Your Firm’s Reputation Matters. It Starts With Who You Hire.

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Managing your law practice can be challenging. Marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable. Welcome to this edition of The Unbillable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. This is where you’ll get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson here on Legal Talk Network.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Welcome to The Unbillable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson. And today’s episode is, well, it’s a little bit kind of about you. It’s about marketing in a way, but we’re going to call this one about you because what we’re going to be talking today is about is something that we haven’t really had many shows on. We’ve danced around it with reputation management and referral marketing and those kinds of things. But we’re going to be talking with David Craig about building a firm of reputation and how not to fall victim to the process that’s going on out there where people are hiring the wrong lawyers and when they should be hiring you. Remember in the main triangle of what it is that a law firm business must do, we have to acquire new clients. We call that acquisition. Produce the results that we promise, production, and achieve professional and business results for the owner.

And it’s really about the professional results of being the lawyer you wished you always would be. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So in the center of that triangle, driving it all for better or worse is you. Today’s show I’m really excited to welcome David Craig. David W. Craig, I should say. He’s a nationally recognized trucking accident lawyer. He’s been doing that for … We were just chatting before the show for just over 40 years. He litigates catastrophic injury, wrongful death. He’s been named Trucking Top 10 and a top 100 trial lawyer by the National Trial Lawyers. And he received the Thurgood Marshall Fighting for Justice Award from the Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America. He also has his own podcast called After The Crash, and he’s the author of the book, Semi Truck Wreck. And then more recently, the one that we’ve been talking about is his … It was told to me it was his bestseller.

David, remind me of the title. I lost it here.

David Craig:

It’s never been easier to pick the wrong attorney or to hire the wrong attorney.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. It’s never been easier to hire the wrong attorney. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about today because that kind of runs the thrust of what the problem is that we’re talking about. It’s that lawyers’ reputations are so, so important, but yet it’s become easier and easier to hire the wrong attorney for our clients. So David, with that, welcome to the Unbillable Hour.

David Craig:

Thanks, Christopher. I appreciate the chance to talk with you today.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, it’s my pleasure. So what I want to really talk about today and spend the time together today is how our listeners, how law firm owners, law firm leaders build the kind of reputation that attracts the best cases, the best referrals, the best opportunities, and how to overcome the fact that it’s never been easier to hire the wrong attorney. So you’ve been at this for 41 years, I think we calculated. Did you come to the reputation building of your practice at the very beginning, or is that something that kind of grew as your practice and your career grew?

David Craig:

I mean, I think that I always was concerned about doing the best I could do and learning as much as I could learn. And so I think that without really realizing, okay, gosh, I want to build my reputation. I think that early on I was doing that. And so it was just natural for me to try to do the best job I could do, realize that what I knew and what I didn’t know, not be afraid to go out and learn from others and build a reputation and continue to get better every year. And ultimately that is how you build a reputation.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And if you’ve done that, right? I think it’s fair to say you’ve built a firm that is known for high standards, but you’re in an incredibly competitive field, personal injury, catastrophic injury, trucking cases. I mean, this is a field where a lot of law firms, good and bad, come to play. As it’s evolved now, or maybe I always admonish people, don’t ask lawyers or business leaders how they got to where they are. Ask them what they would do if they had to do it all over again because you’re like, “I don’t want to really make all the mistakes that you made. You probably made some. I know I’ve made a lot.” And so what would you say are today a couple of policies or standards that you hold up that really help your entire team live up to the reputation that you’ve built?

David Craig:

I think that early on, as far as mistakes, I mean, I think early on it’s natural to look at the productivity of an employee, whether it’s a lawyer, whether it’s a paralegal and be overly focused on the income they’re generating.

And I had a paralegal once who was extraordinarily good paralegal, very knowledgeable, very focused, was very productive. She was my highest income producing paralegal and ultimately I fired her and because she was not a good fit or a good type, it wasn’t somebody who matched our ethics, our goals. And so I think when I was earlier in my career, I probably was a little more tolerant of the wrong person if they generated income. You turned in to make excuses and look for all the reasons why you should keep this person rather than what is the impact? And when I fired her, I found out that my whole team had their resumes out because she was so toxic. She treated people so poorly. She thought she was all that. As well

Christopher T. Anderson:

As outside.

David Craig:

Yeah, inside. And so outside, she treated my clients fine, but inside she was toxic to my team and she thought she was all that. And so I found out later after I let her go, the people came to my wife who runs my practice and said, “We had our resumes out. We were all ready to leave and thank goodness. And my wife reminds me constantly how long it took me to make that decision because that was detrimental to my overall purpose. And you can’t say one thing and then tolerate something else.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Because people see that.

David Craig:

Absolutely.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. So I mean, how long ago was that, roughly? I don’t

David Craig:

Want to- Well, that was probably 20 years ago.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. When we look at it today, how would you make that decision quicker? Because listen, as much as we try to hire the best and for all the things that you said, for treating people well inside, for treating your clients well outside, for being productive, hiring’s hard. How would you say your processes differ today to weed out someone who’s being toxic inside or outside sooner?

David Craig:

Yeah. I mean, so now we’re very focused on how we go about hiring somebody. We hire slower. You always hear hire slow, fire fast. And so we do that and we test people. We do Kolbe scores. We ask for Kobe scores. We do print scores. I actually use a company that I’m part of CRISP. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them out of Atlanta, Georgia. Indeed. Jessica Mogul, Michael Mogul are good friends of mine. And so I will have them interview people and they run them through a whole … They have to do testing. They have to do a variety of things because I was doing it myself or my office was doing it was taking up a lot of time. We now give it to them. And so they have to go through all these hurdles just to even get to the point where they interview with us.

And I think that that has helped me. I look at the Kobe scores, the print scores. Every employee in my office has got Kolbe and Prince score. I can see what has worked for different positions. And so we’re looking for certain candidates. For lawyers, it’s kind of interesting is that

I bring in law clerks while they’re in law school and I get to know them and that’s real important. And not only do you want to get to know them, but I want to know their significant others

Because you could be a rockstar but have a significant other who doesn’t really want you working and that’s not very productive for us. Law school does a great job of making you feel important, feeling smart, but that doesn’t work in my firm. I’m no better than my receptionist or the person who cleans my office and that philosophy has to … I have to have lawyers that believe that. So by being a law clerk, I get to see how they treat my staff. I get to see whether they’re offended by going and getting donuts or whatever it is. Now it’s a slow way to grow. The downside is it’s slower, but the good news is that I’ve been able to hire people. My partner, Scott Fotless, I hired him 30 some years ago as a law clerk. And so the lawyers have been with me for 20.

I mean, I’ve got people who’ve been with me forever, but I got to know them first as human beings. So for attorneys and then the rest of the staff, it’s more if you’ve got the attorneys that are the right people and then you emulate that, the other people emulate that and you test them and make sure that they’re motivated by the right things and then onboard them okay.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So it sounds like the answer to the question. The question I was asking was, what do you do differently to get rid of people faster? But it sounds like your answer is, I don’t let them in the door in the first place.

David Craig:

Absolutely.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. Are you 100% now? Or do you still have some hiring, I won’t call them mistakes, but hires that don’t work out the way you’d hoped?

David Craig:

Yeah. I mean, you have people who aren’t a perfect fit and so you still have that. I move quicker. I give feedback. I talk to them and say, I’ve actually, I had somebody in new business here recently that I let go because they were very, again, very skilled, fantastic at their job, really good, but they weren’t dependable. And so when they weren’t there, other people had to pick up their responsibility and everybody’s here is busy. And so it’s not fair if you don’t care about what the impact of your carelessness or you’re not working has on

Announcer:

The

David Craig:

Rest of your staff, then you’re not a good fit for us. So we do move quicker. I’ve offered things … I’ve had people where I’ve said, look, I’ll give you an opportunity to resign. I’ll pay you for 30 days, go get yourself another job. You’re a very talented, good person, but you’re not a good fit for us. Now that doesn’t happen for … I mean, we screen, we’re very careful. It doesn’t happen with attorneys, but with some of the lower levels, legal assistants, law clerks, people like that we have that. And I haven’t had it in file managers, but it does happen occasionally, but we move quickly. And what is interesting, if you ask somebody, how about I pay you for 30 days and you leave? People who don’t really want to be here

Announcer:

Leave.

David Craig:

And I’ve actually told them, I said, look, I don’t think you’re going to make it. If you don’t make it, I’m going to have to let you go. Now you can prove me wrong and stay and just work your tail end off and take care of the things that we’re going to talk about. Or if it’s easier for you, if you prefer, I’ll pay you for 30 days and you can leave and go find yourself another job and you can quit. And I’ve had people take me up on that.

Christopher T. Anderson:

What a great thing for them to do for you, just to take you up on that, because it tells you so much about what you want to know. All right. I want to take this understanding of hiring and nurturing good people. How do you monitor, how do you know whether these good people are treating your clients well?

David Craig:

It’s a great thing. I mean, so client satisfaction is extraordinarily important to me. So two things I do. I mean, one is that every six months or every quarter we send out a survey to our clients and they can answer that survey anonymously or they can put their name on it and then they tell us how we’re doing and they tell us and specifically if there’s any person they want to talk about and they want to name that’s doing really well.

I have a client navigator and my client navigator as soon as somebody comes in. A big thing is people have buyer’s remorse. Like you said earlier, it’s extraordinarily competitive market and unfortunately there are some lawyers out there that are doing things improperly. They’re sending investigators out and sending people knocking on people’s door, trying to take cases even when they have them, when they’ve already hired an attorney. And so you have to say, “Okay, well, I don’t like that, but what am I going to do about it? ” And so what we do is we have a client navigator. So as soon as somebody signs up with us, we have steps like immediately they get some stuff from our office, coffee cup, candy books, my books and then we start following up with them and they had this navigator is always there. They’re not their file manager, but they’re a person that, “Hey, reach out to me if you have any issues at all.

” For example, I had one the other day that was in pre-lit department and the person reached out to my navigator and said, “Hey, I’m just a little unhappy. I was really happy with the property damage part, but I have some questions.” And they said, “Well, we’ll set you up with Mr. Craig.” “Well, no, I don’t want to bother him. He’s the managing partner. “And she goes,” No, he wants to be bothered by you. “And so then that night, after hours, I talked to that person and he was so appreciative of, he’s like, ” I can’t believe that you’re taking the time to talk to me. “And the questions were still, I said,” No, that’s what I’m here for. “So we have systems set up in our firm to monitor how we’re doing

Objectively through the surveys with our navigator and then I monitor, I have KPIs on reviews at the end. So at the very end I’m like, ” Okay, if we get a bad review, then that matters to me. If we get good reviews, that matters to me, but that’s reflective of how. And so a certain percentage of their clients that they’re working on need to leave a positive review and if they can’t, that tells me something. If their clients aren’t willing to give them reviews, that tells me. So that’s how I monitor from the day, from the very beginning through all onboarding them to all the way through the end.That

Christopher T. Anderson:

Sounds like a great way to monitor this survey that you send. How long is it? Is it like really, really lengthy?

David Craig:

No, it’s relatively short and it’s electronic and we send it on their computers, email it to them and we have very high response rate. Again, people appreciate, and the navigator tells them that in the very beginning, is that your satisfaction is extraordinarily important to us and we’re going to reach out to you. We’re going to give you three, four times, two times, whatever it is a year and we want you to respond to that. Currently, we’re doing it quarterly, but we have done it every six months, depending on whether or not if the clients seem like they’re fatigued, then we adjust it. But yeah, no, it’s worked out really well.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And so this navigator, that’s a role in your business, that’s a human being that’s doing this work?

David Craig:

Yeah. And so

What’s funny is that I guess over 10 years ago, I got sick. I had cancer. I had stage three colon cancer. And so I went into an area that I didn’t know anything about. And the doctor I had, I had to have surgery and all this kind of stuff, but the doctor I had had a client or patient navigator and I thought, what a great concept because this person coordinated me with testing and MRIs and surgeons and radiology and chemo and I just was just a person that’s … Their only job was to answer my questions and guide me in the right direction. And so I came back and said, “You know what? We need to have a client navigator.”

And so we adopted that concept and then another thing is we read books here. We have book clubs. And so one of the books we read, we adopted a Dream Weaver and so we have a committee that people can volunteer to be on and anytime someone on our clients has a baby or a death or whatever, this Dreamweaver, anybody on my staff says, “Hey, here’s my situation.” And this Dream Weaver committee, then it has the authority to do whatever’s appropriate to send gifts, send gift cards, whatever it is, blankets. So we also do that as well.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Nice. How many clients can your navigator handle?

David Craig:

Right now she’s probably handling 750 clients. I mean, it’s a lot on the onboarding, I mean the very first part of it, but then it’s not too bad after that. And honestly, I don’t know, I hope it’s because I’m hiring the right people, but also it’s helpful to know that somebody’s monitoring it. And so as a result, you have less problems. I don’t have people unhappy. I don’t have people complaining. I don’t get bad reviews. So part of it I think is because of what we’re doing, but I think the other part of it is because of the knowledge that we are doing it and we care. When we get a review, for example, every morning at 10 o’clock we have a Zoom meeting with our entire office and they read any good reviews we get

To the whole team and then we clap for the people and I thank them. And so today, this morning we had two positive reviews that came in last night and I think that it just, that again, it reinforces that culture that your clients are very important to our firm and they can see that and we reward those and then they have the freedom to say, they don’t have to get my permission. They say, “Okay, this person’s mother died that we want to send a blanket and whatever or this person going really through a real tough time. We need to do this or do that and they don’t have to get my permission. They just go to this committee and this committee takes care of it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

” So we have a committee of people who pay for this show and so we’re going to take a break here to hear from our sponsors. And when we come back, what I’d like to do, David, is to now turn the conversation a little bit over to how these standards that you’ve set up in these processes, how you and how lawyers can copy you or learn from you as a way of inoculating them against the problem that you outlined in your book. And so we’ll talk about the problem and then we’ll talk about how some of these standards really can help. But first, a word from our sponsors. All right, back with David Craig, and we’ve been talking about internal processes in David’s firm that he’s implemented and learned from to help build and maintain his reputation with his clients and through his clients, I’m sure creating them as ambassadors who speak well of the firm to others.

David, I wanted to kind of zero in on the theme of your book and really get to the crux of what you’re seeing as the problem and why you wrote this book. So you’ve come to the realization and the title of the book to remind everybody is it’s never been easier to hire the wrong attorney. And this book’s for clients, right? For people who need to kind of make their way through the marketing noise and actually find not the wrong attorney, to find the right attorney. So let’s just talk a litle bit about why you felt the need to write this book and what you feel the problem is. And then we’ll talk about how the processes we’ve been discussing help with that.

David Craig:

Yeah. I mean, so it is frustrating to me because so many people, they have no idea when they’re picking an attorney. Most of them, whether it’s a divorce, whether it’s a criminal case, whether it’s a personal injury, whether it’s a truck case, serious or wrongful death or serious catastrophic injury case, they all require a different skillset and people don’t know that. I mean, you go to law school and you get a bar card and you can practice. I could do your divorce if you wanted me to. I could handle your criminal case. Now, I would tell you I’m the wrong person to do either one of those and yet people don’t understand that. They don’t know that. And I saw people picking the wrong lawyers, especially in catastrophic truck cases

Announcer:

I

David Craig:

Would often get cases from people that were referred to me that close to a statute of limitations when a lot of damage had already been done because they hadn’t preserved evidence, they hadn’t done the right things, they hadn’t taken the right steps, just because they didn’t know to do it or they didn’t have the resources to hire the right experts. But I thought it also applies, I saw a famous criminal case here in Indianapolis where a person got convicted and I thought, “Man, they had the wrong attorney.” And I knew because I know attorneys, I knew who they should have hired

And they didn’t hire them. And same way with divorces where people would come to me and say, “Their spouse got everything.” And I’m like, “Well, who’d you hire?” And so I wanted to inform people that there is a difference between lawyers. There are things like board certification for all different areas that you can be board certified in divorce and family law and estate planning and criminal and trial work and personal injury trucking. You can be board certified in trucking, which I am. And I wanted to educate people about that, that just because someone is on television or has a billboard doesn’t make them good or bad,

But you need to ask, you need to do your due diligence. And I wanted to help people understand how to do that. And part of my marketing, what I do in my firm is I market by providing information. I’m not trying to sell them. My book goes all over the country and I’ve gotten calls and thank you emails and letters from people that never hired me, but at least they knew what questions to ask somebody when they walked in and people are intimidated by lawyers. They’re scared of lawyers. They’re afraid to ask them. And so this book says, “Hey, it’s okay. These are just normal people just like you and me. They put their pants on the same way and what you need to do is not be afraid and you just need to be informed. If I can give you information, I can empower you to ask the right questions.”

Christopher T. Anderson:

I totally agree with all of that, but so talking now to our listeners, how can they do better in this environment where you … I mean, because for me, you put your finger right on the problem is that most people are not experienced consumers of legal services. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know how to buy. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know what questions to ask. I hope a lot of them are getting your book, but how can our listeners position themselves to cut through that noise for the clients that can find them as the right lawyers and not the wrong lawyers?

David Craig:

The first thing, and sometimes I get to go down to law school and talk and it’s usually people who want to be trial lawyers because that’s what I do. And I tell people, I mean, quite frankly, it’s never been an easier time to learn your skillset. With AI, with all the conferences that are around, with all the videos, with all the podcasts, I mean, there’s so much information that is out there that wasn’t there when I started in 1985. And so there’s no excuse in my mind for you not to learn your craft. And that’s the beginning. In my mind, if you want to be the right lawyer, then you have to know what you’re doing, not just how to market, not how to just acquire cases That’s a useful skillset,

But at the same time, why not be the best that you can be? Why not learn trucking? Everybody wants a trucking case, but how many people are willing to put forth the time to learn trucking? There are national organizations where you can go learn and ATAA has every video that you can imagine on every subject. So you join a group like that and then you start watching videos, you start learning, you start dedicating so many hours a day to being an expert at trucking. Same way with any other area, criminal, whatever area it is, I think you should begin your process by, “Hey, how do I learn to be a great attorney in whatever area it is that I want to practice in? ” And that’s the beginning.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay. And you and I talked before the beginning of the show about your journey that you kind of, I think it would be fair to describe it as a funnel, right? In the beginning, you did a lot of litigation and you had narrowed it and narrowed it and then now you’re board certified in trucking. Is that one of your advisory suggestions is that people pick a lane and get really, really good in that lane?

David Craig:

It’s easier. I think that that’s easier. I think if you niche, quite frankly, it’s easier to be good at it. It would be hard for me to be good at criminal and civil and divorce and trucking. I spend all my time and resources on educating myself on trucking, keeping up on what’s going on, the trends. My paralegals go to trucking seminars. My staff goes to trial seminar, my trial division goes to trial seminars. So it’s easy to focus on a few things versus everything.You can start off by saying, “Okay, what do I have an interest in? What am I passionate about? ” And then once you reach that, what I did was I wanted to try cases. So I found who was the best trial lawyer when I was in law school, who’s the best trial lawyer in the state. And I went and asked for a job and I think I made $4 an hour.

I could have cared less how much money I had. My wife cared, but I could have cared less because what I wanted to learn was something that increased my value later,

Not immediately. And that’s what so many lawyers are, they wanted something now, but now what’s my plan to get from here to there? So I think going out and learning a niche, getting experience on something I’m passionate about, but then if you’re good at marketing, then also working with people that know how to do those areas and learn from the best. So you find out if it’s a criminal case and you happen to get a big criminal case and it’s early in your career, team up with one of the best criminal defense lawyers and tell them, “I’d like to have you work with me on this case, but I want to be involved. I want to sit through the depositions. I want to sit through the trial. I want to do everything.”

Christopher T. Anderson:

Then when you’ve done that, because a lot of our listeners are experienced, have niched, are the right lawyers to be hired, but this noise is a problem. And one of the things you said earlier that I want to kind of circle back to because I don’t think we amplified it enough is you said something about educating, right about the people that thank you that didn’t even hire you. I guess the question I’m going to really ask is, is the education piece, is the use of the knowledge that you’ve gained and becoming the expert and becoming excellent in your field, is getting that expertise out in a way that’s not necessarily asking for business. Is that the way to do it? Are you establishing yourself as an authority as a way to cut through the noise?

David Craig:

Yeah. I mean, I think that you have to do it for the right reason and the right reason is to help people make the right decisions. Whether it’s me or not, I’m glad that I can help them get to the right lawyer. And so if you are the right lawyer and you hear the noise, you can sit back and say, “I can’t compete with these giant marketers that are coming in my market, people that are spending $500 million on marketing nationwide.” Those people are out there. My business is not going down and I’ve been hit with all of those people because I don’t believe in marketing different or I do believe in marketing different. I’m not trying to sell you something. I’m trying to inform you and give you information that can empower you and whether that’s about trucking, my content, I put a ton of content out, video content.

I put out a lot of written content. All of it is geared towards helping people learn more that may help them in their process. I can tell you, I had a trucking case come in within the last couple years, actually last year and it’s a horrific case. Somebody died and burnt semi case burnt to death and the person narrowed it down to three, they were really sharp people. They narrowed it down to three lawyers and they were We’re your audience. I mean, they were three qualified lawyers. I was one of them, but there were two others and they were great trial lawyers. The client would’ve been good to go to any one of the three of us. Then what she did was they came in to meet with me on a Saturday. She started asking me questions. One of the survivors, family members came in and started asking me questions and the questions were from my book.

She didn’t say she read my book. She didn’t bring my book, but the questions were from my book. I knew I was in good shape, but I also knew that the other two lawyers also would be able to answer those questions

The same way I could. I realized that, but I realized at least she was asking the right questions and that’s how she had gotten to the three of us. I was thrilled. Now I wanted the case, but I was also thrilled that she got the three good attorneys that could capably handle the case. Then the last thing I said to them, she goes, “Do you want to know who the other two are? ” I said, “No, I don’t.” I learned later. I said, “No, I don’t.” She goes, “Well, why not? Don’t you want to know who you’re…” I said, “I don’t.” I said, “But when you’re doing the questions, you’re asking the right questions. I can tell you read my book.” And she did. At that point, she acknowledged it. I said, “I think that’s fantastic. Ask them the same stuff.” I said, “But at the end of the day, when you get done with them, I will tell you that I would very much appreciate the opportunity to work for you and your family.” The other two lawyers, I don’t know who they are, but if they make you feel like you should be grateful to have them as your lawyer versus having that they’re grateful to have you as the client, I go, “It’s a very little difference.”

Christopher T. Anderson:

It’s all the difference.

David Craig:

But you’re going to spend the next couple years with this person.

And so they came back, hired me, or I probably wouldn’t tell you the story. They hired me and they said, then they told me who the attorneys were and they said they did feel like that they kept talking about themselves and bragging about themselves and trying to sell where I spent all my time just informing. And so I got a huge catastrophic case that two other really skilled lawyers didn’t get. So I think putting out the information is extraordinarily important in everything you do rather than because you’re not going to compete with the guys that are doing $500 million worth of television and billboards. And so how are you going to be different? Well, the way to be different is to be helpful.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. Oh, indeed. That’s a good spot. So we’re going to take that spot and give one more word to our sponsors. And then David, when we come back, I would like to again pivot a little bit to how you, because what you’re talking about makes so much sense, being the authority, being a giver of information and being helpful, how do you make sure that that ethos of yours permeates the firm as a leader? So I want to talk about that when we get back, but first this word. We are back with David Craig. David is a trucking accident attorney, doing this for 41 years and has really built a reputation as an excellent firm by focusing on giving and educating. And so what I wanted to do, David, is in this last segment, I think you’ve made it clear to our listeners how you built this ethos with yourself and how you believe that this is the right way to go.

But of course, well, some of our listeners are an island, they’re solos. And so if they take this advice, that will become the culture of their firm. But some of our listeners have other lawyers and paralegals and legal assistants and other team members as you do. How have you kept the guardrails there and permeated your people, your culture into your firm so that if I were to talk with someone else in your firm, they would tell me very similar things.

David Craig:

I think that it goes back to what we started off with, which is hiring the right people. If you hire the wrong people, I don’t care what your messaging is, they’re not going to emulate your guidelines, your full philosophy. And so I think hiring the right people is key and getting rid of the bad people, making sure that your company and your firm knows here’s what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. Here’s what we’re willing to forgive and not. I expect people to make mistakes. We all make mistakes that we’re not learning, we’re not growing, but I want my lawyers to focus more on how do I provide the best quality services that I can provide. And so here I want all my lawyers to go out to the best schools, the best training, the best seminars, best conferences. I want my paralegals, my trial, my paralegal.

I send them all out and pay for them to be educated. That reinforces that I care enough about the quality of my product that I’m willing to invest in the people. I’m not worried. I get lawyers ask me, “Well, what if they leave you? ” I don’t know. They don’t. I go, “Because I’m investing in them.” But if they did, so be it. That’s okay. That’s okay.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. I heard a great quote around that once, which is facing that same question. They say, “Well, you put all this investment and energy into your people. What if they leave?” And the answer was, “Well, what if I don’t invest anything in them and they stay?”

David Craig:

Exactly. Exactly. And

Christopher T. Anderson:

That’s it. Well,

David Craig:

And then also it says something. If your firm really does believe in, if people are important to you, but yet you’re not working hard. Nobody here in my firm outworks me. I still outwork everybody. I have breakfast cooked for my staff every Monday morning. I have lunch brought in every Thursday. Why? Because I care about these people. These people, they’re my attorneys, were my law clerks. And so I know that they believe the same things I believe or they wouldn’t be my lawyers. Now, growth is hard because I don’t bring people in laterally because I don’t know them as well.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. That does make it hard and that does restrict it to some extent, but it gives you such a better product. And probably I’m going to guess you enjoy it more.

David Craig:

I mean, I love, you spend so much time with people. So if you invest in your people and you’re helping … If you see somebody who’s good is a good person, you meet them or you may know them from some other situation, maybe they’re at a restaurant, they’re a great server, whatever it is. And you say, I get to know this person and they’re a great person. Bring them in your firm. You can figure out where to put them later. The person that runs my office now, she started as a paralegal. My person who runs my litigation department, she applied for a record retrieval position. The guy that runs my rapid response team, he started as a legal assistant 20 years ago. I mean, they were great people though. And so you brought them in and then you educate them and you train them and then you help them grow.

And when people in your office see that, they say, “Oh my gosh, this person started down at the bottom and now they’re running this because they invested in them going to school. They invested in them going to training.” That tells them that you back up what you say. And I think that’s critically important.That

Christopher T. Anderson:

Makes total sense. We have reached the top of the show. So David, this has been really an enjoyable conversation. There’s so much more here and I think our lawyers should actually read your book even though it’s aimed at their clients because I think they should hear from your voice in the questions that you think their clients should be asking them so that they’re prepared. How can our listeners, if they want to learn more about you, follow you more, catch your podcast, how can they learn more and get in touch?

David Craig:

Yeah. So I’m David Craig. If you do David W. Craig, you type it in. My law firm is Craig Kellyannfaultless, ckflaw.com. And you can reach me at dc-R-A-I-G at ckflaw.com. My podcast is After the Crash. Again, it’s aimed at the consumer, not the lawyer, but I get a lot of lawyers who listen to it and learn from it. And then I write the books as well and you can get on my website and you can download those books for free if you want it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Fantastic. Thank you so much, David. And of course that is the end of this episode of The Inbillable Hour. I want to thank our listeners for listening. Our guest today one more time has been David W. Craig. And I really appreciate you being on the show, David.

David Craig:

Thanks, Christopher, for letting me be on.

Christopher T. Anderson:

You betcha. And of course this is Christopher T. Anderson. I look forward to seeing you next month with another great guest here on The Unbillable Hour as we learn more about topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you. And you also get a seat at the table. We are launching our new episode called Seat at the Table, where you will be able to listen in to a conversation about topics that really matter for you with experts in the fields that are speaking to the things that will drive your law firm forward in this year, in this month, in this quarter, and to help you achieve the goals that you want to achieve. So come along and have a seat at the table and remember you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. Thanks once again for joining us.

We will speak again soon.

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