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. All right, well, welcome to Ben Catterlin. And this is hacking law firm success. My name is Jordan Turk. And we are here talking to the owner of Catterlin and Arnold. There we go. So Ben, can you tell me a little bit about yourself a little bit of background about you? ‍

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Ben  01:26

Yeah, I went to university Arkansas Law School, graduated in December of 14 went a little later in life. So I was 30 when I graduated. And then, you know, just started off was a public defender did that for about a year and a half and then went to work for another firm here. It just says criminal defense work. And then in 2017, made the decision to start my own firm.

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Jordan  01:55

So what led you to making that decision?

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Ben  01:59

So I, I respected the way that the firm that I worked for what how they did things. They're obviously really well known around here. But there's things that I wanted to change with it. That I wanted to be more client orientated, not really just like, it's not some hay machine to make money. And, you know, it was just looking at the population increase in the area, the growth over the next 10 years. You know, it was it was basically one of those, if you're going to do it, do it now. Because whenever, you know, the Northwest Arkansas area hits, you know, half 1,000,003 quarters million people. You want to be established already. You know, you don't want to be like oh, hey, now's a good time, because usually you're late at that point.

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Jordan  02:44

Yeah. And what areas of law does your firm cover?

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Ben  02:47

Oh, we do criminal defense, all sections of family law. So everything from divorce to custody to guardianships, stepparent, adoptions. We have one attorney here that does personal injury law. And then I do some business contracts, picked up during COVID. And just kind of kept doing it.

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Jordan  03:09

And then do you so do you primarily now do criminal?

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Ben  03:12

Yes, I'd be I'm like 90%. Criminal, I think I represent two companies. And they put, you know, two or three contracts in front my face every three months. So My day consists of just in and out of courts, just from the criminal dockets.

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Jordan  03:28

And as a firm founder, so what is your typical day look like?

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Ben  03:32

Generally, eight out of 10 days, I would say I'm in court from eight in the morning till one or two in the afternoon. And then come here, have client meetings, figure out, you know, we have within budget issues, or if we're trying to do something or employee issues, and kind of try to slam from two to five, two to 530, all the things that you have to wrap up that day.

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Jordan  03:57

So it's interesting, because you're still have to be an attorney plus a law firm owner, right, which to me is mind blowing, because there's so much that goes into it that nobody understands. So when I think about what your typical day looks like, where do you even get the time? For instance, if you're trying to monitor whether your employees are getting their hours in, right, where you're trying to see trying to figure out, you know, is somebody you know, is somebody making me money this month or not? Is somebody profitable or not? Is there a client that I need to fire, you know, are telling us to fire and things like that, where does that typically fit it?

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Ben  04:28

So big thing with me, that I wanted to do is treat every attorney like you know, their their own business owner. You know, I the software that we use, everyone can see everyone what we're doing. There's nothing hidden and in fact, dinner actually reversal from my old offices, if you want to come in here and see all the numbers of what we're doing and who you know, then you can you know, because I think that as our generation progresses, people want less of that, you know, cloaking shout stuff they want to see, hey, you know, if I'm going to work for you, you know, why do you get to take half my check? Okay, fair question, you know, well rents 1000 a month, you know, Google advertising is 10,000 a month, like we can keep going on, you know. And it's interesting that when you actually just tell them that instead of going, well, it's on your business, they start to go, oh, okay, there's actually a lot of stuff that gets paid for. And so what happens is, is we, we have five attorneys here, you know, you can see ours, you can see what they're doing what's in the trust account for them only. And then we have an office manager, Corey, she's awesome. And I always tell her all the time, she runs the place, because she's here when I'm not. And, you know, but by ways of email, you know, being on your mobile phones, and being able to pull up the software, we can pretty much tackle anything like that throughout the day, while we're just waiting in quarters sitting around. And that's really the double tasking. What happens as you see, you know, you're sitting in court or waiting for your case to be called, well, you're shooting emails back, you're answering questions, hey, what do we do about this? You know, it's 50 million questions, then you get called you like, okay, all right. Well, though, that court, you move on,

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Jordan  06:07

right? It's a kind of beautiful, the worst part for me for practicing would be I'm in court on a motion to withdraw that I can't build a client for. Either I can sit there and not be billing, or I can use, you know, I can utilize technology that I have and start emailing other clients and start building on other cases, because otherwise, I just want to die. segwaying from that, so what types of technology to use the other CRM or like a client relationship manager? What do you use?

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Ben  06:34

Yeah, um, so we use practice Panther. Basically, it's kind of the equivalent of Trello, or, or Clio, that's what it is. So it's basically the the other way of Clio. It's super simple guitar clients in pink, all information, dates, keeps track of money. What's in the trust, what's coming to build, it's a very user friendly software. Clio can get pretty... you can do some pretty cool stuff with Clio, it's awesome.

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Jordan  07:03

You can with Smokeball too, just gonna pitch that.

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Ben  07:07

With Smokeball, yeah! From what we were doing, and honestly, if with me starting it, because to be frankly, honest with you, I mean, I had no idea that this was going to happen, you know, so I kind of picked what I liked, and what be kind of simple when it comes to some of those things. So

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Jordan  07:21

At your prior firm, did you use any type of technology like that at your prior one?

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Ben  07:25

they, they were so big, they actually had one custom made for their firm. And so it was awful and horrible and completely redundant in a lot of ways. And so for me, I was just like, this has to be simpler than this, you know, we have to figure something out. And sure enough, there was, it's just they were the owners are old school. And so it kind of was like, if you're used to, you know, the very, very new windows and also the someone's like, hey, you know, go check out, you know, Windows XP from 2005. You're like, wait, what this is not, it just didn't work?

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Jordan  07:57

Well, when you opened up your own firm in 2017, was this one of the first things that you knew out the gate? I need one of these, but I definitely don't want, you know, what was that? My prior firm? Oh, yeah.

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Ben  08:07

Yeah. I mean, it's from, you know, law school or so, you know, rigid on pay, I mean, with an attorney time is everything, you know. And so, immediately when I started thinking, Okay, this is what, you know, you make a list of the top 10 Things you can't live without, you know, and number one was, you know, client management software, because there should be no, you know, I should go pick up my phone, if someone calls me and says, Hey, you know, this is Tim, so and so and I can look up Tim's file, you know, right there. We can upload, you know, all the documents to it if we want to, we don't do that. But we can, and then just have the ability to have a conversation with them, like, Hey, your next court dates this. Hey, the notes say we're waiting on this discovery, you know, anything else, just let me know. And so that really simplified the process.

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Jordan  08:56

I think back to when my firm was big. I mean, we were probably at one point 40 attorneys across the state, and we did not have a uniform practice management software. So yeah, so anytime I needed to look up, oh, hey, what's the divorce date in this case? Or hey, what's opposing parties name, you know, anything like that? Just any type of minutia from the case, I would have to go try to find the firm drive, which by the way, if I can't VPN into it, then it's a disaster, you know, so it's like, there was no way of finding something where it only three seconds, right, everything was a 30 minute process, which usually involves me emailing the receptionist from the courthouse, asking her to look

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Ben  09:37

that's exactly what I wanted to avoid, you know, is the the inefficiencies of there's so much easier ways to do things. And if you're, you know, when you start something, you think there's a possibility we're going to grow. However little it might be, but hey, how easy would this be implemented to people, you know, two or three people and that's just kind of went like that.

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Jordan  09:57

What I feel not having legal technology such an old school mentality. Right? Firms that we, for instance, would intern at, during our law school days, you know, had nothing, it was a pen and paper, and it was the whole, you know, lawyers drowning in paperwork on their desk kind of picture. Yeah. And then you get out into it, and you actually start practicing. And you realize this is extremely inefficient. And actually, this is the reason why I'm having to stay late every day is because we don't have any process like this in place. And it really just, it wears on you mentally, we already have already terrible as profession about and little things that we can do like adding, you know, digital payments, or adding a practice management system or anything like that little things that actually don't cost that much in your person, right, like less than a billable hour of my time. That saves me, you know, five to six hours. And I wish that I would have had that in my prior firm, because I always feel like I would have avoided numerous mental breakdowns. Oh, totally.

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Ben  10:58

Yeah. I mean, you're you're absolutely right. I mean, it's so funny, the newer generation, you know, like, we're not coming to court, you know, the old guys, they've got their got their files in their hand of all the clients, you know, and come to court with this, you know, and they're like, where's your files, and I'm like, on my phone,

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Jordan  11:13

you know, most courts to I mean, post COVID, all the trials that I've handled, the court doesn't want you to bring in paper files anymore. They want you to give them a flash drive, or they want you to send it to the clerk, you know, prior to your hearing or your trial. And so I get to eliminate all the costs of having any read well. Or if opposing counsels ornery about it, then I'll bring it but I think this is the future. Right. But it takes a long time for a lot of attorneys to get on board with that, because that's not how they cut their teeth. Right? Yeah.

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Ben  11:45

Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to have them adapt. And by them, I mean, older attorneys do adapt. So it's like, hey, that's the way we've always done it. You always hear that, let's say it's worked. You know, obviously, we're still here. It's doing well. Yeah. It worked. That's great. But like you said, it's the reason why I have less, we're staying an extra two or three hours a day just to try to make this system work when we could easily just streamline

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Jordan  12:07

Yeah, because here's the deal, I'll still make money on the you know, old school system that they have, I will absolutely still make the money. I will make money, but I could be making a lot more and I could have a way better quality of life. Yep, exactly. So to me, why not? Alright, but let's go in segue to talking about growth. So as far as when you started, you know, in 2017 to now, is there anything that you've done specifically about growing your firm is a lot more as a, you know, more referral base? Have you spent money on marketing or what have you been doing?

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Ben  12:37

Yeah. Oh, gosh, well, it started off just me. I was doing criminal mailers. So getting the arrest list and just sending somebody some mail, just saying, hey, you know, you got pop for X y&z You know, give me a call, I found really quickly, I got a lot of referrals from being a public defender in Washington County. So having set up shop there, there was some referrals coming in that way. About McKenzie came on board. And then roughly about three or four months later, we started use our first online service, which was one of those like lead generation services, though, people call in and they call us you pay a certain amount. And it's like, yeah, we can get you 15 to 20 leads a month for this X, Y, and Z. And as we started doing that, notice that it was actually doing pretty well. And then what I mean, and again, I don't, you know, Google the algorithms of all that stuff. Like I'm, I'm out, like, I know what Google does. And I'm great. It's awesome. But it's funny, I was working out one day, and it was a lady there. And we were talking about business. And she's like, kind of combined sometimes talk to you about Google Marketing and all this. And I was like, Yeah, you know, I don't spend money on Google at all. And so she came in. And basically, she's our middleman to where she tweaks the algorithms, all the search terms puts in, you know, hey, this is what your cost per click is, this month, we get all these reports and spreadsheets and stuff, way, way smarter than I am. And we just basically dropped all the services and went to her, and she's been with us for Well, I guess we've been with her, I would say since end of 2018. And then we can control the budget. So as we get start to grow and larger, you know, I have personal financial goals for all the attorneys where I would like to see them. And once they start hitting that goal, it's like, okay, well, you know, that's one of two things is happening, and we have to get more help to then make it to where they're more often their time has been more optimally or, you know, hey, we're looking at another attorney, and then with another attorney considerable now we need to budget this much because there's more people here and kind of go from there,

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Jordan  14:34

or the goal is based on hours or on revenue or a mixture of both

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Ben  14:38

revenue. So revenue is brought in I so there's like the third business I'd actually owned to for law school. And I'm a big proponent of Ira don't care how much you bill doesn't matter. Because if it's not coming in, it doesn't matter. You know, so it's all about money collected and we call it paid out. So How much money you get paid out, you know, if you bill 80 hours, joint paying out 20 hours, well, then we got a big problem, you know, something's going on. So my goal is we're all like, you know, I want to see everyone and take home really big check, be really happy about it, you know, because that's what's happening to me is these guys are doing well, they're having fun doing it and making money.

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Jordan  15:21

Do you have a formalized bonus structure? Or is it all discretionary?

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Ben  15:25

No, so it's, we do a percentage wise, which I kind of tweaked a little bit. And because, you know, we start off on 5050, just see what you kill, you know, what we do, though, is anything. So at the end of the month, like anything over, like $20,000, brought in, you know, which will be about 5050. Anything from 20, to 3020, to 25 is 60%. Anything from 25 to 30 is 65%, anything over 30 70%. Because the we thought is if we can to pay the bills, if every attorney here, just build out were brought in 20,000 a month, that could float what we're trying to do as far as the overhead and the employees and all that. And that would put, you know, make someone 120 grand a year, which is not too shabby, you know. And so from there, we've kind of had to tweak it, because as we've grown and, you know, the paralegals that changed the whole formula, because then you're billing twice and all this and so we figured that was more fair. And honestly, like, I don't want to be mean, we could have kept it there and McKinzie I could have made a lot more money, but I would rather have them happy than make more money, because it's just like turnovers your biggest enemy.

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Jordan  16:45

That's gonna be my next question. The whole thing is, it's like, that's why so many people leave to hang their own shingle. And it's because they think the billing practices are shady, the bonus structure is shady. I never know how much money I'm actually getting. I never know how much money I'm actually collecting. You know, it's all kept in the dark for them. And so yeah, they're, of course, they're gonna go and hang their own shingle because they can absolutely make their own money. With you talking about transparency, and how Yeah, I'd rather keep these people because you know how easy it is, it would be for them to just go out and start their own.

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Ben  17:15

No, totally. That's, that's again, you know, all the attorneys here, you know, knock on wood, and we've never had one leave. In six years. We the only staff that's left has been due to personal issues like, hey, you know, husband got fired, and I have to take this other job. Okay, go for it. You know, it's not a big deal. But even with staff, you know, we'll pay a lot more than everybody else will. And sometimes we can't, and I butt heads on it. But I'm gonna say the thing is, if we lose a paralegal, you've got to find one, number one. So there's three to four months, just looking. You got to train them. There's another three to four months, you know, so you're already out. At a minimum five months of profit, you know,

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Jordan  17:57

you have to hope that they won't quit a month in which happens all the time. Oh, yeah.

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Ben  18:00

Yeah, then then they have to, like you're gonna have to stay. You know, that's always my joke with new people. Oh, my God, you're gonna stay right, you know, haha. Like, they'll really

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Jordan  18:09

you're investing so much time and effort. So that's a whole thing when you have a lot of paralegals are now you know, renegotiating their rates and things like that. And my philosophy on it has always been, if they're asking for a 5% Raise, or if they're asking for a $4,000 Raise. Yeah. Because it's going to cost you so much more to go out and find someone and hope and pray that they're going to be a good fit at your firm.

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Ben  18:32

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm doing that too. You know, we do. I give them two weeks off paid vacation, no questions asked. We don't do hours here. It's all salary. And so it's, you know, I don't I'm not going to keep track of their hours. It's, I think, it's like, Hey, you're an adult, you got to do what you do. You know, and just like you said, though, if, you know, if you're paying someone, let's just make the numbers easy, you know, 50,000 a year, so let's just say, let's say 60. So bring home five a month, right? Well, if they leave, and they're asking for let's just say an extra 500 bucks a month so your total in in is, you know, an extra six grand a year. Well, if they leave and you're out, you know, way trying to even find more, you know,

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Jordan  19:14

so and I don't know how it is in Arkansas, but here it's apparently will pay for themselves, right? Because they fill out but they're not making an attorney salary necessarily. So to me, you never want to lose a paralegal ever. That's my worst fear

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Ben  19:30

because they can do every single thing that I can do except go to court. And so it's awesome that I can say hey, do X y&z You know, their billing with their parenting rate and we've got that math figured out, but every month I'm like, Look, regardless of how little or or how much they worked, as long as they covered their salary, then it's a no brainer for me, you know, because I'm not out anything, which of course, they'll always cover it, but it's just like, Yes, I have to look at it. You're not just paying someone to sit there because they're actually working to do what we were doing.

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Jordan  19:58

Exactly. Agreed. Well, that's Talk about any struggles that you've had. So since you opened in 2017, is there anything pivotal that you remember where you're just like, Oh my God, I didn't think that this was going to happen or something that you've had to overcome or really like work through as, as a founder of your firm.

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Ben  20:14

I would say there's two main things that pop out the first six months, just being by myself. No one prepares you for how quiet and honestly lonely it is. Your you know, my office was next to the mall in, in Fayetteville. And, you know, I'm very big believer in, you know, treat everything like a job. So, you know, no matter what, I'd still be there at 8am, you know, waiting for the phone or again, the phone was my cell phone came there, but still just being present being ready for business. You know, yeah, take the lunch from 12 to one because again, soon, you're not going to have that ability. And then, hey, don't leave at four o'clock. leave at five o'clock. You'd be surprised how much the phone rings at five to 515. Hey, can I come drop by you're like, yeah, come on, you know, I had weekend appointments. Just just trying to make money, you know, trying to feed the family. But yeah, I would say that, getting there. And then, you know, doing all the things you had set to do that day. You look at the clock, and you're like, Oh, it's 1005 I've got one appointment at three o'clock today, you know, and I know a lot of people do their blackout most go and take a nap or go watch TV or something. I just I couldn't do it. Just stay there.

Jordan  21:20

Was there like, was there this fear, though, that nobody was going to come? Or did you? Were you pretty certain that no, I'm going to be successful?

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Ben  21:28

No, I was a hot wreck for I was a hot wreck until so I opened in June of 17. And when I did end of the year, taxes in December and figured out what we'd actually made and brought in, that helped alleviate because it's like, okay, like businesses come in, you see, you see a growth pattern, you know, so it's not like it was dip. And now granted, there are better months than others because it's just, you know, the market. But yeah, it was a hot mess for probably the first six months just, you know, you the whole deal was work as hard as you can in the month you get your paycheck. The other month you celebrate for that night, the next day, come back and you do it all over again.

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Jordan  22:07

Why did you start adding employees? And how many will How many employees do you have right now?

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Ben  22:11

With? Well, there's five attorneys and five staff. So we have 10 total ease. It's the first one we added was suing, which she actually she was awesome. She had to move back to Louisiana for some family stuff. But she was an office manager with Martin and Martin, which is a divorce firm here. And you know, we were looking back. I don't know why she said yes. I mean, me and Mackenzie were sitting there like two kids, you know, and she's, you know, in her upper 40s, early 50s. What the hell are what am I doing here kind of thing. And, you know, having someone there like a presence that you trusted to handle money, answer the phone set appointments. That was the biggest thing for me being like, wow, like this can really if used right and appropriately, it could really help your quality of life and help you grow. Yeah.

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Jordan  23:10

Going forward from there, too. How do you think that you would define success? Like what is success for you?

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Ben  23:17

That's a hard question. You know, yes, the dad and me is like, you know, hey, provide a good life for your kids, you know? Now, of course, they're talking back and you know, they beat me up every day. But, you know, I would say that it's being able to every day to get up in Yeah, I mean, we all make the joke. Oh, it's Monday. But yeah, I love this job. It's fun. Nowhere else in the world, can you do something like it? So I think that happiness is success. I think. I don't think money buys happiness. But I think money definitely helps a lot of mental health issues. And the stress and stuff that this doc comes with, helps me achieve my goals because I love traveling, I love doing fun things. And so that's kind of, you know, plays off that. And, you know, for me, success too, is you know, seeing all these guys that come in here, their, you know, their love being here. They love having a good time. You know, they work hard. They like what they do, you know, and then obviously success in the courtroom winning cases and having fun there.

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Jordan  24:20

So that's really how you would find even just professional success, like what exactly is made? What's the secret sauce for your firm? Like, what makes your firm so successful?

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Ben  24:30

I think really, number one, the hands on mentality. I'm a big advocate of the person calls, they want to talk to the attorney, they need to talk to the attorney, there shouldn't be this gatekeeping thing. Now granted, some people will call for just the weirdest reasons. And that's great for paralegals to answer like, hey, you know, it's, it was going on, you know, but, you know, it's still to this day, I mean, I have a second line on my phone and 90% of my clients and myself, you know, even six years into it and they call they text you know Hey, what's going on? I really think it's just knowing that people that come in here chose to spend money here. And so you can't treat them like a number, you know, they're here human being. And as long as we're in the business of helping people, you know, which is exactly what this really industry does, you know, we help people that you need to treat them like gold, you know, because I think the more the more people you help, you know, I had a theory when I was first starting was, you know, you know, a lot of people said, you know, coming out of law school, well, you know, if you don't get your retainer in full, you're never gonna see it again. Or if you're not paying up front with everything, you know, just you should shove them aside. And I think opposite of that, if you can help somebody out and say, hey, you know, this case is whatever, 1500 bucks, I've only got 500. Okay, well, you know, do three payments of 500 bucks. Now, granted, you're putting faith in them, and they could screw you, but you'd be shocked how little people will actually screw you over, you know, with all the clients. Yeah,

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Jordan  26:00

I agree with you, to an extent I flat face. Family law

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Ben  26:08

firm was a different base, and we had to adjust it, we still actually do do payment plans on family law, but they have to have the initial retainer up front, you know, and then if they've got a balance, we'll let them pay it off like that. This, this is purely just criminal law. But going back, it was like, Listen, if you do, I've had people that screwed me over, that then sent me like six more clients that were getting in trouble. And it's just because you you tried to help them. You know, that's kind of where I'm at on that. But your family laws, there's a different beast that you have to attack differently, because

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Jordan  26:40

there's still ways to do it. So, you know, a lot of times, it'll end up being even if I can't help that person that will just end up leaving their console fee, funding it to them. Because at the end of the day, that's more goodwill for me. And I know that they're going to go off and you know, at least speak my name. In a more positive light than a lot of other divorce attorneys. Yes. So we're Yeah, it's a fun time to be in family law. Oh, yeah. As far as if you were to give advice to someone who is trying to grow their firm, or they were just hanging their own shingle? What would you tell them?

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Ben  27:16

Don't have blinders on. You know, there's a lot of people that wake up, they say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna open my own shingle, and I'm going to be this kind of attorney. You know, rule number one of businesses don't say no to making money, like, there can be opportunities presented to you that you're like, oh, wow, I didn't expect this to be part of my daily life, part of this attorney gig. But you know, hey, this way, they want me to look at these contracts. And that was, that was the COVID thing, actually, that reinforced this. And it was just like, hey, I'm not a contract attorney. But I was like, I'm not gonna say no to money, because they need it. And I'm gonna try to help them. So I learned it. And just, you know, always keep an open mind. Then, plan, have a really good plan and just work it and see what happens.

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Jordan  28:05

Well mentioned in COVID, too. Did you end up offering? I guess? Well, the question that I'm trying to ask is, do you offer remote or hybrid options to?

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Ben  28:15

Yep, so I'm coming here, all of our staff, we provide them with a laptop unless they have one themselves. And so everyone here is free. I prefer obviously to be in office, I think that we lose a lot of human interaction and a lot of the fun for not. But you know, like, Katherine, one of our paralegals, you know, she has a two year old kid, and I'm sure you're gonna find out very soon, but two year olds are assessed. You know, they come home with a sneeze, and all of a sudden, you're thrown up that night, you know. And it's just to be, you know, you have to be flexible, you cannot be this whole, rigid, old mentality of like, well, if you're not doing this, you're not doing that, like work can happen anywhere. And in fact, the studies have shown 40 work weeks are better than five, there's more productivity, having the ability to say, hey, I can go work from home for half a day and not be stressed, because I don't think my boss is going to freak out increases productivity. And so yeah, just kind of giving them the option of saying, hey, you know, this is what I prefer, but I understand that, hey, life happens, you know, then you have to be able to react to that. Because if you don't, there'll be unhappy. If they're unhappy, then you're gonna lose them. And then you're

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Jordan  29:30

right. I mean, we used to have a couple of paralegals that would drive in it would they would drive in an hour and a half each way to get into the office because they lived in a really far out suburb of Houston. And my thought process was always Why not a couple of days a week because we had a fully, you know, remote system. It's like, why not just a couple days a week, offer that to them so that they're not spent, you know, I'd rather have the milling three hours a day, you know, as opposed to having that drive in. So I think a lot of attorneys are getting less rigid on that post COVID. But to me, it was always a no brainer.

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Ben  30:04

And that's in that your drive is okay. Can you imagine the quality of life of this looking at them and saying, Hey, I'd like to see here on Mondays and Fridays, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday work from home, you know, I mean, that's nine hours of their life, we could just get back to. And again, they're gonna get up, they're gonna be ready to go because they got to sleep at home. Sure, they may work their pajamas, who cares? But at the same time, if you send them these documents as a, hey, I need these by three o'clock, and they're in your email box by a 130. Who cares?

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Jordan  30:33

When you're talking about employee retention, too. I mean, studies have shown smoke volume into the study are basically the new ask, you know, used to be salary benefits. And then it was a lot of like random other miscellaneous stuff. And it's now basically when people are going and looking at other jobs in the legal field, it's salary, hybrid or remote work options. Interesting. Yeah, super, super interesting. But I'm not shocked by it. Because I think COVID rang a bell that can't be wrong.

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Ben  31:01

Oh, no, you're absolutely right. Absolutely. Right.

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Jordan  31:04

Okay, I guess the last question I'll ask is, is there anything that you think makes your law firm culture standout?

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Ben  31:09

I'm so big thing, when people come work here, I was given the adult speech, you know, you're your own adult, you're your upper 20s, lower 30s, mid 30s, how old you are, I'm not going to look over your shoulder, I'm not going to micromanage you, you know, your work product, you're here, number one, because you already have good work product, you're good person, you know what you're doing, I'm not gonna, you know, mild form, I used to get in trouble because I'd rather come in at like, 804 and get a phone call, or leave on a Friday at 455. When I get a phone call, you know, I got a phone call for wearing too many khakis and polo shirts. When I wasn't seeing clients, you know, it just, it drove me insane. Because I'm like, I'm an adult, like, I don't, I'm not gonna say five minutes just to appease, you know, all the attorneys here. There's no set hours, you know, it's like, Hey, if you're gonna come in and work. And it's funny when you do that, because, you know, Fridays would close at 330. But it's interesting, when you don't put parameters on it. I'll come to work I'll get here at 745. And there'll be three attorneys already here working, you know, and because they gotta get some stuff done, they prefer to get it done in the morning. And guess what, they jump the deuces at 330 or four o'clock before anybody else. And it's like, longer stuff, don't care. Now, if a judge is calling me saying you're unprepared, you know, look like crap. Well, then we got issues.

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Jordan  32:36

It all comes from such a an old school mentality, because it used to be that you were supposed to come in before the partner got there. And you were supposed to stay until the partner left. And if that partner didn't leave until 9pm. And guess what you were staying until 9pm.

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Ben  32:50

Exactly. Which is completely ridiculous.

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Jordan  32:53

That's why there's been this switch, I think, right? Where people are feeling more empowered, because they know how much they're worth, right? Especially, I think, especially if you're a courtroom attorney. And if you're a litigator. And once you start getting in there, and you realize how terrible opposing counsels are, just in general, and then you start realizing no, I'm actually pretty good at this. Yeah, you're worth very quickly, I feel, and the staying until nine o'clock, just for the purposes of setting until nine for the partner doesn't really jive with that.

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Ben  33:23

No, no, not at all. And it's thanks to its I know, it's vacations, it's days off, it's, you know, take it like, as long as you're not abusing the system, like go for it, you know, it's just, again, it's, I nothing should be me working here, like, Come my schedule should have no bearing impact on anybody else, you know,

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Jordan  33:45

because are you getting your work done? Or are you not getting your work done correctly?

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Ben  33:49

You know, and if I leave at four o'clock, so I want to go work out early one day, I would hate to be there. I mean, again, I would cringe if I left early one day. And then people were just like, Oh, my God, we can leave early now. You know, it's like that's, that would I would deflate me entirely, because I would just say, All right, well, I've missed the point here, you know.

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Jordan  34:06

Yeah, agreed. Well, Ben, thank you so, so much for participating in this and I really appreciate it. This has been extremely insightful. And I know that a lot of our audience will appreciate what you've said.

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Ben  34:17

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.