Hello and welcome to this edition of the law firm blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane. Managing partner of Ruane Attorneys and founder of the criminal mastermind. And with me, as always, is my man, Seth Jerome Price, down there in DC, Maryland, Virginia, the Grand Poohbah of all things at Price Benowitz. But of course, also your law firm SEO guy at BluShark Digital. Seth, how’s your week going this week?
You know, in some respects, awesome, back from Aruba, ready to start stuff up, kids going back to school, yada, yada. In some senses, I just, you know, it’s hard to get restarted after some awesome time off. But secondly, you know, I feel more and more every day, like a generation gap building. And you know, again, so much. So, if you look back at the term for the gap, that was the generation gap, that’s the old school way. And I feel like I’m now that guy like that, you know, people were a generation ago, thinking about how do I work and relate? How do I know what’s an acceptable time to call versus not? And it is definitely a challenge in ways that continue to both intrigues, as well as frustrate, as time goes on.
Well, yeah, and especially as you’re starting to hire, you know, you’re hiring more and more people that are not part of your generational cohort. And, you know, people communicate differently, people respond differently to challenges. You know, I’m probably trying to raise my kids to be more like a Gen X or anything. Because, you know, we were at the beach two weeks ago with another family and they were blown away that I let my 13-year-old walk up to the snack bar and get her own stuff. And the other thing was like, you’re not going to go with them? Like she’s 13, she’s, it’s not that far.
But by 13, I would travel three years in New York City subways, it was a different world.
Yeah, I can remember being a freshman in high school and skipping school and taking the train into the city. And you know, walking around all day.
No, no, because I had left by that, that was a suburban one. But from the house, you know, you were left, you left home with mugging money in case somebody, you know, it was. So, I don’t want to seem like the old guy or…
The old codger.
But the piece that, you know, accurate. Okay. Nope. What’s interesting is, I feel like in one sense, the BluShark setup, which is very, a lot of young people, but with management, very well structured between me and most people, has worked extremely well. And when I watch ELS, for example, that’s being run at BluShark, it’s magical. Every single person is jamming, excited about hitting their, their numbers, their rocks, like it versus at a law firm. It’s like, everybody goes to the meetings, everybody has their rocks, but have to go yeah, what was it? Did it get accomplished 90 more times versus an idea that this is Game On. And that it is, I, so what I’m trying to what I’m trying to get at is while there are certainly frustrations with the gap, I’m also seeing certain positives, that when these programs are put in place, assuming you have the right people on the bus, that the gunning for success in those areas is great. But like anything else, you it’s not going to be the we have plenty of people that both of us have experienced that come in and just don’t want to work. That’s the overarching theme. But when you get the Gen Z who get it in a bought into a culture, it is pretty magical.
So, let me ask you, that is that, you think that, that is, do you think that the challenges with implementing ELS at a law firm come as a result of the mindset of lawyers and paralegals? Because you and I both know, most lawyers that we talked to do not come into a law firm with an eye towards this as a business. They believe that there’s is a higher calling that that, you know, and paralegals themselves can fall into that trap, especially if they’re trained by lawyers who are like, we’re not a business, we have a higher calling, you know, we’re doing the Lord’s work all of that stuff. And yeah, I get a lot of pushbacks from lawyers, even from my partner, you know, my father for years about how you know, this isn’t a business. This is, you know, we’re doing something better than a business, we’re lawyers.
We bought. Right. And I think that mindset of how law firms have historically been built present company included, makes it harder to implement what I’ve seen in recent years, our head of intake and our head intake CHARNY are both out of state, we can go nationally. So, while we may not be able to find the Rockstar, Gen Zers that will commute to our office, we have by branching out. And so, some of that allows for, you know, gaining that that sort of your it is a business right before it was like, hey, this is a profession, are you coming to the office? Are you dressed? Are you there on time? And now it’s where’s the best talent anywhere in the country, and frankly, now anywhere in the world. But, you know, most of our management team is still domestic. I mean, I don’t think we really have more of that piece much. But we’re now getting mid-level management overseas. Each of these pieces is us being able to get the right cultural fit, rather than somebody who just shows up day after day, which was, my dad, I remember back in the day had a receptionist for 30-40 years, she was the lifeblood of the firm, but out of her effing mind, she would take she lived two hours into Jersey by train, she bought a bottle of wine each night as she got to Penn Station and finished it by the time she got home. You know, she was beloved by clients, but certifiably crazy, and like, that was the that’s what you did, because she showed up. And I feel like the more that we morphed from, who was showing up to does somebody want to be there? Do they buy into our culture? Stuff that for years we first met culture was talked about, but it was very hard to sort of really move the needle was smaller was easiest for sub wills, it’s Jay, but as you scaled, it’s hard to just run on Jay. And…
I think it’s absolutely impossible to just run, especially because, you know, my contact now with some of my people is absolutely, and we onboarded and terminated a remote worker this week, I didn’t even know we had them that he came up in the leadership meeting that I was on a little while ago. And it was like, yeah, we found this remote worker. And they, they were clearly trying to do two jobs at once, because they were not sharing their screen during training, like they’re supposed to, they can hear, you know, keyboard clicking when they’re supposed to be observing. And so, we, you know, within 48 hours, they were here and gone. And I didn’t even know that we had filled somebody in in that role. So, you know, I’m getting to a level of, of not knowing everybody on my team. So, how can I, you know…
Agree. No, I’m fine. When you were a handful of people, the Jay could be that person. But the moment there, it’s there, and then look, and there are people that are better than you and I at that piece. And there are pieces that I’m relinquishing control, letting people say, okay, here’s the here’s the hierarchy, you know, be more of the of this, you know, you know, the EA, can you can you actually be that person who’s innovating and bringing new ideas to the table or working on special projects. It just we both know, and you’ve seen this is that if one person disappears, your back sort of plugging that hole potentially, and can you get to the point where there’s enough redundancy, which is very expensive, and cuts down on margin, so that you aren’t one higher away from going back to the substance?
Yeah. And I mean, that’s my, you know, that’s the conversation I had actually, with my wife recently was like, you know, should we staff up in these positions, knowing that it’s going to mean, at the end of the day, less profit for me, and the response I got, and the conversation that we had was essentially, right, you’re gonna lose less than dollars, but your, your state of mind and your free time, which is much more valuable to you now than ever before, that you’re still gonna get to keep so you’re not, they’re not necessarily spending money just to spend it, you’re spending money to guarantee that, you know, you don’t get that call saying you’ve got to be in court tomorrow, at least for me, you’ve got to be in court tomorrow morning, you know, so…
Have you read who not have? Yeah, so I met Mario to do a friend of the show sent it to me, and I had not read it. And what stuck with me is exactly what you’re talking about. Like if we staff up properly, that we that and that was, that wasn’t what the point was like the mantra that was like the coach that got Michael Jordan where he is, but I’ll tell you, historically, in intake, we’ve grown and grown and grown so pre COVID, when we were like, like 13 intake people, we were at a point where we could never fire anybody short of a meltdown. Like you could really see C minus and we held on for way too long, until you fell to a D and finally cut ways. And that one of the things that we have seen, particularly with the blending of international domestic is we have our headcount up really high. We’re at like 28-30 now and not right, and one of the things that I that I’ve seen from that, right? So that sounds that numbers, let’s say, you know, a couple managers and the rest are there. One of the things that I’ve seen from that two things one, and this is not enough to justify it, but we brought down our answering service bill to negligible, right? We’re actually answering the phone with better user experience. But and this is where we have this amazing woman who runs that division. You know, I told her early on, if you have somebody who’s not performing, it brings down other people. It’s there’s, it’s your time. And I was like, just go and cut it. It’s like the Jack Welch bottom tempered, and I want to be like, look, every time you say we want to fight, no, I don’t want to fire people, I want people who want to be there, somebody doesn’t want to be there, or they’re not with the program. This is not for, like, my firm, I can count on a hand, the couple people that don’t hit that mantra, most of the people there at this point, really want to be there doing kicking ass. And the idea that when somebody isn’t with the program, right? And this is not, again, this is not looking, these are people that very often are brand new that have come through, as you just said, you saw the person clicking during, in, you know, during onboarding, the old school would have been man, we really need this person, we can’t lose them. If we’re at the point where somebody has broken for whatever reason, and they just don’t want to be there, or are through their actions rather than their words, you know, where you’re able to say, let’s bring in people that do but the only way you can do that, is because you normally have to wait for somebody. And that’s, you know, and so the idea that if you have that excess bandwidth, that you’re able to bring it down, I would get as well. We talked a lot about how if you look at somebody hiring them for a year, it’s really scary. But here’s a, what’s that for three months, or six months, it’s a much more doable hire, I would argue that if you were to staff to what you think would reduce your profit and over staff, that likely statistically, something would change either a promotion and exit, a leave of absence, whatever it is, that would realistically not impact the profit as much. And even with what would have been the turnover and that loss that you get your internal rate we’ve talked about over time, that you would be better off holistically between the fact that somebody is already there and trained, and you don’t have that normal dip when you lose somebody, whether it be intake or production or what have you.
Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, these are, these are the problems when you’re growing a firm, you got to, you know, you almost have to try a bunch of things and fail and see what works for your, for your systems, for your culture, for your market, for how you want to practice, you know, and that’s, and that’s, you know, that’s the journey that we’re all on, you know, what works for you down in DC is not necessarily going to work for me and Connecticut, but the one thing that I have learned is that I need to, I need to have more bandwidth of my people…
Think that DC versus Connecticut. That’s, you know, meaning…
I don’t mean…
No, no, no, no, I know, I just clarify.
The business that Seth Price is building is different than the business that Jay Ruane is building. Correct. Different from the building business that Mario Godoy is building, that Ryan McKean is building, that bill humanities…
But for all of us, if we have excess bandwidth, and access, I say lightly because we, if you’re growing, it’s going to grow into it. If you have an absence, you’re going to need it. If you can get to that point, whether you’re a solo, when you hire your third paralegal instead of the two that you’re working with, whatever it is, it’s a scary step. But I would argue most meaning you most of the time, you’ll either grow into it have some sort of life event that causes it to be there, or take a less of a of a profit or realize you know what, I have three, but they’re two rockstars, and one that’s not however it plays out though there are certain business truisms that we love to and I present company, it’s different where I am, but there are certain business truisms that run through all this.
Absolutely. You know, it’s funny, I was just scrolling Doom, scrolling through Facebook the other day, you know, I found a lot of baseball pages. And there was a picture of Wade Boggs, who had come in for relief.
I saw that.
You know, but he threw knuckleballs, right? So, but here’s the thing like the Yankees when he was playing on them, on that team. They had relievers, they had a bullpen, but they still found themselves in a situation where Wade Boggs had to come in, and meaning. And so that’s the kind of thing that we have to recognize, you know, too many of our firms are like we are at our capacity with what we’ve got right now. And I think you need to build in that budget of, of bandwidth.
And it’s easier said than done, but it’s, I, look, I’ll my law partner, Dave, no big Giants fan. And he always talks about you pick the best guy on the team, whatever the best on the draft board, right? was always the Giants philosophy. And I sort of feel like when you see talent, that if I could sense if I could the piece of advice, I give to people as they’re growing. If you see a rockstar person and even though you’re not ready for a full-time office manager, but it’s the right person, it may, you may be several years before you get that person again, if it’s really those positions or, you know, intake where you see something that could really raise your firm level, and you don’t want it to be like, hey, it’s a Lamborghini, that’s beautiful, do I really need it. But if it’s something that could really, practically free up the time, your bandwidth, and get you to that point where you could then focus on the game of whack a mole that we talked about all the time, and move on to the next issue? I love it. You wanted to talk about call rail before we got so…
I got a DM from a member of the law firm Facebook group. And they were wondering if they should be adding call tracking to their website. And I am a believer that… Well, I’m going to ask you straight up and then I’ll get your opinion on it. What’s your opinion about adding call tracking and a call tracking number to a, you know, a regular, like a, not a Price Benowitz but like, you know, and maybe not even a Ruane attorneys, but you know, to lawyers, to associates couple paralegals, you know, they’ve got a decent size county or two or three or four county practice? What’s your thoughts on that?
I think that, look, there are two schools of thought. And Jay Ruane comes from the just brand a named Father John Morgan philosophy where there’s like a big number, a lot of marketing natural, it works. From a digital point of view, I love it. I think there’s a lot of value to it. And historically, it was good because people that didn’t have call listening, use that as their default. So, it allowed, right, which is huge coaching and development. I’ll quote the Gary Falco, it’s like, you know, don’t listen to your recorded calls at your peril. For years it is criminal for we can’t do it, put the frickin blip on, you know, the downside of what a bad intake person can do, especially if you’re overseas people can be so dramatic. So, to me, I love it. I will again, before I flip back to you, I would say you can get crazy with attribution. And like there’s a diminishing value point of return, you can’t get it exactly right. People come to you to all different touchpoints some magically hit a click come straight to you. And they’re your client, but some of them three or four searches before they get to you. And it’s an amalgamation.
And that’s why I’m against it. And I’m gonna come out hard against call tracking. And I know digital marketers love it. And they because they can say, hey, we can attribute you know, the sale to this to this click. But here’s the problem with law. We have careers that spanned 40 years, we are not just solely in the digital space, like a lot of products are, I may be different if I were, you know, selling a widget, but I’m selling a relationship and my ability to solve the other problem that they have. And quite frankly, you know, if somebody were to say to me, hey, you got it, you know, I need a referral down in DC Oh, call Seth Price. I go in and I look up Seth Price and I get a call tracking number. That’s a referral, that’s not a digital lead. But…
No, but that’s also, tell him, look, that, that’s where legitimate, and again, I did something that’s another larger issue. We talked about another show, which is SEO companies should not take credit for direct traffic. Jay Ruane, Ruane attorneys…
Answers that. How do you split that off?
Because you would have a different for a direct search. In theory, again, if everything is jamming right, you would be should be able to segment it if you, again, if you’re using call rail properly as opposed to a paid click from paid campaign. If you have a branded campaign, go to a different number. That is doable. But look, I’m gonna go on a little bit of a rant. People seem to like these. But one of the issues that as a digital provider, which it gets, you know, originally started out, hey, it’s a website, we have some pages to optimize, then there’s local search. Now not only is their call ref. Not only is their website to call rail not only is their website to call rail to lead docket or whatever you’re using for your intake, that all of this stuff, all of these different complications are getting, you know, I look at it like the mechanic that started out with like, we fix some spark plugs. And now they have to be computer geniuses. It is taking things to a level and we’re seeing that with all of them. You know, there was um, do you remember years ago, we went to PubCon? And what was the, was the mobile optimization that was all the rage but…
Mdot?
No, no, there’s Mdot, which came and went, but there were the stripped-down mobile websites that were that was all the rage and all the big publishers were using it. And I remember speaking to one of the experts on a panel, I raised my hand in the middle of this big room and said, “You know, of the four that you’re displaying here. How many of these went smoothly?” And he’s like one, three of them were upside down. And this is like the times, you know, the London, one of London tabloids. This was like a US major publication. And I’m like, if people in the resources there can’t implement something easily, I said, you know what, we’re not going there. The risk is too great. So, it’s not the call rails a risk. That’s not what I’m trying to say. But with each level of complication you’re adding, there is additional issues. And as long as you work on the fundament, the phone ring, is it? Are you tracking it? Are you getting back to people? Great, I so you’re gonna, I’m gonna surprise you and saying, I love the concept of call tracking, I think it is important if somebody is going to say, if you know that you need to measure paid search, and have some benchmark because you can piss away a lot of money. But if it’s other things, you know, you can on your own Jay Ruane, pull out the actual referrals at some form or fashion based on intake and get an overarching ROI.
Right. Yeah, I mean, my whole thing is, who’s got the time for that? That’s if you’re running your business, if you’re, you know, for me, and I, you know, I have people, you know, that work for me in marketing, I’d rather than creating new content, shooting new video, that type of thing.
You put your head down and push forward. The exception, I would say like I’ve seen it, I, I put a $40,000 PPC campaign, and Google’s auction just kept going up and up. And I’m very glad that I knew that my cost per case was like, should have been 3000. It was like seven, I was able to say, you know what, let’s, this is not an, I’m gonna cut it off. And so, I think that, you know, you’re gonna hate my answer depends on who you are your practice, whether you like it, and I think you’re made a very, very point, a good point that sort of got brushed over here, which is, if you are somebody in your team is going to use it.
Right. That’s, I think that’s the big thing, you can be sold all these bells and whistles. But if you’re not actually capitalizing on that data and that information to make those changes, then it’s just an added expense every month that you could repurpose, I mean, look at every one of us, I’m sure who’s listening to this has bought some software, you know, subscribe to a service and said, oh, this is going to be awesome. And then guess what, it’s not being used at all after a month or a year.
At any, once you get to Salesforce, because we have Salesforce for our intake of Price Benowitz, you know, it is very, very difficult because every sale with Salesforce, every software is five 6x, what it would be itself, right signatures like $50 a month with Salesforce, it’s like 2000, it’s crazy. It but that integration is a huge deal. And every single time I get pitched by my team, it goes back 10 years, I’ve always like all this is gonna save at least half an employee. If I saved all the money I bought from the software, I I’d be a gazillionaire like, meaning, it’s what you’re saying is it’s a combination, right? You want those improvements, but don’t get the beauty that we see. And what that software is going to do for us very often has to be balanced, but in reality, and statistically, what are the odds it’s going to be used in six months?
Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things, I mean, I have, I have a bunch of products that, you know, as we off boarded some of our, some of our team, they were using it, now they’re not using it anymore, because they’re gone. You know, those, those are the types of things, you know, you really have to do that. And I’m going to challenge everybody that’s out there, I normally do this. At the end of the year, it’s usually something that I do, I call it cut month is December I go through all the things that I pay for annually. I make sure I, alright, have subscriptions to my, you know, internet provider, my cell phone, but I just look to see where can I make some savings, you know, and I want to usually every year coming up with, you know, a grant or two that I can save every month and you know, in a firm like my sizes, that’s significant money over the course of a year and back to school time is a great time to sort of get your feet underneath here. And I think I’m gonna move it up and start doing my cup month in September rather than December because December you know, with holidays and travel and, you know, events and that type of thing it sends to get away from me, I always wind up doing it in between, you know, Christmas and New Year’s holiday. But yeah, maybe it’s time for me to do that in September and really sort of reevaluate everything that I’m that I’m spending because, you know, you got to watch the pennies and the dimes and the nickels because if you do that the dollars add up to themselves.
Absolutely. And, you know, I think that love to talk next show because as you say this, I’m now seeing, you know, deja vu all over again to quote yogi, where, you know, the others that we all cut are now…
They’re huge. They’re…
Right. And we, I want to talk about is it time to reevaluate these and how to reevaluate them? Or is it they’ve suckered me before my, you know, my just being a sucker again.
So, we had this conversation probably back on one of our first shows, have I cut Avvo because they gave us, they said, well, we’re gonna give you a tracking number and we’re gonna track all the calls to you. And so, I gave Avvo a tracking number of my own to see if it matched. And what they were saying we’re calling in, we’re not what we were, we caught them in a lie basically. And I showed my rep, I said, this is a lie, because we’ve got these calls. And they didn’t ring to these phone numbers. And this is a dedicated ABA phone number in our system. And the guy’s sort of just had nothing to say and he’s like, understand if you want to cancel your contract, you know, at this point, but the other thing too, is that some of these, you know, find law just yet Avvo even super lawyers they’re showing up more prominently in the SERPs now.
And they always had been. The question is…
Results page.
So, let’s make that next week. Let’s get out of here now, but we’ll talk about that next week.
Alright, folks, that’s gonna do it for us this week here on the law firm blueprint. As always, you can take us on the go by subscribing to our podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. And of course, as always, give us a five-star review. When you do subscribe, make sure that you follow along with us. Of course, you can catch us every week live in our law firm blueprint Facebook group. If you’re not a member, please join. Be sure to answer all of the questions when you join so that we can get you in right away. That’s it for me. That’s it for Seth. Have a great week and we’ll see you next time on the law firm blueprint. Bye for now.
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