TECHSHOW 2024: Optimizing Your Firm With Free and Low-Cost Solutions

Episode Notes

Transcript

Laurence Colletti:

Hello, welcome to another edition of On the Road with Legal Talk Network, this Laurence Colletti, and I’m hosting this last episode for the day. We’re still recording over at ABA’s Techshow in Chicago, Illinois. It is mid-February as Valentine’s Day has come and gone. It’s been quite festive here. A wonderful group of people out there and looking forward to this interview. I have not seen Judge Barbara Leach in quite some time. We were just talking, it has to be pre pandemic last time I saw you, so we’re talking like 40 years. It’s crazy. So it’s great to see you. How are you doing?

Barbara Leach:

I’m doing great, and I am so energized and so excited to be here. I’ve missed tech show, I have missed technology.

Laurence Colletti:

Yeah, I know. It’s such a great group. And I was talking about kind of our tribe, just people that travel around and our tribe that learns these new things and passes information and shares contacts and things, supportive groups, so definitely missed them and it’s great to see the conference after a couple of cycles through back and full strength. And so anyway, I want to get into your presentation a little bit. And you came all the way out here from Florida and you had a partner, Alexander Pakin, as I understand, and you guys did a session called Optimizing Your Firm with free and low cost Solutions. And I read through the slide deck realizing that this is a great opportunity to show this information with new solos or people that are practicing, maybe ventured out, start a small firm, how to do it on the cheap and give yourself that nice long runway you need to grow that firm. So why don’t you just give us the skinny of just the areas that you touched on during the presentation real quick.

Barbara Leach:

Sure. Well, I think the thing that Alex and I, well actually what was great, taking a step back from a bigger picture perspective, he shared what he uses slash does slash did, and I did the same thing from both a software and a hardware perspective. And then we shared, well, here’s what we wish we had done. And so we both agreed on the importance of having a practice management program. That was actually one of my regrets. I had my own law firm for about 10 years before I took the bench and I went from being a true Solo to having about seven people working with me during that time period. And I started out thinking I’m going to save as much money as humanly possible. I don’t need practice management because I have zero clients and Excel will work, right? Everyone can do everything with Excel.

Turns out I couldn’t, nor should I have, because what I realized was at the time it was like 50 bucks a month for a license and I was like, I’m going to save this money. I don’t need it. And I didn’t realize I needed practice management software until I needed to have it in place. So for those of you who are out there and you’re being uber conservative as far as expenditures, realize this, then at some point if you’re conscientious about how much things cost, I think you’re already going to be successful because you’re being a thoughtful custodian of your firm. So that means at some point you’re going to be successful beyond your expectation and you’re going to have to transition from none to a fully fledged integrated practice management program and you’re not going to have the time, the runway to accomplish that.

So figure out what you want when you have the luxury of time, kick some tires, come to tech show, come to the expo hall, ask hard questions, get free trials of the respective software and use it. And then at that point, decide what you want and start. Steven Covey says, begin with the end in mind. So expect that you’re going to be working on, I don’t know, anywhere from 20 to a hundred cases at once depending upon your practice area. So what does that look like? What do you need from software to manage a hundred cases at a given time? So even if it’s your grandma who wants you to sue the neighbor for keeping her cat. And so you’ve got this actually very bizarre fact pattern Dhir listeners, I’m sorry that I sprung that one on you. I have no idea where it came from. I have neither a grandmother nor a cat, but let’s play along what your need is for that. One case is different today than if you have a hundred grand mals soon, about a hundred cats. So try to put yourself in the shoes of your future person and identify what that software needs to look like and implement it. Now, knowing what you will need,

Laurence Colletti:

Well, I want to take a step backwards there. I remember when I graduated, I just didn’t have any money and you struggle. Maybe you got a bar loan, maybe pass theBar, but you don’t have a job and you’re out there struggling. You decided, you know what? I’m going to go hang my shingle. You just don’t have a lot of cash. And so if there’s a free resource out there that kind of gets you to that next step where, okay, now I’ve got incoming money, I’ve got regular revenue, now I can start branching out. I like what you said about designing it for the future, but I think we got to get there first and you got to get there in a sustainable path first. So I think you all, from what I saw in your slide deck, has some really great options of free or near free solutions, software solutions that people can jump on right now that’ll get the job done until they have that volume, have that revenue that makes the next step possible. So why don’t we share that and then maybe some of the hardware, those must have items in order to manage those first few days.

Barbara Leach:

Sure. Well, that’s why I did say practice management software because it’s not expensive when you have one license and oftentimes the practice management software will have built-in components that you can use. For example, as I said, I managed my firm off of Excel, which is free or practically because I had a Microsoft 365 license and at the time I think it was eight bucks a month for everything I needed. And then I also used QuickBooks to send out my invoices and QuickBooks was fairly inexpensive because at the time this has gone back, I had bought the disk, so I amortized the cost of that, I dunno, 200 bucks over two years, and so it’s fewer than $10 a month for the cost of QuickBooks. And I used that. It served two purposes. One, I used it for my billing and then two, I used it just to manage my income and my expenses.

So I thought that that was a really good investment. Again, looking back, if I’d had practice management software, I wouldn’t have needed that. The other thing that I found to be incredibly beneficial was I on my phone bought PDF Expert, which was an app that was $10 to download it, and it allowed me to edit PDFs super easily. So back in the day, I would print out and it’d be an inch and a half thick of pre-bills. Then I would then mark up manually and then give to my team or myself to edit. Because sitting there and going into each time entry was just not as efficient as looking at what a potential bill would look like. So PDF Expert allowed my team to no longer print out the documents, staple ’em together, and hand it to me. They could send it to me on my phone and I would just sit and edit on my phone or my iPad mini $10.

I never paid for Adobe Acrobat for the first seven years I had my firm because that’s a monthly subscription that is worth it. But the PDF expert, I didn’t need it. I could use my free Adobe and my PDF expert. So I think that those are two really crucial examples. Oh, the other one I would say we talked about stamps.com or something like Pirate Ship because I send packages more than mailing things that you would use stamps.com for. And so Pirate Ship, if you’re unfamiliar with this, is a free program online where if you have a ruler and a kitchen scale, you can figure out how much it would cost to ship packages and it’s actually discounted UPS or United States Post Office then to go in there and I was like, wait, you’re going to pay me essentially because you’re charging me less mail this, you’re going to pay me to not go to the post office. And so I create my little packages of cookies or whatever I’m sending out.

Laurence Colletti:

Judge Lee made some good cookies, I’ll tell you that.

Barbara Leach:

And I will print up the package, the labels at home and this walk into the post office and drop it off. So I’m saving time and money using free software.

Laurence Colletti:

The steak solution I have for here, this is something I’m so bad at actually, it’s my New Year’s resolution with all of these memberships and sometimes with accounts you get these benefits that come along with discounts or coupons or offers and things like that. I’m so bad at calling these in. I’ve got a T-Mobile account and they’ve got a deal Tuesday or whatever they call it, and I’m just so bad at it, but bar associations are really good for this as well. You’ve got member benefits and you’re paying for it anyway. And so just in terms of that, what were some of the really great, like look, resources are really thin, but take advantage of those services and those member benefits that you’re already paying for. What are some of the highlights there?

Barbara Leach:

Well, you’re already going to be a member of the Florida bar because it’s a mandatory bar or whatever, insert whatever state. Ostensibly they have member benefits. For example, the Florida bar, one of our member benefits was Fast Case. So I didn’t have to pay for Westlaw or Lexus when I had my firm because I had this free fast case membership. And it’s gotten so sophisticated over the years that you can ize using Fast Case. Again, not needing to pay for Westlaw or Lexus, it’s clunkier or at the time it was clunkier than using that, but the price differential was so worth it from my perspective. Then another example is you’re already perhaps a member of some voluntary bar, not a mandatory bar. So you get a benefit from that membership because it’s either networking or it’s learning a subject matter. And then they too might have some kind of member benefits like American Bar Association, voluntary bar.

Sometimes their benefits are more valuable than what you get from your mandatory bar. Another example that Alex brought up that was mind blowing was how many times, not you and I Warrens, but more sophisticated of people who adult better, they have the credit cards and they’re manipulating the point system game. Yeah, I did that when I was 51 finally, I’m adulting now, but Alex said he does that with his business. So he has business credit cards and he runs all of his bills, all of his monthly overhead through his business credit card that he’s now getting points or gift cards or discounts. And he said at one point he has a Amex business Platinum that costs him $800 a year, but between the discounts he gets or the $3 per dollar, three points, three times the points for $1 when you’re eating out and stuff like that, he said he has a net benefit between eight and $10,000 a year for paying that $800 a year fee to use the credit card. So again, I was like, why didn’t I do that? Or it just never occurred to me that credit cards could be good stewards for my practice. I was just so focused on this is a personal thing, not a professional thing, when my monthly bills for my firm were larger than my personal bills. So why didn’t I think to pivot that?

Laurence Colletti:

My last question we’re almost out of time. And so pitfalls, I want to talk about pitfalls. So there’s obviously risk in every business venture out there and many attorneys, if they get out into a Solo or a small firm, it’s the first time they’ve ever run a business. So they don’t have any kind of business training from undergrad. They’ve never run a business before college or anything like that. So this is their first entrepreneurship venture. And so I guess from that perspective, there’s a lot of lessons. So I guess what couple of things could you recommend to stay away from? What are the really big pitfalls when it comes to running your own business, your own legal practice as a

Barbara Leach:

Business? Number one, know thyself. So before I opened my firm, I did everything in my power to reduce my monthly nut. I wasn’t married, I didn’t have children, and I got a roommate. And so that cut down my cost. So that ultimately meant that I needed to bring in less money in order to satisfy my obligation. So that took the stress off of me by having that ability to know what my monthly nut was. And then I figured out what my hourly rate was going to be. And I’ll be honest with you, my monthly nut was $2,000 a month. My hourly rate was $200. I thought all I need to do is build 10 hours a month as I’m starting this business. So if I hadn’t taken the time to really identify what that was, I think it would’ve caused me additional stress. The other piece of advice is don’t compare yourself to other people and don’t think that’s comma, not a number three.

And don’t think that you have to have some grand presence just because you’re a lawyer. I had a conversation once I was doing a CLE and I was explaining this concept and a woman came up to me afterwards and she was very chagrined and she said, I went out and bought $5,000 worth of office furniture because I thought I’m a lawyer, I have to have fancy office furniture. And I mean, just hearing that caused me to stress out because I think I paid for malpractice insurance and I paid for a logo and I paid to have a killer party when I opened my law firm. And that was it really. At the end of the day, there was some incidental expenses, but it was not ginormous. And just the fact that she spent $5,000 on a desk spoiler Facebook marketplace or Google Office furniture, used furniture and you’d be surprised what you can find in expensively. So I never a day in all those years I had my firm ever had brand new office furniture. It looked great, but I never paid full price.

Laurence Colletti:

Well, it looks like we’ve reached the end of the road for this episode. I want to thank our guest, judge Leach for joining us and also want to thank you listeners for tuning in. If you’ll like what you heard, please rate and review us in Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon music, or best yet your favorite podcasting app. Until next time, I’m Laurence Colletti and you’ve been listening to On the Road with Legal Talk Network.

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