Community Table: Firing an Employee, Ever-changing Marketing, and Moving to a New City

Episode Notes

Transcript

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. In our first segment, an attorney is facing the consequences of waiting too long to fire an employee.

Caller #1:

I need to fire an attorney immediately and I’m scared. I’m not scared to do it. I’m scared of the repercussions of doing it because it’s all going to fall back on me

Christopher T. Anderson:

As it does, right. I mean, that’s all why we don’t fire people way too long. And the repercussions from that, I mean, I think attorneys tend to make the move when they feel the repercussions for not firing are starting to exceed the repercussions for firing. So do you want to understanding, now obviously we anonymize things on the show, but do you want to give a little bit more meat and potatoes to understand the situation you’re in? What is not working out for you?

Caller #1:

Lenny? It’s easier to say what is working for me. What is working for me is that he’s a very nice person and he doesn’t steal.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Those are harder,

Caller #1:

But everything else is not working for me. He doesn’t prioritize. He gets confused. He only has a docket of 10 cases, so it’s not that it’s overly excessive or he is overburdened. I’m sitting here now rewriting an entire cross motion because it took them three days to do this and it is terrible. And it’s not even stylistic. It’s devoid of legal persuasion. It’s devoid of a legal theory. It’s devoid of facts that have any sort of tying it together to present your case. Three days, and this was supposed to be in my hands for me to review on Tuesday at 6:00 PM He didn’t get it to me at eight 30. I’m like, where is it? He ignored my team’s message. I was not a nice person the next morning about it. And here we are, it’s due today and here I am from since 1230 rewriting the whole thing. And under my comp model, like we talked about, I’m writing off all his time in exchange for mine

Christopher T. Anderson:

Or

Caller #1:

At least 90% of it in exchange for mine. The client’s a little annoyed, Hey, no, it’s due today. Am I going to get a copy? I’m like, yeah, you should have gotten a copy on Wednesday. We have planned out, but he got delayed and then I rearranged my whole schedule just,

Christopher T. Anderson:

And this is one episode of many. I mean this isn’t like, yeah,

Caller #1:

Yeah. This is a pattern. This is not a one-off. Absolutely. I can’t do this anymore. I’m becoming someone I do not like when I interact with him.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So one of the people that I really turned to when it comes to personnel issues is Rob Lightner. He really helps both to fight the urge to keep people too long and also analyze and help make that decision. So I’d like to turn the first part of this response over to you, Rob, because Yeah,

Caller #1:

I’m sorry. Let me clarify. The decision has been made. The decision was made weeks ago pending a replacement. That replacement has yet to manifest itself,

Christopher T. Anderson:

And so now you’re facing that you really just need to make the choice, make the move now, even though you don’t have the replacement yet.

Caller #1:

And we’re at capacity with him.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah,

Caller #1:

Beyond. I got another three clients, Christopher. It’s a long complicated, but yeah, here we are.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Got it. Rob, what are your thoughts?

Robert Leitner:

Okay, so the decision was made weeks ago. We don’t yet have a replacement in place, which you had planned on, which is good. A couple of points. Number one, I would suggest trying to take the emotion out of this. Obviously this person is not performing and is hurting the firm. Most important, we have to support the clients. So whatever decision you make and the timing you make must be focused on can we service the clients and what’s best for the firm. Okay, so that’s number one. Obviously we need to make sure that the work can be covered by someone else.

Caller #1:

Nope.

Robert Leitner:

Okay. So that’s pretty important. Operationally, this is easy. You can follow the offboarding checklist.

Caller #1:

Yeah, no

Robert Leitner:

Problem. I don’t know if this person has an employment contract with the firm or not. If they do, I would recommend making sure you’re checking the terms of that agreement to make sure that we are fully compliant. Obviously someone who’s a nice person, that’s not a factor that goes into our calculation of ROI. So we’re going to take what you’re saying about his or her performance at face value. Okay, so what do we do now if you terminate this person immediately versus letting this person stay on, which is the greater evil right now in terms of we must support the clients.

Caller #1:

I don’t know what’s happening is I’m behind the scenes shadowing to save his ass from committing malpractice 17 ways from Sunday. But anyhow, but even then he’s not a hundred percent executing it correctly. And then because of cognitive confusion, he is passing off ideas as his own, which is okay, I don’t need the credit for it, but yet in the billing entries you’ll see that I was the one who suggested the thing. So there’s just a disconnect and it’s not intentional, it’s just the unaware. So to answer your question, I don’t know. I’m doing it anyway, so I’m like, I might as well just fricking do it.

Robert Leitner:

What grade would you give this person out of 10? Scale of 10, 10 being fantastic. What’s their grade overall?

Caller #1:

C minus D plus.

Robert Leitner:

Alright, so what number would that be out of 10.

Caller #1:

Oh, you need, oh, sorry. Sorry. I was thinking of the other matrix. So just equivalent four,

Robert Leitner:

So four out of 10. So your choice is do you keep a resource that you rate is a four out of 10 and there are ramifications and consequences, or do you get rid of that resource and there are additional ramifications and consequences. This also points to the need of always having a bench. Do you have someone of counsel you can turn to? Do you have someone who used to work for you that you still have a great relationship with that you can possibly get involved? I’m just talking in terms of capacity and getting the legal work done in the interim period till we can replace this.

Caller #1:

Is that a rhetorical question?

Robert Leitner:

Well, it’s both. I mean, do you have a resource we can rely upon? We can call in.

Caller #1:

So no, but not, I already have the resources utilized. I already have two of councils there at capacity.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So to fill in has been recruiting, not just for this replacement, but for others. She’s known she’s at capacity and is in a difficult hiring environment.

Caller #1:

I never stop recruiting. I’ve been recruiting every day I recruit. So it’s not that for lack of not wanting a bench, it just hasn’t come to fruition. And I’m onboarding a new paralegal, so that could help. But the attorney tree has not shooken where I need it to shake. And so my of counsels that I already have are at capacity. I reached out to another colleague of mine that Christopher knows she has her own. She just separated from a partner, but she’s at capacity. Everyone in new is at capacity. And I’m not joking. Family law people are getting out of family law in new, they don’t want to do it. They’re changing careers. So the pool is getting smaller and smaller. And then I interviewed a LawClerk, or I guess she’s out eight months. She got let go from her prior position. So I thought there would be some synergy there, but she didn’t want to do any effort to learn.

Robert Leitner:

Okay. So you stated the facts. Generally, if someone’s rated a four out of 10, they’re gone.

Caller #1:

There’s

Robert Leitner:

Not too much to say about it. They’re gone. We have to make sure we, it’s going to be tied on everyone else. It’s going to add work to everyone else’s plate, but they’re gone. So is your question, you’re looking for support for this decision to let this person go immediately? You said the decision was made weeks ago, it’s obviously coming to a head. What’s really your question or decision you’re thinking about?

Caller #1:

Yeah, I guess I just need to walk through what I can do as a bandaid solution. If I let this happen asap. I mean, I know what to do. I’ve done this before. I’ve been a solo before and when I let three lawyers go at once, so I know how to do it, but I don’t know when I’m supposed to do all this. Even if I chime in, I’d be doing it all versus 80% or 70%.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Right? Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. It sounds like you’re doing the work already, so it’s not like a hundred percent of the work to use your is going to start piling onto your plate already there.

Caller #1:

But it’s the extra 2020 5% where hey, call the client. Hey, deal with the emails. Hey,

Christopher T. Anderson:

I’ve got some more answers for you, but I wanted Danielle to chime in before I come on in and give you the final word. So Danielle, you’ve been listening to this. You run your own people and you support a team and you work with a lot of law firms that face this decision. So what are you hearing and seeing? And the advice we’re giving here is for our listeners who there’s lots of ’em out. They’re facing the same exact decision. We all fire too slow.

Danielle Hendon:

It’s less about what I hear and what it’s more about what I think you need to hear. You’re losing money every single day. You have this person on staff.

Caller #1:

I am not.

Danielle Hendon:

You’re not losing even what their utilization rates. So that’s where I was. I like if we’re losing money every day, why are we not just getting rid of them? So the utilization is still covering their payroll?

Caller #1:

That’s right. And my comp structure is a bit unique, so they only get paid on what they bill and collect. So if I cut time, they don’t get paid.

Danielle Hendon:

That is unique. So your billing and comp structure is different than any other, I’m like, you’re losing money every single day. This is get rid of them. Oh, I would’ve done that

Caller #1:

If it wasn’t for this comp structure. A hundred percent. This would’ve happened weeks ago, months ago probably.

Danielle Hendon:

But then I would also turn around and say, your comp structure is going to reward those that step up and step in and get this taken care of for you as well.

Caller #1:

Yes, yes.

Danielle Hendon:

And you’ve got the structure in place to encourage and empower your team to help take care of this while you solve the HR dilemma. Yeah,

Christopher T. Anderson:

And so that dovetails nicely with what I was going to say. First of all, unless he is, which he may be entirely clueless, the fact that you are doing this work and wiping it off of his billable time and putting it onto yours, having to redo it, he’s going to quit.

Caller #1:

Fine.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I know, but the point being is you can decide to let the timing be his or yours. The other thing that you said that I think is key here is that you’ve got 10 cases, and I know everybody’s at capacity, but everybody’s going to have to go above capacity. But if you spread it out, it’s to each including you, but we spread it out, spread it thin, and we get with our recruiting team and put more fire under it to say like, listen, we are bursting. And then the last one is, and this one’s the most painful, is that you might have to start referring clients sales out and not take ’em. But from that perspective, don’t be willy-nilly, just raise theBar. Just create criteria. Say, okay, for the time being, cases that we’re going to take are a cases only that have these criteria, this level of income, this level of complexity, whatever other criteria we want to talk about is what fits your skillset and your team skillset the best and for the time being, anything that doesn’t meet this raised bar gets referred with your thanks and gratitude, which will make you some friends.

And then when you get your recruiting done and higher, you can bring theBar back down to not a low level, but to a level that is more befitting the rest of the team that you’ve got.

Caller #1:

I’m glad you said that because I actually already thought about that, but then I got stuck a little bit because my sales team has their incentive and their money.

Christopher T. Anderson:

You got to pay ’em for what you refer,

Caller #1:

But then they don’t have the client happiness calls on the backend.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Make a deal with referral sources that your team will do that and that you are expecting them to pay them for it.

Caller #1:

They pay them for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Listen, I’ve got this great referral to you. Here’s the thing, my team’s incentivized. I’m going to have more referrals for you. My team is incentivized to make sure that they’re onboarded well. I’d really like to have them continue on that as long as it doesn’t create a conflict for you on that. For this in order as a condition of giving you this referral, would you be okay with paying them X dollars to complete that work so that I can keep them generating cases for me, which apparently is now generating cases for you. That’s just a conversation I have. I know some of the people that you would talk to would probably be more than willing to listen to that suggestion.

Caller #1:

That’s a good idea.

Danielle Hendon:

I was going to say standard practice. Usually a lot of practices have some form of referral fees, so it’s not going to be completely off base to be like, I need you to cover this thing so that we can keep the wheels moving.

Caller #1:

Yeah. Family law has, we’re not allowed to do referral fees, but

Christopher T. Anderson:

This is not a referral fee,

Caller #1:

Isn’t that? That’s not that This is a No, it’s covering a cost. It’s covering a cost. Yeah, absolutely. And then a really nice birthday gift. Yeah.

Robert Leitner:

I would also just have having a full case review on these 10 files. Let’s see what can be delegated down. Maybe the work and the deadlines are not as severe as we think. Obviously push down to the paralegals as much as possible, and if it’s difficult to get attorney support right now, get someone else in, maybe we can get additional paralegal support and push some of those tasks down and free up capacity that way.

Caller #1:

Yeah, I agree. And when the new paralegal gets up and running, that’s exactly the plan.

Danielle Hendon:

The other thing I want to point out by getting rid of this person and spreading the work, because I can hear the stress in your voice. It’s not you doing all of it

Caller #1:

And

Danielle Hendon:

It’s spreading it out so that you aren’t getting burnt out and you can do what you need to do to run the business and not just be in the business the whole time.

Caller #1:

Yeah, fair. Totally fair.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. Okay. I know this is stressful, but this is where it is. Can you just, let’s round it out. Where are we? I know you have talked with new recruiting talent. Where are we with them getting started and cranking up? I know that the word from the recruiting street is that attorney recruiting is still tight. Paralegal recruiting is getting easier, but they feel like they’re going to be able to get you some candidates.

Caller #1:

So he already started poking around despite we finalizing the terms. He sent me the revised thing yesterday, so I just have to sign it, but he’s already been poking around, so he’s retired cop. He’s been doing his thing over there and he’s hearing that a lot of attorneys are not happy. So I said, great. I mean, great, not great, and so I’m interested to see who those are and dah, dah, dah, dah. So we’re getting there. I will put a fire. I might give him a bonus, so if you can get me someone in three weeks, I’ll give you an extra $5,000.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, I wouldn’t start there. Since it’s a new relationship, he’s got every sense incentive in the world to do a good job would actually, this is a universe thing. I think I would say to him out loud, I’ve really got, I know we talked before, pressure was high, but now it’s really high, so your ability to come through is going to be really good for our relationship. I would leave it there. I don’t think money’s going to make a big difference.

Danielle Hendon:

Yeah, okay. Yeah, you don’t want to incentivize them to put anyone in the door. You want the right person in the door. Yes.

Announcer:

Our next segment is centered around what Christopher and Rob believe are the diminishing returns of pay per click.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Another issue that we’ve been seeing out in the world that you talked about, and that certainly we experienced too, which is, and it’s a funny one, I’ll kind of riff on it for a second, and not funny, it was in Haha, but funny in that it is totally predictable and will continue to be predictable in similar ways. It all goes back to the concept that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever marketing Avenue channel technique strategy that you as a law firm owner might engage in that has a remarkably good ROI and I hope you find them and we will help you find them, but it will degrade over time because it’s hard to keep a secret. It’s particularly hard to keep a secret because the provider of that channel has no interest in keeping it a secret. They have an interest in maximizing their return on their whatever it is, magazine, radio station, internet, website, billboard, sky writing, whatever they want to and deserve to get a maximum return on that.

And so they’re going to continue to market and provide that resource to others. Or if it’s not a person to vendor, others will figure it out and drive up the cost. We’ve seen that with multiple things. But Rob, you were suggesting earlier that there’s one in particular that you’ve seen where law firms are starting to have a more difficult time getting good ROI from paid search, from search engine marketing, particularly Google Ads. So tell me a little bit about what you’re seeing, what you think is going on and how firms are reacting to it and what they should be doing.

Robert Leitner:

Yeah, that’s an excellent intro. You hit the nail on the head. I find that a lot of law firms are becoming disenchanted with pay per-click, particularly on Google AdWords, meaning the golden age is over for pay per click. It is becoming very expensive in most markets and most practices, you’re not getting as good of an ROI the leads. They’re just not as much quality as there used to be, and the volume of leads down, so cost of acquisitions going higher, cost per clicks going up, and it’s a difficult time because unfortunately many firms rely on pay per-click to bring in the leads. It’s in fact, for a lot of firms, it’s their number one source for leads that is dangerous. The points is diversification and ROI. It’s also a risk, a huge risk to the firm. If you’re relying on any source that’s digital, you are one algorithm change away from having a real big problem.

Think about that, and a lot of these firms threw tons of money into pay per click and it’s okay as long as they’re getting a good ROI. If Google changes the rules of the game, which they have done in the past and they do it without any notice, it’s a big problem. You need to diversify against that risk. You need to hedge against that risk. And I’ll give you a couple bullet points here. If you’re a firm who relies on pay per click and you’ve been unhappy recently, you’re not getting the results you need, I would suggest pivoting toward search engine optimization, SEO, and most firms are already engaged in SEO, pick up the pace. SEO is just a word. You need to speak with your digital marketing vendor and determine what is included. What does that mean? Are you getting a certain amount of blogs?

Are you posting a certain amount of videos? How many backlinks are you getting? What’s the quality of those backlinks? Are they using an age domain strategy of some sort? Exactly. What are you getting for your money? Too many of us sign a contract with the digital marketing firm that provides SEO. That’s a couple thousand dollars a month and we don’t really engage. Keep in mind it’s not up to the marketing company to understand the trends in your industry and the new keywords and the new forms and the new documents and all the latest. It’s up to you to feed that information to the marketing company. Your meetings every month should be a back and forth iterative process. It is not just them presenting a report to do that. They could just email it to you. We all can read if you want to diversify. So we’re taking the scenario of pay-per-click and we’re not getting a very good return anymore. So pivot toward SEO, put a lot of resources into SEO. It’s another channel, another marketing channel. Just like anything else, think about business development, old school, business development, relationships, networking. Do you require your attorneys or others to attend networking events? What does that look like? What are the requirements? If you want to know if your firm is engaged in a lot of business development and networking, figure out how many attorneys have requested a new order of their business cards.

I guarantee you for a lot of firms, it’s not a whole heck of a lot. I’ll tell you, create videos, videos, videos, videos. Keep in mind on Google search, when you type in search criteria, the results come back. Now, video is included in the results, not just text. However, we’ve not advanced to the point of where Google searches your video. It only really searches the description. Make sure you are putting quality descriptions. That’s what’s going to be searched by the spiders on Google, and that is what will determine if your results are returned down. Video results. Next, content, content, content. You should have a ton of content and you should be repurposing content. If you write a blog, the blog could be the script for a video. It should be a blog on your website. It could be posted on social media, it could be a video with description, and there you go. Obviously social media is another big channel to exploit and I highly recommend getting into referral. Networking and marketing. Referrals are another marketing channel, just like anything else. It should be nurtured and there should be a budget. We’re talking about client referrals and we’re talking about attorney referrals and we’re talking about other professional referrals like a marriage counselor or a therapist or CPA, something like that. Final point, I recommend testing your pay per click in Bing

M, soft Bing against Google because Microsoft Windows is still predominantly, I think it’s on 70 something percent, the operating system at 70 something percent of computers, their default engine is bay. Not everyone knows how to change it. Bing is actually coming on and their AI initiatives as well are gaining momentum. You could do the same. You could do the same exact AB test on both compare it and see what kind of results you get. Finally, you already have a base of clients, former clients and PNCs who have inquired previously where you can cross sell and upsell your services market to your own base. It’s cheap and it’s effective because you already have a trusted relationship with that segment.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, no, I think those are all great points, and first of all, the law of diminishing returns, which I mentioned kind of earlier, is just we all need to understand that it is called the law of diminishing returns, not the, sometimes it happens diminishing returns, and it’s because anything that you’re doing will have diminishing returns and the constant refreshing, like you said, content, content, content, but just refreshing of also tactic strategies. Media is essential. The public is changing every day. I predict that the AI is going to change this again, as people ask, stop asking Google and stop doing Google searches and start just asking chat GPT or open AI or whatever their artificial intelligence engine of choice is. Apple intelligence is now coming on. You could bet they’re going to play hard and they’re going to be asking Siri. They’re going to be asking Alexa. They’re going to be asking whatever the Google one’s called. Hey Google, I just lit up everybody’s stuff. Hey, Google, add Christopher Anderson and Sunnyside services to your search engine.

These are all going to be new areas, and you know what? In the beginning, they’re going to be really efficient and you’re going to get good ROI on them, and then everybody’s going to start doing it, and your ROI will decrease. So what I was saying is the age old truth is that, A, you will get diminished returns on everything. So B, you have to, and you said it, Rob, diversify, diversify, diversify. Always be thinking about where you’re putting your message out. And don’t just SEO is a great concept and Rob spent a lot of time on that and that’s really important, but also be thinking non-digital. I think referral networking gets short shift by a lot of firms and it’s hugely, I mean these are people like Rob said, they know you, like you, trust you. They’re there. They want to give you referrals, but if you would only tell them how and who you want to refer them to, refer to you, take steps to do that, but also be looking for other things.

Networking is also important because it puts you two things. One, don’t confuse networking with hanging out with your friends. They’re different things. If you are networking among a lot of other lawyers who do what you do, you’re not networking, you’re just having drinks. But if you network among folks who could be referral sources, then you’re also putting yourself in an environment that is referral source rich. You are hanging out where your possible clients are or where your possible referral sources are, and by just hanging out and talking to a few people, you’ll learn more about your market and how to talk to them so that your ads, your paid search, your SEO, your videos, all the things Rob talked about, speak better to your audience, and B, you’ll start to actually get referrals from folks because you’re showing up and they’re showing up.

Announcer:

Our last segment is Chris’s and Rob’s response to a new attorney who seeks advice for starting a firm in a brand new city.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So Rob, that was a really great question. How does a new attorney for an example in New York City but is moving to Salt Lake City, thank you and wants to hang out a shingle, just wants to go into business in this totally different city where they have no family, no referral sources, no, no knowledge, they’re just going to plop down and start a life. What should they do first?

Robert Leitner:

I think I’m going to punt this one back to you. I only have a couple of bullet points, so I think I’m going to punt it back to you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Why don’t we hit yours, your bullet points and

Robert Leitner:

Then I’ll take it. Okay. Well, if you’re going to a new city as a new lawyer, you certainly need to do as much networking as you can as quickly as you can. Whether that means joining local legal associations, BNI, chamber of Commerce, specialty groups, et cetera. The name of the game is going to be network, network, network. Make sure you’re getting your name out there. I would also want to know if you have any family or friends at all who live in the city that you could leverage and get the word out there a little bit.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, we’re just going to presume they’re not on the lamb, right? They’re going there for a reason. They hopefully knows somebody,

Robert Leitner:

He’s on the lamp. So let’s start there. As far as marketing, you’re going to need to market, you’re going to need a budget, you’re going to need a website. I’d make sure that your search engine, your organic search engine marketing, that you have a plan for it. I would make sure that you’re on Google My Business. Basically you want to come up on the first or second page on Google search results when someone is looking for your specialty in your area. That’s where I would start.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Great. Yeah, and I think I can’t find fault in any of that. I think those are absolutely great places to start, but I think in your recitation it did. It just made me think about you went there for a reason. You went to law school in New York or you graduated there, but you’re going to move to Salt Lake. There’s probably a reason why and leverage that reason, whatever it is. It would be the girl you met in law school lives there, fine. That means she has friends and family or your best friend is there and you guys wanted to start a firm together or whatever it is. Definitely leverage that. And then the networking that you said, network, network, network are really important. The other thing that I would add to that, and it’s been my experience, is that although we have a reputation for being a pretty competitive industry, the law individual practitioners, I have found to be extraordinarily generous of their time and their referrals.

Maybe not everybody, but wherever you’re moving, reach out to find a mentor or two and let people know that you’re coming and you want to start a business. People will refer you business, maybe the stuff they don’t want themselves or that they wouldn’t refer to, their best referral source, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You take anything when you’re just starting and you just do it. So reach out. So how do you find a mentor? You’re like, well, I’m going to this new city. I don’t know anybody. You know somebody, you went to college somewhere. If you graduated law school, you went to college and you went to law school. So there are alums in your new city, almost any law school you went to. If you’re going to another city, there are alums there. Wherever you go, there are alums of your college there. If you were in a fraternity or a sorority, there are alumni of those.

There are people from your hometown who live there. There’s a number of ways you can reach out to folks and just say, Hey, I’ve just graduated from NYU law. I saw that you did too, and I’m going to get started here. Would you mind having lunch? I’d love to buy you lunch and just get your take on how I should get started in this town, who should. And then before you know it, these people will introduce you to other people, let you let them know that they know you and you’ll be able to really get your network kicked off. And that would be the other thing that I would do. All that being said, this is the way to really start to build everything that we’ve talked about is a way to start building your base, building your reputation, building your referral network, building your knowledge network, all really important, but you need to eat tomorrow.

And so I often say all the things we’ve talked about are how you build wealth from the concept of these are the gifts that keep on giving just like wealth, if you’re wealthy, my definition of that as far as financially wealthy is you have enough money put into passive investment vehicles that your basic living needs are taken care of without you having to work that’s wealthy and that takes time and it takes investment. If you need to eat today, you need money. And money and wealth are not the same thing. So if you need money, then you got to go do some things to get money. So depending on what your practice is, if you want to open as a criminal attorney, march your butt into the court and let them know that you’re ready to take appointments as public counsel, as a public defender or conflict public defender.

So you don’t want to go to work for the public defender’s office, but you’ll take, there’s always a lot of cases that need to be referred because public defenders get conflicted out. They need private attorneys. If you’re going to do family law, one of the things that is still a great way to get started is get out there on bulletin boards like AVO and others and answer. People are posting questions all the time. Answer them, go on the Facebook groups, go on whatever groups are out there where people ask questions, answer them, builds up a great bunch of, by the way, and then take that answer that you wrote and then post it on your website as a blog and then take that answer that you wrote, make a video and put it on YouTube, and then take that answer that you wrote and put it on Facebook and just use and reuse and reuse to start putting yourself out there as someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about.

Content is king. It’ll get you people. And then on Facebook, you can boost that. You can boost your blogs. You can start some small spend on AdWords to try to again, get money. You’re trying to get new clients and you can get out in the space and compete and put your word out there. But it starts with giving this advice, giving answers to hypotheticals, and then reusing those in ways that can bring people to your door. So that’s how you get money. If you’re different practice areas you go and offer, if it’s not criminal, it’s not family. There are other ways you can offer your services. You can do some contract work too, and that’s a good way to get better knowledge of the practice area and help some other lawyers who need the help let them know that you’re out there willing to do it.

I just had lunch, I think it was two days ago with a young lawyer who’s trying to get started here in the same jurisdiction as I am, and I offered him a job when he first ordered an interview. Anyway, when he first called, he said, I don’t want an interview. I really want to make this work for myself, but I’d be really grateful for anything you can do to help me do that. And I gave him some tips as to how to get started and I’ll refer him. Some cases we get conflicts, right? That’s how you do it. That’s how you get money and you just combine your efforts on money and wealth and you’ll get there. Rob, anything to add to that?

Robert Leitner:

No, you brought in some really good points. I would only add alumni groups, connect on LinkedIn, and as far as the contract work, definitely engage with local firms and just ask. You’d be surprised when you just ask how many times the audience will be receptive.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. Perfect. Alright, and that brings us to time. So I want to thank everybody for being here at the Community Table for The Un-Billable Hour. We are here to answer your questions. We’ll answer anything on the third Thursday at three o’clock Eastern. And also, of course, don’t forget to tune in to the unbillable hour on the Legal Talk Network where we have another great guest coming up this month that’s going to help you grow the business that works for you. Until then, you take care.

Announcer:

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

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