Law Firm Marketing Catalyst

What you'll learn in this episode: Why B2B companies are often underserved by traditional marketing companies and strategies What the different parts of the digital marketing funnel are, and how understanding the funnel can help you generate and convert qualified leads Why websites are still a key part of a marketing strategy How giving away expertise for free can actually generate more business Why the most successful companies are the ones that resolve their customers' pain points About Ted Lau Ted Lau is the owner of Ballistic Arts, an award-winning high-touch digital marketing agency that focuses on growing sales leads for small and medium sized businesses. He leads a team of creative professionals in digital marketing strategy, video production, graphic design and web development to provide effective ROI for businesses that want to raise brand awareness and garner tangible leads for their business growth. Ted is also a host on Canada's #1 marketing podcast Marketing News Canada where he discusses the latest insights on all things marketing, advertising, and communications with today's brightest minds in the industry. Additional Resources: Ballistic Arts Instagram Ballistic Arts LinkedIn Ballistic Arts Facebook Transcript: Small and mid-sized B2B companies may not draw as much attention as B2C companies, but their business makes up the majority of North America's economy. While their marketing may not be as flashy, B2B companies still need no-B.S. strategies that generate leads. That's where Ted Lau, founder of digital marketing agency Ballistic Arts, comes in. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the importance of the digital marketing funnel; why tracking is the key to generating qualified leads; and why likes, followers and impressions mean nothing if they don't increase revenue. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, it's my pleasure to welcome Ted Lau, founder of Ballistic Arts, a digital marketing agency. Ted is speaking to us from Vancouver, Canada, although they have an office in Bellingham, Washington and they work all over the West Coast. Ballistic Arts combines innovative, creative storytelling with leading-edge analytics so they can really move the client's needle. Ted leads a team of experts in design and branding video production, web development and lead generation. We'll hear all about this and more today. Ted, welcome to the program. Ted:       Thanks, Sharon. Happy to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us how you got where you are. Ted:       That's a long story. I'm starting to age a little, hopefully in a good way like fine wine. Basically, right after university, I started the business. I was trying to get into the film industry. I graduated four months or so after 9/11 so nobody was hiring, so I thought, “I'm just going to freelance and what not.” I worked on an indie film. I met the director at the time, and he and I got along quite well. He was like, “Do you want to start a business together?” I was kind of naïve in my early twenties, and I was like, “Well, yeah, how hard could that be?” There you go. We started setting off on our journey. We started as a video production company, and then one thing led to another. A lot of our clients were SMBs, small and medium-sized businesses, that didn't have the wherewithal or the budgets to hire large agencies to help them do all their marketing. This is, again, in the early 2000s. I had to make DVDs that people could stick into their machines, and a lot of them said, “I don't even have a TV in here, but I notice that you design your own brochures, and it's quite lovely. Can you design mine?” In your early twenties, you're like, “Well, yeah, I'm starving. I'll do whatever. Yes, I can do that.” So, we immediately got into the graphic design biz. A few months after that, people said, “Ted, this web thing, this interweb, the internet, I don't think it's going away. I noticed that you designed your own website. Can you help us?” I was like, “Yes, I think I can.” We started becoming a full media marketing agency, and we did creative work up until probably 2018 or 2019. Then I bought out my business partner, which is whole other podcast if you want to talk about that. Then I wanted to start helping small and medium-sized B2B companies. That journey I had, that first 15, 16 years in the business, we went from small and medium-sized businesses to large companies. We worked in healthcare. We worked with a lot of large real estate developers. They got larger and larger. These are multinational companies, some of them, and it became a little bit—financially it was rewarding, but it didn't feel like we were helping the little guy anymore. I wanted to get back to our roots, and I noticed that a lot of business-to-business folks aren't supported by the marketing world. They don't actually have the inclination to seek out marketing, and marketers don't really want to work with B2B. They find it boring. It's not Lululemon. It's not the L.A. Rams. They want to work with those companies typically, so I noticed that B2B companies were underserved. If you look at the stats, B2B, small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of the North American economy. They're like 89% of the economy. So, I thought there was a good opportunity for us to support that, and we got into lead generation digital marketing for a lot of SMBs, a lot of B2B professional service companies, a lot of B2B distributors and manufacturers. They don't really need all this huge marketing, branding, blah, blah, blah. They need business. They need sales. So, I was like, “What if I helped you get leads?” That really perked one of my clients' ears, and he said, “You know, Ted, if you could get me leads, I'll never leave you.” That was basically it. Again, I didn't really know how to get there, but I had a vision where I thought if we could marry the data and the creative and focus on one goal, not vanity numbers, but really focus on actually getting people business, leads, solid, qualified leads, not garbage tire-kicker leads, there was a place in the marketplace for that. It's been very rewarding over Covid. We actually started this division, I want to say, six or eight months before Covid, and not because I had a crystal ball thinking the world's going to shut down with the global pandemic. It was simply me wanting to serve a particular community. I think Covid, as disastrous as it was for many people and as devastating as it was for many businesses, it was very helpful for us to be in a position to support these businesses. That division grew very rapidly over Covid because people were like, “Oh my goodness, we're shutting our doors, but I got a little bit of government money. Can you help get me business and keep my doors open?” I was like, “O.K., no pressure.” We set goals. We created strategies and tactics around that and supported them in generating revenue, and it's been very successful. Sharon: Did you think about jumping ship and going back to the film industry at some point? Ted:       That's a great question. I think the film industry, like of a lot of industries, is much more glamorous on the outside than it is on the inside. Like they say, this is how the sausage is made in the factory, whatever that saying is. I started noticing many of my friends who were in the film industry starting to get burnt out. They were working 12, 18-hour days, a lot of overtime, a lot of low pay, and it was a lot of grunt work. It took 10, 15 years to get into any kind of leadership role because there are union rules and whatnot, not to say there's no place for the union. I just found that it was very tiring for a lot of these folks. A lot of them ended up having marital issues because of it, relationship issues, health issues, addiction issues, and I thought, “You know what? This is not really for me.” I was tied to the hip by a lovely girl back in my college days, and I wanted to make sure I was able to seal the deal, as it were. Funny enough, she is my wife of 17 years. We got married in 2006. We started dating in 1999, got married in 2006. It's 17 years this year, and after I bought out my business partner a few years ago, I brought her in as a 50-50 partner. We've been partners in life and partners in crime for a number of years now. Sharon: Pretty good. It sounds very fulfilling. Ted:       It is. Sharon: You do a lot of different things. How do you define digital marketing? You say you're a digital marketing agency. That could mean a lot of things. Ted:       Yeah, absolutely. Great question, Sharon. The first thing is that, for us, it is anything that is online for the most part. I think a lot of folks will do PR and outreach and influencer marketing, those kinds of things. Those are not our forte. Our forte is around helping folks on things for the digital funnel. If you don't understand the funnel, it's top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. The top of funnel is where you get the awareness. People who have never heard of your business before don't know you from Tom, Dick or Harry. You're just like every single person in your industry. Getting awareness is top of funnel, and activities like that that we support are things like digital ads, be it Google, LinkedIn, Facebook. We'll even do Snapchat and Twitch and Pinterest. We're exploring TikTok for some B2B companies. So, that's getting the awareness out, but you also have things in top of funnel like SEO work. You have PPC, which is part of the Google landscape, blog writing to support the SEO efforts, video ads, YouTube ads. Whatever those things are just to get the word out. Then the middle of funnel is the consideration phase. People have heard of you. It usually takes about eight to 10 touches for them to even realize you exist. Once they actually convert and come to your website, that's the consideration phase. We need to have really good, thoughtful content on a website. Gone are the days when if you look pretty and half-decent, they're going to just call you. You need to actually provide value. So, we do a lot of work around supporting website content creation, creating marketing strategies and actually executing on them. Maybe we'll have video content that is not a video ad, but it's something that educates the end user, the client's client or p

What you'll learn in this episode: Why Google's search results page is more important than your website homepage Why the most successful law firms are involved in their marketing, even when they hire an outside agency How a firm's intake process can make or break their SEO efforts Why content marketing today is about quality, not quantity Why consistent Google reviews are the key to ranking higher About Stephanie Chew: Stephanie Manor Chew is award-winning law firm analyst andDirector of Sales and Head of the Elite Sales Team at Digital Law Marketing. For the last 16 years, she has been helping clients build credibility and increase their visibility online through the full lifecycle of digital initiatives. From custom search engine marketing and social media positioning, to targeted content and online reputation management, she makes sure that DLM clients get what they need, when they need it. Additional Resources: Digital Law Marketing Website  Stephanie's LinkedIn Digital Law Marketing Facebook Transcript: Gone are the days when you could simply outsource everything to an SEO agency and expect results. To rank on Google today, law firms must take an active role in overseeing and executing their marketing plan. Stephanie Chew, Director of Sales at Digital Law Marketing, finds that the company's most successful clients collaborate with them to achieve the best possible outcome. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about why content is no longer king; why a firm's intake process is the most important part of lead generation; and how consistent Google reviews can boost your SEO efforts. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon:          Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Stephanie Chew. She is the Director of Sales at Digital Law Marketing, and she's speaking to us from Annapolis, Maryland. The company is headquartered in Nashville but is basically a virtual firm and works all over the country. Digital Law Marketing encompasses a wide range of digital aspects today, and no law firm can live without them. From SEO to PPC to social media, a law firm can make a case for each of them, especially when they work together. Today, Stephanie is going to educate us on what's new in digital law marketing, where we should start and what we can't live without. Stephanie, welcome to the program.   Stephanie:    Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.   Sharon:          Stephanie, tell us your background. How did you end up doing this? You didn't tell your mother this is what you wanted to do where you were little, I don't think.   Stephanie:    It's funny; I always wanted to be in advertising in some respects. I was just telling my daughter this the other night when we were watching the Super Bowl. Watching the Super Bowl with my father, I was always so fascinated by the ads, and I always knew I wanted to do something around advertising and marketing. After college, I started with Trader Publishing Company, which is now Dominion Enterprises. It has changed hands a couple of times, but it's basically selling advertising space to car dealers. Then it turned into apartment communities, like for-rent magazines, things of that nature, and then that led me over to the SEO world, the website world. Then I started working with law firms in 2009, and I've been here ever since.   Sharon:          That's a long time with law firms. I can relate. I wonder what would have happened if I had been in advertising when SEO started. I'm involved in SEO, but I thought advertising was my dream job and quickly found it wasn't. What would you say that lawyers have to do differently in digital marketing?   Stephanie:    They have to be a part of the partnership. In the first part of my career, we would come in and help firms and companies by putting ads in newspapers or books, and the firm or the business really didn't have to do much. Now the most successful firms out there are involved with their marketing, maybe not as much as we are, but they're a pretty big part of it. More than they ever have been. For instance, getting reviews is incredibly important now, so the firm has to work to get reviews. We can make a firm tell Google how amazing the firm is. We can create an amazing website with wonderful content, great SEO strategy, but if the firm isn't getting reviews, they're not going to get business. Now, more so than it's ever been, the firm has to be behind the digital focus and be a part of what their partners are doing to help them become successful online.   Sharon:          That's interesting, because when I read a review, the first thing I look at is, “Is this a legitimate review or is something the company wrote?” I hadn't thought about how involved lawyers have to be, how involved everybody has to be. It's not just something done in the back room.   Stephanie:    Right. The firms that are the most successful online, the lawyers are actually asking for those reviews directly themselves. We've seen firms where they've hired people to get reviews for them. They're never as successful as the actual attorney asking for that review themselves. So, asking for those reviews is one thing we always push our firms to do because, like you said, you look at those reviews to see if they're real or not. Most people look first at the newest reviews, the most recent review that was posted, and then they look at the lowest review. Those are the two categories that people care the most about. So, it's important for the firm to be involved just as much as the marketing company to make sure your reputation is good too.   Sharon:          Do you explain that from the very beginning, that they have to be involved?   Stephanie:    Yes, and we will only work with firms that will be involved. We're very lucky that we're exclusive, so we only work with one firm per practice area per geographic location. If a firm isn't a partner with us, there's only so much we can do for them. But having that partnership, we are the best in what do. We like working with the best firms. It creates the best partnership for everybody's success. But yes, it's very important that they're also a part of their own success up front.   Sharon:          When you say success, is that lead generation? Is it just what they're doing?   Stephanie:    Yes, lead generation. Our goal is to help firms become visible online organically. Our main focus is search engine optimization, which is organic placement on search engines. We do paid ads, and we're very good at doing paid ads as well, but it's that organic placement that you get the most return from. The more rankings these firms have on the search engines, the more phone calls they're going to get and then hopefully the more cases they get. It really does work that way. We can track a ranking on the search engines, and then we track their phone and work with them to hear how many cases they're getting, and it really does work in that direction.   Sharon:          Social media and the paid stuff aside, do you encourage lawyers to write articles? Does this help?   Stephanie:    With our clients, we handle all of the writing because there are couple of different ways you have to write. Number one, you have to write to make sure you're the voice of the firm and it makes sense. You're writing about cases you're looking to get, but you also have to make sure you're writing so the search engines can recognize you. For instance, a very popular search phrase right now is “near me,” like “car accident attorney near me,” “car accident lawyer near me,” “dentist near me,” “best optometrist near me.” It's making sure you get those “near me” keywords in your content, making sure your content includes questions and answers, because a lot of people are asking questions of the search engines.   We do have firms that like to write themselves. Attorneys are wonderful writers, but if they're not writing so the search engines can recognize what they're saying, it's not going to help them become more visible when it comes to these search phrases. It's a balance. We do all the writing for our clients with their approval, but if somebody does want to write here and there, we encourage that. We would just help with massaging the SEO and the content.   Sharon:          Would you massage the SEO or the stuff that makes them go higher in the rankings? If they have a website already, would you say, “It's wonderful, but we can go in and do some things”? What do you do?   Stephanie:    99% of the time, we rebuild and redesign and develop the website first. The reason we do that is because a lot of how your website is built is how you're going to perform on the search engines. For instance, if you have a very slow website, Google does not like that. Your site speed is a factor if you're going to rank or not. So, we like to go in and clean up the website so we have a good product to work with to then help with SEO. From there, we write content, build out the content, create site maps, really get to know the firm, their voice, and figure out the types of cases they're looking for. Then we write content around that to help them rank on the search engines.   Sharon:          Are you called in when they say, “We're about to embark on a rebuild of our website”? It seems to me they already have one when they call you in.   Stephanie:    Sometimes that happens, where we start working with a firm and they just rebuilt their website, and we have to give them the bad news of “I'm really sorry, but this website isn't going to perform.” We wouldn't take on that client because we want to set up the proper expectations of success for our clients. If you have a marketing company tell you, “Oh no, that's O.K. Your website's slow, but we could still work with it,” that would be a red flag because it won't work as well as it could if you redid the site. It happens sometimes.   Sharon:          Going back to the “near me,” I don't even enter that, but that comes up as a choice to click on.   Stephanie:    Yeah, that's usually right.   Sharon:          That's interesting. What do you mean by content writing? Is that what you mean when you're making sure the content—   Stephanie:    When it comes to content, you have the content pages on the website. Some of the most popular content pages on a law firm's website would be their practice area pages. You might have a page on wrongful death. You might have a page on car accidents. You might have a page on personal injury. Then each one of those pages includes content. The type of content on that page could be question and answer, could be including those words “near me.”   Google pulls from that content to determine how you're going to rank based on the way the person is searching. You'll see a lot of times where Google does an instant answer. If they're asking a question, “what is the statute of limitations in the state of California for a wrongful death case,” a law firm's content page could answer that question, so they'll bring it up as the first result.   There's also blogging. You want to make sure you're blogging on a regular basis. In the past, it was as much content as you could put on there. The phrase “content is king” is gone. That used to be the way we spoke when you would push content, push content, push content. Now, it's more about the quality of content versus the quantity of content. It's making sure it's good content that's enriched with the types of cases you're looking for, and written well so the search engines recognize you as an expert on that topic with experience and expertise in the discussion. Google will see that and help you rank better based on the content and what you're saying.   Sharon:          Is that per lawyer? Let's say on the home page of the website you have banners or badges that say, “We're the best.” Or is it in the bio?   Stephanie:    It would be in a practice area page. When somebody does a search for a car accident lawyer, let's say, Google wants to provide them with the most specific information they're looking for. So, they'll more likely pull up a car accident page from your website and show that over your home page. Your home page should be a summary of everything you do, and then the content pages are more specific on each practice area. When somebody does find you, they're going to find that practice page usually over your home page, but all of your content should include things that are easily identifiable for Google.   Sharon:          I always laugh when I see a bio that says they specialize in 20 different things, because how many can you specialize in? What would you do? Would you put everything the firm does? What would you do in order to come up?   Stephanie:    With a bio, you really want to focus on that attorney and what they've done and that's it. When it comes to the actual practice area pages, that's where you would focus on that practice area. Then maybe you could put in a little sentence or two about which attorney does that, if that makes sense. There are ways of doing it. It's not necessarily a right answer or a wrong answer. It depends on the firm, the market, the practice area. But there are ways you can incorporate that being specific to the attorney and what their expertise is versus what the whole firm does on the bio page, if that makes sense.   Sharon:          It does make sense. Should you put successes like, “We won a case that was really hard to win for $10,000 and John Smith did it”?   Stephanie:    Oh yeah, verdicts and settlements pages and verdicts and settlements in general are some of the most visited areas on the websites. People want to see numbers. There are some markets where they might not be allowed to put verdict and settlement numbers on their website, or the firm doesn't feel like it's appropriate to do that. But by the way, law firms that put their numbers on their websites get more attraction than the ones that don't.   Sharon:          The big question is do people choose a personal injury firm because they like the lawyer? It's a nice, touchy-feely firm versus one that's won all of these big numbers but they might not like as much. How do you choose? What's more important?   Stephanie:    That's a good question. Again, it comes back to the person choosing and what's important to them on why they're choosing, but if you don't have the big numbers, you definitely want to talk about what you've done. A lot of people want to feel that they can relate to that attorney. I always say talk as much as you can about things you've done to help other people. If I had a case that was specific and I read that that attorney has helped other people with the same thing I have, I'm more likely to work with them regardless of what the numbers are because I feel like they could help me. If you don't have those big numbers, you want to discuss what you've done because people will be able to relate to that.   We're also big believers in putting personal information into those bios. Talk about your hobbies, talk about your children, because people relate to things. There are so many situations where I've heard that this attorney got a case because somebody saw they had the same hobby, they went rafting or whatever it was, and their son had passed away, or that they were calling him because he had the same alma mater. Obviously that is a big one people gravitate toward. Outside of politics—I would stay away from writing anything related to politics—the more information you can humanize yourself with, it's going to help people connect with you better and they'll end up hiring you.   Sharon:          That's interesting. I've heard that both ways. I tend to relate to people, so I would like to know more about them. That's interesting that you should put it in your bio. Are you usually called in the beginning or are they already underway? Why are you called in? Tell us about your business. That's several questions, sorry.   Stephanie:    That's O.K. Usually we're called in when a firm is looking to take their law firm to that next step and they're looking for more cases. They're not showing up online. They're not getting phone calls. They're not getting cases online. A lot of times, we're called in to firms that have worked with referrals for pretty much their whole law career. They're always getting referrals, and they're tired of paying those referral fees to other attorneys. They'd like to generate cases themselves from the internet. Then we would be brought in to help them analyze what's going on in their market and what their current web presence is. Then we can put together a plan to get them to where they need to be to generate more calls that generate the cases they're looking for. It's usually somebody that wants to make more money off the internet in some way, like they're tired of paying referral fees and/or they're looking for more visibility and better-quality cases. We hear that a lot; that we help firms create better-quality cases over anything else.   Sharon:          Better quality meaning larger cases, bigger numbers?   Stephanie:    It could be anything. It could be that it's a firm that did a bunch of slip and fall cases and now they're getting bigger and better quality personal injury cases. It's medical malpractice firms that used to get a lot of junk calls and now they're getting quality calls, things like that. We're really good at SEO, and we're really good at creating more rankings for somebody organically. Usually when somebody finds a firm organically, they tend to be better qualified, quality leads.   Sharon:          Do you keep your eye on the changes in the Google algorithm?   Stephanie:    Yeah, we have a SEO specialist that works with digital marketing. We're all senior level, too. I always like to mention that because our SEO specialists are also very recognized in their SEO space. We have one Google Product Expert that works for us. She's one of 50 in the world. She's outstanding. We also have a Google Local Search expert who's been nationally recognized. They're the ones that keep up with the trends and how things are changing, and then we push that down to all of our firms. We're constantly moving in different directions with content and with SEO strategies based on the changes in the Google algorithm and changes in how we as human beings search. It is ever-changing. If you looked back 10 years ago from today, it's totally different to what we're doing. Even a year ago, it's a different strategy than what we were doing.   Sharon:          That sort of leads me to the next question. When I search, you have to skip like 10 sponsored ads. Is it possible to be high organically?   Stephanie:    Absolutely. It's interesting because Google has put a lot of emphasis on their paid ads. They have a newer ad called the Local Services Ad. It's been around for two years now, but those are the ones where there are pictures at the top of the page. They're considered Google screened, but they're driven by reviews and making sure that somebody answers the phone and other things in your budget. But the biggest driver of those is how frequently you're getting reviews, which is interesting that Google is doing that. So, there are different types of advertising they're doing, and they're pulling in an organic element with those reviews. Below that you have your pay-per-click, which is the paid advertising for Google Ad Words, and then you have your local. But yes, local SEO is still the sweet spot of getting calls. The firms we see, the majority of the calls come in through that local SEO space.   Sharon:          When you say you only take one practice area and one geographic area, do you have a map divided up? What do you call a geographic area?   Stephanie:    It depends on the marketplace, but a lot of it has to do with where the office is located. For instance, we have a state where the firm has 10 office locations throughout the state. Well, they're the only personal injury firm in that state because they have so many offices, so we're not going to work with anybody else. It comes down to who their competitors are. Our whole thing is we're not going to work with your competition. If it's too close for comfort, we go to our clients first and have them tell us if it's O.K. if we work with them, yes or no based on the competition, and we will or we won't. We do not cross that line at all. We are 100% exclusive, and that's why. We only have a handful of clients per state because it's all we want. We don't want to be the biggest SEO company out there. We want to be the best, and we feel that we are.   Sharon:          What do you do if you're in a room of lawyers, whether it's partners or not, and they say, “Reviews aren't a problem. Sally in marketing handles the reviews”? What do you do then?   Stephanie:    It depends. Maybe Sally in marketing really does do a great job and she is getting multiple reviews a week. That would be awesome. We wouldn't have a problem with that at all. But if Sally in marketing hasn't gotten a review for six months, we can see that. We can say, “Oh, that's great, but the best thing for firms is to get consistent reviews on a regular basis. Two to three reviews a week would be ideal.” We can show that they're responding to them, that they're engaging with that list, and we really push that.   We've had situations where we have gotten firms top ranked—I keep trying to say first page, but there are no pages anymore when it comes to Google. It's about rank. You can't even scroll. So, we could get somebody at the top of the rank of the search engine, but if their reviews aren't good, nobody's going to call them. We've done our job, but nobody's going to call you if your reviews aren't good. It's a two-way street. We coach our firms. We encourage them. We do a lot with intake. We can audit phone calls and help them figure out how people are handling their calls. It's a lot of coaching and encouraging and trying to do our best to get them to do their part, too.   Sharon:          I think you just preempted my next question. You can have wonderful numbers, but if they fill out the intake form and nobody sees it—   Stephanie:    Yeah, if they're not answering the phone. We see this a lot. We'll do audits with some of the most successful firms in lots of different situations. I'll never forget there was a catastrophic injury/medical malpractice firm, and a lady called very upset saying that her daughter was just diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and the woman's like, “I don't know if we do that. Hold on. Let me check. Yeah, we do that.” Now the confidence is shot. There's no way. These are not the people to hire.   Intake is such a big part of these firms. It's probably the most important part that our lawyers aren't paying attention to right now. Not all our firms, but in our industry in general. We're doing a lot with our clients to help them with that, but in our industry as a whole, I feel like intake is probably the area that can be improved the most.   Sharon:          People don't talk about that enough, I think. They talk about how much money everybody is spending on SEO and organic, but not about when the calls come in, where they were sent or what happens. Stephanie:    It's really a salesperson on that line if you think about it. As you said, firms are spending thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of dollars a month in marketing, but who's answering that phone? All your dollars are going out the window when you don't have the right person. They usually want to cut costs on those types of positions, when really it should be handled as a sales organization. Some of the more sophisticated PI firms, those large firms that are coming into different markets, are handling those as sales calls. It's changing. I've seen firms do a great job, but I do think that's one of the first things that is overlooked. Hopefully it's coming to light now. More firms are starting to do better at it, but you've got to take care of all the parts.   Sharon:          There are a lot of parts. I was laughing when you said content is king because that's what people used to say. There was a time, a long time ago, when you could tell somebody, “Just write a lot about what you do and you'll be O.K.,” but that's long gone.   Stephanie:    Yeah, it's gone now.   Sharon:          Would you say that a website is the hub of everything a person is doing when they're doing paid ads and SEO?   Stephanie:    I probably would have used to say that, but what I would say now is if you do a search for the firm's name on Google, that is the new homepage. Whatever you see that comes up there is what I would be more concerned about than even the homepage of your website. The reason I say that is because if you do a search—let's say you're a car accident lawyer and somebody finds you by doing a search for car accident lawyers. They are going to see your presence on Google pop up first. Sometimes they'll go directly to your website; sometimes they'll look at your reviews before even looking at your website; sometimes they'll look at where you are before doing that. There's a lot of information they can find out before even getting to your website.   If somebody does a Google search of your firm name, on the right-hand side of that search is usually where you'll see the Google information and Google reviews, but on the left-hand side is all those other directories out there, which could have bad reviews. That shows up before somebody even gets to your homepage. It used to be that your website is the hub of everything. It's still incredibly important, and maybe it still is the hub, but when it comes to your reputation, you really need to see what Google has on your firm. What is your brand telling people before they even get to your website? What are all these directories saying? What are all these reviews saying about you?   Sharon:          What are you seeing with all the sponsored ads? I just happened to look at your website, and there are about five sponsored ads before you even get to yours. What do you do? Is that part of it?   Stephanie:    If you were to google Digital Law Marketing, there are other law marketing companies that will bid on our name to show up ahead of us. That happens. Or somebody could be bidding on digital marketing or terms like that, but people can see that they're sponsored or paid ads. You can see that right there. Most people, if they're looking for the real website, will pass those and go directly to the organic.   Now, some people search differently. Some people would click on the first one they see, but users are becoming a lot more sophisticated than they ever have been, so they understand what an ad is. Sometimes ads are the best result. Google has also done a good job with the ad program so that sometimes the best information you're finding is in the ads. It depends, but it's hard to get away from those ads. One thing you could do as a business is bid on your name. For instance, we bid on Digital Law Marketing, so we're one of the first that pops up when somebody does type in our name. But you do want to make sure you're aware of what is on the internet about your brand.   Sharon:          It seems like the world has changed so much as a marketing person who's interested in everything you're talking about. For the firm to be at the top and on social media and everywhere, you need a bunch of experts. They need their own team. You can't be an expert in everything or just a lawyer who's interested in marketing.   Stephanie:    You're absolutely right. We touch on social media, but there's so much more you could be doing with social media. There are so many different avenues and elements of everything. You could have, like you said, a whole team. You hire a company like ours to manage the website, the SEO, the paid ads. Then you have somebody that does social media video, optimization and things of that nature. Then you get somebody that just does PR. PR companies and SEO companies work really well together because it creates good results when they do. There are so many different things. It's not just hiring one person and they can do everything.   Sharon:          But the marketing person or the lawyer who's interested should also be auditing calls or at least know what's happening.   Stephanie:    Yeah, and there are so many different tools now. We use something called dynamic call tracking where you can record every call. We're constantly spot checking and listening to our clients' calls to make sure the leads are being handled properly once we bring them to the law firm. If they don't, they're not going to see the success of their marketing dollars.   Sharon:          Have you ever had to make changes because of the dynamic call tracking?   Stephanie:    Yeah, we've had to. We've actually had to not renew agreements with clients. In almost 10 years with Digital Law Marketing, we've only lost a handful of clients, and two of those we actually let go ourselves. The reason we let them go is because they weren't helping themselves and they weren't helping to be a partner. At the end of the day, nobody would be successful. Lots of times we have these hard conversations with firms and say, “O.K., this what we found out. We did an audit and 40% of the calls aren't being answered.” The firms are very receptive to it, and they make changes quickly. That's why they hire us, because they know we'll help them with making those decisions. We've had lots of hard conversations with firms, but if firms aren't willing to help themselves, it's hard for us to help them.   Sharon:          I presume you've been in the position where you've come in to replace another SEO firm.   Stephanie:    Oh, yeah.   Sharon:          How long should a law firm wait to see results?   Stephanie:    Good question. We ask all of our clients at Digital Law Marketing to give us one year of SEO. After that, it's month to month. We don't renew clients because if you don't want to be with us after a year, then we're probably not the right fit. But we don't lose clients because we can show you within a year what we've been able to do for you. If it's not us, then try somebody else. I would definitely give it a year.   Just yesterday, I had a call from somebody who was frustrated because their marketing company had been working for three months and the results weren't showing up. I'm like, “You really need to give them longer than three months. Give them a good year. I'm not going to say you're going to be at the height of your performance in a year, not at all, but you will see progression.” We tell people all the time, “We'll be able to show you in the first 90 to 120 days how you're ranking better, how you're getting more phone calls.” We continually show that progression because it takes years to get really good visibility on search engines. You're telling Google who you are over a long, consecutive period of time of building your brand, but you will see progression quickly. You're just not going to see ultimate results for some time.   Sharon:          You must have lot of people say, “A whole year? You want me to wait a whole year before I start to evaluate?”   Stephanie:    People have figured it out now. It used to be more of a challenge five years ago, but people have figured it out. SEO takes a while. With paid ads you can see a return a little quicker, but it's still not as quick as it used to be. With paid advertising, we tell everybody to give it at least three to four months. There are so many people that are doing paid advertising, so it takes a little longer. It used to be that you were able to see results in a day, but it's different the way things are working now. It just takes time, but if you're consistent and you're doing the right thing over a consistent period of time, you will see the right results with the right company. You have to make sure you trust who you're working with, too.   Sharon:          That's probably a big factor. One of the last questions, if you can tell us, is about how people find you. Do they only find you because of a web search, or do they find you other ways? How do they find you?   Stephanie:    The law firm?   Sharon:          Yeah, how do your clients find you, so they call you versus another company?   Stephanie:    They could do a web search and find us that way. We are Diamond Sponsors of the American Association for Justice, the AAJ. It's a national organization. We're also sponsors of the National Trial Lawyers. We do travel a couple of times a year to conventions and meet new firms. A lot of our clients come from other clients because our clients tell our story a lot better than anybody else. On our website, we have a bunch of FAQs and testimonials from our clients, but they can look us up on Google, social media and through our website.   We have a form on there so we can do free SEO audits for firms. We'd love for them to fill that out and see if it's something we can help firms with. We are working with firms all over the country, but we do have markets available, so we'd love to hear from anybody that's interested in not having to hire a company again. A lot of times, people come to us and say, “I'm tired of switching companies every year or every two years.” Our clients don't have to do that anymore. So, come to us and you don't have to continually look further.   Sharon:          That's a big point of differentiation. For everybody listening, we'll make sure to have the website link and any other links. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it, Stephanie.   Stephanie:    Thank you for having me, Sharon. It was fun.   Sharon:          Thanks. Stephanie:    Take care.

What you'll learn in this episode: How to determine what your succession planning goals are Why it's so difficult to sell a law firm, and which types of practices may sell more easily than others When to start succession planning, and how long to expect a deal to take How buying a firm can be a strategic career move for young lawyers Why most lawyers need to challenge themselves to be better entrepreneurs and business developers About Roy Ginsburg Roy S. Ginsburg is an attorney coach and law firm consultant who has practiced law for more than 30 years. He works with individual lawyers and law firms nationwide in the areas of business development, practice management, career development, and strategic and succession planning. Roy is also a prolific speaker and blogger. He travels around the country speaking at CLEs sponsored by bar associations on topics such as selling law practices, succession planning and more. He's a regular contributor at attorneyatwork.com. Additional Resources: www.sellyourlawpractice.com Transcript: Succession planning is the most important topic law firm owners never want to talk about. But whether you want to sell your firm or pass it on to a top associate, deciding how you want to exit your career is better done sooner than later. As a legal coach, Roy Ginsburg helps attorneys prioritize their goals for succession planning and create a plan to achieve them. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about which types of practices may be more appealing to buyers; how to help associates transition to owners; and what age attorneys should start thinking about succession. Read the episode transcript here.   Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, we are talking with Roy S. Ginsburg. Roy is a lawyer and strategic advisor to lawyers and law firms. He puts his 35 years of experience to work helping lawyers be more satisfied in their careers. He has several areas of expertise, but today, he'll be talking about an area we don't hear a lot about, and that is the obstacles lawyers face when they start the process of estate planning. That could be selling their firm to a different entity or turning their firm over to the next generation. Roy, welcome to the program. Roy:       Thank you very much for inviting me, Sharon. It's a pleasure to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. You're talking to us from Philadelphia? Roy:       No. What I tell people is that I'm talking from a city that, until a few years ago, no one ever heard of, and that's Minneapolis. They know about it now for all the wrong reasons, but, yeah, I'm talking to you from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sharon: Tell us about your career. Roy:       I got to the Midwest initially through law school. I attended the University of Wisconsin for law school. For a year after that, I clerked for a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and then I moved to Minneapolis after that to work for a large law firm here. I worked for a large firm for a few years, then I worked for a smaller law firm for a few years. I spent about a dozen years as an in-house lawyer. In all those times, in private practice and in-house, most of it was in the employment law area. That was the first 20. The last 20, I've pretty much been the consultant I am today. Sharon: How was it that you came to be a consultant and a strategic advisor? Roy:       I wasn't one of those lawyers who intensely disliked practicing law, though I've worked with plenty of those. I just thought it was O.K. and I was looking to do something different. In some ways, I surprised myself by having this entrepreneurial bug. The initial game plan was to be a CLE speaker primarily talking about business development and ethics. I figured lawyers would attend a CLE with ethics attached to it. They did, but it's not so easy to get gigs if you want to do that on a national basis, which was the goal. I got them, but when you have three kids and hopefully all of them are attending college, it wasn't enough. Then I realized that coaching was becoming popular, at least in corporate America. I knew that from being in-house and working for a few companies. I figured if I can tell a hundred people how to build a marketing plan, I can do it one-on-one. That was initially how I got into coaching/consulting. Over time, people said, “Roy, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?” The recession was here. Could I help people find jobs? Back in 2008, a lot of small firm owners would call me looking for help with practice management issues. Most importantly for the purposes of this program today, I got lots of calls from senior lawyers, either solo or small firm owners, not knowing what to do. So, I saw business there. This was about 10, 15 years ago. I created my own website just for that particular business. Although I do all types of consulting and coaching today, I'd say about two-thirds of my time is helping solo and small firm owners with their succession planning, because they oftentimes just don't know what to do. Sharon: You must have been very busy during Covid with succession planning. Roy:       Yes and no. Much like a lot of America, for the first two months, in April and May, my phone didn't ring. Everyone was trying to figure out how to live. Then June was business as usual. I've read and seen anecdotally that the pandemic was a mixed bag as far as retirement planning. It definitely incentivized some people to call and figure out what to do. On the other hand, it delayed some people because they thought, “What am I going to retire for? I can't visit the kids,” or they realized during lockdown that they needed to have a busier practice and it was premature to retire. At least for the people that are calling me, it's been a wash. I haven't seen a tsunami of phone calls, but I also haven't seen it drop off the cliff. It's business as usual, and pretty steady at that. Sharon: I'm thinking about how many businesses and restaurants and all kinds of people decided to pack it in and said, “O.K., I'm going to try something different.” Rboy:       Not so much. One of the things I pride myself on is I understand the DNA of lawyers. I'm a lawyer myself. They don't like change. They don't like to take a chance or a risk. I didn't realize how unique I am by not only changing my life as a lawyer but being somewhat of an entrepreneur. I've learned from the coaching and consulting that's not in the DNA of most lawyers, to think entrepreneurially. Like I said, they find themselves in the profession for no compelling reason, and they stay there because it's a half-decent living. Some love it; some hate it; most are in between. Sharon: Did you know you had this entrepreneurial gene before you started? Roy: Not really. It surprised me as much as it surprised family and friends, I think. Sharon: You say that practicing law was O.K., but it wasn't because you had this craving, or you knew that wasn't really what you were meant to do. Roy:  Correct. I'm like most lawyers. There's a joke in the Jewish community: nice Jewish boys who don't like the sight of blood go to law school. My brother's a doctor, so I'm the lawyer. Anecdotally, I can tell you I've coached or consulted with well over 200 lawyers over the last 20 years or so, and I always ask every one of them why they went to law school. You think you can guess the number one answer? There actually is no close second answer. Sharon: What else? What else was there to do? Roy: They couldn't think of anything better to do. Very few lawyers have a compelling reason, and this is across the board, whether you went to a premier law school or one of the ones in the box. They just find themselves saying, “Eh, it's a nice living, not too bad. I get a little prestige.” If you're really entrepreneurial, you don't go to law school; you go to business school or you start your own business. That's one of the many reasons why I think most lawyers are horrific businesspeople in general. Most lack any sort of entrepreneurial DNA. Sharon: Did it take a while for this gene, this DNA, the entrepreneurial bug, to come out in you? Roy: I kind of enjoyed it. Needless to say, I've been doing it for 20 years at this point, but I think I have been good at it. Like most lawyers, I'm not terribly creative. But if I see something, I'll act upon the trend. My consulting business is a perfect example. I had no big plan to help senior lawyers exit. I saw the demand and said, “Huh, I think there's something here,” and then went with it. I'm good at spotting a trend and acting upon it, but big-picture-wise, I'm not so good. I wouldn't have thought this would be a good way to make a living as a lawyer. It just turned out that way. Sharon: Why do you think prioritizing is so difficult for lawyers? Roy: Lawyers tend to be very reactive. When they call me, for some of them, it's a big, big deal because they're in denial, like a lot of people when it comes to what they do. Even though they realize they've got to do something, they haven't taken a step back. Lawyers, again, are not very reflective. They're not sure what they want to accomplish, so they try to make a lot of money on a deal, or they want to make sure their clients are going to be well-served, or they want to make sure staff is going to be maintained. I don't want to say those are conflicting goals, but depending on the importance of a goal, they may do some things differently when they figure out what they want to do for succession planning. Sharon: Why is it harder for a law firm to do a succession plan? What are the obstacles they face versus another business? Roy:  Probably the biggest obstacle is it's a very immature, underdeveloped marketplace, unlike a lot of other professional services such as CPAs and dentists, for example. That's a mature marketplace. People have been buying and selling CPA firms for years. Same thing with dentists or any other professional service. Law, as you may or may not know, was ethically prohibited for a while, although lawyers got around that, at least the clever ones. It's still on the up-and-up. A lot of people don't realize that there's even that possibility. A lot of people don't call me for help because they don't even realize they can do anything. It's more out of ignorance. Another fundamental difference between other professional services is each practice is pretty much unique. A million-dollar criminal defense law firm is completely different from a family law firm which is completely different from an immigration firm which is completely different from an estate planning firm. It may have similar revenues, but the only thing in common with those four practices is that they're owned by a lawyer. They have a J.D. next to their name and they passed the bar, but it's like comparing a grocery store to a gas station, and they happen to be owned by a lawyer. Even if you're in a small town and there are 10 firms, oftentimes they don't necessarily compete against each other. There may not be a natural buyer in the town or in the big locations. A lot of younger lawyers don't even realize they can buy a firm and that's a strategic way to build a practice. Part of my job is educating younger lawyers about how one way to jumpstart their practice is to buy. They just don't think like businesspeople. If you're a small business lawyer, you do deals all the time, but they can't connect that dot to themselves. Sharon: Having a PR and marketing firm, I was told—I don't think this is the case, but I was told from day one, “You're not going to sell your firm. People don't sell firms. They just can't sell firms.” Are lawyers told the same thing? Roy: Pretty much. They're not necessarily specifically told by someone, but when they ask about it, they'll find it out. In fact, the way most people find me—I'm in Minneapolis. My clients are nationwide; five to 10% are from Minnesota, which I think is very typical. Someone, a small firm owner who's about 65, 70, 75, goes to their buddy or a colleague and says, “Hey, what are you doing about the firm now that you're getting older?” and they say, “I'm not really sure.” They say, “Is there anything I can do?” “I don't know.” So, they ask around town and realize there's no one in town who can help them. The good news for me is that 60- and 70-year-olds now know how to search the web. If you search “Can I sell my law firm?” or “How do I do this?” or “How do I do that?” I come up very high. Not that I want to pat myself on the back too much, but I don't have much competition. So, it's easy to come across me, and I say, “Hey, I can do something.” In other words, most people have no idea what can be done. All they do know is that sometimes they have internal people. I help those firms, but those who are solo or have no good candidates inside, like you said, they think there are no good options, but there are. Sharon: You do come up very high because of your website and your blog. You come up very high when it comes to succession planning. Let me ask you this: when you say they don't have internal people, do you mean they don't have somebody ready to move into their position? Roy:       Yeah. Small firm owners have one, two, three, four, sometimes as many as five or six associates or people who've been there for a long time, and they're thinking they want to sell it to the internal people and theoretically preserve the legacy. What they often call me for help with is how to price it and structure it. Is it realistic to get the money over this amount time? I also give them an idea of how much to ask for, because they're often clueless about what their firm may be worth.  Sharon: When you say theoretically they want to preserve their legacy, do you think that's important? Do these people think it's important? Roy:       Again, that goes back to your question a few minutes ago: what are they prioritizing? To some, that's a big deal. Others don't care at all. Most are somewhere in between about preserving their legacy. Sharon: Do you find that most people have an unrealistic expectation as to what their firm is worth? Roy:       Very much at times. Some firms aren't worth much at all. Those are the ones who have goodwill, which is very personal. For example, if you're a prominent criminal defense lawyer and you have a location in your city, your geographic area, your county, and you're a solo, people call you because they want you; they don't want anybody else. The best way I describe it to laypeople or even to lawyers about whether your practice has value, think about if it's a Friday afternoon and you ride off into retirement sunset, and on Monday you sell the firm to me. If I answer the phone, will they work with me on Monday? Going back to the prominent criminal defense lawyer, for example, no way in hell are they going to work with me. They'll just go to the next name on their list. They wanted to work with the guy or the woman who sold the firm on Friday. Other practice areas, it's going to be a different answer. They may work with me. So, I always tell lawyers the two-word answer about whether they'll work with you on Monday is, “It depends.” My job as a consultant to my clients is to figure out what it depends upon. For some lawyers, they have nothing to sell. The best example of a firm that has value, on paper at least, is estate planning. You know people are going to come back and revise the will. You know they are going to die and maybe need probate. It's not so theoretical that the phone will ring. I think, given the nature of the relationship, a lot of people will assume the seller vetted the buyer. They'll figure, “My former lawyer was pretty good at creating my estate plan, and I don't know anybody I could call at this point without starting from scratch. So, yeah, I'll work with them.” I'm sure you're much like me. A lot of the people we've been working with, especially our doctors, they've all retired and we had to try someone new. Sometimes they sell the practice, and most people, especially with a dentist, they're willing to try him once. The same thing with an accountant. It's the same thing with a lawyer for certain areas. They'll give him a shot. Others, there's just no way they will give him a shot. It's very, very dependent on the practice area. Sharon: That's interesting. I never thought of it that way. How do you turn it over if it's dependent on the practice area? How do you turn a criminal defense firm over to a senior person so the name of the firm carries on, let's say, as opposed to the person? Roy:       It's going to depend. There are some criminal defense firms that are very prominent with advertising and people have no expectation they're going to hire the person on TV. Personal injury is a good example. Those have value. In other words, the people calling up have no expectation they're going to work with the person on the billboard or on TV. You can preserve the legacy. There's a brand and there's value there. In that respect, it helps. Let's say you're a small business attorney. Let's say you have a dozen really good, consistent clients. You're like a general counsel for half a dozen or a dozen smaller companies. There, it's certainly possible to transition the relationship, but that's going to take time and effort. You've got to make sure there's company chemistry. That's a deeper relationship. So, I tell people if you have 10 clients like that, it's unrealistic to think all 10 are going to work with the successor. It's also unrealistic to assume that no one's going to work with the successor. It's going to be somewhere in between. It's going to be very dependent on how they hit it off, but certainly you get an advantage as a buyer to get that introduction. There's no guarantee it's going to work, but you've got to believe some of them will work. That's why it's very difficult to predict how successful a transition is going to be. Again, it's very dependent on the practice area. Going back to estate planning, without that deep relationship, the odds improve significantly that when they call the former clients, they will work with the successor, as opposed to a small business attorney. Sharon: It seems like you need a longer timeline. What timeline do you recommend to think about this? Roy:       I tell people that if all the stars are aligned, which they rarely are, nine to 12 months. If they're not, 18 to 24. That's just to make sure. It takes time to do a deal. The buyers want to do some due diligence. From the buyer's perspective, it's usually not the top thing on their radar to get done. They have client demands. It takes time, and sometimes when you get close to doing the deal, it falls apart. I've seen that happen. So, it gives you time for a do-over. Oftentimes you don't know how long these things are going to take. The age range for me is 60 to 80. I'd say at this point, I think 70 is the new 65, but I have many lawyers calling me in the mid- to upper-70s which in my view is probably—that gives you no time for do-overs at all. I can't make this stuff up. I've had people sign five-year leases when they're 77. I won't tell them to their faces, but I'm thinking, “What were they thinking doing that?” A lot of people are, quite frankly, in denial. They think that just because they feel good at 75, they're going to feel the same way at 80, and chances are you're not. I've become somewhat of a pop psychologist for aging lawyers, talking them through the plans. Some intentionally delay. They put me off. They don't return the phone call. Even when they pay me the money up front and I want to get moving, they'll still delay. Sharon: If I come to you with my firm and say, “I have an estate planning firm or whatever kind of firm; it's a mixed bag of practice areas,” do you shop it around? What do you do? Roy:       Good question. For some, yes. I think that's one of the things that quite pleasantly surprised me. Being a consultant here in Minnesota, I figured helping seniors with an exit strategy would just be a nice way to enhance my consulting business. I know a lot of lawyers in Minnesota; I'm very familiar with the marketplace; all good. Needless to say, I update my website. I'm getting calls from all over the country. Over time, I realized I can help these people, and what I realized once I got into this was usually the best buyers are going to be internal people or friendly competitors. It's not like selling a house, where you just put it on some law firm listing site and you know people are going to look. Even if people did look, it's so dependent on the practice area. You can't sell a family law practice to a criminal law attorney. They don't know what the hell they're doing. Oftentimes, my clients are going to know the best buyers. So, I work with them trying to assess who of your friendly competitors do you think has the wherewithal. I see things they don't see and vice versa. It works. There are some clients where there are no obvious friendly competitors. Then, yes, I do help them find those parties, but I'm going to level with you; it's not often the case. Oftentimes, the only way to reach these people is directly contacting them, and most don't realize that's something to even consider. It's not as easy to find buyers as one may think out there. The marketplace is maturing, but I can do it nationwide because typically the sellers themselves, if forced to think about it, can find people who may be interested. Sharon: Let's say I'm in Oregon or on the West Coast and I want a certain practice we don't have in our firm. We had an estate planning practice a million years ago and it didn't bring in any money, but we want to try it again. Do we come to you and say, “Find us an estate planning practice”? Roy:       Yeah, but I'm going to tell you the same thing. You can probably do it yourself for a lot less money. I tell younger lawyers all the time when I'm doing business development coaching, one way to build your practice is to try and find some older lawyers in your area and ask them about their retirement plan. Sometimes they get them for nothing because the older lawyer has no idea there's value there and they could actually sell them. There is no simple way for a younger lawyer or a law firm to do this. You could hire a headhunter-type. I'm really not a headhunter in any way, shape or form, but when some of the bigger firms try to build a practice area, they will poach successful people from other law firms and ask if they're interested in moving. Those aren't necessarily a sales situation. Most of the law firms who do that want the business right now and need to beef up. Sharon: Would you say business development is an important part of this? I'm thinking of an example where we were called in because the managing partner was a rainmaker. He wanted to retire in the next few years, and he wanted help in making the other people rainmakers or business developers. Roy:       That's a problem with a lot of smaller firms where you have one rainmaker, one leader—even some firms with as many as 20, 30, 40 lawyers, you have one or two rainmakers, and the others haven't done that for a variety of different reasons. As I'm sure you know, for most lawyers, rainmaking doesn't come naturally. A lot of lawyers just want to sit at their desks; they have no desire to get out there. A lot of those firms, quite frankly, are going to fold up, and the younger lawyers who have been in denial thinking the gravy train was going to continue, it won't. Sharon: It's one of the things people look at when they're assessing a firm. They look at the books, but I presume they also look at how many rainmakers there are, how many people are bringing in business. Roy:       Yeah, for sure, but it really depends. One of the things I tell younger lawyers considering buying a firm and deciding whether it's worth it is just look at it as another way of marketing. You can spend money on Google AdWords; you can spend money hiring consultants. There are a lot of different things you can do. One thing to do, though—and it's going to cost money and time, but one way to least jumpstart the practice is to buy a practice. Sharon: Would you say that one of the obstacles or one of the things that makes a law firm more difficult to sell or buy is that there's no central place? I haven't looked, but I've seen listings of CPA firms. Roy:       Right, that's one of the many reasons. I actually thought for a time that was something I could make money off of, but then I realized there are a handful of smaller websites that market other businesses and they'll have a legal section. But I've had clients advertise it. Typically, the people who respond are young lawyers who have no money; they're still in debt and they don't necessarily have the expertise. I'll go back to what I said very early in this program: it's just not a sophisticated marketplace. That's why it's hard even if you're looking to buy. Occasionally I have listings on my website, but I have no illusions that people are going there all the time, like “Let's see what law firms Roy is listing this week.” Even if they're interested, it's got to be the right location; it's got to be the right practice. There are so many ifs, it's not that you can just say, “Oh, that's something I can buy.” I will also say, as you're probably aware, that some states are experimenting with nonlawyers owning firms, specifically Utah and Arizona. Once all states get on board—and I think they will, but it's going to be 10, 15 years—then you'll see a very sophisticated marketplace. For example, Raymond James and Merrill Lynch and Fidelity, they're going to buy up estate planning firms left and right. The estate planning lawyers won't know what hit them. Certain practice areas are going to be very, very vulnerable to nonlawyers coming in. Bankruptcy is another example, a lot of paper-intensive types of things. Then you'll see someone, at that point, making a lot of money by having listings because you'll have buyers out there actually looking. But now you have to be a lawyer, and typically if you have that kind of DNA, you never became a businessperson to begin with, so you're not looking to buy firms. Sharon: Take us through the steps if I come to you and say, “It's time for me to retire, but I have no idea what to do. What do I do?” Roy:       I get asked that a lot, especially from younger lawyers. At least a few times a month, someone calls me up and they're about 55 or 60. They've still got five, 10 years of practicing, which is realistic. They say, “Roy, I don't want to screw things up. What do I need to do to prepare my law firm for sale?” I don't know if you remember Obama. President Obama had a theory of diplomacy. His theory of diplomacy was don't do stupid shit, as I'm sure you know. I'll keep this PG rated. And that's what I tell my clients. Don't do something stupid. What's something stupid? Signing a five-year lease at 77. Until the marketplace becomes more mature, the time to make money is while you practice law, period. It's not a good idea to build the practice for getting it ready for sale. Also, again, I pride myself on knowing the DNA. Everybody who calls me knows they should have a better process for this. They should invest more in this, but they've known that for the last 30 years. What makes them think that now, after 30 years, they're going to do it and get it ready for sale? They're not. They're just going to go from crisis to crisis. So, I tell them, “Do whatever you're doing to make as much money as you can now. The chances of doing that somehow detracting from the value is slim to none.” Given the immature place in the market, there's nothing really to do other than to make sure you don't mess things up that you're presently doing. Sharon: I feel like I'm opening a Pandora's box. If I say I want to earn all I can while I'm practicing law, would I do anything different? Roy:       No, in fact, you wouldn't. You'd try to get the work out efficiently. You'd double down on doing business development. You'd try to leverage some people. Just do the basics. But as you know from your experience working with law firms, getting the basics down sometimes can be very problematic for law firms. Going back to the million-dollar criminal defense lawyer who built personal goodwill, I tell people like that they've got good news and bad news. The good news is you made a lot of money in your career. The bad news is you've got nothing to sell. But again, even if you're an estate planning lawyer, it's the same: keep track of your clients and make sure a buyer would be able to contact all the people. Have a good process in place. A lot of lawyers come to me and say, “Roy, I figured out the best way to create this or create that. I've got the best process, so that in and of itself is going to provide value to my law firm,” and I tell them, “Yes, I know you have a great practice, but you know what? So does everybody else.” They think they have a great practice. It's going to be tough to convince somebody that the way you do things is better than the way they do things. Sharon: It sounds like what we hear over and over, that the hidden gem— Roy:       No, there is no hidden gem. The hidden gem is usually the personality of the seller who has that unique rainmaking ability. As for getting the work out, occasionally you'll have people that actually have figured out a way to provide the service better, but again, most lawyers won't pay anything extra for it. What I tell people is if you have that sort of process, it may enhance the likelihood that it'll sell faster and you'll have more interest in the firm, but to quantity it is virtually impossible. Sharon: So, what am I going to do? I have savings and I say, “O.K., I've been a big-deal criminal defense lawyer. I have millions of dollars in savings.” Roy:       Well, one thing you can do is if you have internal people, you can start transitioning some responsibilities to them so it's not going to be such a hiccup if and when they take over and you do a deal with them. There's really nothing special or unique besides figuring out the timing, of course. I get people calling me now and they say, “Roy, I want to get it done by the end of the second quarter,” and I'll say, “It's not going to happen. I can still help you, but it's not going to get done by then.” It takes time, so give yourself enough time. One of the things I definitely need to mention is if you die prematurely, or even if you live a long life but there's some sort of disability, you're going to leave a mess. I have worked with the grieving widower or widow. It's not pretty. It's not pretty at all when they die. Even if they die at more of a normal age, let's say 70s or 80s, but the lawyer was in denial, and especially if it's a solo practice with a minimal staff, this poor spouse—because that's ultimately who's got to figure things out—they don't know what to do. No one plans for that stuff. All lawyers here, they need to have a contingency plan in place if they get hit by the proverbial bus. Needless to say, it's a hell of a lot more important to have it when you're 65 or 70 than when you're 35 or 45. You need it nevertheless, but of course the chances of it happening increase. It's so important to have something in place. I can't predict the future; it's above my paygrade as far as when those things are going to happen, but you need to have something in place if you do get hit by the proverbial bus. As we get older that's more likely to occur. Of course, few lawyers want to acknowledge that and do something about it.  It's going to be more and more of a crisis, I think, in a lot of states as the boomers retire, because we're just seeing the start of the boomers. I'm 65 myself and I'm right in the middle of that. You have some of the senior ones dealing with it, but again, people aren't retiring at 65 as much, especially as solo and small firm lawyers where they're not booted out as easily in bigger firms. They tend to be booted out earlier than solo and small firm owners because they decide what to do. They don't have any firm issues there. Sharon: Do you work with firms that aren't consumer? You've mentioned estate planning. Roy:       I work with all types of firms. Occasionally I work with bigger firms where there's one or two particular rainmakers. Again, they're in denial about what to do. The other lawyers don't want to step up to the plate. Those are the firms I was mentioning earlier that are going to be falling apart. Everyone's going to scatter once that rainmaker and/or leader retires, and they do the best they can to transition. In the bigger firms, it's hard to transition clients because they don't invest in the leadership to give it to the younger lawyers. They still want to make as much money as possible. There's only so much money to go around in the bigger firms when they compensate the partners they don't want to let go. Sometimes they have only themselves to blame when that occurs. Sharon: Not letting go, that's probably a big problem you run into a lot. Whoever has the relationship doesn't want to let it go. Roy:       Exactly, they don't want to let it go. Less money, less prestige. Even if you're one of the younger lawyers who sees the accident occurring, it could be political suicide to raise it in a small firm. It's fraught with a lot of issues. When it comes to the selling piece, most of my clients are solo and small firm owners with maybe half a dozen or a dozen lawyers, but on occasion, I'll get called in to do more big picture succession planning for firms. That's just transitioning clients, which, again, goes down to compensation and figuring out a way to keep the institutional clients in the firms. In some practice areas it's easier to do, others not so easy, and a lot depends on the clients. There are so many different variables. Sharon: You've given us a lot to think about when it comes to estate planning and succession planning. I think it's just recently I've heard a lot about it, but thank you very much for it. I greatly appreciate it. Roy:       My pleasure. Thank you.

What you'll learn in this episode: What companies should consider when planning their corporate giving initiatives, and why Tyrone is passionate about anti-hunger causes How mentorship creates strong connections that last for years, especially for lawyers of color Why law firms don't necessarily need perfect diversity, but they do need to demonstrate a plan for growth and improvement What it's like to work in-house in the renewable energy space Why the best leaders see their reports as individuals with goals that go beyond their workplace  About Tyrone Thomas Tyrone Thomas is General Counsel at Doral Renewables. He has broad strategic and transactional experience within the renewable energy industry, having served as both Head of Legal at Plus Power, and Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Invenergy. Throughout his career, Tyrone has led diverse teams of professionals in connection with the development, construction, financing and/or divestiture of dozens of utility-scale energy facilities with a total value of over $7 billion. Mr. Thomas earned a BS in Urban Studies from Hunter College and a JD from the University of Illinois College of Law. Additional Resources: Tyrone's LinkedIn Conversationforsix.com Transcript: In the legal industry, every connection matters. This is especially true for lawyers of color and other underrepresented attorneys who know the feeling of being left out—and the feeling of finally being seen. Tyrone Thomas, General Counsel at Doral Renewables, credits his mentors with guiding him on his career path, and he does the same for young lawyers who reach out to him today. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about what qualities he looks for in the firms and attorneys he works with; how firms can demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; and what makes a good leader. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Tyrone Thomas, General Counsel at Doral Energy. In addition, he's the company's anti-hunger advocate. He's speaking to us from the Chicago suburbs. Tyrone has been on the podcast twice before, but he was with a different energy company. Today he'll tell us all about his industry experience as well as his experience being a Black lawyer. Tyrone, welcome to the program. Tyrone: Thanks for having me, Sharon. Sharon: Glad that you're here. Give us a synopsis of your career path. Tyrone: Sure. I'll keep it post-law school. I worked in private practice for a few years. I was at DLA Piper in the Washington, D.C. office. I am still involved with DLA Piper from an alumni perspective, using them and adding advice when I can. I was with a firm called Hanson Bridgett, in San Francisco down in the financial district. Then I was with a small firm in the Chicagoland area called Gould & Ratner. In each of those spaces, my work primarily centered on development, whether commercial real estate development, development of GSA leasing properties primarily leased from the federal government, healthcare development, and everything in between. Then I moved over to a company called Invenergy that now is probably the number one, if the not the number two, private producer of renewable energy in North America. I moved over to them in 2014. Sharon: What is the name of the company? Tyrone: Invenergy. Sharon: Invenergy, all right. Tyrone: I spent about seven years there, eventually leaving as the number two on their legal team. I was the vice president and deputy counsel. I had a wealth of great experience there. I worked on a ton of really interesting projects that were cool from a practical perspective, but also great for the world in decarbonizing the environment. Tons of great employees. There were probably 400 people around the world when I started and almost 1,600 when I left. I went from having zero reports when I joined to about 27 when I left. I got to watch the company grow as I was growing in my career in that space. I then went to a really great standalone battery developer named Plus Power based out of San Francisco and Houston. It was a brief stint there because of Doral, where I currently am. It ultimately made sense to transition to Doral, where I'm general counsel and where I work with a number of folks who I worked with in prior years, including the CEO. We crossed paths in Invenergy for several years. It all just clicked, so that's where I am currently. I was head of legal at Plus Power, and here I'm general counsel/corporate secretary. I'm taking on more and more of a compliance role as well. Sharon: What is anti-hunger? That was on LinkedIn. Tyrone: When I present on LinkedIn, I try to present not necessarily where I'm working, per se, but the entirety of what I'm doing in the professional space. Primarily what I'm doing is working in the legal compliance function. I'm doing a lot of work around governance. I sit on some boards, and I'm looking at some for-profit boards right now to figure out the best fit for me. Then, I consider myself an anti-hunger advocate. I spend most of my time that's not on family or professional matters volunteering or donating to organizations that try to combat hunger and food insecurity. I have sat on associate boards and executive boards of various organizations. I've sat on the Executive Board of Directors of Beyond Hunger in the Oak Park/River Forest area here in Illinois, which honestly is probably one of the best-run and better-funded food pantries in the Midwest—I would say probably in the country. The funding is a testament to the community it's in, but it also gives them the ability to serve a lot of constituents and continually chase new opportunities to serve more or in a different way, because obviously just giving someone food is not a holistic solution. This is one of the few food pantries I know of in the country that has two dieticians on staff, for example. There are nutrition programs and things like that. I also run a small nonprofit called Conversation for Six, which is intended to lower the informational bar to entry for people who want to get more involved in the hunger space. The idea was germinated off of feedback I got from individuals whom I was trying to nudge to give more money or to center some of their corporate giving campaigns on hunger. A lot of folks told me they didn't understand it. They didn't understand what these programs are, what some of these terms are. It's not unique to the hunger space. A lot of nonprofits have to pick and choose who their audience is. They focus a lot on the audience that is preaching to the converted, because the converted are proven givers. They are going to give more and donate more. They're going to evangelize, but what sometimes gets left out is the entry-level folks. I fund the charity myself. The goal of Conversation for Six is not to raise a bunch of money; the goal is to educate. I hired some freelance writers beginning in the pandemic, and they wrote a bunch of articles on foundational concepts. What is SNAP? What is WIC? What are the summer school lunch programs? What's the idea of a food desert? Why is that term falling out of favor? It's all these foundational things that will help someone then go on and engage with more involved food scholarship. We also point people to those organizations. So, if you need help or you want to help, we point to organizations. There's a resource directory on the site that has organizations in all 50 states and some international organizations where people can either get help or give help, whether it be their time or their money. We're a nexus to get people to direct-access organizations. I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I spend a lot of time doing it. I'm currently in conversations about whether it makes sense for me to join some local government boards that are focused on hunger, whether I can add something of value there. It's a passion. It's something I carry with me separate and apart from any legal or compliance or governance-related work I do for pay. Sharon: Let me ask you this. If you walked into an office and engaged a recruiter or a marketer and they said, “Hey, here's a bunch of money. Go put it in hunger,” would that influence you? Tyrone: You mean if I was looking to take a job and they were also— Sharon: Or in marketing. Would it influence you in terms of having a better feeling— Tyrone: You mean in terms of whether their client would be influenced by this? I would say no, and I'll tell you why. In our space, corporate giving is table stakes. Everybody has corporate giving. Let me start off by saying that feels too much like a bribe to me, so I want to stay out of the gray area. Everyone has corporate giving. When I made the comment earlier about influencing where they center their corporate giving, that's a very real conversation. When I came out of law school, you still had to be in a suit every day, but you had a jeans Friday. They would pick a charity, and everybody would donate. Everyone would give $5 as their payment to wear their jeans, and it would go to a charity. A lot of the charities were not focused on what I considered some of the base problems that humans face. I wasn't the only one there. I am certain other folks would try to push for certain charities, like “Can we give money to these anti-homelessness charities?” That was in D.C. and San Francisco, both of which have aggressive homelessness problems. “How about charities working on hunger? How about ones working on reintegrating people into the workforce or supporting unwed teen mothers? Can we put money there?” If we're putting it somewhere anyway, and most of the people are giving the $5, $10, $15, that's your table stakes. A lot of the people who made a lot more money would give $50, $100, but nobody cared where it went. They knew it was going to a good cause, and this is not directed money with conditions. I want to direct it towards these things at the very lowest level of a hierarchy of needs. Candidly, if someone tells me they want to put a bunch of money in the hunger space, I would tell them you should do that. You don't need me to do that; you should do that, and I'll talk to you about it. I'll point you in the right direction. I'll tell you about organizations that are doing great work and that are poised to be able to take that money and use it.  There are some organizations that are struggling with certain types of resources, human capital resources, for example, and they can't adequately use a large donation. An organization that had a budget of $100,000 or $10,000 last year would not be able to spend $1 million in one calendar year if you just dropped it in their lap. They would probably spend six months with consultants on a strategic plan, which they should. I can direct all those things. I can speak to those things. I can tell you what I would do with a big pot of money that needed to be given away. It could go to a lot of different organizations based upon who they serve and how it would be effective. It wouldn't influence my decision to use a firm or not. It's something I'm talking to everybody about. Sharon, when we turn off the recording, I'll probably talk to you more about it later. I'm talking to everybody. With your corporate giving, you should fold in hunger because it's such a basic need. Without it, you can't really talk about these other types. Sharon: Should a marketer or a decision-maker try to match you with other people who are Black? Tyrone: It's interesting because it's not uncommon. The answer is no, but it's not an uncommon question because you will interact with people. There's a meme that goes around about President Barack Obama shaking people's hands, and the handshakes are different based upon the cultural identity of the person he's interacting with. He's going down a receiving line and everybody's getting a different handshake. I think sometimes what people see is there's a very small number of African Americans in the legal field, and there's a much smaller number of African Americans in the legal field in positions of power and leadership. Candidly, because there's such a small percentage, a lot of folks know each other or know of each other. It's not because the person is a statistic. We still see this, but we saw this 40, 50 years ago in terms of women in the workplace. The few people who were there made an effort to reach out to other women; they made an effort to reach out to other people of color and mentor them and ask, “How I can I help?” Back when I was coming out of law school and I had no business to steer anyone's way, and I had no particular connection with a lot of the folks I was reaching out to for informational interviews, a lot of folks didn't respond. I'm not going to knock them for that. But there were people who were doing very well and were very important, who were general counsel and CEO and managing partners, who were African American. They made a point to reach out to me, a 24-year-old, and say, “How can I help?” I'm not going to mention who, but I was at dinner with someone who has had a very prominent position and career, an African American probably in his 70s, a couple of weeks ago. It was a broader dinner, but he was there. We were at a table. We were talking, and he was a leader for someone who had been a mentor to me. I found out he had mentored that person 20 years before that person was a mentor to me. So, there is this small universe of folks who are trying to provide help that they themselves maybe didn't get. There's a high likelihood that if you put me in front of someone in the legal space, I might know them if they're African American because there are so few. But if I didn't, that wouldn't influence me. When we're talking about law firms, private legal providers, those of us who are interested in diversity and equity and inclusion—as I am—we're beyond that surface-level engagement. It's great if you have someone and they're the right person to put in front of me. That is great because you are showing me something, but beyond that, who's going to work on my matter? What are your broader numbers? Not just what are your numbers—I think, again, that's surface level—but where are you going, where have you been? If you're a firm of a thousand people and you have 12 African Americans, we want you to acknowledge that's not a good number. Two, I'd love to know where you were last year, the year before and the year before. Did you go from zero to 12? Did you bring in one group? Was it a slow burn? What's your plan going forward? How do you want to integrate folks into the business? What's your plan? There's recruiting, but what about advancement and retention? Who do you have in the partnership? Who do you have as income versus equity party? Who do you have on management committees? Who do you have leading offices? All of those questions are fundamental to understand what the firm does. I know firms that do a lot of great work in this space, but the people who do the work I need are all white men over 55. That's fine because I know the firm itself is doing a bunch of work. The fact that the people in the room with me, who I've become great friends with, are not representative of the firm's push for diversity isn't an issue, because the firm can come with their receipts and say, “Here's what I'm actually doing,” and it's enough. Sharon: I can't say I've been in this situation. It's been a long time, but it used to be that there was tokenism. I remember being in meetings where everybody was, like you said, over 50, except for maybe a woman. Tyrone: And they didn't get to participate in the meeting. Sharon: Right. No reason to be there, just to show their face. Let me ask you: did your ethnicity influence your decision to leave private practice and go behind the desk? Tyrone: A little. It wasn't the only reason, but it influenced it a little bit. The work we do as lawyers is incredibly important work, but it is work that oftentimes is very difficult to blend with any creativity the lawyer has. As the managers of the guardrails, it's not incentivized in our industry to take risk. We understand and we report on risk, but it's always incentivized not to take risks. Let me be clear: there are tons of people who do take risks, including people who are taking their firms to the next level. But on the individual contributor level, it's not incentivized. When I saw friends, colleagues, folks who were in the commercial space, they seemed to be able to incorporate their creativity in what they were doing. They seemed to enjoy what they were doing. I think the essence of what they're doing comes through more because they work for a longer period. Sometimes on a transaction, when I bring in outside counsel for project financing, it's 90 days from start to finish. I may have someone on my team working on that same project for three years. They know that project. It's 200 landowners on a wind farm in the middle of some beautiful county in Nebraska. We know everything about those landowners that they're willing to let you know. We remember the stories they told us about who owned the land before them and who owned the land before that person, typically in their family, and what their grandchildren are going off to college to do. You know them. You know this person doesn't like that person, so if we do a dinner to celebrate all the people who are part of the project, don't sit them next to each other. All those things add a little vibrancy, and they keep away the monotony with the work you're doing. When I got into private practice in-house, I was chasing a little bit of that, “Let me find more entertainment in why we're doing what we're doing.” I found it in this space, and I never looked back. I've been incredibly excited. That's not to say that's something I don't hear lawyers talking about in private practice, but it was something I saw less of in private practice. I saw so many people in the in-house world talking to me about the why. They really understand the business and the business concepts, which is also very attractive to me—and still is, being able to take the hat off sometimes. I joke about it. “I'm not here with the lawyer hat on. Nobody get freaked out. I'm just here." I was on a call this morning, “I'm just here to listen. I'm not here with the lawyer hat on. I'm going to be on mute. Don't mind me.” I'm doing that from a quasi-commercial standpoint as well, because my involvement in the matter is going to inform strategy. It's not about legal risk. It's going to inform executive strategy going forward. That flexibility is really interesting to me. It keeps my days interesting. It keeps me from wanting to hang it all up and go do something else. Sharon: That was going to be my question. Does the excitement keep you attracted to the industry? There's so much new stuff going on in energy today. Tyrone: It does. The excitement keeps me attracted. Candidly, it's also the people. When you're working on financing commercial office buildings, for example, there are a lot of interesting individuals. There's a lot of interesting information you learn about the building, its tenants, its neighborhood, its owner, its prior owner. But there's nothing like the partnerships—which is really what they are—we do with rural communities around the world in this industry. For my company, primarily in the U.S., there's nothing like those partnerships. There's nothing like truly doing what transactional law is supposed to be, which is where you're finding a space where both of us want something and we can get it, and no one walks away feeling like they've lost. We have folks who own land, and that's their primary asset in a lot of these rural communities. They join these rural communities in large part because this is where the needs are for additional generations.  For wind and solar specifically, it's where a lot of large, undeveloped land is—undeveloped in terms of buildings. Land exists where you can stitch together the type of footprint you need for project: five, 10, 12 thousand acres for a solar project; 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80 thousand for a wind project. You're not using all that land, but you need buffers and a variety of other things. When you go into these areas, these are agrarian communities. These are folks who have a lot of land. It's their principal asset for a lot of folks. It has been in their family for several generations. They want to lease or grant an easement. They do not want to sell because they're thinking 30, 40 years down the road after that project has gone out of operation. That's still their land. It's going to stay in their families, and it can go to their kids or grandkids. They're thinking in that space. So, you come in. You understand this is their baby. This is a part of the family. It's a part of their heritage, and they have areas of it that, for one reason or another, they allow you to use for a certain price because it makes sense to them. They can't farm it, or they are farming it and they're just making ends meet on this crop. This crop is a loss leader. Or in some areas it's rocky and they can't use it, or they just don't have the resources or the inclination to put it to a certain use. They'd rather put it to a different use, and you come in and say, “Look, I'm going to build this thing. This is going to be good for your community in terms of energy and hopefully bring prices down. It's going to be good for the world and for our future generations,” which is what a lot of folks there are thinking about. “It's going to be value-creative to you, and you're not going to have to do any of those other things you typically had to do to achieve that value.” They think, “I would pay people. I would prep the land. I would buy seed. I would put it in. I would use all the herbicides and the pesticides. I would then have to pull it out. If I had a bad crop and I lost it, I've got the insurance. I can just make the money and then go focus on something else.” When we do that, you see that the human element is front and center. I have met so many landowners. I've heard so many interesting stories. I've eaten at people's kitchen tables. I have really gotten a feel for the human element of what we do. Similarly, I've seen operating facilities where we hire people from the local community—obviously, because they can drive to work—who are working at those facilities. At Invenergy, many of the people they hire happen to be veterans who could transfer a lot of the skills they got in the military. It's so interesting to see that ecosystem. It's not just an address. It's a part of a community. It's a piece of an infrastructure that now exists in that community. Sharon: Is it selling against somebody, or is it convincing them to go from the loss leader crop to letting you use the land? What are you trying to do, exactly? Tyrone: Sometimes there's what people call a land battle, which is when there are several different developers, maybe not all renewable, who are trying to get use of the same land. Sometimes you'll see these narratives in the paper about people taking farmland out of production. You're not really competing against the existing use. It's the same way that people who put up cash-for-houses signs on the side of the road are not really competing against homeowners who want to stay in their home. But you take the call because you're interested, the same way any of us do when a recruiter calls. Texas is a perfect example, but you see it throughout the Midwest and the east and everywhere else. In Texas, it's very obvious a lot of times. You'll see landowners who have hunting ranges on their land. They've got oil and gas activity. When they've got solar, they've got natural energy via thermal. They might have some battery storage. They've got people farming. They've got people ranching. They've got a dairy operation. This is their asset. They're making use out of this land. This is their right as the owners of that property, within reason, depending on zoning and laws: to make whatever use of it makes the most sense for them and future generations. That's really what it is. This person is farming soybeans because soybeans made sense. If all of a sudden, Levi's came in and said, “I want to put you in my rotation of cotton farmers,” that person would look at the numbers and say, “Oh, maybe this makes more sense. Maybe the soil could support it.” That's all we're doing. We're saying, “Look, we're looking to take up a certain amount of land in this area. We want to talk to you about what that looks like.” There are some people who say, “I want to keep farming my carrots, but what I'll let you do is run these underground cables along the edge of my property by the road to connect someone over here that wants panels.” That's what participation can look like. Maybe you're just a buffer between us and the road.  You're planting a crop which is a visual barrier to whatever's happening with the actual industrial facility. You're what they used to call in the industry a setback parcel. There's nothing happening on your land, but you're part of the project. You're getting some amount of money for being part of the project and agreeing not to develop anything else in that area. It really is just a conversation with the landowners who would like to participate and at what level. Then you start to zoom out and see the tableau. “O.K., we've got a lot of people that would like to participate at a level that allows us to place panels over here. There are people who don't over here, so maybe we can place them over here. Maybe there's a way we can run some cabling here because that's all these people want to do.” It's a continual negotiation and renegotiation with the community to ask what the community will tolerate. All of these people are neighboring landowners. They have to be, so you have the rights to get from where you're generating it to where you're interconnecting it and sending the energy into the grid. Sharon: So, it's not really selling as much as a negotiation. You must get calls from recruiters every day. Do you look at the diversity of the equation that comes into this before you even talk to anybody? Tyrone: Where I would work myself? Sharon: Yeah. Tyrone: I do, but—this going to sound odd, but I think of an organization where I sit, especially as I've gotten later into my career and I've been in more leadership experiences, and now being an executive of the company, I look at them differently than the organizations I'm hiring. Part of that is because I have some level of control over increasing diversity or the implementation of a diversity, equity, inclusion program. When I've led teams, they have often been the most diverse teams in the company. I've had a hand in that, and it's been very intentional. Not in terms of quota and picking individual people, but I've been very intentional in setting up the opportunities for that to occur from a recruiting perspective. It's making sure we're reaching out to a broad enough universe of people so you're not just tapping existing networks of people, because a lot of these friend groups tend to be very homogenous, and you need to spread that out. I've successfully gotten very diverse candidate classes for particular positions. We've been able to go through the process to find the right person. That person is a white man sometimes; it's a white woman sometimes; it's an Asian woman; it's an Asian man; it's a Black man or Black woman. It's a variety of different people, but I've been able to get to that point by implementing a lot of the tools I've picked up over the years listening to other people who spend all their time steeped in work around diversity, equity and inclusion. It obviously doesn't end there. We'll get the person in, but if I'm part of the organization, especially if I'm an executive or in a leadership role, I can come in and take a little more ownership over turning that ship. It's something I'm always going to be interested in. You're never going to put together a committee on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at a place where I work and not have me on that board. Similarly, you're not going to start a corporate giving or matching program and not have me in that room talking about hunger. For third parties, however, I have no control over what they do, so there I'm just looking for other people who are doing that work. Sharon: What if you had a lawyer in private practice who really wanted your business or wanted to get into the company? If they say, “Hey, you wouldn't believe the diversity and equity program we have here,” would that sway you compared to somebody else who might call and say, “Can I come talk to you?” Tyrone: That could sway me, but in the sense that I'm going to want to do more vetting. We talked about this in a prior discussion. There is a mechanism for choosing counsel. As with everyone, there's obviously an inherent bias. People we're already using are going to be first in line for potential new scopes unless there's a strategic reason not to. When you're at small companies, there's always that issue of we have too many eggs in one basket; we need to diversify our providers—this is consultants and attorneys as well—and we need to have two or three people, at a minimum, that do this type of work on our small bench. You don't want to get more than that. It becomes unwieldy. In that case, if I'm adding someone to the bench, I might strategically say, “I've got four more deals coming by. We've got someone we've been working with who's been really good to us. I'm going to give that person at least two of those deals. For the other one, I'm going to try to find someone else and be proactive about diversification.” In that case, I might start looking. Who else does this type of work, does it well, has the right people, has the right bedside manner, doesn't have conflicts? I've been doing this long enough. You know who the other side uses. You know who the banks use, so this person will be conflicted out of representing you directly. It could potentially be a direct conflict. In those circumstances, I have a list of folks who I know do good work around diversity, equity, inclusion at the firm, who do good, professional work, and who I happen to like as professionals. They're not all people of color, and I haven't worked with them yet. I haven't used them yet. For a long time now, I've had a list in my head of people who are—I don't want to say next in line, but are on a list. “O.K., I've got one of these types of opportunities. I need to find someone who's outside of the fold.” I made a call to someone who had shifted firms a couple of months ago for a potential opportunity that's coming up. I did it well in advance. This was a person I had worked with in the past, a really great lawyer, a partner leading a group at a very, very large firm. I reached out to him. It turns out he's leaving that firm for another big firm. I will use him in the next 12 months. I'm certain of that, probably a few times. But I've got that list. It's rolling around. People join that list, to your point, by reaching out and saying, “Hey, here's what we're doing that's great. Let me talk to you about it. There might not be an opportunity today.” Those are the good reach-outs. “There might not be an opportunity today but let me get to know you. Let me talk a little bit about what we do. Let me tell you who else we're working for and why we can be value-creative for your business.” For a lot of us, the last thing you want to do is absolutely need someone and not know where to go. So, there's always a list rolling around of great firms and great lawyers at those firms. I say to myself, “I'm going to figure out a way to use this person or to make a referral to someone who needs to use them,” because they're doing what I consider to be the right things. I'm all over these in-house things where people are looking for a lawyer who does this or that. I'm part of the ACC. I'm part of the National Association of Corporate Directors. I'm part of the LCLD alumni because I was a fellow there. Then there are friends. People will always reach out and say, “Hey, I need this. Does anyone know a lawyer that does X in this geographic location?” When I do, because I know that person's elevator pitch and they've been rolling around in my head, I'm like, “How can I help this person advance what they're doing because I like what they're doing?” I immediately will either use them myself, or I'll reach out and respond. I've referred countless people. I've been in the room with GCs of Fortune 100 companies who were like, “Hey, can I ask you question?” I've made that referral and people have been happy with that. I've similarly had people I don't know in some organization I belong to send an email saying, “I need someone that does this type of work in Alabama and Mississippi.” There's a firm down there called Butler Snow that does great work in energy and infrastructure and other things in Alabama and Mississippi. A perfect example. I had a question the other day, and I shot out a note about who would want to use this firm, who they should use, whom I've used and whom I like, and hopefully they reach out. That happens all the time. Sharon: Are you often in the position where you might look in a directory, or do you not pay attention to them? Do you look at directories or badges or Super Lawyers? Tyrone: I look at them every year. I look at Super Lawyers. I look at Chambers. I look at the Legal 100—is that it? Sharon: Yes, I think that is one. Tyrone: I look at other ones. I get all those magazines. I look at all of them because our profession is large. It's small compared to certain other professions, but there are thousands and thousands of lawyers. People are shifting practice groups, and people who were previously not as visible for one reason or another later become visible. So, I'm always looking at those things because, again, the table stakes is that you know what you're doing. You have the right expertise. You have the right bedside manner. You've got the right rates or ability to be flexible when it's called for. Sometimes it's not. Then are you the right person, are you doing the right things, do you fit with the ethos of the company? It's not just me as the procurer of legal services. Do you fit with the ethos of the company? There are people I like personally and I think could do the work, but they, for example, have done certain work that politically I cannot align with our company given what we do. You just can't do that. I'm not using one of these firms, but during the 2020 election, there were certain firms that were front and center on some fairly spurious legal challenges. I knew of folks at other companies who were discussing whether or not to cut ties with some of those firms. A lot of stuff happened in Pennsylvania. I'm from Philadelphia. I have a lot of friends in Philadelphia, and I know people at firms; I know people at companies that are headquartered there—our current company is headquartered there—or were doing work there who were using some of those firms. That was definitely a discussion. I'm not going to say everybody did it. I didn't follow up on it. I definitely know from news reports that a variety of folks did drop those firms. I know some people who left those firms. I can't mention them in particular, but I know one person who reached out because they wanted to leave that firm. I was able to put them in touch with someone who was looking for someone, and they were able to make a transition. This is an extreme example, but those types of things do happen. Those types of things happen across the vendor spectrum. Every once in a while, there are clients where there is a case conflict that just doesn't make any sense. There are people in this world who spend a lot of money lobbying to get rid of renewables or kill projects or get rid of incentives at the state level. I'm not necessarily going to work with lawyers who spend all their time representing those folks. It's an easy example. I had a lawyer once reach out to me about a conflict I didn't know about. She presented the conflict, which she thought was a nothing burger. It turned out she literally represented the folks who killed another project my old company had done in that same jurisdiction, but she's like, “The representation is over, so it shouldn't be an issue.” Obviously, we didn't use this partner or their firm, but those are the types of things that come up and will influence the hiring decision-making process. Sharon: I'm curious. It's an out-of-left-field question, but I was looking last night at the board of Doral—is it Doral Energy? Tyrone: Yes. Sharon: I was intrigued because you mentioned you had just come from Israel, and I saw that it was a heavily Israeli and Jewish company. I just wondered if they wanted somebody in the States. Do you feel like you're outside? Tyrone: That's a good question. As a Black man in America in the corporate space, I am almost never in a room where I'm a majority. That's just a baseline. So, with this company, I never felt like I was outside; I never felt other. The story of Doral Renewables is we're a U.S. company which started as a JV with an Israeli company of the same name that is now publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. They do a bunch of work in the solar, hydrants and some other spaces in Israel and Europe. They really didn't have a footprint in the United States. Our company started as a joint venture with our CEO, Nick Cohen, who is not Israeli, but who I worked with. He and I worked together at Invenergy years ago. He's a serial entrepreneur, we'll call it. He's had several other companies in the energy space that were ultimately successful, and that was my siren song. Nick and I remained friends and stayed in contact, and ultimately it made sense for me to join this company. It's been a great partnership with the Doral Group in Israel. One of the other passive investors is Migdal Insurance, which is the largest insurance company in Israel. We have strong ties to the Israeli market. A number of board members are in Israel and are from these companies which are large investors and backers. We recently did a deal with Apollo, which you'll see in the press release. There's a board member from Apollo that's now part of our board, which is very exciting. The early backers of the company were largely out of Israel, so that's a strong representation you see on our board. They've been amazing partners in what we do because especially at the Doral Group level, they do what we do. That understanding is critical because you can have conversations without the need for in-depth explanation. Everyone's working with the same baseline information. We were actually in Israel to discuss business and to do some celebrations of the Apollo/Bank of America deal that was publicly announced. I went over to take part in that and to have some discussions. A lot of folks from Israel are here. Periodically we're there just making sure we're maintaining a relationship. Even though people are distributed all around the world, we're maintaining some level of face-to-face contact fairly regularly. Sharon: Do they ask you for referrals? If they might not know somebody in the Midwest, let's say, and they need an energy lawyer, would they ask you for a referral? Tyrone: Technically no because it's part of my role. I'm going to find the person and put them in the slot. But if someone else, for whatever reason, was trying to find a lawyer separate and apart from my scope, they would come to me, whether the Midwest or otherwise. The benefit of what I've been doing over the last several years is I know a lot of lawyers doing what needs to be done in and around the renewable energy space and the traditional energy space. Some of it has nothing to do with energy. Some of it is in the private finance space; some of it is in the trade and controversy space dealing with importation. I know a lot of lawyers doing this work. I have sat through a lot of pitches. I have a done a lot of deals with folks. Again, I have gone to the trade shows and gotten recommendations, met people, interacted with them, but over time, I've developed a good list of folks who I know do this work, notwithstanding conflicts and/or retirements, which have been hitting me lately and making me feel old. Some of my favorite people have retired with a clear successor, but notwithstanding retirements and conflicts, I could tell you who you should be using, who I would say is tier one, who I would say is tier two, and who I would avoid. I've worked with legal service providers who ultimately did not give good service or who broke certain rules, sometimes around soft conflicts, so I could give that information as well to someone who's looking for it. “Here's who I recommend. Here's who I know nothing about. Here's who I would not recommend,” without going into any detail, of course. I've got a wealth of that information, so people will tap me for that, especially because what we do is often done in remote areas of each state. I can tell you where to find a lawyer in southern Mississippi just like I can tell you where to find a lawyer in northern Saskatchewan. I can tell you who they are, what public deals I know they have done, how to use them and how not to, and where their expertise ends so you probably need to bring in a different firm. Those are the things I've had to learn over the years, so I share that pretty freely. Sharon: Do you mentor pretty freely? If I'm a new lawyer and I'm a person of color and I say, “Can I talk to you for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or a half-hour?” Tyrone: I'm almost always going to say yes. These days, that scheduled time might be several weeks out, but I'm almost always going to say yes. I always try to take the coffee. I always try to take the phone call. I don't oftentimes take the dinner or the drinks from people I don't know, but part of that is because I've got three little boys. I live in the suburbs. I'm not often in the city. I have a home office that I work in, so I'm not going to disrupt my daily family routine very often, but coffees, phone calls or meetings like that, I do those all the time. I'm happy to do them. I love when people refer folks, largely because it's something a lot of people don't have time to do or won't make the time to do. I still remember doing an ungodly number of reach-outs to people, which is the advice we got from our career office in law school, and the number of people who actually responded that I didn't know, that I didn't have any connection to. Almost none of them were people who did not have some prior experience with being left out or not necessarily getting the attention evenly. So, I'll try to do that until I can't do it anymore. I'll always take the phone call. I'll chat with folks. I've mentored some people in a more formal way, either way through the ACC Diversity Mentorship Program here in Chicago or through other mentorship programs at work or an internship program or things like that. There are other people who have just been put in touch with me, and we've kept an informal cadence. There's one guy right now who is at a firm. He worked for the government. I was the mentor for him informally, I think, several years ago. Now he's a midlevel associate at his firm. I was at an event and someone, the head of a group, said to me, “I'm having a hard time hiring lawyers in this practice area”—this person was a person of color—“I'm not finding anyone. I'm definitely not finding anyone of color,” and I said, “It's funny you should say that. I was just looking on LinkedIn the other day and saw an update by this person.” I gave the details, and they were like, “We should talk. We should absolutely talk.” Actually, I have the card of the person I was talking to sitting on my desk. I'm going to reach out to the lawyer first just to see if he will be interested in starting that conversation, but they happen. Those of us who do that mentorship—and I know you know this—we remember. We remember all these people. That's why the elevator pitch is so important because it's so memorable. I can't remember everything, but I remember that tiny, little piece that allows me to think of you when opportunities come up, and I can try to make connections as necessary. Sharon: So, you find them also on LinkedIn. Besides that lucky meeting, it sounds like LinkedIn has been pretty significant in what you've done. Tyrone: It's good to see things like this. In this case, I saw this person had an updated work anniversary or something like that on LinkedIn, so they were top of mind. I think LinkedIn is great for that. It's also great for people being able to get a snapshot of what you're doing professionally. I can't tell you the number of times I hear, “Do you know such and such?” and someone pulls up their phone and pulls up LinkedIn and they're like, “I don't think so,” and I'm like, “This person did this and this,” and they're like, “Oh yes, I think I do.” They're connected to you, or they're connected to someone else who's connected to you. You start to see that LinkedIn is very useful for the core function it was created for all those years ago. I find it still very useful in that space. Sharon: Having a written a lot of this stuff and believing some of it and not believing others, it says you are a proven people person, or something like that; you're a proven leader. Can you give us examples of what that might be? Tyrone: Sure. We don't have enough time to get into all the details, but you know I know that managing people, which is an obligation, is more administrative and is different from leading. Leadership in and of itself can be dotted-line leadership and straight-line leadership. Dotted-line leadership is what happens when there's a roomful of arguable equals, and someone walks in and stands up and just starts talking and leading the discussion and everyone else. That person is leading in that space. I've led teams that are cross-functional teams. You're working on a transaction and legal needs to tie it all together. You're bringing all the elements to the table, but you're there to tie it all together. You're there to run it through the mill of risk and to engage with the other side. I've done that a lot through my career. Then I've done more traditional, straight-line leadership as well, where I've led people. I've been in people leadership. I've had teams of one. At the largest it was 27 direct and indirect reports. In those contexts, I think about those people. I think through my own gaze, about where I've had good leaders and where I've had bad leaders. Largely the bad leaders center for me, because it's a good rubric of what not to do. A lot of time, they're bad in very acute ways, which is easy for you to identify and say, “Well, that thing should be on the no list.” I pride myself on being able to build teams and deal with interpersonal issues with those teams. Anyone who has ever worked for me has had a meeting I forced them to sit in where they talk about their career; where I tell them I don't care if you leave here, I care how you leave. I don't care that you leave. My expectation is that your career, unless you are literally at the end of your career—not that you're a certain age because you can work until you're 90 if you want—is that your career is probably going to extend beyond the four walls of this organization. What I want to understand is where you want to go in your career because I want to help you figure out what you need to do to get to that next step, what other skills you can learn here. How can we marry that with the scope I need from you here, so we're doing double duty and we're not putting you in a position where you have to choose, where you have the tyranny of the “or” here. You'll be able to “and.” Then whenever you're ready, I tell people, “If you come here and you do a good job, I'll be your reference. I'll write your recommendation.” I had someone the other day that used to work for me a few years ago reach out because he needed a recommendation for a new job he's going to, after the job he left working with me to do. I was happy to give it. I called up the folks and gave what I thought was a glowing recommendation because it was deserved. That's a part of it. I like that because it's true, and it also disarms a little bit. It gets people to be a little open. I like to be frank with folks. We are not a family; we are coworkers. We can use the term family, but I don't mistake my family for this. That doesn't mean we can't be jovial. It doesn't mean we can't be supportive of each other. It doesn't mean we can't all get along in a way that gets the work done very well and makes this a relatively enjoyable experience for people 75% of the time. When I do that, I find you get openness from the people you're leading, but you also get a willingness to follow. When you're in a position where you need to lead, either because you decided to or because the organization decided, it's critical to get people who are willing to follow. I think some of that comes from being human. I think some of that comes from explaining where they're following you. I'm not blindfolding you and taking the kids to Disney. I'm telling you why I'm trying to do something, what I'm trying to do to get there. Even if you don't think it's the right thing, you know I'm earnest in what I'm trying to do and what I'm trying to accomplish. So, you're going to dig in and participate and help me get there. That's something I've done now for several years, and it's something I didn't come up with on my own. I learned from bad leaders as much as from great leaders. The LCLD Fellowship Program is an amazing program with a ton of resources on leadership. I read constantly on the subject. I've taken courses on my own dime on leadership, a master class and other things to try to home in on certain areas. I think it's so important. It has such an outsized impact on people's day, a large part of your day, and the energy you take home. It's such a large part of your life in the working years. Sharon: It definitely is. Tyrone, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. I greatly appreciate it. Tyrone: Thank you for having me.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why it's important to look for career opportunities and not just wait for them to come to you How government attorneys can be strategic about advancing in their careers Why attorneys should periodically evaluate their practice areas and consider how their skills may translate as their clients' needs change How learning to ask for and receive feedback can make or break your career What information you should gather before jumping into a career change About Laura Terrell: Laura Terrell is an executive coach with over 25 years of professional experience as a legal and business leader. In coaching, she partners with people to support them in reaching new levels of effectiveness and fulfillment in their professional lives. Her clients come from a wide variety of industries, including law, education, financial services, pharmaceutical, oil & gas, non-profit, health care, and technology. Some of them are senior corporate executives like CEOs and general counsels; others are entrepreneurs and small business owners, as well as professionals who may be returning to the workforce, making a pivot to a new career, or switching roles mid-career. She has worked extensively and in-person in many international markets and financial centers, including New York, Washington, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Canada, London, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Singapore and China. Supporting start-up companies and their founders is also one of her interests, and she is an active private investor in early stage ventures. Additional Resources: Laura's Blog: www.lauraterrell.com Laura's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauralterrell/ Laura's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraterrellcoaching/ Transcript: Every lawyer must ask difficult questions at some point in their career. Should I go in-house? How do I become partner when I don't feel confident? Can I use my skills in another practice area? As an executive coach to lawyers and a former attorney herself, Laura Terrell has helped numerous clients find the answers to these questions. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the value of feedback; what questions to ask before moving in-house or making a significant career change; and how to create career opportunities instead of waiting for them. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Laura Terrell. Laura has been an equity partner at two Am Law 15 law firms, a senior-level appointee at the U.S. Department of Justice, the in-house counsel of a publicly traded company and Special Assistant to the President at the White House. Now she is an executive coach to lawyers. We'll hear about that today. Laura, welcome to the program. Laura: Thank you, Sharon. It's a pleasure to be with you. Sharon: I'm so glad to have you. Tell us about your career path. You've covered so much. Laura: I've been really fortunate. I've had the opportunity to work in public service in the federal government in a number of different capacities, including, as you mentioned, at the White House and the Department of Justice in legal roles. I've also worked in private practice at two very large Am Law 25 law firms. That provided me with a lot of knowledge of the business of law and much of what your interviewees talk about on this podcast, which is marketing, branding, running a business, all of those important things. I've had the chance to work in-house as in-house counsel for a publicly traded company. That also has been an incredible part of my journey. So, I feel really fortunate. I feel, as a lawyer, I've had a lot of variety in my experience. I've had a lot of different opportunities that have given me different breadth and different capabilities along with way. Sharon: Which is unusual, because I talk to people who have been lawyers for 20 years in private practice or in one area. There's a lot to be said for that. You've really covered a lot of ground. When did you know you wanted to become a lawyer? Laura: I wanted to be a lawyer very shortly out of college. I was primarily interested in finding a career in law that would help me to mirror my interest in legal matters as well as government policy and government enforcement. I spent much of my career working in areas where I was either an attorney for the federal government or working in a capacity where I was defending clients and working with clients who were under federal investigation or dealing with lawsuits by agencies such as the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission. What I didn't expect was that I would develop a practice that was heavily based in financial and investigations issues. I didn't have a financial background, but I learned very quickly about all kind of matters, including commodities markets, trading, options issues, a lot of the things lawyers don't necessarily go to law school for. They were of interest to me because it taught me a lot about how money moves, about how businesses interact with capital markets and what's important about that in terms of regulatory practice and regulatory enforcement. Sharon: So, you didn't want to be a lawyer when you were 12 or 10. You sound to me like someone who got a degree and said, “O.K., now what do I do? I don't know. Maybe something different.” Finance is definitely different. Laura: It is. I was an undergraduate major in government political science, and my interest was working in an area that involved federal government policy. I was tremendously interested in the executive branch and the regulatory enforcement agencies like the FTC and the SEC. I ultimately ended up working for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as my first job outside of my clerkship and outside of law school. That was a surprise to me, but I always liked investigations work, putting puzzles together, working through facts, putting evidence in place, trying to figure out how it all connects. So, I did not grow up as a young child wanting to be a lawyer, but I saw very quickly in my college career that I was interested in finding a way to marry that policy side of my interest with an interest in legal enforcement and interaction with the court system. Sharon: You must have a lot of opportunity to put the puzzle pieces together in what you do. It seems there are a lot of pieces you put together. Laura: I have had a lot of opportunities. You mentioned a varied career. I think part of that is driven by looking for opportunities. That's something I talk about a lot with clients. When I have lawyers that come to me, they're often in a transition phase, maybe looking for a career pivot, maybe feeling stuck in a certain way. One of the things we talk about is that opportunities come to you, but you also have to look for opportunities. You have to find moments where there is something that makes you say, “This could help advance my career,” or “This could lead me to work in a different way.” I've had those chances. When I had the opportunity to work in the White House, for example, I didn't know that was coming. That came up in a very unexpected way, but it gave me a real sense of working across agencies, managing the administrative and executive decision-making process. Those were all things that also prepare you well for the corporate world, being able to manage different interests, understanding who the different stakeholders are. Those were things that gave me different skills that I think I wouldn't have had with just a law degree. My law degree is great; I'm proud of it, but I needed a lot of practical experience. Like a lot of people, I've found the things that interest me are beyond the bare bones of the law. My clients, for example, have legal issues, but they also need to be aware of where business intersects with those legal issues and what the practical business implications are for the questions that are coming up for them. I feel like a lot of experiences have given me that kind of understanding and ability. Sharon: Now your business is more about being an executive coach to lawyers. Is that correct? Laura: I'm an executive coach. I do work with lawyers. I do still practice sometimes in a pro bono capacity, but I primarily work with lawyers who are interested in working with a coach, maybe to reach a goal like making partner at a law firm. I've been there. I understand that, and I understand a lot of the challenges that come with that. Some of my clients are interested in just finding a better footing in their work. Maybe they need to shift how they're working, or they need to change their practice area because everything is evolving. One of the reasons I decided to become a coach was because I really like talking with people about what inspires them in their legal life. I feel like I have a lot of background that can be helpful as a foundation for understanding that. For example, I work with a number of government attorneys who are looking to shift into a different role, maybe a management role. Working in the federal system in particular, it can be a little bit challenging to try to get those next positions, but I understand that. I understand the hiring process and the evaluation at many agencies. That's something I also enjoy working on. Sharon: That sounds very difficult. I would think it takes a lot of patience in terms of a government attorney wanting to go into a more managerial role. Laura: For some attorneys, it may involve leaving one agency for another and leveraging skills in a highly regulated sector like energy or education and leveraging those into another area. One of the opportunities in government service, particularly federal government, is often once you're inside the federal government, the ability to move to another agency can be a bit more eased by the fact that you have years of service, you understand some of the issues that come along with practicing in an agency as an attorney, including the budget you have to work towards, getting approvals, the kinds of authorizations you need to take investigative or enforcement action. Those are things that can pivot among different federal regulatory agencies and branches. That can be a chance for someone who may not have thought, “Well, if I can't make this move at the Department of the Interior, for example, could I move to the Department of Energy or the EPA or another agency where I have a new opportunity, but my background is helpful?” Sharon: The background must be very helpful when it comes to branding or marketing a new practice area to be ahead of the curve. Laura: I think that's right. I encourage all attorneys to think periodically throughout their careers, “What am I branding myself as? What is it that people think of me when they come to me and ask, ‘What's your practice area?' or ‘What's your specialty?' or ‘What do you work in?'” Sometimes, I think attorneys get trapped in thinking they're doing one kind of practice, but it's really not the bread and butter of what they do, or that practice may be waning or waxing depending on the market. It's important to think about, “Oh, I've been focused on commercial litigation, but I've developed a different ability in restructuring work. Could I convert that into bankruptcy litigation? Could I bring that in as another aspect of my career?” I've met lots of people that have worked in different kinds of trial work, for example, that have also converted that into investigative skills. Sharon: You have to be thinking about your skills and what you're really doing, but how do you transform that into staying ahead of the curve? You talk about the importance of being ahead of the curve and not letting it get behind you. How do you stay ahead? Is that one of the ways? Laura: That is one of the ways. You have to constantly evaluate, “What do I want to be doing? What is the market demand for what I'm doing?” Also, “How do people perceive me in that market?” Maybe you're hiding your skills a bit. Maybe you're coasting, or you're assuming clients know what you do. There's a certain amount of marketing that has to be done, as you know, Sharon, like going out and speaking at conferences, putting out emails regularly, doing a webinar, something for your clients that gets them engaged. I also encourage my clients to listen to their clients. If you're an attorney in private practice, you should be listening to what your clients want. You may be selling them something that isn't top of mind for them or is an area that is not mission critical for them. A great example is working with a pharmaceutical company that's getting ready to spin off its oncology business but is really focused on its veterinary medicine practice. If that's the case, you need to think about what their needs are going to be in that area and ask, “What is it that you're looking for?” I think a lot of the rebranding and regeneration we need to do as attorneys is also based upon what you're hearing from your clients. You need to have an ear to the ground, keep abreast of market trends, but also listen to what your clients are saying their priorities are, because clients' priorities change too. Sharon: I think that's really important. I know one of the first questions I asked—and this is like 25 years ago—to a bankruptcy attorney was, “What do you do when there's no bankruptcy work?” I've seen it go up and down since then, but what do you do? You have to know. Laura: Absolutely. That's a great example. I know several terrific bankruptcy attorneys who are quick on their feet in thinking through tough problems and getting to the heart of what is it we need to know. You know why? Bankruptcy litigation moves fast. Bankruptcy litigators don't have the luxury of commercial litigation or civil litigation that can drag on for years. In a restructuring, you have clients that want to reconstitute their business as quickly as possible, address creditor issues, address debts, address pending litigation, so restructuring attorneys are really quick on their feet to think through that. They've got to be able to come up with ingenious solutions. They've got to persuade people. That makes them great attorneys when it comes to doing investigations that have a short timeline and require an adequate amount of evidence to be collected. They can actually come to a decision more quickly for a company, like, “How do you act on noncompliance without spending a long time doing something?” I find restructuring attorneys have a lot of great skills, even when the bankruptcy field is a bit less than active. Sharon: That's interesting. You could really build that into something different when the market isn't as strong in bankruptcy. You could build it into investigations or other things that are interesting and important. How did it come about? What was the catalyst for you becoming a coach? Laura: I had been practicing for a number of years. It coincided with a change in my personal life and a relocation for me and my family geographically, but also just an understanding of where I wanted to go as an attorney. I'd been an equity partner in two firms. I'd had an incredible practice. I enjoyed traveling. I had clients all over the world, but I also wanted to connect more one-to-one with my colleagues, with people I knew that would say, “Do you have five minutes to talk to me?” I realized that five minutes wasn't enough to dig under the hood of what they were doing. I also enjoy working with more junior attorneys who are in earlier stages of their careers, where they're asking, “How do I make partner at my law firm?” or “How do I advance in this corporation when there aren't a lot of senior roles for me? Does that mean I need to take a leap and change to another organization?” I like working with people that are maybe not sure of where they want to go, but they know they want to make a change. I also like working with people that have a very definitive idea. For me, that's really rewarding. I like the one-to-one. I also work with groups. I facilitate discussions and workshops with law firms and other organizations. I enjoy that as well, but the one-to-one is very personal. I just like helping people find the best path they want for themselves. Sharon: You must have a lot of people coming up to after you give a talk on what you do. Do people come up and say, “Who are you and what are you saying? You talk about branding. How do you brand yourself?” Laura: I tell people that I'm an attorney that likes to help other attorneys find ways to succeed on their own terms and based upon their own goals. I have a lot of diverse experience, so I can understand where they're coming from. When someone says to me, for example, “I feel really alone. I feel like there's no support for me in my law firm,” or “I'm not sure how I get that next promotion,” or “I don't know whether there's any path for me,” I've had some of those questions in my own career. I've helped other people work through those, so they're familiar. I like to help people find the right resources, the right communication tools and the right ways to decide what they do next, how they leverage the things they know, how they find the knowledge they don't currently have. I feel, as a practicing attorney, that I have a lot of depth and background that is relevant. People tend to trust me because they say, “Oh yes, you've been there. You understand this.” I think that does provide a foundation, if you will, for having the conversation. Sharon: I think it does, especially the fact that you have a broad background and you're still practicing. That must differentiate you as a coach. There are a lot of attorneys who are now coaches, and I think that's great, but the fact that you are still practicing and you have this broad background can differentiate you. Laura: I also spend a lot of time immersed in the legal industry. Many of my conversations and my meetings are with people who are not clients and are not going to be clients, but people that are friends or contacts within the industry. It's important to ask them, “What's on your mind these days?” or “How is your move working out at the new firm?” “What do you think is next on the horizon in terms of remote work for law firms?” or “What does this economy look like?” Those are things I get to ask other people about, and it's as much a research mission for me as it is finding out what's on their mind and what they're talking about. It's staying involved in the industry that I think gives a significance to what I do. I think it's an extra incentive for people to find me as a coach that would be helpful for them. Sharon: Do you find that the advice or the counsel you give has changed when you're talking about somebody who's working remotely now, in terms of finding more clients or showing your immediate superior what you can do? Laura: I find that attorneys generally are people that have come out of very successful backgrounds. They've done really well in school. They have good grades. They have succeeded in law school. At times, that means that if they're doing their work and all seems stable and they're getting the work they enjoy, everything is O.K. I'd like to point out that it's important to get outside of your work and your tasks to evaluate and consider what other people think of your work, what other people react to. If you don't know how you're doing at your firm, but you assume everything is O.K. because nobody's ever tapped you on the shoulder and said, “We need to have a conversation. Maybe this isn't the right place for you,” that can be a problem. A lot of times, law firms and even companies will not have a conversation and say, “Hey, this isn't the right place for you,” until it's too late. You need to be constantly seeking feedback. I think that's tough for attorneys. Attorneys are used to being the person in charge. They're used to being the person that knows how to do everything. I'm sure you've seen this on the marketing front as well. Attorneys say, “Oh, I don't need marketing. I know I'm good at this,” but do people know you're good at this? Do people understand what your capabilities are? Are you putting the right pricing on your work? Are you putting the right information out there? Do you have the right, up-to-date skills you need, or are you lagging a little bit behind? I think that applies in a world where people are working remote as well. It's really easy to sit at your desk behind your computer and say, “I'm working pretty hard. I feel pretty confident in what I'm doing, and nobody has gotten on the phone to say, ‘Laura, you really need to change your approach.'” Have you asked? Have you gotten feedback? Have you said to people, “How do you think I'm doing?” or “What else could I be doing for you and your company? I know I've done this work. Tell me what your reaction is on this. Were there things you would have liked us to have done differently?” I think that's a key aspect for attorneys to think about. It's not enough to do good work and get good grades; you also have to be out there getting feedback and getting evaluation from the people around you. Sharon: I think you raised several good points. First is feedback, which I think is hard for anybody to do whether you're an attorney or not, but you have to keep getting feedback. You also have to remind people what you do, whether it's finance or whatever. You have to remind them over and over, because they don't remember the first time. At least, that's been my experience. You have to remind them several times. Laura: I think that's true. You mentioned finance. When running a law firm or a company or even a nonprofit, there are business and financial deliverables that have to be met. The economics of the organization matter. For many attorneys, that's something you don't learn in law school. You find attorneys who say, “I didn't go to business school. I didn't know this was going to be part of it. I just know I bring in a lot of work and I have clients that generate a lot of money.” That may be the case, but you have to ask yourself, “What's the overhead?” What's the cost for the work you're doing? What's the rev cycle for getting that work in? What is your organization demanding? When you get that financial payout, are you making sure your accounts receivable are not aging? Those are questions that are not comfortable for attorneys, and they do need to look to other sources within their organizations to help them understand. It's more than just practicing law. It's practicing law within a business environment. Sharon: Do you have attorneys who come to you and say, “I think I'd be happier if I were on the other side of the desk as a corporate counsel.” Somewhere in-house I should say. Not corporate counsel, but in-house? Laura: I do have clients that say that to me. One of the things we explore as a first step in that work is to see if they can identify what they know about working in-house. They talk to people that are in fields or companies that might be appealing to them. It's one thing to say in concept, “I'd like to change jobs to do X. Maybe I'd like to go to a law firm, or maybe I'd like to go in-house,” but you may have misconceptions or assumptions about what that's like. That can be addressed by asking people who are there. If you think, for example, that in-house life is going to be a slower pace, you need to talk to some people that are in-house counsel. In certain companies, it's a very fast pace. It may involve being on call, particularly if you are working with overseas clients at different hours of the day. There may be a lot of travel involved. I have a client that recently joined a company in an in-house role, but one of the incentives for that person was to work in a role where they got the opportunity to travel, in particular to work in Latin America and South America, and to be part of the business where they have a lot of facility. For that person, that was important. For someone else, it might not be important. It might be less appealing to have the travel. It might be less appealing to have more erratic hours. I think you have to investigate the particular culture of the workplace you're looking at and ask the right questions. It's something we talk about. Just saying the abstract, “I think I'd like to move,” my first question is, “Why is that the next step? What is it that's appealing about that? What do you know about it already? Sharon: Do you usually get a blank expression? Laura: Sometimes I have people that have done some preliminary discussion. Sometimes I have people that say, “I'm not sure I would be the right person to work in this environment.” You also don't know that until you ask the questions. I work with clients to try to find their resources and the people and the outlets that can give them better knowledge and help them make better decisions. Sharon: Have you found, because of what you do and the clients you're advising, that working remotely changes things? Do they have to reach out in other ways? What are you finding? Laura: One of the things that has developed over the last couple of years with remote work during the Covid pandemic is people assuming that because you see someone on video, or you talk to them on the phone, that you are connected with them. We have different interactions when we speak with someone in person. I encourage clients to spend some time going to other offices or seeing if a colleague can meet them for a couple of coffee dates. Perhaps if you're not in the office on the same days, make it a point to be in the office at least one day together during the week, if this is someone you work closely with or someone you have a need to be engaged with. I think you need to ask yourself, “Who are the people that really need a good relationship with? Who are the people I need to engage and communicate with? Am I getting what I need professionally in that relationship by just doing it on a screen or a telephone call or over a text message or SMS?” Most people realize there is a degree of depth you get from in-person interaction. I'll give you an example. I have a client who recently went on their first long, overseas business trip with some colleagues. They've all been working very closely together for several months on a project, but this is the first travel they've done as a team in over two years. The client came back and said, “I can't even tell you how different it was having dinner with people, having downtime, getting a bit more of the pattern of how they work, feeling the energy.” That in-person interaction can give you more understanding of how people work best, how people respond and even what they need from you. Sharon: Is that one of the reasons you went behind the desk, because you saw law firms changing? Is this why you went behind the desk, in terms of being remote? I said behind the desk, but I mean corporate counsel or in-house. Laura: Frankly, it was because I had worked as outside counsel for so many years. I enjoyed working in depth with a lot of my clients, and one of my clients said to me, “You know our business as well as you know yourself. Better than we do sometimes. Have you thought about going in-house?” That gave me the perspective that I really like being part of the business world. I wanted to understand more of the business piece of my client's work and the holistic way in which things operated. Now, sometimes that can be a bit messy. Sometimes you can say, “I'm not sure I really did want to know how the sausage got made,” or “There are some politics involved in this.” We're accountable to shareholders, and that's driving a lot of public disclosures; that's driving a lot of our timing. That may be driving our budget, but I found that to be interesting. So, for me, going behind the desk and being the client, as opposed to being the counsel outside, was just a different aspect of lawyering I wanted to try. I found it fascinating, and I liked the idea of being part of the business world as well. Sharon: I think that's important. You knew you liked it, even if you didn't want to know how the sausage is made or you didn't care about the disclosures. You have to know that also. I guess it depends on what kind of lawyer you are. What are the one or two pieces of advice you give to the junior lawyers you talk to? Junior being lawyers that aren't yet partner. What would you say? Laura: The primary thing I encourage junior lawyers to do is to get out from their desk and ask partners out to lunch, ask them if they have time for a cup of coffee. Spend some time getting feedback from even senior associates that are supervising you, not just relying on the paper that comes back with the edits on the memo or draft you wrote or the document review you've done and being told, “Great. We're done. Good job. Move on.” Try to get in the weeds of the work that's being done. Even if you are not in a senior role and you have a very discrete piece, try to understand what the bigger picture looks like. Sometimes that means sitting down with a partner or a senior associate and saying, “O.K., I understand why we did this document review,” or “I understand why we're focused on this contract or this part of the deal, but what's the bigger picture here? Can you help me understand how this fits?” It'll help you understand a little bit more about your career. So, I think getting out from behind the desk and asking questions is important. That's often hard for young attorneys because what they're told is, “You'll get an assignment. You'll do it, and then you'll get the next assignment,” or “When somebody asks you to do something, just do it.” But fitting together what that means in the broader scope of the matter and the clients you're working for is an important question too. Why is this important to the client now? Why are we doing it this way, when we know the better way would be to do this part of the legal work first? Maybe it's because the client has constraints around that. I think being educated so you can understand the bigger picture earlier in your career is important. The other thing I've told particularly young associates in law firms is that you've got to start understanding the financials. This is a business, and you have to understand how the business of the law firm runs. That means sitting down and getting information, like what does my billable rate mean? What is the number of hours you need me to achieve every year? Why is that relevant? What happens if we don't hit budgets? Where do we make that up within the firm? Those are important understandings to have as well. You can't just be a cog. You have to find a way to get from the assembly line to the senior roles and understanding where you fit within that is critical. Sharon: Those are very good points. I think it would be scary for a young associate to ask a partner out because they'll think, “I'm just trying to have them like me.” I don't know. That's a different kind of advice than I've heard before. Laura: I have several partners that are clients that often say, “I wish associates did that. I wish they came to me and said, ‘Do you have time for lunch?' because otherwise I feel like they're just treading water, doing the work they're supposed to do. I'd like to get to know them as people. I may not be able to have lunch. It may be coffee. It may not be this week. It might be next month because I'm going to trial right now.” But I know several clients that have asked for that and said they find it to be a sign that a young attorney is interested in more than just the four corners of the work assignment. I also think there's no harm in asking. What's the worst that someone can say? “I just don't have time.” O.K., that's great. Find another person you can ask. Sharon: I think that's a good point also. A higher-up, a senior associate, might want that feedback or that level of interest from somebody, somebody asking those questions. I think it works both ways. Laura, thank you so much for being here today. You gave us a lot to think about. Thank you very much. Laura: Thank you, Sharon. It was a privilege. Thank you.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why preparation is the key to a successful career in law How Daniel has won some of the largest verdicts in history, even in supposedly impossible cases How making room for creativity can lead to better case outcomes Why focusing on current clients can be more beneficial than focusing on getting new business How to maximize your networking and business development efforts About Daniel Callahan Daniel Callahan opened his own law office on St. Patrick's Day in 1984. From there, he distinguished himself as one of the top trial attorneys in California and has repeatedly been recognized by his peers for his incredible accomplishments. Mr. Callahan was the winner of the prestigious OCTLA Trial Lawyer of the Year Award three times, in 2000, 2004, and 2012. Since founding Callahan & Blaine, Mr. Callahan has won many jury trials and obtained scores of seven and eight-figure settlements on behalf of his clients. Callahan Consulting: Callahan Consulting | Law Firm Consulting by Daniel Callahan - Instagram: Callahan Consulting Instagram Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dancallahanconsulting Transcript: Daniel Callahan is a legendary California lawyer who has achieved record-setting verdicts for clients. What was the secret to his success? Preparation. By not putting off what he could do now, Daniel had the mental space to think about his cases creatively—and that led to astounding verdicts in seemingly impossible cases. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about his tips for building a network; why current clients are more valuable than new ones; and why client bills are an underused selling tool. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Daniel Callahan. He is founder and head of one of California's top litigation firms and has been a winner of the prestigious Orange Country Trial Lawyer of the Year three times. We'll learn all about his career path and why he thinks his firm is successful. Daniel, welcome to the program. Daniel:  Thank you very much, Sharon. It's nice to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your career path. Daniel:  It's an unusual path, Sharon. When I left high school, I did not go to college directly. I went to work in construction because I didn't really apply myself much during school. I graduated fifth from the bottom in my class. So, I worked in construction. I was doing that. A buddy of mine got me a job, and I'm chopping trees down with my McCulloch chainsaw, and that turned me into a wood chopper. I'm thinking, “What am I doing here?” I saw my buddy. “I know why he's here, because he's standing next to his dad who got him the job. My mother and father told me I'd be a good lawyer. Maybe I want to try going to college after all.” Then, when I went to college, I thought, “O.K., now I'm with all those smart kids, so I have to work really hard.” I put them on a pedestal and worked really hard, and as a result, I had straight As through college. When I went to law school, I thought, “O.K., you were pretty good at college, but now you're really against all those smart guys.” Again, I put them on a pedestal, worked really hard and finished in the top 10 and editor of the law review. Then I went to law firms. I was recruited by several law firms. I went to Hawaii to practice initially with the oldest and largest firm in the state. I was there for two years. I learned a lot. I came back to California with another large law firm for another three years, and then I opened up my own shop. I was able to bring in more business than most people. I had enough to keep myself and two other associates busy, so I thought, “Maybe now is a good time to go out on my own.” I did that on St. Patrick's Day of 1984. Sharon: Wow! Let me go back for a minute. Why did your parents think you'd be a good lawyer? Daniel:  I think I was a bit argumentative. I could be kind of persuasive and argumentative at the same time. Sharon: Did you decide to go to Hawaii because that's where you wanted to be? Daniel:  No, not at all. I had never given a thought to Hawaii, but when they came to interview at the school, I accepted the interview and met with them. I got a call back. Two days later, they invited me to spend five days on the islands. They put me up at the Ilikai and gave me a car. In three days, you get to know the firm, and then you have two days to get used to Hawaii. It was so great! I took the job, but Hawaii wasn't really for me. I preferred being back in California, where I went to law school at UC Davis. I didn't go back to Davis, but I went to Newport Beach, California. Sharon: Was it more formal? Daniel:  It was a very large firm, and I would not say they were formal. They worked really hard, but they also played pretty hard. I got a good grounding from them. Sharon: It sounds like you have that, between everything you did. Tell us how that led to a couple of your biggest wins, because they're big. Daniel:  One of the things I learned from my mentor at Allen Matkins was you cannot be faulted for working too hard. Remember, I always put the opposition on a pedestal anyway. I want to be really prepared. They taught me how to be prepared, how not to put things off until tomorrow if you can do it today, because you don't know what's coming tomorrow. You may have an ex parte hearing; you may have something coming up. If you planned on doing this but you put it off, now you're crowded, and you can't do your best job. That's why I have been so successful. I almost over-prepare. When I go to trial, I prepare. First of all, someone else usually works up the depositions and the discovery and all that. They bring it to me and give me an idea which depos to read first. I read all the depos. I summarize the depos myself. I match them with all the exhibits that I read. Then I prepare the examinations of each witness, both our side and their side, linking them to the exhibits, and then I practice the exams. I work with the person who's in charge of my AV. When I want to do an exam, I want this coming up, and he's showing me how to put it up on the screen. When we go through these, after a while he knows everything I'm about to do, so you can almost think as I'm thinking. That's because of preparation. I also prepare my own opening statements. I go through them two or three times the day before or two days before it's scheduled. You don't want to do it too much because it gets kind of old. It still has to have some life to it, but you want to do it a few times to get the bugs out. If I have a group of people sitting in a conference room listening to me, they're instructed not to say a word during the opening, but after they can critique me. There is many a good idea I've gotten from those individuals. Some ideas I didn't think much of, and I did not incorporate them. Many ideas I did incorporate. When I walk into trial, I feel like the 800-pound gorilla because I'm really prepared. I have all the exams for the entire case done. The only thing I don't have done is a closing argument, and that's going to depend on the testimony. The attorneys who are listening to this should order a transcript of the trial and have a daily transcript. By the way, you should have it certified. If you don't have it certified, the judge may not allow you to use it. I believe in quoting the witnesses I cross-examine heavily. I believe in doing video depositions. You ask the same question three or four times. You get different responses. You pick out the response you like the best, and then you put a number of clips together and show that either during opening statement or right as you call that witness. Before you even ask him the question, you can play from his deposition. By that time, you've destroyed him in the eyes of the jury before he even gets to open his mouth. That is a helpful tip. I used that in one case called Beckman Coulter vs. Flextronics. That was a $2 million breach of contract case. We discovered a $300,000 fraud and we went to trial. Seven weeks into this trial, I amended the complaint to conform to proof that I had already elicited from the mouths of the defendants. I added two causes of action for economic duress, which is a subspecies of fraud. The jury came back and gave me $2 million on the first claim and $300,000 for fraud on the second, plus $1 million and a quarter of punitive. On the third cause, they gave me $180 million in punitive damages, and on the fourth $750 million in punitive damages, for a total of $934 million, which was and still remains the highest jury verdict in Orange County history. It was the highest in the United States up until about November of that year. How did that happen? Preparation, preparation, preparation. When you do that, when you are prepared, you can allow yourself to think, “What creative way can I go about doing this? How can I do something different?” By example, I had a smaller case called Radco v. Diamond Walnut. Radco was a producer of urethane foam, and they sent it to work sites in California in 55-gallon drums. They sold it to a subcontractor, but Radco wasn't paid. So, Radco calls me and says, “Dan, how do I get a mechanic's lien?” I said, “Well, in California, first you have to do a 20-day notice.” “A 20-day what?” “You have to give the owner notice ahead of time that you're providing materials to the job site, so he knows to get you paid. Where are these 55-gallon drums?” He said, “They're locked in a warehouse.” “Well, can you go get them, drive them around the block, release possession and then do a 20-day notice?” He has to do the notice within 20 days of releasing possession. “No, it's locked in a warehouse.” I thought through my conversation with him. He said he had sold to Midstate, a subcontractor who could not pay their bills as due. Well, that's the definition of insolvency. I remember from my days in law school studying the UCC that if you sold something to someone on credit while they're insolvent, you can reclaim those goods and get constructive possession. So, that's what we did. I got constructive possession back, even though the drums never left the warehouse. I then wrote a letter releasing that possession, served a 20-day notice and went for my mechanic's lien. The in-house counsel of Diamond Walnut said, “That is ridiculous.” There was no precedent for it, but I argued it to the judge in Stockton, and he agreed with me. As a result, Diamond Walnut had to pay twice for those materials. That is being creative. Sharon, if you don't mind, I think creativity is so important. You have to allow yourself enough time to be creative. Here's an example. I had a client who's an SBA lender. He lent money to this company in Orange County who had acquired all of this collateral, which the lender had a security interest in. The lender was not getting paid. He was afraid that if they did the normal due demand letter, filed a complaint, waited 30 days, all this collateral was going to wind up in Mexico. There are two ways to repossess collateral. There's a self-help repossession under UCC 9-503. That's what I did, but in order to make it look better, I put it on 14x11 paper, legal-size paper. I made it look like a form, although I filled it in with the correct statute, and then I had my signature notarized at the bottom, so now it really looks official. Then I went to the police department and said, “I need someone to come with me to make sure there's no breach of the peace.” He said, “I'll come with you to make sure you don't breach the peace.” This was back in the early 80s, when not everybody had a cell phone with a video camera. So, I hired a guy from Los Angeles to come film, and the three of us approached the back of the warehouse. There was an officer from the Irvine Police Department, myself and the videographer. The warehouse doors were all open, and I said, “Get that guy.” When I approached, I said, “My name is Dan Callahan and I represent the SBA. We're here to repossess a collateral of loans to the SBA. We're going to take the CEO down. If you want to be named in the lawsuit, you can go down too, but if you help me, if you identify the collateral right now, then we will let you go.” He went around identifying all the collateral that belonged to the SBA. One of the pieces of collateral was a forklift truck. We had a flatbed and a forklift, and we're loading all this stuff up on the flatbed. All of a sudden, our forklift ran out of gas. Fortunately, they had a forklift, so we picked up our forklift and everything else and left. We were out of there within about an hour. Whenever somebody came from the back room to look, we had the videographer shoot them, “I got you.” We went back to the office and had a beer with the client. I got a call from the lawyer representing the debtor, and he said, “Is it true all they had to do was say no?” I said, “Yeah, that's true.” He said, “Oh, my god. Congratulations on your sting.” The reason I tell you that, Sharon, is because that shows some creativity. On the other one, I grafted the UCC onto the mechanic's lien law. This one I went in on a self-help repossession, but I did a document. That is legal but somewhat deceiving. It looked like a court document almost. So, there are different things you can do creatively within the law that can get you results. Let me tell you one more story. There's a case I had where other lawyers had turned the case down. It's a personal injury lawsuit. There are these two women who were running in the bike lane, and they got hit by an uninsured drunk hit-and-run driver who abandoned his car. He was caught nine days later in a laundromat with beers in his pocket. He was sentenced to four years. The other lawyers who looked at this thought, “There's no money. Who are we going to sue? An uninsured hit-and-run driver?” I went to the site itself and looked where it happened, and I noticed the bike lane. There are regulations for this in California. Usually, the bike lane is about four-and-a-half feet wide. This lane is 11 feet wide. Also in California, it has to be a properly marked bike lane, and this was not. Ordinarily the government would have immunity, but only if they follow the engineer's advice. They had done it correctly many years before, but there had been a landslide covering the road. When they redid it and repaved it, they didn't do the bike lane properly. They didn't do it the way the engineer had told them many years before, so they did not have governmental immunity. So, I sued the City of Dana Point and demanded $50 million, which was the limit of their insurance. They offered me $30 million. I told everybody in my office, “We're not even talking about settlement. There is no settlement. You're not taking your foot off the gas.” For anybody who's listening to this, once people start talking about a settlement, there may be an inclination to take your foot off the gas. Don't do it. Just keep it there. On the Friday before the Monday trial, they said, “O.K., we're in. $50 million.” I got a call from an organization that tracks this, and they said, “Dan, that $50 million settlement is the highest personal injury settlement in the history of the United States.” Sharon: Wow! Daniel:  That's what I said, wow! They also said, “Oh, by the way, you also have the third highest.” I had one for $28 million. As it turns out, $28 million was third. $29 million had been the highest and became second. My $50 million took over. I don't know where that stands right now, but I'm sure it's pretty high up there. Sharon: You can tell just by looking at your website and all the badges and awards. Let me ask you this because you alluded to it. You said you do consulting. Daniel:  Yes. Sharon: Can you tell us a little about that? Daniel:  Yeah, certainly. I was a founder and managing partner of Callahan and Blaine, 28 attorneys in Santa Ana that do business litigation and personal injury. Now, I'm the CEO of Callahan Consulting. I consult with partners and associates from Callahan and Blaine, but also with other attorneys throughout the nation, giving trial practice and strategy advice. Also, I will be contacted by clients that are looking for a particular type of lawyer in a given community. Just last week, somebody needed a bankruptcy lawyer in Michigan. I researched it, and I found two really good lawyers. I presented them to the client. I arranged for a conference call between the client and each of these lawyers so the client could make up their own mind as to who they wanted to retain. I do this all throughout the United States. Usually, I get about one case a day that I'm trying to help somebody with. So, it's two things. I mentor attorneys, as I used to mentor the attorneys in my firm, and I also help clients find the attorney in the right specialty in their community that can help them. The way I'm compensated for this is normal. I get a referral fee when I set up a client with an attorney. I bill by the hour, and the hourly rate goes down. If you use more than five hours, then the hourly rate goes down. That's just getting at the strategy, how to work creatively to get the best result. One of the things that's helped me the most is looking outside the box. That's because I give myself enough time to be able to have that luxury, and that's because I don't put off until tomorrow what I can do today. It's the lessons you learn in your first few years. You get burned once and then you'll know. I was in trial one time, and I asked an associated to do a request for experts or expert designation. I came back from trial and asked, “Did you do it?” He says, “No, I didn't have time.” I go into the court to try to get relief the next day and he said, “No, it's too late.” So, I went to trial. I still won. I had to take their expert and turn him into my expert. So, you don't put things off. You get things done. Sharon: Would you say that's something you practice in the rest of your life as well as in the law? Daniel:  Yes, I would. I try to teach my children. I have my daughter, Caitlin, and my son, Michael, neither of whom are lawyers, but it's been drilled into them about preparation and its success and results. I think I practice that in many areas of my life. Sharon: Do you think you need to have these big wins to be successful? Can you be a successful personal injury firm without huge or noticeable wins? Daniel:  Oh yes, you can be successful without huge wins. Many attorneys spend a lot of time trying to bring in new clients, as well they should, but what you should also do is pay particular attention to the clients you have. Make sure you communicate often and clearly with your clients. Make sure they're comfortable with you at all times so they know what's coming and what to expect. When that happens, they're out there in the community talking about you, and then you get referrals through them. You build your base by working with existing clients who then will be more than happy to refer your business. If they perceive you as someone who cares about them, then they care about you. That's how I built my business. It was mostly from referrals from clients. Then it became referrals from other lawyers I knew, and then, because of the big victories, it became referrals from lawyers I never met but knew if they came to me, they were going to get a referral fee. It's better to get a referral fee on a $10 million victory than a referral fee on a $1 victory. So, people come to me for that reason, and I try my very best to deliver. Sharon: On your website you have both videos and a blog. Is it necessary to have both? Daniel:  10 years ago, I would have said no, but now, yes. Videos are very important. People now want to see a video. When they go to your website, they want to see a video, not just a bunch of doubletalk. They want to see what the person is like and how he reacts on film. Do they like him? Do they not? Certainly, you're going to pitch your wins and tell them what you can do for them. For blogs, it's the same thing. Blogs are very helpful. People are interested in listening or watching or reading to see if they can learn something. To get better at the very beginning, I would go to a lot of CEB courses because I figured I'm going to go there; I'm going to learn. I will always pick up something, and in the meantime, I'll meet a couple of people. We'll exchange business cards and I'll expand my network. You're in the back of the room, you get a cup of coffee, your doughnut, whatever they happen to have, and you meet people. You expand your network. Nowadays with the internet, people are expanding their networks all the time. But I find if it's a more personal touch, not just somebody I met on LinkedIn, it goes further. So, yes, I believe videos are important, blogs are important, personal touch is important. Get out there and meet people. Get out there and tell people what you do. If it's just a client, nobody's going to know about you. You've got to go ahead and show a little bit of what you have to offer. It's always a good idea to tell stories. When you tell a story to a prospective client about a case you won, that prospective client is putting himself or herself in the shoes of your client, thinking, “Damn, that's good. I wish that was me. I wish my attorney would do that for me.” I would go to parties and just talk to people at parties. That's how I would meet a lot of people. I'd tell a few stories and get them encouraged. Your light is always on. When you want to bring in business, your light should be on 24/7. If you go out somewhere, keep in mind you are a lawyer. If you encounter somebody, you should be able to tell them about it and tell them what you can do for them. You don't want to be pushy, of course, but when the opportunity comes, you are a salesman. Some lawyers I used to work with felt embarrassed about going out and trying to get business. They want to be a pure lawyer where they just research and write and argue to the court, but they don't go out to try to get business. Well, that person's not going to advance. That person is not going to advance in a partnership, because partners tend to look at what this person brings to the table, how much business he has, what kind of book he or she has. You have to always be developing that book, not just so you rise in the partnership, but also for your own well-being. If you have a large book of business with reliable clients, then you have a very good platform for further development. Sharon: Is that something a non-lawyer or a marketing director, let's say, should be saying to a lawyer? Have your light on all the time? Daniel:  Yes, definitely. 24/7, have your light on. Be awake. Be alert. You picked a profession. I'm very fortunate because I'm good at bringing in business, but I'm also good at trying cases. In fact, I'm really good at managing a law firm with the numbers and everything, what to spend money on, what not to spend money on and how to spend the money. I do all three, which is a gift. I didn't know I had that gift. When I used to chop trees down, I was a McCulloch chainsaw guy. It's something you learn and develop. If you work at it, you'll get it. Sharon: Do you think it's possible to learn the things you're talking about? How to develop business, how to manage a law firm, that sort of thing?  Daniel:  Obviously, when you manage a law firm, if you start out as a solo, it's not as difficult as stepping in and managing a 28-attorney law firm. There are classes you can take. You can also hire one or two competent people for your office. One is in charge of your accounting; one is in charge of secretarial. Then just manage it. Just make sure you get the bills out on time. Now, here's something. Here's basic 101. If you're working and billing by the hour, when do you write your time down on your timesheet? When you do the work. It's amazing how some people can leave at the end of the day and not have their timesheet filled out. They figure they're going to do it later. I've had attorneys working for me, and I just can't believe it. “What are you doing? Two weeks and you have not billed any time.” “No, but I have all my notes. I'm going to be doing my time.” That's ridiculous. You need to do it on a daily basis because when you do it on a daily basis, you can actually capture all the time. If you look back a week later, you really can't capture it, and you can't be specific enough to sell your information on the bill. When you do a bill, you should write the bill in such a way that the person reading it thinks, “Wow, that's a lot of work.” Don't give them shorthand, “A little research.” You should say what you've done so they know, “Man, that's a lot. O.K., I can see why they took an hour and a half,” or however long. Your bills need to be a persuasive piece of work, and when they're sent out, they have to be sent out timely. When you do something good for a client, they appreciate it, but the level of appreciation goes down over time. Let's say you do something for him or her on November 1. You get a bill out on December 10, and they go to pay it maybe in January. By January, their appreciation of what you did goes down. “Oh, really? I guess I could have done that myself.” Clients often appreciate you more at the beginning when you do the work, but if you delay too long—and some people delay a month or two months before sending out their bill. When they do send out their bill, it's not written like it's going to make you perspire to read it. It has to be written in a sales manner. You want the guy to read it, appreciate the work and pay the bill. Get it to him quickly and get it to him clearly. Sharon: It's something that persuades them. Do you think the aspect of business development—because that's what we're so involved in—can be taught? Daniel:  Yes, it can be taught. There are DVDs on it. There are many people that will try to teach you how to develop business. There are a lot of them out there. I've spoken to several over the years, and some of them are worth their salt. Sometimes I get a good tip or an idea. People will say you should have a 10-second commercial. When somebody says, “What do you do?” in an elevator, you can summarize what you do within the time it takes you to go from the 10th floor to the ground floor. That's called an elevator commercial. Those are helpful, but if people still have business cards now, you also need to exchange business cards or email or text or something, and then follow up on that meeting right away. Whoever you just met, wherever it was, just say, “It was a pleasure meeting you. I enjoyed learning about your son, your daughter, your business,” or whatever it had been, and then note that and follow up. Like I tell my son, you should log everybody you've met and put them into a calendar so you follow up in a week. Maybe it's, “Hey, by the way, I was thinking about you. I saw this may be relevant to your situation. Here's an email.” Maybe it's a phone call. It's just doing that again and again, and now you're expanding your network intelligently. You're not just getting somebody's business card and hoping he calls you. You're reaching out and talking to them about something that is of interest to them. When you talk to them, you don't want to just talk about yourself. You want to find out about their business, their family and what they do for entertainment or travel, whatever you can know. Then, as soon as you get back to your office or home, log all that in and calendar it to get back to this individual. If you do that, you can commit to making three—I'd say five, but even four—phone calls a day to people you met. Or if not a phone call, an email. It doesn't take that much time, but your network will grow huge. I don't know how many working days there are in a year, but if you made four phone calls or emails every working day, by the end of that year, you would have a network that's huge, which can pay off for you. When you want to bring in business, you've just got to reach out and touch somebody. Sharon: I would agree with you, but do you think it's true for the people who would rather research? They like the law, but they like it from a more academic perspective, let's say. Daniel:  Yes, I think they have to learn to adapt. I like the law. I like research and writing and arguing; however, I also like to have a comfortable lifestyle where I have a book of business that I can always rely on. That way, I'm more likely to make partner because I have a book of business. Also, I'm more likely to get more and more business. The people that say, “I love the beauty of the law,” that's good. We all do, but if that's all you've got, when hard times come, you may not be with the firm much longer. You can find dime-a-dozen lawyers that love the law, who think they're really good at it, that don't go out and do anything to generate business. That's not your best way to be a successful attorney.  Sharon: What is your one piece of advice to be a successful attorney? You may have said it already, but what advice would you give a new lawyer? Daniel:  Don't underestimate your opposition. In fact, you may want to put them on a pedestal and fight the guy on the pedestal. If you put the guy on a pedestal, you're preparing for Goliath. If Goliath doesn't show up, but you're ready for Goliath, you're going to have success. The keystone is prepare and don't delay. Don't put it off until tomorrow. Get it done, and get it done now. If you have an idea for something you think may work, write it down. When you have time to look at it more, maybe you can incorporate that into your action as a plaintiff or a defendant. By the way, I represent plaintiffs and defendants. I've only told you about the plaintiff wins. I have numerous defense wins, and I practice the same methodology. Sharon: Hopefully we can hear about those at another time. I want to thank you for being here today. Thank you so much. Daniel:  Sharon, I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here. Call me again anytime.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why a growth mindset is the key to making effective change Andrew's tips for beating resistance and making changes stick Why lawyers need to adapt their professional approach to become effective coaches and mentors  How to choose the right executive coach What lawyers of all levels can expect to gain from coaching About Andrew Elowitt: Andrew Elowitt JD MBA PCC worked for over twenty years both in law firms and as the head of a corporate legal department before becoming a practice management consultant and professional certified coach. He is the Managing Director of New Actions LLC, a firm that specializes in talent, strategy and leadership development for law firms, businesses, and government agencies. His work focuses on the people side of legal practice: how lawyers manage, lead, thrive, change, and find satisfaction. He is regarded as an expert on the use of coaching and emotional, social and conversational intelligences in leading and managing legal organizations of all sizes. Andrew is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management, an International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach, Vice Chair of the ABA Law Practice Division Publications Board, and founding member of its Lawyer Leadership and Management Board. He is the author of numerous articles and is regularly invited to conduct workshops and retreats for his clients and to present programs to bar associations. Additional Resources:  New Actions: www.newactions.com  Elowitt's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/andrewelowitt  Transcript: Coaching is a powerful tool that can help lawyers in all stages of their careers become more effective leaders, mentors, and professionals. The legal industry has embraced coaching over the last 10 years, thanks in no small part to the work of Andrew Elowitt, founder of coaching firm New Actions and author of books “The Lawyer's Guide to Professional Coaching: Leadership, Mentoring, and Effectiveness” and “Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees.” He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how lawyers can face and overcome their resistance to change; why a growth mindset is necessary for lasting transformation; and how lawyers should choose the right coach. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Andrew Elowitt. Andrew is the managing director and founder of New Actions LLC. His firm provides high-level coaching, practice management consulting and retreat facilitation services to law firms and other professional service firms. He is a former lawyer and corporate executive. He's also an in-demand speaker. He is a very accomplished author who has been on the podcast before with one of this coauthors, Marcia Wasserman. We'll hear all about his journey today. Andrew, welcome to the program. Andrew: It's great to be back, Sharon. Sharon: It's great to have you. Thank you so much. Tell us about your journey. How did you get to where you are now? Andrew: I had been practicing law for 15 years, first in firms and then I went in-house. It wasn't something that hit me suddenly at 15 years. I realized I was a good lawyer and I was well-compensated, but my passion for the law, for legal practice, was ebbing. I wanted to do something more. I wasn't sure what it would be, but I definitely wanted to have a second act.  So, I got to that point 15 years in, like I said, and it was a matter of some awfully good luck. My best friend's weekend hiking buddy was a senior organizational development consultant who was putting on learning opportunities for an eclectic mix of people. I had known him socially, and I was introduced to him. I talked about what he was doing with the learning groups. He had a clinical psychologist, a college professor, an educational consultant, and a woman who did film editing and writing, so a lawyer in the mix made it all the more eclectic. Once I started that learning group, I was fascinated. It was like all the lights going on on the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. I went, “This is so interesting. I want to do this.” Then I started to train, and I probably read more in those first two or three years that I was training with my mentor than I had practicing law in the prior 10 years.  Then I made the transition into doing organizational development consulting. We were working with a lot of tech companies in Silicon Valley. Over time, slowly, I started to pick up more professional services firm clients, lawyers, accountants. A lot of my friends from the legal world were now in managerial positions. We'd get together and they'd say, “Andrew, we're having this problem,” and I'd give them advice. After about six months, they said, “You know what? We'll pay to have you go into the firms and help us with these things.” I went, “Oh my gosh, there's a niche here.” So, I started working with lawyers then.  At that time, which was the early 2000s, coaching in the legal world was not well understood. People thought I was a life coach. They had all kinds of misgivings, and I had to overcome that initially in making the transition. At this point, coaching is very well known and respected and utilized, not fully utilized, but utilized in the legal profession. Sharon: Do you think that's more in California? When I talk to people in other areas of the country, they don't really know what coaching is. They're going, “Coaching, what's that?”  Andrew: Yeah, occasionally I get that. I don't think there's a big geographic difference anymore. Maybe on the coasts there's more understanding of coaching. The legal community has followed the business community. The business community was a much earlier adapter and user of coaching. You certainly saw that in the tech companies. One of the reasons why was because you had a lot of younger, relatively inexperienced managers coming in, and they needed help. Brilliant people, great subject matter experts, but they didn't know how to manage, especially managing people. That's one of the reasons why there was a lot of traction for coaching in tech centers, both on the west coast and the east coast.  Law has followed that, and I think it's a matter of what the business models are for businesses versus professional services firms. As you know, partners or senior attorneys have their producer/manager dilemma. They're the ones that are on the factory floor grinding out the equipment or the product. At the same time, they need to manage, but do they have the time? There's a built-in tension there. Do I step away from billable hours to do the work? Do I step away from client development to do the managerial piece? It's a built-in dilemma. You don't see that on the business side. On the business side, with the executives I work with, which is anywhere from 40% to 60% of my practice, they are managers. Their job is to manage the people that report to them and to collaborate with the people in their organizations. It's different than in law firms. Sharon: Law firms are their own animal. One of the ways is exactly what you're talking about. You have tension. What do you tell people who come and say, “I love the business side and I like client development, but I don't like the law. I don't like to write briefs. I don't like to read them. What can I do?” Andrew: First of all, that resonates with me because that was my feeling about the law. I know I was a good technician, but I much rather would have been negotiating. I think that's one of the reasons why I was happy going in-house. I got to be the client, and I was more involved in the business affairs of my organization.  For those people, I think it's great that they have wider interests. The people who like client development, they're the future rainmakers in a firm. The people who like doing the managerial piece are really important. Now, there's a problem because they may be very good at it, but firms are still slow in rewarding and incentivizing people to take on those managerial roles.  One thing we've seen in big law, the largest law firms in North America and around the world, is the emergence of professional managers. People that may or may not be lawyers are now doing the administration and the leading of firms. There can be challenges to that. In a lot of jurisdictions, you can't have nonlawyers, people that are not certified as lawyers, being equity holders in a law firm. That makes the compensation and incentivizing issue a lot more complicated, but I think we'll see more of a continuation in that direction. It's great to have people in firms that are interested, passionate, experienced and competent in management. It makes a big difference in the bottom line. Sharon: I had forgotten how it's become so professionalized on the business side in many ways. I can't remember; it'll come to me later. I was trying to remember when I was at Arthur Andersen. There was such a big dichotomy between fee earners, non-revenue generators and revenue generators. I always felt like, “What are you talking about? We bring in this much.”  Anyway, you said you were doing training in organizational development or coaching. Andrew: It started out with organizational development. That was the focus of our learning group. It was great for me. I was with people more senior than I in terms of work experience, not necessarily in terms of age. We started with a couple of learning groups in Los Angeles. Then my mentor, Don Rossmoore, got invited to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, to lead learning groups there, so we had other professionals and executive coaches that were in-house for Xerox. We had people from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Sun. It was the whole list of tech companies. This is back in the 1990s. It fast-tracked me to have all those people available to learn from.  Our last learning groups morphed into a consulting group that was a bit informal. Very different from law firms, where everything is very structured. This was, “Do you have the availability? O.K., we'll work together on this engagement.” I learned a tremendous amount there. We were usually dealing with larger issues throughout an organization.  What I found in doing that was I loved the strategic part, the systems part of that, but it really comes down to implementation. When it comes down to implementing the changes we're recommending, that goes back to the individual. Often the individual executives and managers were having difficulty implementing the changes they knew they needed to make, including changes in the organization, changes in the team they were leading, or changes in themselves. It's the individual. That's where I really began the transition into coaching. I didn't think I was very good at it initially. I still feel that way. I had to unlearn a lot of qualities and approaches that made me a good lawyer, but not necessarily a good coach. For example, as a lawyer, you need to be prescriptive and directed. You're there to provide a solution. A client comes to you with a problem, then, “O.K., well, this is what you should do.” That doesn't necessarily work well when you're coaching. It's better to work more collaboratively with your coach-ee to help them come to their ideas and figure out what they need to do. I had to stop myself. I had to restrain myself from jumping to solutions and saying “Here's the roadmap. Here are steps one through five. Do them.” That was me at the beginning. I had to sit on my hands and zip my mouth and go, “I have some ideas about this, but I'd like to hear from you first. What do you think would be a good approach?” It's bringing them more into the picture.  That was one of the biggest and hardest changes for me, but I found I really liked working with executives. There's something about working with people one-on-one I found very satisfying, far more satisfying than working with people one-on-one in the legal capacity. I went in that direction with executives and lawyers and a few other service professionals from time to time, but I wouldn't identify myself in those positions. That's pretty much the journey that I took. Sharon: Do you find that you have to put on a different hat when you're working with a lawyer, and then another hat when you're working with an executive? Andrew: That's a great question. It depends on the lawyer and the executive. Sometimes I have to put on a different hat with the same person from one session to the next depending on where they're at. With lawyers, Sharon, it's usually a matter of the issues we're dealing with. On the executive side, it's pretty much pure management and leadership skills. Lately with the pandemic, resilience and finding a healthy work/life integration are huge, huge issues. For the last two or three years, that has been a theme in almost all of the coaching I've done.  On the legal side, it's different. It's not pure management and leadership. At the younger levels of an attorney's career, we're more often focused on issues of productivity, time management, work-flow management. They are on the receiving end of delegation and feedback, so a lot of it is helping them learn how to receive delegation and feedback and how to help them make the people giving them the feedback and delegation even better.  It's a sweeping generalization, but I think it's true that lawyers don't have a lot of formal training in managerial skills. Some who came to the law after working in another area may have that. Some who took management classes in college or grad school, they may have some familiarity. But basically, when it comes to people management, lawyers don't know a lot. They are replicating the ways they were managed, which means they may be using managerial and leadership approaches that are two generations old, which are not great with millennials and Gen Z.  So, a lot of is helping people learn how to manage.  Now, I said I started with people at the lower level. As you get higher, then it is learning those managerial skills, delegating, giving feedback. How do you hold the people that work with you accountable? How do you collaborate with other people? As you go further up, it becomes more client-facing, so it's about developing those client relationships. Then we get into business development. I'm not a business development specialist, but I'm very good at helping attorneys that have support for client development within their firm and may even have dedicated client development people.  They know what they should be doing, but they're not doing it. It's the classical example of the knowing-doing gap. This is something that's not unique to lawyers. There's something we know we should do, but do we get around to doing it? No. That can be the case with a lot of lawyers when it comes to business development. I'm very good at helping them understand what's holding them back. Typically, it's nothing external; it's nothing in the firm or the environment. It's something in them. We acknowledge what the inner obstacle is and we work past it and through it. I have a good record of getting them into gear and getting them developing clients.  Finally, when we get to partner-level, practice area heads and executive committee members, then it's a lot about leadership and management. That's where there's the most similarity to the business side or the executive side of my practice. Sharon: Do you work with people at all different levels, depending on where they are when they contact you or the firm brings you in? How does it work? Andrew: For firms, it's virtually all levels. Large firms will bring me in. I'll work with their professional development or talent development people. Most often, they have a high-potential associate and there may be a couple of things that they're struggling with. As I think most of your listeners will know, it's expensive to find new people and onboard and train them. You don't want to lose that human capital. So, coaching can be very helpful and cost-effective in helping those people overcome the problems they may be having.  It may be something like time management. You have an associate who's starting to trend late on their deliverables. It's the work they need to get to partners. It's overly simple to say, “Oh, they need to work harder and faster,” or something like that. It may be an issue—it often is—where they're not doing a good job of pushing back against the people giving them work. There are lot of people all over the world and there are a lot of associates. They're hesitant to say no to a partner when a partner hands them a piece of work. What they end up doing is overloading themselves because they are overly optimistic about what they can achieve in a given amount of time. So, helping them learn how to push back is a way of dealing the time management issue. Sharon: I can see how it would be very hard to say, “I don't have time,” or “No,” to a partner. That must be very, very hard. Andrew: There's a skill and art to it, a lot of finesse. With some partners even more finesse. Sharon: Is there resistance? It seems like there would be. Maybe I have an old image of it, but it seems like there would be people who say, “I don't need coaching,” or “I've failed if I have coaching. Andrew: Happily, there's less and less of that. That sense of failure, I don't run into that much anymore. Usually with younger associates, they may feel like, “I should know this. This is a flaw in me. I'm not doing a good job of this.” Often, they're their most severe critics, so I make it very clear to people I coach that I'm not there to fix them. Seldom am I dealing with somebody who really has a risk of being fired from a firm. It's usually developmental. Usually, they're worth investing in, and the firm is spending money to help them become more productive and a tighter part of the firm.  The one thing you did mention is that some people think, “I don't need coaching.” I'll initially talk to a prospective coach-ee—and this works on the executive side or the legal side. I qualify them, which sounds like turning them into objects, but it's coach-speak for talking to them to see if they're coachable. Not all people are. Most are very earnestly interested. They want the help. They're stuck. They don't know what to do, but they know they need to do something. Occasionally, you'll find somebody who points the finger at everybody else. They say, “I'm not the problem. It's their problem, if you could just help them.” That's not going to be a good coach-ee.  The other thing you look for is a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset think, “This is all the intelligence I have, all the social skills I have. What you see is what you get. I'm not going to change. There's not a lot of room, if any room, for improvement.” Why spend time, energy, money on dealing with a person or trying to help a person who is saying, “This is where I am and I'm O.K. to be there”? There's no upside potential. You want people with a growth mindset who are curious, who are saying, “I want to learn how to do this.” It's a challenge. You want people who can say, “I've really messed up doing this. I can tell you about the last three failures I've had.” That level of self-awareness and candor makes for a great coach-ee. Sharon: I'm thinking there are some similarities. Sometimes a partner will say, “I know how to do it. I did it this way. They can learn how to do it this way.” Can that change? They may be resistant, or maybe they're not coachable. What do you think about that? Andrew: There's often a degree of resistance in making changes. There's a reason why we are the way are at a given moment. Often, it's because something has worked well for us in the past, and that's fine. It makes sense to me. It got you to where you are. Why change it? You don't want to take that risk. But that mindset ignores the fact that our world is changing really quickly.  Let's use the example of working virtually. There were people that said, “No, I only want to have face-to-face meetings.” This goes for coaches and their coaching sessions as well as clients and people in their firm. But the world changed, and all of a sudden, we got a lot better working virtually.  Sometimes you do run into people who are resistant. If you're coaching them, you can start to work with them on resistance. You can say, “I can see why this would work for you. I can see the track record. I'm curious. What do you imagine might happen if you tried doing this differently?” I will lay out a scenario of what different would look like. When you start to engage them in that conversation, that's where you listen and hear what their fears are, what their expectations are, why their fears may be justified. Often, they're not. They're thinking something horrible will happen, and you can say, “There is that risk, but here's the opportunity. What do you think?” So, you can subtly, gently shift them.  Sharon: It sounds like you have opened up people who were closed when you walked in. Andrew: Yes, all the time. Sharon: I know you went to the Institute of Management Coaching. Andrew: No, my training didn't include IMC. In terms of management training, I did get my MBA from Marshall School of Business at USC. The learning group supplemented a lot of that. A lot of it was self-study, but I also took workshops and got certified in Essential Facilitation. That was something I found extraordinarily helpful and is a big part of the work I do. There was also action science, which is, again, organizational development oriented. It helped me to understand the dynamics of organizations.  The other thing in terms of training was my coaching training. One thing about coaching that is very different from lawyering is how you become a lawyer. Typically, you're doing your undergraduate work; you're going to law school; you have to take the bar exam. There are a lot of steps, a lot of certifications, that help with quality control. On the complete other side of the picture, we have coaching. You want to be a coach? Go to your stationery store or big office supply place, get cards printed up that say “coach,” and you're a coach. There's very little in the way of, at least, governmental oversight. The last I checked, which was a few years ago, I think the only state that said anything about coaching in their laws was Colorado. It said that coaching is not considered a mental health profession, so it was excluding coaching. Nothing about what you have to do to be a coach.  So, it's incumbent upon coaches to get training. There are a few organizations that sanction training and offer certification. I'm an International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach. Boy, is that a mouthful! ICF is probably the leading and most well-known organization for certifying coaches. It's not the only one anymore, but it is an effort to raise the standards of the profession and to make sure that people who are using coaches get somebody who knows what they're doing. Sharon: Did you have to take some training and go through at least one class? Or could you just send in your money? Andrew: That's a great question. There are some organizations where basically you're paying to be on an online list of certified coaches in the area. That exists. I shake my head in dismay about that. As far as I see it, you have to go through an approved training program. Mine was Newfield Network. It was a nine-month program. I think we met three times for three or four days in person. There was a lot of virtual work, albeit this was so long ago that it was by telephone in between. It was rigorous.  There are several good coaching programs. ICF approves them. They have lists of them. What we're seeing more of, both on the executive side and in law firms, is that they want people that are certified coaches. Certification of a coach doesn't necessarily mean they're the right coach for you or they're a great coach, but it does mean they've taken it seriously enough that they put time and effort into it. They know what they should be doing. Hopefully, they're also doing it.  Sharon: You've been a lawyer and an executive, but being a lawyer, I can see how that gives you so much of an advantage. I'm thinking about how many times we've had to write a press release and weren't exactly sure—we did know, but we're not lawyers. It gives you an advantage. Andrew: Yeah, it does help. Especially in the past, it helped a great deal. If you look at studies of lawyer personalities versus the general population, lawyers typically are slower to trust other people. It makes sense. It's not a bad quality to have considering how we need to protect our clients' interests. But I found that lawyers and administrators in law firms are very happy that I have a legal background.  There was this one moment relatively early in my career where I was sitting across a managing partner's desk. He was starting to explain to me realization rates, and I held up my hand and said, “It's O.K.” He stopped and went, “Oh, that's right. You've practiced.” His shoulders sank down a couple of inches, and he sat back in his chair and said, “That's so nice that I don't have to go through all that explanation.” Understanding the context of what goes on in a law firm helps a tremendous amount. So, that is good. With that said, not everybody has to have a legal background. But I think some of the most effective coaches I know do have that background. Sharon: I can see how that would make you very effective, especially being on the other side of the desk in any capacity. If you were a lawyer at one point, you know about doing the work and getting the work. There's a difference there. I love the name of your firm, New Actions. That's what all of this is about, right? Andrew: You nailed it, Sharon. Especially when I started the firm, there was, like I said, a limited understanding of what coaching was about. Coaching can be these wonderful dialogues and interesting conversations you have with a coach-ee. What you want to do is get results—at least, that's my philosophy—and the results are helping people make changes. Where they are doing is not satisfactory for some reason. They may be unclear about a direction. They may need new skills. They may have difficultly working with people in the system of their organization or getting past that knowing-doing gap we talked about. It could be all those things, but people have to start taking new actions to get new results, better results. That's where the name came from.  Sharon: Do you think results last? Maybe they try the new actions once or twice and say, “Oh, that's different,” but then they forget. Maybe I'm personalizing it. I'm thinking you forget.  Andrew: Yeah, as I said earlier, there's a reason why people do the things the way they do. It's easy for people to revert back. That's one of the problems we find with training in a business or a professional firm environment. I'm sure you experienced that in doing trainings with lawyers and seeing they've learned all this new stuff. They'll do it for a couple of months, but without reinforcement, people do start to revert back to old behaviors. The six-month mark is my ballpark estimate. I liken it to having taken a foreign language in high school. You don't take it in college. You don't go to that foreign country. You don't use the language. You lose it. It certainly happened with me. That is a problem.  The difference with coaching is there is a reinforcement. Sometimes we do spot coaching or laser coaching. It may be three sessions. When it's really short, we're probably dealing with a specific issue or problem, but most executive coaching goes for six months. That's our target area. Often, it may extend a little bit longer than that. In the first part of the coaching, you're understanding the person, why they're doing what they're doing. Then you move into what they could be doing differently. In the middle third—and this is very rough as to the time—they're practicing the new skills, the new behaviors. They're understanding what works for them and what doesn't. The last third is really more practice. It's integrating those skills so they become second nature, almost automatic. That's where what you learn in coaching can become sticky, if I can use that term. After you finish coaching, it's going to stick with you.  I was just thinking of this while on LinkedIn. A former coach-ee of mine posted that he got a promotion, and I sent him a congratulations. I got back a comment saying, “Thank you so much for your coaching. I'm still quoting you.” I coached him about four years ago. That was the kind of gratification I was talking about earlier, the difference between being a lawyer and being a coach. I don't remember what I said or what he's quoting, but it stuck with him. He's using it, and he's in a global world now. That made me very happy. I had a big smile for the rest of that day. Sharon: As a lawyer, when should I consider getting a coach? What would I be dealing with? What should I look for? Andrew: O.K., two different questions. Often, the lawyers I'm working with, their firms have contacted me or they've been instrumental. With that said, one positive trend I've seen is that younger lawyers are saying, “I would like a coach. I need a coach.” Lately a lot of them are saying, “I'm overwhelmed. I'm stressed. I have too much work for my ability to handle it. I need to get better organized.” They're initiating that. The first step for a lawyer at any stage of their career is that you're dissatisfied with the way things are. You may have a good idea of where that's coming from. You may sense, “I want to stop doing whatever I'm doing now,” but knowing what you want to stop doing is different from knowing what you need to be doing differently. The analogy or metaphor I use is think back to being on the playground. We had monkey bars, I think they were called. Those were the horizontal bars that went across. You grab one and then you swing to the next one. What you learned early on as a kid was that if you don't have some forward momentum, you get stuck. Then you would end up letting go and dropping to the ground. In making changes, you have to be able to release the hand that's on the back bar. Sometimes in coaching, it's unlearning what you were doing. If an attorney finds themselves in that position, that's where coaching might help. It's not a panacea. It's not perfect for everybody.  I'm a good coach, but I'm not the right coach for absolutely everybody. Rapport is very important. Fit is a very important thing. Typically, when I work with somebody, I qualify them and they're qualifying me. Do they want to work with me? It's important that you feel a degree of comfort with your coach. As I've gone on, I think you can be too comfortable with a coach. You want a coach who can challenge you and be honest with you and be able to say, “No, I'm not saying this,” or “No, I don't think is working for you,” or “Hey, it sounds like there's an internal contradiction in what you're saying to me.” A lot of coaching is helping people get past their blind spots. We all have blind spots. That's not a failure. I think it's wired into us. Having another person there, especially an experienced person who can help us see what those blind spots are once you recognize you have them, that opens up a lot of possibilities for taking new actions. Sharon: You mentioned in some writings that you've helped people with difficult conversations. There are a lot of difficult conversations. Can you give us some examples in law? Andrew: There are two conversations that come to mind. One I alluded to earlier, which is pushing back on partners. Just recently I co-presented at a professional development consortium summer conference. It was a program on helping passive and timid associates learn to push back and manage up. For all the talk about law firms being flat organizations—and it's true; they do have fewer layers than a lot of business organizations—they're still pretty hierarchical. Younger attorneys can be overly deferential and very uncomfortable in saying no or pushing back. It can be a lot of different things. I don't have the bandwidth to handle work, like I mentioned earlier. How do you say that?  This can especially be a problem if you have one associate who's getting work from multiple partners. Then it's like, “Well, I'd like to do your work, but I'm slammed.” That can be a difficult conversation for an associate. In helping them, one learns that they need to do that and it's O.K. for them to do that. Actually, if they're just a passive person who's not providing that information to the people who are giving them work, they're harming the firm, harming clients potentially, and definitely harming themselves. That is something that's come up a lot lately, at least enough that the presentation we did this summer was very well received and attended. It's something that professional development managers and directors in big law are hearing from their associates. That's one area.  The second difficult conversation is around feedback. This is difficult in a way because it's not done enough. Often, in the rush of doing tasks and taking care of client matters, lawyers don't hit the pause button and spend time with the people who report to them and give them feedback on how they did. I remember this when I was a lawyer. You would finish a transaction. Rarely did we have the time to do a debrief. What worked well? What didn't? “This was great what you did. It really moved us forward. This is what you could have done differently that would have helped. Next time, maybe you can do it.” Feedback conversations are often missing.  The other thing in feedback conversations is that they can be very top-down and done with a lack of curiosity about what was going on with the associate. Those conversations can take a more collaborative tone, become more of a dialogue, be less about the problem. “Here's the problem that came up on this case. We were slow in responding to every filing the opposition brought to us. Let's get curious about why that happened. What can we, not just associates, but all of us as a team do differently?” Those sorts of conversations.  The hardest ones, Sharon, are obviously the conversations between partners in terms of strategy, direction, and compensation. Those are given to be difficult, and I do get pulled in to help. I'm a facilitator in those. I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm just trying to help people understand one another's perspective. What facts they're looking at, what their rationale is based on, trying to change it from a legal argument with pros, cons and who's going to win to more, “Let's look at the whole business of the law firm. Let's see what's good short-term and long-term for all of us, not just part of us.” Sharon: Each of these are very interesting scenarios. I give you credit for even being able to endure them, especially the first one. Covid probably changed this, but I do remember a partner saying, “What do they think evenings and weekends are for?” I always think of how partners would say, “This guy didn't make it in terms of client development. It was clear they weren't going to become a partner. I coached them out.” I always think about, “What did you say? How did you do that? Andrew: I'm not sure what coaching somebody out necessarily means. Let's stop here and think about lawyers as coaches. This is one of the things in my first book that I went into in some detail in one of the chapters. The skills for being a good lawyer, when you line them up against being a good coach, there's not a lot of overlap. Lawyers, to be good managers and leaders, they need to take off their lawyer hat at times. If they're coaching, which is a very potent, effective way of managing your people, you have to not approach it as lawyers.  For an example, as lawyers, we often ask closed-ended questions. We're getting to the facts. In coaching, open-ended questions are much better. You want to see where the conversation is going to go. You want to learn more about what's going on with the other person. In coaching, you also have to be listening very attentively, not thinking about, “What am I going to say in response to this?” Again, I'm going back to one of the shifts I had to make when I made the transition. As a lawyer, I'm thinking, “This is what I'm hearing from opposition. Now, how am I going to counter that argument? What am I going to say next? How do I want to navigate this conversation?” It's more oppositional in that way. You really do have to take off the lawyer hat at times to be effective. Sharon: Your first book, “Lawyers as Managers,” talks about that. Am I remembering that correctly? Andrew: That's the second book with Marcia Wasserman. The first one was “The Lawyer's Guide to Professional Coaching: Leadership, Mentoring, and Effectiveness.” That was, I think, back in 2012. It's available now. I think you can find used copies on Amazon. The ABA still has it as an e-book. Coaching in the last 10 years has certainly changed within law firms. At the time it was written, it was to help lawyers and firm administrators understand the potential of coaching. I'm happy to say I think that potential is increasingly realized. I wouldn't say my book is responsible for that solely. Absolutely not, but it was one piece that helped. In “Lawyers as Managers,” Marcia and I look at the role that lawyers need to take as people managers. Lawyers are generally good managers when it comes to technical aspects. You give a lawyer a spreadsheet, they're probably pretty good at dealing with it. Things like budgets. When you come to the more interpersonal stuff, like client development, lawyers aren't as good. When it comes to people management, there really was a lack of understanding.  Marcia originated the idea. We were at a meeting, and she said, “I'm looking for some materials on leadership and management for lawyers. Do you have any?” I said, “I have a few articles I've written for bar associations, but most of the stuff out there is general management and leadership. It's tailored for the executive committee, the business community.” A couple of months later, we had the same conversation. I said, “Marcia, we're going to have to write the book,” and she agreed. Little did she know what she was getting herself into. That, I will say, is the definitive book on people management for lawyers. Sharon: To end, can you tell us about one of the difficult conversations you've had? I don't know how many times I've stopped myself and just said, “I can't do it,” or “I'll go around it.” Andrew: I'll speak in general terms. Again, I'm going back to when I was first making the transition to coaching. I found a great deal of difficulty in having uncomfortable conversations where I had to deliver bad news. I had to tell somebody what they were doing was not working at all. It wasn't even neutral. It was really harming them and other people. In short, they were really messing up.  I was very gentle. I was bypassing. I was softening, diluting, sugar-coating messages that needed to be heard. I realized that I was playing nice. I didn't want to upset the other person. I didn't want to feel my own upset in doing this, so I wasn't providing value and the proof that they were making the changes they needed to make. This was maybe in my first two or three years of coaching, and I started to realize this isn't good. I was stuck and working with my coach at that time. I realized I had to let go of my personal discomfort if I was going to be more helpful to my clients, and I started to make the change. Now, I am honest. Sometimes people will say, “Can you predict or guarantee any results?” and I go, “No, absolutely not. Coaching at heart is a partnership. We're working together. I can't fix you. I can't wave a magic wand. It's on both of us. I'm here to help you, but just like I can't wear your clothes, I can't do everything for you. We're going to work together.” I do make three promises. One, I listen. I listen very attentively to what my coach-ees say and what they're not saying. The second thing is I am honest. I am very honest. I will not hold back in terms of what I'm hearing or the impact it's having on me. If a coach-ee is saying something and I'm not believing them, I'll say that. I need to. If I think something is B.S., it's the same thing. If I think they're fooling themselves, same thing. There are times where I have to deliver tough feedback.  The third promise is I'm compassionate. I don't beat people up in the process. I won't sugar-coat, dilute, or bypass. I deliver the message, but I understand they have feelings. In giving them this feedback, it may affect their emotions and their own identity as a person and a professional. I'm aware of it and sensitive to that, but I still get the message across. I figure that in the first two or three years of my coaching, I was sugar-coating. For the last 22 years, I think I have a good record of being straight with people and getting results. Sharon: Andrew, I'm sure you do get results. Thank you so much for being with us today. Andrew: It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed it immensely. Thank you, Sharon.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why law firm owners need to think of themselves as CEOs The two biggest mistakes law firm owners make that prevent their firms from growing Why law firms need to scale to stay competitive How Reza's past mistakes helped him become a better leader Why knowing your firm's vision and core values is the foundation of success About Reza Torkzadeh: Reza Torkzadeh is a nationally recognized plaintiff's trial attorney who has dedicated his professional career to the pursuit of justice by exclusively representing victims in personal injury and wrongful death cases. Reza has handled numerous high-profile cases in both state and federal courts, and has served in leadership roles in litigation at the national level. He has been featured for legal commentary by the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, New York Daily News, Metro News, Christian Science Monitor, KUSI TV, and many other news outlets and publications. Through Reza's leadership, vision and passion for representing the people, TorkLaw has established offices nationwide, in cities throughout California, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Texas, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. Reza has successfully represented thousands of clients and after more than a decade of practicing law, “Representing the People” continues to be the core foundation and guiding principle of his practice and the firm. Reza is a frequently invited guest speaker and has lectured across the country on the practice of law and the civil justice system. He is a proud Honorary Board Member of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Charity, an active member of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles, and President's Club Member of the Consumer Attorneys of California. Additional Resources: TorkLaw Reza's LinkedIn Transcript: Whether it's stigma or tradition, law firm owners typically don't call themselves CEOs. But according to Reza Torkzadeh, founder and—you guessed it—CEO of TorkLaw, the most successful law firm owners are the ones that run their firms like any other Fortune 500 company. Reza joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the importance of creating a strong team and culture; why law firms are really in the business of customer service; and why any firm that wants to succeed the long term needs to scale. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Reza Torkzadeh. Reza has a successful personal injury firm located in Orange County, California. He recently wrote a book, “The Lawyer as CEO,” which we will hear all about today. Reza, welcome to the program. Reza: Hi, Sharon. Thanks so much. I appreciate the opportunity and for having me on.  Sharon: It's great to have you. Can you tell us about your career path? How did you end up where you are right now? Reza: Oh boy! Well, throughout high school and growing up, I never thought of becoming a lawyer. It was never a career path I envisioned. I originally wanted to go to medical school and be a doctor. That was my study during undergraduate. I worked a summer as an EMT driving around in an ambulance downtown. I was doing all the things you would do if you are going to medical school and you are interested in that career.  In my last year in college, I realized very quickly that the lifestyle of a doctor is one where you need to absolutely love what you're doing. My grandfather is a doctor. My uncle is a doctor. We've got doctors in the family, and I didn't feel like it was something I loved and was passionate enough about to put in those long hours and to be on call and to make those sacrifices. But I knew I loved people, and I knew I wanted to make a difference in people's lives. That's what was driving my initial desire to go to medical school. I wanted to meet patients; I wanted to help patients and treat them. So, that was still there.  The next natural option for me was going to law school. I didn't go to law school with the intention of practicing. I went to law school with the intention of using my law degree in some setting, in some business. During law school I tried a few different areas of the law. I worked at the district attorney's office. I did transactional work. I did international business as a lawyer. After every position I knew what I didn't want to do.  It was right around my third year that I discovered plaintiff's work, representing individuals on a contingency-fee basis, where if you don't win, you don't get paid. That was very attractive to me. How great to be able to provide legal representation to those who couldn't afford a lawyer and to make a meaningful change in their lives? To cut it short for this interview and podcast, that's how I ended up doing plaintiff's work, and I never looked back. Sharon: That's interesting. Most lawyers have wanted to be lawyers since kindergarten, so that's interesting. Tell us about your practice today. Reza: We're exclusively representing plaintiffs. We never represent the defense or insurance carriers, and it's 100% personal injury. We handle a wide spectrum of PI cases. The majority of our cases now, 10 years into it, are catastrophic injury or wrongful death cases, and we handle them nationwide. We've got an office presence and staff in about nine states right now. Sharon: Wow! Had you been thinking about writing your book, “The Lawyer as CEO,” for a long time? Did it come to you because of your entrepreneurial background? What was it? Reza: A great question. I wrote it almost as a way for me to reflect on the last 10 years of the law firm. I had a lot of growing pains, a lot of learning the hard way and experiences where I almost walked away from the practice altogether. I thought to myself, “What would I have wanted if I was first starting out my practice?” I would want a book. I would want to know examples. Every industry has so much support for how to do things, and yet the legal industry doesn't. They don't teach you how to be a business owner in law school. They don't teach you how important the business side is. We are a profession. We're lawyers, so we have to act accordingly; however, every law firm is still a business. You're not going to do anybody any good if you're not running it like a business should be run.  When I looked back on the last 10 years of starting and running TorkLaw, I thought about what I would have wanted on day one. It was really an exercise in vulnerability for me to write the book. I shared many things in there that I think are new to the legal world. We're so used to hearing how wonderful all the lawyers are and their great results, and we're not used to seeing the reality of what it takes to start a law firm. So, for me, it was an exercise in putting my thoughts and my journey down on paper.  It was also a way where I felt I could make a meaningful difference in the lives of all lawyers, not just new and young lawyers. Not a day goes by, Sharon, that I don't get a random email or message from a lawyer that says, “Wow! You really inspired me to take action.” That was the goal from the beginning: to put this out there and share my experiences, my ups and downs, my failures and my successes, and then ultimately my realization that in order to be an effective business owner, in order to be an effective CEO, you need to take a look at yourself. You need to look in the mirror and come to the conclusion that the buck stops with you as a business owner. Sharon: I guess that's why the title of the book stopped me. As someone who spent their professional career marketing lawyers, it's such a different thing than being an entrepreneur. How did the book change how you viewed marketing or client development? Reza: Great question. A question I asked myself before I wrote the book was if I were a CEO of a Fortune 500, publicly traded company, how long would I have lasted in that role? My response was, “Not very long.” I would have been kicked out very quickly. I think as business owners, that's a great way to measure your performance and your accountabilities. When you're at the top and you're leading an organization of 50, 60 or 100 employees, whatever it might be—it might be five employees—it's hard for those folks to be as transparent as you need them to be to hold you accountable. So, I often ask myself the question, “If I were a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, what would my board of directors say to me?” You're absolutely right; I've been practicing for 15 years, and I've never heard a lawyer-business owner call themselves a CEO. Whether it's stigma or tradition or whatever it might be, I think ultimately you have to decide whether you want to be the CEO of your company or not. Every organization, if it's meant to thrive, if it's meant to scale and grow and do meaningful work and make a change in the community, needs an effective CEO. Sharon: Maybe a lawyer wants to be successful but doesn't want to be a CEO. They want to focus on developing clients and marketing, and they say, “I'll leave the CEO to other people,” like you. What do you think about that? Reza: Absolutely. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's every person's own path. They get to choose for themselves. I chose this one because I am more drawn to the business side. I'm more drawn to marketing. I'm more drawn to scaling and the big picture. I've been fortunate enough to find people on my team who are much better lawyers than I am, much better at doing the tasks than I am. So, it works. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer for a lawyer who says, “Look, I just love lawyering, and that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.” I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Sharon: Very early in my own career working with lawyers—I can't even remember who it was—I heard a managing partner or a lawyer say they thought scaling a law firm wasn't feasible. What are your thoughts about that? Reza: I disagree. At our firm, we say we're a customer service business that happens to practice law. We're in competition for the consumer. The consumer is used to a certain level of customer service and experience that you get at Apple or Amazon or Walmart or Starbucks or FedEx and these national brands we all recognize. I think where lawyers and law firms have fallen behind is this element of customer service and customer experience.  I think you can absolutely scale. It's no different than providing a product. You're providing a service, and if you're providing a good enough experience for your clients, there's no reason why you can't replicate that in other markets, in other practice areas. You have to have the right people. You have to have the right tools, the right infrastructure, of course, but if you've discovered a formula that's successful in your own law firm, the only thing that's stopping you from scaling is yourself. I think any CEO or business owner will tell you that if you're not growing, you're going in the wrong direction. When I started practicing law 15 years ago, it was competitive. The personal injury industry has always been competitive, but not as fierce as it is today. There wasn't the amount of dollars being spent on marketing as there is today. Now, you've got hedge funds and banks and venture capital firms that are dumping money into law firm marketing. In order to survive the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and in order to be competitive with these behemoths that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on marketing, in a way you have to scale. You have to grow to stay competitive. Sharon: Did the book change how you look at clients, how you market or how you develop your people? Reza: Absolutely. The exercise of the book was itself a reflection. Our lives are so crazy. Oftentimes I describe it as being inside of a tornado. Writing the book allowed me to quiet everything down and put on paper what's in my mind. It made me focus on the things we were doing. If I'm talking about customer service in the book, it made me focus on, “O.K., what are we doing step by step, A through Z, for customer service?”  It's the same thing for marketing. One of the biggest realizations for me—and I included this in the book—was ego-play marketing, which is seeing your face on a billboard or on TV or hearing it on the radio. Just because you see it doesn't necessarily mean it's effective and that there's a positive ROI on it. It made me self-reflect, to go back and dig deeper. Look, I don't have all the answers and I continue to make mistakes, but an important takeaway is that you can always improve. You can always do better; you can always change. We're not the same law firm we were five years ago, and I can promise you something: we're not going to be the same law firm five years from now, either. We're always retooling; we're always changing. We don't have all the answers, but I think there's always a better way to do things. Sharon: Do you think there will be a sequel, a third edition? Reza: I don't know. Not now. This one took me about 18 months to do. It was a massive labor of love. I wanted to create a book that was super easy to read. You could read it in one day. So, I spent a majority of that 18 months cutting back what was in the book and making it as short as possible. I wanted as many people as possible to pick it up and finish it and read it more than once. As of right now, no sequel. This is it. The response has been incredible, and this is not a money maker for me. 100% of the proceeds are donated to charity. Sharon: Writing the book probably brought to the fore a lot of things that lawyers don't do or mistakes they make. What are the top two things that lawyers should do differently or the mistakes they're making? What do you think? Reza: For law firm owners, I will tell you the two biggest mistakes I see—which I made also—is, number one, not focusing on culture, vision and values. That's the first one. Had we not had those things in place, in writing, engrained in everything we do, we would not have been able to scale effectively. Number two is not having a process or procedure for recruitment and retention of teammates. Both mistakes we made and paid for dearly.  I think the most common way we hire is that you put up a job post, you get back hundreds of résumés and you can't tell the difference between one or the other, and then you just pick one that might have some experience or might have worked for a competitor. You bring them in for an interview. You interview them, everyone interviews great, and then you hire them. Six months in, you realize this is the wrong person. This person sucks. I think doing that type of blind hiring is a mistake. I think desperation hiring is a mistake, and not having the culture be part of it and not having the right people is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Sharon: Do you think if somebody had said that to you when you were just opening your doors, you would have been able to say, “Oh yeah, I didn't do it that way the first time,” or “I don't know what my culture is”?  Reza: Yeah, I'll tell you. This was my experience. It was my own ego for the longest time. I thought we had the best culture. I thought this was the best place to work. That was in my head; it wasn't reality. I was dealing with office drama and turmoil. It was a toxic environment, and I kept telling myself, “This is the greatest place to work.” It really wasn't. If someone early on, in year one, told me to focus on culture and a method to distinguish the players you're bringing onto your team, I don't know if I would have taken that advice. I learned it the hard way. Sharon: I'm not thinking about it as advice. I'm thinking back on when I didn't have business experience, and professors were asking me, “What about this, that and the other thing,” in a business environment. How would people know what their culture is? You could ask. You could say, “My culture is to have the best place to work.” Who knocked you on the side of the head to say it isn't the best place? I'm asking two questions. Reza: It was a one-day event that occurred, but it was an accumulation of the stress I was feeling working in the office. I was doing anything and everything not to go into the office. That's how bad it got. This is a company that was my first baby, that I put my blood, sweat and tears and everything into. Now I was at a point, five years in, where I didn't even like going into the office. I think that was a reality check.  Then losing half of my staff in one day was a reality check. It was an indication of my failures as a leader than it was anything else. All the things I was complaining about, all the things I was struggling with, really started from me. I was not being accountable. I was not the leader I should have been, and for the longest time I assumed I was. When you get to the point when you can take accountability for those things we're all complaining about and see how it was my responsibility to correct them and make different decisions, I looked back and said, “Wow! I was a pretty crappy leader.” I was not making the decisions I should have been making to set an example for the rest of my team. I should have been making those decisions so the people on my team could be proud of who they're working with and for. It took a good five or six years of pain to figure that out. Sharon: My last question is—I have a lot of questions. I'm thinking about all the newbie lawyers, because I hear about them and see them all the time, who say, “I can't work for anybody else. I'm going to hang my own shingle.” If they had read your book, would it have helped them develop the business into a client-focused business? How would it have helped them? Reza: I hope so, Sharon. I think there are some fundamental things in there that every business organization can benefit from, but it's like everything else: what you put in is what you get out. I meet with young lawyers all over the country all the time. I'm telling them what to do, and the majority of them won't do it and don't do it. They continue going along just how they were. I think for those folks, the book could be the spark. I don't think the book is a blueprint on exactly how to start your practice and scale and be efficient, but I do think it's a way to get some inspiration and a spark that will lead you down your own path.  Our core values are going to be different than everybody else's. My vision is going to be different than everybody else's, and the things that are important to me may not be important to everybody else. You've got to figure out your own path, but I think there are foundational things, like having your core values, having your vision very clear, making sure everybody understands what they are. You need to know every single person you bring onto your team, or at least make a best effort to go beyond just posting a job, pulling a résumé and hiring somebody. I say don't make desperate hires and wait for the right person. It may take a while, but you're better off waiting for the right person than bringing the wrong person into your organization. Sharon: It's hard to let go of the wrong person, yes. Reza, thank you so much for being with us today. Reza: Thank you, Sharon. I appreciate it. Sharon: I greatly appreciate it.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why advertising for professional services is unique compared to other industries How to make the subjective creative process more objective The process behind some of Brad and Larry's most well-known campaigns Why law firms need to be responsive to the changes in the marketplace, and why advertising is no longer optional Why a good website is a nonnegotiable, especially when it comes to hiring and retention About Larry Cohen: Larry Cohen is the president and co-founder of advertising agency Glyphix. His vision of a small agency of talented, skilled professionals doing great work for great clients is what drives the group. He's a writer. Copy. Scripts. Children's books. In addition to his work with clients, he understands the financial side of their investment in Glyphix…and keeps Glyphix financially strong and stable. About Brad Wilder: Brad Wilder is creative director and co-founder of Glyphix. Art direction and design are his thing. The national and international awards he's won prove the point. Awards for almost everything… corporate identity, advertising, packaging, in-store merchandising, display and trade show booth design, interfaces, for clients like Nestlé, Mercedes-Benz, Baskin-Robbins, Xircom and Disney. He's also a tech geek. Transcript: In the legal industry, advertising has done a 180. What was once considered tacky is now a requirement. And according to Larry Cohen and Brad Wilder, co-founders of advertising agency Glyphix, if you're going to advertise, you better make it count. They joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how to make the creative process run smoothly; why a strong website is a critical part of attracting top talent; and why even the best brands need a refresh from time to time. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guests are Larry Cohen and Brad Wilder, who are some of the professional forces behind Glyphix. Glyphix is an advertising agency which works across all genres but has particular expertise in the professional services space. They're specialists in all kinds of advertising, websites, print, etc. I say specialists because they're specialists in having their work stand out from the crowd. We will learn more about Glyphix today. Larry and Brad, welcome to the program. Larry: Thank you very much for having us   Brad: We're glad to be here.   Sharon: We're so glad to have you. Each of you, give us your career paths just briefly.   Larry: Interesting question, because our career paths are almost exactly the same in the sense that—   Sharon: Larry, that's you speaking?   Larry: Yeah, this is Larry. Brad and I met in high school at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. I was a writer for the school paper. Brad was the photographer and designer, and that's where we met. After college, we got together and began working for an advertising agency called Mendelson Design. Back in 1986, when the Mac came out and gave us the tools to do a lot of great creative work for a very affordable price, we decided, “Hey, let's start our own new agency.” We've been together since 1986. So, it's been a very similar career path.   Sharon: So, you've known each other a long time.   Brad: Longer than we've known our wives, yeah.   Sharon: Can you tell us what Glyphix does in general?   Larry: In general, we do professional services-focused, full-service advertising, some marketing, no PR. We try and delineate those two things, but it's soup-to-nuts advertising from brand building to SEO and social.   Brad: The bottom line for us is really helping our clients position themselves in the marketplace against the competition and keeping them ever-present in the minds of their potential customers and clients. That can start with the strategy, and then from there move right through to naming their websites, logos, branding, TV advertising, print. All those are different tools we have at our disposal to keep our clients front and center in front of their clients.   Sharon: How do you describe each of your roles at Glyphix? Are they the same?   Larry: No, our roles are very, very different. I came out of university with a business degree. So, for me, it's the business, dealing with clients, doing some copywriting. Brad is our creative director, so he runs the creative. Whether we're designing websites, shooting TV commercials, doing print ads, Brad's the guy that runs the creative here. I think it's one of the reasons we've survived together, as we have a good delineation between who does what with respect to each other's talents.    Sharon: That is a good delineation. You're not crossing over on each other. Brad, the first time I ever saw the agency was when you did something—I can't remember which company it was for—it was advertising an x-ray. It was for a healthcare law firm.   Brad: It was for Fenton Nelson which is now Nelson Hardiman, health-care attorneys. What was the question? That was a great piece. It was so radically different at the time. No one had ever done it before.   Sharon: It was radically different. It was for healthcare marketing attorneys, as you say, and it really stood out.   Brad: To give some background on that, Fenton Nelson is a healthcare law firm specializing in all things healthcare. They wanted direct mail, not digital, but they wanted it to completely stand out. We actually shot x-ray film with a design that became a direct mail line. It was a full x-ray in an x-ray envelope. It was sent to all the healthcare agencies on their call list. It was 10, 15 years ago, and people are still talking about it.    Sharon: So, it was a real x-ray?   Brad: Yes.   Larry: We actually had to source x-ray film.    Sharon: How did you come up with that?   Larry: That's a great question. We came up with it because Brad and I always try to look for what makes a client unique, what makes them special. In this case, we interviewed Harry Nelson and his staff and they said, “We could go to any healthcare facility. We can walk through the facility and see what their issues are and where they're going to get in trouble. We see things that other people don't.” That gave us the idea that an x-ray allows you to see things other people don't. That gave us a positioning line for the firm, and it was, “We see things other firms don't.” It was a positioning that said, “We're unique because our experience and expertise allow us to help our clients.” In that case, it was to help healthcare clients, hospitals, and facilities stay out of trouble.    It really came out of the client organically, and that's what Brad and I tried to do. I think we're good at helping clients find a position for themselves, find the thing that makes them unique. Are you the most expensive? Are you the most experienced? What is it that you're the best at, and how do we translate that into a creative message? Then, how do we get that in front of our potential clients?   Sharon: Do you tell the client that even if they don't ask for it? Do you tell them what you're working from?   Larry: Yes, absolutely, because we want to educate the client. I think clients find it exciting. People love hearing stories, and every firm, every client has a story to tell. The trick is to find that story. I have to uncover that and deliver that story. It's compelling. You think about great brands. Most of them have a story behind it: why the company was started, what problem you are solving for your customers. That's what customers and clients care about. Nobody cares about what you do. They care about what you can do for them, how you make them successful. Our job is to translate what you do into why somebody should care.    Sharon: Is that how you got the name Glyphix? Is there something with Glyphix that tells clients that?   Larry: It was painful naming. We're a creative firm, so we have to have a creative name; we have to do things differently. We went through hundreds of names. We kept focusing on the name “glyph” as in a hieroglyph. It's using a picture or several pictures in a row to tell a story. At the time, everything that ended in X was much cooler, and we just stuck with Glyphix. Even our logo is a little “GX” man—it's on Glyphix.com; check it out—that tells a story through pictures and simple storytelling.   Sharon: I was thinking this while I was looking at the website. You have these very simple line drawings that tell what you do. Was it you who came up with that, Brad?   Larry: Are you talking about the video?   Sharon: Yeah, the video.   Larry: We typically come up with work as a team. At Glyphix, we have a great bunch of people who work together as a team. At the time, we had a gentleman, David Allman, working with us. I think David and Brad came up with that idea. Then we had it animated, and we had a wonderful gentleman who did the voiceover. We wanted a very simple way to explain what we do to people.   Sharon: As I was looking at it, I thought it was great, but it's like, “How do they come up with it?” I don't know if I could have.   Larry: We're very glad that other people can't do it; otherwise, we'd be out of work.    Sharon: If somebody says to you, “What does the firm specialize in?” do you have an area you specialize in?   Larry: I'm not sure about the word specialize. We do a lot of work with professional services firms. We understand how they function and how they work. We work with dozens and dozens of law firms and accounting firms, helping them craft their position, understand the brand and keep it in front of clients.    Ballard Rosenberg is a firm out here in the Valley. We keep them in front of their clients by keeping them in the business journals every month. For other firms, we'll get them on television. For others, we'll put them on KCRW radio. For us, it's helping our clients manage their brand. For others, it's evolved into websites and doing some social media for them. I think nowadays people are so busy, it's difficult to keep up with everybody. The key is keeping our clients front and center in the minds of their clients so when a need comes up, they remember them.   Brad: And I should say we don't do only professional services. We just happen to be very good at it. Professional services, especially with law firms, they bring their own special challenges, and we've learned to work around those things. You often hear that working with law firms is like herding cats. We've gotten pretty good at herding cats, but we handle many other firms. Our newest onboard is an AI and machine learning company. It couldn't be any more different than law firms, and the approach is very different from law firms, but again, we're looking for that story, that one thing they do best.   Sharon: How would you say that working with professional services firms is different than working with a products firm, let's say?   Brad: It's super different, because with professional services firms—I don't mean this in a negative way, but there's a lot of ego involved because it's personal. You're talking about selling the people. With a product, you can get some distance in between them. I can go to a CEO or marketing group in a firm and say, “Hey, your product is this and that. Here's the audience. Here's how they're going to respond.” There's some objectivity you can bring to that.    With professional services firms, it's very, very personal, especially when you get in a room with three, four, five partners of a law firm. They all have opinions. They're all valid, but they're all personal. Imagine taking five lawyers at a law firm out to purchase one car. You'd come back with a motorcycle. They have very strong opinions. They're always very articulate. They're very bright folks, so they all have valid opinions. Trying to get to a consensus is oftentimes difficult, as opposed to a product that stands on its own. Instead of telling a story about the product, you're telling a story about the people at the firm, and you have to get them over that hurdle. The firm itself has a brand and that brand stands for something. If you can get to that point, they can put their own personal biases aside and do what's best for the firm, but that's a challenge sometimes.    Sharon: I'm sure that's a challenge if you're dealing with ego. How do you overcome that? If you have a managing partner who feels one way and a senior associate feels differently, or if you're talking to an equity firm and the driver feels they're going one way and the other people are going another, how do you overcome that?   Larry: It's a great question. It's challenging. You can start by listening. Hopefully, we can spend the first meeting or two really listening and coming back to them with a creative brief that says, “Based on all the input we've received, this is what we're hearing. This is the direction to go in. Do we all agree on this?” We'll never start a design, whether it's a logo or a website or an ad campaign, until we understand who we're talking to, what we're trying to say, what our goals are. We try to get them all on the same page. That's the first hurdle.   The second hurdle is when you show creative. Creative is subjective in nature. People like blue, but they hate green, and they like flowers, but they don't like butterflies. Who knows? With that subjectivity, we try to bring objectivity to this process by saying, “Based on what we heard, this works well for you. Here's why these colors work well. Here's why these graphics work well. Here's why this typestyle works well.” We bring objectivity and some rationale behind the design, but again, you can look at a painting and you can love it or hate it. It may be a Rembrandt, but you may still hate it. It's hard, and you just take time. Sometimes these projects will go on for months and months because they're debating in-house or they're busy. We do our best to keep moving things along and trying to get to a final answer.   Brad: In addition to that, I think it's partly common ground. If you have a lot of partners and they all have strong opinions, it's sitting down long before any creative and discussing likes and dislikes, because personal likes and dislikes are every bit as valid as any other design criteria. In talking with you as long as possible, we try and pick out the common ground they all agree on to start with and then build outward from there. We build on the common ground and the trust that's been created in the initial discussions. Then that's where, as Larry was saying, we try and make it as objective as possible in a very subjective industry. That's one of the biggest challenges about being in advertising.    Sharon: I bet it's a challenge with a lot of professional service industries. Are you ever the order takers, as we sometimes get accused of being? Do people call you and say, “We need a new website,” and you go in thinking, “O.K., let's look at the website. We may not need everything new.”   Larry: I would say definitely not. In fact, we've lost business in the past by saying, “This is not what you need.” I feel like our responsibility is to talk to the client and say, “Based on your goals, here's what we suggest.” Now, if you want to ignore that, O.K., we can do what you're asking us to do. But I'll always give a client our best advice right up front, because otherwise I don't think we'll be successful in the long term, and they won't be successful. That doesn't work for us.    Most of our clients we've had now for, some of them, five, 10, 15 years. I think they know we will make the hard call and give them good advice. We may not be so popular, but I think in the long run, it serves them well. We try very hard to avoid being order takers. We always say, “If you ask for this, we'll give you that, but here's what we think you should do as well. Here are both options for you.” I always want to feel good that we gave the client the best thinking we could, even if they want to make a bad decision. That's up to them, but I want to give them an option and say, “Here's another way of going. What do you think?   Brad: We will never do only what the client asks for. I don't want that to be taken wrong, but if they ask for something very specific, if they've got something in their mind they want to get out and see how it looks, we're happy to help them with that process. But we're always going to give another opinion or two about a possible better way to get them thinking in larger spheres or in different directions.   Sharon: Do you think it's possible to rebrand? If everybody has a brand in their mind, is it possible to change that?   Brad: Oh, absolutely. Brands evolve constantly. If you look at the big brands, the Apples and Cokes of the world, they're constantly evolving and changing and staying current. We do that very often. We just finished a project for Enenstein Pham & Glass, a great law firm over the hill in Century City. They wanted to tighten the name up to EPG. We had a great project we did with them. We redid the logo and updated collateral materials.    I think firms constantly need to be responsive to the changes in the marketplace. They need to stay fresh. Law firms oftentimes say to us, “We don't need a website because nobody checks our website.” Well, the truth is when you're hiring, that's the first place they go. We've been working with a lot of our law firm clients and accounting clients so their site is designed in part to attract young talent, to bring people on board. Your website is your calling card. It's your office. Everybody goes there and checks it out just to validate who you are. Oftentimes, you have to understand who is going there. If you are looking to hire, which every accounting firm we know of right now is looking desperately to hire talent, that's where talent goes. They check out your site and get a sense of who you are.    Larry: And to see if it's some place they want to join. The better the candidate, the better the website should be to impress in both directions. Most people think of a website as outbound. I don't get new business from my website, especially in professional services. It's usually word of mouth. But they're always going to validate, and that validation has to be up to date. It has to be modern. It has to be credible for every law firm, and everybody knows this.    For 20 years, the professional services industry has been going through upheaval after upheaval because it came from a time when law firms, if they advertised, they were shysters. Now more than ever for law firms, you have to think about marketing and social and putting your best face forward. That's a huge turn of events, and I think some law firms are still having trouble getting used to that idea.   Sharon: Do you think that in any professional service there's room for traditional advertising, for print, for newspaper ads or magazine ads? Is there room for that?   Larry: Oh, sure. I think they all complement each other. As I said, for Ballard Rosenberg, we keep them current. They represent companies in employment law cases. So, for that firm, we keep them in front of the L.A. Business Journal, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and some other publications where businesses are looking, where CEOs are reading those publications. I think there's definitely room for that.    For other clients—I'll give you an example. With direct mail, people think, “Why would you use direct mail for a law firm?” Well, we've got a number of law firms who don't want to do traditional advertising, which I completely respect. They have a list of 5,000 clients they've worked with over the past 10 years who they don't normally talk to. We put together a concept called an annual review. It's an annual report that goes out, basically. It's not the financials, but it's a yearend review on what happened at the firm this past year. It talks about cases they've won and publicity and pro bono work and new hires. It's a lovely booklet, and it goes out at the end of the year to 5,000 clients. Suddenly, it's a non-advertising way to get in front of all those clients you've had in the past, remind them of who you are, remind them of the exciting things going on at your firm and why they should do business with you.    We've done this for a number of firms and they've gotten tremendous response. People say, “I love this. I get an update on what's happening at the firm.” It's a very non-solicitous advertising piece, but it still an advertising piece because it communicates what's going on. It's a communication tool. I think it's traditional because it's direct mail, but it's been tweaked a little bit to be more contemporary. All these things combine to deliver an impression to your clients.    Sharon: That's interesting. Given the amount of direct mail I receive, my first reaction to what you're saying is, “Who would do direct mail today for any kind of marketing?” But I guess a lot of people do.   Larry: I think the key is to do it well. I agree with you. You get a lot of crap in the mail. 90% of it is garbage. Our job is to make sure that whatever we do, like that x-ray we did for Harry Nelson years ago, it's got to stand out. We've done those campaigns for law firms. We have a lot of nonprofits we work with. Whenever Brad and I do a direct mail campaign, we always push the pedal to the metal on creative. How out there can we be to get some attention, whether that's headlines, colors, different sizes, different materials? Brad and I have sent things out in tubes before.    Brad: Even bubble wrap.   Larry: The direct mail piece was sent out in bubble wrap because they were an insurance company. It was about protecting yourself, so it went out in bubble wrap. People went nuts. They were like, “This is so creative. I had to open it. I got a piece of bubble wrap in the mail. I had to open it up and see what was inside. You got me. I gave you the 10 seconds to read it.” So, I think the trick is to get creative.   Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. Brad, when it comes to picking the right photo, you did a little booklet on your website. What do you think about when it comes to picking the right photo? What do you both think about?   Brad: Actually, that one was very specific. That wasn't actually about photo composition choice. We tried to educate our clients about aspects that are really different with digital advertising. The biggest problem we've had over the last five, six years is responsive web design. Every screen has a different ratio, a different dimension, a different pixel count, and website elements move depending on how big the screen is. Most people think of websites as the old desktop publishing page layout, where you put everything in. Then, if you want to move it around, it's going to stay exactly the same, like a print piece. The web is not that way at all anymore. It is completely data-driven and responsive to the screen size. It's a phone up to a 32-inch monitor. It still has to lay out properly, but it's not the same.    So, we had this issue with photos. People would pick the exact cropping of a photo they liked, and it would have things on the edges and the corners of the photo that were very important to the composition. When we put it in the website, when the website responsive design would change for different screen sizes, the photos would crop differently and something that was important on the edges would get cut off. It's a very difficult concept to understand, that even a webpage looks different on every screen. It's a difficult concept for everyone to deal with. I know people in the industry who still have trouble with it. So, that booklet was to try and help clients understand that digital technology is not the way it used to be and there are adjustments that need to be made in that area.    In terms of regular composition of photos, we generally do it for the client. We alter it. We choose stock photos, and we work with them to find the photo they like. We are always keeping an eye on the images we give them to make sure they are proper for the branding with their approval. I totally forgot about that being on the website.   Sharon: How do you keep current? As you said, it changes so quickly.   Brad: Neither of us wants to answer that. It is insanely difficult. I personally spend probably eight hours a day in addition to work trying to keep up. I'm not the spring chicken I used to be, and it's getting harder and harder, but I love the industry. In fact, I love the web far more. I grew up on traditional advertising. I've done print. My first job was for a print company, actually, on the presses. I know traditional, but I prefer digital. It's more free flow. It's more creative. Sometimes, when things have a lot of hard parameters, you have to get super creative, and the web has a lot more parameters than print. I love it.    I love being in it, but it's starting to vulcanize a little bit where you need specialists. There are specific SEO specialists now in different areas. Social has become an industry in itself. We used to do it all in-house, and it's starting to get too complicated to do that. So, we find the best we can. We don't do PR, but I love the industry. If I didn't love design and trying to make companies look better, I wouldn't have been doing this for the last 30 years. It's barely better than ditch digging, but I really love it, as an old partner of ours said.   Sharon: You have to love it. You have to bite the bullet, I suppose, to keep abreast of everything.   Brad: Absolutely. Larry, on the other hand, he wants nothing to do with technology. So, we keep him doing what he does best, and we try and educate him as best we can on the fly. But we have developers in-house, we have designers in-house, and all of them have to be more up to date on the nuts and bolts of digital marketing than you did before. It used to be that a designer had to know how to create something that will print correctly, but he didn't have to know how to do the printing. Now, you have to learn a little about coding and what coding platforms there are for web and for social and APIs and all of that stuff. It's getting into the weeds, but once you grasp it, it's actually fascinating. It really is.    Larry: You're talking about technology. Once we thought we had it all figured out and websites were a piece of cake, then the ADA comes along. Now you have ADA compliance issues. You have to really understand what ADA limitations are in terms of fonts and colors and be responsive to that. Technology is always going to be encroaching on the creative aspect. You have to learn how to balance the two of them.   Sharon: I agree with a lot of what you're saying. You do have to balance, and it seems as soon you've learned it all, it changes. Let me ask you before we end, because you did write something about this. How do you know if your logo sucks and what do you do about it?    Larry: That's a tough one. It's hard to go up to someone and tell them their logo sucks. It's like telling them their baby is ugly. They may love the logo or hate it, but if you say something about that, they're going to take it personally. They should take it personally. Your logo represents you and your company, especially in professional services, and very few friends are going to tell you your logo sucks. That's just the way it is. When someone's building a company and building a brand, you don't want to tear them down if you're a friend.    So, the best thing to do is get a third opinion. Get an objective view. Every design firm, every ad agency will be more than happy to do a quick review of your identity. Every marketing design firm is going to have a different opinion about it, but they will be as objective as possible within their preferences. There are design rules that can't be broken. So, if it breaks design rules, the logo needs work.   Brad: Things also just get dated. I'll go back to the Cokes and the Disneys and the Apples of the world. These are companies that don't need to change their logo, yet they do because society evolves. Things change, and you want to look progressive and contemporary. I think even just a logo refresh is a great idea. You don't have to change the whole thing, but maybe bring it up, make it current. Fonts change. Colors change. There are lots of ways to refresh a brand. Plus, it gives you a wonderful opportunity to go back to your clients and say, “Hey, check out our new logo. Same great commitment to service, but a new logo reflecting whatever it is.” It's a nice way to take a new look. It's like painting your house. It gives it a new, fresh look.    Sharon: Larry and Brad, thank you so much for being with us today. You've answered a lot of questions and given us a lot to think about.   Brad: It's a pleasure. It was great.   Larry: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

What you'll learn in this episode: The difference between search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), and why SEO is a worthwhile investment even if it takes time to see results Why Google's Local Services Ads give you the most bang for your buck if you're investing in SEM Why quality, original content and a great user experience are the keys to ranking on the first page of Google When it makes sense to pay for pay-per-click and social media ads How your firm's intake process and in-person service affect online rankings About Eric Bersano Eric Bersano has been deeply involved in online legal marketing since 2006. He is the VP of Business Development at Market My Market, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses generate new clients by implementing the right systems and strategies. Depending on a law firm's goals, Eric ensures the best marketing channel and modalities are implemented, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and TV and radio. His focus on the legal space gives Eric the network to utilize the most talented designers, programmers, and marketers in the country. His clients maintain very high rankings for competitive online searches at the city, state, and national levels. Transcript: The online marketing landscape is so competitive that it almost seems pointless to put much effort into SEO. Why try to compete with the firms that rank highest on Google? But according to Eric Bersano, Vice President of Business Development for Market My Market, that belief is misguided. Not only can the top law firms on Google get knocked off their number one spots, it happens quite often. Eric joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the paid and organic campaign options available through Google; why you should think of your website like a book in a library; and when paid search and social media ads can pay off for your firm. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Eric Bersano, Vice President of Business Development for Market My Market. Eric has been in the legal marketing space since 2006 and has seen a lot of changes. Today, we'll hear all about the evolution of legal marketing and its importance to the legal marketing community, as well as why law firms need a guide to navigate the proliferation of marketing venues. Eric, welcome to the program. Eric: Thanks for having me, Sharon. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your career path. I'm sure you weren't saying this is what you wanted to do when you were in kindergarten. Eric: That's a very good point. I actually made a shift in 2006. I was working with orthopedic surgeons. I had a friend who was working at a company called FindLaw, which really put search engine optimization and digital marketing on the map for lawyers. My mom didn't raise a doctor or a lawyer, but I've worked with both. To be honest, I prefer the law field. Sharon: We'll talk more about it, but how did you get into this space, the online legal space? Eric: So, a quick background. Coming over from the medical side, one thing I always tell people is I was never going to be as knowledgeable as a surgeon. I was selling orthopedic implants, and there was no way I would ever know more than they did. My nail for the femur was very similar to somebody else's nail for the femur. When I came over to attorney marketing, I realized very quickly that this was a new animal. A lot of attorneys weren't doing marketing or weren't putting it into focus. To a lot of the old-school attorneys, marketing was hurtful, because they weren't even legally allowed to market until, I think, the late 70s. Most attorneys that had a thriving practice were using either Yellow Pages or just referral sources, and they were doing extraordinarily well. Once the internet started to become a place for people to find attorneys, it was this brand-new open ground that was really fertile. The thing I loved about it was that I could go into a law firm in January and six months later, they wanted to buy me lunch or dinner because they doubled in size or their profits had doubled. In the early days, search engine optimization was fairly easily, especially working for a big company, because it didn't take much. But as you said, over the past 16, 17 years, there has been a ton of changes. I like to keep up with all those changes to make sure my clients are profiting from those. Sharon: You're bringing back so many memories of firms saying, “Oh, I don't need any online stuff. We take care of it with referrals only. We don't market. We just do referrals,” which to me is marketing, but O.K. Eric: Right. Sharon: What does Market My Market do, and what does that mean? Eric: Good question. We get asked that a lot. When you're choosing the name for a company, you throw a bunch of things against the wall, and you're hoping for something that really defines what you do. We didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves into just legal marketing. There are a lot of companies that do that, but we do work with other professionals. That would be doctors and some accountants, and then lawyers are probably our biggest market. Market My Market is us marketing you in your market. Everybody's got a geography they cover, and our true focus is to make sure they're being as competitive as they possibly can when it comes to online. The one big differentiator we bring is that one of the co-founders, Ryan Klein, worked in-house at two extremely competitive law firms in south Florida. One was a personal injury law firm and the other one was a criminal defense firm. Both were in south Florida, which is the home of John Morgan when it comes to personal injury plus a host of other really competitive law firms. One of the things he did was bring over his philosophy from working in-house, working side by side with attorneys and knowing exactly what they wanted to see. When some people get lost in the weeds as marketers, they say, “Hey, look, your traffic is up,” or “Look how many intakes or phone calls you got,” which are great indicators, but what a lawyer really wants is signed cases. They want more high-quality, signed cases. We want to work backwards into that with our approach to make sure we're getting an increase in signed cases, not just pointing to some of the key indicators. Sharon: I'm going to stop to ask you, is John Morgan a personal injury law firm or an attorney? I've never heard that before. Eric: John Morgan of Morgan and Morgan has built kind of the Death Star of websites. He started out in south Florida as a big TV advertiser. You can't drive more than 10 feet without seeing one of his billboards. Probably five, eight years ago, he started really branching out. He's got practices in Boston and Arizona and Las Vegas. So, his one website they've grown is really competitive in a lot of markets. If you talk to any personal injury attorney in Florida they'll know John Morgan, but more and more, they're starting to know him in other parts of the country because he's starting to encroach in everybody's backyard. Sharon: That's interesting. When you said Morgan and Morgan, I've seen that, but I didn't realize it was John Morgan. This question comes up a lot: what's the difference between SEM, search engine marketing, and SEO, which is search engine optimization? What's the difference? Eric: It's a good question. SEM would be the umbrella term. Search engine marketing is all the different types of marketing you can do online with search engines. We always refer to Google because that's the 800-pound gorilla, but there's also Bing and Yahoo and some other ancillary search engines. Search engine marketing encompasses search engine optimization, but it also includes paid search. Those would be things like Google ads, or one thing that's become very popular over the last two years is LSAs, or Local Services Ads. Anybody listening to this who's done a search for a car accident lawyer in “insert city here,” you'll see three ads at the very top with a profile photo. Those are Local Services Ads. The key to those is you don't pay when somebody clicks; you only pay when you get a lead. If somebody clicks on your ads, reads all your information, but doesn't contact you, you're never charged. But if they fill out a contact form or call that tracking number, it's taken into account on your Google dashboard. You can even reject leads for a refund if they don't qualify. For example, if you're a criminal defense attorney and you get a family law lead, you can dispute that, and they'll take it off your bill. So, search engine marketing is everything you can do with search engine advertising. Search engine optimization is really the key we focus on for one main reason. Nobody goes to Google or any search engine because they have the best ads. They go to that search engine because they trust that the results that show up on the first page are the best information and resource for that subject matter. If I type in “DUI attorney Fresno,” the average person assumes that the law firm that shows up number one is the best DUI attorney in Fresno. It's not always the case, but the big advantage to the optimization piece is people will trust you more when you show up on that first page. The marketing costs are also generally fixed. What I mean by that is if I do a PPC ad and I've got a $10,000 a month budget— Sharon: PPC is? Eric: Pay-per-click. When I do a pay-per-click ad, I'm going to be charged every time someone clicks on my ad, whether they call me or not. Now, if I'm spending $10,000 in January and I spend none in February, that's a sunk cost. I'll never get that $10,000 back. But with search engine optimization, you're paying for links, you're paying for new website pages, blog articles. All of that stuff accumulates over time. The biggest thing I hear with search engine optimization from attorneys is, “Oh, we tried it. It doesn't work,” or “It doesn't work for anybody.” I would challenge you to do a search for your most important keyword in your city and look at the firm who's showing up number one. That person is fighting tooth and nail to stay there. The bigger the city, the harder they're fighting, because if you're showing up number one for “car accident lawyer Houston,” your business is exploding. You can guarantee that the people who are there want to stay there, and they'll do anything they can to keep their number one spot. Sharon: Does anybody still say, “Oh, we tried that and it doesn't work,” when it comes to SEO? Eric: Yeah, they do. To be honest, SEO is constantly changing. Companies like us, we don't claim that we know exactly what Google wants. Google gives you best practices, but they don't want to say, “Do, A, B, C and D and you'll rank number one,” because not everybody can rank number one. The one thing they've always stayed true to is that they want original, relevant content and a great user experience. That's what we've built our company principles on. The people who say it doesn't work have been burned, because no matter how great of an SEO company you are, it takes time to see results. Let's say we're talking about a competitive market like Chicago. That could take six months to a year. If you give an SEO company a year and you get nothing in that year, it's going to be hard for you to invest in somebody else and give them a full year. What happens all the time is they don't get somebody who focuses on legal. They don't know which directories to go to. They don't understand the practice areas, the keyword terms to optimize for. They might be a really good SEO company, but without understanding that legal niche, they might not be performing well enough to get them rankings. I talk to attorneys every day who are like, “Nope, I tried SEO before. It doesn't work.” It's just because it didn't work for them with the particular program they had. Sharon: When you say LSA, Local Services Ads, do you set up a separate phone number for that? Eric: The Local Services Ads are through Google, and Google has its own tracking numbers for you because they want to be able to tell you exactly what somebody searched for and clicked on to serve that ad. That's how they charge you. One of the things we do is manage those Local Services Ad campaigns, so that tracking number gets imported into our dashboard. We can actually say, “Hey, you got 10 Local Services Ad calls. You got 15 intakes. You got 20 calls from organic, and you got 15 calls from Google My Business.” We want to know which piece of the online marketing is working. There are four places for you to get business on Google's homepage: LSAs, PPC, Google Maps, and then there's organic. We really like to focus on organic because that's typically 60% or more of clicks. Not that LSAs and PPC aren't a good substitute, but anybody who's relying solely on PPC is really putting their client flow in jeopardy. It doesn't take many bad months with PPC for you to spend your marketing dollars with no return. Sharon: It used to be many, many years ago that you could say to somebody, “O.K., you don't have the budget. I understand. Here are some things you can do.” It seems like today there's not much you can do. With PPC, it seems like that's the one thing you can still do and say, “O.K., you could just start with PPC. Put all your money into PPC and start that tomorrow,” but you're saying they're missing a lot still. Eric: That's a really good point. If I'm working with somebody in a really competitive market, let's say New York City, and they have almost no web presence at all, that's going to be a really tough pill for them to swallow, for them to hear, “I need you to pay me X dollars a month for a year before you can expect anything.” But that's realistic if they don't have any SEO working at all. That's the case where I'd say, “All right, let's put together a very competitive, focused, pay-per-click campaign to start getting some clients in the door,” because the big advantage with PPC is it's instantaneous. You do the keyword research. You set up your landing pages, and you can start receiving phone calls and emails right away. Now, the downside of PPC is it's become extremely competitive. If you've ever done a search, the most expensive pay-per-click keywords, there's a list of about 180 of them that are legal keywords, things like, “I'm a car accident lawyer.” Those could go anywhere from $50 to $150 per click with no guarantee that the person's even going to reach out to you. So, I think PPC can be used sparingly to make up for that valley of death before you start to get organic results or to hyper-target something that's very timely. For example, if there's a bridge collapse or food poisoning, sometimes there's going to be a bunch of people that are injured in a very short window. Those types of cases come out all the time. You're not going to have a “food poisoning for Tyson Chicken” campaign ready to go with SEO, so in those cases it would make sense. But the most efficient, lowest cost would be LSAs. Again, you're only paying for leads. The big issue right now with LSAs is they've been around so long that if you're in a major market, there are probably at least 50 people in those LSAs already, and there are only three spots that will show up on the homepage. Sharon: And Google decides who those are. Eric: Yes, Google decides. There's some thought that having more reviews, getting consistent reviews, is going to help you show up there. You don't want to get 10 reviews in a month and no more for six months. But the number one factor for showing up in those LSAs is how responsive you are to the leads that come in. Google will know if those go to voicemail. Google will know if you're not interacting with their dashboard to say, “We have this lead” and move that through their funnel. They want to make sure that if you're getting the leads, you're treating their clients well. Remember, they're Google's client first. They went to Google for a search. If you mistreat them and don't provide them a good service, Google's not going to reward you with those rankings. Sharon: Wow! With LSAs, it seems that they would go to voicemail sometimes, because nobody's manning those phones all the time. Eric: That's another good point. The more sophisticated people become, the more efficient their front and back office are, the more profitable they'll be. In the old days, let's say 20 years ago, I don't think the average person expected someone to pick up the phone at 7:00. But if you're having a legal issue, you may not want to talk about that in the workplace. You may call on your way home or after you get home. So, if you don't have 24/7 answering, you could be missing out, and this is actual data we have with our clients. We use call tracking for every single one of our clients. Just under 30% of contacts came in either before 9:00 or after 5:00. If 30% of your contacts are coming in during off hours and you're not immediately responding, you are definitely losing out on clients. Sharon: Wow! That's a lot of person power, I should say. Eric: Exactly. If you get a hundred leads in a month and 30 of those are going to voicemail, that's not a good client experience. Sharon: Is it still possible to become number one in Chicago or Los Angeles or New York, no matter how much money you're putting out? Are those spots just long gone? Could somebody overtake somebody? Eric: Yes, it happens all the time. There are two things that will typically happen. You'll have somebody who gets really aggressive with an organic campaign. There are a lot of myths about organic. A lot of people will say they've got proprietary software; they've got a proprietary secret sauce or amazing links that nobody else knows about. The truth is search engine optimization comes down to doing a lot of things really well. It's very detailed. I's need to be dotted; T's need to be crossed. It's keeping up with trends like user experience. One quick example would be on a mobile phone, you want the contact us and phone buttons to be towards the bottom of the page because that's where people's thumbs are at, whereas on a desktop, people are used to seeing them at the top. Extrapolate that times a thousand little, tiny things, they all add up to the people who show up in those top three to five spots, which is where you need to be to get any clicks. The second thing that can jostle things up would be a Google algorithm change. Google admits that they change and update their algorithm hundreds of times a year, but each year there are usually two or three major ones, and you'll see a big shakeup. Someone who has been in the number one spot for months and months and months all of a sudden drops down to the bottom of page one or even page two. Those are opportunities, because Google is testing out some of their new changes, and they want to see if that user experience is still good. What that means is, let's say you and I are both competing for the same keyword. Somebody goes to your website and the average time on your website is 90 seconds, and the average time on my website is 20 seconds. Well, Google knows that, and they're just going to assume that your website is better; it's more engaging; it has more relevant content. When the algorithm shakes up, that one factor could cause somebody to stay higher than the person who was previously number one. I'll just end by saying this. There's no one factor or silver bullet that's going to get you to number one. Time on site is really good, and it makes logical sense when you tell somebody, but just because your time on site is great doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be number one in that market. There are so many other things that need to be done correctly to keep those rankings. Sharon: You mentioned organic. I know you said you're going to finish up, but I have a lot more questions. Eric: Sure. Sharon: When you say organic, what do you mean? What are you talking about? Eric: Organic are Google's results. They're their most preferred result. Google needs to make money, and we all know that Google is one of the most profitable companies in history, and the reason they are is because they sell ads. They sell Local Services Ads and pay-per-click. Every time someone clicks on an ad, Google gets paid. Well, underneath the ads are typically the Google Maps results first, although sometimes an organic search will show up above it. Then there are the organic links below that. If I'm looking for a pair of shoes and I type in “running shoes,” I'm probably going to see Nike or Dick's Sporting Goods as number one because they're such big, powerful websites. Organic refers to those things underneath the paid section. You basically have to walk through the paid section—a lot of people get stuck there and click on those ads. Google gets paid, but the vast, vast majority of people are going specifically to that organic section because they trust that those are the best, most relevant websites. Sharon: How do you influence organic? You mentioned blogs. Do you write? Do you have other people writing? How does that work? Eric: That's a good question. I like to use the library analogy for how Google picks out a website. Instead of websites, let's call them books. Google is our librarian in the largest library in the world, and I'm looking for a book on cookies. Not just cookies, but I want chocolate chip cookies. What's a better resource, a hundred-page book on cooking that includes chicken and roast beef and baking, or a hundred-page book on just cookies, and specifically chocolate chip cookies? What Google is looking for is the best, most relevant information. As a personal injury attorney, if I've got family law and criminal defense and estate planning and trusts and intellectual property and car accidents, I'm really diluting my message. My book is a catchall for everything. If I have a really focused book on just personal injury—and I'm talking about car accidents or brain injuries or spine injuries—now I've created a really powerful, relevant, niche source. If you do a search for Covid right now, you're probably going to find something like WebMD. You're not going to find some random website. You'll find something from the CDC because those are powerful sites that have developed their niche. So, the way to earn Google's respect is, number one, the content has to be original. They don't want to duplicate content. They're literally tracking billions, if not trillions, of websites by now, so if your content isn't original, why keep track of it? Then they want to make sure those user experience things are there: how much time on site, how quickly does the website load, how easy is it to get from one page to the next? When you ask us specifically about content, we have our own in-house team. We think content is so important, so we look for really good writers and we train them on how to research for the purposes of showing up organically. So, how to research for a keyword and then how to write so search engines can pick up on those keywords. Content is such an important part. Instead of outsourcing it to a third party, we hired good writers. These are all US-based employees of Market My Market that write, edit and post their content to the website. Sharon: With Google, I always imagined—and maybe you can shed some light on it—that there's some person somewhere who's watching all these screens and making decisions. Is this all done by a machine? Eric: Yes. Google specifically calls this machine learning. That's really where the user experience part comes into this. In the old days, back in 2006, all you really needed to do was have some good content and a couple of labels. If I was trying to rank for “medical malpractice attorney Los Angeles,” I would want to make sure that page was titled “medical malpractice attorney.” I'd want that to be the title of the first paragraph, and I'd want to use that term a couple of times in there. Well, people got wise to that, and then they started keyword stuffing. They started putting keywords all over the place. They would even put black text on a black background so you couldn't see it, but Google could read it. Well, Google is much smarter than any of us, and they can now pick up on those. They pick up on the user experience key indicators, which is how people interact with the website. They know if someone is clicking around and going to multiple pages. One of the biggest SEO terms is bounce rate. A lot of people mistake bounce rate with how fast someone bounces from the website, meaning, “I went to the website, and I bounced in two seconds.” That's not what bounce rate is. Bounce rate is only going to a single page. If I come to the homepage and I don't click on an attorney profile or a client testimonial or the car accident page, Google is marking that against me because they're saying, “People come to your website. You've got a hundred pages and they only go to one. That can't be a good search experience.” These algorithms are now taking all these learning experiences from millions and millions of searches, and they're coming up with—and Google admits this—rankings that even the Google engineers don't know exactly how they get to it. The benefit of AI is that it works while you're sleeping. The downside of AI is you're not exactly sure why the output is what it is until you dig into the weeds. That's why we see so many changes in Google's algorithm throughout the year. Sharon: AI being artificial intelligence. Eric: Correct, yeah. Google likes to use the term “machine learning.” I don't know if they just want to coin their own term, but they always refer to it as machine learning. Their computers are learning based on how people interact with the Google searches they provide. Sharon: That's interesting. I didn't know that was how they defined it. What's the difference between working with lawyers and working with financial professionals, doctors, other professional services? Eric: The biggest difference from a marketing perspective is knowing which resources are best. Most of my clients are in the legal industry. People are going to get their links from Avvo and FindLaw, but if you haven't dealt with lawyers before, you might not know the more obscure or random or even local searches. Most attorneys belong to at least one if not several bar associations. They could belong to their local city bar association. They could belong to their state bar association. All of those give them opportunities to list who they are and link back to their website. When it comes to other professionals like financial, that's not a market we dabble in. I wouldn't have the confidence to tell somebody who was a financial planner or someone big in the finance world that I know exactly where to market them, because I don't have the 17 years of experience there. When somebody can focus in on a niche, they can find all these nooks and crannies on the internet where they can market their clients to make sure they're putting their best foot forward. Sharon: Does social media play any part in this? Does that change things? Eric: When it comes to social media, there are two different ways to use it. The first one is the most labor-intensive and hardest, but it can pay off. I strongly suggest anybody who wants to do organic social media, which means you're posting about your law firm—that takes a lot of work. They say you should be posting one to three times a day, and that would be on things like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. Now, I see your face. That seems like a lot of work, and it is. You've got to think about this, and you've got to be very inventive when you do your posts, because who is going to follow a criminal defense attorney for no reason? Who's going to follow a family law attorney? One way to use social media to your advantage organically is to take viral content that's happening right now and put your spin on it. For example, we just got past the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial that was making worldwide news. Some of the most popular posts were attorneys who were giving their two cents on that day's trial. That's a great way to do something through social media. It still takes time because you've got to keep up on whatever that trial is, and then you've got to go in and give your unique take, but that could pay off in dividends. Some of those videos were getting millions of views, which is really raising their presence.   The other way to use social media is to do paid advertising. You can do paid advertising through TikTok. You can do it through Facebook and Instagram, and what you're doing is targeting your most likely audience. If I'm a criminal defense attorney, I might be targeting males because more males are committing crimes. I might target certain areas of the county near jails or where courts are. I can geotarget those. I can put a circle around the court. Anybody who's coming in and out of this building, I want to target them with an ad. Those would be paid ads. Budgets can range in the low thousands to the high thousands, depending on how competitive that market is and how many people you want to serve ads to. Sharon: Do you take that into account? Does one hand influence the other in terms of things you're doing to optimize everything? Does that come into play? Eric: Social media doesn't have a huge organic bump to it unless you get into the extremes. If I have a post that's going viral, if I'm getting lots of mentions, if the firm name is being mentioned a lot on Twitter, that can have some effects, but that's very rare. I would say if you have somebody in the office who loves social media and they're going to post your holiday parties—for example, if somebody gives you a great review on Google, repost that review and say, “Thanks, Karen. We really love having you as a client.” Make it interactive. That's probably not going to win you a case organically, but if someone finds your social media profile, sees how active you are, gets a feel for the personality of the firm, it could get you that first phone call as they're doing their due diligence on who to hire. Sharon: Do you see social media playing more of a role as you continue in this vein? Eric: I see social media as a really good way to connect with people. I see it more as a tool for paid. There are very few attorneys that are going to spend enough time on social media, the time it needs. If you hire me to run your social media campaign, what do I know about the daily workings of the firm? That should be more of a personal thing. What you could hire us to do is to create ads for you and to serve those ads to specific people. As a general rule of thumb, social media is not a great tool for single-event personal injuries like car accidents, because it's really hard to target your audience. Where they do make a difference would be in mass torts, for example Roundup. Roundup has glyphosate in it. It was giving people non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. There were links to this. Monsanto was sued. Bellwether trials went on to prove that they were at fault, and the verdicts were coming back in the tens of millions of dollars. That is a great tool for social media because I know the type of person that used Roundup. I know the hotbeds. This wasn't your weekend gardener; these were people in the flyover states that were using tons of this stuff, literally, on their crops. People who were working on farms or in agriculture were overly exposed to this stuff and were coming down with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a couple other types of cancer. That's great for Facebook because you're leveraging all the data they have on their users, all their attributes, their age, their income. I like social media for those kinds of campaigns, but for your typical family law attorney or criminal defense attorney, it's probably dollars that could be spent better somewhere else. Sharon: Eric, I could go on forever asking a million more questions. There's so much to all of this. Thank you being here today. Eric: Sharon, thanks for having me. I appreciate the conversation. Sharon: Greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

What you'll learn in this episode: How your location affects SEO, and why firms in major metros need to market differently than rural or suburban firms How traditional advertising and brand building can complement SEO What end-to-end SEO is, and why Chris' company does nothing but SEO How long you can expect to work with an SEO firm before seeing results Why it's better to not do SEO at all than do it halfheartedly About Chris Dreyer Chris Dreyer is the CEO and Founder of Rankings.io, an SEO agency that helps elite personal injury law firms land serious injury and auto accident cases through Google's organic search results. His company has the distinction of making the Inc. 5000 list four years in a row. Chris's journey in legal marketing has been a saga, to say the least. A world-ranked collectible card game player in his youth, Chris began his “grown up” career with a History Education degree and landed a job out of college as a detention room supervisor. The surplus of free time in that job allowed him to develop a side hustle in affiliate marketing, where (at his apex) he managed over 100 affiliate sites simultaneously, allowing him to turn his side gig into a full-time one. When his time in affiliate marketing came to an end, he segued into SEO for attorneys, while also having time to become a top-ranked online poker player. Today, Chris is the CEO and founder of Rankings.io, an SEO agency specializing in elite personal injury law firms and 4x consecutive member of the Inc. 5000. In addition to owning and operating Rankings, Chris is a real estate investor and podcast host, as well as a member of the Forbes Agency Council, the Rolling Stone Culture Council, Business Journals Leadership Trust, Fast Company Executive Board, and Newsweek Expert Forum. Chris's first book, Niching Up: The Narrower the Market, the Bigger the Prize, is slated for release in late 2022. Additional Resources Chris Dreyer LinkedIn Rankings.io Twitter Rankings.io Facebook Rankings.io Instagram Transcript: SEO is a complicated beast. If you want to conquer it, you have to go in ready to swing, according to Chris Dreyer. As CEO of Rankings.io, Chris specializes in working with personal injury lawyers and law firms to get them on the first page of Google in competitive markets. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how the “proximity factor” affects Google rankings; why your content is the first area to target if you want to improve your rankings; and how SEO, digital marketing and traditional advertising all work together to build your brand. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to The Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Chris Dreyer, CEO of Rankings.io. His firm specializes in working with elite personal injury firms, helping them to generate auto accident and other cases involving serious personal injury. He does this through Google's organic keyword search rankings which, to me, is quite a challenge. This is a very competitive market, and it's one that requires a very healthy budget if you're going to be successful. Today, Chris is going to tell us about his journey and some of what he's learned along the way. Chris, welcome to the program. Chris: Sharon, thanks so much for having me. Sharon: Great to have you. Tell us about your career path. You weren't five years old saying this is what you wanted to do. Chris: I've always been an entrepreneur. I saw my uncle. My uncle's a very successful business CEO for many organizations. He's had a really interesting career path. I told my parents before I went to college that no matter what I got a degree in, I was going to start and own my business at one point, and they were on the same page. I ended up getting a history education degree. I was a teacher, and I was working in a detention room when I typed in “how to make money online,” probably the worst query you could possibly type in. But I found a basic course that taught me the fundamentals of digital marketing and I pursued that. By the end of my second year teaching, I was making about four times the amount from that than I got from teaching. So, I went all in and did some affiliate marketing. I had some ups and downs with that. Then I went and worked for another agency and rose to their lead consultant. Then I had an epiphany and thought, “I think I can do this myself. I think I can do it better,” and that's what I did. That's when I started. At the time, it was attorney rankings. Sharon: Wow! Had you played around with attorney rankings before, when you were a teacher and just typing away? Chris: When I worked for this digital agency that's no longer in business, they were a generalist agency, but they worked with many law firms and attorneys. I was their lead account manager. I just enjoyed working with them. I enjoyed the competition and the satisfaction I would get from ranking a site in a more competitive vertical. That's how I chose legal. I wanted to look for something that had a longstanding business. I didn't want to jump into something fast or tech-related that could be changing all the time; I wanted something with a little bit more longevity. Sharon: Did you ever want to be a lawyer yourself? Chris: I ask that to myself all the time. I think about it now, mainly because of all the relationships I have, how easy it could be for a referral practice. We have our own agency and I know how to generate leads now. So, I ask myself that a lot. That's a 2½ to 3-year commitment. You never know; I may end up getting my degree. Sharon: There are a lot of history majors who went into law and then probably decided they wanted to do something else, so that's a great combination you have. It's Rankings.io. What's the .io? Chris: There are these new top-level domain extensions. There are .org, .net, .com. Now you see stuff like .lawyer or .red. There are all kinds of different categories of those domains. Tech companies frequently use .io, standing for “input” and “output.”  How I look at it, or how I make the justification for it, is that if you invest in us, you get cases—input/output. Sharon: Can you make up your own top level or is there a list somewhere? Chris: There's a big list. GoDaddy and NameSheet.com have many of them. In legal specifically, there's .law, there's . attorney, there's .lawyer, I believe even .legal. Most industries have their own top-level domain extension now. Sharon: I've seen .io, but I never knew what it stood for. You don't see it that often. I happened to be Googling somebody in Ireland the other day. Most of the places were using .com, but this was using .ie, and I thought, “What is .ie?” but it turns out it was Ireland. Tell us a little about your business. What kinds of clients do you have? Is there seasonality? Chris: We help personal injury attorneys. We primarily work with personal injury law firms that are midsize to large. Typically not solo practitioners and new firms, but more established firms trying to break into major markets in metropolitan areas, your Chicagos, your Philadelphias, your bigger cities that have a lot of competition. We've been around since 2013. We don't work with a high volume of clients because our investments are higher, because to rank in these big cities takes a lot of quantitative actions, a lot of production. We currently work with around 45 to 50 firms, and that's what we do. We do search engine optimization for personal injury law firms. Sharon: Search engine optimization for personal injury law firms. To me, that seems like a lot. It's great. Are these typically smaller firms that are in—I don't know—Podunk, Iowa, and they say, “I want to go to the big city”? Is that what happens? Chris: Typically, it's one of two things. It's either a TV, radio, traditional advertiser that wants to focus more on digital that has a larger investment. They have more capital to invest. Or, it's someone that wants to get creative and focus on digital to try to take market share away from the big TV advertisers. Most of the time it's individuals in big cities because there are tons of personal injury attorneys. Right now, I'm in Marion, Illinois. There's a handful of attorneys. Most of them aren't focused on marketing. Just by the nature of having a practice, they typically show up in the Map Pack. That's not the case in Chicago. You actually have to aggressively market to show up on the first page of Google. Sharon: If somebody's already spending a lot of money on TV or radio or billboards in Chicago, are your clients people who have turned around and said, “I can do better if I put this money all into digital and rankings.” Does that happen? Chris: I personally am not an “or.” I'm an “and.” You did TV? Well, let's also do SEO. Let's also do pay-per-click. I like the omnichannel approach. I think there are two types of marketing. There is lead generation and direct response. That's your pay-per-click, your SEO, things like that. Then there's demand generation and brand building. The thing about demand generation and brand building is they actually complement direct response, and you can get lower cost per acquisition. To give you an example, if you're a big TV advertiser and have an established brand, and someone types something into Google, you may capture that click because they recognize your company as opposed to someone that isn't as known. I think they all work together. Of course, we're always playing the attention arbitrage game. We want to go to the locations where our money can carry the most weight to get us the most attention. For example, right now, individuals are going to TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts because there isn't the same amount of competition there. That's where a lot of tension and competition are occurring. It's a constant game, and it's something to be apprised of and aware of what's going on. Sharon: Is that something you also do in terms of rankings? Do you do TikTok or Instagram or anything like that, or Google My Business? Is it all of those? Chris: We use that ourselves to market our business because we're omnichannel, but for our clients, we focus solely on design and SEO. That's simply because we have intense focus and expertise in those areas. We want to be the best in the world and really dialed in to all the fundamental changes that occur. But knowing that limitation, knowing that there is more effort and sacrifice if someone wants to come to us because we don't do everything, we like to be aware of who is providing services in those other areas. Who's the best at pay-per-click, who's the best at social media. We try to make it as easy as possible to get our clients help in those areas too. Sharon: How do you keep up with everything? There are so many different things. Chris: Obsession. I think of it as a game. I always tell people that running a digital agency is like a game that pays me. I truly believe that, because I enjoy what I do. I don't love the quote that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. I don't believe that's completely true, but I don't have the same stressors and I enjoy what I do. So, that's an obsession. Sharon: So that's dinner-table talk. Chris: Oh, yeah. Sharon: What keeps you attracted to attorneys? A lot of people say, “O.K., I've had it.” What keeps you attracted? Chris: I think they're providing a good service to the common individual and fighting against big insurance companies. Generally, they get a bad rap, particularly personal injury attorneys. They're referred to as ambulance chasers. Sometimes individuals get creative, and they refer to me and our agency as an ambulance-chaser chaser. But in general, they're the plaintiffs; they're trying to help individuals that have been injured. I think where they get a bad rap is sometimes people are banging down their doors and soliciting them right after they're injured or in the hospital bed. Other times, you'll see these big billboards where it's like, “How could you possibly put that up on a billboard?” There's a complete lack of EQ or empathy. It's like, “Congratulations. You just lost a leg. Contact us,” or “Congratulations. Someone's seriously hurt.” It's just the wrong messaging. That's where they get a bad rap, but the overwhelming majority are truly trying to provide value and help these injured victims. Sharon: Do you ever work with defense firms or law firms that aren't personal injury? Chris: That's a good question. Our focus and expertise is personal injury, and what I tell other businesses and my peers is that it gives us optionality. If I think we can help a law firm and we can serve them and continue to provide extreme value, we will selectively take those opportunities. Right now we have about 45 clients, and I think three of them aren't personal injury law firms. It just happened to be the perfect prospect for us. They were in competitive markets. They had these clearly defined goals and brands, and we wanted to help them. Sharon: How about other legal services, like—I forget; I think it's Legal Voice or something like that. If it's a graphics firm that does graphics for trials, do you work with that kind of firm? Chris: We've worked with some. I can't think of any specifically. I would say our business is more focused on the front end, the marketing and awareness side, and less on the sales intake or operations side. Operations would be your trials and customer service and things like that. At this point in time, we're focused solely on lead generation, and that's an issue upon itself. Our job is to overwhelm the sales department. Intake is a whole different ballgame. Sometimes intake has to be addressed, but it's not us. We have referrals that we give for that. Sharon: Do you work with only lawyers, or do you work with marketing directors at these firms? Who are you typically working with? Chris: Most of the time it's the lead attorney. There are some firms that have a CMO or a marketing manager, but I would say that's the minority. When they get a CMO, typically it's at your higher eight-figure or nine-figure firms, and they will start to bring these services in-house. So, most of the time it's still the lead attorney. Sharon: You used a term I hadn't heard before, end-to-end SEO. What does that mean? Chris: It's a great question. A lot of digital agencies that are full-service, they'll offer design and social and PPC. They have a very narrow span of control, meaning you get assigned a SEO specialist, and that SEO specialist is supposed to be able to write content, optimize your site, do your local SEO, do your link building. Look, I don't believe in unicorns. I don't think people have the skillset to do all of those. So, when I say end-to-end, we have a dedicated content department with writers; we have a dedicated, on-site SEO and technical department to optimize your site; we have a dedicated local department that only works with local maps and helps you on the Map Pack; we have a dedicated link-building department. It's the full spectrum of SEO as opposed to getting these generalists, where maybe they're good at one thing and not good at the other things. Sharon: Do you think your market understands the term end-to-end SEO? Chris: Probably not. I probably should work on the copyrighting a little bit, but I do like to make that distinction. Even though we're specialists and do only SEO, you can take it a step farther. If you look at how we staff, everybody's a SEO specialist, as opposed to it being an add-on or backend service. Sharon: The Map Pack, is that where you have the top three local firms on a map near you, when you search “Starbucks near me” or “Personal injury firm near me”? I say Starbucks because we did that last weekend. I know things are always changing, but if it's a one- or two-person personal injury firm and they don't have the budget you're talking about, can they do anything themselves? What do you recommend? Chris: That's a good question. If you don't have a budget, try to scrape your budget together and get a website made the easiest way you can, whether it's a WordPress site or a template. That's your main conversion point. Try to get your practice area pages and your sales pages created as an outlet for conversions. If you don't have a big budget and you're in a metropolitan area, I would encourage you to look at other opportunities to generate business, potentially on-the-ground, grassroots business development practices where you're making relationships with other attorneys. That can carry a lot of weight and get you started. SEO is a zero-sum game. Either you rank in the top positions or you don't, and if you don't, you're not going to get the clicks. If you're on the second page of Google, you might as well be on the 90th page. No one goes to page two. So, if you're going to do SEO, you can't just dip your toe into it. You've got to go in ready to swing and ready to do the quantitative actions to get results. Otherwise, you might as well not do it at all. You might as well choose a different channel. Sharon: That's interesting. So, if you Google your firm and find you're on the second page, should you just give it up and say, “O.K., I'm not going to do anything in this area”? Chris: If you're working with an SEO agency and you're on the second page of Google, I would tell you to—well, first of all, depending upon the length of time you've been with them, if you've given them sufficient time, then I would say you probably need a different SEO agency. If you are on the second page of Google and you're not doing SEO, that's O.K. You could still rank for your brand, your firm name, particularly some of the attorney names, the name of their company. There are probably not going to be many of those. You're probably going to rank for that. I would find a different way to generate leads. It may even mean working for someone else to generate revenue before you go in and start your own practice. Sharon: So, being a lawyer in a law firm first and getting your feet wet that way. You mentioned something about the length of time. How long should you give a firm before you say, “O.K., thanks”? Chris: I'm going to give the lawyer answer here. It depends. If you've been doing SEO for a long time and you have a tremendous amount of links and content, it could be a technical SEO coding issue, maybe a site architecture issue. Maybe you need as little as 90 days to truly make a huge impact. We just took on a client in Florida that had a tremendous amount of links, a tremendous amount of content. We literally just unclogged the sink, so to speak, and they're skyrocketing in a short amount of time. If you're in a major market and you just got your website built and you don't have links, it's going to take some time. All of these SEO specialists will say it takes six months. That's completely untrue. It's based upon the gap. What are you benchmarking against? What does the data show? It could be nine months; it could be 14 months based upon the quantitative actions you're taking. If you don't take the correct quantitative actions, you could be treading water, too. So, it really depends. You can see results quickly. It just depends on where you're at in your state for your firm. Sharon: Since you work with attorneys, I'm sure more than once you've heard, “Chris, I've waited three months. What's going on? How long do I have to wait? We're pouring money into this.” What's your response? Chris: That's a great question. We try to set those expectations on the front end before we even sign them as a client, but occasionally those situations will slip through. Maybe we didn't have those conversations enough or they weren't clear enough. We have a series in our onboarding called “Teach Our Clients Not to Be Crazy.” I'm being really transparent here. Clients become crazy when expectations were not set. If they're set in the front end when we sign them and it's part of our onboarding processes, we say, “This is how long it's going to take to get results.” We're not three months down the road getting that, because we already told them on the front end this is how long it will take. The same for your operation processes like content or reporting. You report our meeting cadences, your communication preferences, all these things. We do that in our “Teach Our Clients Not to Be Crazy.” That's the biggest issue. Most individuals don't have those expectations set well enough on the front end. Sharon: So, you basically say, “It depends. I don't know. We'll have to see. We have to look at your website.” Do you start usually by looking at the site architecture? Do you change—I forget what you call it—the headings at the top of the page, things that are searchable? Chris: We have a very thorough diagnostic that uses a lot of data from different APIs, Ahrefs, and other tools that help us with benchmarking and setting these goals and KPIs. We look at three primary pillars. We'll look at their content to see if it's targeting keywords properly, if it's well-written, if they're missing content. We'll look at their architecture, like you said, to see if the information is easily accessible, if they can Google the website and the consumer can find the information they're looking for, if it loads quickly. Then we will look at their backlink profile to see if they have enough endorsements. If you're trying to win an election, you want to get as many votes as possible. If you're trying to win the first page of Google, you want to get as many high-quality links as possible. So, we'll take a look at that too. There are a lot of subcategories to those, but those are the big, top-level things we look at. Sharon: Of course, we're a PR firm and we do a lot of PR, a lot of article writing for the media. We've had SEO companies say, “I want to see the article before you post it. I want to pump it up, add words, delete words.” Do you do things like that, or is that more on the PR side? Chris: I'll be transparent. I don't love it because it hurts things from a throughput perspective and getting it to the end. It's a bottleneck. It delays things. We do heavy, up-front analysis of the content to try to identify voice and their style. We go through a style guide and try to identify their taglines. It's very cumbersome up front. Then we try to get their permission to not do the approval process. Not everyone will allow us to do that, but we like to say it delays us. If we're an SEO agency and we write 40 articles a month, and if the client takes a month to approve them, we don't have any content to market. So, we try to avoid that when we can. Sharon: Yeah, lawyers didn't go to law school for SEO; they went to be lawyers. Chris: And I think there's this perception where they think everybody in the world is going to see the content. We can publish the content then make edits post-production. I know that's a bit different from what you do, Sharon, with PR, but for us, we can control and make changes. You see something you don't like, we'll just change it. Sharon: How important is money? You emphasize that in your own marketing. There's always a debate with personal injury firms. Do people care about warm fuzzies, or do they care about your wins? What do you look at? Chris:   That's a deep question. I'm a big fan of Naval Ravikant, and he talks about— Sharon: I'm sorry, who? Chris: Naval Ravikant. He talks about people's motivations based upon status or wealth. Status is a zero-sum game; there's a winner and a loser. A lot of attorneys love trial because there's a winner and a loser. Sports is a zero-sum game. So, there's status orientation. Then there's wealth. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Many individuals can be wealthy. So, it depends on their demeanor. I think some of them are more status-oriented and want to be the heavy-hitting trial attorneys and peacock and be the man, but then there are others that don't care. They'll let the other individuals shine and they're more wealth oriented. You see this a lot in society. Individuals will choose to go against common things, but they're doing it because it's a status play. It brings them status to be against the big billionaires or whoever. That's a whole different conversation we'll probably want to avoid, but that's the way I see it. Sharon: Do you basically stick with the marketing they have? If they call you in to do SEO and you look at their website and messaging, do you stick with that or do you recommend a change? Chris: We absolutely will make recommendations if we see an opportunity to help them. Ultimately, if they're signing more cases, it helps us; we have more opportunities to do different SEO for different locations, for retention, for security. Individuals that are living and dying by each lead are the ones that are emailing you every single day, “Where are my leads? Where are my leads?” We just try to do the best. If we think we have excellent rankings, and maybe they don't have the correct copywriting or positioning conversion points, we'll absolutely make recommendations for branding or anything that can help them. Sharon: Have you ever let a client go because they were too anxious or they wouldn't listen to you, or you thought, “This is not going to work”? Chris: Yeah, I wouldn't say very frequently, but absolutely. We've done it a couple of times this year under different circumstances. At the end of the day, your team has to feel welcome and hungry and motivated to work on your client. I want to have a culture where people enjoy their work. Sometimes we've had individuals that weren't respectful or the best from the culture perspective. Look, at the end of the day, it's not worth it. I know our employees really appreciate that we have their back when those situations occur. When you take care of your employees, they're going to take care of your clients. Sharon: Another question, one that's important to me. I'm not sure I understand it, but how can you work with a client in more than one market? Can you only work with one law firm that wants auto cases in Philadelphia? If client B comes and says, “I want auto cases in Philadelphia,” can you do that? What do you do? Chris: That's a great question that has been debated on and on in the SEO community. What I'll tell you is that radio and TV own the distribution rights. They already own the distribution. For SEO, it's determined based upon proximity. I'll give you an example, and then I'm going to circle this around. If you go on vacation to St. Louis and you type “best restaurants near me” in your phone, you're going to see restaurants nearest your proximity. You're not going to see them 10 miles away or 20 miles away. In some situations, if you have a big market, let's say Houston, you could, in theory, have multiple clients in Houston. You could have one downtown, one in the northeast, and there will not be a true conflict because of the proximity factor. Having said that, I personally have given up on trying to educate our clients on this because, at the end of the day, it's what they feel. So, we only take one per market now. In the past, I was very resistant to it because of the proximity. We've done our own data studies, but the SEO industry itself, it's perceived as a snake oil salesman. Any time I would try to educate about proximity, it's like they have earmuffs, and they're like, “Oh, another snake oil salesman.” So, I've basically given up. It's what they want; it's their perception, so we just take one per market. Sharon: Let me make sure I understand. Are you saying you think it could be done, but your client doesn't want that? Chris: Yes, that was what I was circling around to. Because the Map Pack, which is the best virtual real estate we talk about, after about one mile, your rankings start to deplete based upon your physical location. One of the biggest things I see attorneys do wrong is they'll have an office in Orlando or Houston, and they'll think about going to an entirely different city. They don't understand there's a big portion of their market that's not covered just because of the location where their office is. It may be better to actually open a second office in the same city than to go to an entirely new city based upon proximity. Sharon: Physical offices may not be the same today as it was a few years ago, but the law firms that advertise will advertise 20 different locations. What location do you use? The main location? Chris: First, I'll say all attorney listings are supposed to follow Google's guidelines. Google's guidelines state that the office has to have staff during your regularly stated hours. That's the big one that most don't do. It has to have signage. It has to be an actual brick-and-mortar with an office space. It can't be a shared office. You'll see a lot of fake satellite offices. Technically, they're violating Google's guidelines. So, when we say they should expand, we tell them to follow the book. Get a lease. Make sure it's staffed. Have proof of that. Have signage. Have business cards so if there's any question, here's the proof. That's the way to do it by the book. There are many firms that do not do it by the book, but again, we can educate them as to the best ways to do things. Then it's their choice on how they proceed. Sharon: I can see them saying, “That's nice, Chris. O.K., thanks.” There are people listening today who are going to get off the phone and go look at their website and say, “What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong?” What are the things they should look at right away, the top three things to evaluate whether this is going to work for SEO? Chris: I would say read your content first. Does the content answer consumer intent? Do you think it would answer your customer's pains? Is it well-written? Is it formatted well? Can they find the information they're looking for? That's where I would start. Looking at things like links, you need to use diagnostic tools. You need third-party assistance or someone that really understands that. So, I would pay close attention to your website, to your content. Read it and make sure everything's covered thoroughly. That's where I would start. Sharon: Can you set SEO and then leave it for a few months? If you get things up and running, can you just— Chris: In major metros, typically, you cannot. In most of the major metros, all SEO agencies are an in-house team that is constantly foot on the pedal, doing more content, more links, more Google reviews, or eventually you'll lose market share. In smaller markets, you may be able to create a big enough gap where you don't have to touch it as frequently. Maybe there are only a few firms. You can get a big runway ahead of them. But in most markets, it's a constant game. It's not set and forget it. Sharon: Do people ask you, “Should I add YouTube?” or “Should I link my YouTube? Should I link my podcast or blog?” I know you have a blog. Should those all be linked, and does that help? Chris: Yes and no. I'm trying not to get too confusing for the audience. In general, I would tell the audience to create a link if it can serve the consumer, if you're trying to transition or build brand awareness. I know you're aware of this, Sharon, because of what you do for PR. A lot of times, the links are not followed, and they won't contribute or pass equity. A lot of press release sites, a lot of media news sites, don't pass authority back to your site. Is it still a good reason to include a link? Yes, because you could transition a consumer to your website. It could still convert. Is it going to help SEO? Maybe. The traffic might help, but will the link pass authority? Maybe not. Should you link your social assets and directories and things like this? Absolutely. Are they going help improve your rankings? Maybe. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. Sharon: Is your team constantly Googling your clients? Is it constantly evaluating them? When you say diagnostics, what are you looking for? Are they doing Google Analytics? I don't know exactly what it is. Chris: Yeah, we do. We have several tools that track rankings. Rankings are one of those leading indicators. Just because you have great rankings doesn't mean it's going to generate cases. It's more predictive. So, we look at leading indicators. There's one we look at as an agency. I'm not aware of another agency that does. It's referred to as Ahrefs traffic value, and basically this number shows the amount of money you'd have to spend on pay-per-click to get the same amount for organic. We measure that on a weekly basis. If we see it increase, great. Our rankings and visibility are improving. If we see a decrease, them something happened. It allows us to take action more quickly on a weekly basis than by looking at your Google Analytics traffic or goals and conversions on a monthly basis, which is more a lagging indicator. We look at a lot of KPIs. We look at leading end lagging. Sharon: You mentioned pay-per-click and social before. You don't do social. Do you do pay-per-click? Do you incorporate that, or is that totally separate? Chris: That would be a situation where we have a few strategic partners we can highly recommend. We work very well with them from a communications standpoint. We feel we're the best in the world of SEO. We try to find the best in the world of pay-per-click and these other services and let our clients work with those individuals. Sharon: That's interesting to me, because I always think of pay-per-click as part of SEO in a sense. There are so many perspectives on SEO. Should you focus on this? Should you focus on linking everything? Should you focus on YouTube? That's why it's always changing. What are your thoughts about something like that? Chris: Again, I'm a big omnichannel person, so I think there are a lot of different places where individuals congregate and hang out. They could hang out on Facebook; now that audience is depleted, so let's go to Instagram. Now that audience is depleted and it's going to TikTok or YouTube. I think you need to do it all. The difference between pay-per-click and SEO in my eyes is with pay-per-click, you're leasing visibility. The moment you quit bidding, you're gone. It's great. You can get that visibility immediately. With SEO, you're creating a library so people can pull these books from the shelves when they have a certain query. The more content and queries and keywords you target, the bigger your library is, the more opportunities there are for consumers to find you. I look at it more as an asset as opposed to a leasing situation or a liability perspective. That's the way I look at it for SEO. It just gets better with time. Still today, even though there are all these different mediums, it's still one of the best costs per conversion, costs per acquisition. With pay-per-click, the amount per click has exponentially increased. Now, we're looking at $300, $600 per click. Facebook ads have gotten more expensive, and you're not seeing yourself on the organic feed as much as you used to. It's more pay to play, but we still see a lot of value in SEO. Sharon: I would think it would be foundational in the long term. No matter what else is coming, you are still going to need that. Do you work with your clients on the intake process? What if you're generating these leads and they're blowing it when somebody calls? Chris: We secret shop them. We secret shop our clients. We listen to calls. There's nothing worse than when we generate leads and the phone's not answered or calls aren't returned. It's our job to overwhelm the sales department. The moment we get any insights to where sales could be improved, we make those recommendations because it impacts us. We can generate a thousand leads, but if they're not getting assigned, we're going to get fired because they're not making money. Sharon: How are you tracking that? Do you work with people inside for that to work? Chris: Yes. There are certain CRMs we recommend. There are a few consultants we recommend. There are even outsourced intake services we recommend for all those scenarios. It depends based upon the type of firm. There are some firms that are settlement firms, so they don't do a lot of litigation. They're really high-volume. Then there are litigating firms, where maybe their case criteria are super high and they don't do volume. The way you staff those sales teams is different, so it depends based upon our recommendations. Sharon: Going to back to what you were saying before about working only with personal injury firms, I would think they're not scared off by big marketing budgets or the big numbers you might be throwing around. When you read the Wall Street Journal, they're spending millions of dollars on stuff like this. I don't know if you find that. Chris: They're not afraid to spend money; I'll say that. It is definitely increasing in most major markets. You're not going to do TV in most markets for less than $50,000 a month. Pay-per-click, you're not doing that for less than $10,000 typically. There's big money in personal injury because there's a lot of opportunity. There are a lot of different insurances and big insurance companies. It's a behemoth that takes advantage of a lot of consumers, so they definitely invest a lot. Sharon: Chris, I really appreciate your being here today because this is, to me, foundational. It's not going away no matter what comes. Thank you so much for sharing all your expertise with us. If things ever change with SEO, we'll have you back. Thank you so much. Chris: Awesome. Sharon, thanks so much for having me.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why all successful business owners use a combination of thought and action The difference between Google Ads, Google My Business, and organic SEO Why all roads lead to Google My Business, and why law firms should be investing in it How SEO has changed over the last decade, and how it will likely change over the next five years Why online reviews are crucial for ranking on Google, and how to get more of them About Ronnie Deaver Ronnie Deaver is the founder of NoBull Marketing, a lead generation firm for lawyers. Specializing in Google Ads and Google My Business, NoBull is know for its “No B.S. Guarantee” and fluff-free services. Before founding NoBull, Ronnie was Director of Operations and Director of Web Development & SEO at SMB Team, a legal marketing and coaching firm.  Additional Resources NoBull Marketing Website Ronnie Deaver LinkedIn No Bull Marketing Facebook Transcript: SEO has changed dramatically over the last five years, but one thing remains the same: keep Google happy, and Google will reward your firm with higher rankings. Ronnie Deaver, CEO of NoBull Marketing, has figured out exactly how to do that for his legal clients. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about why Google My Business is so important for law firms; how to get more valuable online reviews; and why your website still matters—but not for the reasons you might think. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today my guest is Ronnie Deaver, who is CEO of NoBull Marketing. NoBull Marketing is a lawyer-exclusive marketing firm. In this session, we're going to be touching on three areas: search engine optimization or SEO, Google My Business and Google Ads. They all play a role in generating leads for your firm. They can also make your head spin, as they have mine, but Ronnie's going to lay it out for us clearly. Ronnie, welcome to the program.   Ronnie: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.   Sharon: So glad to have you. First of all, tell us about your career path, how you got here.   Ronnie: My career path probably started around 10 years ago, and it was a very unexpected way to get into marketing as a whole. I moved to Boston, and for anyone who wonders why, it's a very stereotypical story: I chased a woman. The woman did not work out, but the city did. While I was there, I was very broke. I went on Craigslist—this is one of my favorite stories—and found a guy who was like, “Hey, I need help with my website.” I met with him at a McDonald's, and the first thing he said to me was, “Hey man, I want a website, but what I really want is to show up number one on Google.” In my head, I was like, “I don't know how to make that happen, but if you pay me this much per month, I'll make it happen for you.” So, I got my first recurring client. Fortunately I succeeded, and the rest is history from there.   As it relates to lawyers, I got involved with lawyers three or so years ago. From then on, I've been sold that they're the people I want to work with. As far as I'm concerned, it's almost like a spiritual calling. I have so much respect for lawyers because they literally raise their hands and say, “Yes, I'm willing to get involved with people at the worst times of their lives.” They're crazy. That's insane to be like, “People going through the most emotional problems of their lives, when they're at their worst and their lowest, I'm going to help those people.” I'm like, “Wow! I want to help those people help other people.” I've been working with lawyers ever since.   Sharon: Why are they at the lowest? Because they're lawyers, because they went to law school?   Ronnie: No, they're helping people who are at their lowest.   Sharon: I see. I get it.   Ronnie: If you're getting a divorce, you're pretty emotionally stressed.  If you're going through a criminal case, you're usually not your happiest person at that time. What I respect about lawyers is they put a lot of training and time and willingness into helping people who are not coming to them when they're super chippy and cheery and excited. They're usually unhappy; they're usually trying to solve a big problem; they need help; they can be emotionally touchy. It's not easy to be a lawyer. You're dealing with people at the worst, but these lawyers are volunteering to do that. It's a cool career. While I couldn't be a lawyer—I wasn't destined for that—I want to help those lawyers build better lives and build better businesses for themselves so they can help more people.   Sharon: That must keep you very busy. You answered my question. I was going to ask if you had thought about law school yourself.   Ronnie: I did, but I'm one of those guys that's more of intense action than intense thought. I thought about it, and I was like, “Man, this is not my destination.” I'm a very clearcut, no B.S. guy, and the law is a little—there's a lot of negotiation. There's no clearcut “This is right. This is wrong.” It's not that simple, and I'm a simple guy in that sense. I'm like, “This is how we do it. This is what's going to work. I've tested it and I'll evolve that over time.” I'm not destined for that high level of nuance and thought that lawyers need. I thought about it, but it's not me as a person.   Sharon: That's interesting. I'll have to think about it. I like the idea about intense action. You're a person of intense action and not intense thought, and lawyers are so thoughtful and think everything through. What keeps you attracted, then? Why, after years now, have you continued to work with lawyers?   Ronnie: The biggest thing is because they're so intensely thoughtful, they're also willing to recognize that intense thought doesn't make a business. That's the cool thing about business; it inherently is this weird balance of both. You have to have to incredibly good thinking. You have to think and know what you're doing and why you're doing it, but you can't think your way to success. You also have to take a lot of action, action that you don't know if it's going to be profitable; action you don't know if it's going to work; action even when it's hard; action when you're having a bad day. It's a combination of both.    What I love about lawyers is that oftentimes they're very driven people if they went through law school. They're like, “Hey, I know I have this weakness. I know I can think well, but I don't know what I need to do to act.” They're very willing, if given appropriate guidance and coaching, to take real, major action and have success. When I work with a lawyer, I'm usually quite confident. In almost every circumstance, I can work with that lawyer and they're like, “Yes, I want to make this business work,” and I'm like, “Great. Do this, this and that. This is what we found works. If we follow these steps, we're going to make you money.” They're like, “Great, I will follow the steps,” and they do it and they execute.    If I work with a restaurant and I work with somebody who's not quite as driven as a lawyer, you can end up with a lot less successful story. The success stories I get with lawyers are incredible. I've got one woman right now, and when I met her, she was basically facing bankruptcy. Now she's growing so fast and hiring because she can barely keep up with the caseload. They're struggling to follow up with their leads. That delta, that change, is so common in the lawyer space because once given direction, they run with it because they're so driven. I love it, and I have so much energy for it.   Sharon: That's great. I'd like to know some of the lawyers you know. Don't you find resistance sometimes? Resistance like, “I know. You don't know. I'm a lawyer. I know how to do that.” Not to knock anybody, but it's like, “I know how to do whatever needs to be done, whether it's marketing or whatever.” Do you find that?   Ronnie: I think that's broadly true for most marketers in working with lawyers. I have a unique experience with lawyers as an individual because of the way I come off and the way I speak to people. The way I think and talk and approach people is very forward. It's no B.S. It's like, “Hey, this is what I think. This is why. This is going to be the outcome if you do this and the outcome if you don't.” I'm very honest and transparent.    Maybe you have seen my guarantee—I won't go into it right now—but if I don't think I can make you money, I'm not going to charge you, basically. If I don't think I can succeed for you, I'm going to tell you I can't, and I won't take you on as a client. I make it very clear to people that I'm not trying to sell you anything. Either you want the thing I do and I can make you money, or you don't want the thing I can do or I can't make you money, and we shouldn't work together. When I come to people with that approach and I'm that transparent, that no-B.S., and I have that wiliness to not take your money, and I'm not trying to scam you or sell to you regardless of your benefit, people will come to trust me a lot quicker. They're going to say, “This guy actually has integrity.”    Character and integrity building is something I care a lot about. Because I approach my business and every person I speak with like that, I usually get very little resistance, because at that point, they're like, “Hey, I actually trust this guy.” That resistance is usually coming from fundamentally they don't trust the person they're talking to. That's not usually an experience I have, because I will willingly stop working with somebody when I'm like, “I think you should focus on a different investment, because I don't think you're getting the ROI from me for whatever circumstances. I think you should go to do this.” I do that even to my own detriment, because my fundamental goal is that I want lawyers to build better businesses. Sometimes that includes me and sometimes that doesn't. I'm willing to say that regardless.   Sharon: I can see how that can engender trust and less resistance. You're in area we've worked in, but not so much as a hands-on area. It's something that really needs to be straightened out. SEO has come a long way since the first websites and I could tell people, “Do it yourself.” That can't be done anymore. What's the difference between SEO, search engine optimization, Google My Business and Google Ads? Can you explain that all?   Ronnie: I find the easiest way to explain it is to envision an actual search. Any lawyer listening, do a search for “divorce lawyer New York City.” I chose New York City because it's going to have tons of searches and a lot of competition. If you do that search, what you'll see immediately at the top is Google Ads. You're going to see the new local service ads. I should say newer; it's been out for years now. That's where you see maybe an image of a lawyer and their reviews. Under that, you'll see text ads. Those are ads that literally just have text on them. Both of these, though, are a form of Google Ads. Google Ads, they're great. A lot of people have had mixed experiences, but the great thing about Google Ads is you can pay to play, and it works if it's done right, if you're doing it with a professional who knows how to fight Google.    Here's the thing: Google Ads is designed to spend your money, not make you money. Think about who's running it. Google wants to make money. They don't really care that much about you. They just want to make money. But when you work with a professional whose goal is to make you money, like me, my goal is to say, “Hey, Google, I don't want you to take my money. I want to make sure we're making money.” Anyway, Google Ads can be really profitable if you spend this much to get that much. So, that's Google Ads, and basically it's pay to play. You pay to advertise. You get clicks. Those clicks turn into calls. Those calls turn into cases. You run the numbers. You try to make it profitable. That's Google Ads you see at the very top.    Interestingly enough, as you mentioned, a lot has changed over the last 10, 15 years in the SEO/Google world. What's right below Google Ads now—and this didn't used to be true—is Google My Business, otherwise known as the Map Pack or the Three Pack. There are a lot of different names for it. That's the next thing, where you see names and reviews and a literal map. Back about 10, 15 years ago, you saw organic results first. You would see ads, of course, but then you would see organic results, your typical text search results, and then you would see a map under that. This was a major shift that happened roughly five years ago, where Google My Business was completely allotted to being above organic results.    Nowadays, what I talk to lawyers most about is that Google My Business shows up above all of your organic results. This is where I think you should put your effort into on the organic side. Google My Business is its own standalone profile. It has a lot of ranking factors that are a little bit different than SEO. It's going to have ranking factors based on reviews, how active you are on the profile. Are you making posts? Are you uploading photos? Have you added your services? Have you added your products? Are you doing Q&As? Are you responding to your reviews? There's a lot of grunt work, which we'll talk about later, that goes into Google My Business as a platform for ranking on there.    Quick caveat there: one of the big differences from traditional SEO—when people say, “I want to be ranked one”—is on Google My Business, you can get to rank one, two or three, but you're never going to own that spot 100% of the time. It doesn't happen. Google My Business is always switching them out. There's no owning rank one 100% of the time in your market, especially in a bigger market. So, the name of the game with Google My Business, because it's so dynamic, is not just to rank one. It's the percentage of time that you own rank one, otherwise known as your market share or your share of local voice, which are just different ways of saying how often you show up in the top three. So, just remember that, people. The big thing that's changed from SEO to focusing on Google My Business is instead of owning that rank one spot and owning it permanently for years, you're talking about a percentage of time, literally, in a given day. If a thousand searches are made in one day, you're trying to have maybe 20% of that, not 100% like you would in the old days, which is traditional SEO.   Beneath is, of course—if you search “divorce lawyer New York City,” we saw the ads; we saw Google My Business. Right beneath that is your traditional SEO. I personally don't promote a lot of traditional SEO anymore. The big reason for that is that nowadays there are all these aggregators: Super Lawyers, Lawyers.com, Justia, FindLaw. These guys are spending millions and millions of dollars a year to own these. I've found that even if you could rank here—and you can with sufficient effort, but the value you get out of it, plus the chances of your ranking are so low that it's not worth the ROI. I did the tracking once. The average website tracker converts 3%. You're going to put all this effort in, and you get 300 extra people on your website. That's like 10 calls. 300 people, that could be a big number for a lot of business owners, especially for the level of SEO they can commit to, but it's only 10 calls. Making that profitable is very hard.   Regardless, that's your three fundamental separations between Google Ads that show up at the top, pay to play. Google My Business, which is where I now recommend people put the majority of effort because it's at the top. More importantly, you're not competing with Findlaw, Super Lawyers, Avvo, any of those guys on Google My Business. You're just competing with the local people in your market. It's a much less competitive market while still having all the volume of everyone in your area searching for it. Below that are organic SEO results. That covers the three.    Sharon: Let's say I'm a family lawyer and I've never done any of this. I come to you and say, “I have money to put behind it. Can you get me to the top or near the top?” Is that possible today? Do I have to redo my website with content?   Ronnie: Yes, it's absolutely possible. Here's the thing. SEO and Google My Business, they still have a relationship together. Do you have to do everything as crazy and intense as you used to have to do with SEO? People used to think with SEO, “We have to redo the website, and we've got to make millions of pages of content. We've got to do that,” and it's this whole giant affair. You don't have to do that anymore. However, your website still does affect your Google My Business because it scans your website and uses that for context of what services you offer. If you say you're an estate planning lawyer, for example, Google wants to see that you have pages for probate, pages for estate planning, pages for wills, pages for trusts, because it's going to scan your website and use that as context.    But here's the thing. This is the big changing in mindset. It's not about those pages' rankings. Those pages are never going to rank. I don't give a crud if anyone ever Googles and finds that page. That's not the goal when you're focusing on Google My Business, at least. The goal is that Google scans them to help it understand what your business does, and then it's more likely to rank your Google My Business profile higher on that Map Pack rather than your actual page.    Here's the other reason I love Google My Business. Google My Business only shows up on the searches where people have literally raised their hands and said, “I need a lawyer right now.” It doesn't show up when they're saying, “Should I get a lawyer?” or “Can I avoid getting a lawyer?” or any of these other research terms. It literally only shows up when people say, “Hey, I want to hire a lawyer right now.” So, the leads you get from it, the people who call you, they're usually very close to making a decision. You're putting effort into showing up in front of people right when they need a lawyer, which is why it can have a high conversion rate and why it can be so profitable.   But yes, you can absolutely start ranking. A lot of my clients rank within as little as 90 days. That's possible. The reason it's possible is because if you put the sufficient grunt work into the profile—grunt work being the posts, photos, Q&As, getting reviews—reviews alone are like 35% of the factor. Put that grunt work in, and even a small boost in your ranking on Google My Business can easily turn into an extra 10, 15, 20 calls a month. 10, 15, 20 calls, maybe that's three, four or five consultations. If you close one of those with an average case value of $3,000 to $5,000, you're already starting to get profitable from what you're spending on somebody like me. The ROI to time factor with Google My Business is so much better and so much faster than whatever SEO that was in the past, where it's 12 months or 24 months to float an expense, and maybe $30, 40 grand a year for years. Google My Business doesn't have that factor. You can go a lot faster.   Sharon: You still have to do a lot of SEO behind the scenes. It shows up in a different way. Tell us more about the grunt work. Do you do the reviews? Are you doing the photography? Are you prodding your clients, saying it's time to write an article or whatever?   Ronnie: Yes, so we do as much of the grunt work as we humanly can. This what I talk about the whole time. We're not selling back magic. We're not selling a magic pill that solves all your problems. What we sell is grunt work. We know if we put this work in, it pays. So, we handle all the on-page SEO. We'll go through and optimize your website fully. For anybody who wants to hear these terms, some of these will be a little technical. We're not going too far into them, but metatitles, metadescriptions, local schema, image alt text, image compression, website speedup stuff. All your basics of having a website that makes sense to Google so they know your name, your address, your phone number, what you do, we'll handle all that.    Then on the setup side of Google My Business, there's actually quite a lot. One of the things people don't realize is that five or eight years ago, Google My Business was a set-and-forget thing. You put your name, your info, your category and never thought about it again. Maybe you get a review every now and then. Nowadays, they've turned it into a quasi-social platform. I want to be clear here: it's a terrible social platform. Never think of it as a social platform. But even if you're not going to get views or likes or whatever on it, doing that activity still makes Google happy, which means you're more likely to rank higher. It's about making Google happy, not about getting profile views or image likes. In terms of setup, you can put all that basic information in: your name, address, phone number, description.   Nowadays, they've recently—and I say recently as in the last couple of years—they've added functionality where you can add literally every service you offer. Let me give you an example. When I work with a criminal lawyer, they're not just a criminal lawyer. They do drug crimes; they do manslaughter; they do criminal deportation. They do all these different subcategories. Even below that, a drug crime lawyer is not just a drug crime lawyer. It's also Xanax crime, meth crime, marijuana crime. You can break this down. For our average client, we're adding 50 to 100 individual services, breaking down literally every single thing they do. We're adding 100 words of extra context into the back of the profile, putting every single thing they do. Again, that gives Google more context of who you are and what you do, and it makes it easier for you to rank. The cool thing is when you do rank, if somebody did want a marijuana crime lawyer near me, Google literally would say, “Provides service: marijuana crime lawyer.” You're more likely to get the call because not only did you rank higher, but you showed that you're a specialist in that industry.    You can also do products. Products are basically a visual version of that. You get to do the same thing, but you put photos and you can link to a certain page on the website. It has a little more of a visual component to it, but again, it's another way of telling Google who you are and what you do. We do all of that on the setup side.   Then you have the ongoing side. On the ongoing side, again, we do all this grunt work. We write a blog post every single month. Lesson learned; I now only work with J.D. holders to write blog posts for lawyers. I will never have somebody who has not gone to law school write a post for a lawyer. No lawyer likes that. I've never had a problem with a lawyer now that I only have people who went to law school writing it. I had lots of issues before, but we've done that for years now, no problems. So, we have an actual law student, somebody who went to law school, got their J.D., write the blog posts so the lawyer doesn't have to.    Then we go further than that. We have posts on Google My Business. We'll upload photos. If we have to, we have stock photos; even stock photos are better than no photos. We do send a little automated text asking lawyers, “Hey, send me a photo if you have it. If you have a real one, I'll take it.” I make it as easy as if you just respond to a text, I'll handle uploading the photo. So, we ask for those photos or we post our own.    We're going to be uploading our own questions and answers. People don't realize this, but you can actually ask yourself a question on Google My Business and answer it. You don't have to wait for somebody to ask you a question. That's a whole new functionality. A couple of years ago, Q&As didn't even exist. Now Q&As will do this. Say I have a family lawyer. I'll say, “Hey, what's the process of divorce?” and I'll ask myself that question. Then, J.D. holders will write a 300-word response and post that there. We're adding 10 of those a month; we're adding 3,000+ characters of words to the profile proving to Google that we're an expert and know what we're doing. Again, more and more grunt work, everything you can do.    Finally, on the review side, I can't do it for you fully. People have tried completely outsourcing but your conversion rate will be terrible. If I do it for you completely, I'll get one out of every 10 people to leave a review for you, which is a waste. What I have done—and I've gotten this up to a 40% conversion rate, so four out of 10 will leave of review of you. I set up a very simple flat automation for our clients, where all they have to do is give me a name, a phone number and an email, and we'll automatically send three to six follow-ups by SMS asking them to leave a review. It'll follow up over 10 days. It's that follow-up that makes a big difference, because the first time you ask, they're never going to leave a review. You've got to ask at least two or three more times, and they'll do it on the follow-up. That gets about a 40% conversion rate. Most of our clients are getting two to five, sometimes 10 new reviews a month.   When you combine all that together, what we end up seeing is often between 20% and 30% lift month over month. By lift, I mean an increase. If they're getting 30 calls now, next month I'd see maybe 40 calls. The next month I'd like to see 50, 60 calls. The next month I'd like to see 60, 70 calls, so that at the end of it, I have a lot of clients. Within six months, they've doubled their call volume. When you're doubling your call volume, that pretty easily turns into quite a bit more revenue.   Sharon: Wow! But you're saying, though, you still have to do all the stuff we used to do. It's the stuff we're talking about, just on your website. You'd come in and say, “Let me change the tags. Let me change this.” You still have to do that, even though people aren't coming to the website directly; they're coming to the ads or Google My Business. When you add, let's say, 15 more services, is that behind the scenes? Like if they search “criminal lawyer in New York City” and then they click on that and see, “Oh, this guy does all this criminal stuff,” is it behind the scenes?   Ronnie: It's completely behind the scenes. The customer will almost never see it unless it showed up on a very specific search. Here's the thing: it's in the profile of Google My Business itself. It's not a thing anybody can click through to. It's not a thing somebody can explore or open up. Products are a little different. Products you can click through and explore, but services are explicitly a backend thing, so Google My Business knows exactly what your services are. They sometimes use it where the customer can see it says “provides” and whatever the service is. That will sometimes show up, but you can't control it. It'll sometimes show up on the search, but there's no clicking through and seeing all those services. So, mostly we do it for Google's sake.   I love that you mentioned all that old SEO stuff as still being present. The way I think about it, Google My Business was built on the foundation of SEO. It's not that they're completely disconnected, but nowadays, SEO is a supporting tool to Google My Business. I don't usually recommend SEO as a standalone campaign anymore just because of the numbers and profit. I tracked 200 campaigns and here's what I found. I tracked every call, every form fill, every everything. I found that 60% to 80% of all calls a lawyer got over 200 campaigns could be directly attributed to Google My Business. They called straight from Google My Business. They didn't go to the website at all. They just called from Google My Business without ever going to the website.   Sharon: Does Google My Business give you a separate phone number if you're paying Google for ads? Do they give you a separate phone number to track this?   Ronnie: They do have some call tracking functionality. It's not a separate number. What they do is behind the scenes. They have what is called call history in Google My Business. I don't usually recommend it, and the reason I don't recommend doing that is because, first of all, it's bad data. It'll lead you to believe you're getting worse data than you are because it can only track the people who click it to call. It can't track the people who type it in manually. Google My Business is still going to show your actual number, but when you click it, they run it through a different phone number on the back end. So, it's only tracking 60% to 70% of your calls. It's not tracking the many, many people who Google on their desktop and then call from their phone, for example.    What I do instead is set up call tracking, where we replace your office number or we import your office number and turn it into a tracked line, depending on if you have a vanity number or really old number you love. Either way, we either completely replace your office number with a new tracked line, or we'll import your current one and make it into a tracked line, and then we put that on Google My Business. Then we have perfect data because it doesn't matter how you placed the call. Whether it's clicked on or manually called, I have that data. I know how that person called and I know where they came from.    Sharon: Is everything you're describing the same on the phone, desktop, mobile device?   Ronnie: It's all the same. They would see one phone number all the way through. It doesn't matter where they come from.    Sharon: What happens if you have a vanity number? Let's say I'm a client and I say, “Oh, I have to call John. I know his number is 1-800-LAWYER.” How do you separate those?   Ronnie: Yes, if you really care about running a vanity number, I understand. Like I said, we have the option to import that. We can import that number and turn it into a call tracking, which I think is best practice regardless. If you're going to have a fancy number, at least know how many people are calling you. I think that's the useful thing to do. So, we import that number and turn that into a call track number. Then that number stays the same. Nothing changes. It's the same number. When you switch from T-Mobile to Verizon, you get to keep your number. It's the same thing. We get to keep that number; we just turned it into a tracked one. It's the same number, but you get all the benefits and now you can track all your calls.    Sharon: When you're working lawyers, what are the top three mistakes you see, or the top three tips you have? What would you say?   Ronnie: I think as it relates to broad marketing, the biggest thing is not realizing what personally works for you as an individual. What I mean by that is the biggest thing I see lawyers do as a mistake—this is all business owners—is that it's so tempting to follow the advice of everyone else who says, “This is the best way to succeed,” and they'll do it regardless of whether or not it's good for them as an individual. I'll give you an example of somebody it's not good for. Say you've got a very shy person, a very shy lawyer who doesn't enjoy meeting in person. It makes them very nervous. It makes them very sickly and unhealthy and anxious. They're having a bad day. Every time they go to a networking event, they're miserable. But every lawyer they've ever met has told them the only way they're going to succeed is if they get good at networking, so they grind their way through and force themselves to go to all these networking events. The reason I think that's a terrible idea is because business is marathon; it's not a sprint. This is general business advice separate from marketing. Business is a marathon, not a sprint. If you go do things that make you miserable all the way through, you're not going to be able to sustain. You're going to want to quit. You're going to want to give up. You're going to burn out. You're going to shut down. You're going to give up. It doesn't work. So, the biggest mistake I see lawyers make is trying to do things the way everyone else tells them to, regardless of how it feels to them.    Networking for me is super easy. I'm very outgoing, very loud. I speak. I can own a room very easily. Great. What didn't work for me was trying to force myself to run a lot of Facebook ads. I'm a very direct marketing guy. Cold email is how I do things. Meeting people in person is how I do things. Podcasting and talking, that's how I do things. But everyone I met was telling me, “Do Facebook ads. Do Facebook ads.” That just freaked me out. If I spent $3,000 in Facebook ads, I was terrified all month, like, “Oh my god, I'm wasting money.” Then I'd be miserable the whole day, all day, every day. I never would have gotten this far if I kept doing what everyone else told me to do.    The same thing is true for most lawyers. Find the marketing path. Find the way to run your business that works for you as an individual, even if everyone else tells you it's not the best way. Again, success is going to come from surviving over the long run, over the marathon, so you can find what works and find the thing that keeps building up rather than the short-term thing everyone says should work. That's the biggest mistake with lawyers. Just find the path that works for you. If you don't like making content, you don't want to be on TikTok, you don't want to network, you don't want to whatever, that's fine. There's a way to do it; I promise. You've just got to find the way that works for you. That's my number one tip there.   The second one, as it relates to Google My Business specifically, is that it's not a set-and-forget profile. I'm going to say it again. It is not a set-and-forget profile. Five years ago, you were right; it kind of was. You would set it. It wasn't even the thing that showed up first. It was secondary. Now, it's the thing that shows up first. I've tracked 200 campaigns. The majority of your leads comes from Google My Business. Think about this: all roads lead to Google My Business. Here's why. You run that billboard campaign. They'll remember your billboard. They might remember your name, and what do they do? They Google your name. What's the first thing that shows up? If you do a Google search for the business and you have a Google My Business listing, the first thing they see on the entire right side of the screen is a massive thing with everything about you, your reviews, you information. That is Google My Business. It's literally massive. It takes up the entire right side of a Google search. It's huge.    So, if you run that billboard campaign, you run that Facebook ad, you do that radio campaign, even if you get a referral, the first thing people do nowadays is they Google you and read your reviews and look at your profile. I've seen lawyers lose referral leads because they were Googling them, and they were like, “Hey, you've only got one review. I don't trust you. Your Google My Business profile looks terrible.” All roads lead to Google My Business, so what I tell people is don't set it and forget it. Put more effort into it than anybody else, whether you pay somebody or do it yourself. This is not stuff you can't do yourself; it's just a lot of grunt work. Get in there. Make the posts, add the photos, get reviews. Do the work. All roads lead to Google My Business. Don't set and forget it. Make use of it. Find everything you can do. You'll get paid for it in the end. It's grunt work that pays. That's what I tell people: it's grunt work that pays.   Which brings me to my next thing, which is that when it comes to reviews, there's a big myth. I get so many complaints about reviews. “I can't get reviews. I'm a criminal lawyer. Somebody who just had a child sex case doesn't want to leave a review. Somebody who just went through a divorce doesn't want to talk about the divorce.” First of all, you don't actually know that. There are a lot of assumptions. I know if you were going through a divorce, you wouldn't want to leave a review, but you don't know that about other people. I have met a lot of criminals who are pretty thrilled to brag about the fact that they were a criminal who got off the hook. They're very thrilled to leave that review. They're proud of it. You've got no idea what people are willing to do. Don't assume you do. More important, the reality is that reviews are so profitable. Even the referral person is going to look at your reviews. So, you've got to get those reviews, and the number myth I see is that most lawyers think they can only get reviews from paying clients, people who have succeeded and paid you. That is not true. The only requirement for a review is that you gave somebody legitimate legal value.    Let's think about that. What does that mean? I'll give you an example that blows it out of the water every time. Estate planning lawyers, every quarter they're going to host a local seminar at the nursing home, for example, and 60 people are there. Maybe they get three, four, five clients out of that session. They're thrilled. They've just made so much money. However, here's what they do next. After that seminar—they've just spent two hours with these people—the ask all 60 attendees to leave a review right then and there. They get 15 to 20 extra reviews in one day for a seminar they were already going to do and they already got five clients out of. At free consultations, you just spent 30 minutes giving legitimate legal value to somebody, even if they don't become a client. I've got clients right now who get three, four, five reviews a month just from people they did a free consultation with. They didn't even become clients, but at least they got a review out of it for that free consultation. So, there are lots of creative ways that you can get reviews. You've just got to think, “Did I provide legal value of some sort?” Friends and family count here. If you gave legitimate legal value, if somebody asked for advice or a thought or suggestion or direction and you gave legal value of some form, that's cool; ask for that review. You're safe to do it. It's worth the payout.   My final thought for people, and I'll close off here, is that I know you've probably had a bad experience with Google ads when you tried running them yourself. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There are a lot of lawyers who are like, “I'll never do Google ads. It's never profitable. I tried it once and I lost a lot of money,” especially after Google launched Google Express Ads. I don't know if you remember those, but Google tried it for a while. Basically, Google wants to get rid of us agencies because we are really good at not getting people to spend as much money. We're really good at getting our clients to reduce the budget with Google ads. Google wants a direct path to the client where they can work with the lawyer and the lawyer pays Google. They don't want a middleman. However, the benefit of the middleman is that when you work with an appropriate middleman, you can get it to where we're constantly telling Google, “I don't want to pay for this. I don't want to pay for that. I don't want to pay for this.” What we're doing every day and every week is finding out what's worth paying for and what actually turns into money.    I'll give you an example. If I work with a criminal lawyer, what I've found out—and we've helped clients make more money this way—is that if we just pay for DUI searches, we'll get some cases that way, but a lot of people who are in a DUI, some of them don't have the money or they aren't very socially responsible people. They're not likely to have the money or to pay out. What I found was if we go after nursing DUI or contractor DUI, suddenly the game changed. Now we were going after people who lose the entire livelihoods and licenses. A nurse loses her license for a DUI. Suddenly, those people have more money because they're nurses, and they're way more incentivized to make it work because they don't want to lose their license. I have that context where I can pay money on Google Ads to find the leads that are most likely to make you money and actually convert. When you work with a professional on Google Ads, you can make your campaign a lot more profitable than anything you've ever done on your own. So, don't throw out Google Ads. You're literally getting to pay to put yourself in front of people who say, “I need a lawyer right now.” If you work with a professional, you can make a lot of money with it. Don't throw it out. Consider it.   Sharon: You work with Google a lot. It sounds like Google would love to go to a lawyer and say, “Just buy my ads.” It doesn't matter whether it's a nurse. This is just off the cuff. What's next for Google and you? Do you feel changes coming? It seems like every time one learns what's going on, it's changed. What do you feel is changing or coming?   Ronnie: Yes, one thing I love about Google is that while it seems like it's changing a lot—which it is. It's changed more in the last five years than it's changed in the last 15. At the same time, it's kind of the index fund of marketing. What I mean by that is if you think of it as a broad hull and you don't get distracted by Google itself in terms of user behavior, it's the most ingrained thing now. It's a social/cultural thing. When you don't know something, what do you do? You Google it. You look for it. You make a search for it. It's the most basic thing. We haven't quite gotten to that with social media like Facebook. You're not so ingrained with the idea of Facebook that you go on Facebook to look for an ad to find an answer to your problem. It's not the same; it's completely different. Google has the benefit of being this culturally ingrained thing. Even though its platform is changing a lot from a user behavior standpoint, nothing's really changing, unlike Facebook where a single iOS update completely shattered Facebook ads, and now you suddenly can't make money on it. That's wild. That's very unlikely to happen on Google because it's so ingrained in culture and how people work. It has the benefit of being high intent. People only go there when they intend to find an answer or when they intend to hire somebody, unlike Facebook. They don't intend to find an ad on Facebook; they just happen to.    I bring that up because when it comes to Google and why I love it and expound on it so much, it's the index fund of marketing. It's hyper-ingrained in culture. It's not going to change very much at all in terms of the cultural side. It might evolve, but it's going to be Google. It's going to be the idea of searching for a solution. That may evolve in its format. It might be like a VR headset, where an ad shows while you're searching for something on a VR headset. But fundamentally people are going to search for answers, and you can pay or put grunt effort in to show up in front of people when they search for the answer, whatever format they take. So, in some ways it's changing; in a lot of ways it's almost not at all. For me, I'll probably be on the Google search world, because why would I not put all my effort into putting myself in front of people when they're already looking for me? That's where I want to be. It's easier that way. Fundamentally that's not changing.    Now, when it comes to actual platforms—which, to me, are on a micro scale compared to the macro we just talked about—there is some micro-stuff changing. The thing that's going to keep changing is Google's going to keep trying to find ways to get rid of agencies. I'm going to have to keep fighting. We're going to fight that as long as we can. There's going to come a day where eventually Google succeeds with that, but the agencies will probably still have a role because business owners have better things to do than manage their budgets or campaigns. There may be a human component forever, but there will probably be a point where Google succeeds enough where their ads actually perform at reaching their goals for the client. That is probably still many, many years off, because right now the reason Google Ads can't do that is because they don't know your business.    For example, right now with local service ads, which is probably the most they've ever succeeded at making it where they can go directly to the lawyer, they will run a campaign for an immigration lawyer, but they don't know that business. So, if that immigration lawyer says, “Hey, I don't do deportations and I don't do asylums,” Google has no filtering for that. You can't turn that off, so you get all immigration leads. Right now at least, there's no customization to that individual business. That's the kind of filtering I can do as the human saying, “Hey, I only want these types of cases. I don't want any of these cases.” I can put that kind of thinking into it. Google may one day fix it up, but they haven't done it yet.   What they're trying now is an improved version of all this called Performance Max. It recently came out. Basically, it's the same idea as Google Express Ads, but with the lessons from local service ads. It's like version 3, but now it goes on all of their Ads platforms. They're trying merge into one giant ad platform where you pay one budget to advertise on Google ads, display ads, YouTube ads, Gmail ads, on all their platforms all at once. Of course, in theory that sounds great, but if you just give it to the bots, it's going to spend money. It has no context of who you want to target, what types of cases turn into money. Performance Max might have a role to play. I don't expect it's going to take over the agency role anytime soon. I probably need to keep fighting them for a long time to make sure we're only spending money when it makes money. But what we're going to keep is a trend where Google tries to find some new way where we don't need an agency. They're going to underestimate and still not understand what the individual business actually needs, so we're going to keep going back and forth until one day they figure it out. I don't know how long that's going to be, but it's probably at least five, 10 years.    Sharon: You've given us a lot to think about. It's not your father's Google, I should say.   Ronnie: Yeah, it's changed a lot.   Sharon: I want to thank you so much. It's been very, very interesting. We greatly appreciate you being here.   Ronnie: Absolutely. I had a great time. Thanks for having me.  

What you'll learn in this episode: Why lawyers should aim to persuade, not educate, when they're communicating Deborah's top three tips to become a better presenter Why professional women often hesitate to speak up, and how they can overcome this block Why understanding your intention is the first thing you should do before communicating How to create a newsletter that both you and your readers will stick with About Deborah Shames  Deborah is passionate about speaking and training. That's why she wrote or co-wrote four books on communication and public speaking, including the business best-seller “Own the Room.” And because Deborah ran a successful film company in Sausalito, CA. for fourteen years, she knows how difficult it is for women to stand out and succeed. Her latest book is “Out Front: How Women Can Become Engaging, Memorable and Fearless Speakers.” She walks the talk by speaking regularly across the country to motivate and inspire professional women. Deborah has coached and trained thousands of professionals from all industries to communicate more effectively. Her work has supported A-list performers in television and film, CEO's of major corporations, gold-medal Olympians, and political candidates. Her clients also include professionals in finance, law and insurance. Deborah ran the successful Calabasas group of a national business organization and was awarded “Consultant of the Year” by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Deborah uses her experience directing over sixty award-winning films to make her business clients more genuine, effective, and successful. It doesn't matter whether they are delivering a keynote address, speaking to a Board of Directors, or pitching for new business. Deborah donates her time training MBA candidates in presentation skills at UCLA, Pepperdine, USC and Cal Lutheran. Her personal goal is to prepare women, from Millennials to seasoned veterans, with the skills they need to be out front. Additional Resources Deborah Shames LinkedIn Eloqui.biz Out Front: How Women Can Become Engaging, Memorable and Fearless Speakers   Transcript: Although communication is a daily part of the job, lawyers aren't immune to the fear of public speaking. With practice and intention, however, it's possible to evolve from an anxious speaker to a confident, fearless one. Deborah Shames is proof: she has helped thousands of professionals become strong communicators through her speaking and training company, Eloqui, and she has overcome a fear of public speaking herself. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about her top tips to become a skilled speaker; how to identify your intention when communicating; and why persuasion is more effective than education. Read the episode transcript here.   Sharon: Welcome to The Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is  Deborah Shames, one of the founders of the speaking and training company Eloqui. She is author or coauthor of four books on presentation training. Her latest book is “Out Front: How Women Can Become Engaging, Memorable and Fearless Speakers.” The company's training has made a difference in the careers of thousands of professionals across the country. Today, Deborah will tell us about her career path and how we can become better presenters. Deborah, welcome to the program.  Deborah: Thank you.  Sharon: So glad to have you. I love the word fearless in your title. How did you get where you are? Tell us about your career path. Deborah: I was a film and television producer and director for many years. I found that the qualities and traits I used with actors could be used with business professionals. When I met David, my partner, who was in front of the camera as a presenter, we combined forces and translated performance techniques for the business professional. Sharon: Did you find that actors were listening to you when you were talking? Deborah: I produced and directed over 60 films and videos. Actors have all of these issues—not the best ones. Not the good ones like Danny Glover, Angela Lansbury and Rita Moreno, who I loved directing. But so many other actors were insecure and constantly needed reinforcement and feedback, and what I found when we switched to business professionals is they have the same issues. They had anxiety; they needed to know how to engage an audience. For me, it was so much easier because they didn't have to memorize lines. So we translated the techniques from the entertainment world for business professionals, and I was thrilled never having to work with actors again. Sharon: Did you decide after film and television producing you were going to teach people how to do this? How did you get to this stage? Deborah: My partner, David, had an executive at a tech company. She needed to do media, and her handler said, “We need a woman to work with her.” David said, “I can be a lot of things, but I can't be a woman,” so he asked me if I wanted to do it. When I went in and trained this woman on how to get her message across, how to engage, how to put herself in her answers rather than doing canned, generic ones, I asked David, “You get paid for this?” From then on we started to develop our business, first with workshops, then training, then one-on-ones. Sharon: How did you name your business Eloqui? Deborah: Eloqui is the Latin to speak out. It's also a form of the word eloquence, and we wished we could bring back eloquence to the way people communicate today. Sharon: It's a form of the word eloquence? Deborah: Yes, and the Latin version, eloqui. Sharon: That's a great name. Tell us about your business. I know you're always very busy with your training. You do one-on-ones and groups? Deborah: Eloqui primarily does training for teams, no more than 12 people, ideally six to eight. We also give keynotes. We give public workshops that everyone from your company has gone to that are half-days, and we do one-on-one. During the pandemic, all the one-on-ones were done virtually, but we're thrilled that starting last fall, companies were saying, “Come back in and do in-person trainings. We're sick and tired of Zoom and Teams meetings,” and we said, “So are we." Sharon: Did you find it was harder to teach people via Zoom, to teach them how to speak? Deborah: We found that one-on-one works great virtually. It's almost impossible to do group trainings virtually because of the distraction factor. People are looking and listening to everything else. It's very hard to get them to be interactive. We've done some, and it was the most exhausting experience I've had. Keynotes and webinars are O.K., but again, people don't pay attention the way they do if you do them in person. Sharon: I'm sure that's true. I think I would have a very hard time listening when the dog comes in or whatever. Deborah: When people are on a virtual session, they check web browsers; they check email; they tell you they're listening, but their eyes are darting back and forth and you know they're not. I don't blame them. Now, one-on-one, like we're doing right now, that's fine, but the others are tough. When people tell me they're exhausted after a virtual session, I say, “Of course you are. You're on camera and right up close, and that can be exhausting.” Sharon: Do you still do Zooms? Deborah: I do, but I really limit them to one-on-one sessions like I have later this afternoon. Sharon: And you teach all over the country, right? Deborah: Yes. We just got back from New Jersey with a new client where we taught IT managers. In two days, we fly back to Costa Mesa near L.A. to do a group of immigration attorneys. In late July we return to Glidewell Dental to train female dentists who come in from all over the country. I love the variety of clients we have. It makes it fun for me. Sharon: It sounds like a variety. When you talk to certain groups—let's say attorneys—do you find them more resistant than CPAs or dentists? That's a leading question. Deborah: I don't find lawyers more resistant, but there's a huge difference between practicing law, no matter what your practice area is, and being a networker or bringing in business. That's what lawyers have the biggest difficulty with. They will tell us, “We didn't go to law school to do sales, but you have to do sales if you want to be made partner.” One of the most difficult things when we train attorneys is to move them away from the belief that they're supposed to educate people about what they do. They need to persuade someone or a firm that it's valuable to partner with them because the attorney has their best interests at heart. Moving attorneys from being educational and informative to persuasive is the biggest difficulty we have. Sharon: That would be very hard. Part of me wants to say, “Are they still thinking they didn't go to law school to be a salesperson?” because that is what you hear all the time. They didn't go to law school to be a salesperson, and nobody taught them how to do that. Deborah: One of the things we teach attorneys is an exercise called active queuing and listening, how to delve for specifics, how to feedback what they're hearing so that, instead of promoting themselves and their firm, they're answering the questions people have and they're gaining trust. For attorneys, gaining trust is everything. We're not buying the name of their firm; we're buying that particular attorney because we need his or her influence. We need their ability to solve our problems. That's what we do when we train attorneys, but it's the same in the medical community; it's the same in IT and with engineers. It's moving people away from showing you how the sausage is made to showing you how much they enjoy and care about what they do and that they will tailor it to your needs. Sharon: That would be very difficult, but I understand. It seems so important for a professional to be able to gain that trust, like you're buying me as opposed to—I don't know; I've never worked with IT people—as opposed to an IT person who has to explain something. To me, it seems a little bit different. Am I wrong? Deborah: I don't agree. Chris Brew is our IT person. I don't need know how he fixes my computer, like today when my Google changed the password and I couldn't send out invoices. I want to know that he's available to me, that he is nonjudgmental and not going to make me feel foolish because I couldn't solve it myself, that whenever I need him he and I can communicate, and then I turn it over to him. It's the same with attorneys. You asked for three tips for attorneys to become better presenters. Here's what I thought about. Whenever attorneys speak, let's say at a conference or a TED talk or they're pitching for business, they need to always tailor their content to the audience. It sounds simple. It isn't. Two, they need to learn how to tell stories, case studies, because they could tell me all day long what their services are; it's not the same as telling me how they solved the problem for another client. Lastly, they need to put in more “I” statements. Even though they're part of a team, when we hear why a project, a case, a transaction was important to them, we start to think about how we could partner together and they would do the same for us. Those “I” statements are really important, and it's not the same as being self-aggrandizing and taking credit. It's saying what they enjoy or what they enjoy doing. Sharon: How do they figure out, or what are the questions to ask before they give a presentation to know who the audience is? Deborah: Great question. When lawyers give either a pitch or a presentation, there's always a contact person. I know when we have a new client, we'll say, “What's your goal for this training? What do you want to achieve? What are the challenges your people face? If you've hired—and this is for attorneys—a lawyer or lawyers before, what did they not do, or what did they do, that has encouraged you to find someone else?” Lawyers need to be better questioners and better listeners. Too many times lawyers will tell you the history of their firm, why they're the best and all these things that do not make us decide in their favor. Sharon: You wrote the book about how women can overcome obstacles. What obstacles are you thinking of, and how do they become engaging and memorable and fearless? Deborah: It took me nine years to write the book “Out Front.” Not only were we busy, but I wanted to share my own personal journey as a woman professional, as a woman executive, and it was hard to put that down on paper. The reason I was motivated to write the book is I have trained, coached, and spoken to hundreds, maybe now thousands of women, who are afraid to speak up, who believe that if they're not an expert, they don't deserve to speak on a topic, who will put themselves last and are afraid to do things like tell a good story or tell why they enjoyed a project. They believe if they're not an expert or perfect or if they haven't been doing the job long enough, they don't deserve to speak. That's simply not true. I help give women the confidence to find their own voice and to speak up before everyone else has spoken, because when a woman waits to speak last, she often will not be heard. I also encourage women to have mentors and other people who say, “Excuse me, I'd really like to hear what Sharon has to say now,” and to build that team and have women mentoring other women. I see women finally breaking the glass ceiling, but it still is not common and it's not easy for women. Sharon: I'm just thinking. It seems that it will be very hard to be the first person to speak out. Deborah: One of the first. You don't have to be first. Sharon: O.K., I'm one of the first. Deborah: Yes, one of the first. What I do with women is identify your intention. What do you want to come from this meeting? Is it to get a second meeting? Is it to qualify to see if it fits right if you're interviewing for a job? If it's to achieve buy-in? Keep focused on your intention no matter how much pushback you get. When you show up, when you are confident, that confidence is more important than your content, interestingly enough. The way we deliver material is worth two to three times our content, so women have to show up and be excited about what they have to say. Now, on the flip side, Sharon, women can sometimes affect negatively how they're coming across, meaning they speak in long, run-on sentences; they have an uptick at the end of a sentence like, “I believe in this,” as opposed to I believe in this.” If they're not specific about a point they want to make, people tune out; they don't listen to them. All of that is in addition to a woman being brave enough to speak up when she has something important to say. Sharon: Deborah—I'm thinking of what you used to do in terms of producing—do you think you were doing the same thing you're talking about and you got past that? I presume now you see it with other women, but did you face the same things, do you think? Deborah: That's so fascinating. As a director—well, first I started out with actors and then I directed corporate professionals. I had to read who my subject was and give them the advice that would move them past the block with the obstacle they had. I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still directing. You're absolutely right, and one size does not fit all. That's why we keep our groups small when we do a training, so that everyone is up on their feet. Nobody learns from being lectured at. You have to do an exercise, get feedback and then, if possible, do a take two in order to change behavior. I'm really happy that we have a business model that works with small groups, sales teams, executive teams, engineers that now have to do sales. These groups, these teams we work with, sometimes we'll say, “We've eloquied you. We've become a verb, and now you can coach each other; you can rehearse with each other.” Sharon: Do you think they do that? Deborah: I do. I think they absolutely practice these new skills. As soon as it gets stressful or a lot's riding on it, you will go back to the way you always did it, the way you always spoke. The most talented women I see have impostor syndrome. They have anxiety. They don't sleep the night before a presentation. They believe they're going to be outed somehow. So my job and our job—because we have other trainers as well—is to give women the confidence and the tools and the safety net, so when they forget where they are, they know how to recover. When someone interrupts them, they can get back to achieving their intention. When they have a success, we tell them focus on it; don't focus on the one thing you left out or what you consider a failure, which it wasn't. Focus on how well you did, and it will be easier the next time. Sharon: I'm thinking about board meetings, meetings with the managing partner and five other attorneys or something like that. Same principles? Deborah: Yes, you can call it communication or presentation. Whether you communicate to a board or to your team, or you want to get a promotion or interview for a job, first, that's your intention. Then have no more than three talking points. If you want to convince or persuade someone with a talking point, give an example. If you say, “Our team is very collaborative,” that's a generality. There's no evidence until you tell us when you were collaborative, when your team achieved something by counting on each other. With these kinds of tools, any woman can be successful. Sharon: I can see how giving the examples would make a big difference, as opposed to saying, “We're collaborative,” because everybody's collaborative, right? In addition, I wanted to ask you: You firm has a newsletter which I think you write, and it has come out weekly for, what, 12 years or longer? Deborah: Our newsletter, the Eloqui Tip of the Week, started 18 and a half years ago. It was because Jim Freedman from—it was then Barrington; it's now Intrepid—said, “You give so many great speaker tips. Why don't you put them out to your clients and colleagues on a regular basis?” We said, “Why not?” Sharon, we now have 5,000 readers. We have an average 27% open rate. Every Sunday morning, it comes out at 7:30 Pacific Time. It is a great marketing tool for us. I can't tell you how many people have written with a tip embedded in the bottom and have said, “It's time for me to come in and do another training,” or “I've moved to a new firm, and I want to bring Eloqui in.” We have missed—because consistency is everything—one Sunday in 18 years because the donkey died. This is my favorite story. We were on our honeymoon on the island of Lesbos. It was pretty constant contact. We had a thousand names. We went to the one internet café on the island, and we said, “We need to use your computer. Deborah's going to enter the names and send it out.” He said, “Internet closed. The donkey died.” We said, “What?” He said, “I put a harness on the donkey. It runs around in a circle. It generates electricity. That's how I have the internet working, the computers working. Donkey died. Internet closed.” I looked at David and he goes, “Don't even think about it.” So, we missed one Sunday. Sharon: I'm thinking how I would be, because you do it every weekend. I always imagine that Friday or Saturday night, you're going, “Oh, my god! I've got to go write the newsletter.” Deborah: No, my personality is such that if I waited till Friday or Saturday, it would drive me crazy. Starting after the last tip on Sunday, our ears are tuned to everything going on with our clients, with news in the world, with what we've seen or done personally, trips we've taken. Because as humans we all speak, we've somehow never had a problem of coming up with a new idea. At some point very soon, we will take either 500 or 750 tips, organize them in categories like managing anxiety, telling a good story, engaging an audience, and we will publish a book with those special tips. Sharon: That would be a great book. It's already written in many ways. Deborah: Yes. Sharon: I'm sure firms ask you, “What do I need to do?” Our experience is that they can manage one newsletter a quarter for three quarters and then it dies. What are your secrets to success in the newsletter? Deborah: First of all, you have to make it readable in under a minute. People have no attention. A lot of white space, short paragraphs. Here, too, you're persuading; you're not educating. You're telling stories. That's why the tip also has a word and a quote. I have some people that say, “I never read your tips, but I read the word every week, and I forward it to my kids in high school who could use a better vocabulary.” Then you have to make it consistent, whether it's quarterly, whether it's a bi-monthly. Ours we can do every Sunday, but most people can't. Make people count on it and look forward to it, and always tailor it to what your clients' needs are. You notice we never in our tips talk about how wonderful Eloqui is or who our clients are, except at the very bottom we just list them. I started to add a testimonial every week or every other week if I could, because I believe people hire you when they see the experience that somebody else has had. We put our tip on both our websites, Eloqui.biz and OutFront.biz, so there's a conversation people can join and say what their experience has been. They know they can count on us, which is the same in business, Sharon. You always, in my opinion, have to have a value-add. The tip is a value-add. If someone's trained with us or I've coached them, they can contact me anytime for 20 years and won't be charged if they have a presentation coming up and need to know if their opening works, or they can't figure out what their intention is. That way we never advertise. It's all word-of-mouth referral. The training we had last week in New Jersey—I didn't realize this until we talked to our contact who brought us in—he said, “There are two people in this room who did a training with you eight years ago, and when we were looking for someone to teach our IT managers better communication skills, they said, ‘See if Eloqui's available.'” You can't buy that kind of advertising. Sharon: No, you're right. Deborah, I'm backing up here, but did you start out as an actor? Did you know you wanted to go into communication? How did that happen? Deborah: David was an actor and a theatre director. I hated and I was terrible at any kind of acting. In fact, I had the anxiety our women clients face. If I knew I had to stand up and talk about my production company, for weeks I didn't sleep the night before. But I have been a director and a producer, and many of the modules we train with, David knew them from being a performer, and then I translated them into modules that were trainable. Again, no one learns from being lectured at; you have to get up on your feet and do it. So, we have a module in our longer training. In Santa Fe, we do an emergent workshop over two days. We work on how to open, how to close, how to tell a story, how to pick a role like a seasoned veteran and motivator. Because if you don't use it, you lose it, they have to take all those skills overnight, and first thing the next morning they do a make-or-break presentation using those skills. So, I'm still directing. After that, we do more fun things: how to read your audience, how to move in a space, how to rehearse to keep it fresh, because the bar is so low for great speakers. If you do one thing well, like a great open or a great close, the audience is so appreciative. They're so bored to death with PowerPoint and boring presentations and presenters who are bored with their own presentations. Sharon: You said you do keynotes, then. Deborah: Yes. Sharon: Do you get nervous before those?  Do you agonize over, “Oh my gosh, how do I say it,” or “I don't want to bore them”? Deborah: I used to get terribly nervous, but then when I wrote “Out Front,” I went on a speaking tour of Vistage and ProVisors and other groups of women, and I had to take my own advice. Now, Sharon, I look forward to keynotes because I love being able to change women's lives. If I can do that and give them confidence—and I'll bring up volunteers. Even when I was at CUNA Mutual a couple of years ago and there were 1,000 people virtually calling in and 500 in the audience, I still brought up volunteers, or I would volunteer people, and I worked with them on their material. It is so satisfying. It's one of the things I enjoy most now. So, I know you can go from being anxiety-ridden to enjoying the process. Sharon: Would you say that's true because you are talking with women's groups, or do you feel the same about talking with the general business population? Deborah: We do speak a lot to the general business population, but I personally have a love of encouraging, supporting and advocating for women professionals. In fact, with groups of young women in high school and college, when they reach out to me and I do a webinar or an in-person talk, I not only volunteer my time, I make sure every young woman has a copy of my book. Sharon: Wow! I'm going to go back to the word fearless in your title. You talked about women. How do presenters, how do lawyers become fearless presenters? Deborah: First of all, most people are still following a 1950s template for how to be a great speaker: gesturing a certain way, telling a joke at the beginning, telling the audience, telling them again, telling them again, that old mantra. That doesn't fit who we are. In order to be fearless, you need to find your voice, what's important to you and speak about it. Let us know why you enjoy marketing, why you enjoy IT, what failures you had, what setbacks you had and how you turned them around. I also wrote an article recently about immigrants. Five, seven years ago, about 80% of our clients were white males. Now, 70% to 80% of our clients are either first-generation, people born in another country, or women who are now in a position of power. When I give these women support, I tell them their accent is a plus, not a minus; that what they've overcome by coming to this country or going to school or learning English as a second language is to be admired and is something that the audience they're speaking to will appreciate. They don't have to hide it. So many women, Sharon, were taught by fathers in Afghanistan, Iran, Japan that women should be seen, not heard. I have to change that, and that's a thing that gives me the greatest satisfaction. Sharon: That's not easy to do. Deborah, thank you so much. This was very interesting. Good, good tips. I hope everybody takes them to heart. I'll just throw this in. I've taken some of your trainings and I found them very helpful and effective. It's been a while, but I would highly recommend them. That's my testimonial. Thank you so much, Deborah. We appreciate it. Great to have you. Deborah: Thank you, Sharon. You ask great questions.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why offering a flexible work environment is the best thing a company can do to entice talent Why the “Great Resignation” isn't necessarily due to younger workers quitting What interview questions to ask to see behind a candidate's rehearsed answers When employers should look past red flags to hire a candidate with potential Why references are not as valuable as they once were About Diane Braverman  Diane has more than 20 years of corporate human resources experience assisting businesses with varying human resource needs. She is the founder of YourHRedge, a human resources consulting company with expertise in developing robust infrastructures, crafting comprehensive policies and procedures, employee handbook and spearheading special projects to secure continuous improvement. Diane's professional experience spans a broad range of industries – automotive parts and products, venture capital, hospital, marketing and public relations, architectural, real estate and more. Her professional experience is complemented by her undergraduate in business, certifications in human resources management and strengthened by specialty training in emotional intelligence and targeted selection (behavioral based interviewing). Prior to founding YourHRedge, Diane was appointed as an operations manager for a start-up nonprofit organization to establish infrastructures achieving the goal of becoming fully operational. Additional projects included writing company policies, creating job descriptions, designing a performance management process (performance review, performance development and performance improvement). Diane has also served for six years as a hands-on board member for a non-profit organization. As a board member, Diane played a key role in the successful merger of two local non-profit organizations with similar program and services. Succeeded in establishing a new functional organizational structure with enhanced and expanded programs, identified staffing deficiencies and opportunities, developed job descriptions, implemented pay increases for equity and consistency, and crafted a series of communications to help acclimate employees to their new work environment. Additional Resources Diane Braverman LinkedIn Transcript: Like many other industries, professional services firms are struggling to find and retain qualified candidates in the wake of the “Great Resignation.” It's a challenging hiring market, but that doesn't mean employers are totally out of luck. Recruiter Diane Braverman has helped numerous professional services firms find the right talent, even when it seemed like a qualified candidate would never appear. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about what employers need to change to attract and keep top talent; why a flexible work environment became job seekers' number one request; and why sometimes companies should take a chance on an imperfect candidate. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today I am pleased to welcome Diane Braverman. Diane is a recruiter who's successful not only because of her personality, which facilitates understanding people, but also because she puts the experience and knowledge she gained in the corporate world to work, which enables her to see her clients' perspectives from both sides of the desk. As we know, recruiting employees is one of the biggest challenges employers face, and recruiting candidates who have the characteristics for their positions is even more of a challenge. Today, Diane is going to tell us about her journey and give us tips about what we need to know about recruiting. Diane, welcome to the program. Diane:   Hello, Sharon. Thank you. It's nice to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your background and how you got into recruiting. Diane:   Certainly. I have been in the human resources space for over 20 years in large corporations, and my expertise ranges primarily in employee relations. I did performance management, performance improvement, HR processes and talent acquisition. Over the past four years, recruitment has been the most requested service. Sharon: We'll talk more about that. It's been such a challenge for everyone, for all employers. Tell us about what you do as a recruiter. Do you get calls from people? How does that work? Diane:   Basically, what I do is speak to the management of the firm—if it's a law firm, I'll speak to the managing partner—and I try to get an understanding of not only the position they're looking for, but I also want to know about the culture of the company. I need to understand all the details of the job, if in fact the responsibilities are exactly what they want. I talk about qualifications, education and the culture, which is really their shared set of values, their goals, their attitudes, their practices. That gives me a better understanding of finding that organizational fit. Sharon: When you ask about culture, what kinds of things do they say? I wouldn't even know how to answer that. Diane:   For some culture, I would talk about management style. Are they a hands-on employer, meaning they need direct oversight? Do they let their staff function autonomously? Do they come to them when they really need assistance? Is it a collaborative environment, so working in teams versus working in silos? Things like that can determine what kind of culture it is and if it's a high-stress type of job, too. Sharon: When I think of culture, I also think of whether it's collaborative, like you mentioned. Do they go on picnics together? Do they have Christmas dinners or holiday dinners, or is it “That's it; you come to work”? Diane:   Unfortunately, in most cases it's work, but I would say individual departments may do a lunch together for a camaraderie event. Sometimes doing it corporate-wide is more difficult. For managers of their particular group or department, it's a little easier to get together and do those kinds of events. Basically, it's team building. It's getting to talk to each other, interact with each other separate from business, and that really goes a long way. Sharon: I bet it does; it's just hard to do those kinds of things when you're meeting with the big poobah. They may say one thing, but the people working for them may say it's something totally different. Diane:   Yeah, and if you have all the top executives attend, staff employees may feel a little intimidated. There's that. You want them to feel relaxed and be able to freely engage. I know sometimes executives can pose a different dynamic when they're with the group. So, I think it's nice to do it with small departments. Sharon: It must be very different today after Covid. Talking about professional service firms, law firms, CPA firms, even marketing firms, what do they have to offer today in order to entice people? Diane:   What I've noticed lately—this is post-Covid—it's a very different talent pool right now. It's a very different attitude. I think the number one commodity an employer needs to address is a flexible work environment. Too many people have gotten accustomed to working at home and they like it. It's cost-effective for them; they get more work done. So, I think that is a consideration. While I understand there are some positions you just can't work remotely, if that's the case, maybe try to create a hybrid. You're in the office three days; you can go home for two days. That's one thing I've noticed. I've even talked to candidates who will say, “No, I want completely remote.” If the employer cannot accommodate, then you move on to somebody who can. Sharon: What really surprised me, and what shows how the world has changed, is when I've been looking at law firm marketing positions with large firms, five years ago, before Covid, they never would have entertained a remote person. Now the position describes, “This is a hybrid position for two days” or whenever. It's like, “Wow, that's fabulous!” Diane:   It's a great opportunity to have that. I interviewed a couple of attorneys for a client, and they did ask if there is any flexibility. One of them mentioned it to me, and I thought her explanation was very good. She said, “It's about being efficient. I could spend an hour in the car driving to work, or I can time my commute, work early in the morning, make my preparations for trial or whatever I have going on, and then when the traffic slows down, I can commute and get there more reasonably.” So, it may not be totally working from home but adjusting their hours. I think employers have to be flexible. That's number one.  Number two, I think a lot of companies need to recognize that they need to treat all their employees with respect and consideration in giving them feedback and treating them like you're glad they're working for you. That's a big thing, too, that I hear. Sharon: Do you find resistance among management or partners, or people who will just say no? In terms of culture, do they say, “No, I need my people at their desks. I need to see them.” Is there some resistance? Diane:   Yes. There's a lot to be said for being at your workstation and doing your work. Attorneys are very busy, and it's not that they don't want to take the time. It's just that a lot of time, they don't have the time. Let's talk about recruitment and time. When I talk to potential employers, especially a law firm, I say, “You've got to be engaged in this recruitment process, because if I send you a candidate I think is a good fit and you're too busy, that candidate is gone.” I have a current client that lost a couple of really great candidates. They just couldn't give the attention. That's something I try to talk about on the front end, their commitment to following up with candidates, because they have multiple offers on the table, which is indicative of what's going on today. Sharon: I read in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal another article about the “Great Resignation.” Diane:   It's interesting; you would think the “Great Resignation” would be that people are resigning. Not necessarily. I think a lot of people are staying put because they're insecure about moving on, but we also have the baby boomer generation leaving their positions. They're retiring, and it's hard to replace those positions so there's that big gap. Replacing them requires having the years of knowledge that this generation acquired working in these organization. Sharon: The history, yes, you can't replace that. I'm thinking about the fact that we often said to departing employees, “We will be calling you because you know what we did last year for this,” and you lose all of that. There are things that just can't be replaced with a new person. As good as a new employee is, you can't replace that stuff. Diane:   It's not good or bad; it's just different. Employers need to be really nimble at making those adjustments. It's a whole new generation of workforce coming in. They're highly technical. They like their technology, and employers need to make sure they have technology in their organization for a workgroup to function well and be successful. Sharon: It seems there would be younger managers now coming on who are not so—maybe baby boomers have retired, and the new managers get it in the sense that they understand they need the latest version of Microsoft. Diane:   The generations that are in the workforce now, they want the latest technology because they've been working with it. It would slow them down to have anything less than that. Technology is getting stronger and stronger, and staying current is a challenge. Sharon: It is for anybody. It is amazing in terms of how fast it changes. Everybody puts their best foot forward when you go for an interview. How do you get behind that façade? I always feel like it's a façade. How do you get behind it? How do you see the other side? Do you ask questions?  Diane:   You're saying what do candidates need to do to prove themselves? Sharon: No, what do recruiters need to do? If I'm going for an interview, I'm going to show you my best side and say, “Yeah, I can do this job, no problem.” How do you get behind that? How do you penetrate that, I guess is the word? Diane:   You're saying that candidates are very good at interviewing and they're well-rehearsed. Sharon: Yes. Diane:   There are a couple of ways you can try to challenge that. When you have interviews, you need one person to look at their résumé and challenge them on their work experience, why they left, what they did, their skillset, all the information that's on their résumé. Then, there should be another group of people—maybe one or two, not a lot—who talk about something different, because if you keep asking the same questions from one person, you're going to get the same answer. It would be important to determine what competencies would be best suited for a particular position. Is it decision-making? Is it leadership? Is it adaptability? Ask questions around those competencies so they don't get so well-rehearsed around their résumés. In this way, you can really hone in on who they are. Sharon: That's a good idea, the unusual question. What's your role in terms of what I call “playing the numbers”? You're going to LinkedIn, and you have people saying, “Call me.” Besides saying, “Are you interested? Can I talk to you? Do you have any interest in hearing about this?” what are the other things you ask before you turn somebody over? Diane:   At the first initial screening, I look for deal breakers. In a phone interview you can only garner so much information. So, I listen to how they communicate, number one. I do challenge them on their résumé. If there are inconsistencies and they can't discuss what's on their résumé, that's a red flag for me. If they talk too much and can't really answer the question, and you ask a follow-up question and they still can't, that's another red flag. One of the big things I notice, I ask them, “Did you research the company? Do you know the company you're applying for?” If they say no, it puts them at a disadvantage, because they've already shown me they're not interested enough to prepare for an interview. Sharon: Do you make a note on the résumé you're going to pass on—I'm thinking of paper, but let's say it's an email—do you say, “This seemed like a good candidate who has the qualifications, but here are my red flags”? Diane:   Well, if there are too many red flags, I don't even push them forward. I take notes during the interview, and usually the interview is 20 minutes; it could be half an hour long. If there are some flags, I will note them. For example, there was this one attorney I interviewed. I thought this candidate was fabulous, great skills, great communication skills. We were almost done, and she said, “I just need to disclose this.” About six years before, she was going through a divorce. She got caught in a DUI and they suspended her license for a month, but she's back practicing. She explained, “That was a different part of my life. I'm in a much better place, and I just want you to know that.” I sent her forward to the second interview, and the law firm still wanted to meet with her. In that case, you give people the consideration that, yes, we all make mistakes. She had a good response on where she was at, and it was the fact that she was honest. Sharon: I was going ask you, did she win brownie points because she told you that right up front? Diane:   No, it was at the end of the interview. Sharon: But before you passed her? Diane:   No, we would have found out anyways. When you do a background check, if you don't disclose it on the front end, own it and talk through it versus getting to the second interview, they make you a job offer, then they find this. That doesn't look good, and that would tend to make an employer say, “You know what? She had the opportunity to talk about this and she didn't disclose it.” Sharon: Yeah, those surprises are not what you want, but it seems that something like that would be—if it was six years ago, it could be different. Diane:   Today, Sharon, running a criminal record is not allowed, at least in California. A lot of states are subscribing to that. It's a double-edged sword. The fact that they disclose it voluntarily, I have respect for that. Then I let the employer decide from that point on where they want to go. If somebody was embezzling, I wouldn't hire them in the finance department. Sharon: If I'm considering a potential employee, what should I ask, or what do I want to know before I get into something? Diane:   First, talk about the culture and see if it's a consistent message. I'm sure this candidate is going to talk to more than one person, so make sure the people that are interviewing this person have a consistent communication about the culture. I would ask how performance is evaluated. How will my performance be evaluated? What are opportunities for growth? Is there growth in this position for me, and if there is, what are the steps? You and I know about career ladders and how important they are. To have a formal career ladder, I think, sends the message to an employee that this is a place they can grow. One of the biggest reasons why people leave employers that I have heard lately—mind you, there's a whole list of reasons why people leave—but one of them is lack of opportunity. So, asking those questions about opportunity is very helpful to retain a candidate. Sharon: Lack of opportunity, I can see that being a big one. Or saying there is opportunity, but when you get into the position, you find out that the last person spent 20 years here before they died, and then there was opening. Diane:   That's right. That's why as a recruiter, you need to be honest. You want not only the company to find the right candidate, but you want the candidate to find the right company. Being honest, placing a body just to get somebody is not doing your job. As much as you want to place somebody at the company, you want to place the right person, because recruitment is very costly. Sharon: Yes. Diane:   It's become more costly. Then there's a whole other set of things companies can do to retain them. Getting them in the door is one thing. When I talk about new hires, I always try to encourage employees to have a solid onboarding program, which can be 30 to 90 days. Actually, onboarding starts with recruitment. You really need to court these candidates because they have many people seeking them. So, you court them. You have effective onboarding. There should be a mentorship program. Once an employee comes on board, there should be somebody assigned to them to help them navigate through the internal processes, what's required to make them feel comfortable. It really gets them to be acclimated quicker. Then there's compensation and those other incentives, but that's more of a recruitment tool than anything else. Sharon: Do you think employers are paying more attention now post-Covid or because employees are so hard to find? Diane:   They're very hard to find. I am seeing that when I post positions on a variety of sites, I used to get inundated with résumés. Literally hundreds would come in, and a lot of them were qualified. Now, less than a third of the résumés are coming in. A lot of them, I don't even know if they read the job description; they're just applying randomly and they're not qualified. When I finally get a good candidate, they will say, “I'm on my second interview with two other companies.” The competition is tough. Sharon: I know it's been tough with lawyers. Do you see it being tougher with any particular profession? Diane:   I know the professional services are struggling big time with recruiting paralegals and lawyers. I'm having a hard time finding those types of folks who have three to five years' experience in whatever the law firm specializes in. If a law firm specializes in litigation and I end up with contract lawyers, that's not what they want. They want people who know how to litigate. It's a strange market. I've had clients say, “You know what? Just take down the postings for now because nothing's coming in.” I get it. I wish I could get them more, but there's nothing out there to help them. I talk about trying to provide incentives in terms of offering flexible time, generous paid time off, parental leave, things like that. That resonates with the younger generation, having that work/life balance. If you tout that, you can maybe attract more. Sharon: My understanding is you do both. You sift through the résumés and contact the qualified candidates, but you also look at LinkedIn or Monster or Craigslist, whatever. Diane:   There's a whole other subset of recruitment, and it is something I typically don't do, and that is passive recruiting. Passive recruiting requires you to search Facebook, Instagram, all these social media sites and literally invite people who are not even looking for jobs to apply. It takes a whole other subset of skills and time to do passive recruiting. There are some recruiting organizations—let's say they work for law firms. They know the people; they even know their org charts. Let's say they need an associate attorney. They locate an attorney at law firm A and call them to see if they're interested or if they are happy in their current job. They ask, “Would you be interested?” That's a whole other subset. Sharon: But you raised a good point. If you're doing more active recruiting—I mean, everything's active, but if you are responding, let's say, do you check references as part of your process? Diane:   I do not. That is up to the organization, the company, because there is a waiver all new hires need to sign giving permission to conduct background checks. I don't get involved. That's more of an internal company process. Sharon: What is your belief about references? Do you think people just call their former best friends? Diane:   I think they do. A lot of people don't even have current references because they move a lot, and they don't even know where their last manager works or where they are. I don't think references are valuable anymore. They used to be. It used to be a very integral part of the recruitment process, but I don't think it is now. If you can find a legitimate former manager of an employee, that's different. Managers and prior employers are instructed legally to just give basic information. Sharon: I was thinking that, yeah. You can't say anything. Nobody can say anything because you're going to get sued. Do you find that employers are looking at a person's social media? What should we know about that? Diane:   I think people need to be very careful about what they put on social media. For example, the candidate was ready to be hired, and one of the staff members at this organization decided to look at her Instagram account. She presented herself not only unprofessionally, but it was questionable. They never made her the offer based on that. So, I always caution, especially when I worked in the corporate world, the information you put out on social media is there forever. You need to be very careful. This is representing you, and many employers will check Facebook accounts. Sharon: I'm thinking of the fact that there are professionals I work with who have two Instagrams, and they won't tell me the other one. I don't want to know, but if someone wants to put a picture of himself that they wouldn't want their employer to be looking at, O.K., fine. What about that? And then they have their more professional one. Diane:   With social media, you can access anything. So, if you are in the market looking for a new job, I would be very mindful of what you put out there on social media. It's just a rule of thumb. In the corporate world, I used to give advice to be careful what you put in emails because it's all discoverable and traceable. It will bite you at the end of the day if you're putting something out there that is inappropriate. Sharon: Yes. We all think about that when, “Yeah, I'd rather make a phone call.” Diane:   Yes. If there is something really sensitive to talk about, don't put it in an email. Just say, “Listen, let's talk about it.” Sharon: My last question: Do you find that employers—I'm thinking of lawyers because I know it's such a difficult or a tight market in general, but it could be CPAs, financial people—are they willing to say, “O.K., I can't find the right litigator, but I'll take that contract lawyer who I really liked and teach them what they need to know”? Diane:   That's a great point. Just recently we were looking for a certain position and a superstar came through. She was fabulous; she was above and beyond the job I was recruiting for. I called the partner and said, “Is there a position for her? She's someone who is so capable,” and he hired her in a heartbeat. Sharon: Wow! Diane:   The good news is he recognizes that talent is hard to find, and when you see it, you need to act on it. Get them engaged with the employer, develop a position and say, “Listen, this is the position today, but we have opportunities for you that we see.” I think people are excited about that. Sharon: Yes, that's a very good point. It's the talent. It doesn't matter if somebody went to Harvard or they went to a trade tech. If they're talented, you can't teach certain things. Diane:   That's right. Especially if they communicate well, they have that emotional intelligence, that social skillset, they're smart, they're willing to learn, they have enthusiasm, I'll take that any day, because there are many skills you can learn. Obviously, there are some credentials that are required for some positions, but the rest is what the person brings to the table. Sharon: Yeah, I think that's the bottom line. Diane:   That's the bottom line. Sharon: Diane, thank you so much for being here today. It's always interesting to hear about the market and what we should be thinking about as an employer and an employee. Thank you very much. We greatly appreciate it. Diane:   Thank you Sharon. It was nice to be here.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why the pandemic inspired Evon and Lori to write their book, “Ready-Made Marketing” Why it's a misconception that marketing has to be expensive and time-consuming How Evon and Lori vetted the technology resources recommended in the book Why so many small businesses struggle with marketing How to access automation tools to make marketing easier About Evon Rosen Evon is a strategic and creative marketing professional specializing in financial and legal services, healthcare, and real estate. Her highly-creative and fresh ideas help develop brands, increase market share, facilitate client retention, and improve processes. Evon has held executive marketing positions at both public and privately held companies that include City National Bank, First Federal Bank of California, Celtic Capital Corporation and the Peak Corporate Network. Evon is the first two-time recipient of the Commercial Finance Association's Essay Award and has had numerous articles and white papers published. She was a featured speaker at L.A. Direct Marketing Day, and received the U.S. Festival Association Award for Creative Excellence. She received both her undergraduate degree and California Teaching Credential from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). About Lori Berson For over 20 years Lori has developed break-through strategies effectively integrating marketing automation, demand generation, sales enablement, branding, interactive media, advertising, email, social media, print, outdoor, video, events, and promotions, for many of the country's leading marketers, including Anthem, Charles Schwab, Disney, Dole, Lexus, Seinfeld, and Coldwell Banker. Her remarkable business acumen, creative talents, and knowledge of emerging technologies have contributed to the success of these organizations and more. Lori began her career at a variety of advertising agencies, including Diener, Hauser, Bates, Needham, Harper and Steers, and Asher/Gould. She established the in-house creative department (servicing the automotive industry) at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Lori then went on to create advertising for the major studios (Paramount, Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers), entertainment public relations firms, and celebrity management companies, at The Hollywood Reporter, and designed for Seinfeld, Lilo and Stitch, Oprah, The Wheel of Fortune, Entertainment Tonight, The Disney Channel, Cheers, Family Ties, Fantasy Island, Beethoven, Charlton Heston, Shirley Jones, and Martin Sheen. As a member of the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Art Center College of Design (her alma maters), Lori teaches Advertising Concepts, Design, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, Landing Page Design, and How to Manage a Photo Shoot. Photos: Additional Resources: Lori Berson LinkedIn: Lori Berson BersonDeanStevens LinkedIn: BersonDeanStevens Evon Rosen LinkedIn: Evon Rosen Ready-Made Marketing Transcript: The pandemic may have left many small businesses with limited marketing support and budgets, but that doesn't mean marketing is out of reach. That's what marketing experts Evon Rosen and Lori Berson wanted to prove with their new book, “Ready-Made Marketing For Business Owners, Business Professionals and Independent Contractors.” The book features hundreds of templates and technology recommendations that professionals with little time and budget can easily leverage for immediate results. Evon and Lori joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about their motivations to write “Ready-Made Marketing”; how to use the book effectively; and why even professionals with no marketing experience should learn how to market their businesses. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, we're talking with Evon Rosen and Lori Berson, coauthors of the recent book, “Ready-Made Marketing For Business Owners, Business Professionals and Independent Contractors.” They are marketing experts and have worked with businesses in a range of industries, including law, and have helped their clients grow their brands, increase market share, facilitate client retention and, most importantly, increase profits. Today, we're going to hear more about their book and how it can help all of us be better marketers. Evon and Lori, welcome to the program. Evon:     Thank you, Sharon. It's so nice to be here. Sharon: So glad to have both of you. First of all, I want to know how you ended up where you are. Evon, why don't you go first? What was your career path? How did you end up working in marketing for a variety of different industries and professions? Evon:     My career in marketing has been focused on business development. I've been helping companies and business professionals in financial and legal services, as you said, as well as healthcare and real estate to develop and enhance their brands, grow market share and increase profits. I started in marketing research, and I moved into product management along the way. Then for 20 years, I helped senior and executive-level positions in both public and private firms. One of my longest stints was with City National Bank, where I created the brand positioning “The Way Up.” The bank is still using that today, I'm happy to say. Sharon: Did you develop that? Evon:     Yes. Sharon: Oh, wow! Evon:     It started off with a blue ladder. It's now a white ladder, but it's “The Way Up” campaign they've been using for many, many years. Sharon: Yes, for a long time. I forgot that's where we first met. I totally forgot about that. Evon:     Yeah, that is where we first met. I think you introduced me to Lori at that time. That's how Lori and I met. Sharon: I first want to ask you, Evon, what did you study? What would you recommend that people study? Lori, the same question when we get to your background. What would you recommend people study for marketing? Evon:     It's interesting; I studied sociology and I got a teaching credential, both from UCLA. I think what was so great about both of those areas in terms of marketing is that sociology is all about people and all about behavior, and that's basically what marketing is about too. Teaching helped me focus on being up in front of a group, being able to write business plans and marketing plans and things like that. It all works to help in marketing. Sharon: Lori, what was your path? Lori:       I actually started my marketing career over 23 years ago. I've been creating revenue-generating strategies in branding, demand generation, advertising, interactive media, email, social media, print, outdoor—a myriad of things, including sales and marketing automation, for many of the country's industry leaders in consumer package goods, financial and professional services. Some of those companies include Anthem, Charles Schwab, Dole Food Company, Fisher Investments. That was in addition to working for entertainment clients like Seinfeld. I did it for many, many years. Actually, I started in entertainment. I've also had the pleasure of teaching advertising and marketing at UCLA, and email marketing and video marketing at Art Center College of Design, which are my two alma maters. To answer your question about what I studied, I started studying in the design area, graphic design. From there, it morphed into more of the marketing side. A lot of it comes from not only from the college education, but from when I was very young and did internships, and from taking online courses throughout the years and then teaching. Like Evon said, that teaches you a lot as well. I'd also say what's really important these days is to continue learning and to stay up to date, especially with the rapid change of what's going on with new technologies. Now it's NFTs and crypto and Web 3. There are so many exciting things happening that it's important to stay up to date continually and to keep learning. Sharon: I didn't know there was a Web 3. Lori:       We're in Web 2 now, but Web 3 is the metaverse. Sharon: Oh, O.K. Lori, you have your own company; it's Berson Dean Stevens, correct? Lori:       Correct. Sharon: Evon, you're independent, and you also work with Lori a lot. You both started in traditional marketing. How did you segue into marketing automation and video? How does one do that? Lori:       That is a great question, Sharon. I remember about seven or eight years ago—I always like to keep up with technology. That's part of what we offer in the book, a lot of technology resources, which we'll get into. But as I was looking at things, I thought, “O.K., what seems to be the trend? What is important to learn going forward?” So, I dove in around 2013, 2014 and started learning. I got together with one of the first animation software companies and learned as I did it and got clients involved. It was all very new, and we all jumped in and learned as we did it. Sharon: There's so much to learn. Evon, you were going to add? Evon:     It's kind of the same for me. When I was with many companies in a senior position, I had a staff. I had a lot of people working for me that had a lot of the tools and knowledge that I didn't, so we would all jump in and do things together. As Lori said, marketing evolved, and we had to evolve with it. Sharon: There's so much to learn when you say to keep up with what's going on. Lori:       It's overwhelming. Sharon: Yeah, it is overwhelming. That's a word for it. Evon, you and Lori wrote the book. What was your impetus? To me, there are a million and one books on marketing and how to market, and there are a million and one podcasts. What was your impetus for writing the book? Evon:     The original idea came out of Covid, because during the worst of the pandemic, as you know, firms were forced into doing new ways of business. Everybody started working remotely. In-person meetings were no longer an option. It was unfamiliar territory for everyone, and a primary concern for both firms and their clients was financial. Cost-cutting led to layoffs and people quitting, which left many professional firms and professionals with no internal marketing support and no budget to hire external expertise. Lori and I had seen so many people struggling with how to reenergize their businesses and jumpstart sales, so we wanted to make marketing accessible and help people bounce back from Covid setbacks. You're right, Sharon, there are a million and one marketing books out there. Most of them deal with developing business or marketing plans, or they're specific to using social media as a marketing tool, or they speak to building brands. They're planning oriented. We wanted to write something that was action oriented, which is exactly what “Ready-Made Marketing” is. It provides the words and the tools to enable business professionals to start marketing themselves immediately. It addresses an unmet need that the business community has, and I'm happy to say it's resonating. Sharon: It's quite a successful book, and it's a very hands-on book. Evon:     Mm-hm. Sharon: Lori, tell us how the book was constructed. How did you write this book? What was in mind when you wrote it? Lori:       “Ready-Made Marketing” was constructed in two sections. The first part includes over 70 customizable email and video templates and scripts that can be used in a variety of business situations. It also includes step-by-step instructions and screenshots for using proven and effective marketing tactics like LinkedIn, podcasts, webinars, video and text messaging, just to name a few. The second section of the book is where we've included over 400 technology resources that are free or affordably priced. This was key because we wanted it to be not only simple, but cost-effective for people to be able to use. All of the technology resources have been vetted, and we have the top two in each category, which are our recommended options. The bottom line is that we wrote the book to be handy and easy to use, with everything laid out so you could quickly get to what you need, when you need it. It starts with a chart that is entitled “How to Use this Book.” If you want to write a sales email, you go to the customizable templates. If you want to host a webinar, there are ideas to develop content and step-by-step instructions for production. Basically, the book takes the guesswork out of marketing. Sharon: It's a very up-to-date book. Lori:       Yes. Sharon: It sounds very different from so many marketing books with everything you're talking about, the video and podcasting and all of that. You don't find that in many traditional marketing books. When you say you've vetted the resources, how did you vet them? Evon:     I've researched and used all of the resources with clients. Both Evon and I have used all of the resources, whether it's both of us or one of us separately, with clients. Sharon: So, they're tried and true. Evon:     Exactly. Sharon: That's great. Evon, it seems that the teacher always learns something from the student. Tell me what you learned from writing this book about marketing, things you didn't think of before. Evon:     It's interesting because I was thinking about that, and I think the difference is no other books are like “Ready-Made Marketing.” You can hit the ground running with this book, and that was our goal: to use marketing to help people generate sales as fast as possible. That can be done. Marketing doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be a time suck. It can be done relatively easily. Not everything, but there are things you can do to jumpstart your business, and that was great for people to see. What I learned is not so much about the book or marketing itself, but the impact the book has had. When I hear from business professionals and read the amazing reviews on Amazon, it's heartwarming to see how appreciative people are. They have something that's really made a difference in bouncing back from the pandemic and beyond. Even if a business didn't take a big hit, they love the fact that they can do so much marketing themselves without spending a lot of money. In fact, the book has a testimonial from an attorney who says it's a game changer. That's amazing to hear. Sharon: It sounds very gratifying. Do you think the book would have had the same impact if we weren't coming out of the pandemic? Evon:     I'm not sure the book would have been written had there not been a pandemic. Sharon: O.K., that's a good point. Evon:     We're hired for our marketing expertise. Marketing is a lot more than what's in the book, but the book is a wonderful place for people who need to do some marketing who don't have a budget, who don't have a lot of time, but still need to get sales and have their brands out there. That's what this book does. We were happy to make it something that people can use themselves. Sharon: Lori, what do you think you learned from writing the book? Lori:       I learned that I didn't realize the need out there. From talking to other business owners and even from some of the testimonials and reviews that Evon mentioned, a lot of people don't know where to go to find information on how to market themselves. They don't have the time. It feels very onerous to a lot of businesspeople and professionals. They're focusing on their business, so they don't have time to get into the growth of it as much as they should. They're going along with a certain amount of clientele, but we all need to grow business to stay alive. I was quite amazed at the response to the book and to the tools that we presented, how people have said it's made their lives so much easier. We knew there was need, but we never realized how much of a need and how broad-based it is. Sharon: It seems there'd be such a demand for something like this. This is for both Evon and Lori. Do you think people were skeptical when you said this book is going to be a hands-on, how-to book? Do you think people said, “Yeah, tell me about it”? Lori:       I'll take that to start. I think people were confused a little bit, because typically what they see is the strategy and planning, which doesn't get to what they need as quickly as possible. Granted, strategy and planning are important. But I think it's so new and so different from what they've seen from other books that it was a little bit confusing. Then, once they got into it, they thought, “My god, this is so easy. It's super simple.” Evon:     I didn't think that people were particularly skeptical. I think what's interesting is that many people don't really understand what marketing is or what they can do themselves. I think when they started looking at the book and saw what was in there, it was more of a revelation, like, “Oh, my gosh, I can do this, and it's right there. This is what marketing is. That's great.” Sharon: Looking through reviews on Amazon—it is on Amazon, and the reviews are glowing. Something interesting to me is that it's on Kindle also. There's a Kindle version, which I was surprised to see. Is that something you thought about or planned for when you were writing this? Evon:     We did. We wanted to do the different versions, the Kindle version, the hardcover, the paperback. We wanted to make it accessible to anybody's needs. However they access it, we want them to have it. Sharon: It's widely available, it seems. Lori, who was your target market for the book as you were writing it? Lori:       The target market is business professionals and their firms, other small businesses, independent contractors, people with limited or no marketing expertise and those with no marketing staff or, as Evon mentioned earlier, those with limited or no marketing budget, which we find is a majority of the small businesses out there. Also, we found out that people who have some marketing experience are especially appreciative because of the distillation of those 400 technology resources in the book. Working with other marketing professionals, I found that they may know a couple of the really well-known technology resources, but many times those can be super expensive. One of our primary focuses was to get stuff as much for free as possible in addition to really inexpensive technology resources, something like $5 a month and at most $15 a month, to give them some of those automation capabilities to help them save time and focus more on their business. Basically, “Ready-Made Marketing” is perfect for anyone looking to start or enhance their marketing, whether they have no experience or they do have some but need extra resources. Sharon: I was thinking about the fact that in marketing today, even more than 20 years ago, you have to be an expert in a certain area. What you wrote is more broad-based as opposed to, “I'm a web developer” or “I'm an SEO expert” or “I do videos.” Do you think people embrace that, or did they say, “I got to find somebody else,” meaning, “I've got to find an SEO person for my SEO”? Lori:       I think it's a little bit of both. In this particular case, because we're focusing on people that don't have expertise, we wanted to give them tools to be able to do some of the basic stuff themselves. There's always going to be a need to hire because you're right; everything is very specialized. There are agencies that just work on each of those sections. They're going to want to eventually hire those people once they get the budget and once they get to that level. But as a starting point, this gives them some basic things and demystifies a lot of it so they can decide, based on what we give them, “O.K., I want to focus on SEO. Maybe I'll go hire an SEO agency,” or “Webinars are going to generate a lot of leads. I've got the tools to be able to do that on my own for very low cost. Once I get to a certain level, then I can bring in some of the specialists with more expertise.” Sharon: It sounds like a great resource. Evon, if I'm an independent lawyer alone in my office and I don't have a marketing staff or a marketing professional to advise me, how should I use this book? I envision tearing it apart and copying the templates. How would you say we should use it? Evon:     The book is truly a desktop resource. We have it organized by marketing tactic. There's a section on email communications, on using video, on podcasts and panels, on webinars. Within the email section, for example, there are templates for emails in a variety of situations. We have cold communications, which you would send to someone you don't know, a prospect. There are follow-up emails to send after a meeting or sales call, emails to reengage with people you haven't heard from recently. When situations arise, you just refer to the book and use whatever you need. The technology is there to help bring some of those tactics to life. As Lori said, the book takes the guesswork out of marketing. To go back for a minute on what you were asking about the research of it all, we wanted this book to be something of a starting point for people who don't know much about marketing or don't have a budget for marketing. Marketing is about getting the right message to the right people, and there are a number of ways to do that. This book deals with the basics. If you start with the basics, you can build from there. Sharon: Was the catalyst for the book that you were both talking with clients, and you just looked at each other and said, “These people don't have a clue”? Not to knock anybody, but if you spent your career studying finance or healthcare or law, then you didn't study marketing. Was that the impetus? Was it like, “We've got to show people how to do this. You can do it if you apply yourself”? Evon:     I think for me, I felt so badly that people were coming back into a world of business and they really didn't know how to start with marketing. They didn't have an internal staff anymore; they didn't have money to ask anybody. They were floundering. We found that out within our client base and outside. For me, it was the pandemic that got it going. It's not that they didn't know what to do generally; it's just that they didn't know what to do in this new world. Lori:       To add to that, Sharon, Evon and I also had interactions with clients who hired us to revitalize their website and their branding and everything else. They really wanted to get into automation and help their sales team, but they were restricted by budget. I encountered several clients like that. That was another reason for the book, too: to help people who didn't have the time to even bring on staff or to hire an agency. They knew they needed it; they just didn't have the tools. We thought, “O.K., between Covid and these other people who weren't hurt by Covid but do need these extra services, how can we help?” Sharon: Did you think about putting in a section about marketing via Zoom? Let's say we backtrack or there's another outbreak of a different kind of strain. Is there something about marketing via Zoom in there? Lori:       Absolutely. We have a section called “Video Messaging” that talks about sales calls. I'll let Evon talk about some of the scripts with that, but it not only covers how to connect with people via Zoom or Webex or whatever else, but also how to connect via LinkedIn and audio and video message via those channels. Evon:     And we have screenshots for the how-tos. We show them how to do it. We write the scripts for them, and we show them step by step how they incorporate the technology to do these things. The book is really do-it-yourself. It literally provides thousands of dollars of marketing expertise for less than the cost of a week at Starbucks or, more relatable, it's less than half a tank of gas. Lori:       Or a quarter-tank nowadays. Evon:     It's all there. Sharon: Are the templates fill in the blank? Evon:     Yes, they're based around various scenarios. They all have a subject line to deal with the issues they're trying to address. Then it gives you the template itself and what you should say with blanks to fill in certain things about you or the situation. It's very easy. Sharon: It sounds like a great resource, whether you're a marketer within a marketing department or on your own. Evon:     A lot of people look at a page and don't know where to start. They want to write something, and they can't do it; they don't do it; they don't know how to do it. With the book, the words are right there. Sharon: That's a good point, when you're looking at a blank computer screen and you don't know what to do. Evon:     Right, right. Sharon: I want to mention again that the book is “Ready-Made Marketing.” It's for business owners and independent professionals of any stripe. Tell me if I'm leaving something out. It's a do-it-yourself book. It's on Amazon in a variety of formats. It's gotten fabulous reviews, so please take a look at it. Evon and Lori, thank you so much for being here today and telling us about this book. Lori:       Sharon, thank you. Evon:     It's been our pleasure, Sharon. Thank you so much for having us. Lori:       Yes, thank you, Sharon. It's been great. We appreciate it.

What you'll learn in this episode: What law firm culture is, and why it affects clients as much as it affects staff Why law firms should look at their policies with fresh eyes post-pandemic How firms can use technology to enhance communication When it makes sense for firms to use a hybrid work model, offer hoteling, or open smaller satellite offices How to maintain firm culture when staff is remote About Marcia Watson Wasserman Marcia Watson Wasserman is a published author and co-author of the books: Law Office Policy, Procedures, and Operations Manual – Seventh Edition (ABA 2022), and Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees (ABA 2017).  She is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management, one of an elite number of consultants who have earned this honor. Marcia serves as Columns Editor on Law Practice magazine's editorial board and is a member of the Publishing Board of the ABA's Law Practice Division. Additionally, Marcia frequently presents law practice management topics for legal and business conferences while also contributing articles on law practice management to leading legal publications. Prior to founding Comprehensive Management Solutions, Inc. in Los Angeles, Marcia served for over 15 years as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director for several national and local law firms, including an AmLaw 200 firm. Earlier in her career, she served as Director of Law Firm Services and Director of Client Advisory Services for two, mid-sized CPA firms in Southern California. Additional Resources:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciawwasserman/ Website: www.comprehensivemgmt.com Law Office Policies, Procedures, and Operations Manual, Seventh Edition  Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees    Transcript: After decades of incremental change, the pandemic forced many law firms to embrace technology, rethink work traditions, and evaluate their culture almost overnight. According to law practice management consultant Marcia Watson Wasserman, these changes have been a net positive, even though they've raised new questions about how to manage a law firm in the post-pandemic landscape. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how firm culture trickles down to clients; what technology firms should be investing in; and how firms can embrace remote work. Read the episode transcript here.  After decades of incremental change, the pandemic forced many law firms to embrace technology, rethink work traditions, and evaluate their culture almost overnight. According to law practice management consultant Marcia Watson Wasserman, these changes have been a net positive, even though they've raised new questions about how to manage a law firm in the post-pandemic landscape. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how firm culture trickles down to clients; what technology firms should be investing in; and how firms can embrace remote work. Read the episode transcript here.     Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Marcia Watson Wasserman, Founder and President of Comprehensive Management Solutions. Her company provides COOs with to-go law practice management consulting and coaching services to boutique and midsize law firms and their managing partners. Marcia is also coauthor of several books on the subject of law firm management. Her most recent book, coauthored with consultant Cynthia Thomas, is the seventh edition of “Law Office Policy, Procedures, and Operations Manual,” published by the American Bar Association. Today, we'll look at how efficient law office management facilitates good marketing. Marcia, welcome to the program.   Marcia: Thanks for having me, Sharon,    Sharon: So glad to have you. As I was saying, it's such an accomplishment to have not only coauthored this book, but to have a list of books you've coauthored. Tell us about your career. You have an impressive track record in the area of law office management. Tell us about your career track.    Marcia: It all started accidentally when I was an undergrad at UCLA. When I was a sophomore, I saw a job on the job board. It was a part-time job working for an attorney. I took that job and learned how to be a legal secretary and a paralegal. I was the backup bookkeeper and office manager and eventually became Executive Director of several law firms back in the 1990s. I was also COO of an AmLaw 200 firm. I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and that consulting was far better suited to me, so that's what I started doing, consulting to law firms. For the last 20 years, I've led a managing partners roundtable of boutique and midsize law firms and enjoy doing that, too.   Sharon: I remember when you started it. That's how long we've known each other. Even before that, but I do remember when you were starting that.    Tell me about law firm culture. How does that affect employee satisfaction, and how does employee satisfaction affect or facilitate good marketing?   Marcia: I want to quote a law firm futurist, Jordan Furlong, because he says it so well. Culture is what people at the firm actually do every day. In harsher terms, it's what people get away with. Culture is what actually happens. So, what type of culture you have has an impact on who you hire, whether people are happy, whether they stay with you and how you communicate with clients. If you don't have motivated employees, your clients are not going to be happy with you. If you have people phoning it in and not really dedicated to serving clients, it's going to have a huge impact on your clients.    If you have a great positive culture, then you not only have good employees, but you have clients who are drawn to you as well. You become known for your brand and people seek you out because it's an important part of your own attempts at business development and marketing. If you have a good culture, it gets known. Suddenly, you're on the best law firm list for employees and your client base expands.   Sharon: Is that the way law firms should review and assess their current policies? Especially post-pandemic, when everybody's ramping up again, how should law firms assess their policies and procedures?   Marcia: They need to look at them with fresh eyes. You may have done something for many years because it made sense, but after the pandemic, when law firms discovered we could work virtually—least most positions could—you need to look at every single thing you do with fresh eyes. There were certain things that were temporary, governmental regulations that you had to put in place because of the pandemic, like mask wearing and cleaning and not allowing clients to come to our offices. Now a hybrid workplace is the new normal. We'll see how that plays out over time, but people reevaluated what they wanted, which has an impact on culture and has an impact on clients.    It isn't just the firm that has that in mind; it's the clients as well. Clients don't necessarily want to get in the car for an hour and drive to you. I heard family lawyers and estate planning lawyers say, “Oh no, it will never work. They're used to coming in. It's a very close relationship, and they want to come to the office. We have to have these really nice, big offices for them.” The reality is that's not what the clients necessarily want. The clients can do a Zoom or a Facetime or whatever works for them, and they're very happy to have a relationship with you that way. There may be a time and place where they do want to meet with you in person, but not necessarily as much as lawyers would have assumed they would. So, you have to have policies in place that take all of those things into account.    Demand has changed as to what clients' expectations are. Some of it has to do with the age of your clients. A lot of this is generationally driven, namely the younger lawyers and staff and clients who are Gen Z or Millennials, who have a very unique spin on what work and work/life balance means. If they're a client, they want to work with a law firm that understands that, so you'd better be marketing appropriately to your clients, know who your clients are and have the right people there. A Gen Z client or even a Millennial will not necessarily want a near-retirement Baby Boomer as their attorney, so you've got to pay attention to relationships.   There are certain policies you have to have that are formal, like leaves of absence and antidiscrimination, but if you're looking forward, what do you want your firm to look like? Make those policies to take into account a hybrid workplace. Be culturally and otherwise diverse and have fun things in your policies, too. Have a fun committee, whether it's virtual fun or nonvirtual fun. It makes a difference.   Sharon: I know a lot of companies learned how to use technology because they were forced to learn how to use technology, whether it's a law firm or a different kind of business. They said, “This will never work with virtual or a hybrid law firm.” What kind of technology have firms been implementing? How are they going to be doing this differently? What have they learned during the pandemic, and how are they going to be operating differently in terms of technology?   Marcia: There's so much available with technology. Even the Zoom we're doing today, if the pandemic had happened 10 years ago, we wouldn't have had a good medium like this to communicate. Communication is so important, and technology is right there with us, leapfrogging ahead of what the law firms were expecting. I know of immigration law firms and certain plaintiffs' firms that are using chat boxes and fillable forms. That's how they do their prescreening; they've designed their software to prescreen potential new clients. It makes it a little more seamless for the client. They can go on to somebody's website and fill out a form, so they don't waste time waiting for somebody to call them back. They're able to immediately get that information to the firm. Somebody reviews it and gets back to them much more rapidly at the intake stage.    There are document management systems that some firms were lazy about; they didn't want to make the investment. If you have those systems in place, you can share documents with clients much more easily. When you're setting up workflow and processes, usually firms look at it totally from an internal viewpoint of what's easy for them. They need to be outward-facing and think, “How will this work for our clients? How can we be more efficient so that our fees are fair, we can get things done faster for our clients and we can share documents with our clients?” Even if you've got a brainstorming session with a client on Zoom, you can use a whiteboard on Zoom or whatever other software you're using. You're able to communicate that way and use technology to enhance communication that you wouldn't otherwise have.    Sharon: That's an interesting point about the fact that if the pandemic had happened pre-Zoom, I wonder if it would have lasted as long. Everybody would have pushed to be able to get back into the office. It's an interesting question. I saw some ads recently for law firm marketers. They talked about the fact that it was a hybrid environment and I thought, “If you had suggested that 10 years ago, five years ago, the employers would have said, ‘Forget it! We're not going to do it that way.'”   Marcia: There are still employers who are behaving that way. I know of law firms that said, “We're important because we're employment lawyers and our clients really need us; hence, everyone needs to come back to the office one month into the pandemic. We'll spread people out and do our best to do what we can do, but everybody needs to be back in the office. My legal secretary has to be outside my door to do the things I need. It can't be done remotely.” The firms that took that position lost a lot of their lawyers and staff who said, “No, it's not safe, and that's not what I want to do.”    Sharon: In terms of lawyers working remotely or in hybrid environments, is that going to remain, especially with younger lawyers? Have they seen the way it might be and said, “I'm not going back to what it was”? What do you think?   Marcia: Some of it depends on where you live. In a congested area like Los Angeles, where both of us live, yes, hybrid will happen because people realize, “Wow, I don't have to be in a car two or three hours a day commuting. I'm so much more productive. I can get more work done. I can be with my kids. I can have more of a balanced life.” The younger lawyers are driving that and demanding it and saying, “As long as I'm getting the work done, what does it matter?”    Now, when hybrid comes in, there's a time and place where getting together makes sense. If you're onboarding new people, you can do it virtually; there are best practices for doing it, but there's a lot to be said for a brand-new person to come in and actually meet people and get walked through things. There's a time and a place for a team meeting. If there's a group of people that work together on a particular client and an important event is coming up, a trial or whatever, it makes sense for them to be in the office the same day. Even though a lot of clients say, “We don't need to come in,” there may be a client that wants to come into the office, and that's also the time the team should be there.    But I'm seeing a lot more willingness to let people adjust their schedules, and everybody's a lot happier. It depends. Your older lawyers who are accustomed to coming to the office all the time swear they can't work at home; they just can't do it, so they've been going into the office throughout the pandemic. There are younger lawyers, too, who say, “I have roommates; I have a one-bedroom; I can't work and live in the same place. I don't have enough space. I can concentrate better in the office,” and they've been going to the office the entire time. The great majority of them say, “Hey, I want some balance in my life. This is really working, and as long as I get the work done, give me the autonomy and the authority to get it done my way, as long as I'm meeting deadlines.” A lot of that has to do with how well your communication systems are in place. I do hear that people are worried about losing their culture because everybody's operating more in a silo. So, you have to work at that.   Sharon: How do firms have to operate differently? You mentioned communication. How about telecommunication? Do law firms have to strengthen or change their management policies around that communication? You have to work harder, I presume, to keep a culture.   Marcia: You do, and that's why firms are having things like happiness committees where they come up with events, virtual or otherwise. There are firms I know that have done walks on the beach during the pandemic just to keep people engaged, or they had everyone met at a park and bring their own lunch and stay socially distanced just to see one another. I know a few firms that had retreats at remote locations during the pandemic. They had everyone take Covid tests and made sure they were O.K., and nobody got sick because they were very careful about what they were doing. A lot of it depends on what your culture was to begin with and how friendly an environment you were. Are you a new firm? Are you a firm that's been institutionalized for 40, 60 years and you're used to doing things one way and you don't like change?    Lawyers don't like change anyway, so you need to manage a little bit differently, and communication is an important part of that. Everyone likes to be communicated with in a different way. Some people are happy to text one another and use Slack, and other people want to use video more. Every circumstance requires a different situation for communicating, both as to what the individuals' preferences are and the circumstances of what you're communicating about. People shouldn't just endlessly do Zooms. Everybody is burned out on Zoom. Meetings should be intentional. They should have agendas. There's a time and place for people to meet in person, and a time and place to have a group Zoom meeting or a one-on-one.    Sharon: I like the idea of the fun committees and walks on the beach. Those are great ideas in terms of keeping something cohesive during the time when you're supposed to be spread apart.    I've read about law firms opening more branch offices, little satellite offices of one or two people. Is that happening, or is that an exception? What's the scoop on that?   Marcia: I'd say, again, it depends where you live. If you're in a small town where everything is close by in Middle America, you don't need it. But in suburban areas that are spread out, yes, I'm definitely seeing it for a variety of reasons. One is to serve clients. It's to open an office closer to where your major clients live so they don't have a big commute to come see you. That's one reason. One firm I know, the senior partners live in the suburbs and they don't want to drive to the home office all the time, so they opened a branch near where they live to make it convenient. Now they don't have to come to the main office all the time.    Another firm I'm aware of—and this happened a lot—when people were working virtually, many of the employees, staff and the lawyers decided they were going to move because they wanted more space. They moved farther away, in some cases another county away. We have L.A. lawyers who've moved to Orange County and San Diego County. We have lawyers from the west side who had a small apartment and said, “No, I want something bigger for my family.” They bought a house out in the suburbs, an hour and a half drive from their office. Suddenly the firms are finding out about it later, after the fact, and saying, “O.K., what can we do to keep these people?” One firm I know has downsized their main office in L.A. and built a big branch because so many of their people moved into the area where they've opened the branch. The branch office is probably as large as the main office now. They did it to accommodate people's lifestyle and commute and to make sure their employees were happy.    Sharon: Are you seeing established law firm offices in Century City or downtown shrinking their spaces?   Marcia: Absolutely. They're doing more hoteling. It depends where they are in their lease. If their lease came up during the pandemic, almost universally they've reduced their space. If they still had time to go, they put up with it or renegotiated with their landlords to extend the term and make it less expensive, or they gave up some of their space. A lot of people are subleasing space. I have a client that is looking to move into subleased space because their lease is up. Just in their own building, they've had offers from several different law firms to move into subleased space. These other law firms—that are well-established law firms—have too much space.   They're doing a lot more hoteling for lawyers, just like CPA firms have done for a long time and commercial real estate brokers started doing a number of years ago. It was always, “Oh no, lawyers can't do that.” Well, lawyers can do that. If you want to work at home three days a week and be in the office two days a week, if you don't need your own dedicated office with your plaques on the wall, you can have an office or a conference room. There's scheduling software that firms are buying that accommodates this. The receptionist has scheduling software so that when people come, it arranges an office for them, and they know where to go. That's another place where technology is helping, so you don't have three people showing up to share the same office on the same day.    Sharon: When you say these are things that other industries have been doing for a long time, I worked for a large accounting firm 25+ years ago and they were starting hoteling. I guess it takes a pandemic to get the world to move.    Tell us more about the book. I was looking at the information about the book on the jacket, and it looks like you can tear it apart, make your own templates and really use the book.   Marcia: The main part of the book is an employee handbook. It's a multijurisdictional handbook because we weren't writing it for California or New York. We have readers in the ABA who live in Canada and elsewhere in the world, so we tried to make it as general as possible, while reminding people that you'd better make sure what the laws are before you adopt a policy that won't work where you are. We made that part of the book available online in Word format so you can take it if you don't have an employee handbook. It covers all the legal things you have to have about antiharassment and overtime and those kinds of things, but it also covers how to deal with technology and cybersecurity. We reached out to SMEs to write some of the chapters for us.   Sharon: SMEs being?   Marcia: Subject matter experts. My coauthor and I certainly aren't IT/technology/cybersecurity experts. That's such an important area. We reached out to four individuals from two companies who actually wrote that chapter for us, which includes model cybersecurity guidelines and policies for law firms. You can just take that and put in your handbook.    That's one part of the book, and the book has been around since 1982. The original book was written by a lawyer in L.A. named Bernie Ralston. Bernie was a mentor and a friend to me along the way. I met him through Bar Association volunteerism over the years, and he would refer clients to me. Bernie is just about 100 years old, and he's still licensed to practice law in California and does arbitrations. I don't think he does a lot of work anymore; it's probably pro bono. He was the one who came up with the idea of doing this book, and here we are at the seventh edition. It's pretty special.    Sharon: Wow! The seventh edition must have a lot of changes from the last version in terms of how you deal with post-pandemic issues and how you deal with cybersecurity. That has become such a huge area.    Marcia, thank you so much for telling us about this. You've given us a lot of food for thought and ideas about where we can get answers, such as your book. The templates sound like a fabulous benefit for law firms. Once again, thank you very much. We greatly appreciate you being here today.   Marcia: Thank you, Sharon, for giving me the opportunity to speak with you.  

What you'll learn in this episode: Why getting your message across is the most important goal of writing How strong writing skills help people move up in their careers  How to remove filler words from your writing Why proofreading is necessary, even if it's not important to you personally Elizabeth's top three tips for clearer writing About Elizabeth Danziger Elizabeth Danziger, the founder of Worktalk Communications Consulting, is a seasoned written communications expert with over 30 years of experience. She has a longstanding reputation for training people to become compelling, confident writers. Danziger is the author of four books published by major publishers, including Get to the Point!, a text on business writing initially published by Random House. Her work has also appeared in many magazines, including Personnel Journal, Journal of Accountancy, and other national publications. She enables people to wield the power of words to enhance their credibility and catapult ahead in their careers. Additional resources: Facebook is www.facebook.com/upworktalk LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/elizabethdanziger Twitter: www.twitter.com/writaminlady Love it or hate it, writing is a daily part of our lives. And according to author, writing consultant and communications expert Elizabeth Danziger, people who write well are more likely to advance in their careers. That's why she founded Worktalk Communications Consulting, a firm that trains professionals to write clearly and confidently. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the importance of rereading; the power of language; and her tips for stronger writing. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Welcome to The Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Elizabeth Danziger, head of Worktalk Communications. Worktalk prepares teams to write clearly and confidently so they can strengthen their credibility, increase their influence and generate new possibilities. Liz is also the author of the book “Get to the Point! Painless Advice for Writing Memos, Letters and Emails Your Colleagues and Clients Will Understand.” Worktalk also has a very interesting newsletter called “Writamins,” and it's chock full of interesting information you'll want to know. Make sure to sign up for it. We'll have a link at the end of the program. Today, Liz will be talking about how we can make the best use of language. Liz, welcome to the program.   Elizabeth: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.   Sharon: So glad to have you. Every time I read what you've written, I go, “Oh my god, it's so useful.” I have to say, I took a course from Liz years ago and the one thing I always do—Liz, I don't know if you still have my emails, but you did get me to reread my emails before I sent them.   Elizabeth: Great!   Sharon: I still do that. I always remember that, because you're right. You catch things you didn't realize were there.    Elizabeth: Oh, that's wonderful.    Sharon: Tell us about your career path. Were you always into words and grammar? Was that always of interest to you?   Elizabeth: When I was a child, I wanted to be a doctor, actually. I wanted to be a physician, but I also always loved to read. I remember my mother yelling at me, like, “Why don't you go out to play?” and I'd be like, “No, I want to read.” I've always been a great reader. Then, when I got to college and hit organic chemistry and calculus, I thought, “Well, maybe my skills are better suited elsewhere,” and I became a writer.    My first book was published when I was 25, and it did well domestically and internationally. Then I wrote two more books, including “Winning by Letting Go,” published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. I wrote for all the women's magazines, and then I decided I wanted to work with people who were doing real things in the real world and making life happen, and not necessarily the editors of Cosmo. I also realized there's a huge need. People suffer over their writing. They suffer personally and internally, and they suffer bad consequences from lost business, lost relationships, lost possibilities. So, I founded Worktalk to support people in making themselves understood.   Sharon: How do you do this? We took a class with you, but do you work with people individually? Is it sessions? How do you do that?   Elizabeth: I work with people however they want to be worked with. Notice that I ended a sentence with a preposition, which is totally O.K. Most of our work takes the form of webinars and training sessions. We customize every one of our webinars to our clients. We get writing samples. It's like sending a blood test to the doctor. You send me your writing sample and I see what's going on. So, it's mostly trainings and webinars.    We also do writing labs, which are much smaller. Each person brings one writing sample and we workshop each other's work in the lab. Of course, I do one-on-one coaching, but mostly it's trainings and webinars. Ultimately, we work with people in whatever way they need.   Sharon: I think there are a lot of people who have a love of reading, but how did your love of reading translate into understanding grammar? It seems like that's a different thing in a sense.   Elizabeth: Truthfully, people think of me as a person associated with grammar. I didn't really study grammar until I started teaching writing. I was a writer, and I was edited by book publishers, by Hartcourt Brace Jovanovich and Random House and by the editors of Cosmo and the editors of Glamour and the editors of all these magazines. They edited me. When I decided to start doing writing training, I think a lot of it came to me intuitively. Then, when I started teaching it, I realized I had to get the rules down. That's why I tell people grammar is extremely important, of course, but getting your message across is the most important thing.   Sharon: I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when we work with lawyers, they go to school to learn how to write in a certain way. Is there resistance, or is it more difficult to untrain them to write for the normal person?   Elizabeth: It is a little more difficult. With respect, lawyers really think they know a lot about a lot, and they're trained to argue; they're trained to think you're wrong. So, there is a little more resistance, but at the same time, I've worked with law firms. I've worked with associates who are getting dinged for the writing. Their writing's not clear; their writing's not to the point; their writing doesn't catch the issue. When I work with associates, they end up getting that taken off their performance review and they turn into good writers. I've also worked with legal firms on other things, but I love working with lawyers because they're smart. Not that people who aren't smart shouldn't call me—not that anyone would identify themselves at not smart. It's fun to work with people who learn quickly. It's fun.    Sharon: That's interesting, because it seems like if you're working with associates, there are people higher up, perhaps partners, who aren't—and once again, as you say, with respect—aren't as good a writer or as to-the-point, and they're evaluating somebody else.   Elizabeth: I'm not sure about that. My experience in all fields, in accounting, business, finance and law, is that the people at the top, they're almost always good writers, I would say. Good writing and good thinking go hand in hand, and you cannot rise to the top if you're not a really good thinker, hopefully. People who write well tend to get promoted in professional service firms. Very often, the managing partner is an exceptional writer, but the managing partner, believe it or not, has other things to do than to edit the crappy writing of the people who work for them. They need to be managing the firm. That's why they outsource to me if their associates are not up to snuff, but the top people are often good writers.   Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. They have to be persuasive, and they have to get their clients' attention, which means being to the point.   Elizabeth: Right.   Sharon: How is what you do changing today? When people are texting and abbreviating every other word—Liz is rolling her eyes here. I find myself doing that, or I'll make a mistake and think, “Well, nobody's going to notice that or know that's a mistake,” and then I say, “Sharon, you can't do that. It's not right.” How do you deal with that?   Elizabeth: That's an excellent question, and I can look at it in a couple of ways. One is that I am fighting the good fight. Like Winston Churchill said, “Fight the good fight.” Although there is a lot of texting, Slack, Whatsapp, whatever, the thing is that—and this is getting a little philosophical—if we think about it, what is the function of language? I'm sure we all love dolphins and pot-bellied pigs and whales, but they're not building legal systems; they're not building cultures; they're not doing what humans are doing. We are doing it because we have language, really sophisticated, nuanced language that can create a future and a past. It's powerful.    Language conveys meaning, but why bother to get something from my head into your head? How do we get this from my head into your head? Because we have a set of agreements. We agree. The sounds I'm making mean something. The scribbles on the page mean something, and you can make a certain number of errors in those agreements. Grammar is just a set of things we agree on. When I say, “I was,” it means it happened already. We agree on that. But if you break too many of those agreements of grammar, it creates friction in the system, and your meaning starts to fall apart. You literally lose meaning, and that's why I know the work I do is evergreen. In every class, I ask people, “Have you ever gotten an email from someone that had so many grammar and punctuation errors that you literally didn't know what the person was talking about?” and everybody says, “Yes.” It's true that people are more casual about it, and the winners, the people who end up on top, are going to be the people who communicate with a nuance and a correctness and a sophistication.   Sharon: Do you find yourself texting and abbreviating things?   Elizabeth: No, I never do. I dictate my texts, and I usually proofread them. I just don't do that. Maybe it's because I'm a boomer. I also tell people not to do it, so I don't do it.   Sharon: It's interesting to me how the world has changed. I do have to throw this out: I'm flabbergasted that they're not teaching cursive writing in some areas.   Elizabeth: I know. What's sad is that there's a lot of research on the whole process of writing by hand, the neurology and neuroscience, and there is an additional layer of writing in cursive. When you take notes by hand or when you write in cursive, different things are happening inside your brain that are enabling you to process that information at a deeper level. On a simple level, I wonder how those people are going to sign their names when they grow up. If you've never learned cursive, what is your signature going to look like? I don't know. But you're right. Of course, I have to deal with people texting and Slacking and this and that, but in the end, the bottom line of language is the same: get your message across. That's what we aim for.   Sharon: When you're teaching a class of law firm associates or younger people, let's say, do you hear more, “Oh, Liz, that's not important”?   Elizabeth: I do. What's interesting is in my section on proofreading, I always ask people, “When you receive a document that's not carefully proofread, how does it affect your opinion of the person who sent it? Positively, negatively or no impact?” I talk to people all over the country, and in most cases, the majority of people say it has a negative impact on their opinion of the person who sent it. Yet there are certain cultures and certain groups and subgroups where a lot of people will say it makes no impact on them. They don't care if somebody doesn't proofread. What I tell those people is, “O.K., so the person on your team, that person may not care at all if you proofread. Knock yourself out. But I promise you, if you write to a CEO or the government or the executive vice president or the division manager, that person will care.” Many people still do care, and we have to take care of that. We have to write for the top, not to the least common denominator.   Sharon: That's a good way to put it. I think certain professions care more. We were the recipient of this, because a firm that became our client, they switched firms because they said their other firm wasn't proofreading.   Elizabeth: Oh my gosh! I saw this in a client, a regional accounting firm that had been approached by the client of another regional accounting firm. The other firm was a very reputable firm, a good firm, and I asked my client, “Did you ask them why they are talking to you? This is like somebody who already has a girlfriend going on a date. Why are they talking to you if they already have an accounting firm?” He asked them, and what they told him was that their firm consistently misspelled their name.   Sharon: That would be a zinger, let's say.   Elizabeth: Yeah.   Sharon: Tell us some of your top secrets or your words of advice for us to keep in mind.   Elizabeth: There are three things I would suggest. The first is that you think about your reader before you write. It sounds very simple, but it astounds me sometimes how rarely people do that. They sit down and think, “Tap, tap, tap,” and they're not visualizing the living, breathing human being who's on the receiving end of that. What do they care about? What are their hot buttons? What are they wondering? What are their questions? Write for the reader. That's the first thing.    Second, write shorter sentences. Your average sentence range should be around 20 words. That doesn't mean every one should be boom, boom, boom, 20, 20, 20. Maybe some 15, maybe some 25, maybe some 30, but if you have a 30 or 35-word sentence, I want you to put two 10-word sentences around it. Microsoft Word's check readability statistics function will calculate your average sentence. That's the second thing, to write shorter sentences, and a whole cascade of good things will happen.   The third, as you remember from when we talked years ago, Sharon, is to always, always reread. You've got to reread what you wrote and make sure you didn't write something incredibly dumb, especially for attorneys. Attorneys are held to a higher standard. The scary thing about not proofreading is that people generalize. They think if you're careless at this, you're careless at that. If there's a typo in the cover letter you send to your client, “Here's the contract you asked me to draw up,” and you write “contact” instead of “contract,” and it goes straight through spell check because contact is also a word, I promise you they are going to have less confidence in the validity of the contract because there was a typo in the cover letter. That's just how we roll. It's crucial to reread and proofread everything no matter how hurried you are. The time it takes to backtrack and grovel and apologize and try and make it right is so time-consuming that it makes the time that we spend proofreading seem very, very short.   Sharon: That's a good point, what you say about lawyers being held to a higher standard. If I got a cover letter or a document from a lawyer where there was a typo, I would think, “Oh, my god, what kind of work am I going to get from this person, exactly?”    Elizabeth: It's terrifying   Sharon: Yes, it is.   Elizabeth: It's truly terrifying.   Sharon: That's true. If I got a typo in a cover letter, it would reflect poorly on the person, but if it came from the guy who's going to paint my house, I don't think I'd be thinking in the same way.   Elizabeth: Exactly, that's a great point. We have different expectations from different people. People have the highest expectations of lawyers because they associate them with precision and language, and because they rely on them to use language to plead their case.    Sharon: That's true. Rely—that word really hit me. They're advocates.   Elizabeth: Exactly, good point.   Sharon: I want to ask you two things. Are you going to be writing another follow-up to the second edition of your book “Get to the Point”?   Elizabeth: I've already done a second edition. I thought about doing a third edition, but I'm very busy with work right now, and it's a huge time commitment. I think I keep people posted by keeping up the Writamins. If you subscribe to Writamins, you'll get all the latest.   Sharon: Yes, and we'll have the link in the podcast description when we post it. One of the latest versions was talking about filler words. As I was writing something the other day, I thought, “Wait, that's a filler word,” and I took it out.   Elizabeth: Great! It really affects you. I'm so gratified.    Sharon: I never thought about it, but it's something I use all the time. Give us examples on how we get rid of them.   Elizabeth: A lot of it is just thought and self-discipline. I wish I could say, “Give me $29.95 and I'll slice and dice and microwave and cut and reduce filler words.” That would be really nice. I would be a millionaire, a multimillionaire, if I could do that. A lot of it goes back to rereading. We also need to be aware of words like “just.” I'm sorry to say this happens more often with women than with men. Men and women both do it, but women are particularly prey to “just” or “sorry.” I would like to bury these words. In other words, if I say to you, “I'm very, very sorry,” do I sound sorrier than if I said, “I'm sorry?”   Sharon: That's a good point, yeah.   Elizabeth: To my ears, the person who says, “I'm very, very sorry,” I would not necessarily say that person is twice as sorry as the person who says, “I'm sorry.” I wrote a Writamin about this. You probably remember. I was about “I would like to,” and “I wanted to.” Oh my gosh! Please read the Writamin, everyone. It's on the website. It's at Worktalk.com.   Sharon: Great information. It's so much to remember. Liz, thank you very much. Whether it's a certain rule or whether it's knowing that we need to get to the point faster, that's the most important thing you're talking about. Thank you so much for talking with us today. It's really been great. I don't know how many filler words I'm using there.   Elizabeth: No, you're doing great.   Sharon: Really, really great.   Elizabeth: Really, really, really, really, so, so, so great.   Sharon: Thank you so much for being with us.   Elizabeth: You're very, very welcome. Thank you for letting me be on this show. I appreciate it.   Sharon: It's great to talk with you.  

Special Announcement!

What you'll learn in this episode: Why Amy onboards new law firms with a day of learning, and why familiarity with the business is crucial for long-term relationships with law firms  Why it is beneficial to have parallel relationships between the level of law firm associates and the level of in-house counsel Why law firms that are passed over by in-house counsel in the first round shouldn't give up on forging a relationship How junior attorneys can build relationships with in-house counsel without overstepping boundaries Why diversity and inclusion is more than just a buzzword About Amy Yeung Amy Yeung is General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, for Lotame, the world's leading unstacked data solutions company. Recognized as an expert in digital data and privacy, Yeung was previously Deputy General Counsel at Comscore, which she successfully helped guide through a corporate crisis. She also served as Vice President of Legal at Dataminr and Assistant General Counsel for ZeniMax. Yeung earned a J.D. from Duke University School of Law and a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago. Additional resources: Amy Yeung's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-yeung-0518883/ Lotame - Website: https://www.lotame.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LotameSolutions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lotame/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lotame Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast The relationship between law firms and in-house counsel is complex, but it boils down to one thing: how well each party understands the other. That's a lesson Amy Yeung, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at Lotame, has learned all too well during her time as in-house counsel. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how she selects the law firms she works with, how junior attorneys can prepare for partnership, and why diversity and inclusion isn't just a fad. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Amy Yeung, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at Lotame Data Management. The Lotame Data Management platform is a data collection application that gathers and unifies audience data from a plethora of sources such as blogs and websites as well as offline information. Today, we'll hear more about that as well as how Amy evaluates and selects outside counsel. Amy, welcome to the program. Amy: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. Sharon: Thank you so much. It's great for you to talk with us. Give us an overview of your career path. You're quite accomplished. Amy: You've very kind and generous, thank you. I went to law school, and from that, I clerked in the Delaware Court of Chancery under Vice-Chancellor Parsons, which was a phenomenal experience and gave me a chance to look at corporate law and corporate law litigation. After that, I joined the wonderful firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where I was in a very broad securities group that included regulatory litigation enforcement as well as some corporate work. It was from that point in time that I took, let's call it, an early detour.  These days it's a little different, but at that time, going in-house was not expected, certainly not at those mid-level years. I spent nearly seven years at my first in-house counsel role. They were a publisher, and I helped them expand it for print and software across to a global platform. It was a phenomenal experience. I really enjoyed it. I think for all the lawyers and law firm individuals in the audience, it was a great way to get your chops and have an opportunity to work through a variety of issues, for me, squarely in the software and data space. During that time, I became a subject matter expert in data privacy and product counsel, which I mentioned. These days it has a name and phrase; back then, not so much. I also gained understanding of hardware, software, intellectual property and a lot of those issues. It's from that experience that I became general counsel for the then-unicorn in New York. There was another company that had already gone public, and this company, Dataminr, focused on social media and big data in the software and data space. In that regard, I helped them scale and easily pivot in significant ways. My work for Dataminr included things like getting certain tweets better geolocated and specific to subject matter that is an interest and for organizations like, say, the Orlando Pulse nightclub.  At that point in time, when there was a shooting in a gay nightclub, it provided media opportunities, like there were eyeballs inside the club just because of the number of people that were tweeting about the situation indoors. It really has made and continues to make such an impact on how we think about tweets, how tweets can be used in the broader public policy and global arena. These days when we get news, there's a reason why there are now tweets incorporated in stories about Pulse. Otherwise a journalist would have to go and search for them instead of tweets just being provided and shared by somebody.  From there, I went to Comscore, which was going through a corporate crisis. Two public companies merged, and then weeks later, an SEC investigation was announced for corporate recognition. So, I was comprehensively redoing business development with clients and redoing data privacy in light of the impending GDPR requirements. They were going through a lot of financial and other considerations. Where I am today is Lotame, which is still in the space which focuses on advertising technology, and in that regard, continues to do a lot of data collection. I continue to stay in software and data, but I'm particularly in this area. I help companies and organizations get to audiences and bridge the gap and encourage the sale of the products that we sell.  Sharon: It seems like an amazing application and platform, to be able to gather all this data from different sources and build a picture of who you're targeting or where they are. Amy: That's absolutely right. Certainly, many of the companies I've been involved with have a component of that. At ZeniMax, they started, frankly, in the digital age and did digital advertising when very few people were focused on that, not knowing, of course, that there would be a big pivot in the coming years. They do have a platform to be able to incorporate advertising data themselves. Dataminr had a slightly different use scenario, especially when it comes to where the true value is in the company, but being familiar with how one uses those platforms to derive those insights is very much fundamental to Comscore.  What we want to focus on, which is to your point, Sharon, is really understanding who your audience is, trying to drill down and get that full picture. Also, as we all realize, we have a laptop for work; we have a different laptop for personal use; there's a phone. What we do on each of these devices is very different, and it's also very different from how we watch TV or use Roku. These days, as I know we all realize as marketers ourselves, are trying to get that singular picture, which is very complex. We're not trying to bombard you across all the platforms, in most instances anyway. We're trying to get a personal product directed to you when you're using your personal device, as compared to a work-related product when you're using a work-related device. Sharon: It sounds like as you've been building your career, you've had to learn about marketing, or get more into marketing. How has that been for you, as somebody who didn't study that in school? All lawyers have to be marketers, yes, but— Amy: That's absolutely right. You're so on point. I'll say one thing here is knowing what your core products are at the heart. I serve as strategic advisor to these companies. Of course, there are certain areas in the law, in data privacy, in intellectual property, that could put me in a much larger position or disproportionate position to be able to serve as a strategic advisor as the companies themselves pivot what they're trying to sell. That's certainly one of the key areas, but to your point, other things I didn't study in school include the business of the business itself, as well as the marketing. I am grateful to have individuals who are generous with their time to help me understand what they do, which gives me the opportunity to think about how I can service them and service their needs. Also, frankly, I'm a consumer just like everybody else. There are lots of things I like buying. In that vein, perhaps different from some of the other areas of my practice, it is intuitively helpful to have those analogies, because I'm a consumer just like anybody and everybody else. Keeping my finger on the pulse of how marketing turns and what those initiatives are helps me round out the picture, which in turn helps me become the best strategic advisor I can be. Sharon: I would imagine that when you're evaluating outside counsel, or when a lawyer's trying to get to know you, that demonstrating that understanding would be very important to you. Amy: It's essential for every company I work with. I will say that, especially when it comes to law firms, one of my expectations—and I know this is not typical, although perhaps it may not be far off the standard—is that I always expect our new law firms to onboard with a day of learning with us. I say that because I have been counseling disruptive companies across all life cycles, so many of these companies are going through a significant change. It's not standard work, and I'm not looking for a standard law firm; I'm looking a partner in the long run. In order for you to best serve me, and for me to be able to best serve my clients, it means understanding what the business does, understanding where the asks are coming from in the big picture. It also relates to the level of risk, because in each of these companies there has been a different risk. There have been different short-term and long-term risks that we know and need to balance. That is the explanation to how there have been some wonderfully successful law firms I've worked with in the past. I think we all recognize and agree that the legal answer needs to be massaged in shape for the client, but it's really difficult, I think, for the law firms and partners and teams to give unqualified advice if you don't have familiarity with the types of choices and operational work the company is going through. Some of that is default. For a large, multinational public company, you can probably guess what that risk is going to be, or for a public company in a corporate turnaround. That probably gives you some ideas you can guess at, but there's still a wide variety. The day of learning is very much an investment with both parties, both the partners and anticipated staff on my side, individuals and executive leadership—who also have busy days—to share in terms of understanding what everybody does.  Sharon: When you select outside counsel, are you looking at it for your clients or for your company, or for both? Who are you choosing for? It sounds like you're advising your clients as to who would be a good firm to talk to. Amy: Yeah, there's a little bit of that. Obviously, when I say client, I mean the people in the company I service. Some of it's a little bit of both of those pockets. As general counsel, I'm looking at their whole company's profile and what the risk is. There's certainly a level of understanding what we can do on the legal side to make sure we've got a well-rounded team, which includes reaching out to outside counsel and drawing the line between what's in and out based on experiences with what the company's gone through and the current legal team. After that, selecting a law firm and understanding their expertise and niche is, perhaps to your quite astute point, Sharon, a little bit of magic as well as a science, in that you are looking for the right fit, the right team with the leader, what their fundamental goals and purposes are. That can significantly narrow or generally broaden the number of law firms that are in that pipeline. I will say for me, the best practice, both normatively as well as philosophically, is that I will ask for multiple RFPs from different law firms. I want to give everybody a shot. I also want to give many individuals an opportunity to get to know us, because even if this time it doesn't work out, it still gives us exposure and a learning opportunity. I think fundamentally, that's important. Sharon: Have you ever gone back to a firm when you initially selected a different firm, but the other firm stuck in your mind? Something came up and you went back to them and said, “This would be great for you,” or “I'd like to work with you on this.” Amy: Yeah, I think that goes along with the philosophical approach of a long-term partner. It doesn't make sense, in my opinion, to spend that much time thinking about an isolated circumstance. I think there's a lot to be learned. Frankly, I wouldn't be doing an RFP if the team wouldn't be learning something new. To your point, there are several times I can think of off the top of my mind. I might not have any doubt, but either we learn something new, or, frankly, it comes down to the way the firm continues to build and maintain their relationship. They've already given more reason to take a look at them a second time. Sharon: How have they continued to build? How would you suggest somebody continue to build on that initial contact of presenting an RFP? How do they build and maintain that relationship and demonstrate that they would be the firm for you the next time around? Amy: There are any number of ways a firm can do this. I'm thinking about discrete examples that can be useful. I think it's fair to say we all get hundreds of emails a day, so adding a line to a newsletter, while it may be on point, doesn't actually help me winnow down what's useful. There are a number of partners, for example—and not even partners, associates—who will add another line or two as they forward, to say specifically, “Take a look at X, because I think X would be applicable.” By definition, if they catch my eye, it gives me the opportunity to examine a lending opportunity and say, “Yes, that was very much on point,” or “No, it wasn't.” It's a next step which in and of itself I see as a learning opportunity.  There are events, for example. I know it is frequent that people want to send those along. It's often useful for the contextualization, such as, “This event might be of use in particular. When we talked about X, I thought the panel at Y would be really useful to you.” Again, it's an opportunity to learn more about us. It's an opportunity for them to respond and think about somebody on the team, if not myself, to join. There are a number of conferences and events that law firms have and host. You can see where I'm going with this item. Knowledge about that for in-house counsel, especially when compared to my law firm experience, resources are far fewer. Being able to quantify that, especially in a discrete way for my team, is helpful. We've all got so many virtual panels right now, so having a virtual panel, a virtual conference alone, is not necessarily going to move the needle. But again, being tactful about it paves the way for that type of relationship, because I know you're not going to inundate me; I know you're already working hard to understand the business in different ways. That is a distinguishing factor, in my opinion, with a number of law firms and individuals who reach out.  Sharon: I think it's important for lawyers and marketers to hear the fact that you do consider firms you passed over the first time around. I'm sure a lot of lawyers say, “Well, that was a waste of time,” and put the RFP on the shelf and never look at it or think about you or your needs again, whereas it sounds like it would be worth it for them to build on what they've already invested. Amy: I think that's right.  Sharon: You've been involved in several attorney organizations. Can you tell us about which ones, attorney or personal, that have been most beneficial? Maybe you've identified lawyers there at times because you've gotten to know them. Amy: I'll say as somebody who builds teams, I'm always on the lookout. When I think back to any of the organizations where I haven't otherwise met someone connected with somebody or hired in some capacity—I'm not sure I can think of one where I haven't had that situation. As we all know, talent comes in all shapes and forms, so it's my role to keep my eyes open in that regard. To your first question, Sharon, I certainly had a wonderful and many years with the D.C. Bar and the ADA, both being elected in initial polls with the D.C. Bar as well as some of those roles overlapping with the American Bar Association. I found that organization to be and continues to be wonderful and a great source of broad legal networking and the like. It was great, especially for me in understanding contextually the variety of things that somebody, even in the business law section or another section, could still be involved in. With that said, since then, I've also been very active and involved in other groups, which might arguably be a little smaller in nature. That includes, for example, NAPABA and other voluntary bar organizations. Sharon: NAPABA? I'm not familiar with that one.  Amy: Sure. NAPABA is the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. It's a great group of individuals. Ultimately, we are not only serving our leadership on the local level with NAPABA D.C., but also on the national level, culminating with my last role as the Chair of Diversity and Inclusion in that committee. I am also serving in leadership as the char elect for the Association of Corporate Counsel, ACC. It provides an opportunity for in-house counsel to come together and share their experiences in a way that, as some would say, avoids the law firm “sharks in water” situation and permits individuals to speak frankly about their experiences. I think the ACC, under this leadership, does a wonderful job of being able to balance that. We all realize it's a full life cycle in terms of needs between companies as well as law firms and law organizations in order for all of us to be successful in our careers. That's been a wonderful set of experiences with law.  Sharon: You mentioned diversity and inclusion. Has that grown in importance? Have you ever experienced that a law firm has brought in a team to meet you, and they had their token Asian, let's say, or their token ethnicity to prove diversity and inclusion? How has that been for you? Amy: I have to say it's been a bumpy road. I'd like to think the issue is much more prominent on its face, and in particular much deeper and richer conversations are happening. To your point, I do still have experiences where individuals will pull together a team and think that's the right message to send to me, but ultimately that message is short-lived and doesn't actually prove itself out in the way the work is done and the way in which the individuals themselves are being paid and compensated. Those are issues and concerns that I have always been of the mind to note. I would be surprised if there's any in-house counsel in a position to hire where that isn't a competitive factor. That's the case, at least for me, in software data, because all of my companies and teams have been global in nature. The reason for that is because from my perspective, it is impossible for me in my role to be able provide the appropriate guidance to a company that has so many points of view. So, I need my teams, whether or not they're inside the four walls of the company, to be able to provide the creative guidance and global perspective in order to advise the business. If they're not able to do that, I'm not doing my job, and if I'm not doing my job, you know what needs to happen.  I've had a lot of success in that. Maybe one can say, “Well, she's in software; she's in data and a lot of things.” I admit that things like pivots of a company, disruptive business ideas, these are all traits that can only encourage a diverse team to be able to come up with creative solutions. I also admit that, at least for a while there, this industry probably entertains larger, greater ideas in that scenario than perhaps a traditional company, but you can't tell me, especially in the days of Covid, that there isn't a company that isn't otherwise struggling for better places broadly in our ecosystem. If I don't have these few clients, I simply don't do enough of a good job for my company. My team is encouraged to think outside of the box, in alignment with the legal requirements of what needs to happen. Where we end up ultimately is another thing, but I want to make sure my team is supportive of the company leads, and in order to do that, we need global views, whether or not that's in data privacy, whether or not that's in intellectual property. We need to be able to see and peer around the corner. The only way we are able to do that is when there are fresh perspectives and multiple perspectives, when we discuss and debate, and then ultimately align with the course of action that comes with the next steps.  Sharon: Do you see things outside of your firm? Do you see things changing in the world of diversity and inclusion, things that are going to stick? Maybe people are saying, “Well, that's the buzzword of today,” like Earth Day was the buzzword decades ago and then it popped up again. At least, that's my interpretation. Amy: Yeah, it's a great question, Sharon, and I thank you for asking it, because it's a very important topic. I mentioned earlier that the conversations these days are richer. By that, I not only mean total conversations and the transparency with which these conversations happen, but also in terms of the metrics that I and a number of other general counsel and chief legal officers expect. We anticipate a more fulsome picture, especially from law firms, in their data. I was just having a conversation last week with a global law firm. They had identified mutual stacks in terms of initial hiring and the like. We all know and recognize that we need to invite diversity of all sorts. It continues to be a work in progress, but is perhaps the easiest of all of the steps to achieve, to be able to then build that in your attention and create that pipeline is something I think all companies or organizations continue to struggle with. This is what I would expect to be the next steps in this dialogue. How has your firm retained diverse individuals moving up? How has your firm been able to elevate? I've worked with partners in law firms to be able to ensure that potential elevations are getting the substantive work that puts individuals in a position to be partner ready. We need that. That, to me, is a full cycle of success for all lawyers. That is the business model that I not only believe in, but I actually put the investment in. That is how this conversation is richer, but we need more people in the conversation, and we need more transparency with respect to how we can advance the profession overall. Sharon: What would your advice be to emerging attorneys or those that want to rise up the ladder, who don't have the sponsorship or patronage you're talking about? I think it's fabulous to be able to say to a partner, “This is a person we need to groom.” How would you suggest that lawyers pierce the corporate veil, in a sense, to get to you? That's my vision of it. Amy: Yeah, that's a great question. I'll add to your good observations what I've described as a dialogue. It happens over the course of a few years, so it's not just me who might say, “You've got an excellent attorney for these following reasons.” It's a way for us to get that full cycle of improving the next generation of attorneys coming in, which is what I hope all juniors in our space want to do. With that said, there are a number of things a junior attorney can do to put themselves on the radar. I know from a law firm perspective, the one thing that is often said is do the best you can do. Always say yes, all of those good things that I don't need to go over in our interview today. But certainly make a mark on the people for whom you work.  These days, more junior attorneys are getting mentorship with their counterparts, which is amazing and certainly didn't exist when I was on the law firm side or when we went to in-house counsel. I think there are more people on the in-house counsel side that create the opportunity for those parallels. I think that would be another thing I would tell junior attorneys to ask, which is to say—at least in my book, I make sure all of my attorneys start getting early exposure with law firm colleagues. It's important not only to understand the cadence and the business model, but also to build upon the ways in which one can create a relationship. If I'm expecting you on my side, that's an opportunity attorneys can ask for on the other side, which is to say, “Look, I'm not going to bill for my time, but it goes without saying there cannot always be a fly on the wall. I'd love to hear that early exposure about the way in which you, senior counsel or partner, are able to manage the client. Help me understand the political dynamic on this case. What's the risk profile?” Being curious and thoughtful about the group picture is something that a decade ago, I don't know that law firms were necessarily thinking about in terms of giving the right answer. That's a terrible generalization. I don't mean it to be quite literal, but what I mean to say is that these days, there are so many more opportunities. It's so much better for senior attorneys to bring in their junior attorneys to have that experience and start giving attorneys earlier opportunities for that exposure to be thinking about as they rise. I'm pretty positive that a lot of junior law firm attorneys I speak with or mentor are looking for that. It's a huge benefit to them in so many different ways.  Sharon: I could see how it would be a tremendous benefit in having the people within the firm know who you are and what you can do, but I'm saying, “Hey, I don't want to wait around for that,” or “Yes, I do that, but I want to get to know you better,” or “I want you to see what I'm learning here.” Basically, how do I get to you without having to wait for the partner to make the introduction or do whatever he or she has to do to get me to you? What's the best way to do that? Speak at conferences? Publish? What are you looking at?  Amy: That's a really great question. Let me see if I can't break it down, because you raise what is, at the essence, a complication of human dynamics. I don't mean that to be so philosophical, but I think that's true, because there's no one way that's going to catch my eye or catch somebody's eye. When you accurately identify, for example, writing an article, that is bound to catch somebody's eye. I don't know if it's going to catch my eye or somebody else's, but you got to put yourself out there. That's the number one rule in marketing, they say. You can't get the business unless you're at least trying to do that. There is some nuance in the other suggestions I raised, which is to say I'm not sure. I wouldn't necessary be advocating for a junior attorney who's on an account to directly reach out to the general counsel without having connected with the relationship partner. Sharon: I understand, but what if the relationship partner—if they don't feel threatened, let's say—says to the junior attorney, “You've got to figure out how we're going to build this relationship with Amy. We have our foot in the door. Where do we go from here? I'm too busy to think about it. You come up with a plan.” What would you say? What would your advice be? You've given us ideas, but how would you help advise him to expand the relationship? Amy: For a junior attorney? Sharon: To maybe go to the relationship partner or one of the partners and say, “Hey, I have Amy's ear. Let's do something with it.” Amy: Yeah, it's a great question. I would hope that all junior attorneys are thinking about how the state of relationship is more than just doing the work and thinking about the bigger picture. Maybe one way I would respond to this—again, this really does boil down to human relations—is that if this individual is involved in other types of organizations, such as the voluntary bar, it's a good opportunity. To answer your question, Sharon, which I think gets to the heart of human dynamics, I would hope that every junior attorney is thinking more broadly than just, “Let me do the work that's being asked of me,” and they are learning more about the client; they're thinking about the business relationship and, in particular for those who want to help develop the business, are taking all of the experiences they're learning from in each of their client matters and understanding where the core of that relationship is. That relationship can change quite drastically, whether it's a core corporate client of the law firm versus somebody who's smaller.  To answer your question more specifically how a junior attorney might be able to help expand, I think this is also where things like bar associations or just your knowledge on the street might be helpful. There might be something that comes in over email that they can forward on to the partner to say, “Hey, the law firm is doing this, and I think it would be great to forward for X client. I'm happy to do it unless you prefer to do it.” This is also where having parallel relationships between the level of the law firm associate and the level of in-house counsel can be helpful, because now you're not having to go up and down the ladder, so to speak, but rather you can just forward that on to the mid-level, and it's probably something you are both interested in, in terms of expertise or takeaways. Another way to do it is if you are learning about something yourself, bullet point three to five takeaways and share them with the partner for the panel. The recording might be of interest to the associates you're generally working with at that company, or it could be something you send directly to your midlevel. Again, if it's something new you've learned, I suspect it might be something your counterpart in the company might also be interested in, or at least it's an opportunity for you guys to be able to synch on knowledge. Sharon: I think that's wise. What you said is almost the essence of this whole conversation. First of all, I want to make it clear: I'm not advocating for anybody to go jump over their senior professional, their partner, whoever, even though I've seen that. The relationship doesn't end up very well. That's not what I'm advocating for. I do think what you're talking about is level-to-level, in a sense that the rising professional, the rising outside in private practice, if they are building that relationship with somebody around the same level in-house, how that could work in the long run very well, if one assumes they are providing value. Maybe I'm naïve, but some of the things you're talking about, I don't have to bring them up because—doesn't everybody say, “O.K., the bottom line is you've got to do good work, and you got to let everybody else know you're doing that good work”? I guess I skip over that because, to me, it's a given. Maybe it isn't. Amy: No, I wish it were a given. It wasn't in my life. I'm still struggling with that. I think studies show, actually, that is not a given with cultural considerations. Some assume that the work speaks for itself, so it is a plea to them to acknowledge, in a tactful way, what you're doing and elevate that. That's an art, and we all have to practice it. To your point, I'd love to think it's a given, but I don't think it is. Doing good work is also contextualized. I've said for many years, for myself as well as from others when listening to them identify, that you have to do the best work you can do, but what exactly does that mean? I think in this day and age, what it means to do good work is to understand what your fundamental client needs are, and that oftentimes isn't information you necessarily get from the first round. You have to be proactive about understanding that. That goes not just for the junior attorneys, but also for the relationship partners and the individuals who are working on the matters. Sharon: I think that's very sound advice, sound thoughts. We could have a whole conversation about what doing good work is. Amy: We certainly could. Sharon: Amy, thank you so much for being here today. Amy: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation, Sharon.

What you'll learn in this episode:   How tapping into the Spanish-speaking market can fuel new growth for law firms   Why simply translating a website or marketing copy into Spanish isn't enough to connect with the Hispanic market Why a Spanish-language marketing strategy that works in Los Angeles may not work in San Antonio or Miami  When to create a Spanish sister website and brand strategy for your firm How to work with Spanish-speaking clients—even if you don't speak Spanish      About Hugo Gomez Hugo Gomez is Founder and President of Abogados NOW, a national bilingual digital marketing consultancy exclusively exclusive to attorneys. The company was founded in Los Angeles in 2018 and has since expanded nationally to help law firms reach Spanish-speaking markets throughout the U.S.  Additional resources: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hgomezmktg/  Abogados NOW website: https://www.abogadosnow.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abogadosnow Twitter: https://twitter.com/abogados_now  Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast Spanish speakers in the U.S. need lawyers, and lawyers need new clients—but these two groups often fail to connect due to barriers in language and culture. Hugo Gomez set out to solve this problem by founding Abogados NOW, a legal marketing firm that specializes in the bilingual market. Hugo joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about why Spanish digital media presents a cost-effective opportunity for growth; how to choose the best website and brand strategy to reach bilingual clients; and how you can reach Spanish speakers, even if you don't speak Spanish yourself. Read the episode transcript here.   Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Hugo Gomez, founder of Abogados NOW. The firm specializes in legal marketing, working with their client law firms to help them maximize their share of the bilingual market. Today, we'll hear all about Hugo's path and how the firm works with clients. Hugo, welcome to the program. Hugo: Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. I'm super excited to be here. Sharon: I'm so glad to have you. Tell us about your career path. Did you want to go into law? Hugo: No, I was actually working in personal and commercial finance for most of my early career, doing a lot of high-volume lead generation. Those are great organizations I worked with. They were super fun, but having done most of what I could do in the financial sector, I wanted a new challenge. I was fortunate enough to get a role as a director at one of the nation's largest lead generators for attorneys. What I learned very quickly was that there's an opening in the market to advertise in Spanish on behalf of attorneys. After learning about the legal industry a little more, I decided to start Abogados NOW to empower smaller firms, sole practitioners and medium-size firms to own their marketing, to grow on their own terms, essentially to have their own lead generation sources in Spanish that most attorneys simply do not have. Sharon: Do they not have it because they think it's going to cost too much, they're too small, they don't know how to do it? What is the opening you saw? Hugo: Yeah, most attorneys largely advertise in English because digital marketing agencies, all they know is advertising in English. The opening we saw was that the fastest-growing audience segment is Spanish-speaking consumers in the United States, and there wasn't anyone really giving attorneys specific strategies to connect with these consumers authentically. And I say authentically because a lot of attorneys, when they attempt to advertise in Spanish, they'll simply translate their marketing into Spanish. We all know what works in Spanish won't work in English, and vice versa. The opening we saw, the opportunity we saw, was the ability to connect attorneys to these communities the right way, the authentic way, so that attorneys who don't have that footprint in these communities can be trusted authorities. Sharon: I can imagine people might hand off website copy to somebody who can translate it and say, “Translate it into Spanish.” You don't know what's actually happening or whether they're doing it right, or whether I need to get out my high school Spanish book. Hugo: Precisely. Sharon: I would assume all attorneys today know that digital marketing is important, that online marketing is important, so I assume they have some sort of program in place when they call you in. Is that true? What's your first step in terms of O.K., let's take a look at this? Hugo: Typically speaking, when we onboard a new member, we onboard them after discussing a few qualifying questions. We want to know if they are on a growth path. If an attorney or a firm wants steady business, we're probably not the right fit. We're more equipped for hypergrowth strategies. We want that solo practice to grow, to find new revenue, so we reverse engineer their business goals. As much as we are a digital marketing partner, I think we are a great business partner as well. It all comes down to what the end goal is. Are you pointing yourself to an exit? Are you trying to increase the valuation of your company? Are you simply trying to grow for growth's sake? There are many different goals attorneys have, so we try to determine what that goal is.  More often than not, the low-hanging fruit is Spanish media online, because Spanish media online is competitively priced. Online marketing for attorneys in English is quite competitive. We hear the horror stories from attorneys who don't do well on Google search for this very reason. We're able to hedge against that reality by owning Spanish-speaking consumers when they're looking for an attorney. Sharon: Is that mostly when they're looking for a plaintiff attorney? Do you work with defense attorneys, intellectual property attorneys? What kind of practices do you work with? Hugo: That's a great question. We work with a variety of practices areas. We're most popular in personal injury, workers' comp, immigration, bankruptcy and criminal defense. Anything that hits a large mass of the population, we're able to generate qualified calls, forums, chats, etc. for attorneys looking to grow their practice. Sharon: How do you measure that? Do you help them? Do you work with them on lead intake, or do you just get the phone to ring and they're on their own after that? Hugo: It's pretty inclusive. We don't consider ourselves an agency. We believe we have way more value than most agencies do in that the marketing, the lead generation aspect, that's standard. That's something everybody gets in our program, and we're very proud to do that quite well and competitively priced. Now, what happens when those calls are generated? A variety of things. A firm may have an intake center that's bilingual already on site, which is amazing. We love to hear that. Sometimes they only have a receptionist, which is fine if they're a low-volume player in the beginning, but if they're confused or they're not really familiar with intake operations, we connect them to the right partners for intake.  There are amazing answering services for attorneys. We work directly with LEX Reception—they are our official service partner—so for any attorney who is worried about answering calls in Spanish, we have a high degree of confidence saying, “Hey, we already have a solution for you; they are Abogados NOW's certified answering service partner.” They'll answer your calls 24/7. They'll walk you through the script. They already know the best practices in getting personal and sensitive information from these markets. We're proud to say that as much as we are a digital marketing partner, we are a great business operations partner. Sharon: You would come in and say, “Let's see what we would do in terms of your strategy, your positioning.” You're working from the ground up. Hugo: Absolutely. More often than not attorneys don't have a Spanish strategy, and if they do, 99 percent of the time we have to break it down and build it from scratch again. It's because the market's changing quite fast. The census data that was released I believe a month ago, the 2020 census data, shows that this market has a very high purchase power. They make a lot of life decision on their mobile phones. Even the Pew Research Center confirmed that the vast majority of Spanish speakers use their phones as a primary source for the web, at a higher rate than the general English-speaking population. That surprises a lot of people, but the data supports that you really have to understand the market and build a strategy for them in that particular metro market, because the strategies that work in California will oftentimes not work in San Antonio and Miami and Newark, New Jersey. They're very different markets, and you have to have a deep understanding of the value systems in these metro areas to build the right marketing program for them. Sharon: So, you work across the county. Hugo: Yeah, we're national now. We started in California. That's where our headquarters are, here in Los Angeles County. We knew the demand was there. Sometime late last year, we did a soft launch nationally. Just a few months ago, we announced our official national rollout. Right now we're in nine or 10 states. Sharon: Do you have people in San Antonio and Miami, or somebody that understands that market as opposed to Long Beach? Hugo: Yeah, absolutely. We are fundamentally a post-Covid organization. Sharon: I'm sorry; I didn't hear that. Hugo: We are fundamentally a post-Covid organization. Sharon: Post-covid? Hugo: Yeah, we're nearly fully remote. Most of our team members work from the comfort of their own home offices or at libraries, wherever they feel most comfortable. We've made it work. We have a great culture that's virtual. Our team loves the flexibility of working on their terms, but with strict standards and deadlines.  Because of that, we're able to say, “We're not that familiar with the Spanish-speaking market in Louisiana. Maybe we should reach out to some copywriters or designers out there who are part of the community and get a sense of what the market's like.” Again, the Spanish-speaking market is not a monolith. What we do is not a translation exercise; it's a brand positioning exercise within your local community. To answer your question, we're able to find great talent based on our infrastructure. Sharon: That's very interesting. I know markets vary, but I hadn't thought that the Hispanic market in Miami might be very different from the market here. Hugo: It is. Just by definition, if you look at the numbers, there are more Dominicans and Cuban-Americans per capita in South Florida than there are in Southern California, where it's largely Mexican, Central American and, to various degrees, South American as well. Those value systems are very different because of how relatives, your immigrant roots, immigrated to the United States. They all came through various channels and have different political systems. The way in which you land in this country will set the tone for your values and potentially the values of future generations after you. Sharon: It's very interesting and I'm sure very, very true. I'm thinking about people like me, whose ancestors came over at the turn of the century from Eastern Europe, and it still echoes today. Are your clients ever bilingual? Do they ever call in and say, “Hey, this is just too much for me”? Hugo: The majority of our members do not speak Spanish. I think that's why they choose us as their digital marketing and business partner, because they realize that in order to scale, you have to find other markets. You have to find lead generation sources. You have to find other media channels that your competition has not figured out yet, and because marketing in Spanish isn't a translation exercise, the bar is quite high to do it the right way. We often tell attorneys at the very beginning, “It's O.K. if you don't speak Spanish; however, someone on your staff should.” That is a requirement. Whether you have a partner who comes to every Zoom or in-person meeting with you, or you have a paralegal who might be bilingual, that is a requirement in our program. Otherwise, there's no way the Spanish-speaking market is going to be able to communicate effectively with your practice. We do make that a requirement, to have bilingual staff, but it is certainly not a requirement for attorneys to speak Spanish. Sharon: We've worked with quite a few law firms, and they've been great law firms, but they're like, “We should go after this ethnic market. Nobody here speaks anything but English, so who can find someone who knows something?” What do you do? Do you say, “We'll assign somebody”? How do you handle that? Hugo: If the attorney is at the point that their firm does not have a Spanish-speaking resource, that's when we immediately default to our answering service partners. What we've learned is—and this is a really interesting phenomenon—that a Spanish speaker will handle the call wonderfully. They'll establish trust. They'll get the personal information. They'll set up the engagement. What our answering service partner is very effective at doing is telling that person, “Hey, you might want to bring a relative who speaks English,” and more often than not, they will. The consumer will bring someone who speaks English, whether it's a loved one, a neighbor, a friend. So, there's always a way to market effectively in these languages, but it really does start with the strategy. If you don't have a credible website, credible advertising, a credible message, you're never going to be able to establish that communication they're after. Sharon: If the firm already has their website, will you then build—I'm not saying translate directly—but will you build a parallel site in Spanish for them? Hugo: There are a few options. Depending on how well their website is built, we may be able to add what we call a “translation switch.” It's a deceiving name because there are no translations happening. You'll see the “en Español” button on the website, and when you click it, you'll see the interpretations, not direct translations, of the English copy throughout the site. It's almost like you have two websites in one. That is a popular option; however, this also depends on the market.  We oftentimes recommend a sister website because of the state bar Rules of Professional Conduct as they relate to advertising, because some states do not allow different trade names. If trade names are allowed, like separate trade names where an attorney can incorporate or use a DBA or do something legally to file that name, we absolutely recommend that. I'll give you an example. Javaheri & Yahoudai, they're two personal injury attorneys in Los Angeles. They've been with us for over three years now, and their name—we had an honest discussion—is kind of difficult to say quickly, difficult to memorize. So, we pared it down to J&Y, and that's their English strategy; J&Y, Javaheri & Yahoudai. They're known as J&Y Law, and they're very successful in arguably the most competitive PI market in the country.  However, in Spanish, we don't use the J&Y name, because in California we could use separate trade names. So, we created Abogados Campeones, which means “Champion Attorneys.” This separate trade name has a completely different marketing angle, branding, website, video strategy, ad strategy. The way we describe it to potential members is we're not just building this marketing program; we're effectively building a new business that's tacking onto your existing infrastructure.  Abogados Campeones does extraordinarily well. Some months, it outperforms their English marketing. That name came about after many discussions with the brand team, many discussions with development, many discussions with the firm to find the values we want to evoke. In Southern California, we've done a lot of polling. The immigrant population likes to win, win at all costs, so we knew this name was going to be a homerun. When we acquired it, it essentially established the model for how we operate today. We try to find out that value system, the right branding. We know that if we pump some ad dollars behind all that research, you're going to have a successful launch in Spanish. Sharon: I can see how a name like that would be compelling. Do your clients call you in when they feel like, “O.K., I'm spending a fortune on Google. I've maxed it out. I have been effective at competing with everybody and his brother, but I've been spending millions every month on paperwork. I want to find a different way. I think there's more here.” What are they saying to you? Hugo: The majority of clients that are members who sign up for an employment with us, I would say four out of five times they are very unhappy with the way things are going in their current marketing. The feedback we hear—and we're very glad to hear—is that attorneys see the value in working with a consultancy that only works with attorneys, that essentially doubles the value of your marketing reach because of English and Spanish. Attorneys see that we're all native English speakers, but we also come from Latin American countries; we all come from Spanish-speaking families and we're all fully bilingual. I think the logic with attorneys, what they oftentimes tell us is, “We're not happy with the way things are going, and we see a lot of value in being fully bilingual rather than focusing on this one area of the market that's super-crowded.” Sharon: You mentioned several times that you have members. I'm trying to think of some of the other legal membership groups. They escape me, but is this something where you're calling your clients members, or is this a membership program? Hugo: The reason we don't use clients is because the nomenclature gets confusing, because we generate clients for our clients. We just established that if you're a part of Abogados NOW, you are a member of our program. There's no network referral opportunity. There is a community of sorts, an unofficial one, but generally speaking, there's no formal discussion board or anything of the like. We are working towards that. We do anticipate having our first in-person event in Q2 next year to further establish our reach in person, just because we've been so virtual the last four years. Our members are members mainly because of the nomenclature, but also we do feel they're part of something new. They're part of something that's original that hasn't been established anywhere else in the country. Sharon: Do you track your success by whether they're increasing the number of leads? Everybody's going to ask that—“How do I measure success with you?” Hugo: I think this is why we don't sign everybody, because we like to ask these questions day one. What are you looking for? Then, how do you and I agree on the metrics or key performance indicators that are going to tell us whether we're winning or losing? Oftentimes attorneys say, “I don't know. I don't know how many more clients I want,” and then we'll schedule another call, but I love it when an attorney is ready with their game plan for the next quarter, the next year, the next five years. We do focus on what we call the frontend metrics. Yes, there are costs per lead; there are costs per click. Ultimately, we never really get into these discussions with attorneys. What they're most interested in is, “How much have I invested in advertising and what was my direct output?” I think attorneys appreciate that because they know we're not just celebrating cost-per-lead goals. Cost per lead is all relative. All that matters is how many are you converting, how many are you signing and what value each signed client has for your firm. Sharon: That's very true. What's the value? If you're not getting quality people calling in, quality meaning—it sounds awful, but a serious brain injury, that's what every personal injury attorney wants. Not to make fun of anybody, but there's a lot of money in that. Hugo, thank you so much. This is very, very interesting.  Hugo: Thank you so much. For any attorneys listening who are serious about scale, who are serious about making that trusted connection with your Spanish-speaking community, please make an appointment with us on our website. We're at AbogadosNow.com. You can create a meeting invite per your availability and we can discuss your goals. That's what we want to talk about. We want to talk about how to grow your business and then work backwards from there. Thank you so much, Sharon. I appreciate your time. Sharon: I greatly appreciate yours. Thank you so much.

What you'll learn in this episode: How to avoid SEO charlatans and ensure your digital agency is getting results Why a beautifully designed website doesn't necessarily equal a high-ranking website Why an SEO strategy means nothing if a firm doesn't have a proper intake system What insights you'll find in Jason's new book, “Law Firm SEO” About Jason Hennessey Jason Hennessey is an internationally recognized SEO expert, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business executive. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student and practitioner of SEO and search marketing. His expertise led him to grow and sell multiple businesses, starting with a dot-com in the wedding industry. After presenting his SEO knowledge to a group of lawyers in 2009, Jason founded and later sold Everspark Interactive, cementing his reputation as a thought leader and authority in SEO for the legal industry. As CEO of Hennessey Digital since 2015, Jason grew a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business that made the Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row in 2020, and he also runs SEO industry news site iloveseo.com. A keynote speaker and frequent podcast and webinar guest, Jason is a columnist for the Washington Post and a regular contributor to Entrepreneur, Inc., and the National Law Review. His team is currently preparing to open Hennessey Studios, a state-of-the-art audio and video production facility located in the Television Academy building in the heart of Hollywood where Jason will host a podcast interviewing entrepreneurs and business leaders. He also recently released his first book, Law Firm SEO, described as the “holy grail of digital marketing for lawyers.” Jason is a United States Air Force veteran and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Marketing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A New York native, Jason launched his SEO career in Las Vegas and grew his reputation in the legal industry in Atlanta. He now lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Bridget, and their three children. Additional resources: Website: jasonhennessey.com  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhennessey/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jasonhennessey/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jason.hennessey.399 Twitter: ​​https://twitter.com/jasonhennessey  Published Book: Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast Transcript: When Jason Hennessey discovered SEO in the early 2000s, it was a largely unknown novelty. Today, SEO is the cornerstone of digital marketing, and Jason leads a successful agency, Hennessey Digital, that specializes in SEO and digital marketing for law firms. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how he landed in the legal industry, why he's so passionate about empowering lawyers to understand SEO, and why he wrote his new book, “Law Firm SEO.” Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to The Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Jason Hennessey,. Hennessey Digital works with law firms to maximize their SEO, their search engine optimization, and rankings. Today, with ranks being impacted by all aspects of the online world, Jason's firm works with law firms on their websites, blogs and social media in order to maximize their rankings on Google. We'll learn more about Hennessey Digital's work today. Jason, welcome to the podcast. Jason: Thank you, Sharon. I appreciate you having me. Sharon: We're so glad to have you. Thank you much. To me, SEO is its own art and science. You can't do a lot more besides that. You can't become an expert in other things. Tell us about your background there. Jason: It's not like I was a kid and I said, “I want to be an SEO person when I grow up.” There was no such thing. I got into SEO back in 2001. I had just finished college. I was going to UNLV in Las Vegas after I had gotten out the Air Force. I was contemplating taking the LSAT to get into law school, and then my journey took more of an entrepreneurial route. I started a couple of businesses. As a result of starting the businesses, I had to learn how to market these businesses, and search engine optimization was one of the first things I studied. Back then in 2001, when I got into SEO, there wasn't a lot of information on it. There were a couple of books that were reliable and a couple of blogs, so I started to read up on it and I got pretty good at it.  Then in about 2008, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia—we relocated our family there—and I got asked to speak to a group of lawyers. There were 50 DUI law firms that didn't compete with each other, and they met for a mastermind in Atlanta. I got up there, didn't know anything about legal marketing, but I gave a presentation about how I was able to rank on Google for the keyword “wedding themes,” because one of my businesses was an e-commerce website. As a result of me being transparent, a couple of relationships were made; a couple of business cards were handed out, and that was the genesis of how I got into legal marketing. Sharon: Were they banging your door down saying they wanted you to do that for them? What happened there? Jason: After I showed them exactly how they could rank their websites on Google for the terms that were important to them with practical examples, I think they realized they didn't want to do that themselves; they wanted somebody to do it for them, or they already had people that were doing this for them that weren't as transparent or weren't getting results. That's how the conversation went: “Here's my card. Do you do this?” I'm like, “Well, not really, but give me your card. Maybe we can talk.” I thought, “Maybe there's something here. Maybe there are law firms that really need help with their marketing. They should be getting paid to do what they're good at, and that's being good lawyers, being in the courtroom, depositions.” We got one or two clients as a result of that. We turned those clients into case studies, and then we used those studies to grow our business.  Sharon: Was there something that intrigued you about doing it in the legal world? Jason: It's probably one of the most competitive spaces from a digital marketing perspective. I was up for the challenge because here I was, ranking nationally for another competitive space, wedding favors and weddings, and this was a little bit different. I didn't know the vernacular of law, so I started to go the conferences. I would sit in the conferences and listen, and I would listen to the phone calls they were getting as clients were working with them to truly understand their world and that vernacular. Since 2008, I've been immersed in that industry, so I'm one of the thought leaders in legal marketing. I just published a book called “Law Firm SEO,” which I'm proud about.  Sharon: Congratulations! We'll have a link to the book and you can tell me more about it. Jason: Thank you. Sharon: In our experience, when we started out we were working with defense firms, and they were still wondering whether they needed a website, let alone SEO.  How do you find the reception now? Does everybody say, “Oh, yeah, we do that. We spend millions of dollars on it”? Jason: Yeah, we do a lot of work with personal injury law firms. There's a lot of demand in those markets, and those are some of the most competitive keywords from a pay-per-click perspective. There are lawyers that will pay $400 or $500 a click just to send somebody to their website. Over the years, we've also started to work with criminal defense lawyers, bankruptcy lawyers, even business attorneys as well. In fact, I actually found my business attorney—I live in Santa Clarita—by Googling. Even me, as a consumer on the other end, I use Google myself to try to find things, whether it's a restaurant or whatever. Particularly in this case, I found my business attorney that way.  Sharon: Now, everybody finds everything today. The first thing you do is go on Google or one of the search engines. Whether you want it to or not, it puts it right there.  Jason: Yes. Sharon: What's the reception? Today, is it more like, “Oh, tell me about it”? Is it more like, “We have guys who do that, but I'm not sure they're doing a good job”? What do you find? Jason: I think that's it. It's a very nebulous space, and most of the attorneys are not really educated on digital marketing. They should be, and it's a little intimidating. If you were to go to a bookstore and pick up a book on SEO, it's in the computer engineering section. Lawyers are not really—their brains, for the most part, generally aren't wired to be coders. That was one of the main reasons why I ended up writing this book. It was to educate and empower lawyers, whether you're just out of law school or if you run a very successful, hundred-person firm. It educates and empowers you to understand it without the complexity of understanding how to write code. I break it down in a very easy-to-understand format. As a result, lawyers will now be armed with the right information to make good decisions with their business, to know how to keep score when they're paying an SEO company, and overall how to not get taken advantage of. In our world, there are charlatans that, in some cases, will leverage the nebulous and confusing world of digital marketing. That was my biggest thing, to make sure lawyers are never getting taken advantage of in this world, too. Sharon: You're probably in a similar situation to us. Being a marketing and PR firm, we always find that if we're talking to a prospective client, they say, “We've done that. We've worked with people. It didn't work.” You find yourself being two steps behind before you even start. How do you handle that?  Jason: This is one of the ways, to be honest with you. When they say, “Hey, I don't know. I've been burned so many times. It just doesn't work. I'm not sure if I should even do this,” we never really sell anything. When we work with a client, we're never selling; we lead with education, and the education is based on our experiences with the clients we work with today. In some cases, we'll be able to show them why it wasn't working, and we'll be able to educate them in a way so they understand it. If they really want more information, then we'll basically mail them a book. If they're curious about why it's truly not working, we'll say, “Here, read the book. This will give you a much bigger understanding of what goes on behind the scenes.”  Sharon: Do you find today, because search engine rankings are so critical no matter what you do, that practice areas that weren't interested before are starting to come to you? Let's say the corporate practice area might have said, “What do I need it for?” Do you find they're showing more interest? Jason: Oh, yeah, 100%, corporate. We even work with Ben Crump, who's a national civil rights attorney. That wouldn't have been the practice area we would have started to go after as far as marketing ourselves 15 years ago; “Let's go after a civil rights attorney.” But now, it's important. There are different aspects of coming up with a strategy. Sometimes it's just educating. Even then, it's educating with answers, FAQs, and creating video content to be more of the trusted source when a consumer is in the market for an attorney for whatever it is they need the attorney for. So, there's definitely branding, there's direct response, and then sometimes there's educational content that they should be putting out on the web. Sharon: Are you called in by lawyers, by managing partners, by law firm marketers? Who calls you in? Jason: It really depends. We like working with marketing directors because they speak our language, but most of the attorneys we work with, a lot of them don't even spend a lot of time in the courtroom anymore. These are businesspeople that are very aggressive marketers. Sometimes the most successful lawyers are not the best in trial; it's the guys or the ladies that are actually the best marketers. In most cases, we either work with a marketing director or we'll work with the owner of the firm who is the partner that does the marketing, that one that's buying all the billboard ads and on TV and radio. That's typically who we work with. Sharon: Do you find that all works together? My question is, do you ever have to come in and say, “O.K., we've got to tear the website up and start over,” or “Let's take another look at your social media”? What happens? Jason: Yeah, in some cases, we'll take over a campaign and one of the first things we'll do is look at the website. We'll try to audit, like what are the blockers here, what's going to have the highest impact, what changes can we make right away that will have the highest impact? We'll get in and do that, but we also educate. We bring our clients along so they truly understand what we're doing and it's not confusing to them, because if it's not confusing to them, they'll appreciate us a little bit more. From there, once the site is fixed, sometimes we'll go for a redesign if that's needed.  Sometimes the sites are nice as-is and we can take that and fix the technical, SEO side of it. From there, it comes down to a couple of things, like maintaining the integrity of the technical code. We do that on a regular basis. We develop content strategies where we write and publish content on our client's behalf, and then there's the stuff you guys do with PR in bringing the eyeballs to the website. That's so important. We work with PR companies for some of our clients. We also do something called link building, and link building is how you boost the popularity of your website. When somebody links to another website with a blue underlined link, that's like currency on the web, and that's how websites become popular. Once a website becomes popular, that's how it ranks well in Google, and that's how you start to get traffic. Sharon: You talked about charlatans. Are there companies that promise to give you a thousand links by tomorrow or something? Jason: Yeah, avoid those. Sometimes it's better just getting one link by becoming a member of the National Trial Lawyers or becoming a member of the Better Business Bureau. Sometimes that one link is better than a thousand of those spammy links that you referenced there. Sharon: Yeah, there's a lot you find if you're clicking around. What would you rank as the biggest barrier to success in this area for law firms, or what mistakes do you see? I guess those are two questions. What mistakes do you see in law firms? Jason: Making sure that you're following the right playbook and you have an agency that has some success in the area of law, because there is a difference between somebody that has a great deal of experience with e-commerce versus working with law firms. That's important, but believe it or not, the other side is that a lot of lawyers are spending a lot of money to bring in more phone calls and more leads, but sometimes that's where they fall down; they're not really prepared on their end with the proper intake. This was actually something we ran a study on, because one of our clients was saying, “Hey, I don't know why, but the SEO just doesn't seem like it's working.” We're looking at all the traffic and phone calls, and it's a campaign that's doing very well and it was really surprising to us.  What we did was plant a lead into his intake. We filled out a form submission on his website, and it was a real, qualified lead. Thinking that we would get a phone call within at least an hour, nothing happened. Nothing happened the rest of the day, and it turned out that we got a call back two weeks later. We were like, “Well, that's the reason why.” If you're getting leads and you're getting back to people two weeks later, there's something obviously broken on your end with your intake. That inspired us to go out and do a whole study. We reached out to 700 law firms and planted the lead around the same time on a Monday morning. Believe it or not, 42 percent of the law firms that we reached out to didn't even respond back to us. Sharon: Wow! I can't say I'm surprised. So many times, we may not be handling the actual SEO, but we will work with the law firm and the people answering the phones to put a process together and that doesn't happen. Jason: That's critical, because it's one thing to spend a lot of money to generate the traffic and the leads, but to fall down when they actually call, that's a constraint. A lot of law firms during their growth, they have to fix that. Sharon: It's more than a constraint; it's a real waste of money if you're doing your job and they're not getting the phone calls. Jason: That's exactly right. Sharon: Then people are saying, “Well, if you're not going to respond, I'm going to call somewhere else.” Do you find resistance to search engine optimization? When you say that's what you do, do you find firms saying, “Oh, we do fine”? Jason: We're not in the business of cold calling people, because (a) good luck getting through the gatekeeper, and (b), you're selling what seems like snake oil in our industry because it has such a bad reputation. I think a lot of law firms don't really understand what is involved with SEO, so in some cases, they have a designer that designs them a new website and codes it and they say, “Do you do SEO?” and they say, “Yeah” and then they build a new website. A couple of weeks later, they have a nice website, and they think they have SEO now because they can check that box, like, “Oh yeah, my developer did the SEO on it.”  That couldn't be further from the truth. SEO is something else. It's like your health. Seriously, I look at it like that. If you want to remain healthy, you don't just eat an apple and say, “O.K., I'm good now.” It requires constant jogging and eating healthy and dieting, and that's how SEO is. SEO is a core to your business. You have to continue to maintain it; you have to continue to make it better. Publishing content on a regular basis is important, making sure there are no issues within the code on a regular basis is important. It's definitely an ongoing strategy. It's just a matter of how aggressive you want to be. Sharon: What haven't we talked about that you want to let us know? Jason: The book that I wrote again is called “Law Firm SEO.” You can find it on Amazon. Sharon: “Law Firm SEO.”  Why did you decide to write it? Jason: I decided to write this, again, because it's been 20 years of me learning this, and I genuinely wanted to give back.  Like I said, I wanted someone in law school that is interested in the business side of law to get a general sense of what this takes; what this world that I'm going to be competing in looks like. So, for $25 on Amazon, you can tap into 20 years of experience that I've had to go through. Sharon: At one point, lawyers could do this all themselves. You didn't have social media and everything else that you need to think about today. Jason: Yeah, and that's point of the book. When you're starting out, you either have time or you have money to solve a problem. For example, my sprinklers broke this weekend. I don't know a lot about sprinklers. I can invest my time into going on YouTube and watching videos about how to fix sprinklers, or I could just call somebody and they can come and fix it. I'd prefer to use my money, in this case, to have somebody that's more professional come and fix it, but if I didn't have the money, guess what? I'm going to have to watch YouTube and figure this out myself. I think that's the same with law firms, whether you're just getting started or if you've been in practice for a long time. It really comes down to time versus money. Do you really want to learn this and, if that's the case, spend some time reading about it?  The book was written in a way where those that read it could certainly spend time starting to learn and teach themselves this or, alternatively, you could be armed with information now that you've read the book, and then you could make a better decision in hiring somebody to help you. When people say, “Hey, is SEO still valuable? Should I be investing in this?” I don't think SEO is going away anytime soon. The question should be “Should I do SEO versus pay-per-click? Where would I invest my money?” I don't think it's an either/or question. I think if you're able to generate business from paid marketing, continue to feed that marketing channel with a budget and continue to generate business as a result of that. If you're able to generate business with organic, with SEO, again, same thing. Continue to test it, tweak it, and then keep ramping up where things are working. I think digital marketing for law firms is very valuable, and I genuinely hope those that are listening pick up the book, “Law Firm SEO”—it's available on Amazon—and I genuinely hope that you get some real value from it. Sharon: Jason, thank you so much for being with us today. This has been very interesting and informative. Jason: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Sharon.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why it takes time to see results from SEO campaigns, and why it's worthwhile to stick it out Why your law firm's website should be the hub for all your marketing activity What granular web pages are and why they are crucial to rank in a competitive market How the technical side of your website, such as load time, can impact your marketing Why social media isn't the answer to all of your marketing needs What the biggest digital marketing mistakes that law firms make are About Eric Bersano Eric Bersano has been deeply involved in online legal marketing since 2006. He is the VP of Business Development at Market My Market, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses generate new clients by implementing the right systems and strategies. Depending on a law firm's goals, Eric ensures the best marketing channel and modalities are implemented, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and TV and radio. His focus on the legal space gives Eric the network to utilize the most talented designers, programmers, and marketers in the country. His clients maintain very high rankings for competitive online searches at the city, state, and national levels. Additional resources: Market My Market Blog: https://www.marketmymarket.com/blog/ Legal Mastermind Podcast: https://legalmastermindpodcast.com/ Esquire University Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/esquire-university/id1561888137 Legal Mastermind Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/273634779949416 Market My Market Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketmymarket/?hl=en   Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast Transcript Most law firms recognize that digital marketing is crucial to maintain market share in a competitive environment—yet many firms cling to outdated websites and marketing strategies. That's where Eric Bersano comes in. As VP of Business Development for digital marketing agency Market My Market, Eric has worked with hundreds of law firms to refine their SEO, pay-per-click and advertising efforts. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about the importance of having a website that's equally beautiful and functional; the most effective strategies to move up Google's rankings; and why the best marketing campaign is a well-rounded one. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Eric Bersano with Market My Market. Eric specializes in legal marketing, especially in the all-important areas of search engine optimization, pay-per-click and radio and TV advertising. I've known Eric for several years and have always been impressed with his ability to break log jams. When a law firm thinks it's doing everything it should be doing, but is not getting the results it wants, they call in Eric. Eric, welcome to the program. Eric: Sharon, thanks for having me. Sharon: So glad to have you. I'm anxious to hear about this. We've talked about it before, but it's always changing. How did you get into working with lawyers? Eric: I'll try to make it a short story, but I was actually on the other side, working with doctors for a while. My mom didn't have a doctor or lawyer for a son, but I've worked with both now. I was working with doctors and orthopedic surgeons specifically. I had a friend who was in legal marketing, and he was telling me how great it was and that he enjoyed being a good resource to law firms. When you're working with orthopedic surgeons, I always said I'm never going to know as much as them about surgery or the implants they're putting in, but on the marketing side, I could become an expert and show some value to a law firm. If you change someone's practices for the better, meaning you're making them more profitable, they're very happy to talk to you. It was a much more rewarding career path that I've stuck with for the past 15 years now. Sharon: Did you study computers? Did you study marketing? What was your background and education? Eric: I did advertising in school. That was my major. I also did business and marketing. I've always been fascinated with how to grow a company and the messaging that goes behind it. What I've learned working with attorneys, it's messaging and efficiency: getting your message out in a hypercompetitive market, putting yourself in the ballgame, whether it's on TV, radio, print or the internet. You need to get yourself in the ballgame, and once you're there, it's all about efficiency. How is your intake process? How quickly can you respond to people? Because in the internet age, it's so easy to click the back button and go to the next law firm if you're not responsive. I do marketing, but I also do consulting with firms and let them know, “Hey, I've worked with other firms that are really good at this and this is what they do.” Some people will take the advice and pull it in-house, and some people will say, “Well, we're going to outsource that,” or “We're not situated to do that yet,” but I always try to be there as a sounding board to point out inefficiencies and solutions for them.  Sharon: There are a lot of roadblocks, as you were saying, about what comes next and making the process smooth. What does Market My Market do? What do you do in that world? Eric: Market My Market is a digital advertising agency and we focus on search engine optimization. I always tell people that a well-run search engine optimization campaign is typically going to be your lowest cost for good leads, and what I mean by that is SEO is typically a set fee. Whether you're paying $2,000 a month or $10,000 a month, that's the set fee. If you're getting one case a month or 20 cases a month, your fee doesn't change. With advertising, whether you're talking TV or pay-per-click or social media, the more you want, the more you pay, and those are sunk costs. If I'm going to pay $10,000 to Facebook this month to get cases, once that $10,000 is spent, I get no more residuals on that. Whereas with SEO, it's really about creating assets online, creating content, creating infographics, creating a presence. If you stop with that, you still have what you built up to that point.  Our firm, Market My Market, really concentrates on that organic side. We've got four members of the team that all worked in-house at law firms, so they understand how this process works from other side, what law firms are most interested in. SEO is compared—or at least I've made comparisons—to a used car salesman. All you need to have an SEO company is a laptop, a wi-fi connection and a phone and you can say you're an SEO person. A lot of the history has been based on proprietary secrets or a black-box type of thing, “We can't tell you what we're doing.” We take the opposite approach. We develop 30, 60, 90-day programs for everybody. We let the attorney know what we're going to onsite, what we're going to do from an SEO perspective and all the content we're going to write over that 90-day period. Each month we have meetings with the attorney and we go through that 30, 60, 90; here's what we provided; here's what we're going to provide; here are the current results. That way they can see the activity. SEO in a competitive market can be expensive. Law firms, on more than one occasion, have said, “O.K. we're paying you all this money. What are you doing for me each month?” We want to be able to answer that question emphatically and show the results.  Sharon: That's interesting. I can understand them asking that question while you're getting set up and then not seeing results, but if they're seeing results—to me, I'd feel like you brought me 10 cases I wouldn't have had. It doesn't matter to me what you're doing, in a sense. Do you find that? Eric: Yeah, but there's always what I call this valley of doubt. Even the best SEO campaign with the best trial firms—because it does help if you're working with a really good law firm that works on the PR side of things, which can have some overlay into SEO. If an attorney is getting mentioned in the newspaper, if an attorney is being mentioned in social media, that does have some trickle-down effects to SEO, but even the most effective SEO campaign takes time, and the more competitive the market, the more time. In a midsize market, you're looking around six months. In a hypercompetitive market like Houston, New York City, Los Angeles, it could be nine months to a year. That's the valley of doubt: “O.K., Eric, we're paying you all this money. We're not seeing the cases yet.” You're not going to see cases for months because it takes time to build up that trust with Google. That's when it's hyper-important for the attorney to see results. “O.K., we're tracking these 25 terms for you. When we started, you were on page 8, then you moved to page 6. Now you're on page 4.” Instead of them hearing the line, “Just trust me. Just give me time,” we want to open up the book and say, “This is what we're doing for you. This is the result of what we're doing for you,” so they can watch and track that. It doesn't mean they're not going to get anything within those first six months, but to the victor go all the spoils when it comes to online marketing. When you Google “personal injury attorney Los Angeles,” those top five firms are getting all the phone calls. The ones that are on page 2 and beyond, none of the phone calls. There's an inflexion point at a certain time where the law firm starts to see and believes. That's when they stop saying, “What's going on, Eric?” That's when they say, “How do we get more?” or “How do we expand?” Sharon: In our experience—and it sounds like yours is similar—everybody says, “Sure, I'll be patient. I understand it takes time,” but the second month when they're putting out money—which, I understand it hurts to take out your wallet and pay somebody when you're not seeing results. It turns to, “Well, what are you doing for me?” It's great to be able to show they're going up the rankings, although I'm sure everybody's fighting to be at the top spot.  Your firm's website says that a law firm's website is the core of a marketing program. I feel that way, but I often don't hear that. Can you tell us more about that philosophy? Eric: One of the things I hear from attorneys all the time is “We don't need SEO because we get lots of referrals.” I believe to this day, even though I'm an online marketer, that the best cases are going to come from referrals, but there is a huge swath of cases that can be gathered from SEO and the website, the hub of their marketing. If you get a hundred referrals, how many of those referrals do you think will Google you? Probably 98 of them will Google you. Number one, they're going to Google you just to find your contact information. Now, if they get to your website and it looks outdated, if they get to your website and they don't see the practice area—let's say you're a mass tort attorney and you're doing IVC filters or talcum powder. If all they see is car crash information, they might go, “Oh, the person who referred me to this firm, they don't even do what I need them to do.” That's where I tell people, “You've got to have really strong messaging on your homepage. Someone needs to get to that homepage and understand what type of law firm you are.” You'll never know how many referrals were directed to you that never contacted you. That's an unknowable.  It's really putting your best foot forward online, creating a beautiful space for people. Believe it or not, even in the legal world, packaging matters. I worked for a technical company once that provided energy storage for all types of different products. One of them was to a company, Mattel, who made toys. Mattel engineers told us that 50 percent of the cost of the toy goes into the packaging, because what's important is when that child or mother is walking down the aisle, what's going to grab attention? It's the exact same thing for attorneys. When somebody gets to your website, they are making a snap judgment about what type of lawyer you are. Are you quality? Are you experienced? What's your personality? Are you the lawyer in blue jeans or are you suited and booted? That's going to resonate with different audiences, but I always tell attorneys to go with who you are. If you're the lawyer in blue jeans, that's the image you should project because that's who you are. Sharon: I want to emphasize that this pertains to—I know you tend to work with personal injury, employment liability and maybe plaintiff, but what you're saying applies to all law firm marketing. All marketing in general, but all law firm marketing. Eric: Yeah, that's a good point. We don't work with a lot of B2B attorneys because if you're a $100 million company, you know 20 attorneys already. But that first impression is still important. If you want to have a client that's going to spend a half a million dollars with you and your website looks like your son-in-law put it together, that's not going to work. You need to project this good image. I used to make this comparison with attorneys: say you've got $80,000 worth of furniture in your lobby, but your website is $1,500 and it's dated by 12 years. You would never want that type of image in your office. You would never have somebody come in and sit on a crate and have a stool as a coffee table. That image needs to be projected online. More and more today, I see law firms doing that. Sharon: That's a really good point. It's a good comparison. Think about all the times you walk into a beautiful lobby, but then there's so much resistance: “What do you mean it's going to cost me $5,000 to redo this or that?” That's a very good point about how you want the website to reflect the polish of your lobby Eric: It's your digital office, and way, way more people are going to see your digital office than your actual office, especially these days. Sharon: Yes, absolutely. Maybe not business to business, but very few people go to an office today to go visit their lawyer. Maybe they do it the first time and that's it. Eric: Right. Sharon: I'm sure that a lot of law firms you talk with, whether you meet somebody at a networking event or however they got to you—I'm thinking about networking events where lawyers will say, “Oh, we have it all sewn up. We have an SEO person and we do billboards. We don't need you. What could you tell me?” What do you say to that? Do you say, “O.K., fine. Here's my card”? Eric: We have the “if it's not broke, don't fix it” mentality. Do no harm. Most people I run into, there's some help they could use. It could be better messaging on their website; it could be more efficiencies in their processes. The luxury that attorneys have is their product is highly profitable. For the most part, it's low overhead. Compare an attorney's office to a restaurant. They say the profit of a restaurant is somewhere between six and 11 percent, where an attorney who's working on criminal defense or personal injury or family law, they've got their office overhead and their time. You can afford to be inefficient, but time is running out. Attorneys listening to this know there are trial attorneys and then there are attorneys that market. The attorneys that market are going to gobble up the cases and then they're going to refer them to you, and you're going to do all the work.  What I tell people is there are going to be some ways to squeeze efficiencies out of what you do. Think about just five percent of everything: five percent more leads, five percent more of the calls that convert—that's your intake process— five percent more reviews online. This has a compounding effect on your business. Five percent more cases in an entire year could be the difference between profit and loss, a good year or an amazing year. Attorneys do have this luxury of having a really high-profit-margin business, but if they don't squeeze the efficiencies out of it, they're never going to get the full benefit. Sharon: I can see how that would make one complacent, if you say, “I'm making a lot of money and my profit margin's really high. What do I care about an extra three percent?” I know they do, but I'm saying that you have to be motivated to move when you're in a situation like that. Eric: Right. Sharon: Also on your website, I was intrigued to read about granular web pages. Can you tell us more about them?   Eric: Yeah. This is sometimes a difficult conversation when I'm trying to work with a law firm. I'm going to use an extreme example. Most people know Orange County, California, but Orange County consists of, I don't know, eight or nine different cities. There's Huntington Beach; there's Newport Beach; there's Irvine; there's Santa Ana.  Well, if you're going to create a web presence online, Google is going to try and serve me, the potential client, with the best result possible for that search. If I search Orange County, it's going to look for people who are marketing Orange County. If I search in Santa Ana or Huntington Beach, they're going to provide a completely different search. This granular marketing model is if you want cases in Newport Beach, we want to create a hub within your website that focuses just on Newport Beach. If you want Santa Ana, we want to create a marketing hub. That means all the content, all the references, the office location, is all related to that.  Think about it like a McDonald's. If I type in McDonald's—I'm in San Diego—it's not going to show me the McDonald's home office, wherever that is. It's going to show me the closest McDonald's to me because Google's trying to give me a better search experience. That's the exact same thing lawyers have to do. Let's say I'm talking to an attorney for the first time and there are three cities around him where they want to pull cases from. I tell them, “You have to do a specific marketing granular campaign for each of those cities.” A lot of times there's pushback, like, “Why do I need three different pages on divorce or family law or criminal defense or PI?” It's because you need to provide a better search experience to your potential client. Sharon: I think it's easy to forget when a website is such a herculean task to put together. You think about the digital office, the entry page, but you forget that people may not land on that page based on what they're searching for. They have to have the whole story on each page. Eric: Right. Most people will only visit two or three pages at most. You've got to be able to tell your story and hit your key selling points on almost every page. Sharon: I know this is not on the questions I sent you in advance, but tell us about the importance of the lawyer's biography and what your recommendations are. I don't like to put a long list of “they specialize in these 40 things,” because how do you specialize in 40 things? What are your recommendations for a lawyer's bio on a website? Eric: The general consumer basically has a mental checklist they're going through. I'm not teaching anybody anything new here. They want to see experience, but they also want to see specific experience. If I was hurt at work, they want to look at your case results and say, “Oh yes, they've done some worker's compensation or a slip and fall case or they've handled an aviation case before.” It's not just experience—and years count. If you've got five years and all your competitors have 25 years, that's going to affect you, but they want to see that specific experience.  The other thing they're looking for is some indication of trust. Some of those might be a 10.0 Avvo rating. Most people don't know what a Martindale AV rating is—I didn't until I started working with lawyers—but have that on there and explain it. It's not like they're going to go in and read what a Super Lawyer is or what an AV rating means, but they're doing this mental checklist. I would not overwhelm people. If your website covers too much, it's called clutter. This is way back from the days of newspaper print. White space is very powerful. Make sure you have your logos from FindLaw and Avvo and all those places on there, but don't slam everything in there. You're not earning more points; you're distracting, and that could be turning some people off. Sharon: Maybe your technique has changed, but I always envision when you come into a law firm and they say, “Oh, we're doing all this stuff,” and they are already doing it, but you peak behind the curtains or dig deep and look more at the analytics. How do you start if somebody's doing something already, if they're doing a lot? Eric: The most common thing I see is that an attorney understands what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to provide good content. They're supposed to have some nice calls to action. To use another analogy, it's like they've got this V8 engine, but all the linkage to the wheels is weak and it's not providing any power to the wheels. Let's say you're creating two blogs a week, you've got a granular page on every one of your practice areas, but the technical parts of your website are faulty. Google has what's now called Core Web Vitals, which is a new part of their algorithm, and what they call User Experience or UX. What that means is they're looking at how can I interact with their website? How quickly does that website load, specifically on a mobile phone, because over 80 percent of all searches are now mobile. Let's say you've got this beautiful page and all this content, but it takes eight seconds to load. I'm not going to wait eight seconds; I'm going to hit back and I'm going to go to the next result. That's the simplest technical thing I can point out, because everybody's had that experience before where the site won't load.  There are so many different technical things, like how easy the website is to navigate. Another good one that seems apparent after people learn about it—let's say I have a car accident page and you have a car accident page. If people spend 25 percent more time on my car accident page than yours, Google is going to see that as a good indicator for a better page, and that's going to help me move up the rankings. So, we'll look for those key indicators. What's keeping them on the page? Is it an FAQ section? Is it a video? Is it an image that's captivating? All these little things add up, and you've got to check all these boxes. When you get towards the top of page one on Google, the competition gets really fierce. You've got to look for all those little efficiencies to get better rankings. Sharon: As you were talking, Eric, I know your market is really plaintiff firms as we talked about, but everything you're talking about in terms of SEO could apply to any defense firm that's doing an SEO program. It's not whether you're a trial lawyer; it's what are the keywords, how are you doing it? At what point do you cross over and say, “Have you considered billboards?” Not for a Latham, but for another firm? Eric: I think traditional advertising is good when used effectively. I also think with technology today, everything can be tracked. You mentioned before about how I would talk to somebody and they'd say, “Oh, we're all good.” Well, I'll say, “Do you know where all your cases are coming from? Let's say you've got a listing on FindLaw. Do you have a tracking number for that?” We put different tracking numbers on a Google My Business account than we do on the website, so I can tell you if somebody found you organically or if they found you through your Google My Business.  If you want to run bus bench ads, have a tracking number. If you want to do TD ads or radio, have specific tracking numbers. A firm that's got a decent marketing budget can do a lot of different things, but you still want to put your dollars towards what's providing you better cases. Let's say that billboards are driving only a couple of phone calls, but every phone call is a great case, and let's say that your Google My Business account is driving a ton of information or a ton of leads, but they're very low-quality. Now, you can really decide where you want to pour your marketing dollars. I never try to convince somebody not to do something; I just try to convince them to track what they're doing so they can use their dollars in the most effective way possible. Sharon: Have you seen law firms be more open to the idea of radio and TV advertising and billboards? It seems like I see a lot more lawyer billboards around.   Eric: Yeah, there are two things. In the mass tort world, TV is still a great medium; the same with radio. Social media and digital are slowly going to start taking that over, though. We're already seeing it today. The problem is the platforms aren't suited to it. For example, you could run a $10,000 a week campaign for mass torts and be very successful. With TV right now, or if you're going to try to do some digital advertising, the benchmark is around $100K. If you don't have that budget and you don't want to be a guinea pig for this new media, I wouldn't suggest that.  But when it comes to billboards—I tell people this all the time now—there's no secret that Morgan and Morgan is one of the largest law firms in the country. What I hear all the time is people in Morgan and Morgan's market feel like they're losing clients to Morgan and Morgan because people know their name. They see their billboards; they see their social media. There is something to be said for branding yourself. Maybe that billboard doesn't get you a bunch of phone calls, but there's recognition when they do a Google search and see your website; they see your Google My Business. “Oh, I remember that attorney. I saw that attorney's billboard. That person must be a high-quality, successful attorney.” That, in our world, is called attribution. How do you attribute where exactly that client came from? Did they first do a Google search, and then see a billboard, and then see a banner ad that was retargeting, and then see you on social media? They contacted you through social media, but they hit all these other buttons along the way. So, the most successful campaigns will be well-rounded. Sharon: You say attribution; I always call it chipping the paint off the walls. You don't want somebody to click past and say, “I've never heard of them.” That's where public relations can come in, in our opinion. You have that credibility of, “Oh yeah, I read about them,” hopefully something positive. You have to warm people up, and they have to see you in different places. Sometimes it concerns me because it seems like—we grew up through traditional marketing and advertising in terms of strategy. Not that people ignore that today, but it seems so easy, especially for millennials, younger people, to skip all the foundation and go right to online, digital, pay-per-click, SEO, and not have a foundation. Do you ever see anything like that, or is that just my concern? Eric: Like you, a lot of this new media is stuff that I—it took me forever to get on Instagram. But as the population gets older, those millennials or 20-year-olds now are going to be potential estate planning clients; they will be potential criminal defense clients; they're going to be potential PI clients. I always ask people, “Where do you think your audience is? JUUL, which was a mass tort; it was the e-cigarette. It was predominantly a younger audience that was using JUUL. That's a perfect campaign for Facebook, Instagram. If we're talking about an estate planning website, where is that? That's going to be an older audience. Where is that older audience going to be? There are probably certain TV shows. There are going to be certain places to place banner ads to capture them. You want to try to hit people where they're at.  The other big thing with legal especially, is it's not always the end person who we need to market to. For personal injury, the person could be in the hospital or, in some cases, deceased. So, you're really looking for family members. The same thing with criminal defense. I work with attorneys that are in college towns where it's typically the parents that are calling on behalf of the student. Every campaign is a little bit different, and you need to tease out who the true audience is that you're trying to reach and then create the campaign around that person. Sharon: So, you're seeing social media grow as a part of this. Do you see it, not taking over, but taking a much larger percentage than it is now? Is it something that people should jump on the bandwagon now, as opposed to waiting until their competitors are spending $100,000 a week, a month? Eric: Social media's good for two things right now. One is branding. You can inexpensively brand, and you can hyper-target. You can target a zip code; you can target your city, your state. The other thing it's good for is awareness campaigns. What I mean by that—I'll use mass tort because that's the easiest to explain—let's say I've taken Zantac my whole life and I also have stomach cancer. I may not have put that together, but if I see an ad saying Zantac causes cancer, I might go, “Wow! I took a lot of Zantac and I have stomach cancer. I'm going to call this attorney.” That's an awareness campaign, just like TV is an awareness medium.  Now, Google and pay-per-click are for people who are actively searching. If I'm going out to buy a new pair of running shoes, I'm going to type in “running shoes near me.” I'm actively looking for that. The same thing will happen if I'm looking for a car accident or a medical malpractice lawyer. I'm going to do those searches. Social media is not a good medium for that, because now you're just throwing a dart at a huge wall and trying to hit somebody maybe in the process of looking for an attorney. It's almost impossible to target somebody who was recently in a car accident because that could be any of us. Social media is still an emerging medium for legal, but it is very good when you know your exact audience: again, somebody who took Zantac, or now we've got wildfires again. We know where the wildfires are. We know exactly the geography where people are affected, and that's a good medium for a social media campaign. Sharon: SEO, what you're talking about, is effective, but it's also very complex. This is not something you want to try yourself at home because you'd never have time to practice law, but is there a place you would recommend that a law firm or a lawyer start?  Eric: Not to be self-promotional here, but if you visit the Market My Market blog, we give away tons and tons of free information. One of our most trafficked blogs—it gets 100+ visitors a month—is the top 125 directories to list your firm in, and we just give it away. These are things we perform for our clients, but the reason we're in business is because real SEO is a lot of hard work. It is very time intensive. Every I has to be dotted and T has to be crossed, but we give away tons and tons of information.  We tell people, “Hey, here are the best practices. Here's how to do A, B and C.” If the attorney has time to do that on their own while their building up their law firm, great. If you've got more time than clients, I always suggest somebody go in and try to handle their own marketing. You can do a lot with just your time, but at a certain point, if you're trying to get competitive in a competitive market, like Los Angeles in a competitive area like personal injury, you're going to need a team behind you.  We've got over 20 people at our company, and we've got our own in-house content writers because we want to be able to control the quality and the pricing of our content. We don't want that to be outsourced. We've got our own SEO team in-house. We've got our own developers that are trying to squeak efficiency out of the website. But if somebody wants to get tools like Semrush, which is an SEO tool; it's like $40 or $50 a month that will give analytics of your website. Ahrefs.com is another tool you can use. They will basically tell you a lot of the problems you need to fix with your website. You might be able to fix some of those on your own, or you might hire a computer programmer at $100 an hour to do some fixes here and there. There's a lot you can do on your own without a company like ours.  Sharon: If a law firm is contemplating a redo of their website, do they need to build the SEO in from the get-go? I'm not trying to knock anybody else, but an SEO company might come in and say, “We can add it on top of what you have.” How do you suggest somebody go about that? Eric: There are two things, and I'll use the analogy of buying a home. If you've got a home that was built in the 60s and it's got good bones, then you can work with it. If we look at that website or that house and the electricity's gone, it's got lead pipes and there's termite damage, sometimes it's better to flatten that and start anew.  There are only two ways to get Google's attention. One is the onsite. That is how well your website is designed, both technically and in the content on there. Is it original content? Is it informative? Does it answer the questions that people are asking Google? That's one of two really big places to impress Google. So, you've got to take your website seriously, and it's not just aesthetics. Aesthetics are great, but it's your conversion methods on there; it's making things easy to navigate; giving people plenty of opportunity to reach out to you when they want to.  The other thing is the SEO. That's the offsite. That's the high-quality and relevant links you can build into the website. You've got offsite and onsite, and those two things need to be dialed in. If somebody comes to us with a decent website, we'll say, “Hey, we're going to make a couple of minor tweaks. We're going to increase the load speed and we're going to give you better calls to action and then we're done.” Some of them we have to say, “This website is almost offensive. We need to start over. Let's get you something that's more modern.” Again, this is your first impression from people that are contacting you. Sharon: What are the biggest mistakes, the top two or three mistakes, you see law firms make when it comes to their marketing overall or their online marketing? What do you see? Eric: I feel a lot of people try to trick Google as opposed to working with them. Google's very explicit: we want high-quality content. Some people take that as “just throw as much against the wall and see what works.” One of the most competitive terms out there is “car accident lawyer.” Obviously, eight car accident lawyer pages are better than one, right? No. You don't want any pages on your website that compete with each other. So, you might have a car accident lawyer page. That's for people who are searching for “car accident lawyer.” But then you might have pages on “Should I negotiate with my insurance company after a car accident? What are the five steps after a car accident?” These are all car accident terms, but you only have one page that's really focused on that one car accident lawyer search.  The other common mistake I see is people building a beautiful website, uploading lots of amazing photos, having really good content, but when you look at the core web vitals of the website, you find out it takes eight seconds to load; you see their navigation is broken. Sometimes the desktop version is amazing, but the mobile version is un-usable. Again, when I talk about dotting I's and crossing T's, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of things that need to be looked at in order to make that seamless experience happen. Sharon: Being effective in professional services marketing is educating people. You're showing people, “Hey, I don't want to do that.” This is a science; it's an art.  Eric: It's exactly that. I used to use that term all the time. This is part art, part science, because you've got to have the art. People have to see the packaging. They have to be impressed by it. You don't want to turn them off by that. You also have the science part. You've got to have that technical piece and marry those together. Sharon: That takes so much experience. The art is the experience of knowing, “O.K., this is going to work, or this might not work.” It takes experience, and I know you have a lot of experience. Eric, I want to thank you so much for being here today. We're going to have to have you back again in a year for a completely different conversation. Eric: Absolutely. Thank you, Sharon, I appreciate the opportunity. Sharon: I was so glad to have you, thanks.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why legal marketing became a legitimate business function in the 90s, and how Jan was at the forefront of this new field Why Jan patterned her early legal business development materials after the architecture industry How a sense of belonging impacts people's work, and how law firms can cultivate that quality within their business How the pandemic highlighted the need for resiliency within lawyers and law firms What strategies Jan uses to work with her clients, and what qualities to look for in an executive coach About Jan Anne Dubin: A legal marketing industry pioneer and thought leader, Jan Anne Dubin is an award-winning consultant and executive coach with global experience leading, innovating, and serving as a change-agent, and connector. Jan has led hundreds of cross-functional legal teams which have helped to build and deepen client relationships generating in excess of $100 million in revenue. For more than three decades Jan has occupied a unique niche in the legal services industry, where she has worked with leadership of global, mid-size and boutique law firms and corporate law departments, with law firm marketing professionals and other senior professional staff, and with law students. Jan concentrates on providing value-driven business solutions focused on business development, client service, marketing, branding, and strategic communications. Jan serves as an executive coach to hundreds of leaders and managers, including high potential individuals and those seeking both to work at a peak performance level and to achieve the next level of career development. As a career-long champion of diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging, Jan is passionate about working with women and diverse individuals and helping them achieve their career objectives. Offering goal-oriented, practical executive coaching solutions, Jan provides perspective, guidance, tactical suggestions, and strategic networking resources for individuals and their organizations to determine and achieve goals and objectives. Her philosophy of executive coaching is to focus on the core skills of leadership development and executive presence; strategic communications; client service; business development; and enhancement of a personal brand, profile and visibility in support of an individual's strengths while improving weaknesses that otherwise may hinder performance. Jan serves as a strategic partner to the Association of Corporate Counsel where she helped to create their in-house counsel executive coaching program and career skills workshops. She is a business partner with the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute and helped co-create and chair their Women's Transformative Leadership: Empowerment by Improving Participation and Representation forum. Additional resources: LinkedIn Transcript: If Covid taught us anything, it's that agility is necessary for long-term success. Law firms and individual lawyers sometimes need a shot in the arm to move to the next level, and that's exactly what Jan Anne Dubin specializes in. As Founder and CEO of Jan Anne Dubin Consulting, she helps individuals, and therefore their firms, become the best they can be. She joined the podcast to talk about her time at the forefront of legal marketing, the trends that emerged during the pandemic, and how she helps her clients step into leadership roles. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is Jan Anne Dubin, Founder and CEO of Jan Anne Dubin Consulting. She is an award-winning consultant who assists clients by helping them develop long-term relationships. She has coached thousands of lawyers, law students and marketing professionals and garnered many accolades along the way. We'll hear more about the work she does today. Jan, welcome to the program. Jan: Thank you, Sharon. I'm delighted to be here with you again. Sharon: Jan, tell us a little about how you started working with lawyers because, as I remember, you're not a lawyer, but I know you've worked with so many. Jan: Thanks, Sharon, for asking that question. Yes, I started my career after graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism thinking that I might want to go law school down the road. I felt the best way to get some experience was to apprentice as a paralegal at a law firm and gain real insight, and then make the decision to go to law school. Subsequently I got hired by a firm in the early 80s to head up their recruiting work and do some paralegal work. So, I gained the skills, as I used to laugh and joke about. I got to do big, paralegal-type projects once and then never again, such as attending a bankruptcy hearing on the last day of the year when you're helped with a very large multi-million-dollar real estate closing. My challenge after 3:00 p.m. was to somehow convince a teller at a bank that they had to accept the funds before 3:00 p.m. so the closing could take effect on the current year.  Subsequently I got involved in marketing and business development in the mid-80s, when I was asked to take on a role in decisional recruiting but not to tell anyone. At the time, I was maybe the eighth law firm marketer in the country. I'm number 32 according to my LMA number, which is ironic, given the profession is somewhere upwards of probably 10,000 people today. For me, it was an opportunity to learn. Subsequently I made a choice not to go to law school, but in the early 90s while working full time at a firm called Rudnick and Wolf—which is today known DLA Piper—I went to business school full time while working full time at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. That was my journey into law firms.  What happened also along the way was that I was given some extraordinary opportunities to be the first coming in to build the department and build the function of recruiting and then marketing. When I got to Rudnick in the early 90s, my job was also to start delineating, within the construct of marketing and strategic communications and business development, each of those separate functions as they were evolving with the profession. I felt really fortunate to be at the ground level. Legal marketing has sparked a very complex half-forward as it has over the years.  Sharon: Are you a natural networker? How was it that they said, “Can you handle marketing?” Did they even know what marketing was then? Jan: To answer the question if I am a natural marketer, my parents are probably smiling down at me from heaven saying, “Yes. You have to say yes.” As the record reflects, I was once known to have sold rocks and notebook paper to my parents' neighbors, which they thought, as endearing as my parents were, absolutely horrifying. I also had a lemonade stand at the end of my driveway, which was the sort of gatekeeper for the beach. Every car was stopped by a police officer who used to park at the end of my driveway. He would pull people over long enough to ask if they had a beach sticker and allow me to sell them a nickel cup of lemonade, which I did often. After that, at a young age, I was very outgoing. I became shy, but I used my tools of people skills and knowledge and the power they brought to get more comfortable as I progressed in my career to network with people. I was good at listening to people, understanding their needs and, conversely, thinking about insight, information and the other people I could connect them to. Stringing those dots together is probably one of my superpowers, if I have any. Sharon: You say you come from a family of architects. Did you see a lot of focus on business development with them? Jan: Yes. In my early career in the 90s at Rudnick and Wolf, it was a confluence of things that were occurring: the globalization of the world and certainly the legal profession, the advent of technology and the computer being used beyond a secretarial function, the world growing such that the lawyers that historically had relationships and allegiances to firms changed. As lawyers were leaving with portable business and coming in as laterals or joinders with other firms as a result of groups leaving, the pressure for business development increased.  I remember in the early 90s, also with the failure of the savings and loan industry and the development of the FTC and the FDIC, a lot of firms that historically had done real estate work found themselves now doing the same work for the government in workouts and restructuring of failed bank loans. I think some of the first proposals I worked on were very labor-intensive government proposals. The first time I saw one of these documents, I had no earthly idea what to do with it. I remember calling a colleague of mine who was the director of marketing at the accounting firm Laventhol & Horwath, which has been extinct for probably 30 years, to ask him about it. Then, I actually went over to my father's office. Architects typically pitched business on spec, and they were very familiar with the whole process of pitching as a result of the business development process.  I looked at what those responses to requests for proposals or information looked like and began to pattern our business development materials after that. Little by little, we created and grew a library of documents very similar to the pitch materials that law firms use today. Today they're more sophisticated. They've got many more areas of practice specialties as well as nuances that delineate one firm from another, but it certainly was the beginning in the 90s, probably five to seven years before a lot of firms were engaging in pitch activity. I started to do that, and I loved that work. I loved the thrill of new business and helping lawyers solve problems. A lot of times in a pitch scenario, you have to create hypotheticals; you have to create financial models to demonstrate pricing. I liked the puzzle aspects, thinking through the challenge and figuring out unique solutions to win work.  Sharon: You were way ahead of your time there. One thing that really intrigued me—well, a lot of things intrigued me while we were talking—but you talked about how you helped lawyers and other executives in this business so that people found their fit within an organization. I thought that was really interesting because, to me, it's like the organization is a static animal; you can't come in and change that as much as you have to come in and find your place. You fit here and that's it, or you don't fit. How do you help people find a fit? Jan: I would challenge that comment a little bit in terms of organizations being static. I think if the pandemic and the responses to social unrest over the last 18 months have taught us nothing, it's taught us that in order to survive and thrive going forward, we have to be nimble. I think that comes from organizations needing to shift course quickly and correct and adapt and those within them, their people—their greatest asset—having to follow suit and do the same. I think one of the interesting things that happens during a time like a pandemic is the volume of innovation that comes out of it. People also have to think of their careers from a resiliency perspective and truly think about what's going to make them happy within an organization.  Historically, as we look at the diversity, equity and inclusion spectrum, those were processes that firms put forward to retain their best people, but the dot at the end of the sentence of DEI is belonging. How do organizations help people feel like they belong? Equally important, how do people who are trying to manage and direct their careers over time seek out to find belonging? That's a complex journey, and part of that requires us to figure out, sometimes with the assistance of an executive coach, what the means and what that looks like, so that people aren't just parking time and doing an O.K. job, but they're really thriving in the work that they do, and if they're not currently with the right organization, taking the steps necessary to either turn their current function into one that's tenable or finding the right next opportunity. One amazing thing I saw over the course of the pandemic is the number of transitions that occurred. Over the course of the last 16 months, I've probably done 30 programs for the Association of Corporate Counsel, for Seyfarth Shaw. They have a program and a project called The Belonging Project, which is focused on a combination of career discussions related to finding resilience and strategic networking in this remote work-from-home environment. It's interesting to hear stories from law firms and those in-house counsel that have onboarded with organizations and never actually met their colleagues until recently, and the comments that come out. I did a program for Women in the House for the Association of Corporate Counsel two weeks ago. One of the comments one of my panelists made was the fact that people were surprised that she was as petite as she was, given she had a much more dominant presence on Zoom calls. I think they were surprised when they actually met her, which is an odd thing to focus on. It's interesting.  To your point, some organizations are static. Some are, but I think they've found that they need to adjust and be more nimble, whether they are dragged into this process by individuals wanting or needing something different or by experiencing tremendous growth or transition. I think the dramatic change that we have endured has impacted organizations to be more flexible, and I think they will only continue to do so going forward. Sharon: I do understand what you're saying. What I mean by static, the corporate world is very different. The law firm world is very different than it used to be. I think everybody understands that they have to make—not concessions, but they have to adapt; they have to make people happy. When people are satisfied, they feel exactly like what you're saying. It's interesting; every organization still has a personality. As much as you bend over backwards or you have people work from home, there's still a personality. I guess that's what I mean by static. Jan: Yeah. I think the opportunity over the last months has allowed for organizations to refine that personality and soul search as an organization to figure out the traditions that are valued, what's their import to people, and what are some new traditions that need to be embraced. Looking at written and very thought-provoking conversations that have come out because of the social unrest this country has experienced, it is refreshing to see people who have concerns and truths that they don't want to suppress any longer. I think the dialogue has become more raw, more real, and hopefully it paves the way for things that are meaningful and significant in firms.  Firms are looking at old traditions that are outmoded and need to be replenished, or they're looking at things that matter, things that are woven into the fabric of the firm. Having smart, talented management people to help organizations figure that out is critical, especially in light of this environment. People are beginning to return to work or some hybrid of work-from-home and in-office work, and they need to make sure that not only is the organization intellectually one that somebody wants to associate themselves with, but also one that's safe and supports an environment that people are comfortable working in. Sharon: Right, every organization today has to think about that, people feeling safe and comfortable. Those are important words. The other important word you used was one of my favorites that I ponder a lot. It has to do with resilience. You talked about how you kept all your resilience during this pandemic and how that meaning is going to change for lawyers, for professionals, post-pandemic. Can you tell us about that? Jan: I think resilience is the watchword of this time that we're in. Midstream during the pandemic, I interacted with two types of people. One was so stretched and they were doing the work of one-and-a-half to two people because their organization had a hiring freeze. They literally went from project to project and worked many more hours from home or a remote environment than they ever did being in the office.  Then there was another approach of folks that had not enough to do, and they were all of a sudden seeking out new avenues. That was a lawyer looking for innovative ways to a go down business development path, trying to figure out how to stay in contact. You saw some creative things that came out of that, as well as the proliferation from law firms at the onset of the pandemic of more material in the form of more newsletters and webinars and podcasts than anybody could ever watch in one lifetime. Thank goodness, I think people have backed away from jumping on everything and throwing the kitchen sink at clients and prospects to being more thoughtful and strategic about what people care about, what aligns with their needs.  I think firms have done some interesting things in the resilience area. You see more firms taking seriously the need of well-being and ways to create healthier lawyers and staff within organizations. That's particularly important. Of this whole concept of well-being, resilience is a big piece of it. People being mentally, physically fit and feeling safe and secure in the environment they're working in is important. People also see this need to give back to others. There's probably never been a greater need, certainly within our large urban cities. Homelessness has multiplied, and the challenges and demands they have are greater when you've got more people on the street. A lot of the shelters and single-room occupancy dwellings they historically would have stayed in were closed due to Covid. Figuring out how to fill those needs, how to help those that are hungry, has been particularly critical.  For me, I came up with some random and some strategic acts of kindness that I felt needed to guide my path starting early in the spring of 2020. I was fraught with the challenge as I was furloughed from my law firm clients. What would I do? I worried about what would I do long-term to replenish that work and what I would do in the short-term to stay sane and intellectually challenged. I took on some pro bono projects that were meaningful to me. One was a project called Milkmaid, where I worked with friends of mine that were partnered with Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen. It's a catering company out of Evanston, Illinois called Soul and Smoke. At this point during the pandemic response, they have donated more than 150,000 meals to those in need in the Evanston and Englewood neighborhoods of Chicago. At the beginning, I called them to say, “How can I help? I have time. I have money. I have limited money, but I have a lot of resources that I can bring to bear.” One of the first demands they had was milk, so I started by calling a number of bottling companies to identify a source for milk and getting nowhere quickly in that process. By fluke, about a week after I had started making those calls, I say a story on ABC Channel 7 News at 4:30 that talked about farmers that were frantically pouring milk back into the earth because cows need to be milked, but they had no demand and no distribution of the milk. I wrote the names down quickly and started to map out each of the locations for the various farms and their proximity to Evanston.  On my first call, I talked to Max Tillges—actually, I talked to his wife first, who had to call to him out on the farm. I explained I was a small business owner, and I knew who he was. I was not looking to get milk at a discount, but I was looking to access a quantity of milk beyond what we could buy locally from any of the grocery stores. I needed pasteurized milk, and I needed to have it delivered in a safe, refrigerated manner to Evanston once a week. We started a project I called Milkmaid, which was the delivery of 200 gallons of pasteurized whole and 2% milk once a week. This program ran for a 12-week period. At the end of the 12 weeks we shut it down, as milk was back in plentiful supply at the local grocery and actually less expensive per gallon than the costs we were paying for milk.  It was an interesting experience from my perspective. I never spent a lot of time dealing with farmers or understanding the challenges they had. I was also pleasantly surprised how easy it was to coordinate the resources between Tillges Farm and the Soul and Smoke folks, and their ability to coordinate with the Montessori School in Englewood, which was part of Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen project to get milk and food to people in need in the community. Sharon: Wow! That was quite a project. I give you a lot of credit. That's quite an undertaking, besides the fact that you were busy and trying to do what everybody else was to keep their own lives going. We talked about in-house counsel and that you work a lot with in-house counsel. It always surprises me. You're an executive coach also, but what do you do? What is the presenting issue? Jan: Sure, it's a number of things. Let me start. Throughout the last 30 plus years, I've had some relationship with the Association of Corporate Counsel. Initially it was through Rudnick and Wolf and then Piper, Marbury and DLA Piper, where I was the lead point person for that relationship. It's extended beyond that up until today. About six years ago, they came to me as they were looking to develop their career resources for in-house counsel. Initially, it was to help those in-house counsel in transition with career needs. The first year we focused the executive coaching resources on career transitions. Subsequently, I found that more discussions related to those that weren't looking necessarily to make a move out of the organization but were looking for ways to own their roles and strengthen their leadership skills and executive presence differently than they had done. So, we started to focus on that. In concert with that, I helped create a series of programs that looked at aspects of building a personal brand, developing thought leadership and a social media profile, strategic networking similar to what law firms do, but very focused on the in-house counsel audience. It was done with the understanding of how somebody in-house can build their network, both with others in a very large law department and with their internal clients who are the business units. In some instances, a general of a bank will have internal interactions with customers at the bank as well. It's a lot of the same intellectual challenges that law firm partners and associates go through in thinking about how to build their book of business, but more with an internal focus.  I've worked with ACC and its members for a number of years in the area. I am on the career website for ACC. I'm one of probably 20 coaches or so that are there. I do some gratis work for in-house counsel that's interested in exploring something different. That could be, again, leadership development; it could be wanting to get to the next level of development with an in-house organization; it could be somebody that's been managing counsel that wants to become a general counsel, and we're talking through the steps to successfully accomplish that. For others it might be inculcating a more robust diversity program within the construct of the law department. If there's any question about the evolution and how much law departments have changed, just looking at the launch of the organization clock which very specifically looks at the operations function. Historically, a role that a general counsel would have served in is now often supported by somebody that's got a purely operations function and is looking at improved functionality as well as cost reduction. I think it makes the role of GC or chief legal officer of an organization even more challenging, and it starts to relate differently to other C-suites within the structure of the organization. That's a quick overview of the type of work I've done with in-house counsel. Sharon: Well, it sounds very interesting. Is it usually an individual who will come to you?  Jan: It depends on the project. I get brought in by organizations. Often law firm leadership or law department leadership will bring me in to talk about the big challenges they may have. Sometimes it's specifically regarding an individual they think might be stuck, if you will, in their career and needs some help. These are productive individuals that may need some improved skills in a specific area. It could be strategic communications; it could be hygiene, and when I say hygiene, I don't mean body; I mean discipline in following rules. Things like timekeeping, where they work, how they interact with folks in the office. A lot of times an executive coach can be a sounding board to try to help an individual erode things that are in their way. Oftentimes, it can help them see themselves as others do. It can help them get out of their own way and allow them the ability to thrive in what they're doing. Sometimes it's unlearning habits and patterns that have been developed and adopted over many years. Sharon: Jan, thank you so much. There are different feelings I'm feeling. First of all, your knowledge is amazing, and your experience is amazing, but I know there's an aspect of frustration here. There must be so much satisfaction once you get past a roadblock or when a person sees the value you're bringing and how you can make a difference. Jan: Yeah, Sharon, you really hit it on the head. It's an incredibly intimate process, to assure somebody that they can trust you and have confidence. I always say to people that are interested in hiring an executive coach, “Kick the tires hard on the person you're going to meet to make sure they have the skill set you're looking for and the personality to meet with you.” I know as a coach—and I learned this lesson over many years as a law firm marketing person—you can't push a string. You've got to be met with the same energy that you as an executive coach bring to the table. They need to want to not just articulate change, but to put in the heavy lifting that's required week after week to bring about the change they want to see. It's an incredibly rewarding experience. Without getting into specifics, I can say the pinnacle of my opportunities came a few months ago, when one of my clients asked me to attend a senate confirmation hearing. They were a Biden appointee who has now been confirmed, and they asked me to attend their senate confirmation hearing, It really was one of my proudest moments, both for the this individual and also to be valued enough by this person to have them want me to come with them. It was quite exciting.  Sharon: It was quite a compliment. I can see why. Jan, thank you so much for talking with us today. I really appreciate it. There is so much depth in what you say, so thank you. Jan: Thank you, Sharon. You've made the conversation flow very quickly. Thank you for your time and for allowing me to share my thoughts. Sharon: I'm so glad to have you. Thanks a lot.  

What you'll learn in this episode: What types of firms benefit the most from being included in Chambers, and how to determine if the submission process is worth your time Why it's important to keep submitting to Chambers annually, even in quiet years Why the referee list is the most important part of your Chambers nomination, and how to choose the best referees How to use the B10 section to your advantage Which lawyers firms should put forth for nomination, and how to effectively nominate up-and-coming associates  About Megan Braverman: Megan Braverman, Principal at Berbay Marketing and Public Relations, has earned an exceptional reputation as a strategic asset for law firms and other professional service firms and is known for her ability to execute marketing programs that surpass business goals. Immersing herself in clients' operations enables Megan to identify what sets firms apart from their competition, and leverage this to create countless PR opportunities, generate awareness and reinforce credibility. As Principal, Megan plays an integral role with all of Berbay's clients, working closely with the Account Managers to ensure the successful execution of marketing plans. She makes it a priority to regularly revisit client objectives and assess if the current strategy is supporting those goals. This proactive approach results in a consistent marketing momentum for clients. Megan is a member of Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and ProVisors. She previously served as a cabinet member and executive committee member of the Jewish Federation. Megan has been a volunteer with School on Wheels, which provides tutoring services and other educational assistance to homeless children in Southern California, and CoachArt, which uses art and athletics to help kids impacted by chronic illness. Additional resources: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast Transcript: Chambers & Partners is one of the most coveted legal rankings—and one of the most enigmatic. With an extensive nomination process and months-long research period, many lawyers and law firms are mystified when it comes to getting listed or moving up in the rankings. Megan Braverman, Principal of Berbay Marketing and Public Relations, has spent hundreds of hours completing successful nominations and gotten numerous clients ranked by Chambers. She joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about which firms should devote time to Chambers nominations, how to create a winning submission, and how to evaluate past nominations for future success. Read the episode transcript below.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guest is my colleague, Megan Braverman, Principal of Berbay Marketing and Public Relations. Megan has significant experience getting our lawyer clients ranked in Chambers as well as working with those already ranked to help them move up the rankings. Today's she'll share some of the ins and outs gleaned from her experience working with Chambers and partners. Megan, welcome to the program. Megan: Thank you, Sharon. Glad to be here. Sharon: Glad to be talking to you, especially in this remote world. Tell us a little about your background and how you came to work at Berbay. Megan: Coming to work at Berbay was very haphazard. I applied to a Craigslist application and got the job and really grew from there. The trajectory at Berbay was not what I imagined. I started about 12 years ago and am now the principal of Berbay, running the day-to-day of the agency and being a strategic asset for law firms, real estate companies and financial service firms. Sharon: I know how much our clients rely on you. A lot of listeners have heard about Chambers, but they're not sure what it is. Can you describe it and give us a little background? Megan: Sure. Chambers is a legal ranking. It uses an in-depth editorial and research team to assess lawyers and law firms globally. Many consider Chambers to be the leading directory in the legal profession, which is why it's so coveted. It began in the early 90s, and today it covers over 200 jurisdictions and over 100 practice areas, and it continues to expand. It's one of the toughest lists to get on. That's what they've built a reputation for a high degree of selectivity. In fact, 2% of U.S. firms are ranked and you cannot buy your way in. Sharon: Wow! You'll have to tell us more about why it's so difficult. I looked at the application and it seems daunting and time-consuming. Why should lawyers or law firms bother with it? What does it get them to get their firm or themselves ranked? Megan: You asked why it's so coveted, how it got to the place it is today, and if you look at the history when legal rankings or directories were first introduced, it was sort of like the Yellow Pages for lawyers. Most lawyers listening remember Martindale Hubbell, which is still relevant, but it was one of the first. It was practice-area-specific; you could easily find the kind of lawyer you needed, and many of these directories were comprehensive. They included every kind of lawyer, regardless of the caliber of work. Then you start to see an introduction of exclusive rankings, things like Chambers. They were much more exclusive, because they began to rank by quality and by caliber of work. Chambers, for example, they're looking for things like technical ability, client service. They're really drilling down into why this lawyer or law firm is so great.  The million-dollar question, the billion-dollar question, is who's using these directories? Should I do it? Do I bother with it? You're right; it's daunting; it's time-consuming. At every marketing conference I've ever been to, there's almost always a question directed to a panel of corporate or in-house counsel on whether they use Chambers. Frankly, the verdict is still out. It's very 50/50. I know most marketing professionals across the world would love if the Chambers of the world would go away, because it's so time-consuming and it can be very competitive and very difficult to get folks on the list even if they've tried year after year.  One of the commonly heard answers is that it helps you get on the short list if corporate counsel or in-house counsel are looking for lawyers in unfamiliar jurisdictions or practices. It's also a badge of credibility. A lot of people look at it as if you're not ranked on Chambers, then something's missing. It's different for different firms. Whether you answer the question “Should I be doing it?” as a lawyer or as a law firm, that really needs to fit into your larger marketing objectives. For example, if you are a consumer-facing firm like a plaintiff firm, you might not consider Chambers because it's not plaintiff-friendly. If you're a local firm—let's say you're only looking in the greater New York area or the greater southern California area. Chambers is a national ranking, so consider other rankings before you pursue Chambers. It's something you have to look at.  Keep in mind that Chambers is an every-year endeavor. If you're going to commit to it, you need to do it every year. I'll add this and close here, but we did an analysis several years ago on how much time Berbay spends on each submission. We found on average that we spend 40 to 60 hours per submission. You're looking at up to 180 hours if you work on three submissions. If it's your first time ever, then usually you're on the higher end, either 60 or sometimes 80. So, it is incredibly time-consuming. Sharon: And that doesn't include the time the lawyer has to put in to send us information and review the information, and the time the marketing person at the firm has to run around and chase someone, a lawyer or someone else, to get the answers. Megan: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot these hours don't capture, so beyond the time investment, you have to make sure that it fits in your larger marketing and business development goals. That's the push that we make for a lot of firms; does it fit what you're trying to achieve? Sharon: I think that's an interesting point you raise, about how in-house counsel use it to market, if you want to attract the attention of in-house counsel. I know some lawyers are dismissive, like they don't use it. Some in-house counsel say, “Oh, I never use it,” but I've sat next to in-house counsel who say they at least, as you say, develop the short list starting with Chambers. It's almost as if there's an embarrassment factor, like, “Yeah, I've used Chambers,” like they don't want to admit it in a sense.  Megan: Yeah, absolutely. I think Chambers has done a really good job of developing the profiles they have on each lawyer and law firm. It gives a lot of insight into the kind of work the lawyer does beyond the bio. It's quoting clients and how integral they were to their legal services and what they really excel at. It's a good sales pitch for a lawyer. Sharon: That's a good point, too. I know Chambers dislikes a puff piece, like if you just copied over what's on the website. Megan: Right. Sharon: When you look at Chambers, it looks like it's only for big firms, but I know we've been successful with smaller firms. Can you give a couple of examples of when it might make sense for a smaller firm, or when we've been successful in getting a firm in? Megan: Sure. Chambers does not consider the size of the law firm in their rankings. They're very clear about this. It's obvious that larger law firms dominate Chambers lists, but they absolutely consider and rank smaller firms, and we've been very successful in getting several smaller firms and midsize firms in their rankings. They actually have an entire page on the Chambers website explaining their commitment to smaller firms. I think over the last eight to 10 years, Chambers has made a stronger commitment to accommodate small firms.  You really have to focus on highlighting the strengths of your practice and your firm. Again, it comes down how strong your submission is, so it may be that you see a lot of larger law firms on there. It could be a combination of things. It could be they have bigger deals, bigger matters, more to boast, but I think smaller law firms absolutely should consider this as part of their marketing strategy. We've worked with a number of folks that had a difficult time getting onto the Chambers list and they thought it was because of their size, but we've seen time and time again that Chambers does not consider size. Sharon: We've talked about this a lot. It's leveling the playing field. How many times do we hear a firm say, “We're a well-kept secret”? Well, get the word out and get on the same playing field with some of the bigger firms. That's where I think Chambers and a lot of these directories are so important. What if you don't see your practice area listed? What should you do? Megan: Good question. Chambers has well over a hundred different practice areas you can submit for. Keep in mind many of these practice areas have subcategories. For example, for litigation they've got five different options, sometimes more depending on the state you're in: litigation appellate, litigation general commercial, litigation securities and so on. They expand their practice areas every year. I think Chambers is well aware of adding new practices because when they first started, it was pretty limited and every year they add more. I think it was in 2020, don't quote me, but they added a nationwide cannabis practice area, for example. If you don't see something, when in doubt, you should ask Chambers. They're very open about which ranking you should pursue in terms of what you're looking for, and they can help navigate that for you. If you don't see something or if there's not something that stands out, I would ask Chambers. Sharon: You also mentioned that you have to do this annually. If you're in it one year, does that mean you'll automatically be in it the next, or do you have to be selected again? Megan: Yeah, I wish. You need to go after it year after year, even if you've been ranked. It's not to say that you'll automatically drop off the list, but Chambers hangs their hat on their research, and that starts with your submission. A lot of the things that are in your submission are not on your website. They do a lot of outside research, of course, but they need to see what you've been up to for the last 12 months. If you don't submit, you're hurting your chances. It's really important; you have to go after it year after year. Sharon: Yes, you can have a sigh of relief when you finish the submission, but it seems like the whole process starts in just a month or two again because it takes so long. You mentioned a really important point, I think. If somebody isn't familiar with Chambers, the difference between them and other rankings is that they ask for what they call “referees.” Can you tell us a little bit about that? Megan: Sure. You're going to start to see this in more nominations than just Chambers. I think we've seen it more in the last couple of years than before. Referees is their term for, essentially, client names or co-counsel that can talk about the caliber of your work. Chambers asks you to submit up to 20 names, and you need to take advantage of all those 20 spots. Essentially, Chambers will call these folks—they email them first and ask for either a call or written responses to specific questions about that lawyer or law firm. One of the challenges when it comes to referees is that Chambers researchers get a very low response rate; typically, it's less than 30%, which is very low. One of the most important qualities in your referees is that they're responsive. It's important that you don't include referees you know won't respond because they're busy. For example, it's amazing to have the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company, but if you know they're not going to respond, you shouldn't list them.  The second piece is that it's really important to work with your referees to ensure they know a Chambers email is coming. Sometimes if they don't know, they'll overlook it, or maybe it goes to spam or they're not aware of the process. If you're going to submit someone's name, you should prepare them for the process. This includes making sure they know who's going to reach out, what questions are going to be asked of them, what the process is.  You may even want to help the referee hone some communication points about you. Maybe they don't have it top of mind, or they could be putting it off because they don't feel prepared, so you just need to step them through the process. Our belief, based on years of experience doing this for so long, is that referees are the most weighted. They're more weighted than the actual submission itself, I think. So, this is the most important piece of the Chambers process. Sharon: Yeah, I think it's important to make the referee's job as easy as possible. Like you were saying, it's about developing communication points or letting them know at least that something's coming so they can keep their eyes open for it. I haven't seen the actual email, but I hear they're really easy to overlook. Very often lawyers will come to us and are frustrated because they've been fortunate to be ranked, but they feel they should be higher on the list. They want help moving up. Is it possible to move people up? Megan: Yeah, but there's no formula. You have to have realistic expectations. We see folks get ranked and they immediately want to move up a ranking the next year, and I don't think that's realistic. It's not that it's impossible, but it's the exception. You have to really demonstrate why you are moving up in the rankings and why you warrant that ranking bump. There are six ranking levels, one being the best. Sometimes firms get a little disappointed when they're ranked in band five, let's say, and they're like, “Well, that doesn't reflect well. We should be band one or band two.”  I think in addition to the referees, how important it is to get your referees to respond like I just talked about, I think the other piece of the nomination is your deals, your cases. You need to focus on the worthy cases over the last 12 months. The other thing is you have to remember that these—I feel bad for the researchers a little bit. They're reading thousands and thousands of submissions. I think it's important that you highlight what's so important about your matter, what was significant about it, what was the outcome, what was the impact it had. Maybe there were nuanced areas of law; maybe it's the first of its kind, precedent-setting. You want to try to underscore the important aspects of the matter and not just leave it as a basic description. But I want to go back to having realistic expectations. Think about it this way: stack your Chambers nominations next to each other. Let's say you were ranked in 2020 in band 4, but in 2021 you were still ranked in band 4 and you're wondering why. Well, do you think you really had a step-up in terms of the kinds and size and importance of your matters? If not, then that's probably why you didn't go up a band. If you had, let's say, the same referee response rate; it was 30% the year before and it was 30% again—and they will tell you how many people have responded. They won't tell you who; that's the struggle, but they will tell you five of your 20 responded or three of your 20 responded. If those haven't changed, then you have unrealistic expectations. If you can point out that your matters were much more significant and you've got that increase in referee rate, sometimes it takes a couple of years of that. It's a couple of years of a slow, steady rise.  There really isn't a formula, but that's the one thing I look at when we have law firms calling us and saying, “We really need some help moving up the bands.” I like to look at all their former submissions and compare them to each other and think about it logically. Do they warrant an increase in bands, and if they do, what's happening? What's going wrong with their submission or their referee response rate? If they don't move up, it's unfortunately having those conversations with law firms and setting better expectations and making sure you keep on keeping on. There are ways to highlight things, but I think realistic expectations is so important. Sharon: Let's say it's been a good year, but we haven't gone to the Supreme Court or whatever. We don't have anything more to say. Should we submit anyway? Should we do our best and submit anyway, or should we skip a year? Megan: You shouldn't skip. I think you're right. Not every year is your most amazing year, so again, it's about setting realistic expectations. If you didn't have a stellar year compared to other years, then don't expect to move up bands. I think there are other ways to sell yourself. There's a section in the Chambers nomination called the B10 section, and it's an opportunity to sell yourself. This is the only essay portion of Chambers. The rest is focused on basic information about the firm, bios of the attorneys and the matters and deals I mentioned. If you haven't had a stellar year and some of your matters or deal submissions are average or not as great as years prior, the B10 section is where you can really focus on other things. I do feel like many gloss over this section or use it as a generic description of your practice, but again, this is where you sell yourself.  What's important is that you should not duplicate anything in the form, meaning in the B10 section, you don't repeat the matters you already have listed. It should be other pieces of information that Chambers should know about, and you want to avoid marketing fluff. It should be substantive information. For example, don't call yourself an unparalleled attorney. Say that you've done more than $4 billion in deal transactions in the last couple of years. Maybe it's more impressive to take a look at the last few years together and quantify what you've done. Maybe you can talk about a new practice area that you've really started to gain traction in or that you've done something internally that was very unique. These are ways that you can highlight other parts of your practice and your skillset. That this section is great to showcase all of that, so I would focus on this. Your matters are still important, of course, but this is the section you want to focus on. Sharon: And it's the one that takes a lot of digging deep and having to stop and think about it. What haven't I asked you, Megan? What else should people know? Megan: Good question. A couple of things come to mind. One is that once you submit your submission, you should introduce yourself to the researcher. Let them know that you're available for questions. I think that this is important. They make this information known and available. Check in with them about referees. They will tell you when their research period is; it's a dedicated month. Check in with them, whether it's every week or every week-and-a-half or so, and see how your referees are responding. If they're not responding, then you need to do another push. That's important, and it's something we see a lot of firms don't do.  I think the other thing is there's something called Chambers Confidential. Those that know Chambers, this will be familiar to them. It's essentially a report that Chambers will issue which explains some of the feedback they've received in prior years. This is a paid piece. You have to pay Chambers to give you this report. If you're not making any progress in a certain practice area or with certain groups, you should request this. It gives you great feedback, and it can be insightful as to why you're not ranked and help ensure that your submissions are focusing on these issues.  If you're still not making any progress, this is really a sales pitch for ourselves, but hire an agency. There are a lot of pros to hiring an agency. First of all, it's time-consuming, but you've got a team of specialists at your disposal. In hiring an outside agency, it provides you with that bench strength not only to draft a compelling nomination, but to juggle all the moving parts, and you get the plus of years and years of Chambers experience. I will say there is some benefit for someone in-house to do it because that person has company familiarity, but there is a benefit to having fresh eyes from an outside agency that can help determine the points that will be the most impactful or elements that you wouldn't have thought through without outside input. If you haven't made inroads with Chambers for a few years in a row, I think you should consider hiring an agency. Sharon: Of course, we support hiring an agency, but you say there's also a case to be made for in-house lawyers to do it. What do you mean exactly? I'm not sure. Megan: I mean in-house marketing. It depends on the firm's structure. For most in-house marketing departments, this falls under their purview. They've got company familiarity, so they have the benefit of pulling different numbers they have access to and things that an outside agency wouldn't think of because it's not at their fingertips. There are a lot of firms whose lawyers do it themselves. I'm always shocked when I find out that a lawyer is doing it themselves. It's time-consuming, so most lawyers don't have the time to carve out 40 or 60+ hours to do a Chambers submission. But again, company familiarity. I think that's the one benefit of an in-house person doing it. Sharon: One question law firms face (and we face working with law firms) is how many lawyers in a firm should be submitted. We know everybody wants to be submitted. Megan: This is my favorite question because that's one thing we see people doing wrong. Firms are submitting everyone and, frankly, not everyone warrants inclusion. I think this is where managing expectations and letting people down comes in. Your nomination should focus on the best and the brightest and those that have the most worthy cases or the most activity in the last 12 months, and that doesn't necessarily coincide with who you want to put forth. Law firm politics; we get it. We've seen a lot of it and we know it exists. It exists in every firm, not just law firms. There are some folks that you have to put forward and that's that, but I think it's important to focus in on the people you think warrant inclusion and narrow this list down as much as you can.  I will say, too, recently Chambers has added an “up-and-coming” or “associates to watch” list. There are basically three additional bands for younger attorneys. A lot of times we'll see younger folks on this list because they're trying to push those younger folks. These up-and-coming lists are for those who haven't had an established reputation but are driving the firm's growth. This is something Chambers has recently added. I think that's Chambers seeing the trends. For senior associates or associates, they're starting to recognize them for their work and their role in these major deals and matters, so there is a place for younger folks as well.  Sharon: It makes a lot of sense. I didn't know about the associate list, so that's great to hear. I hear so often, “We have to submit Harry because we have to show him we support him and we appreciate all he's doing for the firm,” but Harry may not warrant inclusion on a regular list yet. Megan: Exactly. I think Chambers has been good about seeing this issue and the trends and creating new lists, new practice areas. That's opened up the likelihood of other folks and other levels of folks getting in the door. Sharon: Megan, this is fabulous information. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we don't have a magic wand. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of talking to Chambers and talking to lawyers, but this is great information. Thank you so much for being here today and talking with us. Megan: Thank you so much for having me.

What you'll learn in this episode:  How lawyers talked about marketing and business development decades ago.    The change in how prospective clients choose a law firm.  How marketing has evolved through the years.   The internet's impact on law firm marketing and business development.  About Helene Bizar:  Helene Rubinfeld Bizar has been the Director of Administration at the Law Offices of Michels & Lew since 2005. Being a small firm, she is responsible for all the non-legal aspects of successfully running a firm, from personnel management, technology, financial requirements, securing service contracts, managing insurance needs, negotiating leases and seamlessly transitioning the firm through the remote working process during the pandemic – it's all a daily priority juggling act! She has spent the last 44 years working in law firms in a variety of capacities. Having previously been the Controller of a major motion picture advertising agency, along with a background in psychology and being a Certified Legal Administrator through the UCLA School of Law, she is well grounded with the tools and calm demeanor for law firm administration. Helene has been a speaker at several Los Angeles County Bar Association Small Firm Section meetings on various topics related to law firm management and she has contributed articles to the Association of Legal Administrators chapter newsletters, an organization for which she served on the Board of Directors for many years. Additional resources:  The Law Offices of Michels & Lew Website Helene's LinkedIn Firm Facebook Episode Transcript  Episode 92: The Evolution of Law Firm Marketing with Helene Bizar, Director of Administration at Law Offices of Michels & Lew Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst podcast. Today, my guest is Helene Bizar, Director of Administration at the Law Offices of Michels & Lew which specializes in medical malpractice and personal injury. Helene has longtime experience working in law firms and has worn many hats including that of marketing. We'll hear all about her career path today and what she's learned about working with lawyers and with legal marketers. Helene, welcome to the podcast. Helene: Thank you for having me, Sharon, it's a pleasure. Sharon: So glad to have you. I'm really looking forward to this because we've known each other a while, but I haven't heard—I'll call it your story in a sense, but tell us about your career path. Helene: O.K., I'm not going to go too far back, but I did work in a motion picture advertising agency doing accounting work and the production manager was married to an office manager of a very large, prestigious Century City law firm and they were looking for someone to assist in their accounting department and I was ready to make a change.  That's how my legal entry began—or my entry in the legal field—and I worked for that firm close to ten years. I did start in their accounting department and during my term there, I became aware of a class at UCLA through their School of Law and it was in certification, legal management and administration. So, I took the course and it was wonderful, very challenging but good and that really launched my career into the management side of law firms. When I left that firm, I went to a thirty-attorney firm as their administrator and that was in 1986, and while I was there the firm—they were kind of divided. One side was more insurance defense; one side was more general practice litigation and they decided to split. I maintained a dual management administrative role and managed both firms simultaneously until they were able to wind down the business and each go their separate ways.   That was my next entrée to another law firm where I spent almost close to 7½ years.  And that was really my first involvement with any marketing and that was the early 1990s and as I'm sure you know, in the ‘70s, law firms couldn't advertise. It wasn't until 1977 when there was a Supreme Court case, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, that struck down the prohibition of attorneys' advertising. The concept is relatively new in the scheme of things, and it took a long time for attorneys to embrace the concept. TV advertising was certainly frowned upon; it didn't seem prestigious. Law firms look at it as something kind of cheesy. So, they weren't welcoming and embracing to the concept. My exposure in the early days of marketing was really more in terms of sending out newsletters, attorneys having speaking engagements, that type of thing.   When I left that firm, I decided I needed a break from administration and I partnered with someone who had an attorney recruiting background and we opened up our own practice, an attorney recruiting firm and we were both very well connected with administrators and recruiters, and we thought it would be a good fit and something different to try and be our own bosses. After a few years, we decided it really wasn't satisfying. We had lots of job openings, but we really couldn't get the quality candidates to work with us to make a move.   Things were very different back in the ‘90s than they are today. In 2005, I joined my current firm and that's really where I cut my teeth on marketing because the concept was more widely accepted and it was easier to persuade attorneys to put their toe in the water and check it out and see how it went. I was very fortunate that my firm was visionary because the managing partner in 1980, which was early for marketing, launched a TV advertising campaign on the Spanish stations and it was wildly successful. Sharon: Wow, that is visionary! And I can see why you would have been the only one.   Helene: Yes, and especially because he was able to identify that the Hispanic community was very underserved in the medical world. They didn't have access to the top doctors and their resources were different. So, there were many more birth injuries that occurred and that was kind of our niche market, and still is, traumatic birth injuries, and he was even smart enough to have developed a tagline back then which was, “Abogados para los niños” which is “attorneys for the children” and even today people remember that and sometimes will say, “I saw you on TV” and we have not advertised on the Spanish stations in quite a long time. We've diverted to other advertising media. So, that was kind of the launching of my firm's advertising.   Sharon: I'm curious because when I came into law firm marketing, even though it was 25, 30 years ago, it was underway. It was a long time after the Supreme Court decision. How did lawyers talk about marketing? It's only recently that it hasn't been a dirty word in the sense or sales hasn't been a dirty word in law firm marketing. Did they talk about business development? What terminology did they use? Helene: In my exposure early on in my career, it was because I worked at a large, more of a general practice firm, the focus was cross-selling. So, if you were a probate attorney and your client needed something that was of a corporate need, they would try to cross-sell within the firm. I can't remember that there was a formal marketing program back in 1977 when I first entered law firms. It really didn't start to emerge until the late ‘80s, early 90s and even today, my experience has been those attorneys who embraced the concept of marketing and advertising don't actually want to do the work themselves; they want someone else to do the work, which I think you understand. Sharon: Yeah, I do. I can understand that from several perspectives. So, was there a formal cross-selling program? I mean did the partners meet and when they were talking about accounting or the management of the firm, were they talking about, “We've got to cross-sell?” Was it just pounding on the table? I'm rather curious because I wasn't doing this then. Helene: At the first firm that I was at, which again was a large Century City firm, I wasn't privy to those meetings. I just know in conversations that I would hear that they would always emphasize that business development equated to cross-selling within the firm. There weren't really any formal outside attempts to market, though I do think some of the attorneys would speak occasionally if they had a connection with a particular group, but it wasn't in any kind of formalized way and it was always an issue too because in that environment, which is different from being in a medical malpractice firm, the billable hour was the golden rule. People didn't want to give up their hours to somebody else and where I am now, we're on a total contingency basis. So, it's very different than being in a defense firm or a general practice firm.  The world has changed. The internet is here. The options are broad for marketing. Sharon: Was it jarring when you moved from a firm that worked in billable hours to one that was a contingency? For you, was that a little jarring? I guess it's a word that keeps coming to mind. Was it like, “Oh, my gosh?” Helene: It was very different in many respects, not just that. I do think being in a contingency firm promotes a more relaxed environment and I'll tell you our attorneys work long, hard hours, but there isn't that same kind of pressure to meet an hourly goal, but my firm is also very different culturally. I've been in very large firms. It was a difficult decision for me to decide if I wanted to join this firm because I was actually, conceptually, moving down. I was going to a smaller firm and I was concerned about how that was going to look on my résumé if I wanted to change positions down the line, but it's become a non-issue. This firm is very familial. It is cohesive. The people have been there, most well over 25 years, 30 years, some 40 years; some graduated high school and came to the firm. The firm is 40 years old and there are people that started in the beginning and are still here. I've been at the firm over 16 years, and I feel like the new kid on the block.  So, it's a very different experience. Sharon: It must be. I mean I've seen the firm in action. It's been several years, but I'm just blown away by the fact that the leadership of Phil Michels decided to advertise on TV early on. Talk about breaking a glass ceiling, in a sense.   Helene: Most of the people at our firm do speak Spanish and they can very well relate to the clients and our marketing has always been to—well, there's divergent marketing. There's the marketing to the attorneys and there's marketing to the potential client. The client marketing has been focused largely in I'll say the Inland Empire area where there had been—I think the dynamics are changing now—but had been a very large Hispanic population and again the doctors, the regional centers, the medical facilities were not of the level of the UCLAs and the Cedar Sinais that were—it's rare that we would go against one of those facilities. So, we filled a niche and there's a cultural issue too, because with many Hispanics, if something goes wrong in the course of a pregnancy or a birth, they feel that they are responsible. So, we have to get over that hurdle with them and let them know it's not their fault and get to the source of what did happen and what caused the birth injuries, and these are really heartbreaking catastrophic injuries where a child will need a life care plan for the rest of their lives. Our cases are often what they call HIE cases; their hypoxic, ischemic, encephalopathy, where there is a deprivation of oxygen to the brain and limited blood flow. It's so detrimental to these children and heart-breaking. We see them coming in in wheelchairs with all kinds of apparatus to help them breathe and suction and G-tubes, and as a firm, we fight so hard for them so we can get them a settlement that will allow them access to all of the medical needs that exist for them. Sharon: I'm curious if you've seen a change in the way that prospective clients choose the firm or how they make a decision about which firm to choose, and the same with how lawyers who refer to the firm, has it changed in say the last 15 years in terms of what you need to emphasize to them in order to stand out? Does that make sense? Helene: Yes, it makes sense and I'm just trying to think where to start to answer your question. We track, every week, our marketing. We have a software program where we enter every phone call that comes into our firm or any letter than comes into our firm into our system and we track the source of how that person or attorney found us and we're able to see a trend by doing that and again, there are two different marketing venues I would say. We market to attorneys, and we do that through magazines and the newspapers that are indigenous to the legal industry. We attend a conference every year that's put on by the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles—the handle is CAALA—that's a huge conference for attorneys and it'll draw 3,000 minimum attorneys typically and we have an exhibit booth there every year. So, we make ourselves visible. We let people know that we have an in-house medical director that reviews cases. We emphasize that we have great resources to analyze cases, whether or not they have credibility, if they have value and that has been very successful for us.  On the other side, if we're marketing to prospective clients, we have to be more strategic and do target marketing and we're also—everyone who knows about personal injury firms knows about MICRA which is a 1975 law, it's the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act which limits the case value, non-economic damages, to $250,000. So, we are a firm that typically will not take those cases because they are too expensive to litigate to really get the client a decent settlement. Our market is in excess of $2 million, $3 million; those are really the catastrophic cases. Potential clients now have more ways to find us because of the internet and the worldwide web. I mean there's Instagram; there's Facebook, AVVO, Martindale-Hubbell, Google keyword searches. The internet is God. Sharon: I know, yes, there's so much that it's overwhelming. There's always a debate about whether—it's been a while—but the debate about whether clients choose a personal injury firm because they see how much money you've gotten for other people, or they choose it because they feel like you're warm and fuzzy in that sense. Has that changed or has one gone up and become less important than the other or more important do you think or are there others that have entered the picture? Helene: I think that our clients select us because of our experience. They look at what their situation is; they look to see if we have experience in that arena and we have a client relations manager who is really, aside from our receptionist whom we love—our client relations manager is the one who really begins the conversation with the potential client and she's the one that makes them feel comfortable; she's the one who is able to explain whether or not typically we can take their case. She's been with us so long, but she doesn't make the ultimate decision, but she makes them feel comfortable and confident in us. They tell her their story. She gives the information to our medical director. He looks at the facts and determines if it's a case that we want to look at further, in more depth. We have a huge array of experts in all areas of medicine who we use to also look at the data, the circumstances of the case, to help determine whether or not it's a case we feel that we can successfully litigate. If we can't help the client, we're not going to take the case and we are very selective. I will tell you that probably somewhere between 1% to 3% of the calls that we get do we even look at the case, let alone accept it. There are many, many variables and whether or not you can prove causation and liability in a case and with the MICRA cap, it makes it more difficult. Sharon: I know it's a challenge. I mean there are a lot of sad stories out there, but if the evidence isn't there or whatever—you've been involved in and had a marketing hat on at times and you've been involved in marketing your own business and you've hired a lot of different marketers and—I'll use this word—vendors as search engine optimization firms. What do you look for when you're choosing a firm or a person in marketing and business development? Helene: Someone who can be persuasive with our attorneys and get them to actually take action. In the early days, I know my firm, they would do brochures; they would do mailings. We advertised extensively in the Yellow Pages, English and Spanish. Those kinds of things have certainly gone by the wayside. We have tried kiosks in malls; we have tried billboards; we have tried bus benches; we've obviously done TV, but today, it's all about the internet. That's really how— Sharon: Sorry, it's all about you said—I didn't hear that. Helene: The internet. Sharon: Yes, O.K., yes, it is. Helene: Everyone has a phone or they are at the computer; they usually have a phone. They can look up anything any time of day or night. I happen to be a late-night owl and I will see intakes come in on my computer at 1:00 in the morning. That's when people have time. That's when they sit down at their computer and say, “Hey, I need to find somebody to help me with this case.” The internet has changed marketing tremendously. Sharon: It's interesting to me that you say somebody who can persuade the attorneys to market, to have client lunches, persuade them to review copy. What do they need to be persuaded about when you're looking at a marketing firm? Helene: If someone is launching a new website and they're going to put new content on it, sometimes it's hard to get an attorney to sit down and focus and read the content. Sharon: Yes, yes, yes. Helene: “This is what I want to present and how I want to present my firm.” They want someone else to do the work for them. If it comes to a TV ad, they don't want to be the person who is going to be interviewed or to deliver the message. They want someone to do it for them and I think you have seen that, that it's difficult. They can get onboard with the concept of marketing and advertising, but they personally themselves say, “Oh, I'm too busy. I can't do this. I don't want to do this. I've got clients I need to deal with,” whatever it is and sometimes it really does take the personal touch of someone at the top to make a difference. Sharon: No, definitely, I mean that personal touch—literally a personal touch, just a hello or whatever, can make a big difference. So, what do you see post-COVID? How do you see the new normal and who knows what it's going to be, but the impact on your firm? Do you think anything's going to change or what do you think might change and how will it change?  Or will it stay the same? Helene: I don't think it's going to change. I think as a firm, what we need to do is to understand who our potential client is. For instance, we handle a variety of different cases, I've talked about what we do. We do spinal injuries and brain injuries and meningitis and paraplegic injuries, but for example because birth injuries are such a large part of what we do and we're so expert at it, what you have to do is put yourself in the mind of the 18 to 35-year-old woman or husband/wife. That's the person who, if they have problem, is going to be looking for someone to help them. What are they going to do? Where are they going to go? How are they going to search? And that's where you want to have a presence. In my opinion, you have to put yourself in their shoes.  These days it's all about artificial intelligence and algorithms and behavior tracking on the internet and there are so many programs that the software developers have, and we want to be the one who pops up at the top of their search.  So, we are working with—we've had a person handling our website for quite a few years who's very expert in, as you mentioned, the SEO searches and the rules that Google goes by, their algorithms and when they change and how they change and what we need. He's the background person who says, “This is what you need to do now. This is what's going to be helpful.” And lately what we've done is actually record some Instagram messages. We have not been on Instagram and certainly it's very popular these days, so it's something new that we're trying, I don't even think we've launched it yet, but we have done some clips. I haven't even seen them yet. So, that's something new that we're getting involved in and trying to push the AVVO and the LinkedIn—I don't know so much that our potential birth injury clients would be using LinkedIn. That probably would address more of an attorney level, but it's target marketing. Who is it that you want to get the attention of and understand how their mind works and where they are going to go look for information? Sharon: Right, which is always a challenge. Well, Helene, thank you so much for being here today.  It was really interesting. We don't talk to that many contingency firms, so this is very, very interesting. Thank you so much for being here today. Helene: Thank you having me. It's been fun. END OF AUDIO

What you'll learn in this episode: How lawyers, law firms and managing partners respond when they hear Firm Focus can help them develop a firm focus. How you can overcome disorganization and develop systems that can keep you focused. The top three stumbling blocks for lawyers that impede business development. About Sarah Tetlow: Sarah Tetlow is an experienced productivity consultant, trainer and speaker for attorneys and other legal professionals. She uses her past experiences, organizational and strategic thought process, education and training to help law firms increase their bottom line and operate more efficiently. Through one-on-one consulting, strategic planning, workshops and group trainings, Sarah works with attorneys and law firms to find personalized ways to manage one's day with a proactive and focused approach.  Sarah has experienced first-hand the stress that attorneys endure in trying to manage multiple projects. Sarah's mission, and the reason for starting Firm Focus, is the desire to see a change in the industry and to help attorneys experience control over their day.​ Additional resources: Firm Focus Website Sarah's LinkedIn Firm Focus Facebook Firm Focus LinkedIn Transcript: Episode 91: Finding the Focus to Increase the Bottom Line with Sarah Tetlow, Founder & CEO of Firm Focus   Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst podcast. Today, we're talking with Sarah Tetlow, Founder & CEO of Firm Focus which works with law firms to increase productivity with the ultimate goal of increasing firm revenue. She has worn many hats within the law firm environment, so she knows the ins and outs of how they work and where they encounter stumbling blocks when it comes to productivity. Today we'll hear all about her journey, her perspective on law firm productivity and how it can be enhanced. Sarah, welcome to the program.    Sarah: Thank you so much, Sharon, it's wonderful to be here.   Sharon: So glad to be talking with you. When I was reading stumbling blocks on law firm productivity, I thought, “Oh my gosh, there are a lot of them. So, tell us about your career path and how you started working with lawyers.   Sarah: Yeah, I went to UC Santa Barbara and studied law and society and always thought that I wanted to be a lawyer. My whole life, I wanted to be a lawyer and long story short, I ended up going a different path, but always within the legal industry and I was a litigation paralegal for many years in my career and then I moved into a marketing and business development manager role and, ultimately, during that time in my career, I started to really explore what I was passionate about and where there was a need in the industry which landed on creating Firm Focus and now I'm truly happy that my career took this path because I love helping lawyers work more productively, be more organized and basically fall in love with their career again.   Sharon: Was it helping lawyers that made you passionate or was it  that you could enhance their ability to work more efficiently? What did you become passionate about?   Sarah: When I was a litigation paralegal and kind of the day to day and preparing the lawyers for trial or even depositions or hearings and helping manage a lot of the big, voluminous projects, it was always something that I really just enjoyed doing. I remained calm in the storm. I always had a really good sense of time and project size and the resources that we needed to use to be able to meet deadlines and effectuate the projects without burning out and it was just something I was good at, but also I really enjoyed that part of my career and helping manage the lawyers, helping manage the cases. So when I started to explore—when I was a business development manager and I was spending a lot of commuting time thinking about what was I loving about being a marketing and BD manager, what was missing about not being a litigation paralegal anymore, where are my skills, what am I good at and where can I fill a gap in the industry by marrying all of those skills and my passion to help the industry. So, it came from both. It came from just sort of my own selfish view of myself and what fulfilled me, but then matching that to what the industry could benefit from and gain value from and so that's what landed me on their productivity experts, their business development coaches and I'm now bringing to the industry a productivity expert for the legal industry.   Sharon: So, tell us what made you decide to go out on your own, start your firm, and tell us a little bit about Firm Focus.   Sarah: That was scary of course. I had a career; I had a job; I had two babies; I was secure and comfortable, but I started on the side. I started doing some home organizing. So, on weekends or at night, I would go and do home organizing, just something that I found out twas a career and it's something I do even in my own house to reduce stress, and I enjoy it. Yes, I'm crazy; I like organizing; it's something that I love to do and so I would do it on the side on top of my career at a law firm in San Francisco and then I started to get the idea of, “Wow, I can make a business out of this.” But whenever I would kind of look at longevity in that industry, I just didn't see it. I didn't see my body doing this for the next 35 years or however long—not even 35 years. I'm a little too old to work for 35 more years, but I didn't see myself doing it long-term and so it took about a year to evolve to the right idea, but I came to the idea of marrying again the idea of organizing, but also the skills I had in the law office and came up with Firm Focus and then the name came up because I landed on the concept; I landed on the idea; I started to strategize about what that business would be like and then of course I wrote down lawyers, law firms, productivity and came up with Firm Focus which I'm actually very proud of the name because I think it has a double meaning on both ends and I stand by what I do with my clients in really helping them develop a firm focus in their business and in their day to day.   Sharon: What's the response when you tell lawyers or law firms or management partners that you can help them develop a firm focus? Do they always say, “I have that” or what? What's their response?   Sarah: Almost 100% of the time, I get a laugh and says, “You're saying lawyers need that?” Usually there's some curiosity behind that as well because many lawyers—there are some lawyers that have their workday designed perfectly. They have systems in place. They have boundaries established. They are able to stay focused, mitigate distractions and interruptions, have effective communication skills within their law firm and this is not really an issue for them, but there are others, many others whereby the very nature of how the industry has manifest, productivity skills and organizational skills are essential and it's not that lawyers are lacking these skills necessarily. They're incredibly intelligent individuals. Usually it's a result of just the fast-pace day and the slow-paced judicial system, the skills to be able to design the [unintelligible] of day, but then be able to react to significant changes that occur in their caseloads, things settling, trial dates being vacated, deals, the date being moved and all of these things elicit and need to be very organized and have a good sense of time, attention and project management skills.   Sharon: Do you find that most—and I guess there are some people who just can't get organized. Can you help them overcome that or do you come in and set up systems or what do you do?   Sarah: All of the above. So, I work with a lot of lawyers that have ADHD; it's actually quite common and the reality is—I'm a naturally very, very organized person and I don't expect my clients to be 100% organized and they don't expect that of themselves, but I have a lot of strategies, ideas and tips and of course it's customized to the person. Are they a litigator or are they are transactional attorney? Are they remote or are they in the office or a hybrid? Are they a digital person or are they a paper person? And so, all of these I am able to help my clients diagnose where their weaknesses are or their challenges are, leverage the strengths that they have, but also work with the other variables like what I mentioned: in-person, remote, digital/paper and help them just make changes to their habits, make changes to their systems so that they can work more productivity and more effectively.   Sharon: And so, do you help them? Because a lot of times I think it's not that people—they realize that they need this system. Lawyers need—everybody needs systems, but especially lawyers because they're working so quickly most of the time. They need systems, but it's like, “I don't have time to stop and put that together.” So, is that what you do?   Sarah: Yeah, so when I meet with clients initially—I work with clients three ways. One is via coaching, so that's usually one-on-one or very small groups and I have three-month, six-month packages where I meet with clients and what I do there in the beginning is I have a self-assessment I send them that I've created and I have them rate themselves on different statements that are in this assessment and then I take and I rearrange it into a scorecard by various categories that are some of the variables we think of for productivity. So, we have some goals established because—why are we being more productive? Why do we want to be more productive? What are we not accomplishing or what are we missing out on or what's the feeling we have that this is something that we feel we want to improve upon. So I'm measuring goals; I'm measuring their organization; I'm measuring their well-being, their emails and then things like perfectionism, analysis/paralysis, procrastination, what kind of distractions they experience, what kinds of interruptions they experience and I'm measuring all of that, turning it into a scorecard and we meet in the beginning for an hour and a half to really dive into who they are, again what their strengths are and what their challenges are and then I kind of create a road map, so if it is a six-month coaching client, I have a general idea of where we're going for six months. I meet weekly with my clients and what I say to them is, “This is not my journey. This is your journey. I'm here to support you and help you” and so each week we make micro-changes, really, really micro-changes which is why I prescribe usually a six-month engagement weekly for 45 minutes because we're going to work usually the organization first—let's get you a little bit more organized mentally and physically. So, are you getting things out of your head? Do you have a system to put those thoughts, ideas, assets, projects, tasks, to-do's because without having a system set up, you're too afraid to let them out of your head.” So, I'm helping them first to set that up and then from there we move into some of those issues that I talked about and that's what can take the six months or longer to build these healthier habits. I'm not coming in and saying, “Day one, oh my gosh, you need to set up all these systems and you need to turn off your email and you need to do this and that and that. No, no, no, we're going to do it in a slower paced but we'll effectuate long-term changing growth.” And the last piece I was going to say on that was—I forgot. I had one more piece to say on that, but--   Sharon: When it comes back to you, you'll bring it up. So, you mentioned a couple of issues. What are the top three issues you see that are stumbling blockings for lawyers and also impede their business development? I know that you've worn the marketing hat, so you see how the productivity—you could at least be more productive so that you would have more time for business development I presume.   Sarah: Yeah, yeah, well, from a higher level what I see a lot that affects productivity in a firm—I'll talk about the firm first—I would say communication issues. That is email—and I just remembered my other train of thought by the way too--   Sharon: Please.   Sarah: I'll derail, and you can fit it in as you see fit, but I started to say there are three ways I service my clients and then I went way off on the coaching way. So, the other two ways in which I service clients is I do a lot of speaking and a lot of training. That might look like a small team, or it might look like a firm one. I've done firm-wide trainings where they bring lawyers, legal assistants, operations team, finance team, everyone to the table and I've done firm-wide trainings and then the third way I service my clients is email and digital management. I train a lot on email and not just how to use email, but our habits around emails. I connect people's habits to the technology so that busy professionals can be in control of their email because that is a huge, huge distraction piece through the day. So, the top three kind of high-level things that I see that inhibit productivity within a law firm are communication and that's giving projects over Slack, email, constant firing of email, ineffective emails or inefficient emails, volume of emails and then when we are in the office, a lot of just random projects being shouted out while walking by people's desks and so we are getting tasks and to-do's from too many mediums. That's one challenge I see on a firm level.     A second challenge that I see on a firm level is disorganization and so sometimes, whether electronically or digitally or the paper file can be disorganized, there are things that need to be in the file that should be in the file that are missing that can lead to a lot of lost time, especially when it's crunch time and we need original signatures or we're trying to locate a document or a version and we're unable to do so. That leads to a lot of challenges at a firm-wide level in productivity.   And the third one at a firm-wide level that can lead to inefficient use of time is a lack of policies or procedures and I find that a lot in firms that just don't really have a lot of procedures implemented where lawyers are doing a lot of admin, non-billable, non-captured time because there's just either no one else to go to ask or they're unclear or there's no—for lack of a better word—ramifications for some of the support staff saying, “I'm too busy. I'm not going to do it” instead, “Let me support you as the billable lawyer and find the answer or get someone who can help me help you” and I'm finding more and more in firms that that level of service internally has dissipated a little bit which is leading to a lack of productivity on a firm-wide level.   Sharon: Who calls you in? Is it managing partners, the marketing director? Who calls you in?   Sarah: All of the above. So sometimes it's the individual. They see in themselves that they can benefit working with me and oftentimes they want to do it confidentially which of course is fine with me if they're the ones reaching out. I try to encourage them if they can get firm support. If they increase their billable hours, maybe the firm will help pay for some of my services, but sometimes it's a very vulnerable place and they're just not quite ready to admit to the firm that they might need help in that area, although I will share it's very, very common for many lawyers to benefit from working with someone like me and just helping them in the day to day. I also get brought in by either managing partner level or executive director level, somewhere around there. Usually that's for either the firm-wide training or someone is being challenged at this level and we'd like you to work with them and marketing people also bring me in. I mentioned that I was in-house marketing and business development manager. I have been very involved with the Legal Marketing Association in the Bay Area for about six years now. So sometimes the marketing professional is the one bringing me in partially because of my involvement in LMA and partially because, as you even brought up yourself, Sharon, marketers are challenged with lawyers who need to find time to do the business development and marketing and oftentimes what they hear is, “I didn't have time for that,” but in reality what we know that wasn't a priority right now and so sometimes the marketers will come to me mostly for training, not so much saying, “We want you to work with this person, can you come in.” Me being the voice to let the attorneys knows the importance of finding time to develop business and sometimes the lawyers just need to hear it from someone other than their internal marketer to then go, “Oh my gosh, that's just such a great idea” or “I see where I have gaps in my daily practice and the need to grow my book of business.”   Sharon: So where do you encounter the most resistance? I can see a lot of places, but if you're brought in, who might feel the most threatened or--   Sarah: Sometimes if I'm being brought on by a stakeholder to work with a junior person on their team, sometimes I'm met with resistance by the person in the beginning. Almost always within a few sessions, they have opened up and find it incredibly beneficial to their practice, but it's a tricky situation because as that person, I can appreciate that you're being exposed to say, “Hey, we think you need to work with a productivity coach” and that can be a really confusing and scary situation and also the first thought is, “Am I going to get fired? Am I not developing enough here at the firm? Am I going to advance at this firm?” And ironically if the firm is reaching out to me, almost always what they're telling me confidentially, but before I meet with the individual, they see a ton of value in that person. They see a potential in that person. They want to invest in that person and that's usually where in the beginning, there's a little bit of insecurity that gets developed by the individual because they think, “I'm being asked to work with Firm Focus” because they don't see potential in me” and in fact it's usually the reverse. They see a lot of potential and they want to invest in the one area that they see as a challenge for that person so that then they can grow in the firm.   Sharon: No, I can see how that would be unsettling to the person at first, but the message for the firm really is—they're not going to invest in somebody they think they want out the door in a few months.   Sarah: Exactly.   Sharon: So that would be quite in a sense almost—I'm sure I'd feel if somebody came to me and said, “Oh my god, we want you to work this,” I'd feel like, “Oh my god, what am I doing wrong,” but at the same time, it's such a compliment in so many ways to have them bring you in to work with somebody. When we were talking before, tell us about some of your successes. I know you mentioned something about tremendously reducing the amount of emails they have. Tell us a little bit about that.   Sarah: Yeah, I get very excited on this topic because I developed a system; it's called the Art Email Productivity System, ARTT. So just to step back for a moment, Sharon, in life, in anything we do—and if you think I need to cook dinner; I need to go grocery shopping; I need to draft a brief—anything we do, there are five D's. We can do it right now; it's going to take me two to five minutes and I'm going to do it. We can delay it. I'm going to do it in the future. We can delegate it. I'm going to ask somebody else to do it. We can diminish it, take a big, big project and break it down or we can delete it, not do it. Those are our choices. So, in developing ARTT, as I mentioned before, I train a person's habits to match the technology because when the engineers developed email that we all use every single day, they created the tools within the software to support our habits, but no one ever really teaches us what our habits are and so that's where I find a lot of my clients use things like flags. Flags are, “This is really important, and I must do it and I can't lose it and I shouldn't forget about it” or “I need to do this in the future, so I'm going to flag it and tell Outlook or GSuite to remind me of it in three days, five days, seven days.” We use things like, “Unread, I have an action to do. I still need to do something on this email” or “Read, I don't have an action or it's a lower-priority action,” but like I said, we're never really taught how to efficiently use the software, use the tools and use the technology and so that's where I come in with ARTT.     ARTT is action, reference, tracking, trash and that's because I force my clients—I teach them what their habits are as they relate to those five Ds in the ARTT system and then I teach them the habit of touch once or mostly touch once. So, you get an email. You instantly decide is this something I need to do? Is this something I need to do in the future? Is it something I'm waiting for something back to unlock some bottlenecks? Is it something I don't need to do anything on, but I want to save it? Is it something I don't need do anything on and I don't want to save it?     And so, then what do you do with that email? And what it has done for—I teach a workshop; I do a public workshop, a two-hour workshop and that comes with a one-hour private session because I'm not coming and saying, “O.K., Sharon, here is how you need to set up your inbox.” What I do is I go in, and I ask the right questions so that your inbox is set up to support your line of business, your way of thinking and it's going to look different than John's. It's going to look different than Susan's. It's going to look different than mine and so the one-hour private session is where my clients share their inbox with me after they've gone through the workshop, and we set up the system fully and I have had many people come out of this system with a volume of email just sitting in their inbox and in the lower side maybe 12,000 emails or some-where between 5,000 and 12,000 emails. The highest was someone who had a million emails in her inbox and after implementing this system, the new habit, the new way of thinking, they finished most days with zero to maybe 20 emails in their inbox because it's making you do something with the email, not just letting it sit there and overwhelm you and not only that, the volume of email coming in reduces by implementing this system as well because you start to become very aware of what's coming into your inbox. I teach them to batch think by project or by what your behavior is with that type of email so that you can see how many future obligations you've maybe thought that you would do like, “I'm going to read all of these digests. I'm going to watch all of these replays. I'm going to listen to all of these podcasts” and now I'm forcing you to reduce decision fatigue and be intentional on what is important to you to design your proactive day and to mitigate the overwhelm. Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent on that, but I love it.   Sharon: No, no. Well, I guess what I was thinking is it sounds fabulous. I think everybody would benefit from something like this, especially lawyers with that volume of email. Let me ask you this: When you talk about inefficient email—this just came back to me. I remember when I used to work in a different lifetime at Arthur Anderson and I remember a partner who he got so annoyed about people saying, “Thanks for your message. Received your message” and he felt like, “Why are people sending me these emails?” What are your thoughts about something like that? I'm just really curious.   Sarah: Yeah, so we see that all the time and on the one hand, in the ideal world, when we're communicating back and forth, a great thing to always try to add is, “Thanks in advance for your response” because you don't feel the need to send a thank you on the back end. That being said, we can't always train—we can train some people, “please don't send these types of responses;” others we can't and so that's another way that my system is effective because now it's a click of that delete button. You got it; you received it; it took you a second to read it, but you don't really need that piece of the thread anymore. So yes, sometimes it's trainable. If it's internally or maybe if you have a really great relationship with the client, you might be say, “I appreciate your thanks. You don't need to send those. I know you appreciate my response.” If I could elaborate on this for just a second though, another one we see all of the time, “Hi, Sharon, we should really talk about this report. Let me know when you're available.”  No, no, no, “Hi, Sharon, we should really talk about this report. I've got time tomorrow between 12:00 and 2:00 or Friday any time before noon. What works with your schedule?” I see this a lot where we punt the next action to the next person. It's a way of avoiding making the decision or bothering to look at your own calendar for a minute, but you'll see a response, “Yes, that sounds good. Let me know when you want to meet” and then that goes back and forth. So, if you are proposing to connect with somebody about something, give them some options of when it works for you to connect.   Sharon: No, I think that's so important. It makes such a difference in the response you get if you say to somebody here are some times or some days as opposed to—no, that can just take forever.     Sarah: Sharon, can I say on more thing on that topic too?   Sharon: Please.   Sarah: From a client development standpoint as well, I'll let you in on a little secret. What I have found is when I'm reaching out to a potential client, I have my systems in place to follow up with them maybe in six weeks and the six-week day comes up and I know that that feeling many of us get where we go, “Oh, that's right. Here's this reminder. I need to reach back out to Susan today” and we go, “I don't know what necessarily to write at the moment,” but when you reach back out to them, if it's via email—certainly if it's via call, that's great—but it's by an email, what I have found is that if you say, “Hi, Susan,” all of the salutations that you're going to give and then you say, “Here are some times this week or next week that we can connect. Let me know if those work for you” instead of just, “Let me know if you'd like to connect if I can be of further help.” If you give specific times when you reach out, the likelihood of that person to respond increases and if they don't respond and you're waiting a day or two and you to follow up again, then you say, “Hi Susan, I know you're extremely busy. I wanted to update my availability for you. Here are some times.” Then I actually find that they respond quicker to get some time on your calendar. So, it also leaves an open gate for you to be able to respond again to update that availability if you haven't heard back from the person that you've reached out to.   Sharon: I like that a lot about updating availability because a lot of times it's like you give them and they'd say, “Don't respond. It's past” and you say, “Well, when do you want to talk?” One thing just before we end I wanted to ask you because you talk a lot about these habits and I think most people who are in a law firm at some point have taken a productivity class or time management class or whatever and what you're talking about, they're great ideas, but I can't say that they're like nobody's ever heard them before. I think it's the habits. Over six months, are you circling back with the client to just check on the habit or what's going on?   Sarah: Yeah, so I meet weekly, and they say it takes anywhere from 50 days to 365 days—don't quote me on the exact number—to build a habit. The 21-day habit, that's based on a response to plastic surgery that was blown out of the water and not accurate. It takes time to develop habits, good habits. Bad habits, they just develop right away. You start eating chocolate cake at 5:00 every day, you're going to eat chocolate cake at 5:00 every day. So good habits take time to develop which is why I'm meeting weekly for 45 minutes and then many of my clients, whatever that new habit is that we're introducing—again, they're micro; they're really small. So, I might for example introduce, “This week, let's start your shutdown routine. Now, instead of looking at what you need to in the morning or just reacting to everything that's coming at one, the night before, having a clear understanding of what you will get done the next day is a crucial part of being productive and staying focused.” And so that might be a habit that we're starting to develop as we meet this week and we're building upon it for a few weeks and talking about other things as well, but that might be the one thing that we're doing, “How did it go last week? Do we need to refine? Do we need to change the time that you're doing shutdown routine? Are you giving yourself enough time to do the shutdown routine” and then maybe that's developed and we're three months later into coaching and we're working on another issue and they go, “Oh my gosh, I've not been doing the shutdown routine” or “I'm not doing it every day like I was when we first started doing it,” then we are going to lay the foundation for that again and build it again.     Most of the time though, as we're working together, these habits are sticking, and I encourage—some of my clients are good. We meet once a week and then the next week and the micro-homework, they've done the homework; they are learning so much; they're being more organized; they're getting more done; they're billing more hours. Others send me a text every day of the top three things that they're going to focus on that day and it's just that extra layer of accountability and I'll usually respond with, “Looks good” or I might check in with them later or if I notice the next day that something that was written the day before is written again, I'll usually ask them, “Did you not have time to do it yesterday or are you just continuing to work on that one thing?” So, I'll usually communicate with them even outside of our weekly meeting and find out why am I seeing the same project day after day or I will talk about it at our next session if it's a bigger, deeper issue than just over a quick check in.   Sharon: I'll give you a final, final question because I can hear a lot of listeners going, “Sarah, that's really great and what you're saying is really great, but you don't understand. Any partner can walk in at any minute and partners walk into my office all day and throw another project at me that I didn't have in the morning, and you just don't understand how it works exactly.” What do you say?   Sarah: Absolutely, I wish I had my hour-long From Frazzle to Focus presentation because I really lay it out in that presentation, but the short answer is it absolutely happens all of the time and it's still crucial to know what the top things are that you need to focus on each day. So you go, “I need to work on this summary judgment brief. I need to get this letter out.  I need to get three subpoenas out” and as long as you know what the top three things are you need to do—and I'm kind of giving two different paths to this answer; there are two different paths. On the one hand, you know what the top priorities are that you need to work on and so when the partner does not and say, “I need you to do and work on this and it needs to be today,” you can then know what things on your own list can be bumped or needs to be bumped because you're going to have to bump something. So, can the letter get out the next day or can you delegate it? Can you break it down? You were going to spend four hours on a summary judgment brief, but now you can only spend two hours on the summary judgment brief because you need to do this other project. So, the one pathway answer is knowing your priorities so that you know how to shift them when other needs arise.     The second pathway answer is here's that procrastination. So, you get in in the morning and what I see too often is we don't know what those priorities are; we haven't written them down or identified them. We know we need to work in the summary judgment brief. We know we need to get a letter out. Oh, we got the subpoenas we need to get it, but we spend time doing the small, piddly tasks. We get caught up in email, slap chit-chatting. We get point one and point three done and then when it's time to get down to business and start working on the summary judgment brief, that's when the partner has interrupted you and needs you to do something more important and so you get that anxious feeling. You don't feel accomplished. You feel frazzled and the reality is had you know your priorities and immediately in the morning mitigated all other distractions and interruptions and started to work on that summary judgment brief, when you were interrupted, you would still feel like you accomplished that you needed to do that and not blame the partner for interrupting you and then of course let me talk to that partner about how they can manage their projects a little bit better so that they're not coming to you with urgent needs.     Sharon: No, that's really great. I'm sure everybody's going, “O.K.” I'm sure you've given people some ideas to think about. There's also the reality of, “Oh yeah, how is that partner going to react when I tell him, ‘Listen, I have other things I have to do,' but I'm sure you have tips for that. Thank you so much for being here today and talking with us. You gave us some great ideas, Sarah. I really, really appreciate it.   Sarah: It was such a pleasure, Sharon. Thank you for having me and I would love to come talk with you again anytime.   Sharon: Sounds wonderful, thank you.   END OF AUDIO

What you’ll learn in this episode: How to deliver high quality client service. The importance of a firm-minded perspective. How to get a “seat at the table.” Guidelines for service conversations with clients. About Kate Stoddard: As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, Kate Stoddard is responsible for the firm’s business development strategy and the creation of branding, marketing, public relations and communications programs. Kate works with the firm’s Executive Committee, managing partners, practice group leaders and other firm leadership to design and launch meaningful business development initiatives. As a member of the firm’s senior administrative leadership team, Kate serves as an adviser to attorneys pursuing specific business development opportunities and on general management decisions. Kate directs the firm-wide marketing team, promoting a collaborative work environment and the sharing of resources and knowledge across offices and practice areas. During her 12+ years at Kelley Drye, she has expanded the marketing and business development department, formalized the firm’s marketing infrastructure by employing CRM technology, and led a rebranding initiative that captures the spirit and culture of the firm through a new visual identity, enhanced website experience and fresh collateral materials. Whether through client service initiatives behind the scenes or through outward-facing communications campaigns, Kate trumpets Kelley Drye’s reputation as a powerhouse firm with the heart of a boutique. Additional resources: Kate's LinkedIn Kelley Drye Facebook Kelley Drye LinkedIn Kelley Drye Twitter Kelley Drye Instagram Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The most common issue lawyers come to Vicki to resolve. How law firms engage career strategists. How the pandemic has changed people’s values. What role values play in finding the most satisfying career path.  About Vicki Rothman: Vicki Rothman is a Career Strategist and Counselor with over 15 years of experience providing strategic career and life coaching. She works with attorneys on career issues and has facilitated group work through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Through career assessments and in-depth conversations, Vicki helps lawyers learn more about themselves and the world of work. Additional resources: Vicki's LinkedIn Vicki's Website Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The importance of data in perfecting marketing efforts. Why now is the time law firms can get more for their money. How firms like CAMG work with external and internal marketing and PR firms. The top mistakes law firms make when they embark on a marketing campaign. About Steve Nober: Steve Nober has 30 years of executive leadership and innovation in marketing, media management, digital and computer technologies. His expertise covers the full spectrum of legal marketing, from offline, online, and social media marketing to telemarketing, intake and contracting services and medical record retrieval and review. Consumer Attorney Marketing Group operates six service divisions to help law firms with new case acquisition. Additional resources: Steve's LinkedIn CAMG Twitter CAMG Facebook Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The pros and cons of a virtual office. The biggest challenges of working remotely. Transitioning your technology to a virtual “platform.” Advice for firms considering going remote. What to ask prospective employees to ensure they’re a fit for remote work. About Jennifer Schaller: Jennifer Schaller, Esq. is the Managing Director and co-founder of The National Law Review online edition. Prior to The National Law Review, Jennifer was in-house counsel/director at CNA Surety. She also served in various marketing and business development roles as Vice President of Aon Services Group. Jennifer started her legal career as an insurance coverage attorney with SmithAmundsen, LLC in Chicago, and in risk management at various insurance organizations.  About Megan Braverman: Megan Braverman, Principal of Berbay Marketing & PR, has gained a reputation as a strategic asset for law firms and other professional service firms. She is recognized for her ability to execute marketing campaigns that surpass business goals by immersing herself in clients’ operations and identifying their points of differentiation in order generate awareness and reinforce credibility.  Additional resources: Jennifer Schaller: LinkedIn Twitter  Megan Braverman: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The role of law firm marketing in the client experience. The increase in acceptance of law firm marketing. What to look for when hiring somebody in law firm marketing or business development. About Christina Buensuceso: Christina Buensuceso is the Director of Business Development for the U.S. arm of the international law firm Eversheds Sutherland LLP. She is trained as a lawyer and has nearly two decades of law firm marketing experience with a significant portion of that in the energy space. Additional resources: Christina's LinkedIn Episode Transcript  

What you’ll learn in this episode: The difference between public relations and crisis communications. Top mistakes law firms make when a crisis hits. How COVID has been a crisis for law firms. How to prepare for a crisis. Advice on getting ahead of a story in a time of crisis.   About Eden Gillott: Eden Gillott is a strategic communications consultant and has more than a decade of expertise in crisis and reputation management. She’s also a former business professor. Eden resolves issues both in and outside the media’s glare — from celebrity scandals and corporate fraud to criminal and civil litigation. She’s the co-author of three bestselling books A Business Owner’s Guide to Crisis PR, A Lawyer’s Guide to Crisis PR (Second Edition) and A Board Member’s Guide to Crisis PR. Eden frequently speaks to bar associations, law firms, CPA firms, non-profit organizations, companies, and at conferences. She’s also lectured at UCLA and other universities. Additional resources: Eden's LinkedIn  Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: How to measure the success your SEO efforts. What Google looks for when ranking web pages. Recognizing when Google’s algorithm has changed. The impact of social media on your rankings. Questions to ask before hiring an SEO firm Why you should double down on your online marketing? About Chris Walker: Chris Walker is the founder of Advocate SEO, which works exclusively with attorneys to help them rank their websites for terms that attract and engage, in other words, buying terms. He is an expert in all aspects of SEO from strategy all the way through implementation, both on-site and off. Advocate SEO offers law firms the opportunity to partner with experience in SEO, putting you at the forefront of SEO research, strategy, and implementation. They help small generate millions in revenue per year as well as help larger clients generate millions of dollars per month in new organic search traffic. Additional resources: Chris' LinkedIn Firm's LinkedIn Facebook Twitter SEO Training Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: How to overcome and find opportunities during difficult times to grow your firm and keep your team calm. Why getting your head around doom and gloom is important when developing a game plan to get your firm through hard times. Why focusing on one’s “zone of genius” can help strengthen your team. Why it is so important to invest in yourself. How to uncover one’s emotional intelligence. About Elise Buie: Elise Buie is the founder and head of Elise Buie Family Law. Her practice involves all aspects of family law: preparation of postnuptial and separation agreements, parenting plans, child support, simple and complex financial cases, relocation, and blended families. Elise has a deep understanding of complex parenting issues which clients may face when divorcing. Elise is an active member of the Washington State Bar Association. She is also a member of the King County Bar Association (Family Law Section, Collaborative Law Section), Snohomish County Bar Association, Washington State Bar Association, (Family Law Section, CLE Committee), Washington Women Lawyers, National Association of Women Lawyers, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (2019 President, Washington Chapter) and the American Bar Association (Family Law Section and GP Solo Division, Family Law Committee, Juvenile Law Committee, Commission on Women in the Profession). She provides her time and services through the Moderate Means program of the Washington State Bar Association. Elise completed the ABA Family Law Trial Advocacy Institute sponsored by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy in Boulder, Colorado. While practicing in Minnesota, Elise was Treasurer of the Children and the Law Committee of the Family Law Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association. Additional resources: Elise’s LinkedIn Firm's LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: Factors that were changing the media industry, even before the pandemic; How the pandemic has accelerated the changes already underway; How to break through the clutter; and The changes law firm marketers and PR pros are facing. About Aly Crea: With extensive experience in media relations and an astute ability to generate marketing and public relations opportunities, professional service clients turn to Berbay Account Director Aly Crea to strategically place them in front of key players in their respective industries. Aly develops and executes integrated public relations campaigns, writes and places diverse press materials, and has an eye for spotting trends and crafting stories that will get the attention of media. She also manages awards and speaking programs, in addition to developing and refining clients’ web content. Additional resources: Aly’s LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: A breakdown of the different types of legal rankings. What red flags to look for. What factors lawyers and marketing directors should consider when deciding whether to submit for a certain legal ranking. How to leverage a ranking. What a PR firm’s role is in getting a lawyer ranked.  About Megan Braverman: For more than a decade Megan Braverman, Principal of Berbay Marketing & PR, has possessed an exceptional reputation as a strategic asset for law firms and other professional service firms. She is known for her ability to execute marketing campaigns that surpass business goals by immersing herself in clients’ operations, identifying what sets them apart from their competition and leveraging this to create countless PR opportunities by generating awareness and reinforcing credibility. Megan works closely with individual attorneys and law firms to navigate legal rankings process and crafting compelling submissions that get noticed. She has been instrumental in attorneys receiving top rankings. Additional resources: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: How a firm’s diversity and inclusion program influences in-house counsel’s decision to hire a firm. How a firm’s ability to demonstrate a robust D&I program has become more important in the last few years. What to look for in a D&I program. Advice to firms looking to attract and keep diverse individuals. About Tyrone Thomas, Jr.: Tyrone Thomas, Jr. is a seasoned legal and strategic business advisor. He is currently the Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Invenergy, LLC, a global leader in energy solutions, based in the Chicago office. Tyrone leverages his broad experience to provide effective counsel on a wide range of legal, business, administrative and risk management issues with a focus on complex commercial contracts, real estate, permitting, construction, procurement and litigation/ADR management. He has led diverse teams of professionals in numerous acquisitions, dispositions and project financings of utility-scale energy facilities; negotiated land rights for more than one million acres of real property globally; and managed the negotiation and faithful execution of key construction and procurement documents for dozens of utility-scale energy projects.   Prior to joining Invenergy, Tyrone was in private practice at DLA Piper, Hanson Bridgett LLP, and Gould & Ratner.   Tyrone is actively involved in Invenergy’s diversity and inclusion efforts and is a 2019 Fellow with the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD). He frequently speaks on the advancement of diverse candidates into leadership positions within the legal community. Additional resources: LinkedIn Twitter Transcript 

What you’ll learn in this episode: How law firms have changed due to COVID. What firms are doing with their office and equipment leases. Who firms should be using to negotiate their office and equipment leases. How are lawyers who were previously resistant to working remotely handling the change. What firms need to do to maintain employment morale.  About Marcia Watson Wasserman: Marcia Watson Wasserman, founder and president of Comprehensive Management Solutions, Inc., is a seasoned legal management professional with more than 25 years of experience. She provides C.O.O. to Go™ services to boutique and mid-sized law firms. Her expertise includes operational management reviews, management development and training, succession planning, strategic planning, retreat facilitation, and financial management. Prior to consulting, Marcia served as chief operating officer and executive director of several Los Angeles-based and national law firms, including an Am Law 200 firm.   Marcia leads monthly Managing Partners’ Roundtables for more than 50 law firms focused on elevating the legal management discussion and sharing best practices. She serves as an associate editor for the American Bar Association’s Law Practice magazine and is a member of the Publishing Board of the ABA’s Law Practice Division. She frequently presents on law practice management topics at local, regional and national conferences, and her writings can be found in leading legal publications. She is the co-author of “Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees” (ABA 2017). Marcia’s efforts have garnered the recognition of her peers, as she is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management.  Additional Resources: LinkedIn “Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees”  Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The difference social media advertising makes on social media marketing efforts. How digital marketing strategies have changed due to the pandemic. What is the “Hollywood product” and why it is important to dress up your marketing efforts. The impact COVID has had on the influence of social media. The lasting impact COVID will have on how lawyers do business development. About Jason Ciment: Jason Ciment is a former attorney and CPA who has put his years of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience to work for law firms and other businesses by launching GetVisible, a digital marketing agency. Jason has been doing online marketing for 20+ years and has written, “I Need More Clients: Digital Marketing Strategies That Grow Your Business,” a book on SEO and digital marketing. He has worked with lawyers, CPAs, entrepreneurs, business owners and heads of marketing for billion-dollar companies. Jason speaks at local, regional and national conferences about advanced digital marketing and brand positioning strategies. Additional resources: GetVisible Facebook GetVisible Twitter GetVisible LinkedIn Jason’s Twitter Jason’s LinkedIn Jason’s Instagram Book: “I Need More Clients: Digital Marketing Strategies That Grow Your Business” Transcript  

What you’ll learn in this episode: The 21-minute method for conquering writer’s block. How Gary’s WordRake software edits and enhances writing. Top writing techniques for lawyers and legal marketers. About Gary Kinder: Gary Kinder is a highly acclaimed, best-selling author of narrative nonfiction, an investigative journalist, a lawyer, an inspiring speaker and a teacher who understands what you face every time you sit down to write. In 2012, he created and founded WordRake, the first and only in-line editing software for professionals. Adopted in thousands of law firms, corporations, government agencies and universities, WordRake has been hailed as a “Disruptive Innovation” by Harvard Law School, and has been awarded 10 patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Gary also created the online, interactive CLE series “Advanced Writing for Lawyers” for the American Bar Association. He has taught over 1,000 writing programs for law firms, power companies, corporations, courts, universities and writing conferences. Additional resources: Gary’s Website WordRake for Lawyers Website eBook: How to Write the Perfect Brief Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: Benefits of going virtual and why this model is on the rise. Challenges of managing a virtual firm and what mistakes to avoid. How having a virtual office can be leveraged as a marketing tool to prospective clients. About Marcia Watson Wasserman: Marcia Watson Wasserman, founder and president of Comprehensive Management Solutions, Inc., is a seasoned legal management professional with more than 25 years of experience. She provides C.O.O. to Go™ services to boutique and mid-sized law firms. Her expertise includes operational management reviews, management development and training, succession planning, strategic planning, retreat facilitation, and financial management. Prior to consulting, Marcia served as chief operating officer and executive director of several Los Angeles-based and national law firms, including an Am Law 200 firm. Marcia leads monthly Managing Partners’ Roundtables for more than 50 law firms focused on elevating the legal management discussion and sharing best practices. She serves as an associate editor for the American Bar Association’s Law Practice magazine and is a member of the Publishing Board of the ABA's Law Practice Division. She frequently presents on law practice management topics at local, regional and national conferences, and her writings can be found in leading legal publications. She is the co-author of “Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees” (ABA 2017). Marcia’s efforts have garnered the recognition of her peers, as she is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management.  Additional Resources: Website LinkedIn  "Lawyers as Managers: How to Be a Champion for Your Firm and Employees"  Transcript 

What you’ll learn in this episode: How Ackert Inc.’s various platforms help lawyers, law firms and legal marketing departments systematize and track marketing and business development efforts. How to overcome resistance from lawyers and staff when integrating technology. Examples of how Ackert Inc.’s technology and consulting has moved firms forward. Trends in marketing and business development technology.  About David Ackert: David Ackert, M.A., is the President of Ackert Inc. and business development mentor to thousands of high-achieving professionals in the legal, corporate, finance and accounting sectors. Over the past two decades, David has developed and implemented revenue acceleration programs for hundreds of firms around the globe. Widely recognized as a pioneer in business development innovation, David is the founder of several technology platforms, including Practice Boomers (a business development e-learning program), Practice Pipeline (a leading sales pipeline management system), Practice Viewer (a business intelligence platform) and Practice Driver (a business plan management system). Additional resources:  Ackert Inc. Website The Ackert Advisory Website Ackert Blog David's LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Ackert Inc. LinkedIn Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: How SeltzerFontaine goes beyond attorney placement to consult on business strategy such as career development and billing rates. How law firms of all sizes are incorporating diversity and inclusion in their hiring practices. Why mental health diagnoses are becoming a growing part of the diversity conversation. What steps smaller firms can take to become more competitive in the diversity and inclusion arenas. How metrics are showing that firms should look beyond a candidate’s law school and grades when making a hire. About Valerie Fontaine: Valerie Fontaine is a founding partner of SeltzerFontaine, a legal search firm based in Los Angeles. She places attorneys with law firms, corporate law departments, governmental entities and nonprofits as well as consults on career and practice development and law firm office management and expansion. Prior to SeltzerFontaine, Valerie practiced law with a prominent Los Angeles firm and entered the legal search profession in 1981. Valerie is a frequent speaker on topics related to attorney job search, partner recruitment and placement and career development, and has published numerous articles in the national legal press. She is the author of “The Right Moves: Job Search and Career Development Strategies for Lawyers,” now is in its second edition. Valerie is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) and serves on its Ethics Committee. For many years, Valerie served on the Board of Governors and the Advisory Council of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA). She was UC Hastings’ 2002 Alumnus of the Year, past president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the UC Hastings Alumni Association, honored as the 1998 L.A. Alumnus of the Year, the first woman president of the UC Hastings Foundation and was a longtime member of its Board of Trustees. UC Hastings’ Clara Foltz Feminist Association honored Valerie with its Role Model Award. Additional resources: Website Valerie’s Website Bio Valerie’s LinkedIn Twitter

What you’ll learn in this episode: How investment banking approaches business development differently compared to the legal industry. What brand alignment is and how it is distinct from “branding” as a whole. How to conduct a total refresh of a company’s assets to create a cohesive, unified brand experience. How the backing of an executive committee and consistent communication with staff can overcome resistance to marketing efforts. About Kira Sandmann: Kira Sandmann is the Vice President of Marketing at Cleveland, Ohio-based Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL), an investment banking and financial advisory firm serving the global middle market. She has more than 15 years of experience in marketing and business development across law, non-profit and financial organizations. Kira provides BGL with strategic direction on all facets of the firm’s marketing and business development, including branding, practice growth and digital marketing. She works with the firm’s professionals to identify what makes them unique and how to communicate that value with personality so that it resonates with the right audiences, ultimately converting those relationships into revenue. A longtime member of the Legal Marketing Association, Kira is the immediate past chair and current secretary of LMA’s Ohio Local Steering Committee. Additional resources: Website Kira’s LinkedIn Kira’s Twitter Brown Gibbons Lang & Company LinkedIn

What you’ll learn in this episode: How hiring a business development representative can benefit your firm. How to address pushback from your lawyers. Key traits to look for in a legal sales professional during the hiring process. Advice for smaller firms looking to hire sales professionals. About Keith Donovan Keith Donovan is the Managing Partner and Chair of the Executive Committee at Morris James, a law firm based in Delaware. As Managing Partner, he develops sound business strategies and policies for the firm, oversees firm operations with a strict focus on ensuring superior client service and leads firm operations. With more than 25 years of experience litigating personal injury cases, Keith represents insurance companies, insureds, individuals injured due to the negligence of others and plaintiffs in injury and insurance-related matters. Keith frequently speaks on personal injury insurance issues and on trial techniques and strategies. He is often selected by his peers to serve as an arbitrator or mediator. Additional resources: Website Morris James LLP LinkedIn Twitter Keith’s Bio Keith’s LinkedIn

What you’ll learn in this episode: How today’s legal environment is creating unexpected challenges for succession planning. Why it takes a minimum of five years to adequately plan for succession at a small firm. What steps to take to prepare for succession transitioning. What role legal marketing, business development and recruiting professionals play in the process. What obstacles many firms face when trying to prepare for leadership succession. About David Roberts Dave Roberts is a CPA and partner in charge of the Law Firm Services Group at Armanino LLP, one of the top 25 largest independent accounting and business consulting firms in the United States. He has more than 30 years of experience working with law firms of all sizes. He and his group have consulted with more than 1,200 law firms regarding strategic planning, partner compensation arrangements, succession planning, partner withdrawal and retirement, organizational reviews, profitability improvement, partner retreats, dissolutions, and mergers and acquisitions. Dave has authored numerous articles for the American Bar Association Journal and California Lawyer, and he co-authored “Financing the Start Up Law Firm,” published by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management section. Additional resources: Website LinkedIn Episode Transcript

What you’ll learn in this episode: The best way for legal marketers and business development professionals to develop frontline sales skills. How the sales process is different from a business development initiative. How small firms can make use of data and metrics in their marketing and business development. Why specializing within a particular industry creates opportunities for firms. About Clare Block Clare Block is the Director of Business Development at Fox Rothschild LLP based in the Philadelphia office. She has been working in legal marketing and business development for the past 29 years, and draws on a wide range of skills to coach attorneys on how to build their client relationships. Clare oversees the development of individual business plans, client targeting, media planning and events. Clare is the 2020 Director of Member Engagement for the Legal Marketing Association Northeast Regional Board. Additional resources: Fox Rothschild Website Fox Rothschild Twitter Fox Rothschild LinkedIn Fox Rothschild Facebook Clare’s LinkedIn

What you’ll learn in this episode: The power and networking potential of LinkedIn. Why senior lawyers are often reluctant to properly use LinkedIn. The first five action steps lawyers should start with to revitalize their LinkedIn profile. How law firm marketers and business development professionals can persuade lawyers to use LinkedIn. About Brynne Tillman Brynne Tillman is the LinkedIn Whisperer and CEO of Social Sales Link. For more than a decade, she has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams and business leaders how to leverage LinkedIn for social selling. As a former sales trainer and personal producer, Brynne adopted all of the traditional sales techniques and adapted them to the new digital world. She guides professionals to establish a thought leader and subject matter expert brand, find and engage the right targeted market and leverage clients and networking partners for warm introductions into qualified buyers. Brynne is the author of “The LinkedIn Sales Playbook: A Tactical Guide to Social Selling.” Additional resources: Website Speaker Special – 2 Private Sessions for the Price of One Brynne Tillman’s LinkedIn Profile The LinkedIn Sales Playbook: A Tactical Guide to Social Selling Book Twitter

What you’ll learn in this episode: How Buying Legal Council serves its members and legal marketing professionals in the area of legal procurement through advocacy, education and networking. The three key takeaways from Buying Legal Council’s conference on data-driven decision making. Why the involvement of procurement officers in the process of obtaining legal services is here to stay and will only increase in the future. Why diversity & inclusion and pricing have become particularly important to companies when selecting legal services. Examples of innovative strategies businesses have implemented in their procurement processes. About Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein is the executive director of Buying Legal Council, the international trade organization for legal procurement, and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School and Fordham Law School in New York. An expert on the purchasing behavior of clients when buying legal services, Silvia is an editor and author of several books, articles and Harvard Business School case studies on the topics of legal procurement initiatives and law firm management. She holds a Legal Lean Sigma & Project Management White Belt certification and is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. Silvia earned her PhD at Nottingham Law School (UK) and holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Universität Bayreuth (Germany) and Warwick Business School (UK) as well as an Undergraduate Degree in Economics from Universität Bayreuth (Germany). Additional resources: Buying Legal Council Website Legal Procurement & Legal Operations Handout Harvard Business School Case Studies: GlaxoSmithKline: Sourcing Complex Professional Services Riverview Law: Applying Business Sense to the Legal Market Law Review Articles: “I Didn’t Go to Law School to Become a Salesperson—The Development of Marketing in Law Firms” “What We Know and Need to Know About Legal Procurement” Legal Procurement Handbook Winning Proposals: The Essential Guide for Law Firms and Legal Services Providers Twitter Buying Legal Council LinkedIn Silvia’s LinkedIn

What you’ll learn in this episode: How Gabe’s career path differs from that of most law professors, and how he came to focus on legal innovation and technology How Gabe’s time working for the U.S. Government in the Secret Service influenced his decision to go to law school Why Gabe left working at his law firm and moved to academia, and why he is passionate about his role as a professor How Gabe inspires passion for technology in his students, and how legal innovation offers an opportunity to be creative seldom found in law school What kinds of legal technology and innovation courses are available at Suffolk University Law School How Gabe’s students often find a new career path by integrating legal innovation into their careers How teaching students to think creatively and find innovative solutions to legal problems is the cornerstone of Gabe’s work Why legal writing is an important component in law students’ education and teaches them to approach problems and communicate results How Suffolk Law offers an Online Legal Innovation and Technology Certificate to help practicing law professionals get up to speed What free educational tools are available to help legal professionals better understand the technologies and systems available to them Gabriel Teninbaum is a professor and legal technologist at Suffolk University Law School. He serves as Director of the Institute on Legal Innovation & Technology (LIT), the LIT Concentration (akin to an undergraduate major), and the LIT Certificate (an online program for legal professionals). During his time at Suffolk Law, he has taught more than 10 different courses (including classes held in Hungary, Sweden, and at MIT) and published more than 30 law review pieces and other articles. In addition to his work at Suffolk Law, Prof. Teninbaum has also – simultaneously – held appointments as a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, as a Visiting Professor at the MIT Media Lab, and as a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. He is the founder of an educational technology startup, SpacedRepetition.com, which was named one of the Top 20 Legal IT Innovations in the world by ALM/Legal Week Intelligence; is a former trial attorney at Sugarman in Boston; and, before law school, protected dozens of dignitaries including two sitting U.S. presidents while serving as an Operations Support Technician in the U.S. Secret Service. He has been named to the FastCase 50, which honors the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders; and called perhaps the most tech-savvy law professor in the country by the ABA Journal, which named him to the Web100 (the top 100 legal professionals to follow on social media). Additional resources: Website Twitter Website

What you’ll learn in this episode: How Hannah has spent her entire career in the legal industry, how she came to work in HR, and how she is SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) certified How Hannah came to discover her passion for the business side of a law firm and why she chose to focus on the business side Hannah describes her work on the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators What important role the signature Knowledge to Leadership Educational Conference and Exposition plays for the Golden Gate ALA chapter each year What personal and leadership development offerings, speakers, and topics will be on offer at the K2L Conference, being held January 30th, 2020 Why the K2L Conference has been intentionally designed to be comprehensive, touching on all aspects of the business side of a law firm How the K2L Conference, first started in 1993, provides an incredible amount of educational value How the great relationship the Golden Gate ALA chapter has with its business partners is being showcased at the Conference with their Exhibition Hall About Hannah Lincecum Hannah Linceum is a SHRM-Certified Regional Human Resources Manager at Reed Smith who manages and leads HR functions across the California market. She is a dedicated, intuitive leader with a unique, strategic perspective on successful law firms and their people. Hannah strives to keep the legal industry appealing to and thriving in the next generations. Her life interests include supporting local artists and musicians, improv, comedy and all things San Francisco. She has had the opportunity to work in the legal industry her entire career. Her primary initiative is honoring the heritage of the industry while helping it solve the many challenges presented by economic and generational shifts.  Additional resources: Website LinkedIn 2020 K2L Conference information Episode Transcript