Navigate the Ups & Downs of Solo Law Practice: Tales from the Trenches

MPS: [: 00:00:00

Richard James: I'm Richard James. Looking forward to today's conversation, Michael.

MPS: Me too. And we're joined by eternally Attorney Emily Smith Lee, super excited to have you on here today. Emily. Thank you for joining us.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Hey, Michael. Hey, Rich. Great to be here.

Richard James: I'm excited. Not only are you a good friend and a captain in our program, and you lead many of our mentor, or you mentor many of our members but you're also a past EAY finalist in your own right, which means you've had some success. For those who don't remember around here, EAY stands for entrepreneurial attorney of the year and Emily is a finalist, but this isn't gonna be about us or Partners Club, but this is gonna be about you today, Emily. So Michael, why don't you start into that conversation.

MPS: Well, I think that's the best way to start, is learning a little bit more about Emily. So Emily, why don't you just kick it off. Let's break the ice a little bit. What's something that others may not know about you? What's one thing that other people may not know about you?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I [: 00:01:00

I worked all summer at a gas station and saved money and took off in a car with a tent and a camping stove. 95 cans of canned goods and drove across Canada till I ran outta money and had to get a job.

Richard James: Why 95? Was it like all you could get or did you try, did you like, think it that you needed 95, like one per day for three months or something? Like what?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: You know, honestly, I remember the number specifically, but I have no idea.

Richard James: And what kind of car was this?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: It was a bright yellow Pontiac.

Richard James: Nice Pontiac Lemons. I love it.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: You could see it coming in the middle of the night.

I mean, is that kind of how, [: 00:02:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: No, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that old a car.

Richard James: Got it. Good. Well, you're a.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: It was all good.

Richard James: So that, you know.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Not a lot, not even little.

MPS: That's great. So, wow. And where did you get to in Canada?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Well, I got all the way across Canada and down the west coast and landed in San Francisco.

MPS: Okay.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Then I spent working in San Francisco.

MPS: Very nice. Okay, that's a good segue. So you spent the rest of your working in San Francisco. So tell us a little bit about this journey, right? So your, entrepreneurial journey as a law firm owner. You were in San Francisco. Not sure if it's related to law or not, but tell us a little bit more about the journey.

ually I realized I wanted to [: 00:03:00

So I did jump over all those years. I actually started my career with a big law firm. One of those things that I wasn't sure I wanted to do, but in the end I learned a lot from it. I spent 13 years at a major international firm in Boston, became a sort of income level partner. Became like one of their first people on a mommy track to become a partner.

l apart and I got laid off in: 2009

You just spend your time doing your things and people pay you for it. It's kind of bananas. It wasn't like that when I hung out my own shingle. So actually, you know, the first couple years were the most profitable years I've ever had cause I had some leftover cases for my old firm. They were excited cause I cost half as much as I did the week before.

help. Suddenly I have help. [: 00:05:00

I gotta figure out how to manage them. So without all the details, big picture, we grew too fast. We joined forces with another small firm, and suddenly there we were with nine attorneys and an amount of staff, I don't remember and it looked like we were making all kinds of money, but it was all disappearing,

Richard James: Hey, hey. I want to settle on something real quick cause you said, I don't wanna miss this. So you said got out of big law, acquired these clients because they were all of a sudden be gonna have to pay me half as much as they were gonna pay before.

So being a lesser expensive option was a part of your initial unique competitive advantage. Would you agree with that? Yeah.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I would, but it had an expiration date.

MPS: Sure.

ips I already had. You know, [: 00:06:00

Richard James: So why do you think the, when you joined forces with that other firm, cause you grew too fast and you were looking to pick up capacity, why do you think there wasn't enough profit at the end of the week, month, whatever?

What, why do you think you were going real fast? Looking real big, but you weren't profitable? Is there a key driver there?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Oh my, so many. So many. Neither of us, my former partner or I. Really had any discipline or experience in thinking about the math, the numbers, the, you know, we were lawyers, we go do lawyer things and then people pay us for it. That's how it works, right? That's how it worked. The big law.

start throwing into a mix of [: 00:07:00

Richard James: Yeah, I remember you.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I don't know if that is.

Richard James: A multitude of practice areas when I first met you, if I remember correctly. Yeah.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Correct.

etback where, where you, you [: 00:08:00

Or was there another point in that journey where you're like, no, this was kind of the big low point, the setback. This is where we learned a super valuable lesson. What was that for you?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: In that period of time let me take that question apart in my head for a minute. So, the growing too fast for sure, but it was the growing on quicksand. You know, we didn't, I couldn't have woken up in the middle of the night and told you how the. What do you say, Rich? How the cow went through the pasture for every single practice area in that firm and nobody else was interested in learning how to do that and understanding it.

So when we sort of reconstituted smaller that year, we were down to three practice areas, half the number of people. I'm not gonna say we immediately figured all that stuff out, but at least it was a limited number of rivers.

mirror, Emily, and you said, [: 00:09:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I know you said this is not about you, but it was about the time I started looking for help. You know, started looking around for like, who can help a lawyer figure out how to do this business thing?

And the reason I say that is not just to suck up to you Rich, but because it was coming back from the first set of experiences to my partner and starting to try to implement things and starting to try to pull him along on that river, that just, it made everything fall apart.

Richard James: Okay.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: In good way. I don't know if that's me looking in the.

Richard James: No, no, no. Yeah, so okay. So you started looking around Michael, it sounds like she was searching, and then you found it. So that leads us to what? The, what was that thing, Michael?

S: Yeah, I mean I guess this [: 00:10:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: So in terms of, I'm sorry. There's, I have so many failures and light bulb moments, I just wanna make sure I'm on the right one.

MPS: That's ok. That's right. So for the, in relation to the firm, where was that light bulb for you? That we went from a foundation of quicksand to starting to build a sturdy foundation.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: It was about in that moment where everything was falling apart. In my partnership, it was, you know, when I think I had been afraid to rock the boat until we had this sort of conflict around it, and then the words came outta my mouth. Maybe we should just divide up the practice areas.

imagining what it might look [: 00:11:00

MPS: Yep.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: And I started having this feeling like, well, I could do that.

Richard James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, okay, I can envision myself doing that, and that maybe seems like it makes more sense. Okay. So you went on a search, you came into our world. Fine. Got it. Thank you for the credit. But at the end of the day, you had to do the work.

So what was that big like maybe, was there not a big, but was there something you learned in our world being surrounded by your peers, that was one of the first action steps you took that seemed to really move the needle for you?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Yes. In fact, so at the beginning I was doing the modules, right? Like I was big on this. I'm gonna like pay as little amount of money as I can to all the people who wanna sell me stuff and I'm gonna learn how to do it myself.

Richard James: Get that.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I'm awesome.

Richard James: Hey, I was raised East Coast German, man. I get it. I mean, you know, Dutch, Pennsylvania, I'm with you. Pay as little as back in the day. Let's get as much as we can for as little as we can possibly spend. I get that concept.

inced me to come to an event [: 00:12:00

Richard James: Yeah.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: And I, you know, proudly, I don't even remember what I was asking for help with, but I was proudly presenting all of the things and like our numbers and whatever, and a member came up to me at the break and just very bluntly said, how do you make payroll? I was like, damn, you're right. Good question.

Richard James: So did that become the I mean, and honestly, did that become the driver? Like was that the earmark for you make sure there was enough money for payroll or, you know, like what was it that, how did you go about starting that?

Like if somebody, as somebody's listening to this, they're like, okay, Emily, I got it. You're on this journey. It was a hot mess. You took the lessons from big law, try to apply it to the little law. It didn't work. You got into a partnership that broke up. Okay.

s missing on the foundation, [: 00:13:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: So the first thing that I think I hadn't done until we had that sort of epiphany was just like, really ask yourself whether you need all the people in the world that you have in your world. That was a big pain point. But the other thing is we never really figured out sales. We'd never really figured out leads.

You know, so with the ability to focus a little more narrowly on a few practice areas, we were able to do things like write a couple books, you know, put some lead mats out there, figure out how to track that stuff. That was probably the first big rock. You know, so those start coming in. So that's great and that's fantastic and we feel very proud of ourselves.

And then we gotta do all the work and, right? And then there's a whole other. Puzzle around, cause it's not big law. We can't pass on every breath we take to the client. It's gotta get done with some efficiency. It's gotta get done with some systems.

So that was probably our [: 00:14:00

MPS: Sure.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Right? How do we get all that stuff done? And at some point, I believe you finally convinced me, Rich or somebody in the program did that. The business model, being the smart lawyer for half the price was not probably the right idea.

You know, we, I had this mentality of, all right, I'm a small firm outside of Boston. What people are gonna notice that's different about me than the Boston firms is that I'm cheaper. And it really wasn't true. The thing there were people noticing about us that were different from the Boston firms was that they could find us and they could understand what we did.

as brave as you'd like me to [: 00:15:00

MPS: Hey, it's the first step, right? You got it. It's the crawl, walk, run, right? So that's the name of the game. So it sounds like the big thing was first. Identifying and fixing the sales process, and that meant by actually installing sales systems, but more importantly, tracking the sales numbers, right?

And tracking the metrics. And then you did that, generated more leads, generated more clients, and then you had to fulfill the work, right? And so then putting in fulfillment systems to make sure we're adequately moving them through and providing a great experience while doing it.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Yes. And next after that, so we get more leads, we get more people hiring us. We're trying to figure out how to do the work, and I'm still in the consult room. While trying to figure out how to do all the work

Richard James: So you're meeting with all the new.

MPS: Pretty.

Richard James: Perspective clients.

ee: Correct. And not doing a [: 00:16:00

And honestly, some of the time I'd be sitting in there with a prospective new client knowing I should be selling them, and half of my brain is saying, no. If you hire me, I'll have to do your work. I don't think I ever said those words out loud.

keep up cause I'm gonna keep [: 00:17:00

And when you got both sides of your brain, by the way, I'm there right now. Like I am, I'm the first time in my car. I'm a salesperson of those who listen to me long enough, should know by now I'm a salesperson. That's what I do. And I'm fully immersed in operations right now on the staffing project that we've got going on.

Hired 35 plus people in the last 30 days trying to figure out all the moving parts. And I got more demand than we have supply. And I keep trying to get ahead in the supply chain and every time I do, Michael goes sell something else. And I'm like, Ah, slow down.

I gotta catch up. Like literally yesterday I begged them. I'm like, can we please turn off the ads? Can we just please turn off the ads? Give me, I need a week. As a matter of fact, I'm going on vacation next week, so like, I need two weeks because I need to get ahead of this thing.

battle that goes on in your [: 00:18:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: No. And so 2018, we jumped off the cliff and hired a non-attorney salesperson. And was it perfect right away? No. But did it change everything really, really quickly? A hundred percent. Both in terms of, you know, what you would measure as hard sales numbers, but the amount of my time that I could control suddenly.

Richard James: Michael isn't that sales role, it's so reactive.

MPS: It's reactive. It's one of the most on-demand roles in a firm because you've just always gotta be on, right? You gotta be on, you gotta be open, available, have the capacity to take consults, and then when you're in consults, you gotta be on, right?

You gotta be actually running the structure, running the system, closing the deal. It's just reactive. And so it's very difficult to balance the consult room and.

Richard James: And doesn't provide a lot for creativity.

MPS: No.

orneys like to be. They like [: 00:19:00

And he goes, if I have to do that in the concert room, I'll quit. Because he goes, that sounds so boring. He goes, I like going in the consult room, and I like hearing their challenges. I like coming up with these creative strategies and working with them and like giving them advice and then let them know how smart I am.

He didn't say that, but you know, theoretically let them know how smart I am. And so they hire me because I'm so intelligent and I've got a great plan for them, and that's why they hire me. I'm like, yeah, that's not the right way to do it. Right? And so you discovered that.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: And has that person since figured out that he can do all of those things after somebody pays the firm money for him to do.

you being so transparent and [: 00:20:00

Cause I know you're wickedly intelligent and highly talented attorney and you. Couldn't be that unless you were wildly you know, goo smart and you had good grades and you had good acumen. And attorneys by nature don't like getting things wrong. But in business, failure is rewarded because you learn from it and you pick up and you move on.

But I do wanna point out your successes, because I think when I met you, we just speak appointment law cases alone. Maybe you had eight or nine ish, 10 ish cases a month. Is that right?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Sounds about right. It's a long time.

Richard James: And then, and I think like last month, is it in the forties ish? Something like that.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: For over the last year. It's been between upper thirties to 40 new cases a month. We're carrying about 200 cause they don't all open and close at the same time.

mes with its challenges too. [: 00:21:00

Some 400 plus percent in case volume and, you know, still in, arguably in the game, figuring it out. But you know you're there, you're playing the game and you can do it for as long as you want. You can build it as big or as small as you want, and you're playing the game.

I mean, does it feel good to feel like, do you feel like you're. Control is a weird word, and I don't think any attorney actually feels totally in control because of the circumstances, but I would argue that many attorneys who are very good at their craft feel like they control the situation an awful lot because they understand their craft well. Does it feel like you're more in control of your business at this point because the knowledge you have?

know, not only am I more in [: 00:22:00

MPS: Nice feeling I'm sure, right?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Have an every day, but.

MPS: Yeah, that's terrific. I think that's great. And I mean, obviously from a sales process perspective, I've gotten to see that over the last year and a half or so, which has been super exciting to watch. So certainly kudos and it's fun to watch the non-attorney get in there and crush it too.

Which is always good. So, I'm curious, Emily, you're speaking to other law firm owners here. Is there a particular book that you enjoy that you would recommend to other law firm owners?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: It's also stage dependence.

Richard James: Good answer.

now, I love Mike Michalowicz [: 00:23:00

MPS: Sure.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: I would say I'm a huge fan of Mike Michalowicz since I would read any of that. I really enjoyed sort of Cialdini's persuasion work, not because I love sales as much as you guys do, but because, you know, the more I listen to this stuff for attorneys out there, don't kid yourself, everything you do is a version of sales.

And by that I don't mean closing the deal, but that I mean persuasion. You know, you're moving your clients through a process. You're moving your team through a process. So I guess it's not a perfect answer, but there you go.

Richard James: Cialdini. That's good. I like it.

ys listening, I think that's [: 00:24:00

Emily, you've got a lot of exciting things happening. Obviously you've had a lot of success over the last couple years. What's got you fired up and excited today? What's got you amped up?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: So what's got amped up right now is the thing I've been preparing to do by trying to pull out of the litigation world, which is I really wanna start in the next six months or so building a specific service for small employers to deal with not only the legal questions around employment issues, but to, there's a lot of expertise out there that a small business owner doesn't access when they're in the middle of freaking out over a problem employee. So.

MPS: Yeah.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Jazzed about.

Richard James: I'll do a shout out for anybody listening to this, reach out to Emily if you would love it if there was an attorney who had a. Simple subscription service that you could go to to get like employment questions answered at any given time. I know I use Emily for that service as we speak.

And so it's [: 00:25:00

To our members cause they like, they put it in the queue. And they're like, Hey, does anybody have, I've got this situation with an employee and we're all just sitting there waiting for you and I know you're waiting for all of us politely to let us give our thoughts. And then you come in and clean up behind us and you're like. Well, I appreciate Rich's vision on this.

However you might wanna reconsider that concept of using one bullet and just line them up, cause that might not be appropriate any longer in today's society. Right? So anyway, so, you know, your advice from an employment law perspective would be much needed out there in the world.

Not just [: 00:26:00

MPS: No, I mean e Emily. If people wanted to reach out and connect with you in any way, shape or form, and you do not have to give your phone number, I don't recommend it. This goes to a lot of people. How, what would be the best way for someone to connect with you?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Probably the easiest way is to either go to www.SLNLaw.com. We've got a general email box info at SLNLaw.com that gets an, of eyeballs on it to get to the right people.

much as you can and speak to [: 00:27:00

What would you tell yourself that you should focus on first? If all the things you gotta do one thing first, and I guess it's relevant to where they are, but let's assume it's something that's universal. What would you tell them to do?

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Ask yourself honestly, if the, what you're doing in the practice of law is something you love. That's not the mathematical answer, but I. To be honest to that about your numbers. Don't like be vain about how many clients you have. If you're waking up in a cold sweat every two weeks, when it's time to do payroll.

Richard James: That's great.

MPS: I think that's wonderful advice. I think that's really wonderful advice and look to the law firm owners listening. First off, Emily, want to thank you. This was super valuable. I think everyone was able to take something from today. But for those that are listening, we have the gentleman's agreement around here.

first time listening to the [: 00:28:00

But again, Emily, I really appreciate you being willing to share everything you did today, and I think it was super helpful.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: Anytime.

Richard James: Yeah good to see you too. I'll say another plus one on what Michael said. Look this, we're building this community so that we can, we can speak to you, you can hear it. We want Emily to, and all of our guests to speak to you. The attorney that's out there that's searching, you're trying to figure it out, right?

And I'm hoping you're picking up a nugget here or there. So feel free to share this, right? That's what it's all about. You can go ahead and grab a copy of it, share it with somebody else that you think might need it. That's what we're trying to make a better community for owners of law firms. Again, law firm attorneys who made a choice to be a business owner, to sell legal services as opposed to a lawyer who happens to own a law firm.

ion and you'd like to figure [: 00:29:00

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: All right, thanks, you too.

Richard James: Thanks everybody. Bye.

MPS: Thanks, guys.

Attorney Emily Smith Lee: All right.