Practice Smarter, Not Harder: 411 Tips for Modern Lawyers, with Jordan Couch

Episode Notes

Transcript

Stephanie Everett:

Hi, I’m Stephanie.

Zack Glaser:

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 5 88 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today I talk with Jordan Couch about tips for new and experienced law firm owners on how to run their, honestly, how to practice law, and they’re very practical tips. He’s got 411 tips on how to practice law and he’s got a new book out.

Stephanie Everett:

Nice. That’s a lot of tips.

Zack Glaser:

It is a lot of tips. I think he was going for 5 0 1 and he got to 411 and was like, you know

Stephanie Everett:

What? That’s good.

Zack Glaser:

This is the number for information.

Stephanie Everett:

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah,

Zack Glaser:

So honestly, when you read the book, Jordan has a good sense of humor, so there’s a lot of that type of stuff in the book that we get into in the interview. But

Stephanie Everett:

Nice. By the way, I love Jordan. He was a member of our lab community.

Zack Glaser:

He practices all up in Washington state. Yeah, but Stephanie, why aren’t we? Oh,

Stephanie Everett:

Fireside.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. What are we doing here? Where are we?

Stephanie Everett:

Well, we’re at the Ohio. We’re in Ohio, which is unusual for both of us. But yes, we’re here because we are practicing what we teach our lobsters, which is sometimes it’s important to get your team together, to get away from the day to day and to focus on what’s next. We’ve actually, because we’re a fully remote team, everyone works from home, and so we brought everybody all 90 something of us at the same place at the same time, breathing the same air, looking at how tall everybody is. It’s been lots of surprises. People are like, you’re so tall.

Zack Glaser:

Well, not title of us.

Stephanie Everett:

No, not to us, but other people are tall, and so it’s given us a chance to get the team together to, we’re going to be rolling out our new vivid vision for what we want to accomplish as a company in the next three years. So we’ve previewed that. I mean, we did a lot of work. We’ve done dig into our business.

Zack Glaser:

We broke into teams that we have in the company and everybody really got to sit down and do some real deep thinking and deep work, and then some practical work as well. But I want to point out though, that we do have some people that are here hybrid. We were able to get some people here via Zoom that weren’t able to show up, and so no excuses for not being able to do this. And you can put everybody in one place, and so if some people, some things come up,

Stephanie Everett:

Yeah, some things came up for some folks health issues, so we adjust it. We made it happen. The other thing that should go without saying, but it’s so important is we have just had so much fun as a team. You forget last night we did some karaoke that was super fun. The night before that we went to Topgolf. Tonight, I think we have some trivia, but you forget the importance of having a meal with somebody, connecting with a team member that you’d see on a regular basis or in finding out how they’re doing or what they do for their job. Sometimes we just forget that we all have a lot going on, and so it’s important to create the space to plan for it, to make the budget for it. We had a very thoughtful process where we brought in, where we thought about what we wanted to accomplish each day, and also cool tip, we hired a couple of interns, we hired a couple of people that we knew because we wanted our whole team to be present and to be able to work. So we hired a couple of interns to come and help us run the backend logistics of it. And they’ve been great. They’ve been the ones passing out the cards and getting all the thing, if you need a marker, whatever it is, they’re the running around doing all the things so that our team could all really be present and focused on their work.

Zack Glaser:

Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that. You don’t necessarily have to hire interns if you’re a small firm or attorney. That’s something that we do. We facilitate retreats,

Stephanie Everett:

But different these people, were more like logistics people for us. Well, when I go into a firm, of course I’ll go running and get your marker, but that’s probably not the highest and best use of, I mean, sorry to say this, but can I say that that’s not my highest and best use? It is a thing. We’re helping plan the agenda and helping facilitate. The point is you don’t have to do this alone. So whatever level of help you need and planning the agenda could be the hardest part. To me, that’s my favorite part. We really dig in what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish, and then how do we build an agenda that gets you there?

Zack Glaser:

Right? I love it. It’s a fun thing to do. I mean, it’s something you have to be delivered about, and each time we’ve done it, it’s been extremely valuable.

Stephanie Everett:

It’s budgeting time for most firms mean you should be working on your budget. If not, make sure by the way you’re on our Wednesday newsletter, because every week this month on our Wednesday newsletter, I’m giving you step-by-step instructions on your budgeting money month around here because we’ve got to be getting ready for 2026. But my point is, put this in your budget for next year. Make the commitment that you’re going to get your team together. Our leadership team gets together in person quarterly. We bring the whole company together at least annually. So make the plan now. Now’s the time to plan for 2026. Make this a priority as it should be, and then let’s get intentional and make it happen for you.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Well, we’ll drop the link to get onto Stephanie’s Wednesday email list in the show notes, but you can always go to lawyers.com/subscribe and you can find it there. But now here’s my interview with Jordan Kosh.

Jordan Couch:

Hi, I am Jordan Couch. I’m a partner at Palace Law in Tacoma, Washington. I also formerly was the chair of the Washington State Bar Association’s solo and small practice section. And then I moved on from that and I’m now in my second term on the board of Governors for the Washington State Bar Association, doing a lot of work there. Recently though, I decided I wasn’t busy enough, so I wrote a book of 411 tips for solo and small firm lawyers. This is the proof copy that has the nice typos in it for you still. Nice,

Zack Glaser:

Nice, nice. That’ll be a collector’s item someday.

Jordan Couch:

Exactly.

Zack Glaser:

I have a few Tony Hillerman books that are like that. I have no idea where I got them, but anyway, I digress. Jordan, thanks for being with me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. A lot of times I see you a all over LinkedIn, all over Instagram. We’ve been connected for a while, but a lot of times I see you actually in your second thing, the Board of Governors talking about some of the future of law stuff. So we will get into a little bit of the future of law later on in the podcast. But yeah, you wrote the 500, I mean 411 tips on practicing law. Talk to me about this book. Where’d this come from? And I guess first, what is it? What’s the idea here?

Jordan Couch:

So the basic idea is to be an introductory guide to help lawyers kind of across the spectrum, but who are in so, and small firms specifically do better in practice and have an easier time in practice and not have to learn over a decade with the things that I learned over the last decade. And I had the mentors. And so for those who don’t, I just wanted to create something easily accessible to a lot of people, to cover a lot of basics and a little bit of the fun, exciting stuff as well.

Zack Glaser:

In reading this, I am a second generation attorney, and so I got to practice with my dad for I think seven years. And reading this, I read a lot of it in my father’s voice. There’s a lot of stuff I think I said to you before we started recording that it’s not elementary stuff here, but it’s fundamental. It’s things that I literally remember my father saying to me. So it is very instructive, but I don’t know. You don’t necessarily know these things coming right out of law school. These aren’t things that are just taught to you because we don’t know how to run a law office. You don’t know how to do strategy against opposing counsel a lot of times.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah, that’s something that’s always difficult. And I think also drilling fundamentals is so important. I am a trial attorney and I have a book of trial basics that before a big jury trial I will reread because even if I know all of these things, drilling basics is so important. And so if you’re starting out, you might not know a lot of these things if you’ve been practicing for a little while. It always helps to remind yourself to just drill those basics.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Okay, let’s jump into here. We’ve got 411 of these to get through, so we’re going to have to talk very, very quickly. No, but we’ll touch on a couple of ’em here and kind of talk about some of your favorites and dive in a little bit. But we start with, I mean, we go from starting your own practice to customer service financial management. We lead into innovation and becoming sustainable. That was one chapter that I thought was very, very interesting, but going all the way into tips if you’re a new lawyer, tips if you’ve been practicing for 20 years. So I think this really runs the gamut of subjects as it goes to tips to attorneys. It’s not just for new attorneys, it’s for seasoned attorneys, it’s for attorneys practicing a lot. But let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start at kind of, I guess chapter one, technically starting your own practice. Crappy a tip in there.

Jordan Couch:

I have to start at the beginning, right? Tip number two, which really starts the book is just pick your lane. And this is something when I was first starting out and I didn’t have a job and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, I thought, okay, well, I can start practicing law on my own. And the question is, well, what will I do? Okay, well, I could figure out how to do personal injury. I could figure out how to do criminal law. I could do family law if I needed to. Really. And the list of what you can do gets so long, and I’ve seen a lot of my friends go through this as well, who have come out of practice, out of law school after me and tried to start their own practice. They know they can do everything. They’re desperate for anything. And so they start doing everything. And what I’ve learned is that that is a huge mistake.

If you practice every type of law at all levels, you do nothing and you don’t give anyone a reason to hire you. So tip number one, if you’re starting a practice, if you’re going out there, pick your lane, decide what you’re going to do, be as specific as possible if it’s personal injury. Okay. Is there an area of personal injury where you think you can be the expert in your state, in your community? If you are going to be kind of a generalist, okay, what’s the community you’re serving? A great attorney I know is something of a generalist, but she really focuses on the lgbtq plus community in her neighborhood. That’s who she’s trying to serve. So there are all these models, but really picking your lane is the starting point because that’s so important.

Zack Glaser:

But that scares the shit out of me. Jordan, I remember you start your practice and you think, man, I’ll take anything. I’ll take anything that comes in. So how did you, I guess, kind of get the gumption to pick your lane to niche down? I guess as some people say,

Jordan Couch:

A little bit of luck is part of it. Frankly,

I was looking for everything, but I found a contract job with one firm that was doing workers’ compensation. And I got in there starting out on an appellate case. So it was already kind of high level, high niche. And I just thought, okay, I can do as much contract work for this firm as I can. And started doing a lot of that. And then it so happened that as I’m doing that, I met another attorney who did workers’ compensation who shared a lot of interest with me, Patrick Palace, and we connected, and he was absolutely not looking to hire, but we connected. And I had this niche I’d built for myself that lined up with his as well. And I didn’t have to make the courage of starting my own firm. He’d already done that. But I got to make the courage to say, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to do workers’ compensation in your firm, and that is all I’m going to do. Because I did that. I had the support of some experience, some falling and the willingness to just commit and say, this is all I’m going to do. But because I did that within that firm, I rose up to becoming a manager and a partner within four years.

Zack Glaser:

That’s pretty quickly. Was Patrick doing workers’ compensation at that time? Was Palace Law doing, did you kind of niche inside of there? I could envision a scenario where you come into a practice and you say, well, I want to expand what this practice that is already niched down is doing.

Jordan Couch:

And there were conversations I’ve had, but really what I saw was I have some workers’ compensation experience. This firm is already doing workers’ compensation. Sure. Expanding building a book of business sounds good on paper of, oh, making the firm more money by expanding to new practice areas. But I saw that there was really a better opportunity to just make us the best of what we were doing already and help make us the best because the opportunity was there available in front of me. And so I was able to just say, rather than trying to add value to this firm by expanding, I can add value by being the best that we have at this.

Zack Glaser:

And that seems to have worked because you’ve been practicing there for a significant amount of time now. Alright, 410 left to go. Alright. But seriously, we’re going to kind of bounce through some of these. You’ve got starting your law practice is chapter one, and I think it’s significant that client services is chapter two. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Client services is chapter two, and that had to be an intentional decision, right?

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. I think that’s something a lot of lawyers struggle with is recognizing that we are a service industry. One advantage I had coming out of law school was that I paid my way through college and most of law school working in restaurants where it’s very obvious you’re in a service industry, right?

Zack Glaser:

But

Jordan Couch:

You come out, a lot of lawyers

Zack Glaser:

Really tells you. Yeah,

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. A lot of lawyers say like, no, no, we are a profession. We’re a high minded grand profession. And well, there’s some truth to that. There’s also a lot of reality as your job is to serve people. You are at their whim. And so I wanted to go straight from starting your own practice to recognizing, and one of the tips in starting your own practice is be obsessed with quality because customer service is everything you need to be delivering on customer service and communicating with people. And in a world where people don’t like lawyers, people don’t want lawyers, people never want to hire a lawyer, right?

Zack Glaser:

No.

Jordan Couch:

I use the same joke anytime a potential client calls my office where I get on the phone with them and I hear a little bit of their story and I say, how are you doing today? And it’s never great because they’re an injury law firm. And so the joke I use every time is I had a feeling, rarely does someone call an attorney saying, I’m having the best day of my life. I really need an attorney, right? Things are going great. Let’s sue somebody.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah.

Jordan Couch:

And so one of my favorite side of this book, tip 18, learn to sell respectfully As a lawyer, you have to be able to sell your services and be willing to sell your services, especially if you’re running your own practice. And I have never been a fan of the hard sell. I think in a legal context, it’s really distasteful. And so if you have to convince someone to hire you, either they don’t need your services or you’ve done a poor job explaining it. And so learning to sell respectfully was one of my favorite tips in the book.

Zack Glaser:

I do like that one because it still lets you take pride in what you do and it takes flipping your brain. For me, it takes flipping my brain a little bit to no, I’m providing a service that somebody needs. This person needs this thing, and I’m doing good work and I can charge for that. That’s okay. But we don’t have to try to really, like you said, sell my service. My service is my service. I I’m doing good work. It should be there.

Jordan Couch:

They’ve reached out to you, my dad, I said, they’ve called you, they’ve reached out to you. My dad used to say, selling cars. No one walks onto a car lot if they’re not at least open to the idea of buying a car, if someone’s calling you, there’s something they want from a lawyer. Understand that, decide if you’re willing to offer that to them and then tell them what you’re willing to offer it to ’em. And if there’s a match between price and what they’re willing to pay, you’ve got to sale. You don’t have to pressure anyone. F

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. So one that I really, and there’s a lot of really good ones in the client services one, but one that I really liked that spoke to me that again, I heard my father’s voice was redirect anger. Talk to me about that one. I like that because it’s kind of judo of client services,

Jordan Couch:

Especially when you’re dealing with people with injuries or with something bad going on in their life, a difficult legal system that’s making people upset. You’ll get a lot of complaints calls as a lawyer. And I think it’s really important to always be compassionate to those people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean giving into them. And so what I say is when I have an angry client, I will often ask them, what specifically would you like me to do for you that I’m not doing?

Zack Glaser:

And

Jordan Couch:

In my experience, sometimes people are just kicking and screaming, but most of the time answers come into two categories. It’s either a straightforward request like, Hey, I need you to call me more. And I say, okay, I’m going to start scheduling a call with you every week or every two weeks until you feel comfortable again.

Zack Glaser:

Or

Jordan Couch:

Sometimes I get an admission that they really aren’t mad at me and they just need to vent and I get an apology. But that question is really key because it cuts through whatever noise is going on. I’m upset that this is happening my life, I lost my truck, I’m getting divorced. There’s just so much mess out there. And you can cut through that by just asking that question, what specifically would you like me to do that I’m not doing? Because you’re the one they’re complaining. So cut through that, what do they need from you? And if they can’t answer that question, then it’s not about you.

Zack Glaser:

I love this one because we as attorneys, a lot of people think they get into being an attorney because they’re good at arguing. People get told You should be an attorney. When you grow up, you’re good at arguing. And so sometimes our knee jerk reaction just out of habit is to push back to argue on the same playing field that they’re on. And this is, you don’t have to sit there and argue with them over whether or not you called them in your example. It’s okay, I hear you. We’ll talk more.

Jordan Couch:

And one of the examples I’ve done on that is if someone is complaining about one of my paralegals and they’ll say, Hey, they didn’t call me. They didn’t call me. And I’ll look through the notes and I’ll say, okay, I see that they called you and left you a message on this day, send you an email this day. But what I’m hearing from you is that that’s not enough. So I’m pushing

Zack Glaser:

Back,

Jordan Couch:

But not really. I’m validating their feelings. What I’m hearing from you is that’s not enough. So then it turns to the question, what would you like to make this work? What do you need for this to be working? And there’s a lot of cognitive science behind this that when you try to argue with someone about their beliefs on something, their opinions on something, they get more entrenched. Even if you are right, they get more entrenched. So don’t push back on people. But asking people questions allows them to bring themselves to a different place in the argument. And so you can say, Hey, here’s what I’m seeing. You’re telling me that’s not enough. What more do you need from us? That changing of the question puts it on them to solve the problem instead of on you to solve their problem.

Zack Glaser:

I love that one. I really like that one. So that leads into another piece of advice that you have, which is I think you actually have to put two pieces together, which is be cordial to opposing counsel, but also don’t be a pushover. You’ve got two there that are, you can seek collegiality with opposing counsel and everybody else, but you don’t have to be a pushover to make things right, to have client service or to make sure that everybody is okay.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. One of the most difficult aspects of being a trial lawyer, and I’m sure this exists in other legal contexts as well, is the balance between, to be a good trial lawyer, I say you have to be deeply afraid of losing because if you’re not afraid of losing, you’re not going to have the drive to do the work it takes to win. But at the same time, in order to be a good trial attorney, you have to be willing and not afraid of losing. And that comes up in these things. It’s like you have to be reasonable. You have to make deals at times when you need to make a deal. I’ve had cases, I was planning to take legal issues to the Supreme Court, but then the opposing counsel gives my client an offer. And I really want to say to my client, no, don’t take this even though it’s the best possible scenario for you because I want to push my legal

Zack Glaser:

Issue.

Jordan Couch:

But at the same time, you have to be willing to stand up and say, look, I know I’m going to lose, but I’m going to push this argument anyway and I’m going to make this claim and I’m going to keep fighting. And that balance comes up in litigation, but it also comes up in dealing with clients. One of the things I mentioned in here is don’t waive your fees, but I also say give back money where if you can give back money to clients, do that. They need it, but don’t waive your fees, don’t discount your fees. Don’t argue with clients about your fees.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, that makes sense. Because your product has value. You have to maintain your value. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Okay, so that’s always in the litigation area. One of the ones that I really liked in the litigation chapter, and this is on further down, is the trial is always happening. I think attorneys, if you ask them, they would agree with that, but I don’t know that they would necessarily think that initially. When did you kind of come up with this idea or what pushed you to the concept that the trial is always happening, we’re always moving forward on this, I guess?

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. There are a few attorneys that, trial attorneys that I kind of had as mentors, including Patrick, that kind of taught this to me over time. And it starts with the little things of when you’re in the parking lot, when you enter the Courtroom or the courthouse, be aware that you don’t know which jurors are going to be yours when you start that day. And so if you cut in front of someone in line, if you are on your phone and taking a call, and even if it’s talking to your family and you’re making jokes, you could be heard by someone. The closer you get to the courthouse, the closer you get to your potential jurors. And they’re not necessarily going to say, yeah, I saw him in the lobby and he was being an asshole on the phone to someone, or he made some joke that I think was really inappropriate. They’re not going to say that in voir dire. They’re going to say, no, I’ve never met this person in my life, because they haven’t. They might not even recognize you at the time that you’re doing your voir dire, but this goes further. There are always contexts where a jury might encounter you,

And they’re also be aware of what the jury might end up hearing. If you’re doing a deposition, is this transcript going to come in for some reason? But also if you’re on your way to the courthouse and you cut someone off in traffic, they might pull in behind you at the courthouse and be on your jury. Who you are in the community is everything. And I think some of the best trial attorneys I’ve seen are people that are giants in their community as well. They’re philanthropists, they’re out there doing good work, they’re speaking with people they’re offering to help. And I think it’s really important to realize that people do have biases and they’re going to interact with you, and there’s always a chance, especially the smaller the community you have, the more likelihood that that juror is going to know you or someone like you.

I never go through a jury trial without the juror recognizing someone in the room on there, and sometimes it can be a lot of people. I got called for jury duty recently, and I got out of it because I saw the case and I explained to the judge, well, your honor, I’m happy to be on jury duty, but this is a workers’ compensation case or this is a personal injury case that happened on a work injury. And one of the attorneys I went to law school within in Indiana, even though we’re in Seattle, it’s a small world wherever you are. So I think you have to be very aware it’s not just at the courthouse everywhere your jurors are in your community.

Zack Glaser:

That’s fair. I remember my father, who was public defender for years and years, swears that he lost a case because the jury saw him and the DA eating lunch together because they were cordial to each other. They had a job to do. Of course, they were going to argue their cases, but the jury seeing that they were cordial to each other, like, oh, well, it couldn’t have been that bad. He swears he lost a case because of that. But you’re right, because it’s always going on. Yeah.

Jordan Couch:

Well,

Zack Glaser:

Let’s move a little bit, and I feel like we’re, well, we’re not going to give the book the full treatment here because you know what? Go read the damn thing. Go get it. Read it. We’re not going to go through everything, but let’s move to writing. I liked writing, and I’ll tell you while we’re getting there, that I have a note on writing that says, read, read, read is inherent in all of this. You don’t necessarily say it, but inherent in this entire thing is read a lot. And I kind of love that you’ve quoting Kurt Vonnegut in here and talking about, and it’s not just read books or read literature or read nonfiction. It’s read. Read other attorneys. I really liked that one. You had, I think it’s 2 66, is steal from your favorite writers and included in there is other attorneys that you respect. I thought that was very neat.

Jordan Couch:

Absolutely. I mean, there are public records on so many cases and how many people have gone out and watched a trial of an attorney they thought was good to learn, especially as a starting lawyer, right? Guess what their briefs are online. You can go find those and read them. And one of the early cases I worked on ended up going up to the Supreme Court in the state of Washington, and I had worked on it at the contract firm I was doing, and I lost, and I went to Palace Law and Patrick said, I have this case for you. And he told me about the case and he said, it’s an interesting one. I think we’re going to take it up to the court of appeals. And I said, I have good news and bad news. I already have all the briefing written on this.

And he says, that’s great news. And I said, but I lost. And he goes, well try again, Jordan. And I was like, okay, swing away. I lost again. I lost the court of appeals. Then he brought on an appellate attorney and he came on and Phil Bureau, I was very kind and he said, look, Jordan, I’m going to change a lot of things, but I want you to know you did a good job as a new AttorneySync this, but I’m probably going to change some things. And I said, Phil, I’ve lost this case twice. Change everything. Do not do it by way. But I read all the briefs that he wrote and I learned so much from the way he wrote and that style of how you take something from the trial attorney mindset to the appellate attorney mindset. And since then I’ve tried to bring those things back. And it is Reed. There’s the famous apocryphal Einstein quote of, if you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be brilliant, read them. Lots of fairytales. Right. My mom was an English teacher. Reading is, you can see a small portion of the books behind me.

Zack Glaser:

Yes.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah, yeah. Steal from your favorite writers, steal from everyone. And it doesn’t have to just be legal. Writing too is one of the points I wanted to make in this book is steal from Everyone.

Zack Glaser:

Well, so speaking of that, let’s take a step back and get a little bit meta on this book. The structure of this book you actually stole as well, because we’re doing small tip, small tip, small tip, big longer tip. Talk to me about that real quick.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah, that might’ve been a timing thing. There was a great book that I had read called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and it’s this wonderful book. And the basic concept was creating words for emotions that we all experience but don’t have words for. And how the act of defining them and writing them down what they are kind of makes you able to feel them and understand them better. And I was reading this book and it’s just constructed in this beautiful way where there are sections, it’s going to all sound familiar, and it would have a long one where you’d give a word and then give a long, detailed definition of it that encompasses the feelings of it and all of this. And then it would have a few short ones that are just quick, you see in a dictionary style definitions of various words. And I really liked that style. And as I was putting together this book, I thought, okay, I don’t want this book to just be a list. I can collect tips from people and put in my own and I can just make a list of tips. And that’s fine,

But that’s, there’s no beauty in that. There’s no fun in that. And so what I really wanted to do with this is take some favorites of mine and say, okay, these are the ones that I can really dive deep on and elaborate on and get detail on, but then also have some filler in there that is like, let’s go through some stuff fast here. The idea being hopefully you can pick a section, you open it up, find something on any page that’s useful for you, do some refreshing of your memory of some quick tips, and then if you want to read something longer, there’s something longer and deeper to read as well.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Well, and I think it’s interesting that you spent a lot of time on some of these specific tips because you sent over a thing to me that was like, here are, here’s some of my favorites. And a significant portion of your favorites are short ones. And some of the short ones, it’s not that they’re short because you didn’t like them or didn’t want to spend time on them. Some of them are short, they’re just fricking punchy. They need to be short. But the structure strikes me because it takes it away from being, you remember those bathroom readers, the chicken soup for the soul, or just the tips in life or whatever. It takes it away from being that and puts it into something that it breaks up and gives you a moment, in my opinion, gives you a moment to kind of reflect on it.

There’s a cadence to writing, and this is a big structural cadence, and it gives you a moment to reflect on things. But at the same time, as you and I have talked about, you can just jump in here, you can jump into the middle and just start reading some of these and going, but before I keep getting effusive on the structure of this, the next thing after steal from your favorite writers, I’m going to stay in the writer’s thing because you wrote a book here. We’re talking about a book. We’ll stay in the writing area. You go into some of Vonnegut’s rules for writing that are, I was slightly adjusted writing for attorneys. And I say this because attorneys, yes, we’re in the customer service business, but a lot of us, some of the best writers I know are attorneys. And so I think that a lot of attorneys really do appreciate good writing, whether it’s in fiction, nonfiction, or legal briefs. So yeah, talk to me about, I guess, what is it, the eight rules that Vonne has?

Jordan Couch:

Yeah.

Zack Glaser:

Has you have now

Jordan Couch:

Eight rules of writing. And I remember reading those again in I think law school or just after law school, and immediately noticing to myself, these kind of apply to a lot of legal writing. You have to change a couple words, but the basic concept is there. And I printed ’em out and I actually had ’em next to my desk because in my first couple of years of legal work, I was doing a lot of writing because every motion, I was the associate. Every motion came over my desk, but I was trying to remember these because I thought they fit so well. So use the time of the judge in such a way that he or she will not feel the time is wasted in every brief. Give the judge at least one character. He or she can root for every person mentioned in your brief party, witness or bystander should want something, even if it’s just a glass of water.

Why are you including these details? Why are you putting these facts? This one I really love and I train my associates pretty heavily on. Now every sentence must do one of two things, reveal key facts or advance an argument. And if you have a sentence in your brief that doesn’t do that, it is a wasted sentence. And also this one came, I really recognized when I was clerking was start as close to the end as possible. If one sentence into your brief, the judge doesn’t know what you want and why that’s bad. If two sentences in the judge still doesn’t know what you want and why you’ve

Zack Glaser:

Lost that one, I absolutely love because we begin when the earth was molten. No, we’re not going to do that. Okay, well then in 10 66, no, get as close to, don’t include the bullshit, but I’ve never really phrased it that way, and I really like that one.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah, that really resonated with me. I clerked for a superior court judge in law school and the number of briefs I get from experienced attorneys who now I know and know are good, but I would start reading and it would begin with the plaintiff, by and through his attorney X name hereby files this motion in support of X with briefing attached. And I’m like, I am reading, and if it would happen as a clerk, I would read the entire first paragraph and think, I don’t know what this motion is about

Zack Glaser:

And

Jordan Couch:

I don’t know why it’s been filed, and now I’m a clerk and I’m mad at you.

Zack Glaser:

I think that’s a really good point to hang on for a second, is we’re dealing with people and our writing is supposed to be persuasive. And sometimes persuasive isn’t just about the actual argument. It’s about being persuasive. It’s about making people feel like they’re on your side, the give the judge a character to root for or something in there. I remember my father always saying, make your client wear the white hat. You just have to, he would say in trials, make the jury like your client and then give them enough to hang their hat on to go home and say, yeah, we ruled in favor of this person right here who I happen to, but just give ’em enough law to hang it on. So I really liked these specific ones in the writing that are very, very practical. Again, we don’t have all the time in the world, so I want to kind of move into some of the futurist stuff, some of the innovation things. Grab me if you don’t mind. You’ve got a chapter on innovation, one of your innovation rules here.

Jordan Couch:

We’ll start here in the innovation section, number 1 99, practice creativity. Take some time each day to get into a creative space and try to just have fun. If you can’t leave your space, you can’t make a creative space wherever you go. Just put on your creative socks, don’t have them. Grab a sharpie and write creative on the side of your most boring pair of socks, then put those on. That’s a tip stolen from Scott Birkin who has a great book, I think I mentioned in this book called The Dance of the Possible about practicing creativity. And it’s something I think lawyers don’t do enough and we have to innovate. Our systems aren’t working for people. We need to do better. And so you have to jump into, we have to innovate. We have to practice being creative because it is not natural. It is something you have to work on. And so just take a little time every day and think, what can I do differently?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think that’s a really good crux of innovation. We can get into technology, we can get into adjusting things, but it’s being creative. Now, I think attorneys don’t necessarily think of themselves as the creative type a lot of times, but I would say see writing, see how much we write, see how much we have to be creative about arguments and things like that. And so I would certainly argue that for the most part, lawyers are pretty creative. We just don’t necessarily think of ourselves that way.

Jordan Couch:

I was going to say, you hit right into tip 200 there, which is look at your business. You do the law because so many lawyers when it comes to the law are so incredibly creative. I had a lawyer who I worked a case, and I won’t give details in case he ever listens to this, but he had a phenomenally creative legal argument on this case that I was just like, you know what? I disagreed with him. I ended up winning. But I saw the angle he was going with, and he put a lot of work into that, and he was being incredibly creative. He’s a guy who used to print out emails within the last five years. He was not practicing that creativity in his business at all. And that to me is so lawyers do recognize that value of being creative, thinking creatively like that. They just don’t always apply it back to their business. They only apply it to the work they do for others, not the work they do for themselves.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, that’s interesting. Okay, so let’s stay in this creative area. Let’s stay in this innovation area. I run across a lot of stuff that you do, Jordan, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and in various places that are related to different methods of licensing, different alternative business models, the idea that we are going to have corporations owning, being able to split fees and things like that. And so I wanted to look a little bit forward. So a lot of the advice in this book is for the now, which is great. It’s great advice for the now, but let’s think in 20, 20, 30, let’s say five years from now, we live in a world where fees are able to be split, non-lawyers are able to own law firms or corporations are able to own law firms. What advice do you give attorneys to get themselves ready for that, to prepare for that?

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. I hear a lot of lawyers when they’re pushing back on me about these proposals we’ve been doing in Washington and around the country saying they’re worried about competition or that they’re worried about private equity coming in and buying up all the firms, to which those are concerns I sometimes share, but I also sometimes have to ask them, why would they be interested in your firm?

And if I’m building a firm for the future right now, I think what you have to think about is how do you make yourself a company that someone would actually be interested in partnering with, not just buying your cases. Because a lot of law firms, they think they have value. They think there’s worth a lot, but when you get behind the scales, that law firm is worth nothing more than the current billables you have and the clients you have. That’s all you have in your firm. And so if you’re trying to think for the future, how do you develop a firm that isn’t someone, they just buy your book of clients, they want to partner with you to build the legal profession and make it

Zack Glaser:

Better.

Jordan Couch:

That’s the kind of firm you have to be. And what you have to be thinking about now is how do you become that sort of firm?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, I like that. I like that because that dovetails nicely with, quite frankly, how do you become a firm that you can sell? How do you become a firm that has inherent value beyond, like you’re saying, beyond just literally what’s owed, what’s owed in the business, what are the cases that I have that are ongoing right now? How do you get yourself to a place where the marketing exists and is a system where your processes are running smoothly, and so somebody wants to buy your processes? How do you get to a place where you set yourself apart? I like that.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. I mean, palace Law has done this for a few years now of building a business model of buying up other firms. And part of that is we have the marketing in place. We have the processes in place where we can buy cases and say, we’re going to be able to turn these faster than you would’ve because we have these

Zack Glaser:

Processes.

Jordan Couch:

And the idea there, the comparison is if someone came to us, they’d want our processes to put other people’s cases into our processes. Spent the time developing our firm as a business like that and thinking about the future. And there’s a tip in the book, 196 is become either fashion or entertainment. And it comes from a Harvard business professor who said that really the best businesses over time develop into either focusing on a small set of products that are either a fashion or entertainment. So fashion brands create products that are trendy and desirable. Entertainment provides memorable experiences. And legal oftentimes, people think is so separate from that.

But that’s because so many law firms are separate from that right now. They just provide the same service to their clients on an hourly basis. They’re not building anything lasting. They’re not building fashion, but there are some exceptions. They’re the big white shoe firms that are hired because they’re the fashionable firms and no one’s going to hire anyone other than them. Entertainment wise, people provide really good services, but they’re very rare exceptions that people say like, oh, this was fun to go through this process. I enjoyed my experience with you. I’m sending everyone here. Because even if it wasn’t good, it was memorable.

Zack Glaser:

I’ve never thought about that before though, the idea, because that’s beyond just processes. I’m creating an experience or I’m creating a feeling. My company, my business, my law firm is making people feel a certain way. And that’s something that does stick around. If you buy the company by the name, by the idea of it, that does stick around.

Jordan Couch:

And that’s something, yeah, lawyers don’t think about, but what you’re buying is, there’s the apocryphal story of the Black and Decker drill. What do they sell? They don’t sell drills. They sell holes in the wall, and you can go one deeper than that. And they say No. What they actually sell is a picture hanging on the wall because, and I tell lawyers this, sometimes no one cares about lawyers. No one ever wants a lawyer. No one gives a shit about a lawyer at all. They don’t even want courts. They don’t even want that. They want the feeling of justice. And there was a judge who, it was Victoria Pratt who referred to Justice, not as a result, but she referred to it as a feeling of being with dignity and respect by the process. That’s what it’s about. That’s what we’re selling is a feeling, but we don’t always see that. We see it as focused on results or these, but we’re selling at our best. We’re selling a feeling to people, and the best lawyers know how to do that.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. Well, and that encompasses the idea. I was just talking to a lot of people on my team about what does the law look like in the next five years. And in my mind, there’s a lot of potential for parallel justice. There’s a lot of potential for alternative dispute resolution. There’s a lot of potential for apps to come out to help people, because again, you’re right, justice is just a feeling. It’s vindication or fairness or something like that. And it’s not necessarily about literally going to court or literally having some guy with a wig on. I know we don’t do that in the United States, but just like dole out unquote justice, it is, it’s the feeling. And so how do we put ourselves in a position where we can help people find that feeling and access that feeling

Jordan Couch:

And recognizing that that is the job we need to be either fashion or entertainment for these people? Because I’ve seen lawyers get great results for clients who are incredibly unhappy with them because they didn’t like the process. I’ve had people call me upset, wanting to fire their attorney, and it’s like, actually, everything they’ve done is really good, but the feeling is bad. They’re not getting that sense. They’re not getting that entertainment that they want from these. And if we’re thinking about in the future, how do you build your company to be not just providing the same legal service, but how do you build your company to be the fashion law firm or the entertainment law firm to provide those services to your clients?

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. I think of the potential for having platforms. Your company is a platform. It is not necessarily just doing the divorce, but it’s the divorce and the splitting of the assets, and maybe even some therapy or counseling sessions for the people involved in the divorce or something like that. And that is not me writing briefs. That’s not even me arguing in front of a judge. Nobody gives a shit about what that is. That is, that’s the feeling I had. Yeah, it’s the fashion of it, of going to that website even.

Jordan Couch:

And in the injury world, the number of cases I see that could have never come to an attorney at all, if the insurance company had just paid for all the medical treatment right away, the famous McDonald’s case, she wanted medical treatment, and they refused. And look what happened to them. This happens so often, and again, it’s that the insurance companies could provide that feeling and take it out of the legal system entirely. There’s so much error to disrupt there. If you’re an attorney who’s forward thinking and asking yourselves, stop thinking about yourself as the attorney providing this legal service in this context, and ask yourself, how can I provide what my clients actually want? And better yet, what the 70% of people who aren’t getting served actually want.

Zack Glaser:

Well, Jordan, I think we’ve solved the future of law now.

Jordan Couch:

It’s done.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah. So we can probably shut the podcast down at this point,

Jordan Couch:

Transcribe it, add it as an addendum to the book, and then

Zack Glaser:

We’re done. Then we’re done. We’re done. We’ve solved law. So thank you. Thanks for helping me. Thanks for helping me solve law. But really thank you. I really enjoyed reading this book. I got a lot of good information out of it. It’s one of those times where you’re reading along and you think, well, of course, but you wouldn’t have gotten to it necessarily on your own. But that’s the kind of advice, and I love that kind of advice where you’re like, this seems like it should have been intuitive, but it wasn’t necessarily for me. And so I really enjoyed this book.

Jordan Couch:

Well, I’m so glad. Thank you so much.

Zack Glaser:

Before we go, we’ll obviously drop links in the show notes, but tell people where they can find it, where they can connect with you or where they can find the book.

Jordan Couch:

Yeah. 411 Tips for Soul and Small Firm Lawyers. You can find it on Amazon. If you go to my website, Jordan l couch.com, you can find it there. You can find me on all social media just at Jordan l Couch, everywhere. I’m always happy to talk about this stuff, especially when we get into conversations about innovation and pushing the world forward and serving that access to justice gap that’s just waiting there for us to make money off it.

Zack Glaser:

Awesome. Well, thank you, Jordan. I appreciate it.

Jordan Couch:

Thank you.

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