have been some issues in the business. Real structural business issues, so Will decided to go out on his own and start his own law firm…
Don’t miss next week’s episode with Will Norman and his 5, 5, 5 plan!
Hacking’s hack: An episode from GaryVee’s Audio Experience Podcast in which Gary is interviewed. One of the most inspiring, truthful, honest, brutal, harsh, motivating podcast.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-garyvee-audio-experience/id928159684?mt=2
(April 26 episode)
Will’s tip: A practice management software. Pretty awesome and helpful. https://www.actionstep.com/all/
Tyson’s tip: Read John Fisher’s book. The Power Of A System: How To Build the Injury Law Practice of Your Dreams.
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Transcripts: Going Solo ft. Will Norman
Jim Hacking
You know, the one thing that I want to say is that it’s so important in situations like this, to make sure that your mindset is right. And Tyson and I both said you independently, that you’re going to look back on this. And you’re going to be glad that this happened. And this is the direction that your firm is taking. But you’re now going to be the complete master of your fate. You’re going to be responsible for your own success or failure. Run your law firm the right way.
Unknown Speaker
This is the maximum layer podcast. Podcast. I’m your host, Jim hacking and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting metrics. Jimmy, we had a pretty awesome show. Last week, we have Jill Nelson on she’s really awesome. There’s a lot of great takeaways. So people have not listened to that episode yet. They need to go back and listen to it because she really is incredible. started a company from the ground up really the ground up, you should listen to other podcasts too, because she’s got a more of a backstory that we didn’t really get into, but really is great. But I do before we jump into our guest today, Jimmy, I want to remind everybody to go to our Facebook page, make sure you like us there request to join the group, because there’s a page and a group. So make sure you join the group as well with the closed group, a lot of good things there. And also make sure you go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, make sure you rate and review us there, subscribe there. It helps her numbers quite a bit. So Jimmy, you want to introduce our guests? Yeah,
Jim Hacking
so this week, we have sort of a special episode, I’m actually really excited about it. This is something that I thought we would spend a lot of time on our podcasts doing. And that is talking to members of the group. And specifically, we’re talking with will Norman, he’s a criminal defense attorney out of Cleveland, Ohio, and he’s had some changes recently, in his practice. And he talked about that on the Facebook group that Tyson just mentioned. And instead of in this might be me being lazy, instead of me sitting down and typing out suggestions for will about what I thought that he should do, I thought we would have him on the show, I thought we could talk everything through that we might make an extra special long episode out of it. Or we might even cut it up into two episodes, depending on how long we go. But that basically Will’s getting ready to go out on his own completely. And we thought that we would have him on the show to talk everything through. So we’ll welcome to the show.
Will Norman
Thanks for having me, fellas. Great show really looking forward to it. So well,
Jim Hacking
why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are as an attorney about the practice that you’ve had, and then the changes that are going on?
Will Norman
Sure. Thanks, Jim. I’ve been practicing criminal defense for about five years, I have experience in that kind of going back my whole life. I’m a My grandfather was a police officer, my father’s police officer, my brother’s a police officer. My sisters are dispatchers married to police officers. So I’ve been kind of in this line of work, I think as long as I can remember. And I’ve been trying cases doing some appeals work in the Greater Cleveland area, primarily, I do some federal work outside of the state. And essentially, I have a practice with my partner, and old army buddy of mine. And we’ve kind of been together through law school, and then through our first jobs. And we decided to go out on our own together. Recently, there have been some issues in the business, just real structural business issues, where the overhead we were sharing didn’t really make sense from my practice. And it wouldn’t have made sense to divide fees in a way that would make it worth the juice worth the squeeze there. So I’m just going to go out on my own and start my own law firm. We’re still friends, and he’s like a brother to me. And we’ll still refer cases back and forth. So totally amicable, but it’s just purely a business decision. So I put a post on the Facebook group here. And Jim was nice enough to have me on and just ask him some questions about the nuts and bolts of going out on your own and trying to learn the lessons, you too have learned maybe without having to make the mistakes. So looking forward to having the conversation?
Tyson Mutrux
And will can we dig a little bit deeper into sort of how your partnership began? Because I think that can be helpful for the listeners to see an example of how maybe a partnership formed and maybe how it should not afford Maybe that’s your opinion, I guess you can tell us your input on that as well. But can you sort of get into you know, how the firm began? Why did you choose this partner?
Will Norman
Sure. So like I said, we did have some history and just to go a little bit more in depth. My partner’s name is Ziad Taya. And we were in the same army unit when I got back from Iraq I transferred into his unit and at that time we didn’t really know each other real well but when we got to law school was kind of one of those Hey, I know you from somewhere feelings and And we started being in the same study group together with a couple of other friends in law school, which kind of brings you closer. And then when it came time to study for the bar, as you to know, as our other attorneys know, you know, that’s, you know, 10 1215 hours a day for two months. So you get very close, just, you know, interacting a lot there. The way I got my first job was actually through Ziad, he asked me to basically after law school, I was kind of on my own, not really doing too much to try to find my way. And he was working for a small practice in a neighboring suburb, February 29th, of leap year, I’ll remember. And he told me, Hey, why don’t you take this job, I’m leaving for a big firm job to work on the Bernie Madoff case. They’re hiring 500 lawyers or something. And I went and I interviewed, and it was not going to be an ideal situation for me, came back kind of dejected, and looked at the job board. And that same job that he had applied for was open until March 1. So if it weren’t a leap year would have been closed, I put my resume and got called back the next day hired the next day, we worked there for about six months together, we got there was just a reverse seniority layoff. And so we both got laid off the same time got a severance. So it just kind of from there, he said, you know, what are you going to do? And I said that I’m not sure. He said, Well, why don’t we, you know, hang our shingle. And so we did. You know, I don’t know, looking back on it was that the right or the wrong decision? You know, as it turns out, five years later, our businesses kind of developed differently, I don’t know that we could have seen that from the beginning, maybe we should have set a higher standard for ever going into business with anyone. And so since there weren’t a lot of lot of reasons to go in together, maybe it was a mistake, but learned a lot over five years. And again, just as the businesses developed, he just requires a little bit more overhead for his business, and he has a lot more, you know, he has considerably more revenue. And my business is a little bit less revenue and doesn’t require as much overhead. So just the the splits and the divisions in payments and fees just stopped making sense. And so before it came to some sort of blow up, we decided to just animate amicably part ways, and kind of brings me to where I am today.
Jim Hacking
Well, what’s your immediate next, say, six or eight weeks look like? What are you doing as far as moving out? But, you know, what are you what are your immediate goals and tasks?
Will Norman
Yeah, so you know, there’s, there’s kind of nuts and bolts things, I have to find it office, I have a couple of places in mind, I’m going to be looking at, I’ve set up my corporate entity, I’ve got a domain name at defending cleveland.com, I’ve got some advice on how to start the website and how to get that up and serving as a tool for my business. And then there’s, you know, a couple of other pieces, which is, you know, keep doing the legal work that I’m still responsible for as a part of this firm, and probably will take with me to my new firm as well, you know, winding up this firm, just from a legal and financial standpoint. So, you know, those are kind of my immediate, immediate next, for six weeks, I think I’ll probably moved out by the middle of May, the end of May. So those are the immediate things I’m looking at. And then I’ve set some business goals and marketing goals and different things that maybe we’ll talk about in a bit.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, I guess when did the actual partnerships split up? When do they actually take effect? And then what have you done in the meantime, to really get the ball rolling?
Will Norman
Yeah. So it was last Monday that I got the email from my partner, where he just kind of recognized what we both had been thinking, I think, for a while. And so, you know, it’s kind of gone on the fast track from there. What have I been doing? I have, you know, been kind of putting together a business plan, setting some goals in that regard. And like I said, forming the corporate entity, getting the domain name figured out getting an email address their tax ID number, you know, kind of just real kind of first order things. I spoke with two really great young attorneys, will Ed and Michael hill here in Cleveland, they do nursing home injuries, they just left a big plaintiffs firm and went out on their own and they’re big fans of the show. And you know, they’ve been a great resource in kind of, you know, checking all the boxes and how to do things the right way. So I’ve been talking to people I’ve been, you know, looking at office space, trying to do the nuts and bolts legal work to get an entity warmed up and opened up. And, you know, trying to set some goals and then just trying to get my arms around the whole thing.
Jim Hacking
Well, you and I had a chat last week by phone for about a half hour and we talked some things through And one of the things that I think is is really good is that it seems to me that you have your mind in the right place that you’re focused. And you’re you have accurate thinking, you understand the reality of your situation. And you’re also looking forward to the challenge. And I think that, you know, the one thing that I want to say is that it’s so important in situations like this, to make sure that your mindset is right. And Tyson and I both said, You independently, that you’re going to look back on this, and you’re going to be glad that this happened. And that this is the direction that your firm is taking that you’re now going to be the complete master of your fate, you’re going to be responsible for your own success or failure. I think that given your track record with the army and your success as a lawyer, that you’re going to do just fine. And I really applaud you for making these moves. And I think that looking back in the future, you’re gonna laugh at sort of how much there was to do and, and this is really going to be a time of trial and interpolation and tribulation. And that I just think at the end of the day, you’re going to really do well. And so I just wanted to say that before we sort of dive into your nuts and bolts questions, this is going to be sort of a different episode where Will’s going to be asking us questions, as opposed to us interviewing him so much. So why don’t we transition now into I mean, one, if you want to comment on that, and to if you want to transition into the topics that you want for us to cover in the show, I think that’d be good.
Will Norman
Sure. So first of all, thank you for your words of encouragement there, I’m happy to hear that, it seems like I’m going in the right direction, I will have to say that. I think a big part of me having the right mindset, as you say, is the discovery of this podcast and a couple of other resources that I’ve found kind of bread crumbing, through your podcast, John Fisher’s book, and kind of some other things. At the time, when I first was introduced to you guys and kind of these other resources, I was not in a real good place in my practice. I mean, I was doing the legal work, but it just it wasn’t making sense as business to me. And so I was looking more and more outside of the law. And when will Ed again mentioned and him put me onto your podcast here. And I started listening to it, I dove in, probably listen to all the episodes and a week or two. And it really just gave me a great rejuvenating idea of what a law firm practice can be. And so you guys played, I think a big role already in my mindset being in the right place. So I want to thank you guys for what you do. And I think it really helpful to a lot of attorneys out here who are kind of maybe stuck in the grind a little bit and not able to see kind of the broader picture of what a law firm can you know, what a great business that can be. So, you know, just to transition that I guess, into the questions I have, you know, one of the primary reasons that my partnership didn’t work out exactly as planned, was, I believe we took on too much overhead too quickly. And at some point that just stopped making sense financially. So at the same time as I listened to your podcast, and the other resources that you pointed us to, a lot of it is get that work off your desk, you know, be focusing on things that only you can do as an attorney. And so I wanted to ask you guys how to think about maybe the tension between, you know, staying lean and not taking on overhead too quickly. And at the same time trying to keep your you know, the attorney focused on attorney work that is, you know, not something that you can delegate or automate. So, I don’t know if you guys have thoughts on that,
Tyson Mutrux
you really asked a lot about outsourcing and your questions. And so that’s, I think that’s gonna be really important. But I mean, I did criminal defense work, I know how that how that work practice goes, I do understand that you do need to keep a very low overhead. So but even though there is, I understand how that works, the cash flow can be a little different than with personal injury, you need to outsource everything you can. And so there are a couple services you can use. There’s Upwork, there’s Fiverr, and all that. But in particular, I don’t know if you have an assistant, I don’t know what you have, on your end, who you’re taking with you for taking anybody but I think about very this nothing Okay, so you’re taking nothing with you. So this actually is a great segue from last week’s podcast until now said number one is phones. If you can avoid taking all those phone calls, get an answering service. It doesn’t have to be Ruby, it can be someone else. There’s a lot out there that you can outsource the phones. That is the number one thing I would do is outsource that. Jim would probably also advocate this is just bookkeeping. You probably want to do that. Because you don’t have to hire someone in house to actually do the bookkeeping, you can actually outsource and have someone like Jill ulit do something like that. So it was The things that you would pay for the services, you wouldn’t be paying for someone to sit there all day doing the work on that. I would also say there’s ways for you to get work done faster. And it’s actually a save you some money, even though you’re going to pay for it in the long run, cannot save some money, getting someone to transcribe for you, if you can dictate a bunch of your letters and sounds to clients, obviously, automation, we can sort of push that off, because I doubt you’re at the point where you can automate a bunch of stuff. If you are, you’ve got the resources to do as I suggest do that. But at this level, as you’re leaving court, I don’t know if you send letters to clients and things like that, but transcribe those letters on your way out of the out of the courthouse, or while you’re driving back to the office, that can save you a little bit of time. So you can use that, those that extra time on marketing efforts, or whatever it may be. And it’s there’s also a simple exercise, which I always talk about, it’s such a simple exercise, is just sit down and figure out what you do and get over the syndrome of like, I’ve got to do everything. I mean, that’s completely BS, you know, attorneys think that they’ve got to do everything. We’re egomaniacs. It’s just not that way. You don’t have to do everything. But you sit down. What can I delegate, you know, what can I automate? What can I eliminate? You know, what can I outsource? actually sit down and write everything that you do as an attorney. And you learn as you are actually running a firm and I don’t know what your role was at your old firm if you’re actually managing it, or you’re splitting those duties, but you’re taking on all those duties now. So you’re right on everything you got to do as an attorney. And as a business owner. Now, you’re the sole owner that you need to write down all those things, you can delegate, automate, eliminate, outsource all that. That’s how I would start, Jimmy, I’ll let you add on to that.
Jim Hacking
So I have sort of three thoughts on different things that you might want to think about? Well, number one is, I think that you explore office space, and I think you need office space, I would encourage you to find a place with other attorneys. Maybe not necessarily other criminal defense attorneys. But I would find a situation where there are going to be lawyers down the hall that you can talk to, and you can keep your overhead low by sharing expenses for a conference room and an office. And I think that the one of the big problems about being on your own is the isolation. And you won’t have your partner anymore to go in just when it’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and you’ve been thinking about a case all day, and you want to bounce things off someone, I think there’s a lot of value to being around other attorneys. And another benefit of a two is that, you know, when you’re down the hall, people think of you more often to refer a case to so especially when you’re out on your own for the first time you’re going to be you know, you’re gonna have a lot of time on your hands, and people are going to be giving you cases and that’s that’s a good thing. So I think that having that office space is good thing. Number two, I would encourage you to, whenever you do something, figure out how can I systematize? And how can I make this so the next time that I have to do this, I have this at my fingertips and I don’t have to recreate the wheel every single time and in start right at the very beginning, when you’re with your first case, if you do a little memo on, you know the admissibility of a gun or something or whatever evidence or whatever procedural things you can do to work that into a system so that you can do it easier the second time around and always be thinking of that in that kind of a mindset, like how can I make this scalable? How can I do this only one time and have it replicate itself. And then the third piece of advice I would have, as far as I agree with Tyson about the phones. But I think that one thing that was really don’t take advantage of our law students, and having a law clerk, we have a full time associate now who started with us as an intern. And it just got really comfortable for me to be able to say, Andy, go research this, Andy, go research that. And I think that having interns is a really cheap way to help you scale so that you’re doing the consults, you’re going to court and they can do the stuff that’s important, but that you don’t necessarily have to be doing and you can check up on after they’re done.
Will Norman
Yeah, there’s a great piece of advice. And I have been cheating a little bit looking at our sheet that you’ve you’ve put out and I have done a little bit of that starting to script out my intake procedures and try to list out each document that would be created in a typical case. So definitely, to try to systematize things and, you know, that’s one of the first things I want to do operationally to make the case it’s just easier to do so I can spend more time on marketing and building referral networks, etc.
Tyson Mutrux
You know, well, I do want to, I feel like we sort of jumped into the weeds and I blame myself for that. But I think we sort of want to back up just a second because something I always talk about, and it’s very, very important to where you’re going. Because you want to craft this firm for your future, you know, not from the future but for for your future. And you want it to be really your firm. You want to grow into being this great thing. So I think you really need to start sort of back it up and really start with a vision and know that sounds really hokey, but you need to start with your vision. It’s very, very important. And I imagine Jim would agree with us. And John Fisher is big on this as well. It’s just sort of putting it out there. You need to start with your vision, where do you want your firm to be in 510 1530 years? Right? Really think about that far? And where do you want to be? Where do you want to be? Personally, where do you want to be? from a, from a professional standpoint, I really think that’s important, because that’s going to guide you and your decisions that you’re making today. So I really want to encourage you to back up and sort of look at this from a 30,000 foot view. And okay, where do I want this thing to go, because that’s really going to shape how things go from this point out, because you’re going to be making a lot of decisions in the next few weeks, next few months, that are really going to guide you as to where going to be going in the future. And if you start with that vision, that’s going to help you out quite a bit, you’ve got a guidepost to follow, you know, or a light to follow, you know, so you’ll make sure you follow that and start with your patient. And I want to back up a little bit, because I know we are getting into the weeds. So Jim, if you have anything to say about that? Well, I
Jim Hacking
do. And I think that along the lines of You know, where do you want to go? And why? Why do you want to go there? I think one of the things that really inspired me in our talk on the phone last week will, and I’ll maybe ask you to sort of talk about it again. And you did a little bit earlier about your family experience with police officers. And I just think that when you were talking to me about your family, and how you got into criminal defense work and why it’s important and your view of police officers, I was really wishing that we had a video running of that, because I thought it was pure gold, I think it’s a real way for you to stand out from other criminal defense attorneys. And I think that if you talk a little bit about that now on the show, I think it’d be helpful for our listeners to sort of understand you chose criminal defense and why it’s what you do. Sure.
Will Norman
So as I said, In the beginning, my grandfather was a police officer in Cleveland, my father is and has been a police officer in Cleveland for 30 plus years. My brother is a police officer in Cleveland, my brother and father were both narcotics detectives. And then my sisters actually were police dispatchers, and one is married to police officer. So you know, criminal law and criminal justice is something that’s been an integral part of my life, you know, since I was, you know, very little reading police reports, and I was eight years old. And actually, when I went out on my own, I thought that maybe it would be almost looked at, like kind of a turncoat, to be on the defense side. But as it happened, you know, I tried to do a couple of other things. And when I got that first criminal defense case, I just loved it, like a fish to water. So, you know, when I got that first case, I started to focus on criminal defense work. And, you know, my sense is that, you know, my family enforces the law against the citizens, and I enforce the law against the state, I have a real profound respect for police officers and what they do. And I think that my family are exemplary police officers. And you know, anytime that an officer, you know, doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do, I think that that is almost searching my, you know, family name. So I see my job as holding the state to its burden, keeping the state within the boundaries of its power, under the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment in a lot of my cases, and, you know, trying to strengthen that adversarial system, so we could have a criminal justice system, we’re proud of my vision for the firm, I think is, you know, kind of taking a little bit from John Fisher here. But in my first couple of years in criminal defense, it seemed like a lot of criminal defense attorneys, I don’t mean to speak ill of them, but were holding people’s hands while they got plea agreements that they might have got anyway. And I think that the way that I want to be different is, I want people to come to me, when they want to challenge something, whether it’d be a fourth amendment issue, or ticket to trial, I want to be a trial defense attorney. And I think that that gives me the best way to, you know, prepare cases and work them up so that we can get leverage if there is some plea agreement that makes sense. So be it. But I think that my main goal will be to, you know, prepare things for trial, obtain leverage that way, and, you know, try to serve my clients in that way. So that’s kind of my vision for the firm is to not just kind of take cases without a direction, but I am taking your case to bring it to trial. And unless something comes up to interrupt that, like a plea agreement that you really want to take, you know, that’s going to be my plan. So I think Tyson, to your suggestion to have kind of a larger vision, I think that’s my vision for operationally what we will do and kind of how we will be different. So, you know, I think that that’s at least kind of the starting point of what I want to build with this firm and kind of where I want to be I don’t know if there’s more specific ways to get into that, but that’s what I’m thinking right now.
Tyson Mutrux
I think it’s really funny that you You mentioned the Fourth Amendment thanks. Just in my notes for the show, I put in, you know, we’re talking about niching down, and you’re asking about that, and I put, you know, you can niche down to sex cases, and I put the Fourth Amendment guy, you could be the like, the Fourth Amendment guy, and I have zero idea about that vision. So that’s kind of funny. So I do just you talking about that, I spotted a huge opportunity for you, I bet you can list 20 attorneys off the top of your head that don’t like trying cases, those are a huge referral source for you. So I think that you need to keep that in mind. Make sure you you target those, those attorneys, and you may need to target ones that take higher end clients. Because as you probably know, being able to pay for an attorney is one thing to be able to pay for a trial fee is another thing. So you may want to target those higher end attorneys that don’t like to try cases. So you come in on the back end, and you try the case for them. And or maybe you use them to identify those difficult search and seizure cases where a motion is pressed needs to be filed, and a lot of pretrial motions need to be filed, and you’re actually going to be probably going to trial on it. That can be a good opportunity for you. And you can say listen, I’m gonna take all this work off your shoulders, we do a fee split on this thing. You bring me in for the hard work, the work, I want to do the work you don’t want to do. So I think that’s a huge opportunity for you. Yeah, that’s
Will Norman
great. I’m writing that down right now.
Jim Hacking
And we’ll, I know, this is the next on our topic list. But one of the things that I’ve been thinking about since our talk is that we talked about whether or not it makes sense for you to go all in on criminal defense, or if it makes sense for you to sort of do a couple of different things. And on Thursday, I asked about whether or not there are attorneys in Cleveland, who are making a really good living being criminal defense attorneys. And you said for the most part, you know, some are a few are making really good money, but most are sort of just getting by or doing okay. And I think that my thoughts on this have even strengthened since we talked last. And that is that I think that you really need to own one practice area before you move on to another one. And that I that lawyers like to keep lots of practice areas on their website and in their back pocket in case something walks in the door. But I would really encourage you right out of the box to go all in on criminal and own it in Cleveland, and have the situation where if people are thinking about will Norman, they’re thinking about criminal law. And if they’re thinking about criminal law, they’re thinking about well, Norman, and I think that everything else is just a safety net. And some people are going to disagree with this. But I really think that if you own it, if you own it, and you really put a fence around it and become the man, the attorney in Cleveland, that that opportunity’s there for you. And I also think that anything else is sort of just planning.
Will Norman
Yeah, and I’ve spoken with a couple of people, fellow attorneys people that I trust about kind of what to do in that direction, and whether to have some of the other options available to bring in revenue. And I’m getting a pretty similar feedback that, you know, if you can build it in the criminal defense field, that’s what you do. That’s what you’re great at, do it there. If at some point in the future, you’ve got that so well oiled or, you know, you’ve tried it out for a time and you’re reaching plateaus that maybe you need to expand, then you can take a look at that time. But for the purposes of focusing your efforts and focusing your energy and concentration and vision, you know, to start with criminal defense, start with what you do, and build it. So I think that’s, that’s obviously great advice. And that’s the direction I’m heading. So we talked about delegating a little bit, and you’ve given me some options there. So we’ll kind of leave that where was and we also talked, we just talked about niching. Another question I had was, you know, there’s so much that you can track now and so many different tools to track different metrics within your firm. And, you know, the question is kind of what are the most valuable metrics to track both in terms of marketing, maybe financial metrics, I don’t know what other metrics I might be looking at. And then what are some ideas on how to track them both technically, if there’s an app or kind of a software type of program, that, you know, you might recommend for these different things. And then also, you know, are there you know, kind of how to think about setting benchmarks and each of these things so that you’re not just tracking them, you know, the credit monitor, but you also are using that information to then dial in or vary your, your marketing or other approaches. So just the idea of metrics, what to track how to track it and maybe some milestones that you might be looking at. You have thoughts on that?
Tyson Mutrux
I do. I’ll jump in here, Jimmy, so don’t overthink the tracking. Okay. So that’s that’s my First thing, don’t overthink it. Alright, so you’re gonna have some pretty simple numbers that you’re gonna want to follow, they’re gonna be different for you, they’re gonna be different for me, they’re gonna be different for Jimmy, every listener is gonna have different ones, because we have different ways of getting our clients. For me, videos are big, right? So videos, and also for jazz as big as well. But for just baseline stuff, you’re gonna want to track incoming leads, and then also new clients, right? And you need to, if you can, if you’ve got the resources, you want to differentiate between the type of leads, you know, what kind of case are they, if you’ve been narrowed down between, you know, gun cases, drug cases, sex cases, whatever it may be, you want to do that as well. So leads new clients, that’s the first thing I would track. And if I were you, per week, per month, per quarter, and per six months, and then per year, okay, so you can do that with a simple spreadsheet. So you don’t have to get fancy at this point. At some point, you can, you know, as your bank account starts to build up, you can actually use other resources, and I use Infusionsoft. I think Jim does as well. But there are so many resources out there. But it’s easy for me to use Infusionsoft. So that’s what I use. Another thing that you leave with me, I track impressions, I saw a number of views, like she impressions, and then also a number of views. So actually, people actually watch my video, and then how long the video is being watched. That’s a big part of it. So the people are clicking on the video and only Washington seconds of the video, that means I’ve got something wrong with that they’re getting my video and I need to change it. So there are things that you track because of that. If my number of video views is going down, that means I’m not doing something correctly. So I need to need to change that. Another thing that you may want to consider tracking is actually leading indicators, not lagging indicators, marketing activities. So the number of blog posts that you actually do, the number of social media posts that you actually do the number of videos shot and posted each week. So these are things that these are activities that you can control on the front end, that you do each week and actually get that idea from Jim, because I was looking at my numbers a couple years ago the wrong way. And I was setting these goals. And he’s like, What do you do it, you know, so I switched things up. So you can actually track your marketing activities, I wouldn’t really call those KPIs, but it’s something you can actually track. These are the number of things I want to do each week, and these are things I want to do. And then there’s also other ones you could track where you know, number of dollars in and I don’t know how you do it? Well, I don’t know if you do hourly, if you do flat rate work, but you can actually okay, this is the amount billed each month and as the amount collected each month, if that’s if you don’t get 100% upfront, that’s a number you need to track because you want to know how much an outstanding incoming revenues you have. So you want to make sure you track that number. Because if that number is getting really, really high, that means your collection activities are going wrong. So you may have to outsource that part of it. So those are things you want to track, I think really the bedrock, that’s the bedrock is leads, and new clients lead the new clients, if you don’t start with anything else, that that’s the one leads the new clients, but then something for you. In particular, with with criminal work, and maybe it’s what we talked about a few minutes ago is the number of referrals that you get each week, and each month and each quarter. Actually, you know, how many of these are coming from attorneys? How many? How many of these are coming from clients, if you can track those referrals, that can be a big part of one of your numbers you want to track getting?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I think that Tyson’s right leads and people signing up are very important, I think that you then need to compare the number of leads, you’re getting to the number of people that signed up. So you want to have that conversion ratio and figure out how good of a job am i doing and getting the phone to ring and then getting people to hire me after the phone rings. And so I think that this isn’t exactly a benchmark, but something that’s important is, you know, you need to make sure that every single person who calls your office or sends you an email or fills out a contact form, that they go into some kind of database so that you can continue to market to them. Because eventually, that will reach a scale that is something that you can that will be an asset of yours, your mailing list and your contact list will be an asset of your firm. And it will then start leading to greater referrals and things like that. So I think that I’m real concerned as you as you walk out, what are the things that I want to keep track of and I think the number one thing is keeping track of your contact list and making sure you know, I don’t know how many contacts you’re going to have when you walk out the door. But you want to make sure that you have a fence around that and that you have boundaries so that you know who those people are. And then you need to market to them. And so I think we need to talk a little bit about how are you going to contact people to let them know that you’re out on your own? How are you going to contact them to let them know that you know, these are kind of the cases that you like, and then you know you’re going to want to communicate with them regularly. I bet some of these people and I don’t necessarily mean the people sitting in jail or people who hired you but you know criminal defense is a little bit different. I understand that. But still there’s people that call friends of family for As a family of people who are charged with a crime that you can market to, and that’s a list that you control, and you control what message you you give to them. So I think that that is really important to to develop the system to be able to retain all that information. And you know, at our office, nobody gets to talk to the lawyer until all that information is first gathered, that we need to know everything about the people where we can find them, how we track them down before any questions are answered. So I think that’s really important.
Will Norman
Certainly, that’s, that’s probably a weak spot in our current kind of client database. I mean, we have names, phone numbers, emails, but particularly with criminal defense cases where people, you know, even if you’re doing well, or sometimes going to prison, probably didn’t keep enough of the family contact information, and I’m still going through it. And I’ve made a list of my clients and, you know, trying to kind of go through and mine for good contact information for the different people I contact, we’re going to be sending out a joint letter, my partner and I just explaining that, you know, for business purposes, you know, we’re going to dissolve the firm, and then I’ll be going out on my own doing criminal defense and putting my information in there. And kind of leaving Ziad with, you know, the rest of his current practice, spread. And so we wanted to do that as a joint letter so that it didn’t come off as some sort of an amicable split, and maybe make the clients think twice about what’s going on here. Let me ask you this, Jim, if I may, do you have a method for, you know, keeping that database for marketing, names, contact information, etc? Is it just a spreadsheet? Or I guess you probably are using Infusionsoft I imagine, but any guidance there?
Jim Hacking
Sure. So I mean, one, I think you have to have a script for when people call and I think that, you know, the way that we say is that, you know, before we get started, we need to get all your contact information, in case we get cut off, we want to be able to get a hold of you Because don’t forget, well, you spent a lot of time and energy to get that phone to ring. And once that phone rings, you want to maximize the value of the person calling and so you might start putting people into your database that, you know, don’t end up hiring you for a year or two. Now, in criminal defense, that’s probably a little bit different. But you never know that once you add someone to your database, and then you email them every Monday, that if they get into other trouble, or if they have a family member or someone else who gets in trouble, they will know to think of you and they will contact you, I think you should also, I mean, I would use the leaving as a place to announce your new firm. And that includes the family and friends of yours to let everybody know, and to add them to your database, and to make them part of your regular contact. So for now, I think you could do it with Excel, you could just have you could even do, what you could do is a really easy Google web form that feeds right into Google Sheets and just build your database that way. So if somebody calls your office, your assistant or you, you get down their first name, their last name, their phone number, their email address, and then the topic that they’re calling about. And you can you can make it really easily easy Google form, and then that can just go right into a spreadsheet. And that will build your database. And then you can outsource getting all the people that you already have into that database. And for now, Excel is fine, you want it or Google Sheets is fine. And then when you get some money in and you feel like you want to step it up and go into a regular database. I mean, Infusionsoft is great. And I’ve been real happy with it. But yeah, right now we have a whole script printed out. And whoever answers the phone or talks to the client just reads the script puts in the information. And automatically we go into the database,
Will Norman
I actually have started putting together an intake decision tree. I haven’t written the script yet. But you know, name and phone number in case you get disconnected. And then is this about a new or an existing case? And then it kind of goes down different decision trees from there. But that’s, that’s great advice. I’m definitely going to start with that. And in terms of trying to collect information. I saw something
Jim Hacking
the other day, a friend of mine posted on a Facebook group that I met, that the only question we answer on the phone is when to schedule the consults. We don’t answer any questions on the phone. I think I think one of the real problems with answering your own phone and the people say okay, just bend your ear for a minute or just got a quick question. I think that when you’re answering the phone yourself, you’re really setting yourself up for a lot of that, and a lot of that’s going to be wasted time
Will Norman
and money. Yeah. And I think that one of the things that I put into my decision tree there is if they asked for something substantive. I’d have a list of either videos or blog posts that I’ve done and you know, the person answering the phone can ask for the caller’s email and say that she would email a list of informational videos or blog posts that I’ve done that may answer your questions. If they don’t answer your questions, then you know the attorney can on the call back so the dual purpose of the calls for new new potential clients would be to set a phone conference with them for me to call them back or an in person meeting. And also to kind of direct them to my guest to call marketing material for any kind of substantive questions. So, I guess is that kind of in line with what you’re talking about? Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m talking
Jim Hacking
about. I think that’s great. All right, guys. So he’s hit the 50 minute mark on today’s show. So I think it makes sense for us to wrap up and we’re going to come back next week. We’ll get some more questions for us. And two more things we want to talk about. And the one thing we forgot to mention this today, as we’re recording this as well as 33rd birthday, so we’ll Happy birthday.
Will Norman
Thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate it. A good day to get on the show. Great birthday present. All right, Jim. Before
Tyson Mutrux
we wrap things up, I do want to remind everybody again to go to iTunes rate and review us make sure you subscribe, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure also go to Facebook or check us out on maximum lawyer.com Facebook Group is a really good groups. We’ve been really tough ideas around and get better as attorneys. And we are going to bring we’ll be back next week. And he’s gonna talk about his 555 plan, which we’re gonna dive deep into. It’s pretty exciting. I’m pre excited talking about. But Jimmy, do you have your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
Alright, so for my hack of the week, I’m going to channel one of our heroes here on the maximum lawyer podcast and that is Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk. In a very recent episode of the Gary Vee experience, he broadcasts a 75 minute interview he did with a guy named rich role. And Gary was the one being interviewed. And if it’s not the most inspiring, truthful, honest, brutal, harsh, motivating podcast that I’ve heard in a long time, I don’t know what it is because Gary Vee just lays it all out there. He challenges us, he pushes us. It’s just a fantastic no bullshit podcast. And I highly recommend it. It’s the April 16 episode of the Gary Vee audio experience, you can get it on iTunes or any other podcast player, I highly recommend it especially to you will Norman it will get you fired up for all the work and challenges that you have ahead. And that’s going to tell you that, you know, there’s no one to blame or you can’t blame anyone else for your success or your failure. It’s all about you. And I highly recommend this podcast.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s actually a really good one to me. I haven’t listened to that one. But I was my tip of the week was going to be a Gary Vaynerchuk episode, which I’m not going to but I will talk about really quick now is his podcast and just launched this morning episode of how to start from the Gary Vee audio experiences his podcast name, it’s how to start with like seven minute episodes,
Jim Hacking
it’s pretty cool.
Tyson Mutrux
So that’s a good one for you well, but we’ll before I get to my tip you want to give your tip of the week.
Will Norman
Sure. My tip of the week is for attorneys who’ve been listening to the show to check out a practice management software called action step. I don’t know if you’ve come into contact with the show. But essentially, it’s built around kind of pre built workflows, and automated you know, document creation so that you know your Ovi client, which is fairly standardized or your personal injury client, whatever your your types of cases may be, you have a predefined workflow with pre assigned tasks. And you don’t need to create new tasks and you know, divide those tasks up each time you take a client and I’ve been doing some demos on it and watching the instructional videos, it just seems like exactly the software that, you know, it’s almost like they were listened to the show and then created the software. So action step, practice management software. Another suggestion from Ed Hill, Willie D and Mike hill over there. It seems really promising and I’m looking forward to trying it out.
Tyson Mutrux
Then Jimmy seems like we need to call action step and get a commission on this thing. Because if there was a podcast and just right now when we say that, we need to get some money on that bad boy. No, but my tip of the week I’ll use my backup. And it’s a good one. We’ve done it before but it’s timely because of this this episode. And that’s John Fisher’s book power of a system. I know we’ve plugged it before, but I want to plug it again because if you’re in the same position that will then you’re sort of starting out. It’s a great book. It’s a great foundation to really get you thinking about systems and getting your systems and shooting jobs later. Still his system still is I can’t sit it’s another these are copyrighted you know, so make sure you the books cover it was back up for a second but still his ideas though, he still has ideas. I’m sure you’d be happy to use those ideas. So my tip of the week is to read power of the system. Guys anything else?
