Jordan   00:00

What if we could demystify starting a law firm? What if hanging your own shingle didn't require us to fly solo blind into the abyss that is law firm management, that we make the unknown known. Starting a law firm, to me always seemed like some sort of huge, monumental, unknowable risk. But plenty of us do it and plenty of us succeed. I want to start my law firm off on the right foot. And I also want to know the secret sauce to founding a successful law firm. And frankly, I want to avoid failure at all costs. That's exactly why I started this series. Welcome to hacking law firm success with me your host, Jordan Turk. If you are a lawyer looking to grow your practice, or you want some insight into how other attorneys run their firms, you've come to the right place. For each interview. In this series, I'll be sitting down with a different law firm founder from across the country to discuss their secrets to success, as well as the obstacles and maybe some cringe worthy moments that they have had to overcome in starting their firms. From foundation to legal technology to firm culture. We cover it all. Thanks for joining. And I hope this series helps empower you to set up your law firm for success. In this episode, we'll be talking with David Williams, managing partner of Williams Williams, about how he scaled his firm his ethos about practicing law, the technology that he used to help grow his practice and the firm culture that makes his employees want to stay.

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David  01:23

So my name is David Williams, and managing partner of Williams and Williams Attorneys at Law, which is a firm situated with a primary location in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and a secondary location in Columbia, South Carolina.

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Jordan 01:40

What areas of law do you practice?

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David  01:43

I am purely litigation. But my firm handles a variety of different areas of law, I would say, everybody, we have non lawyers with the non lawyers, everybody is a trial lawyer at our firm. We primarily are trying cases in the civil arena from the plaintiff side, but we do a fair amount of defense cases, usually we just don't represent insurance companies. We do have three lawyers that do a fair amount of criminal defense work, we have a number of lawyers that either cut their teeth, or for a long period of time did domestic work, but we don't really do a lot of domestic work simply because of the demand we've got for our civil and criminal litigation. Departments amaze, just over the overload work as is it's just we cannot justify, keep maintaining that domestic branch, but we do. You know, in a small town like Orangeburg, we still have to make sure we cater to our people. And our people have a variety of needs. And and I couldn't begin to explain the scope of services we end up providing. But you know, we might even do wills and Elder Law and probate and real estate and things like that we've got one lawyer, and I won't say his name because I feel bad for him. Sometimes he's like the, the catch all I picked out in the first part of this year, because I looked in Smoke ball and saw he had closed something like 380 Something cases that he opened last year, which means that like, yeah, that in addition to your cases that take years to work, and, you know, I just can't it makes me want to be nauseous for for so ends up catching all kinds of difficult cases that that are just a requirement to help people. I mean, we definitely work with an eye towards helping people and our ideas, the money will come if we do the right thing. And, you know, sometimes we our biggest failures is in selection and elimination of cases that are going to take too much time. creating value given the resources we put in all of our cases.

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Jordan   03:58

Well about your clients, do you typically so to pi mostly? So is it really mostly contingency? Do you do anything on an hourly basis?

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David  04:06

Yeah, we do a little bit, you know, especially nowadays, when when you end up with a any kind of multi district litigation or class action, you end up you know, maybe you're on some type of contingency fee, but then it really becomes an hourly case you're tracking your hours. And judges become a lot smarter about requiring periodic submissions of hours in those type cases. So we do use some some cases we handle hourly but the bulk of most of our work is on contingency fees.

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Jordan   04:39

And then going back a little bit about you Did you always think that you were going to be a litigator?

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David  04:45

I gotta admit, I wanted to do anything but practice law. If you asked me in high school, I probably thought I was a professional athlete or something. And we all think that's right. That's right. Until I got to college and took that first hit and realized, nope, I don't want this life. And then yeah, in college, I had a really strong desire to become an architect too bad. I went to a liberal arts college that did not offer architecture. But it probably wasn't until I hit the job market, trying to decide was I going to go back to school, or was I going to go out and into the working world. And it seemed like the people that were most interested in my skill set were in the finance industry. And I remember doing a couple of interviews saying, I do not want to do this. I think, I think one of the interviews was having me cold call people to set up a conference to God, to pitch like financial management services, and I was like, I'm never gonna do this job. And so, you know, once I get law school, I don't think it took me long to realize I wasn't going to be a transactional lawyer, some type of litigation, you know, and till I came and started practicing, I thought I probably did more criminal offense than than civil litigation. And then, you know, I got exposed to some higher level civil litigation early on. And, you know, the rest was history, I just, you know, handling the case for that type of client versus criminal offense clients. One, one bad client and criminal offense, just maybe now I don't want to do this anymore.

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Jordan   06:30

I kind of had something similar, where I had a really bad case. And it was kind of quasi criminal. It was for a protective order proceeding. And I remember after that trial, I was like, I never want to do this ever again. But I also never thought that I was going to be in a courtroom, I always thought, Oh, I'm going to be doing appellate work. That's going to be it. I love writing this is it, I'll never see a courtroom. Who knows if I'm any good at that anyway. And then all of a sudden, you fall into family law where you're in court, you know, within a few weeks of getting into it. And

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David  06:59

I hated through through law school, I hated public speaking. I mean, I was always a sociable person. And I love to, you know, meet with people getting people one on one, but standing in front of a packed courtroom with a, you know, audience and jurors and judge breathing down your neck was and how I pictured myself doing but then, yeah, now I almost get, you know, like, shaky if I haven't tried a case and lengthy period of time, and I don't go anywhere, I still love trying criminal cases, I don't like dealing with the process that, you know, South Carolina are, our system is just the way they control the docket. And then the way cases are managed is somewhat difficult. If I didn't have to worry about negotiating cases, or dealing with some of the underlying aspects of criminal offense, I love trying to criminal defense case,

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Jordan   07:59

or something if I didn't have to deal with an opposing counsel. And all I had to do was try cases all day. Wonderful. But it's the variables outside of that. That's terrible. But sorry, I'm getting us off track. So let's go back to your firm, and what's your title at your firm.

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David  08:13

So I'm the managing partner at firm. And, you know, I've more or less been in that role for quite some time actually, might have been the managing partner before I earned, owned a portion of the firm just because I just always had kind of that interest on the business aspect of running a law firm has also been somewhat of a passion of mine is is found ways to grow and save money and become more efficient and equip, you know, other people their highest and best uses. And so that's been a fun process for me that I think started actually before I even began at any ownership interest.

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Jordan   08:56

Were you at this firm right after you graduated law school?

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David  08:59

Yeah, it was. So in law school, I'd clerked for a couple of three different firms and looked at it, you know, working at a more corporate law firm atmosphere, and it just wasn't, it wasn't a good fit for me and my personality. And, you know, I came back and work at Williams Williams. At that time, you know, it was somewhat smaller. And it's funny, kind of, you know, we grew really fast. I came back and at the time, I think there was three lawyers. And then, you know, we grew

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Jordan   09:36

well, how many do you have now?

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David  09:38

None of us now. So we've grown quite a bit from when I first started.

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Jordan   09:44

Wow, is that how much support staff do you have now? Like, total? How many people are in that office?

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David  09:49

Terrible I should be to tell you exactly. I'd have to look at a statement 22 of us now. When I started it would have been me. Thank you For less than six or seven weeks,

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Jordan   10:05

that's why well, how long when did you I guess, when did you decide, hey, I can do this, I can be the managing partner here.

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David  10:14

You know, I think it almost became like a sink or swim kind of scenario where when I started, you know, I can either just take table scraps and just kind of work off of the other lawyers and what maybe they weren't interested in working, or I could build my own practice, you know, when I first started, you know, my view of, of what the firm was, was just basically two independent practices. And that was it. One did criminal defense, one did civil litigation, and they cross paths a little bit, but it wasn't really a lot of shared work experience. And so then if I was gonna develop my own practice, that was going to be a little bit of everything to get started and build my own reputation, my own clientele. I think it started with just the need to, you know, look, nobody is going to offer me this, that and the other that would help me build my practice, unless I'm given them, you know, something in return. And so I think that kind of morphed into, well, how can I save you money to justify spending more of your money? The dream? Right, I mean, you know, I was no fool to spend money to make money. But, you know, I had to find a way to cut a lot of expenses and overhead in order to justify spending money for overhead I was going to create. So that's where that kind of morphed and then once I went and sort of renegotiate every contract, from telephone systems to computers, to you name it, and saving money there became my budget.

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Jordan   11:54

Well, in that same vein, too, does everybody come into the office, or you want a hybrid model, or you want a remote model, what, what works for your firm,

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David  12:02

so we're kind of a hybrid model, I won't say that we've got true remote staff, I mean, everybody comes into an office place, at least certain amount of time. But maybe we have a practice group that, you know, for instance, there's a member of my practice group that works out of the Columbia office, and she might come to the Orangeburg office, once a week, once every other week, I've got other staff that probably works two days a week, at home or or off site. I do think it's important to have some type of steady, we're faint, we're still a small firm, right? I mean, we're not some, you know, 1000 member law firm. And with that, there's still this very family accountability kind of atmosphere where, you know, everybody's family here, and everybody holds each other accountable and talk, you know, like anybody else, you have good days and your bad, and we recognize when someone's having a bad day, and we pick each other up and recognize when somebody's kind of on a roll on fire, and you keep on throwing up and Bill that fire. And, you know, I think that only comes with a certain amount of personal exposure with technology, RingCentral, zoom, you know, some of these software platforms, I can be anywhere in the world, I'm about to be in Mexico for three weeks, and I'll have face to face conversations with staff and, and other attorneys. On a regular basis, it really doesn't feel like I'm not here,

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Jordan   13:36

right? Well, even with a 20 plus person office, I mean, is there anything that you think you do that's unique to promote a firm culture and like you said, it is kind of more of a holding each other accountable and a family, familial environment, but is there anything that you do that is you know, unique or special?

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David  13:51

I like to thank everything I mean, we do what our driving kind of motto is, is client first, firm second, me third, right? And so, you know, if everybody takes that motto, Scott and you know where I get this is kind of cheesy to say this, my grandmother is always telling me like David, you know, she loves my wife, right? My wife is was her her favorite, she wouldn't probably announce that everybody else in the family so even if you just focus on making her happy, you're gonna be so happy. Like if you just focus on making your clients happy, it's easy to benefit the firm if you work on making the firm you know, work well then you individually will be very profitable and you'll have a much better you know, you will work a day in your life because you'll have fun every day. And so we do everything from you know, community events that staff would has fun like we had a wreck for Christmas to like rat a bull. That was mechanical bulls out in the parking lot and set up a band and, you know, cook hot dogs and had, you know, treats for kids where you made it kind of like To Bring your family bring your friends and let's play for a day. And we do that at least, you know, quarterly, I guess, you know, we one day we went through axes at a bar and drink. Yeah, little things like that, that I think they're obviously bonding moments, you know, we got a box at the, you know, up in Columbia there's a cleaner life arena where they have 20 or so concerts a year and you got basketball games. And, you know, we do that so that staff can go to basketball games together, go to concerts together, you know, we try to really pick things that allow us to not only do things, you know, in small groups, but that encouraged us to do things in large groups, that makes a big difference and creates a pride and our, our successes, we've been very successful. And I think those successes, everybody's very proud of this, right and holds, you know, in high regard, you know, the integrity of the people here and the work ethic of the people here. And generally just how we treat people here, you know, when you when you have that client first attitude, and you're treating people everyday with respect, and you're trying to put everybody this client on a pedestal. It makes it pretty pleasant. You know, don't get me wrong, you still have a bad day. She's still everybody. Yeah. Are you are you gonna bring something to the office? Sometimes you just man, that was a rough day. Or I've got you know, my brother just had another baby. He's, his wife is either 42 or 43. So you can imagine he's gonna probably be I don't expect for the next six months him to come in with bright eyed, bushy tail ready to rock and roll.

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Jordan   16:49

Yep. There were times when paralegals knew to avoid my office. Because it just wasn't going to be a good day for me.

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David  16:55

Yeah, I mean, and you pick up on that kind of stuff. I won't name names, but I knew if I don't see makeup on someone's face, I know, look, hey, they're long, long, Morning or night, and, hey, let's go easy.

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Jordan   17:12

On that same vein, too. So I've spoken with a lot of attorneys about staff retention, and things that they do to make sure that their staff is happy, particularly with paralegals and legal assistants who are salaried. And so I guess that would be do you have formal evaluations for people? Do they did they get regular raises? Is everything pretty clear as far as how they move up?

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David  17:35

Yeah, I think I've got formula formularies, right, that I talked about that if more of a if you don't like your bonuses, or especially like our big bonus is at the end of the year, right, right for Christmas. And obviously, anybody that works here knows they can come talk to me about that formula and how it was calculated and what to if they want to bid rarely they do. I mean, you know, years, like this past year, you know, knock on wood. If we keep having years like that, it's just never a time that people aren't happy with the compensation. So

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Jordan   18:12

it's basically everybody in the office, right? Like a rising tide lifts all boats kind of.

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David  18:17

Yeah. And so you know, the compensation is not it. I mean, let's face it, I mean, you know, you can make a lot of money is, like in a bank or in certain nine to fivers. Where, look, you don't take anything home with you. You know, I guess the bank, maybe they have a robbery every 10 years or something that might, you know, really make it a challenging emotional environment. But for the most part, nothing like what you have in law firm. I mean, especially when you're dealing I mean, unfortunate, we deal with heartache and pain and suffering and net weighs heavily on I don't care who you are, if you can say I don't take it home, but you still is somewhere back in that brand new years. And so, you know, the compensation can't be you know, nobody's gonna stay and do this. If if the compensation is not fair. Because of the the kind of, you know, and we work with the hair on fire. I mean, when you got someone like me that wants everybody to be super efficient, and it can be hair on fire, good bit of time. And so that's not it, that, to me, my interview is to tell people look, if you're not happy, you're the last person I want here. You know, I mean, I want people that enjoy what they do. But they're the intangibles. You get to find other things about this job. You know, we get paid to help people. Yeah, I like to help people for free. And, you know, when I see the smile on someone's face that I did a good deed for was able to make a difference. I mean, that makes me proud, right? I get paid to be proud of myself. I mean, what better job for me? Truly, yeah, yeah. So it's all about you know, how you how you justify that when that happened. How Are there people that come here that I don't think like this type of work? Sure. I mean, we've had a couple of people before, this wasn't, the clientele wasn't for them, they weren't good at it understanding or communicating with, you know, a good majority of our clients, and it was tough for them, and they didn't enjoy it. You know, we kind of, we didn't kick him to the curb. But we,

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Jordan   20:22

you knew that this is not for you. Yeah, this is not

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David  20:25

for you. And hey, I can move you and make a different role. And you know, it's not really, you know, everybody in our firm, there's not like you don't, there's no ceiling like you don't if you're in this role, you'd make X dollars. If you're in this role, you make wideout, and they didn't work that way. There's just kind of a value added approach. And you know, how they work with different practice groups that generate the formula that, you know, is based on their compensation is based. We're big, we're very bonus heavy, right? I'm here plenty people that make multiples of their salaries and bonus environment. So you got you got a very bonus heavy system that tends to favor the people that have that ability to just love what they're doing. Yeah.

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Jordan   21:16

Well, let's talk about the types of technology that you use. So what are the biggest things that you employ in your office?

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David  21:22

Well, you wouldn't you and I wouldn't be talking if it wasn't smoke ball wasn't a big one. Right. But I gotta say, smoke ball has certainly answered a lot of my prayers, and then a big part of what is changed our organization as we went and wanted to get more and more. And so, so many multi facet, it's hard to explain, sometimes, you know, we talk or, or we in a position where we're asked, what is it about smokebox? I could go for days, you know, it's just more of like, let me show you. I don't know, I can't explain it. And like when I'm telling another law firm, why they should consider a software like smoke ball and tell him about my experiences with certain competitors. And, and why I prefer this over that. You know, it's easier to show than tell, but ultimately, it's just being able to carry around that organization, and carry it around in a way that that not only is repeatable, but it's it's something that everyone in a organization can utilize in a similar way. And we spend a lot of our time.

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Jordan   22:33

Yeah, and that's the crazy thing to me. I mean, my firm was we were 40 attorneys at one time, we had no practice management software. So it was just everything was piecemeal, right. We had ignite for file sharing, we had net docs for storing files. Yeah. And then the practice master for calendaring, we had law pay for credit cards, we had tabs, three for billing. So it was crazy, that every single every single time I had to do anything at our firm, it was a different login, a completely different process. And it was just looking back on it. And now seeing smoke ball and everything that it can do, it would have saved for one a lot of grief, and then to our billing administrator would have been a lot happier. And as far as time tracking, I would have been a lot better with submitting my hours. But yeah, it's wild, I think about all the time that I wasted on just purely administrative tasks, and just trying to log into this different pieces of software and use it at once.

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David  23:26

Well, you start thinking about like your your best trials, right? You came up with some idea in a second, right? And every second counted of that focus. And sure, I mean, I don't know what your effective billable rate was, when when when you were practicing that former firm, but I'm telling you, you much more your billing rate is much more effective, the more seconds you have to process information, if you are used using those seconds. For organization, you're not you're not adding value, right. I mean, that's what I spend a lot of time telling my staff or what you want to be, you want to make more money, right you so your time needs to be more valuable and more valuable your time is, the less time you have to do all the organizational tasks. And so what we ran into is, you know, you have this group would be utilizing these four pieces of software, this other group might be utilizing this one piece of software really well. But those other three didn't, didn't match up to what other people's utilization was and the more we centralize those processes in Smoke ball, the quicker people are with them. The more everybody does it the same way more we see kind of the entire organizational structure. But you know, right now I'm looking at I'm sitting at a station and I've got a laptop here I've got a vertical screen here. I've got a big horizontal screen here and And you know, I can run, you know, basically every program I need to run simultaneously in an organized fashion where, as I'm picking up phone calls, as I'm picking up emails, I can organize as I'm going, and I'm not, I'm not slowing down to organize, I'm not going back and trying to print out and Papertrail a file and then upload it to, you know,

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Jordan   25:25

saving every cya email that I've ever done. In any case, yeah,

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David  25:30

yeah. And then back then, I mean, you remember, when you probably had, like, you like me, you have like a repository of like, cases on an issue of if there's an arbitration issue, or if it was, whatever you could dig to that repository, he spent half the time just looking so you didn't have to reinvent the wheel, then, you know, a smoke bomb. I mean, you're templating a lot of the things you're, you know, you can create, you know, repository in every file, you know, I can copy over a folder, if, if it's the same type of file, I can make sure my, my little pocket memos are just copied over from each file that I'm going to take a trial, I've got all my pocket memos, and I just go and copy this folder over to this other file, you know, pretty simple.

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Jordan   26:19

So when you started thinking about, Oh, I need to adopt this technology. So was it really just looking at the pain points of your office? And did you already know, hey, we can definitely be doing this more efficiently? Or what was your thought process behind it?

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David  26:31

Well, I'm a firm believer that if you're not constantly trying to get better, you're getting worse. Right? And so, you know, I developed my, my organizational structure. You remember when I said when I started with three attorneys, two attorneys. I mean, they did I don't think they used email. I think it was there. They had computers that were paperweights. And they might have an assistant that emailed but they didn't use email, they use WordPerfect. One, typewriter. I mean, I'm not like I didn't start practice till 2009. And we had one attorney, his assistant still use a typewriter. I mean, are you factoring that in? I mean, I'm trust me. It was, I remember, you know, I thought, you know, the first step was a building that was hardwired for a PBX system that was huge to make a move to have a centralized telephone system, when we were first. I mean, that was a big, high tech deal. I mean, this was in 2009 2010. And we had a PBX telephone system, he thought we were high tech, had a had everyone I switched to, I think bonded to one internet connection to get a whopping like, I don't know, it was 10, negative. Up and down, you know, and I thought we were high tech that I was going to, you know, go straight to the top right. And I was compared to other law firms in South Carolina, you know, we were a lot more advanced than they were, I mean, and then building up a Windows file structure, moving everybody over to Microsoft base, you know, word processing Excel. That was a nightmare. And I remember having to, you know, they were so used to using their, their forms and WordPerfect and creating new forms that would work with Word and fixing all the formatting issues when converting things over from WordPerfect was a nightmare. I can't I mean, I still have bad dreams, I think about that process and all the the pushback I would get with that process. And you know, still to this day, we have some hangovers with with that old way of thinking, like everybody needs their own printer. Everybody needs their own this and that. And I, I hate it how many printers we have in our office. That handicap that. This is the way we've always done it, right? Yep.

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Jordan   28:56

Well, when you're looking at it, like say you were just looking at practice management software in general. So you're looking at what your firm does. And you said, there's got to be a better way to do this. Did you just immediately go out and demo as many pieces of software as possible? Or do you just sit down first write down the pain points what you think could be better how a typical case runs, or did you just dive into software headfirst?

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David  29:20

So I tried initially to build my own system using like a network attached storage device and Windows file structure. And then you know, trying to get cute with with a couple of different other services on iOS using share file with that with that, oh, yeah, I'd have to go back and look but I was I was, I was building a database without having a good database without having a good back end element. And then I was I was using PC law to do the backend accounting side and then creating you know, client numbers and math numbers and then attaching those into my, my file structure. And then, you know, saccharin built what I knew I needed to as far as like the, the storage and the accessibility. And then I realized all the things that I couldn't do that I was having trouble, you know, sure, I can use PC law, which is so slow and, and difficult to access remotely, but that's where all my contacts were. That's where you know, and so then I'd have to then start creating a separate file in each folder with all the contact information. It's just so much slower to open up a file remotely through that.

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Jordan   30:41

Through that, and I'm sure staff loved it.

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David  30:45

Yeah, I mean, it was just slow and just bogged down. I mean, yeah, here it was, oh, we still have masses and things that we use to modify videos and stuff. So we're not just pulling it down, back and forth, and smoke ball. But back then, I mean, we all were accessing. I mean, that was before gigabit. I mean, maybe gigabit switches were out. But I mean, everybody in this office going after that, the best, most of that 100 megabits as they could modify videos and pictures and documents, and you just had a bunch of the bigger we got, I could feel that slug, slug slug, and then the remote access. And then I mean, on top of that, like, you were naming files, that's another thing, we still have gotten away, we would have to name files, to get the Revision Numbers and everything so that I didn't overwrite a file. Another attorney was modifying, right?

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Jordan   31:41

That was our biggest problem at the firm we had everything was in our firm drive all of our templates, but they didn't think to make it read only. So everybody was just saving over everything.

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David  31:51

And the amount of metadata that we're sending out, I can't tell you how many smart law firms could go in and say, oh, let's just see how many edits were in this file. And who all I mean, we got smart and would have software to watch the metadata or print the PDF. But, you know, I'm sure that didn't always happen, right? Data safety, if someone had, you know, if I'd had a DNS attack, or had someone come in, and, you know, whatever, hijack all that data, all that HIPAA protected material, I can't imagine the lack of security that existed in the early days when I was first setting it up. And then you didn't know you didn't know, better method. And then when I tried to, and I don't know what it was that triggered the it's gotta be a better system that's already developed. But it wasn't like I had seen anybody else have a better system just started looking around and looking at different software's. And I think, I think the first I probably looked at 100 Different software's. I probably talked to consultants about designing my own, you know, and I think the problem I ran into is almost spent a year developing a piece of software, this would have been fine and dandy if I'd done it before I, you know, had 600 cases I was working on Yeah. Yeah, in Smoke law, I came across it as like, boom, this is I swear they wrote this for me. Yeah. And it feels like they do sometimes. Man, I really, I'm, I'm just shocked. Sometimes I say simple things in passing an exam. Oh, by the way, we thought we might want to beta test this, as you mentioned, you know, a year ago, that's something you're interested in, and I get nice. I love it.

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Jordan   33:46

Well, let's talk real quick about law firm growth. And that's what we'll ended on. So really, and this might be two separate questions, but what strategies if you have any specific strategies have you used to grow your law firm or to get clients or to grow your revenue?

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David  34:00

So, again, and I'm luckier than I am good. And I want to be clear about that. Okay, Jordan, I am the biggest. I'll hold my hand up and say I'm just lucky in many ways, but I think I just have this this fundamental faith that I got to do whatever I can to service my clients first. And so my growth comes from the need to serve my clients and give them a better, the best I want. As soon as I don't think I give the best results to my client. I don't want to either associate or affirmed another lawyer. Okay. As soon as failed to feel like I'm able to do better than what give them better service anybody else? You know? That's our motto. It's our growth has kind of been dictated by that. To be honest, we we'd be a much bigger if I could have more spent. I mean, you know, we have no physical space right now and I hate to lease another building or Do something like that we've got a project to remodel a building next to us here in the Orangeburg office. And, you know, until as soon as I get that I can use six more people.

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Jordan   35:14

Oh, would you say the vast majority of your vast majorities of new clients? Are they coming from referrals? Are they coming from marketing or

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David  35:21

our referral base? From other lawyers grows daily? It seems like and then client, former clients referring new clients? Yeah, we get a lot of client refers. And even institutional refers, you know, I mean, I've got doctors offices that I guess we've worked with or handled cases, and they've seen how we, you know, try to help our clients through the treatment process or, you know, the list goes on, or, you know, different contacts that referral base, I mean, our marketing you know, I make everybody mad because I tell him I this waste of my I don't want to billboards or TV or index, I think is a waste of money. All that gets us the junk that people that have talked to six other attorneys, and had a weak case, the first attorney and still have a weak case, on the sixth attorney, I just don't think it works that well. Some of the Google stuff works. Only because you're not, you know, in people's face, you can do it. You know, retargeting or something like that, that allows you just to talk to people and show people that you exist.

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Jordan   36:29

It's not a commercial that says, Let me fight for you. That's right, it lets

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David  36:33

you unless you put the information in from someone that's actually looking for you. And I think that's one of the biggest downfalls to our profession right now, is the the, you know, over commercialized market where people are advertising so heavily, and they're just you're in, you're in people's faces that don't want, you know, they want you when they need you. But if you tell them you there all the time, they resent you for you know, I think that's where our growth comes from. And then I think our, as far as the monetary growth, right, so the steady growth of our stream of income, I mean, twofold, right? Number one, if you work for the money, you will make it if you work for the client, and again, goes back to the client that matters, if you do good job, if you want to do better and better and better every day for your client, you'll make plenty of money. And it becomes just, you know, I mean, overhead game, I mean, you got to be smart. I mean, you can't go I can win every case, if I throw a million dollars every case, but doesn't mean that it makes sense, right? You can't say you're learning and becoming more profitable because you learn how to do things. More successful with less input costs.

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Jordan   37:57

On that same vein, as you're adding, grown and grown and grown, what's been the biggest challenges for you,

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David  38:03

managing people's expectations of, you know, our employees, you know, making sure we've got the right mix the right personalities, you know, you don't want everybody to be the same. But you also don't want people to do this. And sometimes we find very awesome people. They're very awesome, in a way that's very loud, right, and very confrontational. But sometimes you get someone, you put them in the mix, and you've got folks that have been doing it one way for 20 years, and then you put somebody in there that wants to change, change it up a little bit. And change is good. But, you know, so is someone that's been doing it at a high success rate for many years. And that's probably the biggest challenge is in growing, implementing that change where, you know, take a step back in order to go forward. But inevitably happens, right? I mean, he first has that growing pain of making that leap, you know,

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Jordan   39:04

how would you define success and so far as it comes to practicing law, leading a firm, what does success mean to you?

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David  39:11

So I'm a very results we're going to get right I mean, I feel accomplished in my result, and my result, I hope can speak for, for me and who I am and what matters to me. But I really think the success is when I'm able to not only get the results, but still have a good balanced life where you know, I get my family, my friends, I spend, you know, a good percentage of my time enjoying life, right? I mean, I think experiences you know, I meet a lot of wonderful lawyers and in fact most of the lawyers that are hold most dear in the way I respect their practice and their approach, and that's all they do is they're their lawyers and nothing else. Sometimes, I am very conscious that I want to be, I don't want to be remembered just as a lawyer, I want to be remembered as a person, I want to be remembered for the person that someone had different experiences with, I want my kids to remember me from, whether it be a snow skiing trip or taking them to the Bahamas, or whether it's, you name it, and so I'm gonna live life. And I think that success is finding a way to create that balance. And to do that, you know, having a system that again, yeah, I got, I got a team, right. All as good as my team and my team covers for me when I need a break, and I cover for them when they need to break. Ultimately, I think it makes a big difference when when you hit a point that your success level is, I don't need to go in and work this file, because I've got to cover my overhead this week or next week or this next month. And the following month, I'm coming in to do the best work I can for that client. And I don't care if it takes me three years, or three days, I'm doing the best work for that client. And then I'm also have the ability to step away and have that work life balance, and, you know, allow my staff to do the same. You know, I can't go, you know, the flip side of that is some of the lawyers i least respect. They play all the time. And they've got staff that just, you know, turns and burns all day that that practice law for

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Jordan   41:30

right, and who have the highest turnover rates that I've ever seen, you know, one of the probably best trial attorneys in Texas for family law is brilliant. But he cannot keep any staff to save his life. I remember going over to his office for a deposition one time, and I was packing up and probably no less than five people from his office made a point to come in, say hi, and asked me if my firm was hiring. Yeah, so that's, you know, it's just one of those things where it's a trickle down effect, right? I want to have a good life, but I also want my apparently will have a good life, you know,

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David  42:05

now, and that's a tough, that's a tough thing to do, you know, obviously, your life's easier. If the better people work around you, and the more people work around you, but at the end of the day, you can only work so hard for so long. And I've lost great people before because of that burnout, right. And, you know, especially your young generation, you know, I've had Callie and like sometimes that's forget the age of different people, because I was always young, and I'm, you know, here I am about to turn 40. And in September, and, you know, by all measures, I'm young, but I just got started so early, that I don't think of the age thing isn't when I got, I remember being whatever, 22 years old and already geared at a pretty high level. And so I've had we've had some staff and then, you know, team back and look at him like oh, well, you know, she's burnout. And I'm, like, scratching my head, like, what did I do wrong? You know, and, you know, it's it's a tough thing to manage that, that relationship, right. And like you you mentioned that attorney in Texas, but but you can do it and be so much better at it. That was a little bit of experience and taking that like that retrospective and introspective approach to saying like what I did wrong, why why did I lose this good person? Why is this person is very competent, and otherwise was very happy? Why did they become unhappy. And generally speaking, what you learn is that you shoulder somebody with with too much responsibility where they couldn't communicate, they needed help. And so that team approach and system approach where, you know, look, you can see what everybody's got on their plate, the tasks they've got, you can see they're falling behind, you can see if they're backed up on messages, I mean, having a good system that allows you to do that, you know, it can keep you from losing a great employee, it can keep you from losing a great friend or, or a teammate that might make your life much easier. If you don't want to get to that level. Again, you know, some of it's our own fault, right? I mean, we're gonna get burned out because I put it on my own shoulders. But it's great having a good team. And that's what that's what I think is success is having that team that allows you to to maintain that quality life.

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Jordan   44:41

What advice would you give to someone who is also starting their own firm and wants to set it up for success? So any advice that you could give them? How do I make my law firm successful?

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David  44:51

Yeah. So and I'm assuming in explaining how to make a law firm successful, that if I'm talking to someone that Hang a shingle versus someone who may be in a established firm that is going to change. And I'm very fortunate that I started with an established successful firm. But then I had to change it to meet the growth, the growth demand to take it from successful to extremely successful. You know, for starting out with a shingle is control your overhead Don't, don't focus on making money. The more overhead you create, the more you got to think and the responsibilities to cover, what you don't want to do is take on all this overhead. And then you're making decisions to cover overhead as opposed to decisions for a client. So when hanging out hanging a shingle, you know, stop is one man show, then go to a two person show and then grow from there, don't grow real fast, create a bunch of overhead, and then you're focused on covering overhead forever, and you're trying to make your return on living off a debt or something like that, avoid the debt, avoid creating overhead and focus on clients. And it'll come I mean, anybody that does what we do, that focuses on their client, there will be a success, right? Okay, that can you go do domestic work and help everybody but not understand how to charge people for it

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Jordan   46:26

100%.

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David  46:29

And you learn how to charge people from good mentors and understand how to build and be fair and understand those rules ethics about what is a fair would be compensated, you understand that through the course of dealings with other lawyers, right? In my world, a big part of my business is taking cases that maybe someone that's hung a shingle that can't afford to invest $250,000 In his case, and work it up to get the return, they could probably make a million dollars on the case $4,000 fee or something on the case, if if they want to with very minimal effort, but then, you know, the client could probably make $10 million, if they brought our firm involved. And so, you know, and it's climate extend dollars, you know,

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Jordan   47:22

obviously, your client,

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David  47:24

not only have your client, but the lawyer makes a lot more than $400,000. Even when splitting the fee, right? You got to learn those type of relationships. On the flip side, let's say you came in a successful farm financially sound already able to maintain workloads, and then overhead loads, is getting organized, right, and it's getting everybody on the same system is developing a pattern approach to cases that can be modified case by case, but as uniform. And in many ways, if that makes sense, you're

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Jordan   48:01

referring to like workflows, like, hey, there is a standard way that we do from intake to closing out this file, here are the steps that we do, right?

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David  48:10

When I open up a file, and I can find my exhibits in the same folder or electronically, I can find, you know, my pleadings in the same folder, I can find my you know, you name it, and whatever structure you deem fit, or I can look at my memos that are confined, you know, all my my list of private client contacts and, and you know, get up to speed and in a two minute, you know, peruse the file, what's the what's going on in the case and what I need to do next, you know, tasks that I need to assign or I need to perform myself, getting that organization is the only way to take it to the next step. And if my experience tells me anything, most firms are still just the successful firms are just archaic, still got just buildings and buildings of Becker boxes of files and nothing is organized electronically. Electronics are just merely periodic periodic depository to work off of real files and hard file. Work hard file, like you can't electronic file.

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Jordan   49:21

Yeah, the problem is, their problem is I think, for a lot of these firms, they're happy because they're making money. Right? Not necessarily understanding that you could be actually making 30% more if you just did XYZ.

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David  49:34

Yeah. And that, you know, I can admit, I mean, sometimes that that's a problem that I run into, you know, I've got some attorneys that have been around for a while and the ones they've been around for a while, they're happy, they're happy, you know, and you don't want to change somebody you know, for the money and you won't change them if they're happy and x if they're making x and x makes them thrilled, you know, whatever X may be And then you may not change the desire to make more money, but you know what, but generally, they wouldn't be in that position and make the money that they are making. If they didn't love helping the people, and you let them, you know, the pride of helping more people and with technology and next thing, you know, they're looking at Google and Facebook and things. They don't even bother reading all these positive reviews about themselves. And let me tell you, they'll they'll, they'll make a migration pretty quickly, to keep that up, because they'd love to, you know, we're, we were somewhat I don't want to say, most likely egotistical narcissist, but we are I mean, you pretty narcissistic. Tomboy, I think it's because maybe not,

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Jordan   50:47

not so much. But for me, you know, you spend, sometimes years invested in these cases, right. And so at the end of it all, when you have, especially if you have a good verdict, it's just that review can just lift your spirits for weeks, especially if you've been having a bad day.

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David  51:02

That's why I mean, Jordan, that's why I have a tough time doing defense work. I've represented a couple I don't name names, but I had a doctor one time I represented and won the case form and I didn't get a thank you for that. But every case I get a good result for a plaintiff. I mean, I'm at dinner. Next thing a waiter walks up says your dinner has been paid for and I look back and I see that my former client or I opened Christmas cards and I got you know, these Christmas cards, new clients where they hand drew me a portrait or something of me in the courtroom or whatever and off, begging me to let them cater lunch at my office for about the office. You know, it's always those type people. And they just make you happy. That's the return. And if everybody would just understand how much more you can do, if you're good and organize electronically, and the quicker you can be and more responsive you can be. I think they'd all come on board.

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Jordan   52:04

Great. Well, I don't want to take up any more of your time because I know we went over but I absolutely appreciate this and you have no idea. This has been fantastic.

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David  52:13

Well, Jordan, thank you for having me.