The Surprising Key to Building a Good Law Firm Team
In this week's episode, Richard and Michael (MPS) discuss the importance of doing the unscalable in order to build a team and grow a business. It emphasizes the need to slow down and gain an intimate understanding of different roles and functions within a firm, even if it means personally getting involved. The example of marketing, specifically Facebook ads, is given to illustrate how being hands-on initially can lead to better results and the eventual delegation of tasks and much more. You can’t miss this.
Transcript
Richard James: Well, when to not scale, do the unscalable.
Michael Strauch: The unscalable in relations to both different operations in your firm, but specifically building a team.
Richard James: Yeah. And let's say it's like go slow to go faster. Does that make sense?
Michael Strauch: Something we've been really putting into play lately.
Richard James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, we teach you to do what we do and we do what we teach you to do. Right? Which is you're running a small business and it feels like you're changing the brakes on the car as you're driving down the road when you're putting fixes in place and we're in hyper growth mode.
it feels that way is because [:Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: And what that means is you gotta do the unscalable.
Michael Strauch: Right. Doing the unscalable. So I think we should start by defining the unscalable.
Richard James: Yeah. And, I also think it goes against like. Especially all the business books that are out there about how to scale and build systems. Any, even some of the things we talk about is about scaling and building systems.
But in order, when you're first getting started, like when you're first whether you're building a new practice area or you're starting to grow your firm or you're starting to learn how to market and sell. You really need to slow down and you can't just trust the idea that you're gonna go hire some vendor and they're gonna do it for you.
it without your involvement. [:Michael Strauch: No, I mean it goes back to the same concept. We always say, you know, you can't just write a big check or hit an easy button and then just hope bingo, it's done.
Richard James: Right.
Michael Strauch: At the end of the day, you can grow to the point where you replace yourself in these roles, but in order for that to happen. You need to have a pretty intimate understanding of what the role is, exactly what that role should be doing, and what the expectations are.
And if you don't know what that is and you don't know how the role should function, it's really difficult for you to inform a team member and expect them to just step in and exactly know what they're supposed to do. And that's why doing the unscalable means you need to start by stepping into the different roles and functions in a firm.
And don't get us wrong, as you said, we're all about systems and really it's systems that are gonna run your practice while having people run those systems. But you need to know what those systems are to start with.
I own a small law firm, I'm [:Michael Strauch: Well, you.
Richard James: Yeah. I mean, the answer is yes.
Michael Strauch: Yes. But respectfully, you need to set your expectations. I get it. Everybody's busy, I'm just putting it out there. Everybody's busy, you ask a friend to hang out, they're busy. You gotta find time in a schedule. Right?
You are a busy law firm owner, but if you want to grow your practice, you wanna get to the point where you're not as busy in the sense that you are working day-to-day all the time. Then the answer is yes, you need to set some time aside. And if that means working a little bit more, doing the unscalable in order to get to that place, you gotta start there.
gotta go to work and do this [:As, as opposed to. No, no, no. I'm doing this job to figure it out, to document it so that I can adequately replace myself with the system that I build and the person that runs the system.
Michael Strauch: Yeah. I mean, it goes back to something you've always said anything, anyone could do anything for a short period of time.
And that's what this is. You're not necessarily, I mean, if you've got plans of expansion, you're not necessarily committing to doing each of these roles forever. And wearing every single hat, always. You're doing it for a short period of time to gain an intimate knowledge of the role and what the expectations are.
Richard James: It's like a sprint.
Michael Strauch: It's like a sprint. And sprints can get tiring.
Richard James: Yeah. That way you need to take a break in between.
Michael Strauch: Right, you gotta take a break.
Richard James: So let's start at the top. So let's.
Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: Like, so. You have to think about where in your practice are you going to do the unscalable? And so part of it is it depends on where you're at.
to say we meet people where [:Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: And so, I don't know when they're listening to this, what. Where they are at. And so why don't we run through all of it and give them an example. So marketing.
Michael Strauch: Yes.
Richard James: Okay. Marketing is a great one.
So we first launched, let's give them an example of well, let me give you an example from the law firm and then you can give them an example from what it's been looking like here. So when I built a law firm in Phoenix back in the day, and we were doing the marketing and I started breaking into television you know, you could hire a director, you could hire a vendor, you can have.
And what I found is that everybody's like, oh yeah, just hire this company or just go hire that company. And what I realized is, well, they don't really know what they're doing with respect. And so I found myself. If I wanted it to get done and figure it out and build a system around it, I had to get involved.
popular formula in system to [:And so you know, we would do one a week, two a week, and until I could get it to the point where I had a written documented system that I could then have this agency run for me, I was there. Now, once I had the agency, that the point the agency could run for me. Well now they ran it and I watched them run it and I knew they were doing it and I got confidence and now I didn't have to be there anymore.
Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: But in the beginning, I had to be there to figure this out because if I just let them do it their way, their way didn't make a lot of sense. And so we teach our attorneys how to do it the right way so that they don't have to be subjected to an agency that doesn't do it really well when it comes to marketing.
But they still can't trust that the agency's just gonna go do it, just cause they give them instructions, they need to be there and make sure it's being done right. So in your case, marketing now, when we started launching TCR and TSR this year what did it look like for you being personally involved in the marketing?
d a colleague of mine that I [:Trying to give him calls. Trying to give him texts to understand not only the ads, the creative, but what he was doing on Facebook. Right. To understand what it was. Right. It's one thing to just say, here you go, run it. But if we had no idea who the audience was, what the backend function of Facebook was.
Richard James: We'd be at their mercy.
Michael Strauch: We'd be at their mercy. I'd have no idea if they were doing good, bad, and different.
Richard James: Right.
Michael Strauch: I would just. Think, okay, this is just what it is. Right. So intimately involved in every aspect of that.
Richard James: So what was the result of that, by the way?
Michael Strauch: Well, the result was we started getting results. Right? I was able to identify, okay, here's what needs to happen in Facebook.
I was able to get intimately [:Richard James: So, okay. Fair enough. So let's put you in the attorney's shoes. How much did you know about running Facebook and Facebook ads when you got into this?
Michael Strauch: I didn't know much about running Facebook. I knew a little bit from research, but I didn't know much.
Richard James: And so you were able to figure out what you needed to figure out by doing some research and by talking to the vendor and just being involved in doing it?
Michael Strauch: Correct.
Richard James: And so for you, you know, when you go, well, I don't know anything about Facebook ads and I don't wanna be a Facebook marketer. Well, you don't either.
Michael Strauch: No, I'm not in the Facebook marketing business, but I needed to know enough to know what was happening for the marketing. Which is the top of the funnel.
I mean, that's where the lead generation came from. So I needed to know that in order to put other people into that role, not only that way I had peace of mind knowing what it was, but also so I didn't set the employee up for failure either.
Richard James: So let's talk about the next stage appointment setting.
Michael Strauch: Right.
n I was building the firm in [:And so, in the beginning, I needed to figure out a checklist. I needed to figure out a formula so I could make it trainable and easy. I just didn't wanna rely on the talent of the individual, which is what I did when I was younger.
Michael Strauch: Sure.
Richard James: I just tried to hire really talented people and I found it was harder and harder to find talented people, so I needed ordinary people to do extraordinary things. And so I needed to give them a formula, a structure, a system to use.
Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: So I, literally would either get on the phone and I would answer the call and start to figure out what it was like. And I would take a handful of calls, and then I would literally sit there and listen as they were doing it. And then when I finally was able to figure out how to record the calls, I would record the calls and I would listen to those and I'd go back and forth and tweak and play with it and tweak.
o I will tell you that like, [:But even at a nine because I was doing something that was a little bit new in a new industry way back in 2009-ish when I built this firm. I felt like I needed to be personally involved and understand what these calls were like and how they differed, right? And so the law firm needs to be involved in this.
The owner needs to be involved in this process so they understand what they're asking their team to do. Now, you got personally involved when we were driving these new leads to set appointments, right?
Michael Strauch: Well again, I needed to know every system, right? So, all right, now I learned the marketing aspect.
Well, now it's generating leads. Now I gotta figure out, all right, how do we turn these leads into an appointment? So I stepped into that role and you know, I was, for lack of better terms, on call every single time a new lead would come in, you know, we developed a formula and no shorter than two minutes, no longer than 10 minutes.
, I was sending emails every [:Richard James: How demanding was that?
Michael Strauch: Very, I mean, it's a time consuming role because not only are you now trying to focus on every other aspect of the business, but now you're also trying to make sure you're responding to these leads in that time period, which is tough cause you get notified and then you gotta jump right to it and get onto it.
But as a result of that, We developed a system. And a system that worked, and so then we were able to find someone else and plug them into that role. But even still, we had to inspect. Right. So you had to make sure, okay, here's what I want to be happening. Is it actually happening? And so you do that through the inspection of making sure they're sending the text or making sure they're calling and listening to the call recordings, just like you said.
Richard James: But you were able to, once you figured out, you were able to then, you know, It was like, I think it was three, four weeks you did it.
Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: And then you were able to hand it off to somebody.
Michael Strauch: Correct.
Richard James: But this is the formula we want you to use. Right?
Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: So you could replace yourself. So you didn't, you weren't answering those calls going, I'm gonna do this forever.
Michael Strauch: No.
I'm gonna get somebody else [:Michael Strauch: I went in with one goal and that is to figure out how to maximize the number of those leads turn into set appointments. And once I got that formula is when I knew I had a system and I could turn it over to somebody else.
Richard James: Right. And so again, we give you formulas like if you're in our world, you get a formula of how to use this system of setting the appointments, but the owner still has to be involved. They still have to be, make sure all their team has buy-in. They need to be just, they have to be involved. Cause if they're not, the team doesn't buy in. Right.
Michael Strauch: Well that's the problem. And I think that leads us into our next one, which is consults higher rate.
Richard James: Correct.
Michael Strauch: So this is where I see a lot of attorneys go a little sideways, is when you're maybe taking the leap in hiring a non-attorney salesperson or an attorney or a paralegal, whoever's gonna run the consultations. Right? And, you know, we have the structure in place and the same thing, right?
rmula. So that way when that [:Because if you walk into a consultation and now they're shadowing you, I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation where they're bringing a new rep on. Right.
And then they're like, all right, so what should I do? And I should, and I was like, all right, well, we gotta go through onboarding. They gotta memorize the script, they gotta get that down, and then they should go through a shadow period. And I'll ask, so just to confirm, obviously you're following the 19 steps, right? Well, no, not in my consult.
Richard James: Right.
Michael Strauch: So now we're gonna ask some.
Richard James: Do, as I say, not as I do.
Michael Strauch: Right. So now we're gonna ask someone to come on and follow this structure that we're not even following, and it leads to a misalignment between you and that person because now they can easily call you out and say, well then why aren't you doing this?
Richard James: Right.
. Despite whether or not you [:Richard James: Yep. No, no, no, no. It's well said I mean at the end of the day yeah, you can't live your practice in a do as I say, not as I do type of way.
And so the unscalable is you becoming comfortable with that script. Let's move on to getting paid for those firms that are not contingency based and they actually have to get paid. I was working with a firm you know, let's call it last year, end of year, end of year. They needed a big push and they're like, you know, I just can't get my team to hit the goals and collect.
And I go, okay. I go, how often do you meet with your team about their goals that they're collecting? He's like, I don't. I'm like, oh. I go, okay, well how often do you have a review of what goals you've achieved and reviewing some calls from, you know, that they've made when they're trying to hit these goals?
how it works. The leader has [:And that means that, you know, by noon, we need to have $2,500 collected. So if it's me, I'm having a check-in meeting at noon every day. And then I'm gonna have a check-in meeting at five o'clock every day to see where we ended up. And if we didn't hit it, I'm gonna up the goal for the next day and I'm gonna set the goal for the next day.
And then the next day we're gonna have a morning kickoff meeting, a little standup rally, and then we're gonna have a meeting at noon to review where we are. Then we're gonna have a meeting at five to see where we are. If you have a hyper aggressive goal that you want your sales team or collection team or somebody to hit, cause you're trying to make up some ground on the air or you're trying to make up some shortfall, or you're just trying to get old, whatever, clean up an old mess, whatever it is, if you've got a goal that you're trying to achieve, You've gotta lead your team that way, right?
[:Michael Strauch: No, and I think some of this too is business, society and business culture has led us to believe that, you know, you gotta scale, you gotta scale, and you gotta replace yourself to scale. And we're all about that. But if you do it the wrong way and you as the owner aren't willing to step in and intimately understand each role.
It's gonna lead to a big culture problem in your firm. And it's gonna lead to constant retention or retention issues. Right. Turnover's happening. And it's gonna lead to lackluster results because as you said, we're not eating our own dog food.
Richard James: Correct.
Michael Strauch: Right. We're not doing what we're asking the team to do.
Richard James: Yep.
oint here is that you've got [:Richard James: No, I mean, look. So, we didn't talk about workflow, which is many law firm owners love to talk about workflow.
Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: It's the sexiest thing. You know, get the work done. I get a capacity issue, I gotta get it all done.
Michael Strauch: Document collection.
Richard James: Yeah. They just think, workflow is where it's at. They like, give me a new software to do workflow. Give me a new software to automate Billy, give me a new software to manage to make sure my team gets the task done. Handles customer service. All that stuff is important. Right?
Michael Strauch: It is.
Richard James: But, and you and I lean heavily on marketing and sales, cause we believe you don't have any workflow to do if you don't sell something.
Michael Strauch: That's correct. Workflow is important, but I mean, yeah.
Richard James: It goes [:Michael Strauch: It goes hand in hand.
Richard James: So anyway, here I am in the middle. We're pretty good at sales. And so now I raise my hand and go look. I'm gonna go figure out while you do the coaching, consulting on the staffing and the intake room.
Michael Strauch: Intake and closing. Yeah.
Richard James: And the closing room, I'm gonna do the setup for the staffing room make sure we have all the systems set up in Mexico and make sure that we know how the recruiting goes and how the interview goes, and talk to the client and do the onboarding and all the stages, right?
And I'm slammed, right? Yeah and my wife's telling me I'm complaining and maybe I'm whining a little. She's probably right. Okay. I'm,
Michael Strauch: You are pretty darn busy.
Richard James: Yeah. But I'm not doing it like I'm literally doing, I had a client say to me the other day, she goes, well, I was happy to hire your firm. She goes, I had no idea like you were gonna do the interview. Like, I had no idea you were gonna interview my employee. I had no idea you, you were gonna help place my, and that's not gonna be the case forever.
Michael Strauch: Correct.
to figure out what the good [:And I'm measuring, okay, how many interviews did I did? How many did I reject? How many rejected us? How many did I bring on? How many of those that I brought on worked? What am I missing? What am I hitting so I can build a formula for somebody else?
Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: And then it's like, okay, well once we start the onboarding, what does the onboarding look like for when they come in? And what does their 96 hour test look like to make sure. That they can actually hit the script and the structure and hit their marks. And then from there, what is the handoff look like to the employer? And, how do we make sure we have everything we need from them?
And it's just all these little details that, yeah, I could delegate to my team, but I'm trying to right now figure it out myself. I'm doing the unscalable so that I can replace myself in a way that is not gonna give me headaches later.
Michael Strauch: Yeah. And develop a system that you stand behind too.
Richard James: Correct.
Michael Strauch: Right, because that's the other thing. You pass it off to your team. Look, you might get lucky and have a team member as personally invested in your business as you are, but it's not likely.
Richard James: Right.
re's a blank slate, go build [:So if you want a solid process that you stand behind and you're like, yes, this is what we follow every single time, this is what maximizes the client experience, then you have to be involved in that. Otherwise, someone else is not gonna care as much about your practice as you do.
Richard James: Yeah. And things need to change and sometimes on the fly and sometimes, as you've got so much experience as an owner or as an attorney that's got a lot of experience in certain workflow.
Like you know how to adapt to changing situations and fix and change the system where your team is just gonna not know how to do that.
Michael Strauch: Right.
Richard James: And so in the beginning when you're building something new or you're building something for the first time you being involved allows you to see things in a way that your staff's not gonna see.
ight? And it might get worse [:Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: But I know there's light at the end of the tunnel. And I know as soon as I think get this thing hammered out, I'm gonna have somebody else be able to run it. Right? But none of this stuff, this workflow stuff matters unless we get sales and everything else we talked about in marketing and sales requires all this too. So, I don't know. I think this was a good topic for them that they had to hear.
Michael Strauch: Yes. I think it's had to hear. Right. Need to hear. And we may not want to hear that. Right. Because it just, to be honest, it means more work. But it's something you should hear because it's something that's gonna lead to a better practice overall. So I think today was helpful, but we'll let you be the judge of that.
If it was, go ahead. Don't forget to hit that Like button. Comment your thoughts, and as always, hit that Subscribe button. Turn those bell notifications or that Follow button, depending on where you're watching or listening on.
Richard James: There's a reason for that.
Michael Strauch: Yeah.
Richard James: Because of the agreement that we have with them.
Michael Strauch: Right.
e sure that you keep up your [:Michael Strauch: A gentleman's agreement.
Richard James: Right. If this is your first time, great. It was free. After this, you wanna watch some more. The fee, Like, Follow, Subscribe.
Michael Strauch: Yeah. We ask for nothing else other than that. And look, if you'd like to take the leap and learn a little bit more about working with us down in the description, we've got a link, we'd happy to set up a free breakthrough call to sit down and speak with you about your practice and where you're at.
Richard James: Yeah, agreed. All right. I think this was good.
Michael Strauch: I think so. Thank you for listening today.
Richard James: Make it a great day.
