Join Seth and Jay as they discuss how to collect the money you are owed and what benefits you must offer to retain talent.
Hello, hello and welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m your host, Jay Ruane, CEO of Ruane Attorneys, a professor and civil rights firm in Connecticut, as well as the curator of the criminal mastermind, a mastermind group for counselors. With me, as always, Seth Joseph Price over there. Seth is the Grand Poohbah of all things. Price Benowitz, DC, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, but not the Delmarva Peninsula. Wow. Go there, but you’re not located there. And then BluShark Digital, SEO for law firms. And, Seth, I want to talk to you this week. It’s a great day for us. It’s a great day, because it’s Yankees opening day. Baseball is back. I’ve been going through withdrawal. You know, football takes up some of my time. But I’m very happy to see the Yankees back we got Anthony Volpe starting at shortstop.
I was gonna say like the millionaire’s the injuries, this and that. And then they go they bring me back in, you know. Yeah, same age as JR when he started. Great story. I can’t wait to sit down.
I’m really, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s gonna it’s going to be great. So, let’s talk about collections this week, because we started talking about it last week. And there’s a lot to unpack here. I threw up a question in the group, the Facebook group, the law firm, blueprint Facebook group, and got a lot of good responses there. So, let’s talk about I mean, big firms call it realization rates, you know, like, you know, what they build out to their corporate clients. They don’t necessarily get it all back, right? corporate clients will go in, they’ll cut bills, that type of thing. But for us in the betta b2c world, it’s a it’s a collection rate. I was going through my own collection rate 2022. You know, we had a 97.8% collection rate, which was awesome, I think, especially in criminal defense practice. But that 2.2% adds up to over $1,000.
Yeah, I’ll challenge you the other way. Which is, look, there are two different extremes, right, like spiritually and people in family law, those family law lawyers, it’s not what you bill, it’s what you collect. I see this in the white collar, federal criminal defense case, heavy duty criminal defense, not the DUIs, but the heavy-duty criminal stuff, we get stuck in trials. That’s where, you know, it’s pretty, it’s not even collections, if there’s no money coming in, and you’re stuck in a trial. Right. So, it’s just so let’s divide the question, okay, into the, what I’ll call the regular widget. And one of the things my own firm has sort of struggled with, but it’s been brought to my attention is, we have guys with double digit collection, you know, collections rates, versus people with less than yours, right? So, it goes the gamut. But this is the piece that I’m gonna challenge on, which is one of the guys we have that has a significant collection rate might do 1.3. himself. Gross. And he may collect 1.1 and change. That’s a huge Delta. But that’s 10%. Right. But that’s top line revenue of 1.1. Right, versus I have a lawyer who’s amazing, and does six and change maybe seven, and has almost nothing, which would you rather? And so, it’s an interesting question.
Because I think it comes down to how you compensate your team, if that’s a salaried worker, and…
As a percentage, but as a percentage based on collections, right? Do Now there are extra expenses, right? That person has more intake, there’s more things going on, there is more wear and tear on a firm. And I love it when somebody has it. But I’ll take the analogy since we put all our plaintiffs’ lawyers to sleep in this with this opening question. It’s not dissimilar to the question of a plaintiff’s firm, something I have pushed for and not necessarily gotten my team to adopt, which is what I literally texted John Morgan late one-night, what percentage of cases should I be dropping after signing? And his numbers? 30%. And I’ve heard that from other consultants like Bill big wow, yes, 30%. That is for a marketing firm where stuff is coming in, you have to be set up for it. You don’t drop those cases, you’ll be stuck in cases you’ll statute all sorts, but assuming that you’re willing to drop the cases and you know how to do it. You’re going to sort of hopefully not take too much of a Brunt on bad reviews. They looked at it but you get cases, a certain percentage of those. Then this is what it where it comes down to is that I struggle because on the again I’m pivoting into PII we’ll come back to collections. When you have somebody on a PI case, and the person who’s doing intake has to either say yes or no. And you’re gonna get upset if the case gets dropped later, there’s, you know, there’s a problem, because they’re going to be more reticent. And there’s stuff on the delta. So, are you able to measure? What are you not getting? Because you say immediately, let me go speak to somebody put you on hold that person leaves go somewhere else? How many cases? Are you not getting? Yes, you get the ones, you know, are five-star cases. But how many cases out there have some hair on them that can make you money, that the person is hemming and hawing. Looking for supervision looking for this? Or they just said yes, and dealt with it later, they figured it out. So that’s the first thing, let’s go back here. When doing payment plans, you don’t want to be stupid. If somebody does is there for check fraud, don’t take a check, right? Like, there’s some truisms that you’ve picked up over your years. But if you’re able to get a payment plan, strategically, that pushes a little bit longer than it should, but they have a job, they have a credit card, and you’re gonna sign for more money. If you sign for 20 or 30% more because of a payment plan, is that worth it? Because I’m seeing it, if I charge less and get all money up front, I have a very low collections rate or even with a modest color, but the moment you get to more expensive collection, payment plans, there could be something as much as 10%. Right? Hey, on, you know, on rewards cards up to 3% for a credit card. Right? So, the question is, is that delta there of potentially 7%? You know, is it worth pushing, and being more aggressive, and I’m throwing that out there. That’s not to say that if you’re a family law lawyer, that you’re billing 100, and you’re paying paralegals, and you’re doing all this stuff, and you’re collecting 50? That’s a real problem. But is there something to and again, this is asking, not saying, is there something to because I have learned to do it all these different ways? Is there something to being slightly more aggressive, just like in PI cases where you should be rejecting a certain number? After signing? Should we have your collection rate too low? In that you should be pushing further?
Well, that’s one of the things that I’m going to say, you know, if I clicked 100% of a $5,000 fee, right, but looking back, I probably should have charged $10,000. Did I get 100%? Or did I get 50% of what I what I should have gotten.
Or should have, if you said to somebody rather than 5000 upfront, hey, 2500 give me, you know, $1,200 a month, knowing full well that it’s going to break around 70 508,000. Are you better off than 5000?
I think it kind of goes back to your model. I mean, if you’re, if a lot of people out there are not good at tracking, billing, getting their bills out monthly, they may not have the staff that they need to get it done. A lot of lawyers also don’t want to talk about money. And I think that goes back to the you know, the lack of business training and law school. I’ve never met a dentist who doesn’t like to talk about money. And oh, this is this feeling is going to cost you x if you ask them straight up. Like…
I was watching the chair upside down, and they’re trying to sell me a this is not the dentist but the assistant, a $35 like floor, I had no idea what it was why, like, why are you trying to sell me something upside down in a chair? I look, I was like, I don’t care what it is that technique? The nonsense. So anyway.
Right, right. So, I mean, it’s, you know, I think you have to, before you start judging yourself by other people, and that’s something that I think a lot of people fall prey to, I think it’s natural to look at what other people are putting out in the world and think, oh, my God, I’m not keeping up and that type of thing. I’ll be honest, you know, I have a, we have a friend of the show Marco Brown, who gives a lecture about getting paid for every dollar that you’re owed. And that’s your duty to your family into your firm, because then you can help other people. And I was sort of reticent to go and look at what my collections percentage was, for last year until I finally said, I gotta just bite the bullet and do it. I was happy with the number. And we’ve instituted in the group, I posted my collections Tracking Form, I’m happy to say that of that. 2.2% we’ve collected that 40% of that money. So, you know, because we…
Which means it’s nothing like that. Now the question, there’s like, I’ve struggled with this a lot of different ways. But it also really depends on how you set pricing up.
Yeah, I mean, that has a lot to do with it. But it also goes back to you know, do you have staff that can update credit cards and follow up with somebody if a credit card expires halfway through there automatically.
So, there’s like mental errors who might be in baseball, where the person does this, make those calls? But the question is, depending on the area of law, right, the there’s a combination of being the proactive lawyer and making sure you stay up on it. versus people that don’t have money at all because it’s going to break at some point.
Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things, I mean, it’s interesting, I posted this question in the, in the group two days ago. I got a lot of good responses. So, one of the responses was, how do you stay on top of someone like Jane Weir, who is a, who’s a business lawyer, right? She deals with other business people and shouldn’t want an evergreen retainer enough to cover a month of work in hand. And I think when you’re dealing with, you know, small businesses, that can be a big, a big nut for them to bite off. But you could build that up over time with credit cards, I mean, I’m going to tell you from a, on a criminal perspective, what we have done is we’ve set up payment plans for clients who want to hire us for a trial, but knowing they’re a year away from the trial. And we’ve said, here’s a payment plan, we’re not answering appearance until everything is paid up, the money is going to go right into our trust account, you can always get it back. But we’ll set that up and set payment plans. So, you don’t necessarily have to file an appearance right away if you have an agreement with the client. And another thing that we instituted a while back that has really helped us is that we actually have two different credit card processors in our office, we have our daily operating credit card processor, and then we have we use law pay for any deposits that go right into trust that we have to hold for people. And that’s really helped us sort of divide what goes into our operating account, which is permissible under the rules of ethics for our some of our flat fee clients, and what we need to hold on to for that type of
Question, why law pay? Which is, again, I know there’s a lot of user-friendly pieces to it. So maybe efficiencies, but it’s expensive, expensive.
It absolutely is. But since it’s the credit card that’s going into my trust account, the way law pay does it is they give you the entire deposit, and then they will deduct the fees from operating another different account. So, it makes my bookkeeping very clean. Client gives us a $25,000 down payment. That goes that’s got to go into our trust account. $25,000 shows up in the deposit from byelaw pay, and it just makes my books understood. I get audited, I can tell the bar.
I think I look at, believe me, I’m in the midst of all sorts of nonsense with this stuff. But that said, and that may be enough. But that’s 20 basis points.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
That’s real money.
That’s real money. I mean, it’s funny, I was talking to my local bank. And I know I could get more aggressive with the, with the credit card processing for my operating account. I was talking to my local banker because my local bank was bought out by m&t as a regional bank. And they’re trying to establish a relationship with me. And they were like, wow, you do process a ton of credit cards with us. And I was like, Yeah, and I’m upset that I’m getting hit with all these T tech fees over the last five months since the merger, which we’re all waved at the other bank. What are we going to talk about? And so, it’s been escalated on Friday, the regional director is coming into my office to I’m sure to make nice, but you know, these are the types of things another one Kate Taylor Darcy, said, you know, he’s a firm believer in getting paid upfront. And I think that’s all well and good if the nature and I believe Taylor also does business formation stuff. You know, when you’re dealing with people who need to do business work, it’s a lot different from the father who just got served with divorce papers, or the guy who just got, you know, arrested for DUI, you know, the mindset of, hey, I’m building a business I’m gonna need a lawyer is one thing, people are used to writing those checks.
And that and that, right. So, I don’t disagree, though, each of those people, I think, is doing both. You know, Jane and Taylor are doing this right for that specific practice, given the size of the practice. For me, you know, we’re doing eight figures in criminal load, right? So, the idea is, if I like, if you if I said, take it or leave it at this number, I would have some fraction of my total, right. And so, the idea is, if we’re able to say, okay, I could make this up, let’s say, let’s say it’s 10 million a criminal, hypothetically, if it’s, I could do 5 million to people that would pay up front. But if I give people a payment plan, I do 7500. And if I did crazy payment plans, I would say crazy, aggressive payment plans, I might do, you know, 12, of which that 12 becomes 10. And it’s like, again, it’s part of if you’re doing it consciously, and what I always say is, if it’s done strategically, fine, because look, you’re talking as you said, you could you may be undercharging by 50% if and if a payment plan allows you to charge differently so that Marco has no collections in and let’s say hypothetically, he raised his rate he had Two numbers. One number was for cash up front and the other was almost the bank. Right? And again, you did that with two attorneys, you’re going to do a B test and you say, okay, for these guys, I’m going to charge instead of $4 an hour, 550 an hour, but you don’t need to pay up front, you can give me money, and we’re going to bank it knowing there’s going to be breakage, you know, knowing how good he is, will he be able to keep that to a nominal percentage play the key with most jurisdictions is knowing your jurisdiction and knowing what draconian forces the judges have to keep you in case they…
Make it out of a criminal case.
So, exactly. And in some places where we practice, it’s crazy, you will be forced into a, like a multi week trial without money.
I’ve gotten, I’ve, I have been paid for fewer trials that I’ve done. I say this, I sift.
And that’s, look, I had a come to Jesus with my, with my law partner, Dave, he was doing heavy duty federal, and this is this is where I think the collection matter really matters. It’s to the Marco hourly rate piece, which is you can look there, he charges a fair number, and he gets it. God bless. Right? When you start getting into higher numbers, there’ll become especially higher, like larger cases where you need to get in to do the case, but the money isn’t there. So I took Taylor’s idea of money upfront, great, but we’d have a lot less clients. Right? So now it’s this balance. And what you just said is so true. Let’s say hypothetically, it’s the same number, I’m making this up that you got paid for whatever you say there’s a large percentage use more percentage, you didn’t get paid 100 cents on the dollar, somebody got 100. So you’re at 60. So let’s say at the end of the day, and this is what I think people need to look at, this is what I will get for myself is, okay, take the criminal case, that’s hourly, again, we’re not doing the DUIs that you gave you 2% margin on. But if you went back and you don’t do this right now, presumably, in volume, larger cases, you know, we have 345 $100,000 cases, that sounds great. But if you have a three if you have a $500,000 case, right, but they only pay $300 $300,000. In that case, all of a sudden pro rata your billables change. So let’s use numbers that are easier for me to do. Right. which theoretically means if you are charging, I hope this is right. And somebody will tell us if I’m wrong. $500 an hour, and you build $500,000, but you only got 300,000, that’s 40% less. So essentially, you’re now billing at $300 an hour. That’s That’s what that means. And if your associate who’s on this bill was billing at hypothetically $4 an hour, that means or they would be at…
260, 264.
240, right? Right, you have 240 And you have 300. That’s not very exciting for a scale practice, and maybe fine if you’re a solo. But if you’re trying to scale a practice, we have seven.
And the thing is you probably have to do $500,000 with the work of…
No, no, no, no, no, you know…
You’re, you’re doing that what if so then all of a sudden, you know, you’re you’re not making because you’ve got your attended costs, your staffing and you know, then the…
Right, but knowing that that’s the case, right? This isn’t like, Hey, this is special to us, all of our mentors have the same issue. You go around the country and speak to people high profile cases, we spoke to people, they never get 100 cents on the dollar. What that means is your hourly rate is a fiction. And that’s the problem. So then it’s not a collections issue. To me, it’s are you good in business at that rate, or that blended rate over time. So if you get X number of cases of 500x, and four and x and three, and your total is at four, and you say I am good at $4 an hour, fine, if that works. But if you sit there thinking I’ve done my performance at 500. And that’s what I’m supposed to be getting? And I’m not. So what I’m saying is I’m taking the collections issue a step further into these larger cases that are feast or famine, are we in fact, basically and that’s the issue at 240 $3 an hour, you might as well just open a solo shop, like what you’re not getting the advantages of a scaled law firm, which mean that if you don’t somehow get to that the numbers that you’re billing at, you need to add a premium to it. Otherwise, when it comes down, you’re getting into a dangerous zone that you can’t live at
I wonder if the clients that are and this is so obscure, it probably only impacts you know, one to three people in our audience. But I wonder if there is a model for billing, kind of like how the IRS taxes you, you know, you got to pay 100% of the first 300,000 and then our billable rate goes down from three to five and then it goes down a little more from five to a million people might like that as a way because at that point You’re committed to the case, you’re in it a little further. And they’re paying less per hour, as you are deeper and deeper in the file, because ostensibly, there’s less that you need to do getting into it. And then if there’s a trial, you know, you got to figure that out. But…
I think that’s the fiction. That right there. So like, look, it’s an interesting idea. I take the cynical view, having spoken a lot of criminal lawyers, the clients have X amount of money doesn’t matter what you build. So the question is, when you’re that’s why I keep talking about the hourly rate up the collections breakage, which is it’s, you’re gonna get an hourly rate, the more they pay, the higher that gets to your actual hire. Rate. But that’s the frustration. And that this is what nobody talks about, which is the and then part of the issue with my law partners model right now is he is known as the trial lawyer, who is there for trials not just playing stuff out, people come to them because they can’t afford big law. For a case that actually goes to trial. There’s so many hours involved. The problem is the trials themselves with a loss leader, and you make your money on everything else. If your ratio this is this is what I’m bringing back to you, Jay. If the ratio of trials again, this doesn’t apply to family law, because in theory, those hours are all being paid. But understanding there’s, there’s a known breakage and criminal, this is probably more appropriate criminal mastermind than it is for here. But if there’s a known breakage in criminal, are you in fact, is the ratio of cases that go to trial, one that’s going to determine your profitability, knowing that nobody can really afford a full trial in a criminal case.
I mean, at least for us in my market, it is exceptionally rare that somebody can afford what it’s actually necessary to pay for, like a murder defense.
Right. And that’s why you see your number is some exponential, depending on how crazy the time is, and how disciplined you are. The other problem is great lawyers in the workplace, you could spend every waking minute for the next six months on it. And if anything else, you know, your family get pushed aside. So the number the effective billable rate comes down to almost Criminal Justice Act rates.
I actually think it comes down lower than that. I mean, I can because because I mean, we’re talking we’re talking about, you know, the amount of hours. It’s funny, I was just thinking, right now we’ve got a backlog in one of my local courts have about 80 murders. And they, they’re desperate for lawyers who could step in and handle a murder case. And it’s probably been 1819 years since I had a murder. And, you know, there’s some muscles that I’m like, I got the muscle memory, I should get back in kick that, you know, kick in some doors and handle the murder, but then I’m looking at it saying, I know what it takes to try a murder case. I was, you know, in my early 30s Back then, and I had the energy I don’t know if I have the energy now to do it do do a justice and to lose money. You know, so I don’t know where I’m going. Another thing that came up in the in the group that I thought, you know, two things that people posted about that I think we’re awesome that our audience should listen to. We had Karen Tenenbaum, who says on her invoices, she always has a QR code that takes people right to their Whoo, I like that. I love that. I thought that is so we’re actually adding it right now.
I assume the corollary to that is the link is no, no, no, no, no. And I say that jokingly, because I don’t know how many people send me now things with QR codes on it to my cell phone.
I’m just like, dude, what do you do it just Well, that’s if you mail in a paper bill?
No, no, no, I understood. I agreed. But even if it’s a print, even if it’s on a, you want to make it printed out and sent to somebody, like there are a number of people that are not tech savvy that print every bill out and send it for collections.
So what we’re going to do, I think starting April 1 is for all of the people who are behind, we’re going to actually send them a link to a payment portal and say, Pay $100 towards your past due balance. And see how many people click on that link and just go for it, where it’s just $100
Question about, about the whole collections process, which is…
I got one other thing I want to get in before we got your phone, because this is we’re gonna do we don’t want to have the whole show this Chris, raggedy out in St. Louis, who I met a while ago. He did debt collection work in his prior life before he became a criminal defense lawyer. And he said something that I loved. And he said, set your payment date to be either the day of or the day after their paycheck. And that I thought it was brilliant because you know, you got people whose bills you know will eat up all of their paycheck but if you’re one of the first ones to hit that, that payment on that day, you’re gonna get paid and somebody else will get stiffed. So if you have people that are getting behind, or want an extended payment plan, tie it to their paycheck date and not necessarily you or a day that you want to get?
I don’t know, a I love? No, no, no, no, I love that A and B, it made me think of something which is, and we used to do this a lot more with like people behind on rent is knowing tax refunds or going for bigger case.
Oh, absolutely. Cool. And Shamika talked about having evergreen retainers and credit cards. For us with credit cards, we actually do ACH and credit cards. Yes, we always want to have a backup credit card. But what we found was we have to confirm with the client, that the credit card they’re giving us is not the debit card associated with that bank account. Because otherwise, you’re really only getting one. And that’s something that I think a lot of people need to pay attention to. But I mean, the QR code, the link to the to the link to a payment portal, I think is huge. And I want to I’ll be able to report back
Make sense of your mailing and stuff. But yeah, and we’re gonna get Yes, love it. Let’s get one more topic and before your…
Properties, and this is something that I don’t know, this could probably go along to benefits, you know, as it becomes more difficult to attract and retain talent. Benefits is something that state government, federal government and big corporations can dangle that we you know, as small employers sometimes have trouble being able to do now I’ve been rather aggressive with the benefits in the past, trying to make sure that I give as much as possible. What’s your, what’s your thoughts on? What benefits are must gives? And what benefits are nice to gives? And what benefits are crazy to even give it?
Like everything else, we have people listen to this with a whole spectrum of where they are in the thing when I first started my deal with this before Obamacare, but I was basically hey, look, we don’t have affordable insurance plan, go out, get your insurance, I’ll pay it, it was it was very cheap. And that was pre Obamacare, you could get your own insurance for a fraction, assuming that you’d have some massive, pre existing condition, not at all. So now that that’s in everybody has a reasonable insurance, not the cheap one. So I look, I just got a call from a friend of mine, who’s your client was a mattress firm. And just last one and then a second key employee like one employee and one candidate who was applying because he didn’t have health insurance, right? So I think the basic fundamentals people are, especially as we hit a recession, they want to make sure that they’re that they are covered. That’s there, the part that I feel gets sticky, right. So health insurance, a must, we have gone. And actually one of the reasons we didn’t go with a PEO, which I would love for a bunch of reasons is that it gives us 50 different plans rather than three, right? And so I have people all over the country now doing different things. If we were locked into those it became that became something where I couldn’t hire certain people, because I couldn’t give them the insurance that they needed. Right. So on that end, that’s there, the piece that I think is much more sensitive, is the 401 K. And if you ever if you haven’t seen it, there’s a great episode of John Oliver discussing it. Well, we’ll try to find to get a link down there. So incredibly, you know, it’s 401 K, you need a look, we want people to save, we want people to the fees that are associated, even on the low fee plans are so insane, that when you look at when you actually see benefit to your plan, based It is crazy. And there are good ones out there. I know Tony Robbins pitches one, there are other ones out there. And we do it we have one. But it is so frustrating, because it’s sort of like who’s making money, the banking institutions? Sure it’s like, yes, you want to play for your people to save. But it’s so crazy. I wish that we were in a position that there was a you know, you could just basically fund people’s Roth’s or something like that in an automated way that they said, Hey, I’m really saving. But the idea that we’re sitting there, and in order to give people what they want, going through, essentially the banking industry, which Lord knows, knows how to make money on fees. You talked about credit card fees before, like, it is an every time you look away, it’s worse. But if you go through this, John, he actually sat there and wanted to do right by employees. And when he saw what was there, it’s just so horrific when you dig into it, that you do it because you’re not going to hire people without it at the same time. You want to check the box at the same time I get it and as long as I was small enough, you know, I would try to do for anybody who really cared about it say hey, look, I’ll put the money in your you’re literally set aside money and you can put it directly into your thing and they can only go so far. You can’t do that as you scale. But it is what are your thoughts? What are some of the things that you think so.
You know, I have been rather aggressive with our benefits. We’ve been doing a 401k health care for at 19 years at this point to our employees. You know they are our employees came back to us they’re like we want vision insurance. We want those things.
Exactly. overtime, we’ve added a dental…
Long term short term disability long term care. I mean, we literally have every conceivable. And once you get insurance plan.
I’m sorry. And once you get the disability, it comes in handy. I used to self insure it, we just pay people my attitude was we would just cover anybody whenever they had an issue. And they did. Sometimes they paid six months, sometimes they pay two months of money out of pocket. But you know what, as you grow up, it’s the cost of doing business. You put it in there. I mean, the problem that some of our some of the urban markets in DC, for example, we now have an extra payroll tax that covers maternity leave now it’s awesome. It’s just each of these things, these awesomeness comes with another, you know, fraction of a percent and those percents, it’s I feel like it’s, you know, it wasn’t Superman for with the Richard Pryor with those half pennies. You know, it’s like, it adds up. And so the part of it is, I as you get larger, you sort of like, okay, it’s more holistic, it’s the costume business, we suck it up. But I think it’s also part of the reason that we both diversified to have some percentage of international labor, because the domestic labor, it’s not just the cost, but it’s everything else on top of it. And you’re sort of you want to make sure you do right, you can’t obviously not gonna have an international lawyer in court. But what can I do to make sure that my fees don’t have to go up? And I still have a reasonable profit margin?
Yeah, I mean, these are the types of things I don’t think it’s possible in, in today’s world, to be able to get a top level attorney working for you, where you don’t offer medical benefits. 401. Green, like, I know, some people that are fighting it and saying, you know, we just don’t offer health care. And that’s…
Not all the time. Let’s look for this way. If you don’t, and I’ve been there, because I started out that way. That means one by one you need to negotiate and make sure that they are equal to not have, you can’t just say no, then you’re gonna lose the person. Right? So that’s not even an option. So the question is, could you say, hey, go out first, there’s certain rules after you get to a certain size, you have to, right. And then so and secondly, there, there’s a, again, we’ve talked about the mother in law factor, I’ll call it. So there’s the Y factor. So you know, not I love when there is a brand, that is not a person. I feel like that is something that helps hire greater talent, we moved from the loss of David Bennewitz. When I started, that was what I named it to price Bretton Woods as something that people could come and tell somebody, it doesn’t make you to number two, it just means you’re part of something bigger. I think similarly, if you go to your wife and say, hey, they’re going to pay me the cash equivalent, we’re going to be better off. It’s tough. People want to check a box. They there’s too much dodginess in this world and even stopped a friend of mine who had a 401k. I remember he was with a really dubious one of the stalwarts of the bar in DC this guy worked for him for 15 years. That turned out the guy didn’t fund the 401k for several years. Well, that no, no understood. My point is like this stuff that happens blows your mind. So if I’m an employee, statistically, over time, you’re better off just having the health insurance and counting on somebody to do it again. So it’s, it works unless it doesn’t work, if you can, if you’re so charismatic, and you can convince people, it doesn’t matter, God bless. But over time when you don’t want to have a sit down convincing of each person. And all it takes is one wife to say, You know what, I don’t want to deal with that. Just take the other job. That’s all it takes once and it’s not worth it.
Absolutely. So, okay, before we go, I want to talk about a third topic today. And I’m just gonna put this as a bug in your ear. So we can think about it a little bit more. But I dreamt this up last night like, I don’t know, 1130 at night, I’m sitting there. And I’m thinking, you know, one of the biggest challenges we have with both our remote remote employees and our US based employees is training them. And that’s because normally and especially in today’s market, we’re hiring when we’re at maximum capacity. And so we are trying to onboard somebody to fulfill an immediate need. And then we have to take somebody almost off of…
This is longer than a third said, Let’s make this our kickoff, because I have lots of thoughts but I’ve never been before this. I want to there’s so much to this. Everybody deals with it, right?
Here’s my thought and I want to talk about it. Now, end of March, right? Because by the time the all star brand, bring it back baseball, by the time the all star break comes, I think we’re going to be well on the way and here’s what I’m doing. I’m hiring a teacher who’s fluent in Google Classroom, to take all of our existing videos in our and create, essentially, onboarding coursework, because I don’t have the knowledge to do that. I have the ability to have my team or myself create these videos. But there is a large swath of professionals who have been taught how to use things like Google Classroom to communicate and instruct. And I’m going to put that to work for me during the summer break, Ohio.
I’m gonna do my part in the interruption flag. Great. It’s a J ruin idea. I love it. It could be the next billion dollar idea. We got to wait four months before we before we roll it out. Because I just want it because I know there are people listening. I know, I know. But I don’t want people plant training videos Awesome. Is the teacher you end up with somebody doesn’t know legal figuring it out. Maybe they know the technology where they like it like any other problem I have found again, this is that’s why I think this is a much longer conversation, which is how much do you put in? Obviously, you want the you want manuals for everybody? The question is, how much extra effort do you put in knowing that this stuff? A lot of stuff changes over time? Today, you’re creating video, they sit in a vault, somebody starts, oh, I can’t use that anymore? It’s outdated. Is it too dangerous to use versus evergreen? That you know, is there? So to me, before I even get there? The question is, what can I do evergreen? That’s, that’s firm, specific, general areas specific before I get into the weeds, that some teachers gonna go around, because then you’re yes, you’re not taking time away when you’re in the fire drill, the person leaving, but you’re you’re pulling people away to explain to somebody who’s not there. So again, every idea, sure, let’s try it. But it’s, it’s like there, there it is easier said than done. I’m curious to see how it goes.
So we already have like 100 videos that we use in our onboarding and training. We have YouTube playlists, for lawyers, and for reception staff and everything. What my thought is to have the person who’s familiar with these bonline, LMS, learning management systems, whatever you want to call them, have them put the thing together, create the quizzes, make sure that they get greater automatically, so that we have that stuff there. I’m going to take you use training will know because we have Rinko, which is the online knowledge base by lights.
Of course you do. But the same concept, if you want to go and get…
A trainer will steal my idea. Yeah, I mean, but But you know, we’re going to create a subdomain on it. And we’re going to have a whole training thing. And it’s going to allow people who are in reception to take the coursework for intake or operations and get better at certain things. And I think that this is the next evolution in how we’re doing it, because we’re going to claw back significant hours from highly compensated staffers, so that they don’t necessarily have to train on some of the more mundane basic things. And they can focus their one on one training on the really higher level things as we onboard.
And I think that’s what people will find as they do it, you’re not the average, you know, it’s not your first day at the rodeo for the average person starting knowing I’ll give you the spoiler for most people, for us mortals that are not Mr. systems, that part of the issue is the amount of time and effort it takes to get meaningful training like you can spend it, this person could spend the whole summer and you find out that it saves an hour to two hours in that before they get to the one on one training. The question is, how far can you do it? How far can that training get you? And that’s always been my frustration, not that we we don’t aspire to be more, it is much easier said than done to get stuff that gets you you know that? Because that’s really what you’re talking about is we’re can how much one on one training, can you curtail through interactive video.
Right. So what we have in the in the blueprint, got to do a search for it. But there’s a thing called the training tracker. It’s something that we got from Joey vitality. And that’s how he onboard his employees. And it gives you, you know, you have your 90 days for introduction, proficiency and mastery, and we have the videos that somebody has to be able to watch and be able to answer the question that type of thing. This is just taking it, put it onto a platform, making it look more professional. And I think some of that helps as well, in getting people on board. I mean, we’re in Office of 30 people, you know, and probably in the next five years, we’ll be in office of 50 people. And so if I’m going to be that…
There will be a beach, what’s going on? You changing your mind?
We’re going to be an office, I’m not going to I’m going to be, you know, at the point of the spear, but I’m not going to be here. When there’s 50 people I have to give them my office because I don’t want to take on more space. And that’s another thing I want to talk about. That’s coming up is you know, these five year leases that people signed in 2018 19 and early 2020 are starting to come due
I my law firm it right now we’re busting at the seams because we gave back some space during COVID. And it is you know, and this is the frustration of going to soapbox for a second. The market is softer and you get great concessions, but it doesn’t reflect how ridiculously soft it is. It’s so propped up and so you’re paying a on real money.
When I, and that’s, that’s what I want to talk about because I was reading an article about some of these mid regional banks and how their books are basically propped up by these loans to commercial landlords that landlords are have these huge notes that they were making. And they got bailed out and they had tenants before. I mean, here’s a perfect example subway has a huge corporate campus by me, here in Connecticut, they are getting rid of their entire corporate campus. And moving into a building on my corporate, I’m in my office park here. And they’re taking up three floors in one building. And that’s it. And my landlord is ecstatic because he now has a, you know, an anchor tenant in one of his buildings, after losing you losing Unilever. But I’m thinking, look at all that real estate that somebody’s going to have that’s going to be empty. And I don’t know if they own it, or I got a group…
Of college buddy, a fraternity brother, he and his brother went to Houston during the last real estate bust. And they bought up millions of square feet of commercial real estate REIT reclassified as I took a campus like that, and turned it into, you know, like sweets that Jay Ruane could get and it is a day of mean credit again, for this is a cycle ago, but they you know, cover a Forbes and stuff like that these guys just crushed it. So like with every, you know, with every downside, there’s opportunity, somebody’s going to figure out what to do with that real estate.
And that’s, and that’s my point, my lease doesn’t I’ve signed a lease during COVID to help out my landlord because I appreciate the relationship that we have. And he said, hey, look, I need a certain number of leases resigned to help with my bank financing, will you resign? My lease is now up in two more years. And I’m thinking in two more years, that market may be softer. And maybe it’s time for me to buy something and exit here, although I don’t want to be a landlord in that respect. So, these are all things that we got to talk about. But that’s going to do it for today, folks. We’ve rambled on long enough for you. I got some baseball to watch, I’m sure Seth does as well. So, that’s going to do it this week here on the law firm blueprint. Of course, you can follow us along anywhere you go. By taking us with the law firm blueprint podcast available wherever you get podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Audible, you name it, we’re there. So please find us, just search up the law firm blueprint podcast and give us a five-star review. And of course, you can catch us always here on Facebook at 3pm on Thursdays, Eastern 12pm on Thursdays Pacific. And you can find us every week making comments and asking questions in our Facebook group the law firm blueprint. Any parting word, Seth?
Have a great week and you know we will we’ll see you next week.
Have a great week, folks. Go Yankees and be on the lookout Come on come July you might be seeing my whole new LMS in place here on the law firm blueprint. Bye for now.
Subcribe to our newletter to receive news on update
