Community Table: Setting Real Goals (And Taking Some Time For Yourself)

Episode Notes

Transcript

Christopher T. Anderson:

For them. It is a motivator, but it’s a poor motivator for real success in life because it’ll keep you on the rat race. It’ll keep you on the treadmill forever.

Announcer:

This is Unbillable hours community table with Clio, a monthly virtual round table where lawyers discuss issues their practices are facing and receive feedback from lawyer and law firm management consultant Christopher T Anderson. Join the conversation live every third Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern. Our first segment centers around the value of letting deeper motivations guide your law firm’s growth plan.

Caller #1:

I came on this one other time, Chris, it was kind of at the end or I had to go or something, and I was talking about the seesaw between enough families to work with enough people to do the work and for me it used to go like these big things and then in my brain I’ve been trying to level it and when I talk to people at the firm, it’s funny sometimes what people say, one of the guys who works for me said something about, well, I know you want to be rich and famous, but about my wife. I’m like, I’m not trying to be rich and famous. I mean that will probably occur, but what I think he was kind of just trying to have something to say to be honest. But all that to say with the firm, it’s not like I’ve necessarily tried to grow to any exact thing.

I truly have been trying to level the plan and to get it right if you give a mouse a cookie, so then it’s, and also this idea of if you’re not growing, you’re dying, right? So trying to get that right, and I’m not so many people I’m aware of. I want to be this much gajillion dollar firm. Okay? I don’t have that. I don’t have that. I’m just trying to be the best and do the best me that I kind of can. Now what you said to me is something along what I recall that you said to me was something along the lines of no, no, no, no. Opting out of that, try to get the balance and sort of deciding in advance what I want it to do in reverse engineer, which is very smart. I mean, I understand logically why that is the correct thing to say.

It’s stuck with me and something I’ve kind of thought about since then. I’ve made absolutely zero progress in that regard since you said it to me and still at this point now, if you include me, I have 10 lawyers in one capacity or another. I have two people who are three, whatever. Anyway, various degrees. Not everybody’s in FTE, but we’ve grown. We’re doubling again this year, I think, which is quite a big hurdle considering where we ended last year. And so I don’t know, and it’s not really a fully formed question except I’ve thought about that since I was here before and I’d sure be interested if you had guidance on how to get to the point from when I need to reverse engineer, I mean just like this much of gajillion million dollars, I just am not drawn to anything

Christopher T. Anderson:

Good. That’s good because that’s the least powerful motivator after enough money that I can pay the rent and bring home enough money to pay the mortgage up until I can cover my bills, I can make sure there’s food on the table, the rent is paid. It is a good motivator getting to that step, which according to least Clio’s market trends, I think it’s the majority of law firm, solo law firm owners, single owners of law firms aren’t there. They’re actually humping the work to get the bills paid. And so for them, it is a motivator, but it’s a poor motivator for real success in life because it’ll keep you on the rat race. It’ll keep you on the treadmill forever. There’s always a better car, there’s always a better house, there’s always a better vacation. There’s always a better this and a better that. And yeah, you can just, there’s always richer and famous or as I

Caller #1:

Respond. Yeah, I mean kind for me, Chris, to your point, I have the one threshold is independent financial solvency for myself as a person. So that is,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, but those words have no meaning. My Uncle Joe is independently solvent. He lives in a beach shack in the Virgin Islands and tens bar and requires about $45,000 a year, and he’s got $45,000 a year coming in. No matter what. Everything he makes behind that bar is fun money. He’s independently solvent, not the way I want to be. I would be very unhappy. So not only do those words have no meaning, but they’re also again, a really poor motivator because all we have to do is adjust your lifestyle to where you are independently solvent right now

Caller #1:

It’s close anyway.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, so the question then really becomes, and this might be for everybody, but anybody that wanted to open an ice cream store or anything like that,

Caller #1:

Oh, the ice cream store gait. You don’t have to open that thing.

Christopher T. Anderson:

What are you trying to accomplish here? Because that’s what takes us all way farther than this silly notion of enough money to pay the bills. That is a never ending treadmill. And the biggest symptom is exactly what you’re talking about. Don’t have enough cases, don’t have enough lawyers, don’t have enough cases, don’t have enough lawyers. Why? Because you’re not building. You’re just growing.

Caller #1:

Yes, 110%. That’s what’s happened.

Christopher T. Anderson:

What is it called in your body when things grow without building something, you’re becoming a cancer on your own life where you’re letting your business become a cancer on your own life.

Caller #1:

Oh, that went right into my heart, Chris, why are you doing this to me in front of God and everybody? Oh,

Christopher T. Anderson:

But cancer happens because growth happens without following the genetic instructions that tell you what you’re building. And so just like with your business, if you don’t give it to genetic instructions as to what you’re building, then growth will run away in unpredictable, unhealthy ways that will end up killing the organism and maybe you, so it all does still go back to the work you haven’t done, which is what am I doing here? What am I doing with this? Why am I doing, why do I own this business? What is the purpose of this business? And you should answer that question in three vectors. What is the purpose? The most important one for me and my stakeholders, the people who have a claim on your time, your family, your friends, whoever you feel has the right to your presence from time to time and yourself, what is it supposed to do for me and for them? Because you take time away from those people to put in your business so they deserve a return on that investment and you deserve a return on that investment. So you should determine what that return is going to be. Two, your team, what is the business supposed to do for them? And three, your clients, what’s the business supposed to do for them? And not just your clients, but all the potential clients in the world. What are you trying to accomplish?

Caller #1:

The team and clients seem relatively straightforward and easy to me.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Is it? What are you trying to do for your clients?

Caller #1:

Help ’em in their marriage? Well,

Christopher T. Anderson:

No, that’s stuff you’re trying to do for each client. What are you trying to do for all the clients in the world that you might want to serve? What are you trying to do in the world for clients that are out there, prospective clients, people? What are you trying to do? What’s the purpose of your business?

Caller #1:

Is that rhetorical or do you want me to

Christopher T. Anderson:

Sort of, but you have to answer it, but so I’ll give you a hint. An immigration firm I know that some of you may know set out to, and now I’m going to butcher it, I don’t remember the number, but set out to help 10,000 people immigrant immigrate to the United States legally. That was their goal. That’s what they were out there in the world to do is to help 10,000 people do it. Why 10,000? Well, because there was a shortfall of this or that. There’s a whole story behind it. I’m not going to get into it, but 10,000 was a meaningful number that meant something to them. Notice how it had nothing to do with revenues to help 10,000 people, and then they also had a personal goal and then they had the client goal and then their team to help people have a workplace where they feel respected and stuff like that.

In my firms, we’re trying to change the way that disputes are resolved in the United States, so we’re doing some very innovative things with the way that we practice and the way that we’re building the practices so that they’re not the same as the way the rest of them are done. Why is Bill Gates one of the richest people in the world? Well, he wanted to put a computer on every desktop in America. That’s why he didn’t decide he needed to make whatever the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation is worth. He didn’t say, I need 168 billion, whatever the number is. He said, I want to put a computer on every desktop in America because that will make everybody’s lives better. And in order to do that, he had to make a certain amount of money. It was unavoidable, but that wasn’t the purpose. Deciding how much money we need gets this, I don’t know.

I don’t even like to play with people at that level. It’s just such a beginning level of really what drives great businesses and great business leaders. It’s deciding the bigger things. What am I trying to do for the world? What am I trying to do for myself? What am I trying to do for my client, for my team that really move the needle? It’s for me next to an impossible thing to do by yourself. And so I’ve only achieved it by working with coaches that I trust to work me through a process. It is a process. It’s not a long process. It’s not like three years in a program process. It’s a three to four day process to go through understanding it from the very biggest level all the way down to what I got to do tomorrow to make it happen. And then all of a sudden all these questions about do I have enough people? Do I have enough team? Do I have enough clients? Do I have enough team? They all go away because there’s now a DNA that you’re following that says, well, this month we’re going to have this many new clients and this many hires, and next month we’re going to add this many clients and we’re going to have this many hires because that’s what works. That’s what gets us to this goal because we have to grow to a certain size in order to achieve the goals that we’ve set.

Caller #1:

I asked this sort of question a lot and often I come back to this same point. I think I need help. I mean, I have some pretty good senses and I mean I’m divorced myself. I went through a whole thing. I really do want to help people equip them to do it the best they can so they get on with their life. They can improve, they can be better, they can reach their full potential and have a good awakened life like, yo, wake up, you can do this differently. Divorce is one tool that gets you there. Here’s how you do it. It’s not really that hard and complicated. It does not have to be that horrible. I promise I can help you. I mean that is in my heart. So figuring out how that plays out and then I think, so that’s one part of it.

And then the other part of it I think is a mindset thing because the way it’s gone. For me, even starting the firm, I was like, I wonder if I could start a firm. I did it. I don’t know. Cool. And now I did 500,000. Oh, well, it’s like it all kind of happens and I’m like, for a while it felt probably improving yourself concept, self-identity or whatever. But then to say to getting to a point of like, I’m going to do X, Y, Z. Even I did a business plan this year for this year, I sort of like, okay, what’s the function of taking what it is now and increase? And I was like, what number am I going to pick on the other side? I mean, I literally just did

Christopher T. Anderson:

Get away from numbers. You just said something really cool that you’ve been divorced, you’ve been through the process, you want to make it, and I couldn’t quite remember everything you said about, but I’m just going to summarize better for people going through the process in the future, what does better mean and what would you have to do for most people in your state, your region or the country to believe there is a better way? What would you have to do in order to get your voice loud enough and in front of enough people that they would actually believe there’s a better way?

Caller #1:

Do you want me to say

Christopher T. Anderson:

If I think it’ll take some thinking to know the answer, but go ahead.

Caller #1:

I mean, well, I have things that immediately come to mind, immediately come to mind would have to be hone in the way I do my social media to get, technically

Christopher T. Anderson:

You’re telling me how I don’t care about how right now, what would it take? How many people would you have to work with? How many people would you have to get in front of social media is just a tool. How many people would have to know your name?

Caller #1:

I mean, I see it as a world where it becomes synonymous with demystifying the whole thing. It’s just not that complicated, honestly. But the lawyer, we try to make it that way.

Christopher T. Anderson:

That’s a great message. How big a difference do you want to make?

Caller #1:

I really want everybody to know, and the other thing I want to do is help people who can’t afford us who has $50,000 laying around to pay to get divorced. Not many people I know

Christopher T. Anderson:

Everybody.

Caller #1:

Well, I mean, yeah, they come up with it, but up there are some people who literally cannot there. That is a fact that is outside the scope, but then folks still need to get divorced. I want to help them too. They should be able to do it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, well, but then you build a business where you can set aside resources to help the people, but then that probably increases the size of that. That business needs to be so that you can peel off a certain amount of profits to put towards helping people that can’t otherwise afford it.

Caller #1:

I’m going to teach them how to do it themselves. You give them,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Teach them, but how many people do you need to get in front of in order to teach them how this is an exercise. We’re never going to finish it. Like I said, this is in order to do this, right, it takes days because it involves really breaking everything down to the beginning and it’s getting all the way to core. Where we built, again, I didn’t use the words DNA by accident. It is redoing the DNA of everything. It’s a gene replacement therapy.

Caller #2:

Just to go off of what you just said, we have been trying to work out a different department to help the people that can’t afford us because it is super important to me to help people that grew up like me that couldn’t afford an attorney. So this is something we’ve been working on for a while and haven’t perfected, so I love that.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Great.

Caller #1:

When I got divorced, me, when I went through what I went through, I only was able to do it because I had a rich boyfriend.

Christopher T. Anderson:

If you can lead on this, you could lead other firms to show them how, or you could create a foundation and make it possible for firms to, there’s so many things you could do.

Caller #1:

I doubt I’m going to build like a 25 gajillion law firm. It’s inertia, it’s in motion, it’s

Christopher T. Anderson:

You’ll build it as large as it needs to be, but if we don’t have the DNA, it will all fall in on itself and it will eat itself alive. Seeing it been it, it’s not pretty.

Announcer:

Our next segment is Christopher’s and Rob’s response to a lawyer who wants to take extended time off for the holidays.

Christopher T. Anderson:

We had a question come in, which is I think totally appropriate for this time of year. This was a law firm leader that wanted to take off for the holidays and doesn’t feel like they’re able to, and this is, I get this question this time of year quite frequently, and so Rob, I’m going to put it to you and then I’ll feed back a little bit. But so the question is obviously the person who’s asking hasn’t successfully done it before, wants to take two weeks out of the office over the holidays and just doesn’t even know where to begin for, how to be able to trust their team not to burn the place down during those two weeks. And I think this is all, as we’ve grown in our own business, is something we’ve all faced and a decision we’ve all faced. How should we help our listeners think about that in their own businesses? How can they step away from their business and why it’s such a really great idea to do it? Rob Il, you take first crack at that and then I’ll wrap it up.

Robert Leitner:

Okay, well, some preliminary thoughts. If the law firm owner is having a little bit of trepidation about possibility about going away for two weeks, I would first want to unpack whether this is a mindset issue or if this is really based upon business and operational reality. Meaning maybe this person has gone away before and there were issues, or maybe this person has gone away before and it ran kind of smoothly and they’re just nervous for any particular reason about this time. A couple ideas that are pretty important. Number one, I would suggest that we’ll offer a motor to define the red lines of power and authority while they’re out of the office. Who is responsible for what? Make sure there’s a clear chain of command, number one. Number two, what decisions must involve them if any? Clearly define the lines of communication, how the owner wants to communicate, when what form.

Maybe there’s a call once a day with the managers. Maybe it is through Slack, maybe it’s through email, maybe it’s through texts. Typically you would define one person in the office, maybe even an executive assistant who has daily access to the law firm owner while they’re away. And that is the conduit that everyone must use going up and down the chain of command. Hopefully the law firm owner has gone away and done at least a test, a two or three or five day test before and then you can debrief afterwards and improve upon what did not work that well. That’s kind how I would start. It’s very healthy for the firm. When the law firm owner leaves, they realize a lot of things and a lot of times the firm, the employees, they step up and they realize a lot of things as well. My final point would be that empowerment is a two-way street. The law firm owner has to empower others to act on their behalf within limits, and you have to have employees that accept that empowerment and embrace it and want to step up when the law firm owner is out of the office and those types of employees should be identified and celebrated. Frankly, that’s how I’d begin.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I think that’s absolutely spot on, so I’m not going to embellish that too much other than to say until you do it, you don’t have a business. If you’re feeling that, you’re obviously this person is asking the question is definitely coming from a place of fear about being able or willing to do it. The other thing to think about with it is that how cool that you’re going to test this first when you want to do it as opposed to when you have to do it when you get sick, when somebody close to you gets sick, when you have to be away for whatever reason from the business and you haven’t planned for it. So even if you’re not thinking about it, folks out there think about it and like Rob said, it doesn’t have to be two weeks the first time, take three days away, then take five, then take seven, then take 14, then take 30

Announcer:

For our last segment, an attorney wrestles with the red flags present in a job candidate.

Caller #3:

I interviewed an attorney candidate from a cultural standpoint, all aligns very nice, we got along, blah, blah, blah. I got her writing sample back and what became evidently clear is very contradictory to what, not only what we talked about, but some fatal flaws in her writing sample. One was, I do this, I call it a closed universe test, and we give her as if it would be in real life. Here’s an assignment, here’s the backstory. Right across motion, right? We made up an adversary, we made up a case file and I said, pretty to test issue spotting to make sure that I want to see the creative writing and how she puts everything, how she thinks, right? How these candidates think. So we gave that to her and what came back was not at all what I expected and what came back was a New York, well, I shouldn’t say that, but came back as a letter brief, not a cross motion or a reply certification in the client’s narrative.

Now, granted, our instructions were a responsive pleading, so we were thrilled that she went to the legal brief as if that was at a companion to a normal New Jersey process. So what I discovered through this exercise was that she does not have any New Jersey law. She really has no New Jersey law experience. Her brief sounded like it was by ai, but we put it through an AI plagiarism thing and it said 98% human, which meant I was like, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, because I thought it was AI and to the point that it didn’t jive a hundred percent right. It fell short and there was no creativity. Anyway, my point is, oh, and she spelled my name wrong twice, and she didn’t finish an

Christopher T. Anderson:

Address. Just like 1 25 Main.

Caller #3:

Yeah, main Street. No, 1 25 Main Street. Oh, and she got the county wrong because on the sample exercise we said Bergen County, she put Hudson County with the Bergen County address, but just left it Main Street. Yeah. So listen, at the end of the day, this isn’t necessarily what I was going for because now we’re realizing that, and I asked one of my associates to have an objective eye to it after many hours of discussion, we came to a conclusion of either having her redo it to say no, do a New Jersey cross motion and let her figure it out, or just letting her go and saying, you know what? This is a project. Even if he came on board, she might have potential. She seems smart. She’s a researcher by nature, but her disc wasn’t that great.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Has she presented herself as a New Jersey experienced lawyer?

Caller #3:

Sort of, yes. She did not present herself as a New Jersey experience lawyer. She didn’t say, look, I haven’t spent a lot. She didn’t come right out and say, I haven’t spent a lot of time in New Jersey, so I really want to learn this jurisdiction. What she said is the New Jersey firm she’s been at, she hasn’t gotten the experience that she was thinking she was going to be getting, and she’s looking for a place to land. She has a lot of New York experience and North Carolina, and she said North Carolina is more in line with New Jersey, but the places she’s been at in New Jersey, I think one of the places she was at in New Jersey was a bigger firm in Newark, and she explained it that the department was really more of there of a, they didn’t get any outside clients. It was more of a service to their in-house, other clients from other departments. But I have a feeling that that firm did mostly stuff in New York, and so she used her New York experience. She lived in Jersey at the time, so I think they plopped her in the New Jersey office, but she was working on New York case. Got it.

I need clarification. This is my piecing story together. And then she went to one firm that was a hundred percent New Jersey based, but there was some drama there early on, and I don’t have clarity. It’s my fault. I didn’t ask how long she was actually there, but it sounded like not long enough. But I have to tell you, Chris, even if she was there for two weeks and they had her do something, you know how to file a cross motion in New Jersey. I mean, that’s the first thing you learn.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay. Actually, Rob, I thought you might have some insight onto this one.

Caller #3:

Alright, so hold on. So the question is, do I just say, eh pass or do I try to resuscitate this and get some clarity?

Robert Leitner:

Well, just based upon the fact pattern as you presented, I would say this is probably not a rehab project. You probably know everything you need to know. You see a little bit of potential, and that’s cool. So it’s tempting, but I would say that if you quantify this, she probably receives way less than an eight out of 10 on the assignment and the potential as such, I would let this candidate go and spend my efforts elsewhere.

Caller #3:

I agree, and I think I can hold out. I have another person starting, I think I can hold out for a better quality candidate.

Robert Leitner:

Sounds like that may be a good

Caller #3:

Call. I just felt in the moment, a little desperate, but I need to remind myself I’m not so desperate.

Robert Leitner:

And the fact that you’re mentioning that is great. You never want to make a decision, have desperation or fear or insecurity, and the fact that you’re acknowledging that is awesome.

Christopher T. Anderson:

But to me, it sounds like this person needs a strong, he’s going to come in as a very junior person and needs a strong training role for probably an extended period of time before you’ll get real value out of her.

Caller #3:

Yeah,

Christopher T. Anderson:

She’ll be happier somewhere else.

Caller #3:

Yeah, and I don’t know if I have even that energy or willpower at this moment in time.

Christopher T. Anderson:

With that, I think we’ll wish everybody a great and healthy holiday season. We’ll be back with you all on the third Thursday of December. As a reminder, also, you can catch the episodes of the Unbillable Hour. We got lots of great new guests coming out here on the Legal Talk Network, legal talk network.com. You can leave your questions for the community table on our show page, which is legal talk network.com/unbillable, hour on dash billable dash hour, or we created this brand new ready to go URL for you, where you can leave information or questions that we will answer during the [email protected] slash ask me anything, all one word, ask me anything. Until then, we’ll see you back live the third Thursday at three o’clock Eastern 10:00 PM in Athens, Greece, where we’re coming from today. So from there, I hope you all have a wonderful season. We’ll talk to you all soon.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. This has been Unbillable Hours Community Table with Clio on the Legal Talk Network.

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