Spill The Ink

What if there was a way for lawyers to ditch the billable-hour model without sacrificing value or profits? ADVOS Pro is teaching law firms to do exactly that with its P3 Method. The P3 Method enables firms to transition to a “deliverables-based” format where the firm’s expertise and results — as opposed to six-minute increments — act as the measure of its worth. The model is designed to reward efficiency, streamline processes and prevent attorney burnout. In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” Michelle Calcote King invites ADVOS Pro Co-Founder Whitney Harper to share how the experience she and her co-founder Gwen Griggs had as attorneys and business people shaped the creation of the P3 Method. They also discuss ADVOS legal's success using this model over nearly a decade of law practice, and how other firms can do the same. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What is ADVOS Pro and the P3 Method What is involved in the four-module course on applying the P3 Method How points for the deliverables-based model are calculated How law firms can break up with the billable model while growing profit margins The importance of learning how to pitch your legal services How the solution enables firms to invest in tech and automate tedious processes About our featured guest Whitney Harper is a seasoned legal professional known for delivering high-value service to her clients through her unique understanding of the intersection of law, operations, sales and strategy. She is the co-founder of ADVOS Pro, a business that helps law firms break up with the billable hour method and begin measuring their worth in expertise and results. Her practice, ADVOS legal, uses the ADVOS Pro P3 Method to provide a range of legal services to high-growth companies, including strategic legal counsel, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and commercial contracts. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out ADVOS Pro and ADVOS legal Follow ADVOS Pro on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Whitney Harper on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.

To advance and excel in the extremely competitive legal field, attorneys and legal professionals are pressured to work long hours, handle substantial workloads and exhibit a high degree of professionalism when dealing with complex issues. Although their role is undeniably vital, the industry is facing growing criticism for the negative impact its demanding work environment can have on the wellness and mental health of those working in it. The Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee was created to advocate for healthy work environments, reduce mental health stigma and provide resources to increase well-being and support the success of legal marketing professionals. Cynthia Voth, who currently serves as the LMA West Region president and formerly served as the President of the LMA International Board of Directors, was a key player in launching the committee.  In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” host Michelle Calcote King interviews Cynthia, discussing why the committee was founded and how it helps industry professionals. They also talk about the different ways Cynthia’s law firm is making resources available to its employees and why normalizing conversations about mental health is critical to the industry’s survival. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn How the Legal Marketing Association's Well-being Committee is driving change and promoting wellness The legal industry's mental health stigmas and strategies for law firms to overcome them How Miller Nash LLP is making wellness resources available to its attorneys and professionals Advice for cultivating a culture of wellness in law firms About our featured guest Cynthia Voth is an experienced legal marketer and law firm administrator with a passion for collaborating with and coaching attorneys on business development and delivering excellent client service. She is the Chief Client Officer at Miller Nash LLP. Dedicated to the advancement of the legal profession, Cynthia serves as the 2023 Legal Marketing Association West Region president, previously served as the 2019 president of the LMA International Board of Directors and has been part of numerous committees, including as a founding member of the LMA Well-being Committee.  Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Miller Nash LLP Follow Miller Nash LLP on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Connect with Cynthia Voth on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Learn more and find resources from the LMA Well-being Resource Center Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Cynthia Voth: I think there's been this long-standing feeling that to talk about your mental well-being is a weakness. It's not. It's a strength. [music] [00:00:11]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:28] Michelle Calcote King: Hey, everyone, and welcome to “Spill the Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King, I'm your host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, at “Spill the Ink,” we're spending the entire month of May focusing on conversations that help law firms prevent and address burnout, stress and anxiety, and generally support well-being in this demanding industry. A few years ago, the Legal Marketing Association announced a Well-Being Committee to support legal professionals in promoting mental health and creating healthy work environments. Cynthia Voth is a former LMA president, and she was a key player in launching the Well-Being Committee in 2019. I am delighted to welcome her on today's episode to talk about such an important topic and learn from her experiences. Thanks for joining me today. [00:01:27] Cynthia: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. [00:01:29] Michelle: Yes, I'm excited to talk to you. I'd love, if you don't mind, introduce to our listeners your role and your experience in the legal industry. [00:01:42] Cynthia: Sure. Yes. I am with a firm based in the Northwest, Miller Nash. We're about 150 attorneys. My role is chief client officer. I am basically chief operating officer but with a client development focus, and client service focus. My long professional career has been in marketing and business development or client development, and marketers tend to be pretty capable people, and over time, you just take on more responsibility. Next thing you know, you're managing the law firm. That's been my, in a nutshell, trajectory of my career. I've been a long-standing supporter and volunteer for the Legal Marketing Association. I've served in a number of leadership roles. As you mentioned, I served as president of the International Board of Directors in 2019. I'm currently serving as the West Region president, so I came back for more. I love our association so much that doing another tour of duty for the amazing West Region, but that, in a nutshell, is my background, and I'm based in Seattle, Washington, if the people care about that sort of thing. [00:02:56] Michelle: Yes, I noticed the difference here. I got my Florida short sleeves on and you're bundled up there. [00:03:01] Cynthia: I'm in fleece with my Patagonia puffy behind me. It's quite cold. I'm waiting for spring to arrive.  [00:03:07] Michelle: If you can talk to us first about the stigma surrounding mental health in the legal profession. Why is there the stigma? [00:03:19] Cynthia: Yes, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons. I think culturally, there's just stigma about mental health. Thankfully, it's getting better. People are normalizing conversations about mental well-being. They're being a lot more forthright. I feel like there's a lot more acceptance than even five years ago. I think the legal profession is high demand and it's a critical profession. Lawyers are trained to find what's wrong with— They are actually drawn probably, to the profession because their brains are wired to find the nuances, the errors in the argument, the errors in the document. Sadly, it also extends to the errors in people. What's wrong with the firm? What's wrong with people? They don't like to show weakness. There's a high level of competitiveness.  All of those things don't really lend to a nurturing environment that's accepting and open when it comes to the struggles that people may have. I think there's been this long-standing feeling that to talk about your mental well-being is a weakness. It's not. It's a strength. I think there are shifts happening, but I think historically, they just haven't been there from the staff side. That's for attorneys. Right? We've seen the ABA come up with their well-being pledge, and they've had that for several years. It's been very focused on the attorney side of the equation, and I think the staff side at law firms, there's been a long-standing divide. Attorneys sometimes use the word non-attorney. Right? [00:04:59] Michelle: Right. [00:05:01] Cynthia: We, in the legal professionals' sector have been using a term that is “not staff,” because we also are important for the success of a law firm. There are pressures that we feel because there are long-standing hierarchy differences. Staff are not treated very well, in some firms. They're not as respected in some firms. Not all firms, but in some. Throughout the course of my career at one point supervised legal assistance and paralegals, and I was shocked at how many people told me in interviews that they had had staplers thrown at them by attorneys in the course of their career. That's abuse. That's physical abuse. [00:05:50] Michelle: I have heard the same stories, yes. [00:05:52] Cynthia: Yes, and they were true. People aren't making this thing up. To work in an environment— I'm not saying all firms are like that, but there's definitely real struggles and pressures and abuses and transgressions that happen, which is just incredibly unhealthy. We're not supposed to be subjected to that on a regular basis. I think that has also added to some of that because when that has been accepted behavior for people, then if someone complains or— It's not even complaining, just flags, "I've had this abusive thing happen to me," then sometimes the reception is not, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that. We will never do that again." That's not always been the response from law firms. It's like, "Oh, well, that's just so and so." Right? That's just what they do. That's not okay.  I think that has also added to the stigma, because it's don't talk about that sort of thing. Yes, there's a real need to normalize the conversations and create more compassionate, supportive workplaces everywhere in the world butI think, and particularly, I think the legal profession has a lot of work to do. [00:07:08] Michelle: It reminds me of thinking about how extending this conversation, not just from attorneys to the professionals that work in firms, is that hurt people hurt people. You've got two groups of people there, and if you don't address one or the other, it's going to continue.  Let's talk about the Well-being Committee. Why that was founded, and what were some of the goals? [00:07:33] Cynthia: Yes. Along the lines of what I was just sharing, I was hearing from a number of our members the pressures that they face. To be real honest, we lost some beloved members of our community who committed suicide, and nobody knew. I'm not saying the job is what caused them to do that, but it was probably a contributing factor. It's just one of those things where when you know people are struggling, but they don't always have the support or the environment to reach out. It inspired me to address that issue. The Legal Marketing Association clearly focuses on supporting professionals within law firms, business professionals within law firms, to help grow marketing, client development, business development. Part of being successful in your job is having that sense of well-being. It felt like an area where the association could put some energy and resources to normalize conversations, and to really see if we could give people resources and support so that they wouldn't feel alone or they wouldn't feel that stigma, and hopefully, we wouldn't lose any further members to suicide. I know it's more complicated than that, but if you don't try, if you don't offer something up there, then nothing's going to improve or change. Even if it made a difference in one person's life, that there's a resource they didn't know they had, or a stigma that got taken away because it's like, "Oh, I've heard this person talk about their depression struggles,” then that to me is a success. Honestly, the response from people was amazing. It was just this really wonderful, "Oh, my gosh, I want to be a part of that. I'm so thankful that we're bringing this into the conversation." We had Renee Branson and Ryan King as our initial co-chairs, and now we have Megan Hill and Terry Isner, who are co-chairing that committee, but just really passionate, beautiful people who really want to help others. It just was this incredibly supported and wonderfully embraced initiative. [00:10:07] Michelle: Yes. I love that. I didn't know Terry was doing that. I'm a former Jaffe-ite. So, yes, good friends with Terry. [00:10:12] Cynthia: There you go. He's that. He's the co-chair. He was co-chair last year. He is co-chair this year. [00:10:17] Michelle: That's great. [00:10:18] Cynthia: Yes, really excited to have him part of it. [00:10:20] Michelle: It's a good fit. Tell me about, what are some of the initiatives that the committee tackles? [00:10:25] Cynthia: A lot of programming, I think, normalizing the conversation. Like making sure that people— I think just even talking about mental health and well-being is powerful in and of itself because when we don't talk about things, then people feel like there's shame there. A lot of programming; the well-being Wednesdays; and making sure that the events that are hosted include well-being elements. Rooms that you can go to if you need to just take a breather. Just even morning yoga sessions or things like that. Little things that you can do for self-care. Well-being… It's normalizing conversations, but it's also doing things for yourself to make sure that you are physically and mentally feeling fit. The committee has worked that into a number of events.  They're working on a well-being pledge just to help educate, much like the ABA pledge. That's still in the works, and I'm not quite sure the status of it, but I'm hopeful and optimistic that we will have that as a toolkit for folks to bring back to their firms. So, yeah, a number of different fronts. There's, honestly, so many things.  One of the things that we actually did immediately was a really wonderful resource page on the legalmarketing.org website. That was largely, it was put together by the committee, but Renee Branson was really a driving force because she just had a wealth of resources. For those who haven't visited the legalmarketing.org website, most of our content is behind a paywall. It's a professional association, you need to be a member to access all of that. We were really adamant, for the well-being work, to put that in front of the paywall, so it would be free for anyone to use. I just encourage everyone, whether you're a member or not — I do think it's a great association to encourage membership, but if you're just looking for a really great list of resources, I would definitely go to legalmarketing.org and check out the Well-Being Committee page and the resources listed there. [00:12:27] Michelle: Thank you. You actually just got ahead of one of my questions, was about, where can we point people to resources? That's fantastic.  If you're a law firm leader and you know this is something that you want to tackle for your own firm, you want to address it. What are some ways that firms can support mental health in their firms? [00:12:49] Cynthia: I'll use our firm as an example. I think trying to normalize the conversation. Again, I can't impress that enough. I think there's so much stigma and shame, and I think people need to know that the folks they admire, who seem so strong and put together, have their own struggles, too. It makes you feel less isolated and alone. It gives you resources to go to. I think having that be part of a conversation. We've held firm meetings where I've had pretty successful firm partners talk about their own depression. [00:13:21] Michelle: That's great. [00:13:21] Cynthia: Talk about the struggles they have, talk about being on medication, and normalizing that so that there isn't stigma that sometimes I think people think it's a crutch or it's a weakness if you have to take medication. Blood chemistry is a really complex thing. Sometimes you need medication to help you out, and that's okay. We've done things like given some billable credit for a well-being day, just to make sure that people know we value taking time to take care of yourself. It's a day, so I'm not saying it's a month, but it's a gesture of making sure people know that's important, too, and you should invest in yourself, and the firm will give you some billable credit for those timekeepers out there.  For Valentine's Day last year, we signed onto the Calm app for our firm. There's corporate memberships to Calm Premium that you can do, and so that offers meditation, and sleep assistance, and all of the things. We gifted that to everybody as a gesture of caring and they can share it with their families. They can have up to five logins on this Calm app. It's really a valuable resource for our folks. [00:14:43] Michelle: It's a great idea. [00:14:44] Cynthia: We've had some people who have never meditated before. If you've never meditated and you're like, "Oh, I can't meditate." I would encourage you to try guided meditation. Sitting there in your own brain without someone talking you through, or some calming music can be really tough, especially if you're in the legal profession. It's hard to get the wheels to stop spinning, but I have been trying guided meditation for some time, and I will say it does help my brain quite a bit. There's so much research out there about the physiological and mental benefits of meditating regularly and getting your brain into that state. That was something we wanted to invest in. I think it's knowing your firm culture and community and making gestures and bringing it forward to people. It's not just an EAP program. It's important to have an EAP program that has resources, but I think it's taking those extra touches to bring it into conversation. I've seen some firms who have even normalized it by having backgrounds that have statements and slogans about normalizing talking about well-being and health, and that's just part of what they put front forward. I think it's really knowing your firm and your culture and working with your executive committees or your C-suite or whoever is going to set the tone and make decisions. Then really making gestures and staying with it. I think that will help move the needle for people feeling cared for and feeling like they're not alone, and there isn't that stigma there. They're not going to get penalized if they speak their truth. [00:16:21] Michelle: Do you feel like this is really taking hold in the industry, or is there quite a ways to go? I know there was that PowerPoint slide that got a lot of attention at an Am Law 100 firm, where it was basically like, "Hey, you're in the big leagues. This is your life 24/7." [00:16:42] Cynthia: Suck it up. [00:16:42] Michelle: Suck it up, buttercup. Yes, basically. What's your sense of where the industry is right now with all of this? [00:16:52] Cynthia: There are surveys out there, and I think the industry still has a ways to go. I think some firms have made some good inroads, but there isn't— You read some of the horror stories. There was that horror story chain of the woman who took family leave to have a baby and some of the abuse that was thrown on her. [00:17:16] Michelle: Oh, I missed that one. [00:17:17] Cynthia: I can't remember it. It got a lot of play on the social media for a while. People, there is some old-school mindsets out there. It was the suck it up or the walk it off. I will say my age, I'm 53—No, I'm 52. I'm not 53 yet. I will be 53. I came up in an era where it was walk it off, don't talk about it. That's weak. Don't be weak. Firms are still led largely by some boomers, and a little bit of Gen Xers. I'm a Gen Xer, and I feel like we swing in between the Millennials and are a little more capable and willing to speak our truths, but I think there's a lot of management that still holds to that old-school model. I do think the billable hour model, and the pace of law firms as a business model do lend to some challenges, but I think people are brilliant, and they're creative, and if they bring a level of care and passion to it, we can solve any challenges. We can remove stigma and support people's mental well-being while still having successful business. [00:18:33] Michelle: Right. [00:18:34] Cynthia: I would argue, it would make our businesses more successful. When people are happy, and they feel cared for, and they are feeling well, they will perform better, they'll be more creative; cognitively, they function at a higher level— [00:18:47] Michelle: Yes, 100%. [00:18:48] Cynthia: —than if they're feeling abused and they feel like, "The firm's sucking the marrow out of my bones." I do think there is a real strong business case to be made for firms to really embrace making this part of their culture. For everybody, not just for their timekeepers, but for all of their business professionals, because people have choices of where they can work, and life is short, and the world is pretty dark and hard right now. We just came out of a pandemic. That was brutal. The environment's not in very good shape. There's a lot of pressures out there where people are questioning how they spend their time and their days and recognizing that life's short. If we can, as an industry, make improvements so that the quality of people's life and emotional well-being is better, then our industry will be stronger for it. [00:19:41] Michelle: Yes. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. The research supports that this is good for business. I remember when I first started managing people reading about how being a boss you need to approach it almost like when you're on an airplane and they say to take the oxygen mask first and help those around you. You can't be a good, effective boss if you yourself are unhealthy. Get your own house in order first. And we've all worked for that unhealthy boss. It's not fun. [00:20:11] Cynthia: No, it's not. As you said, unhappy people or injured people injure or bring misery to others. What does it look like if people are in a better head space? You will be a better manager. You will retain your talent. Your teams will go to bat for you because you've shown that you care and that their life and their well-being is important to you. That's how you create great teams.  Oh, gesundheit. [00:20:44] Michelle: Thank you. [00:20:45] Cynthia: You're welcome. [00:20:46] Michelle: I sneezed. I muted it though.  That's great. You had mentioned the Legal Marketing Association's support page. If you're not a member of the Legal Marketing Association, are there other resources out there that you can think of? [00:21:02] Cynthia: Yes. Like I said, our support page is in front of the paywall, so you don't have to be a member. I think that's a pretty nice list of websites and places you can go to.  I mean, the ABA has their well-being pledge, so if we're looking at legal-specific places, I think that's another resource. Our firm just signed on to that. I'm looking forward to bringing that front forward. There are things in there, I will say, that I think firms need to focus on, like not making alcohol front forward the centerpiece of all events.  [00:21:34] Michelle: Right. Yes, right. [00:21:37] Cynthia: In terms of other resources, I guess I kind of lean on those largely for the law firm, just because I'm trying to stay in that space where I bring acceptance. That's been my go-to. I know there are a lot of places out there [00:21:53] Michelle: That would be a great place to start. Both of those. Absolutely.  Before we go, I'd like to ask, if there's one lesson that law firm leaders can take from this conversation, what would it be? [00:22:07] Cynthia: I think it is normalize the conversation. Reduce the stigma. We all have a responsibility to reduce that stigma. You don't realize how some offhanded comments can make people feel shame about the things that they're feeling, and if we're going to create an environment that is supportive and people can thrive, then I think we really need to create that level of acceptance and normalcy so that everybody is comfortable to speak their truth. [00:22:40] Michelle: Yes, I love that, because it is. It's just such a vital part of the whole conversation, being able to talk about it and feeling comfortable talking about it. Absolutely. [00:22:47] Cynthia: It costs firms nothing to do that. It costs you nothing. You don't have to pay for a fancy program or buy some expensive things to install into the offices. It's not easy for some people to do it, but it can be easy once you start that conversation and people don't feel like they're going to be judged, or penalized, or stigmatized for speaking their truth. [00:23:19] Michelle: Right. Yes. Well, thank you so much.  We've been talking to Cynthia Voth — boy, I just got tongue twisted there — Of Miller Nash. Cynthia, if people want to just reach out and talk to you more about this subject, what's the best way for them to do that? [00:23:32] Cynthia: I'm on our firm website, so my email address is there, and my phone number. It's just cynthia.voth@millernash.com. I'm on social media. I'm on social media, so you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Instagram is all about hiking for me. That's my well-being happy space. If you want some beautiful pictures of the Northwest, and some hiking, and some dog photos, you can follow me there. I haven't been super active on Twitter, to be honest. I gave up on it a few years ago. I'm on there, but— [00:24:04] Michelle: Yes. I'm the same way. [00:24:05] Cynthia: —I'd reach out on Insta or LinkedIn. Yes. Those are great. I welcome anyone to reach out. I think this is such an important conversation. I think we as an industry, we as individuals can have a huge impact on our industry and within our organization. Anyone who wants to just talk about it, start a movement, or whatever, I'm happy to support and talk about the subject because I think it really has the ability to change people's lives and honestly, even potentially save people's lives. That's the best way we can spend our energy. [00:24:40] Michelle: Yes. Well, thank you so much. [00:24:41] Cynthia: You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me. [music] [00:24:46]: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. [music]

Legal professionals operate in incredibly demanding and high-pressure work environments that lead many lawyers to struggle with severe stress, burnout and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Research into attorney mental health often reveals grim realities. For example, a recent study sponsored by the California Lawyers Association and the D.C. Bar found lawyers contemplate suicide at an “exceedingly high rate,” with 8.5% of lawyers surveyed reporting suicidal thoughts, compared to 4.2% of the U.S. population age 18 and over. Conversations about lawyer wellness and resilience are becoming more commonplace and a growing number of firms are implementing well-being programs and strategies to help their staff navigate the stressors of the industry. This episode of “Spill the Ink” is a must-listen for legal professionals who are looking for tactics to build resilience into their work lives. Host Michelle Calcote King invites Renee Branson, founder of RB Consulting and co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee, to discuss the industry’s barriers to wellness and share her advice on how firms can support their employees in becoming more resilient. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Barriers and stigmas affecting mental health and personal well-being in the legal industry How the industry’s attitude towards mental health has shifted over time How law firms can incorporate resilience and well-being strategies The six domains of resilience and why they matter Tactics for managing stress and burnout as an attorney About our featured guest Renee Branson founded RB Consulting with a vision of bringing the power of resiliency into the workplace to help people cultivate mental well-being and help organizations maintain high-performing teams. At RB Consulting, Renee works with lawyers, legal marketers, business professionals, non-profit leaders and others to equip them with immediately usable tools to increase resiliency, well-being and optimism in the workplace. She’s a Certified Resilience Coach with a master's in counseling psychology and over 20 years of experience as a mental health professional, educator and non-profit executive. Renee serves as co-chair on the Legal Marketing Association’s Well-being Committee and is a member of the American Bar Association’s Attorney Well-Being Committee. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Sexual Assult Resource Agency, a non-profit agency working to eliminate sexual violence and its impacts through education, advocacy and support services in Charlottesville, VA, and surrounding counties. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out RB Consulting Follow RB Consulting on Twitter and Facebook Connect with Renee Branson on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Renee Branson: He said, "Hey, I saw that you're a trained therapist," and I said, "That's right," and he said, "I just have to let you know that this profession is killing us." [music] [00:00:11]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:29] Michelle Calcote King: Hey everyone, and welcome to “Spill the Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King, I'm your podcast host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  May is a Mental Health Awareness Month and in recognition, we're going to spend the month focusing on conversations that help law firms prevent and address attorney burnout, stress, and anxiety, and generally support well-being in this demanding industry. Today, I've got Renee Branson joining me. She's a Certified Resilience Coach — I love that, resilience — with a master's in counseling psychology. She's the founder and principal of RB Consulting where she works to help businesses including law firms establish and fortify their well-being programs. She's delivered several keynote speeches and presentations about the importance of resiliency and well-being, including for the Legal Marketing Association. Thanks for coming on the show. [00:01:30] Renee Branson: Thanks for having me. [00:01:32] Michelle Calcote King: I'm excited to talk about this. I definitely want to dig into that concept around resiliency. The older you get, you learn the importance of resiliency in your life. [00:01:41] Renee: For sure. [00:01:42] Michelle: Let's talk first about your consulting work just to set the stage and so that everyone understands what you do in this area. [00:01:52] Renee: My background, as you mentioned, is in counseling psychology and I've spent most of my career in that realm and specifically in the realm of nonprofit work working with survivors of trauma, both childhood and adulthood trauma. From that, I really learned a lot about what it means to foster resilience and when folks do have higher levels of resilience, their ability to move beyond traumatic experiences in their life. It was several years ago, I was having a conversation, actually with an attorney and it was a large law firm, and I was working for a nonprofit and I was meeting him as a potential donor actually in a completely different year of life. He said, "Hey, I saw that you're a trained therapist," and I said, "That's right," and he said, "I just have to let you know that this profession is killing us." It was such a dynamic shift of okay, this is no longer a donor meeting, right? [00:03:06] Michelle: Yes. [00:03:08] Renee: It haunted me, stuck with me, and really started to look at what are some of the specific needs in the legal space. Why is it that professionals in the legal space are maybe more vulnerable or lack some of the skills around resilience? And applying what I knew about trauma to the professional space. Trauma can be a lower “t” trauma or the big capital “T” trauma, but we all experience traumas throughout the course of our life. None of us get out of here without that. [00:03:48] Michelle: Yes. That was actually going to be my next question is what is it about the legal industry that makes it particularly prone to these challenges? What is it about this industry that makes attorneys have less resilience, and the professionals in the firms? [00:04:10] Renee: I think one of the things that I've noticed is that there's both an external and internal factors that are at play and make this perfect storm. I'm just speaking some generalities here. This is certainly not the case for everybody or every experience, but generally speaking, if you look at what makes a good attorney, you're looking at high levels of perfectionism, high levels of wanting to have autonomy. And then externally, a pressure to not show vulnerability or not to ask for help. Those external pressures and that makes that perfect storm of being able to say, "Oh, I'm supposed to be bulletproof." Also, we swim in this environment of then a lot of other bad coping mechanisms easily and readily available to us particularly in this industry, whether it's the constant cocktail party social hours, the really late nights of work where now we're chronically sleep-deprived, so we're certainly not functioning. That absolutely lowers our ability to be resilient. There's a reason why people torture people by not letting them sleep. [00:05:50] Michelle: Right. [00:05:53] Renee: That is really just that perfect storm that creates that breeding ground. [00:06:00] Michelle: How have you seen the industry's attitudes change around this topic and what's driven that change? [00:06:08] Renee: I think what's driven the change is this, we're starting to see not only high-profile deaths by suicide, people are seeing their colleagues suffer really from addictions and just general health issues. I think it started to become more noticeable. I also know that when folks are really struggling and are at the point of burnout, rates of negligence or even malpractice rise because folks aren't on their A game. They're really struggling and so rises in that kind of situation, so there's really a component of ethics. That it's the ethical decision to maintain resilience not only personally but then uphold it as an industry standard. [00:07:15] Michelle: Yes, it's interesting. I saw that play out. I was a member of the Florida Bar's committee that oversaw when there were complaints by the public of attorneys, and I would say 9 times out of 10 there was a mental health issue or addiction issue involved where then they didn't uphold their duty of service to the client. Absolutely, I can see how it's an ethics issue.  If I'm a law firm leader and I realize this is an important issue and I want to help, what are ways law firm leaders — and I know one of them is hiring someone like you — how can they help? What are some of the things that you help firms put into place to help their attorneys and professionals? [00:08:02] Renee: That's a great question because I think it's one of the things just like, it would be the same if I were to try to go into a law firm and provide some kind of legal advice, that's the fish out of water. It's really hard for switching that mindset over for those in the legal profession to say, "Okay, what do we need?" I think, first of all, having some good folks around you who really are experts in the field, whether that’s someone you actually fully bring on board, or you're just working with, so they really understand the psychology behind change and the psychology behind that. That's I think a critical point. I think also looking at it really holistically, it can't be a bolt-on. I always only half-joke about, "Yes, it's great to have a massage chair in the break room and fruit in a fruit bowl and bring someone like me in for once-a-year hour-long talk," that's great. I'll never turn that down but it has to be really that holistic change. Looking at how do we function as a firm, how do our policies reflect. If we say our values are the wellbeing of our attorneys and the legal professionals who work with them, how does that show up in the policy and our process and our procedures of how we do business from day to day? [00:09:38] Michelle: It's looking at all the structures and processes and how they work and seeing where some of that might be contributing and doing that analysis. I like that. [00:09:48] Renee: Right. [00:09:49] Michelle: What are some critical times, I'm sure there are times when you've noticed firms tend to reach out to you more. Are there some critical times when mental health training might be more useful than other times, or when does it trigger in a law firm leader's mind, "Oh, this is an issue." [00:10:07] Renee: Oftentimes, it is maybe after something's happened. Or there's a lot of either discord going on in the firm and they can feel the heat rising, or there really has been a tragedy happen in their firm, either a suicide or some noticeable addictions where that's become something that— Oftentimes, that's the time when I'll get called. What I always try to let people know is the best time to make yourself personally and your organization really resilient is when the sun is shining. You've got the ability to build that real strong resilient base when you're not already in crisis mode. It's like trying to sell a parachute after you've already been pushed up out of the plane, so really getting that foundational thing and then being able to build on the strength. [00:11:17] Michelle: Right. I say the same about marketing and PR. Don't come looking for marketing help when your revenue is down and you're desperate for work. You got to do it when things are good because it's such a long-term strategy. [00:11:35] Renee: Here I am. [00:11:35] Michelle: Yes, no worries. Oh, technology. [00:11:40] Renee: I know it. [00:11:41] Michelle: You alluded to this a minute ago but what are some of the stigmas around mental health and the legal profession? What do you see are the stigmas that create the barriers to getting help? [00:11:54] Renee: I think the big one is that fear of being or looking vulnerable. Early on when I started working in this space, I realized the disconnect between when I used the word vulnerable and what people would hear were really very different things. It made sense to me. I figured out that we were talking in two different ways. Someone said to me once, "Listen, Renee, we don't do vulnerability. We don't do vulnerability because vulnerability in the legal world means…that's when mistakes happen. That's when there's weaknesses. We do everything we can to shore-up those vulnerabilities. That's our job." That made a lot of sense to me. There's a reason. Even sometimes when the tools and behaviors that we are doing are unhelpful to us in one realm, they're very helpful to us in another realm. By understanding that, I tried to really help people understand that. If you think about vulnerability, if you think about anything you've ever gotten in life that you've ever wanted whether it's been in your professional career, in your personal life, whatever that might be, there was always an element of vulnerability in that. There was always that moment of risk where I could either get it or not get it. I'm putting myself out there on the line that goes through the relationships that we're in and the jobs that we want. Seeing vulnerability and that openness to risk actually brings a lot of reward, and so leaning into a vulnerability of saying, "You know what? I need something different for my life. I need to start adding some things onto taking a look at what's not working for me anymore. What tool used to work and isn't anymore?" When I talk about resilience, I talk about the six different domains, I refer to them as books. Six different domains of resilience. Sometimes you might be really high on some areas of resilience and really need to then turn up the dial on some others and so being able to sit back and look at, "Where do I really need to pour some energy into so it's filling my cup back up?" [00:14:25] Michelle: I'd love to hear what those six different domains are if you don't mind sharing. [00:14:28] Renee: Yes, absolutely, I would love to. I talk about them in no particular order and that's because, like I said, they're all at different points. Sometimes, we might need one more than the other. When we talk about those six resilience domains, I call them books because I think of this as a library. We'll pull down one of the shelf sometimes when we need it. One of them is calm. The ability to calm and soothe ourselves in the moment. It's one of our very first skills that we learn as human beings when we think about the ability to self-soothe. We had caregivers who nursed us and rocked us and cared for us and then shortly after, as still in infancy, we learned how to self-soothe. We suck our thumb. Babies hold teddy bears or wrapping blankets, so that ability to self-soothe is critically important. Now, we don't walk around pacifiers anymore, so then what do we do? Sometimes, we forget that we have that capacity in the moment that can be offline for us, particularly, when we're already at a [sound cut] rate of that kind of chronic stress. I talk about, we all have stress that it spikes and it'll go back down and it'll spike and it'll go back down. When we're in a chronic state of stress and it'll spike and maybe it'll go down a little bit, then it'll spike up again and it'll go down just a little bit or maybe it doesn't and it flatlines. Even in our new baseline, we've got cortisol coursing through our bodies, and so that ability to calm and self-soothe. We really need to focus on just our health, how we are physically treating our bodies and also what our body is telling us. We know that stress and health are really, really closely related. If we're getting chronic headaches, if we're having constant gut issues, that's a sign of what is our body telling us. Feeding ourselves literally well, getting sleep, all of that is a big component of it.  A third one is, and this is one that folks often don't really think about, but it's staying connected to our values. Values is a huge one. This goes back to what I was saying that if a law firm says that one of their values is the well-being of its people and it says it's on the values that hangs on the walls of every law firm but they're not really living into that. There's an incongruence. We're incongruent with our values and that state of being is stressful in and of itself. [00:17:25] Michelle: Right. Yes, absolutely. [00:17:26] Renee: We ask ourselves, "Where are we personally and as an organization? Are we staying aligned in our values? Are we living in the integrity of what we say we value?" Really in a moment then of crisis, challenge or change, we can say, "Okay, what value do we need to make sure that we're really upholding here?" because we know that anytime, both personally and professionally, when there's a moment of crisis challenge or change, those are the times that will also challenge our values the most because we're looking for an easy exit from the discomfort or the stress of it, so staying really, really close to our values. [00:18:12] Michelle: I like that. [00:18:17] Renee: Especially with the organization, if any one did have to be top of the list, I really would put that one I think at the top.  Also, our ability to reason. We know that when we are under an enormous amount of stress, our thinking brain, our logic goes offline. [00:18:40] Michelle: That's so true, yes. [00:18:43] Renee: Because we've got our little lizard brain which is — I don't know if you've ever heard of the brain is like a hand. We've got that fibula deep down in there that is really messing with us and telling us that we're in danger, and so we've got no blood flowing to the thinking parts of our brain. So keeping those on line, being able to recognize— I always recognize that when I've read something three times and I still haven't comprehended anything I've just read, then I know, "Okay, I just need to push back from the desk." [00:19:12] Michelle: I need to slow down, stop, take a break. Yes, I hear that. [00:19:16] Renee: That's right. Recognizing that, not letting it freak us out too much. We're like, "Oh my gosh, I've lost my marbles here," and give ourselves that ability. When we are able to get back online with that, then we're much more easily able to adapt to the challenge or change that we're going through. We're much more likely to be able to learn from it and actually have that, be that. We talk about positive stress, too, that growth-based stress that stretches us and helps us grow. That's something with reason.  We talk about optimism and optimism for me, it can be a bit sticky. Right now, I'm also the executive director of a sexual assault resource agency. I know that bad things happen to good people for no reason. Sometimes when I think about — or at least when I used to think about optimism, it was like the sunny side of the street, don't worry, be happy, good vibes only, which didn't resonate with me. To learn that optimism really is a more grounded kind of optimism, that means simply that the current crisis, challenge or change isn't permanent. It's not going to last forever, even when we think it is. That it is not pervasive. It doesn't touch every single aspect of our life, so really to take a moment to say, "Okay, what of this problem isn't touching what part of my life and can I lean in and get some relief, some joy, take a breath in that space?  Finally, the third P is that it's not personal. Yes, it impacts, me but it's not because of me. It's not because I'm a bad person or I'm worthless. If I believe those things, I can still feel sad in the moment. I can still feel frustrated in the moment but I still have some optimism because I know it's not permanent, pervasive or personal. [00:21:22] Michelle: I love that. Yes, it's like a perspective almost. [00:21:26] Renee: That's right. [00:21:26] Michelle: It's not just being positive for positive reasons. It's just gaining the perspective so that you don't obsess over the negative and you can put it in the right place almost is what it sounds like you're saying. [00:21:38] Renee: Yes, that's right. The very last one really quickly is connection. We are hard-wired to be connected with one another, and it matters less about how many people we're connected to. We are so hyper-connected to everyone around the world all the time, 24/7, but that real, authentic, deep connection. Even if we just have a few people in our lives and even better, if we've got even just one person in our place of work where we feel that we can show up authentically, that can be literally life-changing. [00:22:15] Michelle: Yes, absolutely. I wonder, too, and I know what you were saying there is about deep connections but the advance of remote work and how that impacts mental health, I could see it having both positive and negative impacts, and the negative from the connection side of things. [00:22:34] Renee: Yes, I think that's right. I think that's one of the things that we will be learning about and studying for decades to come. I think we learned because we needed to. Again, it's about this being adaptive in the midst of a crisis.  Just a personal example, I joined this online book club group at the beginning of the pandemic and there's a core of five of us from all around the country who've only met in person, some of us just once. Actually, I saw one friend in Chicago last week, but really deep connections. We text each other daily and check on each other's lives and ask about our kids. It can happen remotely but we have to be more intentional about it because we don't have those off-the-cuff water cooler moments. Intentionality is really important. [00:23:34] Michelle: I love that. Yes, I love all your points about resilience. For me, it wasn't something I really understood as a concept. I think a lot of people don't understand it until they go through a few things and they go, "Oh, this is what resilience looks like," and if you can get ahead of that, especially in such a demanding profession where you are expected to be the perfect one with the bulldog kind of persona, it's so incredibly important. Last thing I wanted to ask was around burnout and stress. Attorneys are expected to bill crazy amount of hours. I don't know if you've seen, there was a big drama the last couple of weeks where a PowerPoint presentation went viral, and it was in one of the big Am Law 100 firms. It was basically saying, "Look, you're at the big leagues. This is how it is. This is your life. You're online 24/7. Don't complain," and it caused this big uproar. In an industry that demands that, how do you help attorneys avoid that burnout and stress, or how can they help themselves? [00:24:47] Renee: I might have lost you there for just a second. [00:24:49] Michelle: Oh, that's okay. Sorry. I was just saying, how can attorneys honestly help themselves or what tools do you give them for avoiding that burnout and stress before they get to that point where it becomes a real big problem? [00:25:02] Renee: Gosh, it's so important to have a firm that is not like the one you were mentioning that really does have that space to say, "You're allowed to be human, and as a matter of fact, we need you to be human," but we don't all have that pleasure or ability at the moment to have that kind of support. I think having some of these resilience skills on board, knowing how to advocate for yourself and advocate some systemic change, I think is really important, but the idea of being able to grind oneself down and then maybe get a week or two weeks of vacation, even if in an ideal world, you really do log off for those two weeks, which I don't know any attorney in my life I've known that's really fully done that. Let's say, even if that's the case, you're already at such a point, you're not getting up to a recovery level at that point. [00:26:15] Michelle: Right. [00:26:18] Renee: There's not a magic reset button, just like whether it comes to getting in physical shape, too. We can't just go away kind of on a warrior weekend and all of a sudden, we come back and we're in a marathon after a weekend of a running camp or something. It's that those consistent small changes that we can make, that are within our control, are even more important when we have things that are out of our control. One of the things, when I talk to law firm leaders, is I'm not always going to be able to get them to see the altruistic benefit of making changes. That's just the reality and that's okay, but we can also make the economic argument for this that it really does cost in real money and in real reputation, which results in real money, when you're just grinding your folks down to a nub. We know that that makes an impact as well. Investing in well-being doesn't have to be for altruistic reasons, it can be for just plain old economic reasons as well, and that's okay with me as long as it gets done. [00:27:39] Michelle: Yes, nothing wrong with that. Yes, exactly. Nothing wrong with showing the tie to more revenue and a more effective business, so that's great. Well, thank you so much. A really great conversation, really topical for the month of May as we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month and we're shining a light on some of those issues.  We've been talking to Renee Branson of RB Consulting. Renee, if a law firm leader listening to this right now wants to get in touch and learn more about you, where should they go? [00:28:12] Renee: They can find me on my website which is simply just reneebranson.blog or my email address is rb@reneebranson.blog. That's probably the easiest way to reach out. I'd be delighted to talk to more folks. [00:28:28] Michelle: Great. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. [00:28:32] Renee: Thank you so much. Take care. [00:28:36]: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.  

When faced with a complex legal challenge, businesses search for law firms that can provide specialized solutions to their problems. By branding your law firm as a “jack of all trades,” you risk having potential clients lump your sophisticated law practice with other competitors.  What does that mean? You’ve just lost new business because you didn’t stand out. Casting a wide net can help expand your target audience, but it can also prevent you from being memorable in an extremely competitive market. Niching is a way to demonstrate to prospective clients that your team is uniquely qualified to represent them. In this episode of Spill the Ink, Michelle Calcote King sits down with Robert Ingalls, the Founder of LawPods, to discuss the value of being niche-focused and how podcasting can be used to a firm’s advantage.  They discuss the process and strategy behind an excellent legal podcast, the value-add podcasting provides firms, and why defining and owning a niche area is a key to success — in both the legal business and podcasting world. Also, hear about how Robert took his years of experience as a litigation attorney and combined it with a passion for podcasting to start the company Lawpods. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What is the value of starting a legal podcast? How does podcasting work? How does niching help law firms differentiate themselves from their competitors? How can firms define a niche and use it to boost a podcast? About our featured guest Robert Ingalls is a recovering attorney, professional speaker and the founder of LawPods, one of the first podcast production agencies for law firms. At LawPods, Robert and his team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcasts that build relationships and drive revenue. Robert’s path to podcast producer for the Am Law 100 was anything but direct. For years, he battled anxiety from the pressure, long hours and constant conflict of a litigation career. When he was finally ready to throw in the towel, he had no idea what to do next.  With no business or marketing background and only a love for podcasts he discovered while creating a podcast for his law firm, Robert decided to see if lawyers would pay him to help them launch podcasts. With very few takers in the early days, Robert spent two years in a corporate banking gig, grinding nights and weekends to finally bring LawPods to life. As a speaker, Robot frequently speaks on topics including positioning your law firm podcast for success, prioritizing mental health, entrepreneurship and law office technology. In his spare time, he enjoys teaching podcasting at community events, spending time with his wife and daughters, skateboarding and snowboarding. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out LawPods Follow Lawpods on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Robert Ingalls on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Read “Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You” Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript Robert Ingalls [00:00] For most lawyers, you’re sitting down and your job is to help someone else understand the answer to their question and make them feel better. Make them say, “I’ve been here. We’ve been here. You’re in safe hands. This is the place to come because we understand exactly what you’re going through.  [MUSIC AND INTRODUCTION] [00:20] Michelle Calcote King [00:38] Hi everyone! I’m Michelle Calcote King, your host, and the Principal and President of Reputation Ink. We’re a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and professional services firms. To learn more about us go to www.rep-ink.com.  When a business is facing a complex challenge, they do what we all do: head to Google to start researching solutions. What inevitably happens is hundreds of search results come up. While casting a wide net is great for getting the attention of a broad target audience, niche marketing can offer a greater competitive advantage in highly saturated markets. And for the sake of today’s conversation, we’re talking about law firms, but this applies to other industries and professional services firms as well.  My guest today is Robert Ingalls. He's a strong believer that a key part of your firm’s branding and marketing strategy needs to be niche-focused. And I have to say that I strongly agree, but we’ll get into that.  We’re also going to talk to Robert about his transition. He made the transition from his career as a litigation attorney, and then in 2017 he decided to change gears and use that expertise to found the company LawPods. As a new-ish podcaster, I’m really excited to talk to you about podcasting and that strategy and how it works for law firms. Robert, thanks for being on the show with me.. Robert Ingalls [2:03] Hey, Michelle. Thanks so much for having me. Any time that somebody puts a microphone in my face and lets me talk, it’s a good day for me. Michelle Calcote King [2:09] Love it. Let’s start with what LawPods is. Tell me about your journey to starting that. Robert Ingalls [2:16] Oh, that’s a big question. I was a litigation attorney. I initially went to law school probably because I wasn't sure I wanted to be a big kid yet. But, I’d also had a kind of a lifelong affair with just the pursuit of justice. I always found it very entertaining and certainly romanticized it. The idea of helping people was really exciting to me. So, I went to law school and became a criminal defense attorney. That was always the path. Once I got there and I started practicing, I found out very quickly that it wasn’t for me; that I am not built for that type of work. You know, people say attorneys have to compartmentalize. I don’t have it. It’s just not a muscle that I have, and it’s not one  that honestly I think I care to develop. I take my whole self with me everywhere I go and that was really hard for me because the types of things I was doing every day — while completely ethical and the right thing and my job — they made me feel bad. I did not like what I was having to do and the way it made me feel. It was incompatible with good mental health for me and I discovered that pretty early. From there, I jumped into kind of general litigation, but also kind of jumped into what lawyers will call “Door practice.” You know, whatever comes in the door. And that was not great. Jack of all trades, master of none. I think we’re probably going to get into that later in the conversation, but I was stressed out all the time, overworked, very anxious. I didn’t have a word for it at the time because, you know, the idea of having mental health problems was, “No.” Michelle Calcote King [4:15] Well and I’m sure it wasn’t in the lexicon as much back then as well. Robert Ingalls [4:19] Not at all. The type of area I came from growing up, it wasn’t something that you admitted to either. It was a weakness. So, I’d never thought much about it and I thought this is just what life is. This is how life feels. Then, my wife came to me after we got married and kind of hit me with, “I want to have a baby. Like, now.” And up until that moment, that was tomorrow guy’s problem. All of a sudden it was like, someone might live here next year. That really caused me in that moment, and over the next couple of weeks, take stock of my life. And I said, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be this person who is stressed and anxious and was overwhelmed all the time. So, I started on a path of personal development, which I’d never been into before. That path of reading books in personal development led me to a podcast. The second podcast I listened to, just kind of, a light bulb went off for me. Michelle Calcote King [5:30] What podcast was that? Robert Ingalls [05:31] It’s different now, but it was called “Awesome Office.” It was a great podcast and it was about office culture, and I was running an office at the time so I was like, “Let me learn about this.” The guest was a guy named Tom Bilyeu, the founder of Quest Nutrition. He’s now gone on to found “Impact Theory,” a very good podcast about personal development.  And we’ve all heard this so many times in our lives that it’s: try. You can be anything you want; you can do anything you want. It was the first time I’d heard it because that was the thrust of the message: you don’t have to do what you’re doing. You can stop it now and do something else. I just heard it. “I think I can be anything I want. I don’t have to keep doing this.” That just gave me license in that moment to get out of that tunnel vision I had and explore. I think I told  you before we got on that 30 days after I listened to my first podcast, I bought this microphone. The medium resonated so deeply with me that two people could sit down and have a conversation a world apart and it could be valuable to me. Michelle Calcote King [6:41] How cool that you’re doing that. Robert Ingalls [6:44] Yeah. Like, somebody right now is listening to this podcast probably two years from today when we recorded it and they’re gonna, hopefully, get value from it because we took the time here to sit down, have this conversation, put it out where people could hear it. And then it’s kind of got that evergreen status where people can continue to interact with it. So, that’s the short story of how I got where I am. Michelle Calcote King [7:06] So much of what you just said resonates. I often tell clients that marketing allows you to take control of your firm in terms of creating a brand to attract the kinds of clients you want, you know? And I don’t think a lot of lawyers have thought through that. I’ll give you an example. A lawyer will often tell me, “Oh, well, all our business comes from referrals. We don’t get it.” And I’ll say, “Well, you’ve never done marketing. Of course all your business has come from referrals.” Until you start engaging in that and defining an ideal client and ideal business and then marketing for it, you don't understand the power that that has to really create the kind of practice that you want. Marketing is critical to that. So, I love how you said that.  Also, podcasting for me has been such a value-add as well. I've enjoyed every minute of it. And it's not just from the content creation; it's the relationships you build. Have you found that as well? Robert Ingalls [8:05] Yes. When I first started, that was the biggest thing that was unanticipated for me, but for my clients as well. They overwhelmingly say the network effect of the podcast has been one of the most valuable things that they didn't even come in seeing as a potential ROI. And they’re having conversations with people like we’re having right now. We’re getting to know each other in real-time right now. They’re having these conversations with people they otherwise might not be having conversations with or connecting with. Those people turn into, potentially, referral sources; potentially clients, potentially friends, and certainly a member of your network, which there’s always value in that.  Then the relationships you make from the listeners that you connect with, people listen, they start to follow you, they start to reach out to you, you start to connect with them. I have become a guest on numerous shows that I started out as a listener, and I was like, “This is really good information.” And then I started to think, “I think I have something of value to add to this conversation.” Now I'm a guest on the show; now I'm developing relationships; now I have referral agreements with some of these people. It all starts from this beautiful medium that we're engaging in right now. That's why I went all in. That's why when I left my career, I started building this company. You know, I took a corporate America job just to pay for the kids I now have and started building the company. It was early, but I believed in it. I saw how powerful it was in all of these things we’re talking about. And I think the market is kind of proving me out here because every year we see that staircase go up. Michelle Calcote King [9:57] Yeah. And COVID, I would say, probably definitely helped. I hesitated getting into podcasting because I thought I don't have more to share than what's already out there. There's all these sort of legal marketing and PR podcasts so I thought I'm not going to add anything new was what I hesitated. Then I talked to a consultant at a company that manages podcasts and produces podcasts for companies and he talked me through the networking value; and to view it as a networking tool. Sorry, my dog is walking around in the background. Robert Ingalls [10:35] I love it. Michelle Calcote King [10:36] She’s my velcro dog so I can’t push her out while I do this. But, you know, he really coached me around thinking about it as a networking tool first and foremost. Once I did that and shifted that, I’m still producing great content, but I’m making connections in a way that is really simple but has a lot of added value. That was kind of a lightbulb moment for me. When you talk to law firms — we’ve kind of just covered it — but, do you give them any other reasons about “Why a podcast?” As we know working with lawyers, they’re busy people and they’ve got billable hours to meet. Talk me through the value proposition that you give them. Robert Ingalls [11:27] The first one that we usually discuss is when people are showing up on your website, they have questions. For a lot of my clients — I have a lot of trial lawyers — when people show up on their website, something bad happened to them or someone they care about. And they're there not to learn about you, per se. You're not the hero of their story.  Michelle Calcote King [11:51] Right Robert Ingalls [11:52] They're there to get answers.  Michelle Calcote King [11:54] About their problem. Absolutely.  Robert Ingalls [11:55] Right. That's why we're making all of the content we've been making. That's why SEO companies will never go out of business for at least…until they figure out how to beam stuff into our brain, I guess. We're creating content to answer questions and that is usually, depending on the type of law firm, that is usually the first thing we're thinking about: is they ask, you answer. Now let's answer in a way that could perhaps provide more value. Because we write all of this content. It’s very good. It's helping drive people to our site, but people don't love to sit and read content. And videos are good; I like videos a lot. I think that there's a very good place for them, but audio has exploded, I believe, because it does something that no other form of marketing can do: it sells you time. It doesn't say stop and read. It doesn't say look over here and watch. It says, “What are you about to do? I'll come with you.” You can learn, be entertained, and gather information — and on your own schedule, from your own app. You don't have to sit on my website and use the rudimentary players that a browser allows you. You can tap one button, leave the website, go to your podcast player, to my show where everything you could ever want to know about your problem lives.  Michelle Calcote King [13:17] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [13:18] So, you have another problem, then just scroll through your feed. That is also something. And I know they have that problem because I've been in thousands of consultations. I've heard every possible angle of a question asked to me. I've also worked on my SEO. So I know what people are typing before they land on my site. I know what they're typing before they land on my competitor sites; I know what they want to know. And so I'm creating content that when someone does land on my website, that will nurture them, that will cause them to get that know-like trust that we want. That is going to get past that friction point of getting them to pick up the phone. Michelle Calcote King [13:55] Yeah. I love how you say that, that, you know, we're producing a piece of content that is giving time, that's respecting how busy people are and how they like to consume information. But what I found, too, about podcasting, is it's an easier medium for the creator as well. Do you find that? And is that part of how you coach law firms? Robert Ingalls [14:17] One hundred percent because that is one of the biggest objections we get is, “Because I don't have time for a podcast.” And it's one of those things — I've told this story in presentations — I had a call with a law firm owner and they were in a very niche area. And he had two objections. One was, “I don't have time.” Two was “My niche is saturated. People are already doing it.” And so perhaps. Both of these things could be true, sure. Maybe. In theory. So, I did a little research after the call and went on to his website. He was creating a lot of articles and writing a lot of blogs, also creating a lot of YouTube content. You know, a lot of it was just like, “Look at all these books.” But still, that takes time and energy to create.  Michelle Calcote King [15:17] Absolutely. Robert Ingalls [15:18] And then when you look at the saturation point, there were two other podcasts in his niche. It was super —  “Niche,” “niche.” I never know where to go with that. I will fluctuate as this conversation Michelle Calcote King [15:31] Yeah, I do the same. Robert Ingalls [15:33] And that was saturation to him. For me, the idea that someone else is already doing a podcast about my practice area and that means I shouldn't do one? That blows my mind because I see that the same way as somebody saying, “Well, they already have a website. Why would I have a website?”  Michelle Calcote King [15:56] Ah, yeah. Robert Ingalls [15:57] Why would you want someone educating your prospects on their podcast? You think they're gonna listen to their podcast and then call you? No! They developed a relationship with that firm now. And I think some people think about their podcast as kind of like Joe Rogan, as well. “I'm gonna make a podcast about something somebody will want to listen to while they're mowing the grass on Saturday.” That's not the reality for a lot of people and I don't think it's the angle you should be pursuing. You are speaking to a specific problem, usually. That's usually what you're trying to do, you're talking about something that people want to know about. They don't really want to be entertained. There are a lot of really good entertainers out there. And if you're that good, that your law firm podcasts can be entertaining, it’s time to switch areas. It's time to go into entertainment. So the idea that somebody else is already doing it, I shouldn't do it is…I think that's misguided. Michelle Calcote King [16:50] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [16:51] And…I'm trying to remember the other; I had a number two…  Michelle Calcote King [16:56] We’re talking about how easy they are to give time to compared to… Robert Ingalls [16:59] Oh, the time commitment! Michelle Calcote King [17:00] Yeah, exactly. Robert Ingalls [17:01] Thanks for throwing me a life raft there.  Michelle Calcote King [17:02] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [17:03] And then the time commitment, I think you hit on it, is it ends up being significantly smaller than any other type of content creation. Especially if you're working with a team, your job really is to sit down in front of the microphone. It's a USB microphone that you just plug into your computer, it's not a lot of fancy gear anymore. This stuff is streamlined. You sit down. You have a conversation. You walk away. That's it. Most lawyers that have a podcast, that's the extent of their involvement in the podcast, because you're not sitting down creating content that is unique, really. For the most part, you're not sitting down and creating NPR content that has to go from here to here and create a unique and compelling, hooking story. You're creating content about things you are already the expert in. You're talking about things you know about. Like, when you got me on this call, I didn't have any expectations. I didn't prepare for this. We're having a conversation about something I understand deeply. Michelle Calcote King [18:07] Exactly. Why would you do an interview about something that you don't know well enough to just speak casually about? Robert Ingalls [18:14] Yeah, sure. Depending on the type of content you’re making, sure. But for most lawyers, you’re sitting down and your job is to help someone else understand the answer to their question and make them feel better. Make them say, “I’ve been here. We’ve been here. You’re in safe hands. This is the place to come because we understand exactly what you’re going through. It’s a tough position that you’re in. We’ve done it before. Here are some of our clients that have been through it.” Just getting them to that point. And they feel comfortable with you. The amount of time that takes is infinitely smaller than trying to sit down and put 1,500 words on a page. Michelle Calcote King [18:57] Hmm. Absolutely.  Robert Ingalls [19:00] People try to get dressed up and take a thousand cuts for a video you want to put on Youtube.  Michelle Calcote King [19:06] We are a content creation firm and PR firm for law firms. When you’re producing written content, the amount of, you know, editing by committee that lawyers will do — you know, lawyers are word people so the tinkering of words… Robert Ingalls [19:27] Tinker, tinker. Michelle Calcote King [19:28] Yeah, the debate over oxford commas. Robert Ingalls [19:30] Ha! I have bigger things. Michelle Calcote King [19:33] Yeah, well, they all do. So, whereas podcasting takes that away. It takes away that whole process of that tinkering with the words and the back and forth. And I liked what you said about entertaining. I’ve always had a bit of a dislike for podcasts where they don’t jump into the meat of the conversation and there’s this banter and I’m thinking, “I’m not getting any value.” Because when I go into a business podcast, I want value. I want to learn something very quickly. So I’ve always stayed away from that myself as a podcaster. I don’t have a co-host that I sit there and chit-chat about the weather with. I get into it immediately. Do you advise your attorneys similarly? It sounds like you do with the, “We’re not trying to compete with Joe Rogan.” Robert Ingalls [20:27] Right. One hundred percent. But I also do balance that with bringing yourself to the podcast. But I don’t think that bringing yourself necessarily means a lot of chitchat, especially in the beginning. I think it means weaving stories in there that humanize you. That let them know…like, you’re not talking at them. You’re talking with them. And you can very much mention that you had a terrible golf outing on Saturday. Michelle Calcote King [20:56] Right, right. Robert Ingalls [20:57] Just weave in your life. And that’s very simple — well, simple is maybe the wrong word. But that comes naturally for a lot of lawyers. We are trained storytellers. Even for the ones of us that didn’t go into trial work. We still learn how to craft a narrative in our first year of law school. That was a big thing, persuasion. We learned how to communicate with other people. It’s just kind of natural communication. Just bring yourself out and tell some stories that make you a little bit more relatable. Michelle Calcote King [21:28] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [21:29] But the chit-chat itself, the nonsense…that kind of stuff? I highly advise against it. And it’s one of those things where you know it when you hear it. Because I’ve listened to podcasts — somebody will say, “You should listen to this podcast,” — and the first five minutes, I don’t even know what the episode is going to be about. Michelle Calcote King [21:47] Yes. Robert Ingalls [21:48] And I’m sure that’s endearing for people who have developed a relationship with that show. And so maybe it’s the kind of show that that’s just how it is. It’s this one show that goes on for a really long time and people aren’t just showing up to get information. They’re showing up to feel like they know the host. Perfect. If that’s what your show is about, great. That is almost never what a show that I work with is going to be about right now because people show up to lawyers like they show up to plumbers. You don’t even think about them until you do. Michelle Calcote King [22:24] Right, absolutely. Robert Ingalls [22:25] Something happened. My house is flooded. What do I do? Michelle Calcote King [22:30] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [22:31] That is how…. Plumbers shouldn’t be approaching their content with a lot of fluff. Water is rising; get to the point! Michelle Calcote King [22:41] Right. Robert Ingalls [22:43] And that’s how I think lawyers should be approaching their content. Michelle Calcote King [22:46] When you talked about the extent of the lawyer's involvement is getting a microphone, plugging it in and having a conversation, tell me about the work that you do behind the scenes to make that happen. Are you assisting them with outreach and finding the right guests? Talk to me about that a little bit. Robert Ingalls [23:08] Sure. To answer all of it, our commitment is you do the talking, we do the rest. And we learned that over years in business of “How do we make this…how do we lower the commitment as best we can while still delivering exceptional products?” And we discovered that really, lawyers are in a position to show up, talk, walk away, and we can do the rest. And so it starts with crafting the strategy for their show. We start on day one with “Who is our target listener?” A lot of podcasts that I start to work with that exist already, even at really big firms, have never answered that question. Michelle Calcote King [23:53] Wow. Robert Ingalls [23:54] I know!  And they just started talking about something they thought was interesting without thinking about who would listen. Who are we making this for? Because every time you make a content decision, it’s very arbitrary if you’re not making it with your listener in mind. Michelle Calcote King [24:10] Absolutely. Robert Ingalls [24:11] Our goals in mind. What’s our long-term goal? How does this become revenue? So that’s one of the first things we do is, “Who are we doing this for? Why are we doing it?” We work with a lot of PI (personal injury) firms. They’re not all created equal. And, you know, what areas are you focusing on? Michelle Calcote King [24:26] Right. Robert Ingalls [24:27] Some PI firms will have 50 different tabs as far as like we do medmal, we do car accidents, we do truck accidents…. And is there one of those that you’re doing the best with? Or is there one that you really want to hammer? If there’s one you really want to get into, that’s where you want to live. Michelle Calcote King [24:48] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [24:49] Okay, perfect. Maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe we make content. We have a Utah attorney that we’re working with who does PI all over, but we have a truck accident podcast. That’s what our podcast is about: trucking accidents. Michelle Calcote King [25:01] Love it. Robert Ingalls [25:02] And so we want to think about that kind of stuff. What’s the strategy? Who is it? Because we have some attorneys that we work with who are much more interested in referrals. They handle catastrophic injuries.  Michelle Calcote King [25:14] Right. Robert Ingalls [25:15] And they get almost all their work from other attorneys who took the case and said, “We need help with this.” So their podcast is created for attorneys. It is an educational tool that attorneys in their target referral market would want to listen to. It would be valuable for them. And then it’s branded by the firm, “Hey. While you’re here, if you have something going on like this, send it to us. We’d love to work with you.” So, their podcast is referrals. That’s the kind of conversation we have upfront. Just creating that strategy on why are we doing it? Who are we doing it for? Setting ourselves up for long-term success. And then from there, it goes, “We’re going to do voiceover intros and outros with professional voice actors so when people show up to your podcast it doesn’t sound like they recorded it in a wind tunnel.”  Michelle Calcote King [26:05] Mhm. Robert Ingalls [26:06] It sounds professional because just like your website, when somebody shows up to any of your content and it’s bad, it reflects poorly on you. Podcasts are the same way. So, we want to make sure that when they first listen, it’s got a nice soundtrack. It’s got a good voice over. That your microphones are good. We’re going to ship you microphones to make sure that you’re getting good sound. You should be able to record in your office, at home, in Fiji, as long as you have a good wifi connection. And people really shouldn’t be able to hear the difference between the conversation we’re having right this second if you have the right microphone. But people will often buy the wrong microphone that they think is good. So, we solved that problem by shipping them a microphone.  Michelle Calcote King [26:49] Just doing it. I like it. Robert Ingalls [26:50] Just doing it. It’s things we’ve learned along the way, it’s business ownership. And then, we set up a calendar for them, they find a time that works, they hop on, we’re on the call with them, we check their sound levels, check their guest levels, press record, they have a conversation while we’re in the background, and then they hang up and that’s it. We edit, audio engineer, cut the video up into a video podcast for Youtube that’s optimized with keywords. We write show notes, we post it to their blog, post it to Youtube, post it to Apple podcast, Spotify, everywhere podcasts go. We also cut it up into pieces of microcontent. Into little shot video clips on branded templates with captions that people will actually engage with on social media. And then post those things to their social accounts as well. So, it’s really getting that entire content marketing strategy from sitting down and talking for twenty minutes. Michelle Calcote King [27:42] Love it. That trucking example was a perfect segue because I do want to talk to you about niche marketing. It’s what we initially planned but I’m so fascinated with podcasting right now. We started it last year and did it for about a year. I had to take a little bit of a break and I’m just getting back with it. But it was just such a great network builder and all these other benefits that you mentioned that I’m just a fan of the medium. But! Let’s talk about niche marketing and where you think that falls in terms of strategy for law firms. How do you advise firms in terms of finding a niche? When I first started working with law firms, there was a joke about you know because branding law firms is the most difficult thing, the joke was this is just a bunch of professionals that the only thing they have in common is the shared HVAC system and the building that they're working in. As a brand person, you’re looking for what’s that unique value proposition and often these full service law firms really kind of form because of geography. They serve the geography, and as things have changed — obviously, COVID was a big shift but it was already happening with the internet — people are looking for exact experts in their exact problems. So, how are you advising law firms with that? Robert Ingalls [29:16] It’s something that comes up frequently and more so for us with medium sized firms. And that is a lot of times how they formed is people came together. They did this, they did this, well let’s just pool our resources. And then they became a firm. Like any other business, it is really difficult to establish yourself and scale when you do a lot of things, especially if you do those lots of things in lots of different ways.  And, you know, if you go to a networking event and you meet four different people. You meet one that does divorces for high-value men, that’s what they do. They introduce themselves, “I handle divorce proceedings for men that have significant resources.” And okay, that’s perfect. Then you meet another one who does estate planning. Okay, alright. Then you meet another one who does personal injury, some criminal defense, they’ll also do wills for you as well, but nothing too complicated. You know, it’s all these things. And then somebody comes in and they ask for something. If they come and ask me for estate planning, I’m not going to send them to that person because I don’t know what that person does — wills, but not too complicated. By doing all of those different things it can be really difficult to brand yourself. Michelle Calcote King [30:36] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [30:37] And that doesn’t mean you can’t make a good living. I, having practiced for a long time, know a lot of attorneys that are making 80,000 to 150,000 practicing that kind of law. And for a lot of people, I think that that's a very good income, and they're very happy with it. I mean, most of those people I know work really, really hard to cover that — or maybe “hard” is the wrong word. They work a lot of hours. Michelle Calcote King [31:00] Right. Robert Ingalls [31:01] The potential to scale that is really difficult because it’s hard to systematize it. Michelle Calcote King [31:09] Right. You’re not repeating processes. Yeah, it’s not only a great marketing strategy, it just makes your life easier is what I tell people. Robert Ingalls [31:19] There’s an excellent book and this is focused on agencies, but the framework applies everywhere. It’s called “Built to Sell” and it’s about building a company in a way that it’s actually a business. Because if you leave your desk for a week as the owner of the company and things start to break, you don’t own a company.  Michelle Calcote King [31:42] Right. You’re a glorified freelancer. Robert Ingalls [31:46] Yeah, you own a job because nothing continues to happen. And on my side, I think a lot about that. You know, my company is not huge yet, but I can disappear for days before anyone really would notice. And that's how it needs to be. Michelle Calcote King [32:00] It’s a fabulous feeling, isn’t it? When you realize you’ve gotten there. Robert Ingalls [32:03] Yeah. But I think any business owner needs that. You need systems and processes that are repeatable. That when something happens, everyone knows what to do. I read a book where he called it “fire killing.” So like your job as a business owner is not to be a fire killer. Your entire day becomes putting out fires for everyone. Everyone is at your door and it makes you feel important because everyone needs you and you’re busy. You’re so busy. And we feel like busy translates into value, which it definitely does not. By having the type of thing when you’re in a niche — and I think PI firms maybe, I work with a lot of them, but I feel like they do it the best of most of the firms I’ve seen. They have the systems, they have these processes, There’s usually one partner who doesn’t even practice anymore. He’s the face, he’s the marketer, his entire job is to tell the story. Then you’ve got the chief litigator whose entire job is to be really, really good at driving cases. They work up the cases under, they bring them to him when it’s time to go to bat and he takes them and runs with them. And then you’ve got the associate who does this, the intake team at these firms is huge. You’ll see four attorneys and then you’ll look and there’s 15 support staff. I love that because they’re creating a system where the attorneys aren’t filing paperwork.  Michelle Calcote King [33:25] Right. Robert Ingalls [33:26] The attorneys aren’t drawing a lot of boilerplate stuff up. They've got an entire system where from the moment a client picks up the phone and comes through their system, everyone knows exactly what they're supposed to do next. And that's really hard to do if you're doing multiple things. Michelle Calcote King [33:43] Yeah. Robert Ingalls [33:44] I feel like I kind of got sidetracked with the business part of it. Michelle Calcote King [33:46] Oh, no, no because I’m a big proponent of it from both of those sides. From it makes your business run more effectively…but what you were describing at the beginning of that was…. There's a concept about mental availability, right? The world is so much more complex, we're given so much more information, we have so much more information available, so the simpler the message, the more easy it is to recall it. So, when an attorney says to you, “I do a little of this, a little of that, a little that,” you're not going to remember, “Oh, he's the guy to go to for this friend of mine who is high net worth and is getting a divorce.” So  it's really risen because of you know, the internet age and how much information we have now, and you've got to simplify your brand in order to kind of cut through. Robert Ingalls [34:39] Yeah. The ability to get in front of people in the marketplace with  that simple message of “I do this and I do it well.” And that's it. “This is who I am. This is what I do.” It is really easy for people to recall. It's really easy for people to refer to you. Michelle Calcote King [35:00] Mhm. Robert Ingalls [35:01] And any market you go to — right this moment, we could drop ourselves in Iowa and it would take us…within an hour, we would know who the PI people in town are. Just from driving around; just from watching television. And they're hammering, “This is who we are and this is what we do.” They're not trying to draw up your will for you. They're not trying to do these other things. A firm that is practicing like that is almost always going to be more successful in their ability to scale and turn a profit because it's a lot easier to make a profit when you're able to systematize. When you're able to automate a lot of things. There's going to be less errors, there's going to be less need for as many people. And I mean at the end of the day, I know we're here to help people and a lot of attorneys, I think we're driven to the profession to help people. We can't help people if we're not making a profit. We have to take care of our needs, we've got to do what makes us feel fulfilled in order to even show up. So we've got to get those profits and I think that some attorneys are still struggling with that and that's an area I love to help people when I can. Michelle Calcote King [36:02] Wonderful. Well, I have really enjoyed this conversation. It’s kind of touched on things that I’m really passionate about. So, I appreciate you kind of taking the time and leading us through it.  We have been talking to Robert Ingalls of LawPods. If people want to get to know you better, where is the best place for them to go? Robert Ingalls [36:24] I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. So, if you go there, you can find me. Robert Ingalls. There’s not too many of us. I think I’m the only one with any involvement in podcasting. If you type LawPods in any search engine, whether it be Instagram or Google or anywhere, you’re going to find us. Michelle Calcote King [36:39] Love it. Robert Ingalls [36:40] Feel free to reach out www.LawPods.com and email me directly if you’d like robert@lawpods.com.  Michelle Calcote King [36:46] Alright. Thank you so much. Robert Ingalls [36:47] Thank you.

The legal industry isn’t known for being the most progressive when it comes to adopting new technology. Yet, (slowly but surely) lawyers are realizing that wielding the right legal tech can lead to improved productivity and client satisfaction. In this episode of “Spill the Ink,” Michelle Calcote King interviews Daniel Steinberg, the co-founder and CEO of Lawbrokr, about how to best leverage technology in the legal space. They cover a wide range of topics, including the state of the legal tech industry, ChatGPT and emerging technologies. They also discuss how Lawbrokr’s platform enhances marketing departments and why firms should integrate tools that help pre-qualify prospective clients.  Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn The creation of Lawbrokr and how the platform works Why investing in technology enhances marketing initiatives and business operations What the state and future of the legal tech industry looks like How technology can be leveraged to make lawyers better at their jobs About our featured guest Daniel Steinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Lawbrokr™, a pre-qualification platform that helps lawyers humanize the ways clients interact with their law firm. In his role, he leverages his background in professional services (ex-EY), marketing technology (ex-Influitive) and legal technology (ex-Clio). Lawbrokr is a sales and marketing platform for law firms. Focused on building software to support how law firms pre-qualify leads, Lawbrokr augments a law firm’s online presence and captures more data through frictionless workflows that guide the consumer through the legal services of the law firm.  Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Lawbrokr Follow Lawbrokr on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Daniel Steinberg on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Daniel Steinberg: It's important to make yourself more operationally efficient, especially in these tight times. You don't want to look at what that technology did for you for that 30 days. You want to say, what did that technology, or what can that technology do for us on an annualized basis? I think that's really important. [00:00:17]: Welcome to “Spill The Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:35] Michelle Calcote King: Hey, everyone! I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host and the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to www.rep-ink.com.  With new technology like ChatGPT making its way into the market, it's no surprise there's a lot of buzz about the implications artificial intelligence might have on fields like marketing. But this isn't the first invention to give people a “the robots are taking over” vibe. In reality, these tools are designed to enhance our skills and capabilities, not to replace them. Plus they can be very profitable. In the legal world, learning to maximize technology means law firms can get the most bang for their buck with their marketing budget.  I'm excited to dive into this topic on today's show. Welcome, Daniel Steinberg to join the conversation. He's the founder and CEO of Lawbrokr. Lawbrokr builds software to support law firms with their sales and marketing, making it easier for consumers to access legal services. Welcome to the show, Daniel. [00:01:45] Daniel Steinberg: Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be exciting. [00:01:48] Michelle Calcote King: Yes. I'm excited to talk in general about tech, but I'd first love to start with you explaining Lawbrokr to me. We've talked before, but I'd love for you to explain what it is and how law firms can use it. [00:02:03] Daniel Steinberg: You start with the easy ones. I love it. Hopefully, this works out well.  My company Lawbrokr is really focused on the front-end experience of a law firm. We enhance the way that a consumer would interact with lawyers, your law firm, and intake staff prior to the conversation happening directly with you. We act as this bridge between the interaction point of what I would refer to as pre-qualification, into the intake flow. We act as a sales and marketing platform, like you said, that's highly focused on conversion of disqualifying and qualifying your clients so that you can capture better data in an online format, so that they can make you as a law firm smarter and better and have more meaningful conversations. That's where we focus and I'm sure we can get into the nuances of it, but that's really the core crux of our platform. [00:02:59] Michelle Calcote King: On your website, you talk about creating a storefront. What is a storefront exactly, and how does that differ from a website? [00:03:07] Daniel Steinberg: Yes, very good question because messaging is super important and we're in the works of what that looks like. A storefront for us is our brand name for our product view. The reason that we go with that messaging is because we really are trying to digitize the law firm experience online. To us, that feels as though we're taking your potentially brick-and-mortar storefront and turning that into a virtual way of interaction point. We mimic consumer psychology of how consumers think and feel when they operate and interact with Shopify e-commerce stores or other interaction points that they do in a more commoditized setting than the legal space. For us, a storefront, and what it is and how it differentiates from your website, is we focus on what's referred to as a landing page. A landing page is a hyper-focused moment in time that keeps the consumer very, like I said, digitally focused on what the problem at hand is and how do they solve for that problem. We deskin your website, so we act as this extension to your website in a very high-intent moment, like a call to action button, whether that be book a consultation or living in different areas on the internet that a consumer might find you. That could be Google Ads, Google My Business, Marketplace, contact us forms, so on and so forth. Again, it's more along the lines of someone's virtually raised their hand and said, "I need help." How do we help them solve that problem? You usually solve that problem through hyper-focused moments like a landing page. [00:04:49] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. Your ideal type of law firm to use this, explain that. What are the ideal firms for this kind of tech? [00:04:59] Daniel Steinberg: We're an extension to your marketing really. We're focused on firms that are trying to elevate their brand digitally, whether that be through social platforms, Google Ads and Facebook Ads, et cetera. We act as a conversion play to that. We try and help your clicks and conversions elevate to the next level based off your marketing spend. In that vein, we're really focused on that 5 to 30-person law firm that is trying to elevate the experience while guiding the clients through what legal services they offer. We have a light version of our package that's focused on solo and small practitioners that are trying to grow their practice and take it to the next level, and expand and really try and dip into the marketing spend. But our core focus is that 5 to 30-person law firm traditionally focused on personal legal transactions, but we are practice area agnostic. [00:05:59] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Can you explain, how do you view the legal sales and marketing funnel? What's a typical funnel look like? How does a consumer navigate through that? [00:06:12] Daniel Steinberg: With Lawbrokr or before Lawbrokr? I think part of the reason we've slotted our business into this, what we refer to as pre-qualification is the legal industry as it stands prior to a system like Lawbrokr is very much 0 to 100. A consumer comes in, they're highly stressed that one of the most impactful moments of their time, whether happy or sad, at the end of the day, there are stressors when it comes down to the legal interactions. As soon as they either pick up the phone and call a law practice or virtually use contact us forms and things like that, it goes from first interaction all the way through what we would refer to as the intake process. The unfortunate reality is intake is super frictional. Consumers aren't willing to divulge a bunch of information until they're ready to retain your law firm. What we're missing there, and the reason why the process as it stands today is very revolved around price sensitivity is as law firms, as lawyers, we're not so focused on building out that first impression that matters most and leveraging data to really sell against the client's challenges and pains. The reason for that is actually traditionally because of the uneducation piece in the consumer market. If you haven't educated your consumer on what those legal problems are that you're able to solve for, well then traditionally everyone's going to ask what the price is, shop around, and go after whatever the cheapest price may be. With a tool like Lawbrokr or other pre-qualification formats, it doesn't just have to be Lawbrokr, the point and value there is to really understand the client before you speak to them, so that your first impression is more focused on: This is how my law firm operates, this is how we can support you in your legal needs, and this is how it would happen within our practice. When you do that, you're really guiding an uneducated consumer through what that legal process may be, and you're making them feel a lot more supported in order to adopt your law practice and move forward with the case. It's a bit clunky in the way that it happens right now. Again, it leads the consumer in this open-ended conversation of where do I go and what do I do? That's part of the reason why we're trying to solve for that. [00:08:42] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Just for people who might be listening, who might not be as familiar with some of these terms, talk me through pre-qualification. What do you mean by that? [00:08:54] Daniel Steinberg: Pre-qualification, qualification, they're all embedded in that same bucket, but it's really around, I know what my law firm does. Based off what I do, is that client the right—someone referred to this the other day, so I'm going to use the same language—is that person the right avatar for our law practice? A lot of firms, actually, a lot of businesses are like, "I want as much revenue as possible." Sometimes when you actually bring on the wrong individual, the wrong person, the wrong case, it actually backfires and it's more costly for you in the long run. Same way in business, if I brought on a business that isn't the right fit for Lawbrokr and that customer cancels, that's a lot more costly for me to bring that client on than if I didn't and I said, "Thank you so much. This is what we do. Unfortunately, we're not a fit for you." We as law firms and lawyers have to be okay with saying we want the quality case that we know we're really good at, and we can satisfy, over the quantity metric, whether we are having a slow month or not. The reason for that is because there is this cyclical cycle of how you drive new business in the future. Driving new business is very revolved around advocacy and referrals and things like that. So long as you're focused from the front-end side of things, bringing on the right cases, it's really going to help you continue to build and grow your practice from there on out, whether you're bringing on one or two clients that are high quality versus 5 to 10 that are high quantity. The qualification piece is really who is that right persona for me that we know we can support every single day? [00:10:35] Michelle Calcote King: Without a solution like Lawbrokr, are many firms doing that qualification process manually? Are they getting on the phone, having conversations, that kind of thing? [00:10:47] Daniel Steinberg: I think they definitely are. I think that there is a front of office that is either picking up the phone and having those conversations or initial interactions. Then there's also the traditional way of doing it, which would be a Contact us form. Problem with those two methods is there's no standardization to it. Law firms find clients in a magnitude of different ways. It could be their website, their contact us forms, their Google My Business, their Google Ads, their social media, referral sources and calling in. Those are seven different, distinctive ways that a client can interact with you. If you're not standardizing the way that you're interacting with them, the questions that you ask change. The way that you interact with that client changes. From an efficiency perspective, there's too many ways to interact with potential clients, and sometimes the right client slides through the cracks, and that's what we're trying to solve for.  To answer your question, I do think there is a form of qualifying today. At the end of the day, sometimes it's also up to the client, and it might be qualified, but the experience might have not been to what the standards were for that consumer, and that's where you ultimately lose cases. [00:12:03] Michelle Calcote King: We all know the legal industry is not the most progressive when it comes to tech or innovation sometimes. What are some of the objections that you're getting? Are you getting many objections, or do you think law firms are really starting to understand the importance of these technologies to streamline and improve their practices? [00:12:30] Daniel Steinberg: It's a really good question. I think that comes down to do we practice what we preach on the qualification side of things? Our focus is finding the right law firms that do spend money on marketing activities, and making sure that we can enhance the way that they do that. That being said, there's definitely some apprehensions when it comes down to another piece of technology. What I think is really important to recognize and what we very much focused on when building our systems was how do we ultimately keep it as simple as possible? There's a lot of legal tech solutions that consistently pop up, and they're extremely valuable to a law practice. That being said, it's very frictional for someone to stop, drop, and roll, and ultimately implement another technology when 30 people in their law practice have to onboard, train; they might have to do a migration. Does it implement with our current systems and so forth? If you're as a legal tech founder creating those frictions, that's where the objections ultimately happen. I think where we're focused on Lawbrokr is we are an extension to your online presence, which means that there is no onboarding. There is no training. Really, what we're focused on is spin up your storefront. From there, the only thing that matters is you are now collecting more in expanded data in the current systems that you already use.  If you create this complementary product that ultimately doesn't have to consistently tell new staff how to adopt it and how to use it, I think that makes it a lot easier of a transition for a law firm. That being said, there is an education factor to what's the value to me as a law firm when it comes to qualification? I think our job there is explaining and walking through what the importance of conversion is on your marketing spend efficiencies within your law practice, standardizing the way that you ask questions, and ultimately being a really good salesperson. For me and our team, we are not lawyers. My background is sales partnerships and marketing. We're trying to be these expert advisors on how do you sell? Because at the end of the day, lawyers are enterprise salespeople, whether they look at that or not. They are selling very intensive services at the most impactful moment of a consumer's life traditionally, no matter what that legal problem may be. It is really important to understand that client's challenges and pains a lot and make sure that you're supportive in that realm. Yes, there's always going to be push back when it comes to any technology. It's important to showcase where we can support and how we can. [00:15:24] Michelle Calcote King: Let's talk ChatGPT, since it's the topic du jour right now everywhere. Are you seeing it used in any way with your clients or with your work? [00:15:41] Daniel Steinberg: I think a lot of legal tech companies haven't— I don't want to use the word pivot— but have adopted ChatGPT and white-labeled that into some of their solutions to support, whether that be document automation or looking specific things up or writing paragraphs or decisions in that matter, and have embedded it in the technology that some law firms have already used and are paying for to date. That being said, we're too far away from that to understand how lawyers are using it or if lawyers are using it.  We don't have it within our technology. I think it's an incredibly powerful tool. I don't think that it can replace law firms. I think it can only enhance the way that you operate. When we think about technology at Lawbrokr, we think about how does our platform help enhance the way lawyers and firm admins and law firms in general practice law? How do we enhance that to make your lives that much easier and better, so that you can focus on the things that you're meant to focus on? Whether we did adopt AI tools and technology and things like that, it would only be from an enhancement perspective. I think there's still a lot of unknowns when it comes down to the legalities behind it from decision-making and things like that. It is a really exciting topic, and I know that the legal world as a whole is really excited about it and I see it all the time. [00:17:12] Michelle Calcote King: I see almost excitement and fear.I think, both. It's that way with any new technology, there's a little bit of trepidation until you understand it and how it's going to improve what you do on a day-to-day.  Tell me also your thoughts on — and I hate to even bring it up because I can't stand hearing it — but there have been all these layoffs in legal tech. There's been a pullback on some funding, or at least from what I see. It's hard to know exactly what's happening.  What do you see where the legal tech market is right now? [00:17:54] Daniel Steinberg: I think there will continue to be disruptors within the industry. I think that the layoffs are a factor of unfortunate business conditions that exist and market conditions that exist. I think funding will be tighter and more conservatively dispersed. At the end of the day, as most people know, legal is one of the most laggered industries, and it's consistently beginning to adopt new technologies. We've seen that since the COVID days or the early COVID days and making people move out of office, in-home, and so forth. It's something that, at the end of the day, law firms and lawyers weren't used to in their everyday lives. I've been doing that since I've been in tech for five to six years. For us, it was normalized, but for this industry, they're starting to adopt more and more technology. I'm excited about the future of legal tech. I think that there's going to be peaks and valleys of new companies, amd potentially some companies not being able to get funding or adoption within those businesses. I definitely think there's more of a conservative approach when it comes to adopting new legal technology. Pricing yourself appropriately and showcasing the return on that for a law firm is really important because at the end of the day, law firms and lawyers are really focused on how do we get and acquire net new cases? I think that for us within the legal space, it is definitely a recession-proof — to an extent — business. You're always going to need technology to enhance your practice, whether you believe that or not. It's important to make yourself more operationally efficient, especially in these tight times.  [00:19:43] Michelle Calcote King: Right. It becomes even more important. [00:19:45] Daniel Steinberg: Although a big factor is looking at things from a conservative mindset and making sure that you're spending appropriately when adopting legal tech, is probably a good way to say that, I think it's important for law firms to look at things from a macro-level perspective. A lot of legal tech companies position themselves on a month-to-month subscription and annual subscription. That's great. You can acquire things from a month-to-month so that you can save capital on a monthly basis, but at the end of the day, you don't want to look at what that technology did for you for that 30 days. You want it to say, what did that technology, or what can that technology do for us on an annualized basis? I think that's really important. [00:20:26] Michelle Calcote King: Did COVID among your client base really…. Did you feel that clients were like, "Oh, wait, I need to invest more in technology,” because of this shift and how people are navigating honestly just the world in general, like other sectors where there was just this big rush to digitization and improving how they do things digitally?" [00:20:56] Daniel Steinberg: I think that's a great question. When COVID first hit, I was actually working at Clio, so I was running partnerships at Clio during COVID. We definitely saw a mass adoption of cloud technology and an operating system that can help your firm navigate the conditions from anywhere, and work remotely and be okay with that. Of course, you start to see the adoption of Zoom and tools like that and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and so forth. From my business perspective, when I had left Clio, we actually started as a marketplace. We did see a mass adoption of people needing net new clients to continue to survive and thrive through those times. That was great. For us, there was a lot of marketplaces that popped up and our goal was how do we make sure that we take our technology and augment different ways that consumers interact with you versus being that necessary source of truth, which is why we've shifted our business to saying, "Hey, this is how you would interact with a consumer, where they find you anywhere through one dedicated hyperlink." To answer your question, I did see definitely adoption from a technology perspective during COVID, but it also depends on what that legal tech business was. I think the first and foremost was, how do we get a cloud solution that helps our law firm operate and transition to a remote working world? Since then, there's been a lot more adoption of technology in general to enhance your firm. [00:22:31] Michelle Calcote King: Is there another tool or platform or category of tech that you see besides your own really taking hold that we haven't talked about yet that people should be on the lookout for? Is there a particular area that you see that it's going to really take off? [00:22:49] Daniel Steinberg: I think there's a lot from document automation perspectived, subscription services and how law firms reposition their law practice as you get into this new age of law. We talked about the laggard industry of adoption of technology. I also think that a lot of smaller law firms — and I'm speaking from a small law firm perspective because that's who we work with — are starting to adopt and look at fixed fee services and things like that. There are some tools that I love and I think have done a great job positioning that, like Fidu Legal and Documate from a document automation perspective that just actually rebranded themselves to Gavel, to really hone in on what their purpose and mission is. Those are great tools to look at and adopt. Again, it's all about efficiencies and redeploying and adopting technology. Like we talked about earlier, there's a lot of technology that have adopted AI and machine learning to help you be smarter and work better. Again, not to replace the law firm, but work better, be smarter, and capture more insights in a magnitude of different ways. There's a ton of technologies that do that. Here in Canada, there's one, Rally Legal, there's Josef in Europe, and there's a ton of other tools that across the board are using different types of technologies throughout. The way that I look at it is, what lifecycle of the business are you looking to solve a pain in? When we think about what Jack Newton said, who's the CEO of Clio. The book that he wrote, it's all about this client-centered law firm. You can't just adopt technology at one point of the consumer journey. The consumer journey starts with a tool or a system like pre-qualification and Lawbrokr. but then funnels into the intake platforms, of the likes like Clio Grow or Lawmatics and tools like that. Then funnels through to the more operational systems of invoicing, billing, maintaining client portals, and so forth, and follow through all the way to advocacy. That lifecycle has to have some piece of technology or have some type of process in place in order for you to really create a frictionless experience for your customers on an ongoing basis. It doesn't just start with your first impression at Lawbrokr. It's actually your first impression sets the stage, but you have to make sure that you have processes in place throughout the case and the file and thereafter to make sure that ultimately you're growing your business because it is cyclical, whether you're a law firm, a business like yours, a business like mine, or anything like that. [00:25:36] Michelle Calcote King: I like to always end interviews with this question. What is the most valuable lesson you hope people listening today might take away from our discussion? [00:25:50] Daniel Steinberg: Let me pause on that so I have a good answer. [00:25:51] Michelle Calcote King: Yes, I know. [laughs] [00:25:54] Daniel Steinberg: That's hard. Selfishly I obviously want to educate people on the importance of qualifying your opportunities. At the end of the day, and that's obviously the business that we're in, but if you take one piece of advice, it's what we just alluded to, which is think about your law firm holistically. It's not just adopting a technology like Lawbrokr, it's not just adopting a technology like Clio or a document automation tool. You need to have a plan in place, a process, and a budget associated to technology, and technology lives across every process of the legal journey. That's one of the most important things that a law firm should be thinking about, whether you are a modern law firm and have implemented a COO at your firm, a marketing manager, a coordinator, and so forth, a firm administrator. These are things that ultimately you want to plan for, because you do have to have budget and line items for them, and you can't be as efficient as possible with a bunch of different tools that don't talk to each other or just one tool in general and say that you're modern and fixated in the way that you're able to work remotely now, and that's good and done. There's a bunch of different ways that ultimately are integral to running a strong law practice from a technological perspective. Sometimes adopting too much technology can hurt you, but adopting the right technology that plays into one another and can automate a lot of your processes is what's important. [00:27:35] Michelle Calcote King: That's great. Thank you so much. This was very interesting.  We have been talking to Daniel Steinberg of Lawbrokr. Where's the best place if people want to get in touch, should they go to LinkedIn or your website? What's the best place for people to reach out to you? [00:27:49] Daniel Steinberg: Huge LinkedIn advocate. I think it's my favorite social network. You can add me, Daniel Steinberg/DSteinberg on LinkedIn. If you want to go learn more about Lawbrokr, you can visit us at lawbrokr.com, L-A-W-B-R-O-K-R.com. Always just happy to have conversations and learn about what's happening in the industry and how people are thinking about pre-qualification and new technology. [00:28:18] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Thank you so much. [00:28:20] Daniel Steinberg: Thanks so much. [music] [00:28:24]: Thanks for listening to “Spill The Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. KYQznGZ1SWj4TWzsFjhi

Ann Leiner, Chief Connection Officer at Stacey & Associates, boasts over 30 years in AEC consulting. She breaks down the innovative A3 proposal format, which condenses lengthy RFPs into a punchy one-page response. This approach not only sharpens clarity but also emphasizes vital graphic design elements. Ann discusses the evolving AEC landscape, where networking and authentic branding in recruitment are becoming essential. With shifting dynamics in business development, companies must adapt to remain competitive and attract top talent.

With so many law firms vying for attention in today’s hyper-competitive market, it can be hard to stand out among the crowd. Answering Legal, a company providing 24/7 answering services for law firms, has found success using partnership and video marketing strategies to amplify its reach and connect with its audiences.  In this episode of Spill the Ink, Michelle Calcote King sits down with Nick Werker, Answering Legal’s marketing director. They talk about how Answering Legal joins forces with other businesses in the legal industry to create marketing campaigns that cater to the diverse needs of their shared audiences. They also discuss Answering Legal’s “Lawyer’s Guide to 2023,” which, for the first time, featured a collection of short video clips in addition to written content. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What partnership marketing is How collaborating with industry-adjacent companies can result in more effective marketing campaigns How video has changed the legal marketing landscape How Answering Legal's 2023 Lawyer's Guide combines written and video content to deliver more value to lawyers About our featured guest Nick Werker is the marketing director at Answering Legal, leveraging nearly a decade of marketing experience and adeptness for customer-centric messaging to progress the company’s strategic campaigns. He’s also the host of Answering Legal’s Everything Except the Law podcast, where he interviews legal experts about legal marketing, public relations, legal tech, wellness and more. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Answering Legal Follow Answering Legal on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram Connect with Nick Werker on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Read Answering Legal’s Lawyer’s Guide to 2023 Listen to our recent interview with Robert Ingalls, the founder of Lawpods Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Nick Werker: People were so excited, they were like, "This is so cool. I can't wait to see this come out. What else can I do? Do you want my help promoting it? Can we talk longer?" Again, it's one of those things that I think has gotten content creators and marketers back into having fun with marketing again. [music] [00:00:24]: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:41] Michelle King: Hey, everyone. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host, and I'm also the Principal and President of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to Rep-ink.com.  Today, we're going to talk about social media, and there was a time when law firms resisted the idea of being on social media, but obviously, that's drastically changed over the years. The American Bar Association put out a legal technology survey finding that 89% of law firms have a social media presence today with LinkedIn leading the ranks as the most popular platform for attorneys. Social media is truly one of those load-bearing pillars when it comes to developing an effective legal marketing strategy. The problem is the market is saturated and cutting through the noise to boost engagement and visibility is harder than ever, so incorporating video marketing into your firm's social media strategy is a fantastic way to stand out.  I'm excited today to welcome Nick Werker to today's Spill the Ink Show. He's the marketing director at Answering Legal, where he successfully integrated videography into a number of their marketing efforts, including the recently released Lawyers' Guide to 2023, which I was very honored to be a part of. Thanks for having me today. [00:01:59] Nick: Thanks for inviting me. [00:02:01] Michelle: Or, thanks for joining me. [laughs] [00:02:02] Nick: I know what you meant. [00:02:04] Michelle: I'm so used to being the guest on these podcasts. [00:02:06] Nick: That's right. No, I appreciate you having me on here, and it's always great working with you. That's why we reached out for the Lawyers Guide and you're talking my language, so I'm just excited to have a conversation with you. [00:02:17] Michelle: Same here. Actually, I know our producer Sofia directed us to talk a little bit about video and social media, but I also really want to talk about the concept of partnership marketing, which, it's interesting a lot of people don't use that term a lot, but it's actually incredibly effective and it's one of the things you guys have been really effective in doing, and I've always admired. Let's back up and if you can just tell me a little bit about Answering Legal and your role there. [00:02:48] Nick: Sure. Answering Legal is a…I'll call us a specialized answering service exclusively for law firms and legal professionals. We have a few agencies that provide paralegal services and so on and so forth. But our bread and butter is small to midsize law firms. What we do is we're a 24/7 call center, really, but we train our receptionist to be your legal receptionist. They're trained in when to patch a call over to you, when to take a message from an existing client, how to speak with a new client, how to perform a legal intake, so on and so forth. We really try to serve as an extension of the firm, which is why we're constantly developing new features and giving our receptionists-- Our main goal is to empower our receptionist to do the best job for the law firms, if that makes sense. [00:03:42] Michelle: No, it's great. It's a great niche. Do you have a specific type of law firm or size of law firm that y'all are best suited for, or is it really any law firm? [00:03:52] Nick: I would say the people that are drawn to us the most are really the volume-based B2C type of law firm. I'm talking criminal defense attorneys, family lawyers, bankruptcy, personal injury, anybody doing civil litigation on the client's side, and really anybody who has a need to answer the phone call when the potential client calls because — we've done extensive research on this — but I can tell just off the top of my head that I don't leave a voicemail for a business anymore. I know that legal problems are really usually uncomfortable and people want a quick solution and a quick answer so if you don't answer that phone and you let them go to voicemail, they're just going to call a competitor. If you have the type of business where people aren't going to wait for you to call them back with a problem, that's when you call us. [00:04:47] Michelle: That makes a lot of sense. You've got to nail that touchpoint, so to speak, or else that opportunity is lost.  That's great. Let's start out with before we get into social and video partnership marketing. To me, I define partnership marketing as just finding like-minded or similarly situated companies that target your space, your same audience space, but aren't competitive. Tell me how you guys approach that at Answering Legal. [00:05:26] Nick: One of the smartest things I ever heard was that smart people don't have original thoughts and you don't really have to. If somebody else is doing something successful, you can adapt it and give it your own, I don't know, twist.  There's a guy who is in legal marketing who I really, really respect. He has thousands of customers. I was at one of his webinars because I just love the way that he markets himself, and I'm always trying to learn new tactics. He was pitching this webinar on partnership marketing. The reason being that you want to have a more attractive offer than your competitors. Now the way that he phrased this to the audience was he gave the example of a personal injury attorney who specializes in car accidents, should, or could, partner with the local chiropractor or physical therapist so that if you call me for a consultation and you end up hiring me for my services, that comes with one free visit to your local chiropractor to get an assessment or an adjustment or physical therapy for a back injury or whatever injury you have. That made so much sense to me because like you said, it's somebody who's not a competitor, but can also really enhance what I have to offer, my service. That's why we've partnered with somebody like you is because I have no dog in the fight of reputation or PR management or anything like that. Thankfully, my, and why we're good at it, is we only focus on answering the phone and giving the client the best experience over the phone. If I can tell my customers that we have a great relationship with this great company, Reputation Ink, if you're looking for help PR-wise, I know we have an offer, I don't remember what it is off the top of my head, but if you sign up with Answering Legal, you get a free consultation with Michelle and her wonderful company Reputation Ink. When we start to do that and build those relationships and people see that we not only are integrated with the right companies but that we just care about giving them the best business advice or consultation possible, that becomes more attractive too. People want to talk to you if you're honest. Not, "Oh, I'll sell you that and I'll sell you that." Plus, I mentioned this the other day, somebody said they wanted to develop something in-house, and I was like, people aren't going to want to buy that from us because you don't go into a car dealership and when you buy the car, you also want to buy gym equipment. It doesn't make sense. The car dealership does the cars, the gym equipment company does the gym equipment. I've just found it to be really useful and it's worked for us. I thought it was one of the smartest things I've ever heard. [00:08:29] Michelle: Well, and I look at it too from a, well, a couple of angles. In that one, it just makes creating content easier. You're not actually having to create so much content. I think what you guys have done really well is where you do these comprehensive guides and you bring in lots of experts in different fields of marketing and you ask them to create content. We, as the people you're asking, don't have to create that much. It's not a heavy lift, but when all put together, it turns into a great content piece. You solve that problem, but also too with social media, you're borrowing their audience. Those people are going to share and put it in front of their audience because you've just created a piece of content for them. It's really getting that bang for your buck with marketing. [00:09:23] Nick: It's so true. It's people who are interested in maybe just using you and have never heard of an answering service, but say we start working together or putting out content together and people see the benefit of, oh, I could have Michelle manage my reputation and I could also have Nick answer my law firm's phone calls, it's a win-win. You get exposed to different audiences, but it's also, I love the fact that— how do I phrase this? This is like the dark side of content marketing, too. If you think about marketing in the sense that, I just want to be where my target audience is, how do I get there? Even though they don't care about necessarily my message, well then, if I'm not the expert, I want to go be where the experts are and participate in that conversation. That's really like, if we're talking about the selfish ends of it, I think, that's a byproduct of trying to help customers. [00:10:25] Michelle: Absolutely. Tell me about your thinking with this recent-- You put out this 2023 Lawyers Guide and instead of doing written content, you did a compilation of videos. Can you talk me through that strategy? [00:10:39] Nick: Funny story. We have sent that out to subscribers, people who have opted into our blog, maybe people who have downloaded things in the past, and then all of our customers. I got an email from-- He wasn't a customer, he was using this service for a trial and he writes me an email. He says, "Nick, I need to talk to you right away." I called him up, I said, "Hey, how can I help?" He's like, "It's about this Lawyer's Guide. I really like everything. I want to put it in my briefcase. Can you send it to me as a PDF so I can print it out?" I said, "Absolutely. I can send it to you as a PDF, but it's 57 videos and longer than four hours of content that you have to watch. I can't put that in a PDF for you." That was the one response that I got there. I thought that was funny.  The idea of video to me is— I've been doing this almost a decade. I watched the content universe go from short blogs, keyword posts that nobody really liked to this, I'm going to call it storytelling, but really good storytelling. I've seen a lot of people put out some content that I've just been amazed by. It's got graphs, infographs, interviews, quotes, research. Research was big for a while. If you could conduct your own survey and then put it into your post, that was one of those things. Now I'm watching it evolve into people want to watch it instead of read it. That's been the boom of podcasts, too. I used to laugh at people who had podcasts until I made a podcast, and I was like, "Oh, I understand." Because we don't want to consume the content the same way. We want to listen to it, feel a part of the conversation and not be spoken at. This medium feels really inviting. I've watched your podcast. I watch a lot of legal podcasts. I watch The Always Sunny in Philadelphia podcast. I've seen that show like five times. It's just a lot of fun. It's more inviting to me than reading and there's a lot of research that backs that up. YouTube is, again, the biggest search engine right now besides Google, and Google owns it. I've also seen a lot of success in video marketing on Facebook. It's clear that there's a demand for video and we figured why not? It's more fun for us to create, in all honesty, it's a little bit easier for us to create because instead of sitting down and writing and editing and making sure it's all good, you just have a conversation with a person. It's more enjoyable. [00:13:40] Michelle: 100%, yes. [00:13:41] Nick: You pose the question at the top and then I have somebody like you answer it in your own words instead of dry written content. There's still a place for that too, I'm not saying to get away from that, but it was just something that we saw there was a lack of and wanted to test out. It's gotten a good response so far. It's been really good. [00:14:04] Michelle: That's great. As I built my agency, I switched from having a physical office space in one city to being remote and being based all over the country and focusing more on a vertical market with law firms and professional services. Video was never one of those things I thought would be able to scale in that way. You need videographers to be on the ground and doing the shoots and that kind of thing.  I saw some really innovative agencies during the pandemic that would really help law firms create their own video by doing what we're doing now. Because lawyers on the whole aren't the most visual type of industry. Our other industry we really work with is architecture, engineering and construction and that's really visual. We can go out and get really cool video of crews moving earth and building big things. It's more exciting, but lawyers are talking heads, sitting at a desk. I think the creating videos, just using Zoom is what people are doing and it makes it scalable and it makes it something that a lawyer could create and then work with somebody like me, any other kind of marketing agency to package up and to help direct. It takes away the tech requirements and the having to be on-site type thing. When you went and said, "Hey, can you guys just all collect this?" Was there any pushback or are people really understanding that it's easy to capture this video and you don't have to have a big crew out there and all the lighting and that kind of thing. [00:15:50] Nick: I had no pushback. I take your point because, when I initially started shooting video, I was really nervous. I was like, "It's not going to look good enough. It's not going to sound good enough." I'm a perfectionist. I don't want to put something out there and it becomes a joke. I don't want to be the butt end of a joke. I want to represent the company the best way that I possibly can. I did that by getting a $50 camera. My camera's $50. This ring light, that makes me look not so washed out, is $20, and this microphone was like $150. That's the three things that I use to record this podcast. If there were pushback or people did ask me is it affordable to start participating in or shooting my own video? It's very affordable. Then the response that I got— Well, I used a lot of people that we have relationships with and thankfully there was, again no pushback, but people were so excited. They were like, "This is so cool. I can't wait to see this come out. What else can I do? Do you want my help promoting it? Can we talk longer?" Again, it's one of those things that I think has gotten content creators and marketers back into having fun with marketing again.  If you're a behind-the-scenes-type person, this is fun for you too. You can cut up the video, you can make clips, you can try different thumbnails, you can put stuff on TikTok. I'm on TikTok. I laugh at myself all the time. I hate the way I look and the sound of my voice, but it's just something that you get used to after all that. [00:17:25] Michelle: Yes. You have to get over it. I'm the same way. [00:17:28] Nick: Everybody's like, "Oh, man, I saw you on TikTok." I'm like, "Oh no." They're like, "No, it was really cool. I saw you interview this person." I'm like, "Oh, okay. I'm glad that you liked it because I can't watch it.” [00:17:38] Michelle: Well, it's similar to the, like you were saying, the whole idea of, "Oh, I'm hosting a podcast," a few years ago, it sounded silly, but it's such an effective tool to one, build relationships. For me, it's been a real relationship builder. When I started my podcast, I would just target people I wanted to have a connection with, that I wanted to build that relationship with so that, I guess what you would say, is a form of partnership marketing or referral marketing. I looked at it just from a pure referrals and relationship standpoint with a side benefit of creating content. People who figure out how to use it to reach their goals or using it really effectively. I mean, I had someone teach me that, I just didn't know it. I thought, "Oh, podcasts are so…. The market's flooded. I'm not going to say anything new." But when you look at it really from that network building, relationship building while also creating content, you really get huge benefits out of it. [00:18:41] Nick: There's also a really cool guy. I'm going to forget his name and I feel bad because I like him a lot. He has a company, I believe it's called Legal Pods.  [00:18:53] Michelle: I've interviewed him. [00:18:55] Nick: Oh, good. [00:18:56] Michelle: Yes, or LawPods. Is it LawPods? Yes. [00:18:58] Nick: Oh my God. Thank you. I can't remember anything. I'm becoming my mother. It's really bad. Sorry, mum. [00:19:01] Michelle: I'm the same. I blame it on technology. [00:19:05] Nick: Do you think? [00:19:06] Michelle: Yes. [00:19:06] Nick: I can't remember the— I just called it Legal Pods and the poor guy's name— [00:19:10] Michelle: No, no. Yes. He's turned a whole business into helping lawyers do podcasts. It's incredibly smart. In fact, I'd love for us to do it more, but absolutely. [00:19:22] Nick: I just love the idea that there's a specific— I think he used to be a lawyer, right? [00:19:30] Michelle: Yes. [00:19:31] Nick: He's just having fun making a little bit of money. He's just got a group and he just teaches you what to talk about, who to interview, what questions to ask, what makeup to wear, what camera to buy. People need that information because it's nerve-wracking to— I remember years ago when I was beating the table for lawyers to write blog content for their website. That was my big thing. I would say “Why lawyers need to blog. Why this would be beneficial for your legal marketing.” But, what do I need in order to start blogging? How do I blog? How do I post a blog post? You walk people through, here's how you post on WordPress. Here's how you set up a wiki site. You can post on Medium and Medium has all this good link juice to give you. He has taken that same idea and just applied it to the way that people want to consume content today, which is podcast. They're super popular. [00:20:33] Michelle: I myself hired a podcast company to help me get started because we were slammed, we'd never done a podcast before and I want to make sure I did it right. There's a slight learning curve at the beginning, and once you get into it and you really understand the medium, you understand all the ins and outs. For the actual host it's— If you are looking at a lawyer wanting a lawyer to host a podcast, it's such an easier lift than asking them to write a blog post. Especially if you have the support of a company behind you the setting up the interviews, doing a bit of research for you beforehand, the calendaring. That kind of thing. Then it's really just having a conversation for a half hour or 15, 20 minutes kind of thing. It's a way to network. I think it's slowly replacing the going out to the chamber lunch, that kind of thing that we used to do. From a PR perspective, because that's our bread and butter, I'm seeing more and more news outlets adding podcasts to their offerings. It gives us another place to place clients. In another way, we'll pitch a story and the editor might run the story and then also have us on the podcast. Which is a win-win for us and helps expand our ability.  I've been in PR for 20 years, a little more than that. The media has changed so much and this is that newer— I think there's a resurgence now with multimedia, which is great.  Tell me a little bit about what this year looks like from y'all's marketing strategy. Are you going to try anything new? Are you doubling down on anything that you've been doing in the past? What are some of y'all's initiatives? [00:22:40] Nick: One of my favorite things is…. I focused in the past on a lot of growth marketing and brand awareness. Now a lot of what we do is, because we want to get better, we're focusing on product development this year, so a lot of our strategy right now is a lot of user-generated content, but we empower the user to generate that content.  For example, I've teamed up with a videographer. He's local to me, but he travels. What I'll do is I'll call up a customer who I know I have a good relationship with, and I say, "Hey, you're in this area. You represent this type of law. Do you have two hours for a videographer to come down, do an interview with you and feature you on our YouTube channel?" Usually, people jump at that opportunity because again, it's fun to participate in something like that. They get their name out there and because it's a high level— This guy knows what he is doing. I don't really pretend to know that much about cameras and shots and lights and all that, and set dressing. He goes out, he does an interview, we helps storyboard it, obviously, so that we can tell the right story. The finished product is incredible. Sometimes it's not that emotional, but it's really cool to hear, because what we do is we give lawyers their time back. You don't have to spend time on the phone. This whole message of what can you do now that you're not, I don't know, constantly answering the phone and trying to get back to clients or worrying about is my business failing when I step out of the office and you hear the response of, "I feel so much more secure now in my business. I can step out of my office and I know that my business is still running." I have that quote ingrained into my brain. [00:24:40] Michelle: That's great. Good quote. [00:24:41] Nick: Right. Then I have a woman who's like, "I became a lawyer to provide for my family, and I want to go out to lunch. I want to go play golf. Answering Legal allows me to do that." They tell this story without me. I ask them a question, but I don't prompt them to tell me these individual things and it's so much more relatable to the actual audience.  So, we've partnered up with this guy. He's traveling, I think he's going to Philly next month. He's just been shooting a lot of videos for us, but we're doubling down on the podcast. We write a lot of content, but my focus is always to try and help the user. Really all the written stuff we do is stuff like the 2023 Lawyers Guide. What tools should you use for your law firm if you are practicing this or what tools best integrate with your legal CRM? We just want to help people. At this point, that's really all I care about, is making sure that lawyers have the right information from a trusted and verified source. It's cool that we get to be that source. [00:25:51] Michelle: Well that's great B2B marketing. Being helpful is the number one key. I hammer that home constantly with my clients. No matter what, be helping. You guys have really nailed that one. In terms of social, obviously, LinkedIn. Do you spend much time— I think actually you just launched a group on Facebook, is that right? A Facebook Community? [00:26:19] Nick: Yes, Joe launched another Facebook group. Joe is my counterpart. I am the loud, boisterous voice, and Joe is the mastermind who figures out how to make me not run through the walls constantly, is how I'll put it. We have a couple of Facebook groups. A couple of years ago he had this great idea. He wanted to start a legal marketing group where we could just participate in and foster a conversation between lawyers. Who's doing this? Is it working for you? How should I do this? We have legal marketing experts in there, too, because again, we're not competing with them. It's in our best interest to participate in this conversation and get the best answers possible. I think he has a new group. What is the group about…? [00:27:10] Michelle: I've been invited to at least one. [00:27:15] Nick: I know what the group is for. It's a legal coaching group. I forgot about it for a second. What it is, is we have three main hosts, because obviously I only know what I'm talking about from my own myopic, egocentric view of things. I'm pretty sure they're going to rotate, but we have a legal business coach, somebody who used to run a law firm and is now just a coach. We have legal marketing experts, we have tech experts, people who used to be the CEOs of big, Clio-type CRMs. What we're going to do is we're going to go live, I think, quarterly. The group is there so that people can get notifications and it can be broadcast there. You can get into the live chat and ask questions to these hosts. Again, we're just trying to build a conversation and help people manage their law firm, run their practice better, get the best legal marketing advice. Also, business advice is so hard to come by. People don't want to talk about, I don't know how to motivate my employees to like working for me better. Now, part of that is, are you paying them enough? Sure. Once that's out of the equation, how do I foster a good environment or a safe environment in which my employees can thrive? How do I handle conflict in the workplace? These are the places that we can ask those questions because people feel like I should be able to figure this out. I'm the owner, I'm the operator, I'm the CEO, it's up to me to figure it out. It's not true. We can all share ideas and share the knowledge. That's what that group is for. I don't take credit for that. That was Joe's idea. He sold me on it, and he is doing his thing. [00:29:05] Michelle: Great. Well, it's another one of those as marketers, we give terms to things. I call that community building. Creating a community around an affinity, these are people interested in law firm growth from any angle. When you create that community, I've seen several companies do that very well where they create a community. By being the creator of the community that gets inferred upon them certain attributes, so you know that these people care about this industry. They care about their best practices, they're connected. You just get that visibility and that benefit from being part of that community. I see some people who do that extremely well. It's almost like a subset of that partnership marketing. It's the complete opposite of the old marketing which was tell everybody how great you are, tell everybody all these things about you and just shout it. It's the complete opposite of that, which is fun. That's the reason I like B2B marketing and PR, it is just about education and being helpful in the end and doing it in interesting ways. We're lucky, we work with a lot of B2B lawyers where we get to learn about all kinds of cool topics we would never learn about because we're helping them be educational to their clients. We're facilitating that, and helping them help. Yes, that's great. [00:30:41] Nick: That's like the best feeling when you get the fundamental understanding of a business because you can come from, like you're a businesswoman, and then they tell you, "Oh, this is what I do. This is how I speak to my client." And, "Boom, I got an idea for you. This is how you should talk about this." They're like, "Oh, my God, I never thought. Oh, it's the best feeling." [00:30:59] Michelle: Yes, that's great. I'd like to wrap us up with, do you see any trends impacting the legal marketing or business world this year? Have you guys done anything around like ChatGPT or talked about that at all? [00:31:18] Nick: I'm a wait-and-see type of person. I like to think that I'm on the forefront, but I'm really not because I don't like to put all my eggs in one basket. ChatGPT is cool, but there's a lot of strange implications, and there's a lot of people trying to make it better. If I start working on ChatGPT, but then the Google counterpart comes out and the Google one is better and it goes— [00:31:46] Michelle: Yes, remember Google Plus. [00:31:48] Nick: Exactly. [laughs] [00:31:51] Nick: I had business Google Plus accounts. [00:31:53] Michelle: Yes, same. [00:31:54] Nick: I'll be the first to tell you, I tried all that stuff. Are there any trends? I think the biggest trend that I'm seeing right now is that we've come out of this whole pandemic thing, and lawyers are fed up, they want to go back to work, they want to grow and they want to hit the ground running, and they're like, "What can I buy from you to make my life easier?" I think there's never been a better time to invest in legal tech, in automation, in growing your business and law firms are just hungry right now. From my point of view, I think that cases got pushed down the pipeline, and people are still coming out of that and need legal help. It was on hold for a little bit, but now it's almost as if the floodgates have opened. We have an outbound call team, too, and there's nobody that we speak to that says, "I just don't have enough clients to justify using an answering service." It's "Okay, how much does it cost? I'm looking for this. Do you have a recommendation for that? Can I integrate my CRM with you guys? Can I so on and so forth?" I just think that if you can be involved, again, in those conversations about automation and how you fit into that mold of what lawyers are really looking for, I think you're doomed to succeed. [00:33:33] Michelle: That's great. Doomed to succeed, I love it. Well, thank you. We've been talking to Nick Werker of Answering Legal. If people wanted to reach out to you, where's the best place to go, LinkedIn, your website? [00:33:44] Nick: You can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can email me, I'm really easy, nick@answeringlegal.com. You can go to the website and schedule an appointment, or I don't know. Call me at 631-686-9700. I'm super easy. Just email me, LinkedIn, I don't care, I'll answer whatever you got. [00:34:06] Michelle: That's great. Well, thanks so much for joining me. [00:34:09] Nick: Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. [00:34:13]: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click "Subscribe" to get future episodes.

What’s the key to building high-performing teams where people feel valued and motivated from start to finish? Brent Darnell says the answer lies in leveling up our emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It encompasses self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. In this episode of Spill the Ink, Michelle Calcote King sits down with Brent Darnell to discuss how emotional intelligence impacts culture and success in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms. With over 20 years of experience coaching AEC professionals on the matter, Brent shares valuable insight and actionable advice to help firms improve their leadership, project and operations. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn What is emotional intelligence? The role of emotional intelligence and people skills in addressing challenges within the AEC sector Techniques and strategies that AEC leaders can use to foster a positive work culture and promote mental wellness How technology is affecting relationship building and collaboration in a professional setting within the AEC industry About our featured guest Brent Darnell is a pioneer in bringing emotional intelligence to the construction industry. He began teaching emotional intelligence in 1999 and continues to help AEC professionals today through his company Brent Darnell International. In 2012 he was awarded Engineering News-Record’s Top 25 Newsmaker’s award for his record-breaking program that “transforms Alpha males into service-focused leaders.” In 2017, Darnell also won the volunteer of the year award for the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) Georgia for his work in training and development. Darnell is a third-generation construction professional. He graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech in 1981 and spent 18 years managing projects, such as the Brooke Army Medical Center and housing for athletes in the Olympic Village in Atlanta. Darnell is also a published author, seasoned speaker and adjunct professor at Auburn University, Penn State University and Virginia Tech. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Brent Darnell International Follow Brent Darnell International on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Connect with Brent Darnell on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Brent Darnell: We talk a lot about creating that trust and understanding the other person's point of view. That's important with these collaborative project delivery methods. Even design-build, design-assist, CM at-risk, those are all more collaborative project delivery that, again, you have to have these skills to be successful. [music] [00:00:23]: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Now let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:40] Michelle Calcote King: Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for architecture, engineering, and construction firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  Regardless of your job title, if you work in the AEC industry, you're expected to collaborate with other people to deliver successful projects. What's the secret to building high-performing teams where people feel valued and motivated from beginning to end? In today's Spill the Ink episode, we're going to talk about emotional intelligence and how it impacts culture and success in AEC firms. I have the perfect guest to talk to me about this topic. For more than 20 years, Brent Darnell has been teaching industry professionals how to build critical people skills and leverage emotional intelligence to improve their leadership, projects and operations. He's the owner of Brent Darnell International, an author and a seasoned speaker. His programs and courses on emotional intelligence span the globe and have helped companies of all sizes.  Welcome to the show, Brent. [00:01:52] Brent: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. [00:01:54] Michelle: I'm excited to talk about this. If you don't mind, I gave that brief intro, but how did you get into this niche area in terms of teaching these people skills and emotional intelligence in the architecture, engineering and construction industry? [00:02:12] Brent: First of all, I'm a construction guy. I grew up in the construction business. My dad started as a carpenter. We moved around a lot to different projects, so I grew up in the industry. Then I went to Georgia Tech. I graduated as a mechanical engineer, so I have that background as well. I started mostly in MEP coordination and then got into project management. I did that for about 20 years.  Then I had this opportunity — I was working for Skanska at the time, big Swedish contractor — and they wanted me to run this leadership program for them out of Sweden. I did that for a couple of years. It was really amazing program. At the end of the two years, they said, "Okay, we're doing something else. Go back to Atlanta." They weren't really interested in the leadership stuff. This was in 2001. They just said, "We want you to go manage projects again." I really didn't want to do that so I started my own business. I saw a need there. We used emotional intelligence the second year of this leadership program that we did and it was amazing. It's something that really resonated with me. I started my own business January 2002 and I've been doing this ever since and never looked back. It's had its ups and downs, but mostly, if you see where the industry's gone from early 2000s, it's become much more collaborative, much more relationship-driven with Lean and IPD and all these collaborative project delivery methods, so there's a different set of skills that are needed. It's come to where these are have to have skills not just, wow, it'd be nice to have those, but you have to have them to create great projects now. [00:04:03] Michelle: Yes. That was actually going to be my next question, is what are the particular challenges that the AEC faces that make emotional intelligence and people skills so important? [00:04:18] Brent: Look at the collaborative nature. What's the percentage, I'm wondering, on just design-bid-build projects? They're really diminishing. It's all about relationships and trust and collaboration and sharing risk and sharing reward. That takes all the stuff we're talking about. That takes people skills. It takes emotional intelligence. It takes self-awareness and empathy and how to communicate and connect and create that trust in a really tangible, real way. We talk a lot about creating that trust and understanding the other person's point of view. That's important with these collaborative project delivery methods. Even design-build, design-assist, CM at-risk, those are all more collaborative project delivery that, again, you have to have these skills to be successful. [00:05:18] Michelle: Right. I can imagine it's becoming more top of mind with owners as well as they struggle with the labor shortage, recruiting, keeping the best people. Do you often hear that? Do they start with a, "Hey, how do I keep the best people that I have and how do I attract the right people?" Is that often a goal that owners are talking to you about? [00:05:44] Brent: Totally. To me, there are three main areas where this whole human connection, respect for people, emotional intelligence comes into play. It's workforce development. How do you attract and retain great people? How do you get younger people to come into the industry? Then we've also got diversity, inclusion, equity, belonging. That's another issue that's driven by ability to connect, ability for that human connection and respect for each other. Then I think the mental health component as well. It's the ability for these hyper-masculine work environments and hyper-masculine folks to be vulnerable and to really overcome that stigma around mental health and well-being. All three of those, to me, fundamentally, the foundation is emotional intelligence. The other thing we talk a lot about in these programs that we do is peak performance. Peak mental, physical, emotional performance, well-being. We talk a lot about nutrition and stress and sleep and exercise and how you manage all that with these crazy work schedules to have your peak level of mental, physical and emotional performance, and longevity. You don't want to develop some autoimmune disease or mental health issue that's going to force you to not be able to work in this industry. [00:07:12] Michelle: Yes. It's interesting you brought up mental health. My company focuses on two industries, AEC being one and law firms being the other. Mental health is widely discussed in the legal industry. I think that stems from lawyers having some of the highest depression and suicide rates. It's been a known factor. I don't hear it talked about as often in the AEC industry. Do you think that's changing with COVID and all the attention around mental health? How can AEC firms help employees with this issue? [00:07:54] Brent: It is changing. There's a couple of people that come to my mind: Cal Beyer, Sally Spencer-Thomas. They're really out there talking about this and reducing the stigma around it. We have the second-highest suicide rate of any industry. [00:08:10] Michelle: Wow. [00:08:10] Brent: Construction. [00:08:11] Michelle: Wow. [00:08:12] Brent: Suicide kills five times more people than all construction-related accidental deaths. [00:08:17] Michelle: Wow. [00:08:18] Brent: It's a problem. It's a big issue and so we have to start talking about it, number one. Then, like you said, we have to give the resources to the companies to be able to support those folks that are struggling. There's an organization called Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention. The website is preventconstructionsuicide.com. You can do risk assessments there and get collateral material, and all the hotlines to give to people and start the discussion. We've created a program we call Primal Safety which focuses on all these lifestyle choices and emotional intelligence and human connection. We've created something called the Primal Safety Coloring Book which it's a really cool coloring book. This kid, they leave him at grandpa's, and the whole family works in construction. It shows how they stay safe throughout their day, but it also mentions things like mental health and nutrition and sleep, and all those things. At the end of the day, they come home safely to the kid. It's in Spanish and English. All of our profits from that goes to the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention. [00:09:29] Michelle: That's great. What are some of the factors that lead to the construction industry having the second-highest suicide rate? [00:09:37] Brent: I think the demographics are there. First of all, it's a really highly stressful job. There's a lot of uncertainty around pay. If you have a bunch of bad weather, maybe you don't get paid. There's very little benefits unless you're in a union environment. There's very little vacation, healthcare, employee assistance programs. We just don't have the support for our workers. They've become commoditized; and they're usually lower income, they don't make the money that we probably should be paying them, so they're struggling. They may be working other jobs. They may not be getting enough sleep. That plus the hyper-masculine work environment, can't be vulnerable, can't ask for help, can't be struggling. Plus there's a typical emotional profile for most field people and superintendents. It's really high assertiveness and independence, which you would imagine to be true, but lower emotional self-awareness, lower empathy skills. Think about it that way. You're not understanding your own feelings, but also you don't understand the feelings of others. You don't have the ways of looking at those nuanced changes in people that may indicate mental health issues and have those discussions with them because you just don't have the skills to be able to do that. It's a perfect storm. [00:10:56] Michelle: That makes sense. Yes, perfect storm. That's what I was thinking, yes, that creates that problem. You had some questions on your website that were fascinating to me. I think the lead was “How many of these questions have you asked yourself?” I know you're talking to that AEC firm leader, but one of them was, “Why is our company filled with middle-aged white guys? Where are the women and minorities?” [00:11:25] Brent: Right. [00:11:26] Michelle: Tell me a little bit how that plays into emotional intelligence and people skills and how you help firms with that. [00:11:36] Brent: First of all, I love middle-aged white guys. I am a middle-aged white guy. It's not a slam on middle-aged white guys. It's a reality of the industry. I think it comes from, again, that typical profile, lower self-awareness, lower empathy. We're not as good at that inclusion part, that belonging part because it's a very transactional results-driven industry. Again, these aren't bad people. They just don't have those skills honed to the degree where they can connect with others as well as they could. That's what this training does.  We can improve things like self-awareness and empathy skills that creates better human connection, that creates more of a connection with other humans. That way, you can start having those discussions and talking to people and you can create a more inclusive work environment and really start talking to folks about— See, to me, the lack of women and people of color in the industry is a symptom of a bigger issue of we just like to be around people that are like us, which is social identity theory. That's just a fact. Also for the industry, it is about those technical abilities, knowing the technical ability and knowledge to be able to be a good builder and build a project, and the human side takes a backseat. If we're going to really be inclusive and really create that sense of belonging, we have to put the human stuff up front. That's what this word does. It flips that. I always talk about every interaction's a human interaction. If you could start there and then get whatever results you need, but start with the human stuff. [00:13:30] Michelle: I can imagine the fact that you are a middle-aged white guy helps a little bit to relate to a lot of the leaders because that is the demographic makeup. [00:13:40] Brent: Sure. [00:13:41] Michelle: That gives you some credibility. This isn't someone coming in that they think doesn't understand them or relate to them. It helps you open up that conversation in a way that someone with a different background might. That's fascinating. [00:14:00] Brent: It does. It really helps. Also what I've done is I've asked people to help me. Women of color, LGBTQ folks that are in the industry, “Tell me what your experience is.” Then I've created a course around that. We talk about, "Okay, let's recognize our biases, and let's recognize those things, but let's not dwell on those things." Let's say, "Yes, that's a fact. We all have these biases, but let's figure out how can we connect as humans better." That's the whole thrust of what I think we're going. We can't ignore those things. We have to have those discussions of people of color and women in the industry have a different experience than me or a middle-aged white guy. We have to recognize that and be able to address that in some way, but the recognition is the first step. [00:14:55] Michelle: I talked to a diversity trainer who had this term he called OWLs, old white leaders. [00:15:01] Brent: [laughs] [00:15:02] Michelle: He talked a lot about making it safe for them, too, to have these conversations because I think a lot of people are just scared. They don't know. It feels like there's landmines everywhere so they just avoid it altogether. I thought that was a really intelligent approach. [00:15:20] Brent: Absolutely. It's so true. There's a book out that's called White Fragility and I think it's done more harm than good. I think the white guys are so afraid to make a mistake that they just tend to distance and say, "I'm just not going to address this because if I say the wrong thing, I can be canceled. I can be fired." It happens and it has happened, and yet we have to have those really difficult discussions to be able to move forward, I think. It's a balance with that, but the white guys need help and you have to tell them when something's inappropriate or that your feelings got hurt or it's something that really upset you. We have to have those discussions if we're going to change behaviors. If we never make a mistake or we never bring that up that that was a mistake, then nothing will change. [00:16:17] Michelle: Right. Let's say someone says, "Okay, I want to improve the emotional intelligence of my team." What would be the way you do that? What are some of the methods that you use or the things that people learn? [00:16:33] Brent: We use a couple of evaluations when we do a full-blown program. It's the EQ-i 2.0, which is one of the oldest emotional intelligence instruments on the planet. It's a validated peer-reviewed instrument, which a lot of these personality tests, they've never been validated scientifically. That's where we start. Then we have something called the Symptom Survey, which is based on physical symptoms. It tells us how your body's working. We look at the results of both of those evaluations and then we see correlations all the time. I'll give you an example. If we see something, what we call self-sacrifice in the emotional side, which is really high empathy, a lower assertiveness — the opposite of that alpha male thing. We call that self-sacrifice: tendency to put other people's needs ahead of your own, trouble setting limits and boundaries, trouble saying no to people. We almost always see sugar handling as an issue, which means they tend to be carboholics or sugarholics. [00:17:34] Michelle: Ah, interesting. [00:17:36] Brent: We work on both of those areas. We'll work on the physical stuff and nutrition and all the things we know that we should be doing, but then for a self-sacrificer, we'll also work on their assertiveness and being more clear in communication and setting some limits and boundaries. We tend to work on both. By the way, we've created a free test that has both of those tests on it. If they go to brentdarnell.com/resources, you can download. It's called the Ghyst EI Test and Symptom Survey. [00:18:06] Michelle: Interesting. [00:18:07] Brent: You can take it and see where you are. It automatically graphs your results and tells you what profiles it sees for the emotional and physical. [00:18:15] Michelle: We've done personality tests with my team in the past. I would imagine a lot of the benefit is, one, self-awareness. learning more about yourself, but also just gaining that knowledge that people on your team have a different make-up and react differently. Is that what you often see there? [00:18:35] Brent: Yes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming personality tests. Anything that brings you better self-awareness is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. That's one of the biggest benefits we see coming out of these programs because all of our programs, or most of what we do is a year-long process. It really takes that to be able to create behavioral changes in people because you can't develop empathy in a weekend or a half day or a lunch-and-learn. You have to have some application and coaching and follow-up and reflection and so it takes a long time to do that. It's about understanding what those different emotional and physical competencies that you want to work on, and then we provide the resources to be able to do that. That's where, again, over time, that awareness becomes behavioral change because we always say awareness alone will not change behavior. Information will not change behavior. If that were true, we would all be pretty awesome. [00:19:43] Michelle: Right. Absolutely. [laughter] [00:19:43] Michelle: That's the truth. You're giving people information and then giving them tools to actually use that information and make changes. [00:19:53] Brent: Right. There are just activities that you put in for development plan. We have daily application stuff, more long-term stuff, books, all kind of written and performance material, movies. We got apps and websites. People have different proclivities toward how they want to learn so we just give them a bunch of different options and then they can start working on those areas. Over time, the behavior does shift and change. [00:20:25] Michelle: How have you seen technology impacting emotional intelligence, relationship building, collaboration? Are you seeing technology impact that in any way? [00:20:38] Brent: You know, it can be very good. I've talked to a lot of tech companies about this. Sometimes technology enables you to hate people faster and with more anonymity. [00:20:50] Michelle: Right. It's the truth. Yes. [00:20:51] Brent: Look at bullying and those online things that take place. I'd say those technologies and those project sharing and file sharing and collaborative tools are awesome. They're much better if you start with the human connection part. See, here's the thing. I think some of these tech companies, they come in and they have these great tools and then they fail. They fail because of the human stuff, not because of the technology. Then the people using the technology say, "That technology didn't work, let's try another one." It has very little to do with the technology and everything to do with how you connect as humans. [00:21:31] Michelle: Absolutely. What about safety? I thought that was interesting to see how emotional intelligence can impact safety. How does it? What's the correlation? [00:21:42] Brent: Yes. My theory, this is just a theory, that if people care about each other and learn about each other's lives and families, they work safer naturally because they will be looking out for each other and correct each other. In this Primal Safety Coloring Book, at the end we have— Oh, by the way, that's on the resources too. There's a whole list of 52-— Not the coloring book, but it's called the Primal Safety Toolbox Safety Topics. It's not about PPE, it's not about tying off, but it's about how you connect as humans. One of the exercises is pair up and tell somebody you don't know about your family. Or pair up and tell a story about what it would be like if you didn't go home today. What would that look like? [00:22:34] Michelle: Interesting. [00:22:34] Brent: If somebody showed up at your family's door and say, "I'm sorry, but Bob passed away today in an accident and he died," what would the consequences of that be? It's those things where we tap into emotional responses. There's a philosopher named Ken Wilber who said, "Rules and regulations will only get you so far with changing people's behavior. Then you have to go to the next level, which is an emotional response to whatever your behaviors you're trying to change." This gets into the behavioral aspect of how we connect with each other and looking out for each other. Then also we talk about lifestyle choices. What do you eat? What do you drink? How are you sleeping? Are you exercising? Are you managing your stress?  I give the example of a guy who wakes up, he's hungover; he has a fight with his wife; he has a flat tire; he's late for work; he rushes in; he's off at the world; he grabs a couple of Red Bulls and a couple of donuts and pops some cold medications or something to jack him up. Then that's your crane operator for the day. [00:23:47] Michelle: Wow. That is an impactful scenario.  [00:23:54] Brent: And not to tell people how to live their lives, but tell them the consequences of the choices that they're making in terms of their own personal safety and for the safety of others. We promote good food. Get those horrible food trucks off the site and bring something that's healthy in, and stop giving people frozen burritos that are microwaved for lunches. Get some good healthy food out there and talk to them about how they eat. I don't know how many projects I've been to where there's a massive litter of a bunch of Monster Energy drink and Red Bull cans. If those guys are going on that, that's dangerous. [00:24:36] Michelle: Yes. Absolutely. It seems obvious, but I can see how it's just an easily overlooked thing because it's probably how it's always been. [00:24:49] Brent: Right. [00:24:51] Michelle: It's those kind of things. The other question that I saw on your site that was interesting to me is “Why can't we pass knowledge to our young people?” How does emotional intelligence help with that? [00:25:04] Brent: I always get the complaints of the baby boomers about the young people, and how they have horrible work ethics and they're lazy and whatever. I think there's a disconnect there, but I think it's an artificial disconnect. I've done several keynotes of the generations and why we're not so different. I think those generational things that some consultants came up with are totally made up. There's no research behind it. All the dates are arbitrary. I think it's just made up.  Now, there are different preferences in communication; different preferences in use of technology. Those are real things. In the end, if you look at something called self-determination theory, people want to feel like they belong. They want to learn and become masterful at something. They want to be connected in some way. I think a lot of boomers think, "Oh, they want to be VP in two years and that's impossible. It'll take them 10 years to be a project manager." I say, "Why? Why don't you teach them everything you know and cut them loose and let them go?" Our father said the same thing about us, that we're lazy and we don't have good work ethic. All those things. It's not a generational issue, it's just we— I put up a quote, our children are worse than we are and our grandchildren will be even worse, and it's from like 2nd century BC. [00:26:43] Michelle: [laughs] [00:26:43] Brent: This is nothing new. I think a lot of it's made up in our heads and we have to embrace that they do things differently and teach them everything we know. Identify those high potentials, put them on the fast track. Back when it took you 10 years to become a PM, you probably had Lotus Notes and fax machines. You didn't have the power of the entire world and the knowledge of the entire world in your hand. Things are different now. Access to information is different now. We don't need to have those mentor-mentee relationships necessarily in terms of passing on knowledge. What we have to do is, like I said, cut them loose and they'll figure it out. If I had a group of millennials in a room and said, "Hey, design me a pedestrian bridge that goes from here to here. You have an hour and a half," they would do it. They would find a way to do that. They would access that information. They would get in a Reddit room; they would find some civil engineer in India, and they would figure it out. We don't let them and we have this stigma around you have to pay your dues and it takes time to learn all this stuff. My theory is, why?  [00:28:04] Michelle: Yes, that's a great point. Business works at a different pace now than it used to. Technology has changed how fast we move and how fast we learn certain things. I even struggle with that feeling— that difference between people 20 years younger than me so I can understand that. [00:28:34] Brent: Yes. I think, again, it's about human connection and creating that trust and doing a mind dump and teach them everything you know and let them go. In fact, if you put a really young, maybe not really a high level of experience PM with a really good seasoned field person like a good foreman or superintendent, why not? We say, "Oh, they're not ready for that." Just put them out there and see how they do and give them the support when they need it, right? [00:29:12] Michelle: Yes. That's great. [00:29:12] Brent: That's my theory. [00:29:13] Michelle: Love it. This has been a really interesting conversation. I love that you are focused on such an important topic in an industry where I don't hear it as much, but I'm certainly going to dive into some of your resources and start educating myself a little bit more on this topic in this industry. If you can give everyone your website address so that-- I think you said it earlier. Is it Brent Darnell…? [00:29:39] Brent: Yes. Brentdarnell.com with two Ls in Darnell. Also, I'll just throw out this, if you want to read my book, The People Profit Connection, which is about this emotional intelligence work for the industry, the subtitle is How to Transform the Future of Construction by Focusing on People, it's brentdarnell.com/peopleprofit. [00:30:02] Michelle: Love it. Great. [00:30:03] Brent: All one word lowercase, peopleprofit. They can download the PDF of that book and put it on their reader. [00:30:10] Michelle: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me. [00:30:13] Brent: Thank you. [music] [00:30:15]: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. [music]

Lori Sullivan, President of BluePrint Growth Consulting, brings a wealth of experience from her decades in the AEC industry. She discusses the fierce competition in the sector and the necessity of customer-centric strategies. Key insights include the importance of branding and reputation in business development, common pitfalls AEC firms face, and the evolution of prospecting from traditional to digital methods. Sullivan emphasizes building meaningful relationships to thrive in a constantly changing market.

The global legal technology market has rapidly grown into a multibillion-dollar industry — and it’s still expanding. Even in its infancy, legal tech is revolutionizing how law firms manage client relationships and internal processes, yielding better overall services for more affordable prices. What trends are shaping the future of the legal industry? What do law firms need to know to keep up with the times? This episode of Spill the Ink features Jared Correia, the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting and co-founder of Gideon Software, Inc. Jared and Michelle Calcote King discuss how emerging legal tech is changing the way firms operate and the common barriers to tech adoption in firms. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn Legal tech trends and how they directly impact law firms How may an economic recession impact the legal tech market? What market factors drive legal tech development? What up-and-coming legal tech companies and events are worth paying attention to? How is legal tech changing service delivery and pricing models?  About our featured guest Jared D. Correia, Esq. is the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting and co-founder and COO of Gideon Software, Inc. Red Cave offers subscription-based business management consulting services for law firms, bar associations and legal organizations. Jared is a regular contributor to legal publications, including his column, “Managing,” for Attorney at Work. Jared is the host of the award-winning Legal Toolkit podcast on Legal Talk Network, and hosts the NonEventcast podcast for Above the Law, which focuses on technology and innovation in the legal field. Resources mentioned in this episode Check out Red Cave Law Firm Consulting Follow Red Cave Law Firm Consulting on Twitter and LinkedIn  Check out Gideon Software, Inc. Connect with Jared Correia on LinkedIn Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink. Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.  Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more. To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today. Transcript [00:00:00] Jared Correia: I think lawyers have to start being more comfortable with change management. I think lawyers have to start being more comfortable with risk management. That's the biggest barrier to everything. I'm seeing that improve. You see a lot of these attorneys who are 60s, 70s, 80s moving out of the practice. A lot more attorneys who are in 40s and 50s taking over practices, and they have a more open mind. Then the other big issue I see outside of the attorneys is the lack of structured data. If you want to start running analytics, if you want to have machine learning going at a high level, the data needs to be structured. Layperson's term might be “labeled more effectively.” [music] [00:00:40]: Welcome to Spill The Ink a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show. [music] [00:00:56] Michelle Calcote King Hey everyone, I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your host, and I'm the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for law firms and legal services companies and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.  Today we're going to talk about the legal tech market. It's growing quickly. In 2021, it generated about $27 billion in revenue. In the United States alone, it's expected to exceed $35 billion by 2027. As a side note, my team here has written some great blog posts, especially recently to help legal tech professionals navigate and boost their PR. Go ahead and check out those on our website. Today we're going to dive into the trends that are impacting the legal tech industry, how emerging technologies are helping law firms and in-house legal departments modernize and improve their operations. Today, I'm speaking to Jared Correia, and in fact, I always ask how to pronounce the name and I forgot to. [00:01:57] Jared: It's a tough one. There's too many vowels. [00:02:00] Michelle: Did I butcher it? [00:02:01] Jared: That was pretty bad. No! But in all seriousness, it's “coh-RI-ah” like the country. [00:02:06] Michelle: Oh, Correia. There you go. Perfect. [00:02:08] Jared: It's even simpler than that, though. [00:02:10] Michelle: I love it. Jared's the founder and CEO of Red Cave Consulting. He's a business management consultant for law firms, and he's a legal tech entrepreneur.  [00:02:20] Jared: Here I am working from my kitchen! [00:02:22] Michelle: There you go! He's a seasoned podcaster. I'm really looking forward to this. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me. [00:02:28] Jared: Thank you. Thank you. I brought my best mic just for you. [laughs] [00:02:32] Michelle: There you go. I like it. Tell me about Red Cave. If you can just give me a background, how you ended up in this area. [00:02:41] Jared: I don't know if it was necessarily planned. [laughs] I went to law school after college not having any idea what I would do with my life because who knows what they're going to do when they graduate from college with an English degree? What do you do? I don't know. I was like, "Oh, I'll go to law school. That sounds fun." I get to law school and I was like, "Wow, this is horrendously boring." When I was in my second year of law school, I went to the career development office and I'm like, "I think I should do business consulting for lawyers because they don't seem to be great at business consulting." They were like, "Hey, maybe you should get a real job, like a lawyer job." That's how it went. Then randomly, four or five years later after working in law firms for a little bit Massachusetts launched this free consulting program for attorneys. I started working there, worked there for about eight years, and then started my own company which I've been running for almost 10 years at this point. Then a few years back, I also started a software company with a partner of mine as well. I got a couple irons in the fire. [00:03:40] Michelle: That's amazing that you thought about consulting back in college. It's one of those things you don't really-- especially business consulting for lawyers, I haven't heard of anyone having that light bulb moment that early on. [00:03:54] Jared: I was in these law firms on internships and I was like, "My god, this is a dumpster fire. What is going on?" I'm like, "I could do better than this." [laughs] That's how it worked for me. [00:04:06] Michelle: That's fantastic. Tell me about the software company. [00:04:09] Jared: About, I want to say four years ago we launched this. It's a chatbot for intake, qualification, scheduling and then document assembly for law firms. The idea is that you can qualify leads and then once those leads become clients, you can produce documents off of a chat-based interface. We've had a lot of success with that. People, clients like building documents via chat through law firms and it takes a lot of the lift off the law firms. We got to a bunch of firms we're working with on that. [00:04:41] Michelle: What management consulting are you doing? Are you doing it mostly in the tech area or are you advising firms on on other issues? [00:04:52] Jared: My pitch to law firms is like, "Imagine if you had a partner who actually knew how to run a business. That's me." We engage people usually a couple times a month. We do a biweekly meeting just to keep things moving forward, but it's super broad. I've always been really shallow in terms of the categories. It could be technology, it could be marketing, it could be financial management and then I don't do the implementation stuff and I'm not building websites.  What's really cool, is that I've met a lot of people in the industry who do good work at very specific things. I can say, "Okay, I can help you with this or I can help you construct a plan around this, but you're going to need these three service providers as well who can help you and I've got great recommendations to make for that.” That's being an outside business partner-ish, working as far as this is concerned. Then in addition to working with law firms directly, we also have partnerships with around 20 bar associations. We're the consulting partner for the bar association and that's cheaper for the bars than hiring someone in-house to do that work. [00:05:55] Michelle: Fantastic. Let's talk about legal tech. You've carved a niche in the legal tech area. I know you do a lot of writing and speaking about legal tech. Tell me your take on what the market's seen this year and where it's going. I'd especially be interested in your thoughts with all this talk around the recession and how that's going to impact legal tech. Sorry to- [00:06:25] Jared: I know everybody-- [00:06:25] Michelle: -just throw a lot at you there. [00:06:26] Jared: [laughs] It's so funny. [00:06:29] Jared: Everybody's like, what about the recession? I'm not an economist. I've no idea. [00:06:33] Michelle: I feel we've been talking about recessions for three years now. [00:06:37] Jared: It seems like it's been a long time. [00:06:38] Michelle: Yes, I know. [00:06:40] Jared: Inflation's high, obviously. I don't know if we're in a recession or not, but my whole approach to this with law firms is like, you should be using technology to run your practice because it's going to be cheaper than using people in certain spaces. But you always run or run a lean law firm whether there's a recession or not and the leaner you can get, the more profit margin you can make, the more efficient you can be. I'm always telling law firms whether it's a recession or not, whether it's high times, you want to be as efficient as possible and running your law firm as effectively as possible because you're making the most money you can in that construct whatever's happening at that time. Maybe it's less than you would've made two years ago, but it's still pretty good probably. I found that most law firms are not really innovative at all. Not a lot of law firms are trying new things, not a lot of law firms are being aggressive about marketing, for example. The ability to be an outlier and legal it's a little bit easier to do that than in other industries where the business owners absolutely are more savvy. That's the way I look at it with folks. As far as legal tech trends are concerned, I guess there's two big ones I'm looking at right now. One is all the consolidation that's happening. As you know, all these larger companies, oftentimes like the case management software companies like the Clio or a Filevine or MyCase, they're either snapping up these smaller companies, or in the case of MyCase, they're being snapped up by larger companies like a LawPay. I think everybody's got this notion in their head that there's going to be this operating system for legal and there's this big battle between these huge companies about who's going to be the operating system for legal. I think that's a flawed premise, honestly. I don't buy that as being a thing. I think lawyers are too independent and I think most lawyers want to choose the best in class solution rather than-- [00:08:35] Michelle: And law firms are different. I know there's a lot of similarities. A small firm versus a large firm, a business firm versus a plaintiff firm. There's quite a variety. [00:08:46] Jared: I'm not seeing a world in which there's the Lexis and Westlaw of legal technology. I'm just not seeing that. The other thing I'm seeing is I kind of feel we're in the second wave of legal technology, as I would call it. The first wave is '08, '09, everybody started using the Cloud, all these case management software products came out, Rocket Matter came out, Clio came out, everybody's like, "That's awesome. Back office software. That seems to be selling. Let's build a ton of that." Then nobody built anything else. Pandemic hits and all of a sudden, all of these law firms are doing analog intake. You got to do digital intake and they have no way to do it. There's no software for lawyers built for that. Now you're starting to see more investments made in front office technology. You're starting to see more companies come out in front office technology, you're starting to see these back office tools, either acquiring systems that can do front office technology or building those features into their own products. I think that's going to continue, and I think it's long overdue. And that's one of the reasons we started a company that was a front office software because there's not enough of that in the space. [00:09:49] Michelle: Absolutely. I was shocked. I remember during the pandemic learning that one of my clients, no one had laptops. The entire firm. [00:10:00] Jared: What were they using instead? Stone tablets? [00:10:02] Michelle: Desktops, yes. You had to be in the office to work and I thought, "Are you kidding me?" It was quite a wake up call. [00:10:11] Jared: It's so wild. Lawyers cling to those desktops, it's crazy. [00:10:14] Michelle: Yes, it really is. I know we all have stories like this, but I still have a client — I don't do a lot of the day-to-day work anymore — but he will print out an email, write his response on the piece of paper, hand it to his assistant who will scan it and send it back to us. [laughter] [00:10:37] Jared: I was talking to a lawyer last week who was like all out of breath and I was like, "What are you doing?" She's like, "Oh, I'm taking my desktop out of my trunk and bringing it to my office." I'm like, "Are you for real right now?" [laughs] [00:10:47] Michelle: Wow, that's wild. [00:10:48] Jared: It's crazy. It happens all the time. [00:10:52] Michelle: What do you see are the areas that you think are going to really continue to grow? We had the pandemic that really put a turbocharge on — and you mentioned the front office stuff. Are there certain areas where you think are going to grow moving forward more than others? [00:11:10] Jared: I think the front office tech is going to explode a little bit here, which I've already mentioned. The other thing probably obviously maybe not, is automation: triggered automation, behavior automation, which leads to the machine learning and the AI. I get law firms, for example, who ask me all the time can you automate conflict checks? I don't think you can because I don't think the technology's sensitive enough right now. But at some point if you run a viable AI on that, you could be in a position where you could do something like that where a machine could tell you whether there's a conflict and do it in a similar way to how a human would do it. I think that technology is in its nascent stages. If you look at all that back office, front office software I'm talking about, none of it uses really any high level machine learning or artificial intelligence. You're seeing some of this stuff happening in legal research software. They're actually starting to use data effectively.  The three big things I see, one is the AI piece that's coming, the use of data analytics by law firms and software. You've seen that happen in sports, you've seen that happen in finance, you've seen that happen in a bunch of other industries where there's more reliance on data so people can make better decisions. No law firm are really doing that right now. I think the software is going to start to be developed to do that. Then the other stuff I think is interesting is all these web-based communities. People look at— Facebook changes name to Meta and everybody thinks Facebook is the Metaverse. There's a bunch of these different segregated online communities, which are various Metaverses and you're starting to see law firms do things like set up virtual office spaces in there. I think that's going to start to become more and more utilized by firms. Those are three things that I think are trending right now that you're going to see developed over the course of like probably in terms of AI over the next 15, 20 years, maybe more. [00:13:10] Michelle: Are there any major barriers that this industry is going to face that might slow down the growth? [00:13:21] Jared: The biggest barrier are the attorneys, because they hate change. When I talk to people about lawyers, people are like, “Lawyers are risk averse. They're so risk averse. I don't understand why.” It's obvious because their job is to spot every possible risk and so when they look at a new venture, they're like, "Oh, my god, look at all the things that could go wrong here. Why would I do that?" If they were advising a client, they would never do that. I think lawyers have to start being more comfortable with change management. I think lawyers have to start being more comfortable with risk management. That's the biggest barrier to everything. I'm seeing that improve. You see a lot of these attorneys who are 60s, 70s, 80s moving out of the practice. A lot more attorneys who are 40s and 50s taking over practices, and they have a more open mind. Then the other big issue I see outside of the attorneys is the lack of structured data. If you want to start running analytics, if you want to have machine learning going at a high level, the data needs to be structured. Layperson's term might be “labeled more effectively.” If there are five different software you're using and they each label a settlement with a different field, it's going to be very hard to extract meaningful information from that data. That's one of the things that's going to have to happen and both the technology companies and the attorneys are going to have to put a premium on that. That's just hard work that no one wants to do. Those are two big issues that I see. [00:14:53] Michelle: Do you think the trends that I've seen in the legal industry are often driven by client demand, things like diversity… Diversity is the best example I can think of. [00:15:07] Jared: That's a great example. [00:15:09] Michelle: This isn't altruistic firms, this is client saying, "Do it." Do you think clients will have any impact on the growth of this market? [00:15:21] Jared: Yes and I think they already are. I think the two big things that are being driven by law firm clients — and it's more of a push the bigger they get. The bigger companies are going to demand more of this. Law firms that are operating as outside council are starting to see this already in waves. The first is efficiency.  A few years back, like Casey Flaherty who was a Chief Legal Counselor at Kia, the car company. He was starting to give efficiency tests to law firms. Like, can you actually convert a PDF from a Word document? A lot of them couldn't do it, because all these companies are upset because a lot of these firms are operating on the billable hour that incentivizes inefficiency. Why would you learn to do anything more efficiently? You wouldn't. You're seeing a lot of pressure from companies now about law firm efficiency, more challenging of billing, more requests for alternative pricing models as well that don't value efficiency as highly. Then I think in addition to that, the other big thing is data security. You see a lot of these larger companies say, "Okay we've got sensitive legal files on our side, but you as a law firm are also maintaining sensitive legal files. We see new stories about law firms being breached all the time. What are you doing to secure your data effectively?" That's not just any longer about having a written information security program or a data security document that's two pages long. That's also about filling out the forms that these companies want you to fill out. I have a friend of mine who runs IT for several large law firms and they're asking these firms to fill out 100 page, 200 page queries about how they manage their data security. They have no clue how to do it. Those questions are only going to get harder. And this is in the US, we're not even talking about Europe with GDPR. [00:17:15] Michelle: I attended a managing partners forum, maybe it was last year. The very beginning of it, they went around and talked about-- The question was, what's keeping you up at night? These are managing partners of mostly smaller defense firms. The amount of people that said cybersecurity was outstanding to me. I mean it was by far the number one topic. That doesn’t surprise me at all. [00:17:45] Jared: It's a huge deal. Lawyers are risk averse because they understand the law very well. They don't understand the data security space very well and it's really dangerous. It's not enough just to get a cybersecurity malpractice insurance policy. You need to actually implement the tools in your office. [00:18:06] Michelle: Yes, absolutely, because it's such a reputation risk as well. [00:18:12] Jared: That's the biggest thing. As you would know, running a PR firm. That's a PR nightmare. A data breach. [00:18:17] Michelle: PR nightmare, absolutely. The risk aversion is something that as marketing and PR people, it's sort of the opposite approach. I see marketing and PR people…by nature, you have to push the envelope, you have to take risks. Marketing is not a risk averse discipline. We have to avoid shiny object syndrome. There has to be strategy, but in general you have to be willing to try some new things. [00:18:49] Jared: For sure. [00:18:50] Michelle: It's certainly a challenge working with lawyers who will point out anything and everything that could go wrong. If you spend too much time, why would you put anything out there? After a while, pretty much anything could go wrong and the more risk you take out of it, the blander and less effective it gets. [00:19:10] Jared: Yes, absolutely. Take a chance. Come on, lawyers. [laughter] [00:19:15] Michelle: Are there any companies in the legal tech space that you think are going to be the ones that are really disrupting the space that are important to watch? [00:19:26] Jared: Yes. I think some of the bigger companies that have been around for a while are still being pretty disruptive. Like Filevine for example. I interviewed your CEO on a podcast the other day. They've been really doing a good job building out case management features in their systems. They've actually started to cross over the larger law firms, which is something that hasn't really been done before. I think that's a pretty big bellwether for where this is going because a lot of those bigger firms prefer document management systems, they’ve never use case management systems. That's a big deal. NetDocuments is a document management and automation platform. They've been taking up a ton of market share in the large legal space. Then there's some smaller companies which are doing interesting things as well. This company called Milestones, I talked to their CEO the other day. They're doing law firm notifications to clients based on workflows. Essentially no touch notifications, which I think is a really interesting thing to do because most law firms are going to forget to do that, or they're going to try to do that in a manual way. That's a really hard thing to do. [00:20:33] Michelle: What notifications? Explain that to me a little bit more. [00:20:36] Jared: Emails, text, any notification you could send. Potentially with integrations as well. If you're using WhatsApp or whatever for texting, you might be able to send a notification that way too. I think that's something that some of these companies lack, these larger case management software companies.  Then what I'm waiting to see actually is a really hardcore legal project management or task management tools. You see a lot of uptick on like Asana, Trello, Notion. There's no Notion for legal. I think something like that, I'm sure somebody may be developing that right now. Maybe I will. [00:21:14] Michelle: That's a really great point. [00:21:16] Jared: That, I don't see anything.  [00:21:17] Michelle: I haven't seen that either. That's fascinating. Who are the people that are who are leading these companies? Do you see any trend in terms of are they all former attorneys? Do you see anything where they were smaller firms, bigger firms? What are you seeing? [00:21:39] Jared: Most of them, to my knowledge, are not lawyers. You see a few people who are attorneys who started companies. I talked about Filevine, Ryan Anderson, the CEO, he's an attorney. You look at a Clio, Jack Newton, the CEO over there, not an attorney. If I had to guess, I would say that probably like 75% of the founders and are not lawyers. They're people who are looking to disrupt the legal industry. [00:22:04] Michelle: Disrupt an industry. [00:22:05] Jared: I think the part of that is obviously because they're less risk averse. They look at this and they say, "Oh, there's so many solutions we can provide that lawyers just don't have the opportunity to even access."  The other thing I will say that, it's encouraging that the legal investment has been going up significantly year over year until this year because people worried about recession as we talked about, but nobody wanted to invest in legal technology for a long time. Lawyers are intelligent, which means they're hard to sell to. The sales cycle is long. There's a lot of entrenched tools, they're skeptical. All bad things, right? [laughs] I think it's encouraging that the investment has been coming in and I think that's probably part of the reason that more lawyers, non-lawyers I should say, have been attracted to this. The other thing I find honestly is that you see a lot of lawyers who launch tech companies, but they can't get out of their own practice because they haven't figured out a way to manage that effectively or hand off the reigns. It's really tough to do two things like that at once: managing a large law firm and also trying to create a tech venture because that's a very competitive space. [00:23:08] Michelle: Well, and that made me think too, the big challenge that I see a lot of law firms talking about is handing it over to that next generation. I would imagine that tech plays a big role there. You've got to-- Law firms are that quintessential, you don't own a company, you own a job almost, until you've built processes and systems. [00:23:34] Jared: Oh, man, you're so spot on. After the pandemic, and during, most of the law firms I was talking to prior to that, they were like, "I'm really inefficient. I don't know why." Then law firms started reaching out to me and they're like, "Hey, we need to start building processes and workflows." I'm like, "Okay. We're getting somewhere now." You're totally right in that lawyers don't build businesses like that. We haven't talked about this, but some states are now authorizing alternative business structures where non-attorneys, non-law firms can be involved in law firms. To be able to compete with organizations like that, you have to take chances in marketing, you have to build processes, and there's a chance that maybe you get acquired by some of those companies down the road. I think lawyers are going to be forced to do this eventually, but honestly it's about time because it only benefits them frankly. [00:24:30] Michelle: Absolutely. A few of our clients are ALSPs. Law firms often were founded based on geography, and their business was built around a particular geographic market. You're seeing that rise of the niche, and obviously you're still regulated by where you can practice in court, but I'm seeing more and more attorneys build brands that are national and international. ALSPs are good at that, too. They have a niche focus that can really deliver a niche optimized service. That's going to be something that the law firms have to compete with. [00:25:19] Jared: I mean, it's crazy. If you look at, even the ethics rules, before the pandemic, in half the states, you couldn't even have a brand name for your law firm. All those rules came off the book almost simultaneously. The bonafide office stuff. Everybody knew that was BS, but took like a global pandemic to change that. They're still behind the eight ball. It's wild. [00:25:40] Michelle: It's wild. It really is. This has been fascinating. Tell me, are there any trends that we haven't touched on? I want to make sure, and then the other question I have is just since we're doing a broad overview of legal tech, what are some of the associations, conferences? If you're dipping your toe into legal tech, let's say you're a managing partner, you want to start following the industry, getting information, what are the some of those that you recommend that they pay attention to? [00:26:13] Jared: I can do a couple more trends first if you want. [00:26:15] Michelle: Oh yes, let's do trends. [00:26:17] Jared: I like how your cat popped into the screen here, mirroring my daughter who's come back and forth for snacks. Well, two of the trends I haven't mentioned yet that I've been seeing is like a change in pricing models. I talk about firms moving away from the billable hour potentially. What do you move to? I see a lot more firms that adopting evergreen retainers. I see more firms doing subscriptions and products. What's interesting about that is that in terms of service delivery, which is a second big trend, and that's changing as well. The law firms only deliver services in one way, like painstaking. Cottage industry. Now, if you've got a law firm products, you can deliver documents. What I never understood was you got companies like LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer out there, and law firms are like, "Oh, they suck. I don't like them." But law firms could offer the same services, capture those DIY clients as well. They just never did. There was no reason for it. I've seen a lot more law firms looking at new pricing structures, which is going to communicate more value to the client, which is going to potentially be more valuable to the law firm as well, which gets closer to like that total cost of representation, which is really what legal consumers want. Then I think that's going to change the service delivery significantly as well. The law firms of the future are probably going to have-- or the law firm conglomerations with other businesses, whatever they are, pricing model's going to be different, service delivery's going to be different. [00:27:42] Michelle: How will it change the service delivery? [00:27:45] Jared: I think it's just a totally different model for a law firm. If you built out-- The way I look at this is like every law firm process is analog, now it's becoming digital. My software company will help a lot of law firms, like, offer estate plans, right? Instead of doing the traditional thing where you meet with somebody, we have law firms that are like faxing documents back and forth. Meet with somebody, you write stuff out, you painstaking do mail merge on the well and stuff like that. You can make that an entirely consumer facing product where instead of having to have a staff, you can just say, "Hey, complete this chat conversation" and guess what? A document pops out on the other end and you're done. You don't want to talk to a lawyer, great. It's cheaper to do it this way, but if you do want to talk to a lawyer, we have options to do that.” That's just a seat change from most law firms. [00:28:34] Michelle: It really is. It's being driven by… I notice I have very little patience. I have some consultants that I deal with for my own business. I have one in particular who loves to call me. [00:28:49] Jared: Feel like this could have been a text. [laughs] [00:28:51] Michelle: I'm to the point where I just-- you start thinking about whether or not I need to switch providers because my patience has left the building for phone calls. It's because, honestly, in our personal lives, things like Amazon and UberEats… I can have dinner delivered to my door and not speak to anybody. It changes your behavior in your work life. [00:29:22] Jared: Oh, lord. [00:29:23] Michelle: You lose that patience of things that could be digitized and automated and that aren't. [00:29:30] Jared: Can we not talk about how much I spend on Grubhub every month? Could we leave that out? [laughter] [00:29:38] Michelle: Same actually, and Amazon. [00:29:41] Jared: Yes. It's funny you mentioned that because that's totally true. I used to practice law, I don't anymore. Now, as somebody who hires lawyers from time to time, I don't want to drive to your office. I don't want to touch your pen, I just want to schedule something online, have a quick meeting via Zoom and be done. I need to get onto the other stuff. Lawyers have never operated that way. They sit at the desk and they're like, "How does this statute from 1843 apply to this document I'm drafting?" I'm not interested in that. Lawyers love that though. They love being inefficient. [00:30:16] Michelle: I think it's almost taught to them. It will change as- [00:30:21] Jared: It has to. [00:30:22] Michelle: -the generational shift. Absolutely. [00:30:26] Jared: You asked about conferences too, events and stuff like that. Obviously, a weird time for that. I don't get out to as many events as I used to. It's starting to come back. I'll tell you the places I go to usually, where I pick up some useful stuff is some of the user conferences for the tech companies. I just went to Clio's cloud conference in Nashville a couple months ago. They had about 2,000 people in-person, a 1,000 people online. [00:30:53] Michelle: Wow. [00:30:53] Jared: That was a really good conference. Lots of vendors there. Talked to a lot of people about what features they're adopting. Filevine’s got a conference. I think MyCase is maybe doing some conferences across the country at some point. Then I also go to the Bar Association Conferences. You've got small firm conferences are pretty good. You've also got bench bar conferences, which draw a lot of lawyers because the judges go to those. Some of those bar associations have tech conferences, and then I use the term bar associations broadly. I'm not talking just about state bar associations, but also county, city specialty bar associations. Those are generally good. Then some marketing companies throw really good conferences like Crisp Video down in Atlanta, they do great conference. They give away Lamborghinis… [00:31:39] Michelle: Oh, do they really? [00:31:40] Jared: Yes. There's a lot of different places you can go if you're looking for legal information and want to meet lawyers. ABA Tech Show has been around forever. That's another big one that a lot of people go to.  If you want to find legal tech conferences or legal conferences in general to go to, there's no shortage of places to go for sure. I’d start with the vendors and the bar associations. [00:32:04] Michelle: That's great information. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you joining me. [00:32:12] Jared: I've enjoyed myself. I finished my iced tea. [00:32:15] Michelle: I love it. I want to point people, if they want to learn more about you and your consulting, where should they go? [00:32:23] Jared: Oh, sure. You can just go to the website. It's redcavelegal.com [00:32:27] Michelle: Where'd you get that name? What's the Red Cave? If you wouldn't mind. [00:32:32] Jared: All right. Remember when I said I was an English major? [00:32:34] Michelle: Yes. [00:32:34] Jared: I went to a small liberal arts scholar, it was a humanities program. It's based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The idea is like you're in the cave, you're not seeing real things, you're not seeing the forms, you're just seeing shadows and then you come out of the cave and everything opens up to you and then you understand the world. I thought to myself, "What would it look like to be out of the cave and looking back on it?” And it's probably very bright flames coming out because they're projecting shadows on the wall." That was the vision I had for it. Then I designed a logo off of that. [00:33:09] Michelle: That's very deep. [00:33:11] Jared: Very deep. [00:33:13] Michelle: Very deep. I love it. Great to talk to you. Thanks for joining me. [00:33:18] Jared: Same. Thank you. This is awesome. Take care. [music] [00:33:22] Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.