EP113: LegalSoft’s Adam Reiman on Transforming Legal Intake, Law Firm Growth and Client Conversion

So here, here's what I've been able to figure out after 12 years in this business, the most important piece of the entire law firm is intake, and the most neglected part of the law firm is intake. There's so much assumption that goes on on the on the lawyer or ownership side of a law firm that you you have to knock down those walls, right? So I've Secret Shop 3000 law firms, and I know how to tell differentiate between good intake and not so good intake. And I can tell you that the numbers haven't changed for 10 plus years that I've been doing this.

Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules, Jay Berkowitz, foreign, Adam,

good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Great guest today, as always, Adam Reiman from legalsoft. We're going to learn all about how they have people in 800 law firms, making those law firms run more smoothly. But I'm going to probe Adam a lot about his coaching for law firms, and particularly, we're going to talk a little bit about intake. He's a real awesome intake coach. He's also a sales guy, so we're going to maybe hit him up for a few sales tips. And you know, really, intake is all about conversion. At the end of the day, right? You get the leads you want to bring him in. So anyways, no more of my blah, blah, blah. Adam, welcome the 10 golden rules podcast.

Jay, it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much for for having me in. I really appreciate it. I look forward to our chat today.

So I was like to start out with a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you got to.

Yeah, so it's funny. Background, I have been in the legal space since 2012 prior to that. I'm just for personal background, I'm married to a lawyer. My wife's been practicing for 20 years. She's a partner here in Phoenix, at a at a large insurance defense litigation firm. But I've sort of had legal in my blood since, since my early days. But I met the owner of a digital marketing agency on LinkedIn who sent me a message, and there was something in my background that interested him. I was working for a large company as a national sales director, and there was something, I think, probably because I had spent a lot of time in law firms, getting kicked out of law firms trying to sell my services, that he felt like I would have a leg up. And he said, Hey, I'm launching this new sales organization. I need someone who's got some who has some experience in doing that, so that I kind of started in that industry and then morphed into legal where it's been just the great love of my life. I was director of sales and live events for that organization for 10 years, and spent, you know, three or four months at a click out on the road. I've worked in a couple of couple of 100 law firms in that time, all shapes and sizes, all practice areas of all over the country, and

because you had a coaching product, right and and you're still doing that, but you were going in, the reason you were in law firms, so to speak, it's your

as a yeah, not as an employee. That's yeah, yes, as a coach, as a coach, yes, I was part of a team. I handled intake, best practice and intake and sales, if you will. We had someone who handled marketing and another person that dealt with operations. And we would do a deep dive into a law firm. We'd spend three or four days in the firm, interviewing all the staff, looking at all the holes in their in their buckets, and then we'd come back three or four weeks later with a full report, I would do an all day intake training for the in house intake staff and and it was, it was great fun until you start having kids and you start missing things, that's when you kind of want to peel back the travel and get get home, you know. So,

so you got that figured out. I hope kind of, yeah, it sounds like you're still super busy. Yeah, so, but yeah, tell you know legal soft is, has, you know, virtual employees, I guess in 800 law firms. Tell us a little bit about the company and what you guys do,

sure. So, the company was started seven years ago, and and we, we specialize. The hub of our business is virtual assistance in the in the legal space. We are only in legal we provide staff everywhere from sort of the jumping off or entry level positions, intake and legal assistance on up to all the way up to virtual paralegals and virtual attorneys, if. Looking for litigation support. You know, in this post covid world, Jay, it's been so challenging for law firms. I can't tell you the number of times where I've heard a law firm owner saying, I can't hire anybody. And there's been, you know, myriad of reasons. It's just people have special requirements. Now they want to work remote. The firm wants them working in house. They you know, I was talking to a solo practitioner in San Diego the other day who needed an in house receptionist, and the receptionist wanted $30 an hour to take the job. And it's not that person's fault, it's just the reality of the economy where she lived, and that's literally a $15 an hour job. And so those sorts of challenges, and you

want me to live anywhere in San Diego where I can drive to work in less than 45 it's gonna be, yeah,

right, 100% so there's so many great challenges. And that's not the only one. You know, people have special requirements now. They want to work remote, they want to work hybrid, etc, etc, I think. And what I've been hearing some of the firms that I visited lately, the shift is sort of on a little bit. I think, I think folks are trying to bring people back into the offices. So certainly, hearing it, yep, yep. We'll, we'll see how that, how that progresses. Yeah, and you

had some amazing numbers. You guys interview 13,000 people, or you get 13,000 applications a month correct.

We get 13,000 postings a month in if you need an English speaking only virtual assistant, we we have six global offices for our English speaking folks that we pull from one of our offices in the Philippines, and then if you're looking for bilingual we'll pull from one of our Latin American offices. We've got offices in Mexico City, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, and then in in the Philippines, we've got multiple offices as well. We interview about 100 people a day, and we're placing a little bit more than 200 virtual assistants per month. I can remember just a year ago, we were placing 50 or 60. So it doesn't seem as though the trend is slowing down. It's actually picking up, and it is the best way, in my opinion, in today's climate, to grow and scale your law firm. And it's

the terminology thing, I'm stuck in a box, like virtual assistant, you know, text my email and does scheduling and books flights and stuff like that. But these are really virtual employees in many different levels in the law firm, right? These,

these are actual technicians, if you will. So we have everything from legal assistants who will manage a calendar, who can can do some phone work. And then we have straight intake reps for high volume law firms that are looking at, you know, they've got 100 plus leads a month that do just intake and follow up. And we have document collectors for they can collect documents, medical records, for personal injury, and lean negotiators on up whatever you whatever you need. We also have custom positions some lawyers, Some law firms are looking for a marketing assistant to do, to run their social media, post, write content. So we do have some specialty stuff that goes on as well. And

you say, there's offices around the world. So does that mean that these folks go into the office and work in your office?

So the option the we make it optional for those folks, because some folks, for example, my virtual assistant, she's in Nicaragua. She's about two hours away from our office, so she works from her home, but the office is always available to any of our remote staff that wants to, wants you some go in every single day, and that's, that's their work. That's their way,

obviously, if you live close by. But there's, I've found, there's 700 odd islands in the Philippines, so it's convenient to get together. You would

be blown away. People we get who are far, far out in rural areas, that have worked in law firms, that we, that we, that we're able to pull in. We do our recruiting, just so you know, for purposes of our audience, we pull from law schools, bar associations, paralegal events, and so we've got folks what you'll find Jay a lot of the times folks have a JD in their home country, and they can make a better living as a virtual assistant, working in their home country, working for a US law firm than you could ever imagine. And it's not even about the the the rate, the the pay rate that they receive. It's about, you know, we give them 401, K, they get health insurance benefits for themselves and their spouse, Wi Fi, stipends, bonuses, performance bonuses. They have, you know, if you talk to the some of the BAS that are in our network, they say that we've helped make a lot of people's lives three times better than they were. If they're working for a local company, a local law firm in the Philippines, or for the state or state government and. A lot, right? Just such challenges. So yeah, so it feels good to be not only providing us law firms with amazing talent, but helping people's lives and their families lives globally, on a global scale. It's super enriching for us. We've

had this conversation with a few different firms that provide, you know, variety of services. How do you make it work? Like we ask ourselves a question every day. We run a remote business now, Tango, yeah, but um, you know, when you're dealing with other countries and you know what, what are some of the secrets to make it really sink? You know?

So we, we, we only were. So we recruit talent based upon the requirements of what our law firm partners want. You know, give us a list of what the tasks are that you want this person to accomplish. When you saw our ad, what was the triggering moment that told you to pick up the phone and call us and let's, let's put that down, and then we only source talent that will fit that requirement. And then so we'll line up five to seven candidates based upon the the needs of the law firm. We send a video and a resume to the to the to the law firm. Here, they get to vet their candidates, and they may say, hey, I want to meet with candidate one, three and five or none at all. Most of the time, they'll meet with several and then we do and we do a zoom interview, just like this, where they can ask them any questions that they so desire. But the reason we're able to do it is not only that, is we match them up with the talent that they want. We also have an amazing infrastructure where you get each virtual assistant has a case, so it's actually an individual who reports back to the law firm. We monitor, we monitor their activity by the minute, so we know exactly what keystrokes they're making, what programs are going to etcetera, etcetera, and so and these folks are only full time, so they're 40 hour week people, and they only work in one law firm. We tried the other way, where we do sort of part time or project work, and it wasn't beneficial to either the virtual assistant or to the law firm, because they were splitting their interests. So we only do full time. I mean, it is just, you know, the virtual assistants become part of the law firm's culture. Some of our law firms fly their virtual assistants up to the US for holiday parties and for quarterly events. That's how integrated they become into the law firms. Truly, that's how they they love them. Oh, they love them. They love they absolutely love them. So, you know, we have folks really making it work. I

love it. Yeah, yeah. I

mean, we've sort of tried to our founder and CEO is just as he thinks a few steps ahead, and so he thought of every contingency that would possibly be necessary to making this a go. And it's, it's working out. You know, we have 2700 VAs placed right now, 800 firms and a lot more to go. So

sweet. So I want to dive into your expertise in intake, because, as you said, it's, you know, sort of mission critical, and you've had a couple jobs in with coaching law firms. But the most important thing is, you know, getting, you know, getting the conversion rate up, because that makes a huge difference in a number of cases side. So you know, why don't you start with maybe the beginner meeting in advance coaching tips?

Sure. So the number one, so here, here's what I've been able to figure out after 12 years in this business, the most important piece of the entire law firm is intake, and the most neglected part of the law firm is intake. There's so much assumption that goes on on the on the lawyer ownership side of a law firm that you you have to knock down those walls, right? So I've Secret Shop 3000 law firms, and I know how to tell differentiate between good intake and not so good intake. And I can tell you that the numbers haven't changed for 10 plus years that I've been doing this, the average law firm scores on 100 point scale. I have a very simple, basic report card that I use when I secret shopper firm. Law firms have been the best of the they score somewhere between a 30 and a 40 on regular, on a regular and consistent basis. And just let me remind you, Jay, it's like the s a t test that you're in America, you get 750 points just for putting your name on it, right? A 30 is absolutely, I don't know where you went to school, but a 30 is failing, and it'd be fun. You'd be funny because I've done over 100 live events where we would actually secret shop every attendee, and we would give them the report card, and you would have people that law firm owners that were happy with the 40, right? When you can really aspire to do a 90 or 100 on every single call, and it's not rocket science, right? Right? There are 10 skills that I measure on an intake that I teach in my eight week training course that will help you double your conversion without spending an additional dime on additional leads, right? Because that's usually the answer. I'll talk to a law firm owner who's at single digit conversion, and he or she'll say, well, that's cool, I'll just double my marketing spend next month. Just right? That that makes a couple of levels. It makes no business sense and right, it makes no sense. You're going to double your spend to increase your conversion, to improve to sign up more clients. Why not just do a better job? Why not spend one additional don't spend one more dime on more leads. Just do a better job with the leads you're getting. Right? So that's sort of to me, thank God. I mean, I built a career on it, and I think that that will continue. You know, I've helped many, many a law firm, go from single digit to double digit conversion in a rapid in a rapid pace, simply by implementing the best practices.

So don't, you know, don't have to give us all 10 of your secrets. But what are some of the basics like? What are some of the mistakes that most

the number one thing is, there's so much assumption and that maybe 15 years ago, you know, it was like, if the phone rang, you were generally the law firm was generally going to be able to sign that potential new client up, right? But the game's changed now. When, when it became legal to advertise, it became advertised, right? It became a full contact sport. You've got TV, radio, billboards, sides of busses. Now, social media, right? It's just taken off like crazy. So the number one factor that still exists, the most critical factor in lead conversion, is speed to lead. How long does it take you now a lead starts to go full Jay in less than five minutes. If you wait 24 hours to talk to a lead, your conversion plummets to to less to a paltry 17 person. Most law firms the the average, you know what the average? How long it takes the average law firm to call a lead back,

eight hours, 3.6 days.

Oh, my God, right. They go call if, if you're waiting

25 it's very different. You know, if you're like, big law 500 totally, got a lot more time.

But if you're, we're talking about consumer, high volume leads, criminal offense, bankruptcy, family, right? Is

this, are you talking about form leads on a website?

It could be form leads, phone calls, text messages, but

the phone call is not you don't have to call them back, or is you're saying it still so many firms have the lawyer call you back. Voicemail

is where leads go to dial, yeah, like Shoeless Joe Jackson's glove, right? That's where triples go to die. It's the same thing voicemails, where leads go to die. And here's a couple of great things, or one great story. I was working for a big pi firm in the Mountain States region. They had paralegals doing intake they didn't have intake reps. They were getting 150 200 leads from a month and the paralegals in this particular firm absolutely positively detested intake. When they saw the intake line light up, they would literally jump under the desk and hide to not take it. So we got to as a coach. We got to dive into their voicemail system. They had six months worth of unanswered voicemails. Wow. Some some folks who had called two to three times. Now, the reason that the people called two to three times was because they were referrals. Yeah, but an organically generated lead will not call back again. They won't you get one shot, right? And so we had broken bones, we had TBI, we had all sorts of amazing cases sitting in voicemail and remember paralegals they viewed and no effect. Paralegals are integral part of a law firm, but you should just there's no reason ever, ever, ever for lawyers or paralegals or staff to be talking to potential new clients and paralegals, no

inherent conflict there, right? 100% you're a paralegal and you sign the case, you got more work. It's more work. Got tons of work. They

don't want 100% it's more work, right? It's like the only one getting rich off this lead that I sign up are the lawyers. I'm just going to have more work. I'm still going to make my my salary every year, regardless whether I handle 30 files or 31 files. Yeah, right. So, so what are some of the top 10 so top 10 things on a report card that I grade, did you answer with the law firm name? This is the number one industry. I've never heard this before. Where, where you'll call a law firm, and someone will answer, Law Firm? Yeah, I don't know. I. Don't know if you ever noticed, I'm sure you did, right? I heard it this week. Yeah. See, I don't call when I call my dentist, I don't know about you, my dentist doesn't say dentist office, right? Number one, it's just right off the bat. Yeah, answer with your name, give them your name, ask them their name, ask them their phone number, ask them their email address. If you get those four or five pieces, you're already at a 50, right? And then the hard stuff comes in. Did you offer the potential new client empathy? Did you say you're really sorry to hear they're going through this, but you're glad they called, right? Did you offer them a unique competitive advantage as to why they should hire your law firm? Right? And did you go to the next step, which may be, you know, again, in the covid world, consumer law firms are wallpaper in the world with docusigns and the hope, right, that the potential new clients are going to sign and return them with having no follow up process, right? So I'm old school in that regard. I still believe in 43% of all potential new clients in 2023 still want to have an in person consultation with a lawyer. So those numbers, you know, 43% in 2023 of potential new clients across all practice areas, still want to have an in person consultation. But lawyers, in the post covid world, they go right for the jugular. They want folks to sign people up right on the phone, send the DocuSign out without any process, and then, and then they have no follow up process for the 1000 docusigns that they've sent out.

So you said the intake department has to be a separate department. What are you looking for in hiring those intake folks?

100% I don't care if they've if they have no law firm experience, it's not relevant. What I look for are sales people, people that have worked in a high volume call center environment, that have done both in inbound and outbound calls, and if they've up sold something, that's a bonus, like if they work for a cellular phone company and they sold up, sold phones, or, you know that, or they work for a travel company, and they sold a, you know, a cruise, whatever, yeah, I want people with sales experience who can take a high volume of calls and are willing to do whatever it takes to sign people up.

Great. Last tip intake topic,

yeah, just again. Just don't forget to say you're sorry that they're going through this formal event in their lives. Even if you believe in your heart of hearts, it's not a case. It's not, it's it's not relevant. People are people are calling law firms on their worst days, not their best, right? I don't know about you, Jay, but I don't shop law firms as on a, you know, as a hobby. Well, you actually do. You actually do, actually do right as right? The average person doesn't

make three things calling a law firm on

what they perceive as being their worst day and not their best, and you should treat them as

such. Great. Thank you. And then the sales piece, maybe, you know, you tremendous sales background as well. And essentially, you're teaching these people how to sell what's, what's the sales role, it'll offer. So

the sales role, again, is, is, can you? Can you? So empathy is one, right? The other part with the salesman, sales person. Ship that comes in is offering a unique competitive advantage, okay? And that's I do a whole class on unique competitive advantages. And essentially, what does that mean? It means it gives a potential new client a reason to hire you to be your law firm, right? And a lot of times, if you say a lot of times, people inexperienced or untrained, they'll say, Yeah, our guys are our team's really experienced. They, you know, they handle a lot of cases, etcetera, etcetera. It's just not enough. You gotta go deeper. Hey, and a great example is, I'm really sorry to hear you're going through this, but I'm really glad you called, because our firm has helped 3000 people just like you since we opened our doors in 2010 When can you come in? It's just that simple, that's sales. That's got sales written all over it. Right? For the life of me, it's a challenge for people that are that haven't done that for a living to really pick that nuance up. So and our virtual intakers, they all go through my through our eight week training. So they are, they're offering Best Practices every single day. And so, yeah, that's the salesmanship piece, right? The assumption, the assumptive. Close, sorry, you're going through this. Here's why you should hire us. When can you come in?

We I talk about this often, and we have a unique ability or unique situation where we're looking at law firms from the outside in, and I'm agreeing with me when I say this. You know, I often see radical differences in law firms in the way they run themselves, the way they run the business. And I have a little mini case study that I share every year in my planning webinar, like we do in, you know, 2023 planning, 2024 planning, yeah, by the way, for some reason, like 50,000 people have watched the 2023 planning, and only about watch the 2024 planning.

Interesting. Maybe they're too busy in 2024

that's, I think, a YouTube court. Yeah, in this case study, I talk about two firms very similar. They each get about 5000 visitors to their website. One firm signs 20 cases a month. One firm signs 80 cases a month. And part of its intake, part of it's, frankly, just the star level. Like one firm runs, it runs very well. One firm has problems with absolutely every you know, from the minute they answer the phone to getting back to customers, to frustrated customers, to customers dropping them. And so, you know, I think when, when the phone rings and it's a referral from a happy customer to one of their friends or family, it converts at a high rate, and then they do a great job, and they keep those customers. The other guys are like you said, they double their marketing spend. So what advice do you have if you've seen the same case scenario, you know what? What are some of the hallmarks of the firms that run? Well, yeah,

that's great question. So the hallmarks of firms that run well, have documented processes for everything that they do in their firm. And one of the things I've done it do as a coach is I help write those process manuals for firms. And it sounds like a daunting project, but I guarantee you that if we work together in 90 days, we can have all of your processes documented. Okay? Because what happens is, and I'm sure you've seen this time and time again to Jay, is there's an inconsistency like prime exam, like here's here's a so you're familiar with In and Out Burger.

I'm not it's, it's really big,

right? Okay, so In and Out Burger, Chick fil A, exam. Chick fil A, well, no, well, yes, I could. Chick fil A. What does Chick fil A say to you when you give them, give them your money. They all say it, Yeah, my pleasure. They all say, my pleasure. Chick fil A. But I think here's the point. Law firms that do a good job, they have documented processes for everything that they do, so that as they grow in scale, Hey, welcome to the firm. Here's your onboarding manual. Here's how we handle intake. Here's our software. This is how you print right? And it sounds like a daunting project, the number so that's one documented process and two law firms that struggle. They don't have an understanding of how to micromanage the client's experience. It's a huge error, right? A lot of law firms started out with just an attorney and a dream, and so they gave everybody their cell phone number, right? And before you know it, they're 10 years in, and they're still taking status calls from clients at two o'clock in the morning on Saturday, because, you know, they got the client, got an idea about, hey, I want to keep the throw pillows from our couch. I'm not going to let that sob. I married. Have them right, my soon to be ex, and so they get anchored to that, right? And there's a way to avoid all of it. You give you have a staff called a client liaison in your firm that has a list of all your clients, and depending upon the practice area, you either do one outbound call a month or two, and you go, Hey, this is Jane from from Berkowitz, his firm. Just wanted to check in. Nothing's changed on our end. Your case is progressing nicely. Do you have any questions for Jay this month that I can write down and I'll get it to them, you'll do a couple of things. Yeah, you'll cut you'll cut down on 90% of the inbound status calls that kill a law firm. You'll get less reporting to the state bar for lack of communication. That's the number one reason law firms get reported to the state bar, right? Is lack of communication, right? And none of my coaching clients have ever been reported, right? No law firm I've ever worked with has been reported the state bar for over communicating, right? It's always the opposite. So they don't take into account kind of

like number one is, is standard operating procedures, training new employees. Number three is what you call it, the client.

Micromanage the client's experience, right, right? And here's why, I know for a fact that in 90 days, buyer's remorse sets in in the legal space. The only time I hear from my lawyers when he or she wants more money, right? That's on the right. The only time I hear from is when I send me an invoice for more. Money, right? And that's on, right, obviously, on hourly builder flat, you know, flat fee setups. The other thing is, in contingency law, people are consistently and regularly being inundated by advertising, interact, get a check, right, etc, etc, etc, right? They're being inundated with it. So they get angry. They see a billboard, like, what's my freaking lawyer doing for me, right? So that's why you cut that off at the pass by being proactive, right? Reaching out to all your clients so that the technicians and the firm can focus on their technical work, and they're not taking inbound status calls all the time.

Fantastic. And is that it, or is there may be another big chunk of, you know, professional management,

so it's people, processes and software really don't rely on, you know, the worst, you know, the worst violators of this are solo practitioners. And solo practitioners who litigate. They don't follow up with anybody. They don't follow up with leads. They don't follow up with clients. The client's experience has got to be horrible, right? That's what? As a coach, I always ask, you know, what's your client's experience like with the firm? And a large percentage of them will say it's not that great. They know it's a gap. So I think the third piece is identify the gaps, the holes in the bucket, and bring someone in who's been in the trenches, and have them help guide you, mentor you to get this machine fixed right. Because you know, it's, it's, it's bring a coach in. Man,

someone else has figured it out.

Michael Jordan, head coaches, Wayne Gretzky had coaches. The greatest of all time. All had coaches. Yeah, Brady had a coach,

right? Well, we were both at a conference last week, and we saw Michael Phelps.

He had co right his whole life, but he said he's,

like, completely addicted to being great at golf, and he's got his trainers, and he's, he's, now, he's training. His physical is around golf. He's got coaches around golf. He's, yep, he can afford,

right, because of the success he had, yeah, the success he had. Now, I, by the way, I looked it up while he was speaking. His net worth is 100 million. That's it, good for him. Yeah, that's it. But the point is, you're right. It's a great point. It's like, what the benefits that he gained from a coach in the swimming world. He's now said, look, I can do the same thing in golf, but I've gotta surround myself with people that have been there in order to get great I gotta work on my swing, my putting, my short game, all those pieces, right? So that's exactly right. And lawyers, I don't know if they I don't maybe they're being inundated with advertising from coaches and people that claim that they can help them. But, you know, I would say, look for a coach to help guide you through this process, because it can be daunting, right? I don't know how many times I've met a lawyer five years apart, I've run into him or her and they said I should have hired you five years ago, some of the same exact place I was in 2019 I should have listened to you, right? That's right.

But the other, the hard thing, you know, being on the side of hiring coaches is it's hard to get the get that right,

for sure, here's my advice.

Yeah. Where's my advice? What three questions should you ask a coach I'm

not hiring and I'm not here to pitch my coaching services by any stretch of the imagination. I'm more than happy to talk to any of you. I'll share my contact info later if you want to talk about it, if you want me to do a free 15 minute strategy session with you about your law firm. But that's secondary. I would number one is, how many law firms have you worked in? The overwhelming majority of lawyers that I've hired coaches will hire coaches that are called business coaches. And business coaches have their place. They're amazing in a lot of cases. But law firms, I have found, are a unique animal. They're different than than owning a bunch of Chick Fil A's. They're different than owning a dry cleaner. They're different than even a CPA firm. Work with someone who understands law firms. That's just the number one rule when hiring a coach.

Oh, is there more? Is there number two and number three? Or just not? For questions.

One, two and three, hire somebody who's worked in law firms and then ask them, tell me, you know, share your you know, share some success stories. Give me some references, and let me talk to some of your coaching clients and let them share, yeah,

no, it's definitely worth it to important decision, and I got a percent, a couple times, great coaches for our business. All right, so look, now comes the easy part. These are our one liners, taking these questions for 15 or more, podcasts, apps or techniques used for personal productivity.

For me, personal productivity, yeah. So I'll tell you, I have a virtual assistant in Nicaragua, Valeska, who is not only I feel honored to have her on my team as part of my life, she is the best thing that's ever happened to me, productivity wise, and I've been doing this for a little while, right? Productivity wise, because she just keeps me on point.

She does all tips because I have a relatively new VA Sure, and I'm sure there's a bunch of folks listening who would love to add that asset. And how does it work? How do you manage she does.

She has full and unadulterated access to my calendar and to my email, and she spends the day with me, going from appointment to appointment, takes notes. She's a human reminder. She reminds me of everything, especially when it comes to you know, I'm coaching right now about 50 or 60 law firms, and it's so challenging to keep track of where I am, where they are in their different phases, and so she just keeps me on point. She'll go, hey, don't forget, you need to do help this law firm with a Clio demo. You need to help this law firm meet a guy like Jay to talk about social media or lead gen, right? Like she keeps me on point for all of those things. So for me, the the greatest is not technology. The greatest savior is not technology. It's a human element that that has been a game changer for my whole work life balance. I cannot do it without her. So I let her. I let her lead on technology. She's She's technical. So she can do pivot tables, she can do all those things. So my, you know, personal shortcoming, I'm a sales guy, right? We typically like to cut corners, and we like to talk to people a lot, and administrative tasks simply, simply fall to the bottom of the pile. I've always as a leader of people have always had to flip the script and really hyper focus on the admin stuff, because if I don't, it won't get done full disclosure, right? And so I've got velasca, and she is has changed my life. People that work on my team are happy. That's all that I care about, is that them being happy, and our coaching clients are happy, right? So she's been the real game changer for me.

Great. I love it. Yup, thanks for sharing that. Sure. I was taking notes. I gotta go back to my list. There you go. Best business books.

The number one book, and in my opinion, is the E Myth by Michael Gerber, I've had the fortune, good fortune, of meeting Michael. He's an interesting character, but the E Myth, to me, the E Myth is a book I read more than a dozen years ago, and I based my whole coaching career on the readings that came out of that book. If you ever go

to it's been probably mentioned 70 out of 100 podcasts,

right? The the E Myth for lawyer, lawyers stinks. The E Myth for accountants stinks. But the E Myth revisited is the to me, the and Michael will tell you this, in every hotel room in the world there should be the Bible and the E Myth you truly believe,

yeah, and if you all haven't read it, it's basically like how to create systems, standard operating procedures for your business. So hire a new person, you can train them on the system, and if they make a mistake, you can go back and explain where they missed a step, 100% consistency, and it removes stress, both from for the employees and the managers. It's

the best $20 read you'll ever have. You can read it on a on a cross country plane flight and be done with it. Highlight it if you haven't read it. Read it because to me, again, I use that in in all of my coaching.

For years, the two most consistent things you'll find in successful businesses, they've read the E Myth and developed systems in their business. And Tony Robbins,

100% 100%

right? I should do a study one time. So when you know your digital feed when you open up in the morning and you see blogs, podcasts and YouTubes, which are the ones that you know you go to, you know when you see the new such and such podcast or YouTube who? Who do you go to? First

Great question, who sticks out in my mind, well, yours. And then

this episode will be your favorite, one

of your favorites. I

absorb going forward.

That's right, I like to absorb anything legal related. I follow everybody on. I don't have any any one heart, regular one that I visit. I follow them all. Law Firm, mentor. Her. That's Allison Williams. She's a family lawyer in New Jersey. I follow. I've anybody who's got good information on the LinkedIn. It's really on LinkedIn, right? All the good stuff comes out there, as far as from my opinion, but there's some great ones. I love some of the funny stuff. Lee Rudin is a lawyer in Florida that does personal injury, who's got some really great content, funny stuff. I'm all over the board. I don't have any hard, fast favorites. If they're legal, I'm going to listen to it. I love who I follow religiously and who I know really, really well. Is Michael mogul from crisp. I knew Michael 10 years ago. He used to come to our live events when he was the only employee, and him and his soon to be wife, they weren't even married then, and he was running, running, the running Chris video off of credit cards. I've known him forever. He and I are on in the first name texting. I'll text him all the time the

Yeah, it's actually a great new podcast from Michael, his 300th episode. If you haven't heard that one yet, I highly recommend it. It's yeah, what is it? The law firm meant, no. The Chris podcast is called coaching.

Oh, yeah, is Chris coach? Now? Is the company? Is the is the name of his company. Is the name of Chris. You know, he started out in video, yeah, his podcast is amazing. He gets some of the, some of the, just the top lawyers across the country, yeah.

So find Michael mogul's Chris podcast episode 300 so he's got, I'll look for it. 12, phenomenal. You know, the highlight portion of, you know, John Morgan, Morgan and Morgan and, yeah, just have to find the list. But three or four of them, I went back and listened two or three times. One of them I played for my wife. One of them I sent to my team because it's got the best part of interview. He's

got shanara on there. Alex, shanara Morgan's on there. A lot, a lot of these. I mean, he's Michael runs in rarified air, yeah, and I've

been Alex or Mozi, you know, really, really diverse stuff, and not all, not all law firm stuff. Who's your NFL team?

Well, I live in Phoenix, so it's the Arizona Cardinals. But I have full disclosure. We I watch it because, you know, my kids that their sports, their their they all play everything, right? So we follow all the local teams. But my heart is really in college, so I follow religiously the University of Arizona, my alma mater, and my oldest my oldest daughter is a sophomore there. So we get to go down on campus a lot, great. But I follow, I follow college basketball and college football religiously. The obviously, I follow the NFL. You can't help it, right? It's in the role in spectator sport. So I would say Arizona Cardinals would be, would be top of the food chain. For me,

what's a great introduction for you?

What do you want to be on my headstone? You mean no. Who

do you want me to introduce you to for business opportunities?

Oh my gosh, anybody and everybody. I'm always open to networking. I I appreciate networking.

And then what about, what about specific for business like, which type of law firms, who's the best?

So, you know, I've, again, I've worked in all of even maritime law. I've worked, you know, I've worked in every practice area. Here's what I would say, consumer law firms typically seem to be in in the consumer law firms are a different beast entirely, right? I have found great success on both sides of the ledger, but I just we have more volume of consumer based law firms. Personal Injury makes up a large percentage. But I love, my very favorite practice area to work in is, you know, I built my career on the backs of small and solo law firm owners. So if it's criminal defense, bankruptcy estate planning, I've got great ideas for all of them. My, I guess my motto, if there was one, is, I'd like to help law firms grow

perfect. And last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

The best question of all. So I work for again, for legalsoft. My email address is adam@legalsoft.com All one word, legalsoft.com and please feel free. My direct phone number is area code 602-828-4415,

call me anytime, email me, ring whatever. More than happy. Thanks

so much for doing this. This was awesome. Lots of great stuff.

Oh, I appreciate you having me and Jay for sure. And I've been following you guys for a while now, and I certainly appreciate the opportunity. I'm honored to spend this time with you. So thank you so very much for having me,

awesome. Thanks for being here, my pleasure.

Thank you for listening to the 10 golden rule. Of internet marketing for law firms. Podcast, please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 golden rules.com that is podcast at t e n golden rules.com you.