Today Seth and Jay discuss terminating employees with CT Employment Lawyer Dan Schwartz. Special Joint Tuesday and Thursday show includes the Tuesday Election Day discussion and Ryan’s Book review of 10x by Grant Cardone
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I am one of your host Jay Ruane, CEO of firm flex social media marketing for lawyers as well as remain attorneys here in Connecticut, a civil rights and criminal defense firm with me as always, Mike Z I didn’t, I knew I was gonna do it says my flip this up, I put me on one side of the screen and you on the other. And I did it again. I’m pointing the wrong way. But here we are Seth Price, founder of blue shark digital SEO for lawyers, as well as the fastest growing law firm on the East Coast price bandwidth set. How are you doing this week?
Doing great. You know, a lot of things going on. But I’m thrilled to have Dan Schwartz here. We started on Tuesday, our conversation about you know, letting people go. Dan is one of the smartest guys in the room. This guy is a brainiac who has figured out I believe, you know, the code of how do you advise businesses on employment law issues? Because it’s not just knowing the law, but how does it apply to the bottom line and everything else. So I can’t wait to sort of be able to dig deep for our audience about like, it is the area that is the sort of ultimate, you don’t know what you don’t know, you go into start a business. All you want to do is, you know, hire people scale, make money, and don’t realize that with every step you take, there’s quicksand.
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, I’ve known of Dan, for at least a decade now. We actually, I think we both won an award from our monthly or weekly, Connecticut lawyers newspaper 15 years ago, right. And so I met him at the award ceremony, and I knew he was starting his blog. And that really has turned into something. And I think, you know, one of the cool things about him is that well, besides your little UPenn fanboy thing that I’m sure it’s gonna happen when when we get into the conversation with him, but one of the cool things about it is he’s really an example of do what you love. Because as I’ve gotten to know him, and you know, him back when, when you were at Penn together, you know, he was a writer. And so he found a way to take his love of writing and put it out there and that his blog, I mean, it’s, you know, a top 10 blog, ABA, I mean, it’s it’s really, it’s got a national presents coming from a, you know, a one guy doing employment law stuff in a small state. It’s amazing to see how many people sourced to him as a voice in that community. Don’t you think?
We’re not right? Not only is he really smart, but he said he does what he loves. Again, I’ve talked about this a lot. Somebody says, Should I blog? Do you love to write? His answer is yes, if you pause and don’t know, or maybe it’s not gonna happen, you’re gonna have a blog with one blog post on and a whole bunch of blank. So it is a great example of digging deep if you love making videos, make videos if you love writing, write, and he has definitely dug deep and it has served him well, as he’s transitioned from firm to firm that asset has has grown gone with him.
You know, it’s interesting, we talked about doing what you love. And this guy over here, he wanted us to just do a podcast. And I said, No, no, I want to do a live show on social media, when we started this seven, eight months ago now. And I think I’ve brought you around to the social side. And maybe we’ll talk a little bit about social media with Dan, because that’s something that can impact law firms long term. But what I’d like to do now is I don’t want to keep him waiting. And we’ve gotten new software, so he’s queued up. So what do you say we take a quick break here from our sponsors, then we’ll bring him in. And we’ll talk about employment law with Dan Schwartz, founder of the Connecticut employment law blog. Sounds good.
Sounds great.
Awesome. We’ll be right back folks, just a minute with Dan Schwartz.
In this world today, if you want to grow your business, you want to grow your firm, you want to take on more cases and make a better impact. You have to have a digital blueprint that says stick We throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group grew over 14 100%. They truly understand where we’re headed, and how we want to get there. I have a team in BluShark Digital that I feel like has my back.
Dan Schwartz, great to have you here. Thank you for being with us.
Nice hat, Seth. Happy to be here.
Well, my pen hat, my pen hat today, Dan and I went to UPenn together. And besides being a partner, Shipman and Goodwin, he’s also the author of one of my favorite blogs in the country, one of the top legal blogs, the Connecticut employment law blog, Dan, what you have done, which while many people are out there, regurgitating news blogging, you sat there and said, Okay, I can combine pop culture, family, you know, current events, and law, and really created something very special, which has been sort of, I think, the beacon for what many of us have attempted to do. Tell us a little bit about the journey of creating this blog and how it’s, you know, taking your practice to new heights.
Well, it’s funny, you have the pen hat, because that really does start my journey, I worked at the University of Pennsylvania on the Daily Pennsylvanian, which was the, you know, award winning college newspaper, and I sort of half our friends became lawyers, and half of them became journalists, editors of Financial Times, and Forbes, and everything else. And part of me always sort of missed that. And, you know, if I could have been an op ed columnist for the New York Times, and get paid just to write, that would have been so bad. And legal writing isn’t necessarily the most exciting, you know, the contracts, the legal briefs, so I had always been missing that from my practice. And when the opportunity came along, I met Kevin O’Keefe, you know, almost 14 years ago now at an APA conference in Montreal, and just use that as an opportunity to say, Hey, I wonder if I start writing a blog will happen, and never dreaming of, you know, again, 1314 years later to be in the position that I’m at. And so the journey really started with wanting to write, which I think is an important part of a blog and being able to write, and then moving on to how do I want to build my name and my practice? Now there was an attorney who would be on the local radio or more such and I was wondering, like, how did that person get to be there? And part of it is just name recognition. And so the hope was, well, me, you know, maybe I’ll get my name out there a little bit more, maybe people will hear about it. And it’s sort of taken off, off from there.
Well, I think one of the Testaments is you’re in the b2b space, you’re the person that we have you here today is we want to talk about, you know, as law firm owners, most of the people listening are b2c Law Firm owners, that are dealing with the trials and tribulations of scaling and growing a firm. Hence, you know, our call to action here, but that in the b2b space, building a name is infinitely harder, you know, then in the b2c space, in my opinion, the fact that you’ve been able to accomplish that there is real testament. So when somebody says I can’t do it in the b2c space, they saying, if this guy can do it the b2b space, you can certainly find some way of carving out a niche in the b2c space. So good for you. But the reason we wanted you here today, and what we talked about on on Tuesday, was the concept of what lawyers don’t know what they don’t know, you start your firm, many of the people listening, don’t have any employees, they start adding them. And I told the anecdote of that life moment when I was coming back from the first Max law con, where we had somebody melt down in an alcoholic stupor in the middle of the night. And you’re like, What do I do now? They’re like, there’s a lot of stuff. There’s no roadmap. I’m sitting at the gate in St. Louis for a Southwest flight, and I was lucky enough to find Dan on the phone, who could talk me off the ledge and say, Hey, these are the parameters of what you’re dealing with. So for those people out there, as people start adding employees, what is your advice to people? As far as you know, there’s so many things that can bring you down, there are ethical issues, there’s finance issues when you run your firm well, but from a you know, what are the major pitfalls that people should start thinking about as they start to build a practice from an employment law point of view?
So from from an employment point of view, you know, having some advice up front, I think your your point There’s one that I always talk about the things you don’t know are the ones that should keep you up at night. You know, so if that means hiring an attorney to help advise you, great, it might just mean hiring a outside HR person, or a professional employer organization, who can help manage sort of your onboarding of your employees, make sure your paperwork is straightforward. And who can make sure that you’re not messing up on the easy stuff, the wage and hour laws? I mean, that’s, that’s a big issue. You know, are people properly classified? Just because you’re paying someone a salary does not necessarily mean that they’re not eligible for overtime. So you’re paralegals. That’s been a big issue over time that those people likely in many places deserve to be paid overtime, means tracking the hours and all of those things. So in terms of pitfalls, wage and hour issues is number one on my list, in part because the failure to follow them is costly. And that’s easy money for a enterprising plaintiffs firm.
And that was when somebody said, Hey, I want wage in our case, and I started writing content to put on my site to refer to a friendly Law Firm. I’m like, oh, put this on my site, I might as well be making sure that we button this up pretty well. You know, the independent contractor law, another one, a lot of us start our firms leveraging independent contractors. And back in the day, I used to point say, hey, FedEx has their drivers as independent contractors, anything I do north of that should be fine. And then the Supreme Court came out and said, Whoa, maybe there are. So you know, it’s also I assume, keeping up with what is going on. So that what may be the law one day, blink five years may not be the law anymore.
Yeah, I think if you’re relying on the law 10 years ago, you’re you’re really behind. I mean, the basic framework is there. But the tests on who’s an independent contractor, even your interns, you know, have changed so much over time. And so I think if you’re relying on old guidance, like go at the very basic, you know, go watch a CLE on some of the basic employment stuff, just get up to speed on it. You don’t have to take a complex course, but you know, the ABA or any number of people, even my firm, we just did four hours of free CLE for people on those tissues. So independent contractors, you know, should be a big, big red flag, because that’s another area that people get into big trouble with.
Well, first, I apologize for the phone. That is because I homeschooling I actually had to remove a phone from one of one of our pupils who had so I have an extra phone that is not mine with me right now. But it looks we actually just this has been coming up on the Facebook, Max law feeds where people are asking about insurance. What is your guidance? In one sense, it’s free labor, I’ve taken the post as I’ve grown, I really have a target on my back. I’ve said I’d rather pay get the people I want have them stay. But as people are starting to you realize you’ve had some some free labor over time. I know I have in the distant past, hopefully outside the statute limitations. But there have been the laws on intern labor have become more clear over time. You want to just sort of opine on that generally.
Yeah, no, I think what’s been clear the test is, is it really for an educational purpose? Or is the employer getting some benefit from it? If the person is just shadowing it, there’s no work substantive work that they’re doing. And if it’s in conjunction with, particularly with a person’s class work that they’re doing, maybe they have to write a report for a high school class or for college, at least there’s some educational purpose involved, otherwise pay him.
If there is college credit, the old sort of I remember way back in the day NBC for the page program that I always wanted to get into, but didn’t, you know, you had to actually get college credit, a lot of lawyers would look the other way and said, If so long as they said they were getting college credit. Is there. Is there still a path? If somebody is there a legal path, if somebody still wants to get something where, yes, you’re getting some shadowing of courts, but you’ll also help with our files or some writing or, you know, social media, is there a quid pro quo where you can get some value, as long as they’re getting that educational piece?
For me, not a not a place that I would feel comfortable with? I think that’s just too much of a risk in this day and age. To do it, I would say the reason I can’t give a straight answer and the whole lawyer it depends is because each state has some very specific rules the general federal rule, which had been very pro intern under the Obama administration said, You really need to work with the school about it. So I think in the absence of that, you should be paying the people if it’s a family member, you know, the daughter who’s coming in and spending a few hours. That’s different than any, you know, an outside person who’s there. So, while the tendency is, hey, let’s let’s get something for nothing. I think that, that just puts you at a risk that you don’t need to take.
So my final question before I toss to Jay, for some more, you know, we talked on our last show about when you know, you need to fire somebody, and there are times when, you know, there are moments where you want to move somebody out, you know, it’s not right, for whatever reason, and the pull and tug that I’ve gotten with employment counsel has been, well, you need to document you need to make your case. You know, there’s risk waking up in the morning no matter what, how do you advise clients to balance the risk of potential litigation with the bad apple that could upset the applecart or infect other apples, whatever analogy you want to go with, you know, talk to us a little bit about balancing internally, the ability to fire fast with the liability, that tail that might stay with you.
So you’re right, no termination is liability proof, you know, someone somewhere is going to try to make a claim, what you’re trying to do is reduce the risk. So certainly having documentation help. And lawyers aren’t necessarily the best at confrontation in the office, you know, you’re sort of go along to get along. And so by the time you’ve reached your limits, there should be something there to rely on. If there isn’t, that doesn’t mean you can’t fire someone, what I say is if you want to balance off that risk, offer some severance in exchange for a release. That’s one way to resolve it. If someone you’re offering someone a month or two of severance, in exchange for release right now, in this economy, that’s probably a decent deal for some people. So you know, don’t run afraid from having to make the tough decisions. I think a bad employee can really have a very negative effect on your entire business, on morale, on productivity, all of those things, but make sure you’re doing it right and understand the protected classes that are out there. The documentation at hiring, you know, it makes sure it’s clear that it’s at will, and ultimately bounce it off of, you know, a lawyer to make sure you’re not missing anything. 5-10 minutes can save you hours and hours later on. Jay.
Yeah, you know, Dan, thanks for being with us. It’s really interesting to me, that as you grow your law firm, there’s really sort of this core group of advisors that you need to need to be able to tap in these important times, like someone like yourself, and employment lawyer, like a good CPA, you know, that type of thing, so that you’re in the position to make informed decisions. I want to talk to you a little bit about employee employment manuals, because those seem to be things that can get some firms in trouble, because they see, you know, when you’re a small firm, you’ll find something online, you’ll download it, you’ll kind of customize it, but it doesn’t necessarily ever get updated. And so you run into problems. And so is there is there any sort of guidance you could give to these lawyers like, Hey, I’d rather you not have one, because you could be making many more problems for yourself than having one that’s way
Out of date and guilty as charged, like we have held off and minimized employment manuals, because I just, I always just don’t like it, no one’s gonna follow it necessarily. And the fear of it coming back and litigation is so extreme
So if there’s one policy behalf, okay, you want to follow one thing, have a strong sexual harassment prevention policy? If nothing else, you absolutely need that. Okay. As for the rest of the manual, keep it simple and keep it to the things that you can follow. You know, at a smaller firm, you don’t need long, detailed policies, on everything of you know, start and stop times and you know, what the snow day policy is and your emergency contact policy. Keep it to the simple straightforward things that you might need a social media policy, I think is one that is a useful endeavor and sort of a fair use of computer usage policy that people know what are the rules, maybe a dress code policy, though, you know, in this work from home age, sort of anything, it seems to be going now. So figure out what are the areas most in need and come up with some specific policies there. I’d rather an employer, have good upfront offer letters, and take care of the sexual harassment stuff, then worry about all the policies and procedures that you may not be ready for. Because ultimately, you need someone who’s going to be responsible for updating that. And given the number of laws that have been changing the paid leave laws that are now proliferating, you’re just creating more hassle for yourself. And if you’re not following your own policies, you’re creating a roadmap for a lawsuit against you.
Yeah, Jay had a point the other day we had a disagreement, I believe or not believe but have generally morphed into a Friday afternoon termination. J seems to like the Monday morning, what is your best practice of when when to do a termination assuming that you have two people in the room.
If you have to ask me between a Monday morning and a Friday, it’s Monday morning, because Friday afternoon, all they’re going to do is stew on it all weekend, they can’t do anything. They can’t apply for unemployment, they can’t reach out to their contacts. It’s a bad situation, you want to make it much more.
Thursday, Thursday afternoon, where they have Friday, end of day versus beginning of day. You know, you know, my fear has always been the the angry person storming through an office and causing a scene. You know, versus, you know, everybody’s gone. And that you the explosions happen when when there’s nobody to hear. But point well taken about being able to do something actionable within a short period of time.
Yeah, I don’t think it makes a huge difference. Ultimately, one way or the other, I think it’s most important to keep it short. This isn’t a discussion. It’s we’re here to let you know what’s going on. This is not up for debate or or discussion. Here’s your termination package, we thank you for your service, and move on. And good termination discussion is no more than five or 10 minutes, any more than that, and it’s long, goodbyes are never good.
Is there anything that huge mistakes you see people making during the termination process, you know, you’re gonna have some people here, they don’t have outside counsel, they’re they’re winging this. You want to release a any best practices for the release, and focusing specifically on the fact that once you get assigned, you hope that that’s bulletproof. In theory, the person should have time to review it, bring it to their own counsel, etc. What are some of the basic steps that somebody should take universally, no law, individual state laws will differ, but any best practices you advocate for?
Yeah, so with regard to releases, you know, understand that if a person’s over 40, there are specific rules that apply. And they’re not common sense. But it’s, you have to give someone 21 days to consider it, they have to be given seven days, to revoke it after they sign it. They have to be advised they have a right to consult with an attorney and be advised as well that there among the claims they’re giving up is a age discrimination claim. And then finally, if you’re doing two or more people on the same day as part of a either reduction in force or a group termination, there are other rules that apply like a 45 day waiting list period. So you know, it’s really important when you’re doing the termination releases that you know that this older worker benefit Protection Act applies. And that’s something you know, most employment lawyers know. But I think most people outside they’ll just pull something from the internet and it must be good. And that’s a real pitfall. I think that that exists out there.
It will Jay, I will adjust the next question. But I just gotta say that as much as I love speaking to you and commiserating about the Yankees and other topics we have in common, it always gives me the heebie jeebies here because I’m like, Okay, are we doing this? Are we doing that there are so many different plate quagmire. You can find yourself in that even just in the last few minutes. I’m like, I better check to make sure we’re doing this. The J.
Yeah, it’s it’s somewhat frightening having this conversation because, you know, no matter how good you are, I’m sure even at your firm, there’s some things that may not be done 100% The right way, Dan, you know, because it’s just the nature of people to to Okay, we’re gonna do it this way. And it just sort of happens.
And yeah, look, it’s all a learning process. I think the scary thing for me has been, I feel like during this pandemic, we’re all going back to that sort of like, I’m a law school student. I’m just learning the law, particularly in the first month. There too, we were dealing with furloughs, which no one had really talked about much before a Shared Work Program in Connecticut, which allows employers to reduce hours and have unemployment pay for part of it. And then this emergency paid sick leave Act and the families first Coronavirus response act, those are all huge issues, that there wasn’t a lot there. So we were, we were flying by the seat of our pants for the early months responding to phone calls. And that’s that felt that uneasiness for a while, and now it’s a little more sure, like, Okay, we got new quarantine rules, great. Bring them on, we know what to expect about it. But if you’re an employer, you should be worried right now. Because there’s way too much going on, and not as much guidance as there should be.
So then I have a question for you, because you brought it up briefly before and it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart. And that is a social media policy, because, you know, I’ve got a social media agency, and we do social media for lawyers, but we also run it in house. And so one of the things that we created years ago was like a 10 point, social media policy. Have you seen in your practice, law firms get into trouble with how they allow their employees to use their social media, and how they discipline employees based on their employees use of social media?
You know, I think if there’s an area where I haven’t seen law firms really be too aggressive and has been with the social media, I think, initially, firms were taking a very hands off view. We’re like, Oh, you want to do a blog? Like the firm I was at, you know, prior to this one was like, oh, no, we don’t want anything to do with your blog. You do it on your own. It’ll be in your name, and, you know, whatever. You would almost never do that now. Right? If there’s a legal practice blog, it’d be oh, we have to do it under our firm umbrella. There have to be rules about it. So things have changed over time. I think as firms realize the value of that, I think if I had to say where firms overreact is they sort of prevent employees from giving personal opinions and their personal voice. And we all know, people and businesses, they hire lawyers, they don’t really hire necessarily law firms, per se, some do. But you know, they want to have a good relationship with their lawyer, they want to hear from them. They want to know that they’re a real person. And a blog provides that opportunity social media provides that opportunity. So I think where we’re law firms tend to overreact is well, everything needs to, you know, go through someone at my firm. Well, you know, do I really need to wait a day to have a Facebook post, it’s just not realistic. I think trusting your employees to do the right thing. Giving them some guardrails, some bumpers to follow is far more effective than having everything funnel from one through one person, because you’re really losing out on opportunities that way.
You know, Dan, one, one last question for me before I let set take over and finish up, you know, you come to us from the big firm, b2b world. And I’m sure there’s some discussion within your own practice area, within your practice group and in your firm about how to grow, you know, that vertical that that business that you have, but it sounds to me, what you’re saying is that there’s a really a need on the solo small firms, small business side for, you know, smart thinking defense oriented employment lawyers to be able to market themselves to that group of people. Because there’s opportunity there, because, you know, the small flower shop or, you know, The Body Shop, still can have employment law issues, but they they’re not in the position to think I’m going to call Shipman, and Goodwin, and there’s really not a lot of B to C employment lawyers from a defense side out there that I’m aware of, and I’m in the industry, is that something that you think is missing in the defense employment law? Side is is a way to approach the solo and small businesses that are out there?
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, even though I’m at a big firm, I mean, I’ve got the largest of large clients in Connecticut and then the smallest of small stuff, solo and small firms, and I think we struggled because I want to help those people, the solo and small firms, but I understand you know, we ended up pushing our rates, you know, our rate structure is going to be a challenge for some of those people. And so I do think there’s an opportunity for a lower cost alternative to sort of swoop in and say, Hey, we want to, we want to be that firm for the for this solo and small firms who are out there. And you know, it’s interesting. During this pandemic, in particular, I’ve started advising smaller law firms on employment law, which I never really thought of as, as a way to do business. But you realize that’s, in some ways, the highest compliment as the lawyers lawyer, right, being involved on those things. So I do think there is there is a market for for that. The one caveat that I would give is, there are HR people, human resource consultants masquerading as employment lawyers, and actually some former employment lawyers, who are HR consultants. And that line of where is HR and where’s employment law gets blurred, particularly at the smaller levels? So that’s the risk, you know, although there’s an opportunity, the risk is, you know, some firms say, Well, why do I need to spend 202 50 on a lawyer, I can get an HR consultant for 120, maybe even lower with a PEO. That’s good enough. And so you’re going to have to find that niche out there. But I’ve always been amazed in some ways that more people in Connecticut aren’t doing employment law blogs, like ours are the ones that did have sort of stopped, because as much as I appreciate my blog, there’s far far too much room in this space to let me go a little bit unchallenged.
You know, that’s, that’s one of those things. And I agree, I think that when you’re starting out, a lot of people sort of rely upon an HR consultants better than nothing, right? You know, the person out of your payroll group. That’s, that’s there, at least they can give you some basic fundamentals on, you know, on overtime rules and things like that. Where would you recommend somebody going? Did you have any particular blog posts out there? Where like, if you’re if you haven’t focused on employment law before, what are the top 10 pitfalls? Is there a place where the checklist where a small business owner can go and sort of say, okay, here are the areas let me just make sure that I’m at least thinking about them. For example, today, I was not focused, I hope somebody on my team was on the over 40 issue. So is there a place of like, here are the top 10 Pit pitfalls you may not know that?
The answer is no. The resource that I use that is sort of our cheat sheet actually is a product offered by Westlaw called practical law. And it is the best resource I’ve seen out there. They’ve got templates for offer letters for Separation Agreements for everything else. And it’s a huge time saver for for me and for clients that we work with, particularly outside my jurisdiction. It doesn’t give you all the answers, but it certainly gives you a head start on that. I think that’s a really underrated product, because it really does add value. But there are definitely employment law blogs that I follow to keep up on things. John Hyman in Ohio is par non Jeff No whack, does FMLA issues. Like no one that I that? I know. So it’s following those people and getting getting some good advice there. But no, it’s a it’s definitely an opportunity for someone.
Any final sort of words of wisdom I appreciate that you’ve been there for me even though you’re you’re out of state, you’ll take my calls late night and have talked me off the ledge because in one sense, it must be entertaining, because the fact patterns are always crazy. People doing insane things that don’t fit into the boxes that you have to figure out how do you how do you navigate both the law and the business and to me that’s the most frustrating is that you not only have to understand what the law is, but then you also have to be able to continue your business and make a buck and make sure you’re protecting the rest of your employees for a viable business. To me I’d love to just get your final thoughts on how you recommend people try to balance that that sort of union
Well, first of all, I thought I was promised the Yankees tickets for life and that’s that was my understanding of the gays.
Box in the legend.
Right right now I’m not sure how valuable they are. So that will.
Get you a cardboard cutout
So I you know, I look I think for for businesses. Employment law gets the short shrift. We know that particularly a starting up that hey, I just want to get myself off the ground. But I emphasize time and again a solid foundation and can build your house far bigger than than not. So if you need a restrictive covenants on some people who are doing business development for you, great, put those in place at the beginning because you cannot put the genie back in the bottle on sales leads, and hire people who know what they’re doing. That’s what I’ve sort of realized over time is, you know, like a lot of us, I’m reluctant to spend money on myself or on others. But if I am going to spend, it’s going to be because it gets to an area that I don’t know about. Lex blog, for me isn’t the cheapest way to do a blog. But they gave me the expertise to get me going in a way that I had struggled with for a number of years, it’s not going to be the same for everyone, there are a lot of opportunities that are out there. But it’s finding those situations that can help you grow. And you know, it’s worth spending a little bit of money on to save you money or to make you more money in the long run. And that’s a hard, hard thing to see. Because, you know, in the short term, every dollar counts, but, but making those smart investments can really help in the long run.
Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome. And you know, appreciate your your friendship and guidance over the years and kin will continue to read the blog. And hopefully maybe we’ll see a checklist that that small law firms should be, you know, we don’t know what we don’t know that just something to keep us up at night.
There’s a content I get for your damn he’s he’s exactly for some free advice. This is what you do to each other. I’m also a Pennsylvania college grad, I went to Scranton. I call my screen buddies on how to tap a keg. We were talking. It’s like how many shots? Can you get out of it?
It’s probably it was Pennsylvania was probably rolling somewhere in there. Like I, I will leave you with this thought which is I did have someone reach out to me going, Hey, has there been any one who’s written about how to do vaccines in the workplace for the pandemic? I haven’t seen any rules about that. So sure enough, there was a blog post on that a few days later. So check out the CT employment law blog in a few days. We’ll see what’s up there.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Dan, thanks, take care guys. Have a great one. Take care.
Well, yeah, another wonderful interview, you know, set these Thursday, interviews really, really helped me sort of get a better understanding of where I need to go with my firm as it grows. And some of the things that Dan brought up, I gotta go back and spend some time tomorrow, Friday, you know, people are out of the office, I’m gonna go in, and just make sure we’re doing things the right way. What do you think?
No, no, I look, I I want to make sure I know that we do a really good job on a lot of things. You talked about it from learning through the hard way. But it sounds like there’s some pitfalls that I we’re not on my radar, I want to make sure my team has them on their radar.
Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I have some other friends that are partners at his law firm. And about a decade ago, I sent a request, I said, Hey, do you guys have a model employee handbook I could take a look at. And I’m thinking now, thank God I have I’m not using it anymore. But it’s really it’s something that I should probably be, you know, a firm my operation my size. This is something that I should just be investing in annually and having somebody looking at these things to make sure that we’re doing it right. It’s, it’s an investment.
Instead, let Less is more, because we aren’t we aren’t GE and let Yes, you want to have your sexual harassment policy nailed down. But to me, everything you do is fraught with peril. That’s the business side of me. So you put a dress code in, and you don’t enforce it for one person. And we see viral videos going where, you know, some awful an awful situation recently in Atlanta, over whether an address code is being forced against an African American man when a Caucasian woman at the bar was not, you know, being thrown out for sneakers, like I get everything you put in writing hazard repercussions. So I think that like I’m gonna, I’m going to definitely double down but it is not it is not like oh, is less is more I think applies to this the employee handbook compared to other areas where if you do put stuff that you’re not thinking about if it’s manageable, so you know, you can enforce it great. But if you start putting stuff that you can’t remember, and your team is not enforcing that that’s a whole nother liability pill there.
Yeah, it absolutely is. You know, one of the things that I’ve done for years as is, every time I would go away with my wife, we, you know, get a day to ourselves and go to the spa or something like that. I always would bring, you know, Inc, Entrepreneur Magazine Fast Company. And I would sit there and I page through it. And always on my iPad, I would have Dan’s blog. And I would literally just scroll through the titles, and be like, Oh, I gotta read this, I gotta read that. And in the last eight months, I haven’t done that, because I haven’t taken that time away from my kids drive me crazy, but it is what it is. But so I think it’s really something I just need to put on my calendar to remember to do every couple of weeks is just looking to see these things. Because that blog does give a lot of good advice. Even if it’s not something of your magnitude that you need to put in. It’s just something to be aware of, on the horizon.
I just had an idea for Maxwell founders for. For Jim and Tyson, it may be worth some sort of content. We’re always worried about the business a lot. But this is a CLE not for like your law firm. CLE not for your law license. But business CLE. What do you need to know? What are the fundamentals in a box? I was wondering Oh, can you can you give me like what are the I asked asked today the top 10? Can we get something that gives people a checklist to it’s not bulletproof? And it’s not exhaustive. But what are the things? Are you thinking about independent contractors? Are you think about insurance, you think about overtime? What are the 10 things that you should be thinking about that you may not be?
I love that, you know, I that was one of the great things about Max law con is that it was it was not legal education, but it was stuff that helps you run your business better. And I think certainly an employment law perspective is something that everybody in this community can really, really get something out of, maybe we can draft in to GM, give us a presentation. And at some point in the future, or at least get back as another guest. And anybody who’s listening to this, I think it’s important that you go back, listen to our podcasts. As you know, we are syndicated on the maximum lawyer podcast, we are available on our own standalone podcast, you could watch us here live. All of our videos are available on our max growth live Facebook page. But make sure that you go back and rewatch it and websites and our website. Yeah, maximum growth live the website. We got to work on that website, though.
But it’s sort of like, Look, you got to start somewhere. So is it the printing produce website? No, absolutely not. But again, get it live, get you know, get your business going. And that’s sort of a metaphor we talked about today. You don’t wanna do stuff, stupid, don’t go and like don’t pay overtime. But you got to start, there’s risk and everything you do. Is it the prettiest website? No, but we got it up. Now we can make it pretty as opposed to it’s not even up.
I love that. I love that. And I know for me a number of years ago, once they started changing the rules about interns, and it has to be something educational, and it doesn’t necessarily make you money. And that was what I just said, You know what I’m paying everybody. And so I’ve had college students who’d be like, well, I can’t get paid. And I’m like, Well, you can’t work here, unless you get paid. Because I just am not taking that risk. I’m just I was.
So on that note, I just I just answered this online and Maxwell the other day, to me, it’s the right thing to do. It’s the right side of the law, you will eventually get sued will happen with that person, maybe maybe not. But I also find that you get much better candidates, that people if you make six internal offers, two to three may show up if it’s unpaid. Whereas you’ll get four to five when it’s paid. And that the length of time you keep the people there’s a certain number of people that need the financial compensation, you might get somebody but when you get somebody where they really don’t need the money, in general with with life and business, I want somebody who needs the paycheck. I don’t want somebody who’s just interested in it, because they might stay with it. But more often than not, and I think it’s a very high percentage, it turns out, oh, well, I’m not getting paid. Therefore, either I take something paid, or it’s an interest and my interest tweaks, it’s gone so that when you have somebody where they’re actually receiving a check, that means something to them, they’ll the odds of it successfully working out long term are much greater.
Totally agree. Totally. Alright, so with that, let’s end the show. We’re a little shorter than normal. But of course, we’re longer than we ever expected. That’s just the way it goes. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever actually had a 30 minute show set. That was our plan. And I don’t think we’ve ever had so maybe one of these days, we’ll be able to get everything in in 30 minutes. But the great thing is is like I said, people can come back to us watch us over and over again. And I guess maybe if you watch this or listen to this, you can do it on two times speed and get us in in half the time. So with that we’re gonna sign off I am Jay Ruane. Oh, yes, I got it right this time is Seth price. I was thinking in my head. Don’t get it wrong. Don’t get it wrong. He is Seth price blue shark digital as well as price Ben Woods down DC, Maryland, Virginia. I’m Jay Ruane. Thank you so much for being with us on this edition of Max growth live. We’ll see you on Tuesday. Have a great weekend bye for now.
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