Transcript:

Hello, It’s Scott Berry, your co-host for Immigration Nation. We have a very special guest with us today. This is a real treat because normally it’s legal consumers getting advice from our friends and attorneys. This time we’ve actually got a session where our friends that are attorneys can hear from someone who’s an expert in growing law firms we’re with Ask Lucine. Hi, Scott, thanks so much. Pleasure being here with you guys. So you can find if you don’t already know, you can find more about Lucine at asklucine.com But also she has a website for her business. So share the website with them. Sure. So my website is a little bit cheesy, mypracticemakesmillions.com So I’ll get you to the millions that you’re craving to get. There we go. And we first met Lucine probably in… I don’t know what year, 2019. We were working together with an immigration law firm that was doing about $800,000 a year, and we took them to $5 million, and they’ve done $5 million ever since that time. And so we worked together on operations and marketing and kind of bottled what we learned there and have been applying it with several other clients Because when you’re growing a firm and you’re trying to change how the law firm owner operates as an owner or an operator, marketing becomes a piece of that and that’s how we connect. So welcome and let’s jump right in. All right. So Lucine, let’s start off with your experience and what is keeping most law firms from growing. So a lot of times the lawyers will come to me with a major issue that they’re experiencing with their staff. So it’s staffing issue. Upon discovery call, the first consultation and it’s all about discovering what’s broken and how I can help to fix it. The realization of it’s not my staff, it’s me. A lot of times shocking. So am I the biggest obstacle? Am I trying to control everything within the firm, whether it is the practice, the case law, the marketing, the hiring and firing, standard operating procedures? Am I in every single meeting? Do I have to be in every single meeting? Am I delegating? So all this question is coming to the place and they come to a realization that they’re doing a little bit too much speak of a big job that they’ve taken and they’re wearing multiple hats and just one sitting. And the question of owner operator comes into the place and we start discussing who they really are, what is their mission, and are they really delivering on their mission money aside? Are they delivering on their mission and their vision, which is the number one step in any organization that needs to be taken defining what their mission vision values are. I know it sounds like cliché. Everybody talks about that, but it’s true. You have to take your time deciding why you’re doing what you’re doing to sort out the rest of the issues. Yeah, it’s just it’s kind of interesting working with law firms for so many years. We find that there are some very smart people that just didn’t get the business training that some of them went to business school got, or someone that is an entrepreneur and has been studying business for a really long time. So have you found that there’s a difference between someone that’s a brilliant attorney and someone that knows how to manage a law firm and take it to seven figures? Absolutely. So a lot of lawyers will focus on practicing law. And running a business is a completely different skill set or running an organization is completely separate skill set. Just take it from an employee for example. They can be doing a brilliant work on what they are asked to do, but then you’ll assign them to a management job. They may or may not do a good job because it’s a completely different skill set. So the same applies to the business owners. So they can be brilliant, they can be winning cases, they can be writing amazing briefs and they could be great presenters and they can be writing beautiful books about everything that they do. But management is a skill set that not a lot of people have, and identifying that within yourself and deciding and understanding and coming to an agreement with yourself is what am I good at, what are my strengths is very important. The cost question comes into the place and this is where a COO is going to be a six person a six figure person that a company would need to hire any company, not only on their law firm. Bringing in a consultant at that point becomes a very cost effective solution. A lot of people think about bringing a consultant is expensive. I hear that all the time. But when you think of it in the long term and in the short term to give yourself a breather, you want to bring in someone that will help you sort out the things that you need to sort out to reach your goals. So that’s when I come into the place and help with the owner operator, sorting out the problems, fixing the issues and helping them go in the right direction for the company. I’d love to hear your opinion about consultants and how a lawyer can find the right consultant, because let’s just use an example. When we first met, that gentleman was extremely smart, got a great business, had used three different consultants in the past, and then he got a consultant that helped him grow from less than a $1 million to $5 million. So like, what are some of the differences between some consultants and then the one that actually grows your company? Do you have a couple of tips for finding the right kind of consultant? Absolutely. The right consultant for a law firm should be someone that has legal background. So we’re not just running a business. We’re running a law firm that needs to be mindful of ethical rules and obligations. The state bar is looking over our shoulders so we can just come in and say, we’ll put X amount of dollars into our business development and marketing and we will accomplish our goal of reaching millions. So kind of need to have the bricks to build the house. I always want to define the scope of our work together and we want to have a plan that would be executed week over week, month over month so we can do it right and so that we don’t find ourselves in the middle of fixing a problem. But we want to make sure that we don’t have a problem so that we can strategically manage it and grow strategically. What differentiates me from others, is that I have that legal background and I always think of the ethical rules that we need to adhere by. We want to make sure that if we’re growing, if we’re going to be spending our marketing dollars, then we need to have the staff that will be able to back it up. So we want to make sure that our intake department is properly functioning, that our case managers are properly equipped with knowledge and they could execute on these cases whether they are in personal injury, immigration, family law, any kind of litigation. So you need to make sure that you have the staff. So those are the bricks to build a house. So once you’ve done that homework and you’ve actually execute it, probably you need to spend the first six months of building your team. And while you’re doing that, you want to have your marketing consultant, building your website, making sure that your social media accounts are set up, making sure that the homework is done, your market research is done. So while this consultant me is building, the marketing consultant should be building the plan. You have to have the execution plan. You need to know what the end goal is and work backwards and only you’ll succeed. Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head is the difference between good and successful consultants and the ones that grow law firms is how much do they really know about growing law firms? That little bit of difference is all the difference. If you’ve done this six, seven, eight, nine times with law firms, then I know you can do it for me. Otherwise, you just take an unnecessary risk bringing someone in and thinking that they don’t need to know about the fine details behind what happens at a law firm because knowing what happens at a law firm and knowing the best practices and be able to address issues before they cause problems is just everything. And I’ve watched you with attorneys. One of the things I think that you do really well is coaching the attorney. Because they don’t always possess all the soft skills and organizational skills and technology knowledge that they need to do this quickly or they would have already done it. And so I like the way, talk a little bit about how you’re able to coach someone through staffing issues and stuff, and how you can kind of coach someone to do the right thing. Sure. So any journey that we take that is outside of what we have been doing already requires change. And change is very difficult for people. It’s really difficult. So just think of it as a therapist. So you go to a therapist and you explain your issues and they’ll hopefully give you a solution that they’re good enough. So I don’t enforce my solutions, but I help them come to their own conclusions. And that usually happens in their one on one sessions. It’s very private. Because the owners would never want to come in to their staff and say, “You know what, I really don’t know what I’m doing.” Or they don’t want to even hear that they’re doing something wrong. So by going to someone saying, “Look, I have a problem or I am done, or I’m just ready to quit, help me sort this out.” And maybe they are ready to stop practicing at one point. Then we have really good solutions for them to transition their firm or to merge or sell. So I help with that as well. But those are the things that I usually discover… help them discover by themselves and help them come to those conclusions because is this good for me and my firm, for my team is important light bulb that usually goes up. And because they’re always going to be type A, type B and C employees. So surrounding yourself with the team that can actually deliver on your mission is very important. That’s a really good question. I like what you were talking about the state of the lawyer when they’re first talking to you. So let’s approach it this way. What type of attorney and what type of situation is ideal that they need to be reaching out to you? So there could be various scenarios. The best is when they really want to grow. So for instance, they got 200, 300, 400 but not the million yet on their own. They are they’ve been solid practitioners for the last 3 to 5 years and now they realize that I can do more, but I don’t really know how to scale or I don’t really know how to hire. And anytime I hire more or something happens. So but I really want to get to my next million and I want to… I just want to grow. So those are my best types of clients because they’ve been practitioners for the last five years and they know that growth will require change and they’re ready for that change. So the state of mind would be I need change. So now they’re also practitioners. They’ve been doing this for about 20, 30 years and change is really difficult for them. So then we can have different solutions for them because if the lawyer is not ready for a change, it’s will be really difficult for me to work with that lawyer because I will give them what they need to know and usually they’ll come to me in a couple of years from then and they’ll say, “You know what? I remember what you told me. It really struck me, but I wasn’t ready. I’m ready to do it now.” Folks that also have been doing business for the last 10-15 years, but they feel like something is not working for them, whether it’s staff or technology. And technology is the biggest part of everything that I do, because if we can’t measure our activities, we can’t really understand what we’re doing here. After years of contributing a lot of knowledge and my case is a CRM solution that has been integrated with many other programs like LawPay and Docketwise. So they actually asked me to be their first certified consultant and really fortunate to be able to be a part of that team and contributing to them and to my client’s needs as well. Because by me or that connection, when I identify or my clients identify the needs that they may have, whether it comes to the reporting or anything else, I have that way of going to my case and saying, “You know what, this would help us very much.” And they take it and actually implement it. Clients appreciate it. I like it and I think my case is happy as well. Yeah, the marketing team likes it as well because it’s really important that we be able to know how many leads came in and how many of those ended up in consultations and out of those how many are good fit and then how many are actually hired. And so my case gives them all that information right at their fingertips. So we love that. What all types of services can you provide a law firm that’s looking to grow? Sure. So, LT Global Practice Management solution goes with the name. So I’ve created this company with the vision that this is going to be a global organization because I look at things from that angle. So I like bringing people together. I like people. We build the websites. We are associated with proper talents and agencies. that help us deliver on that angle as well. So Scott, you’re one of them. Next is the practice management. So that’s where I get involved personally and hold the lawyers, the owner’s hands from the inception of our of working together to the end. And I’ll be the first person to say, “You don’t need me anymore.” And my practice management process is very unique and very different from any other consultant to where I won’t only come and tell you what to do, I’ll actually do it with you. and you’ll feel that it’s happening week over week, month over month, and you’ll be seeing the results of the practice management portion of it. We’ll provide staffing solutions, have a really nice team of recruiters that work with me. Obviously, every single person that gets placed needs to go through my screening and training and all that good stuff, and I look for attitude first, skill set later. It’s very, very important for me to have people on my team that support my clients that would do the work ethically correct. So that’s very important to me. So we spend a lot of time on that piece. We’ve become a really nice, significant part of the organization that we usually work with. And so we’re available. Anything you need, we can provide. A to Z. So how can you tell when it’s time to disengage with the law firm? So you’ve been working with them for a while. What’s it look like when the work is done? Sure. So obviously we set a goal and we work backwards. So once we hit the goal and I will be the one coming to my client to say we’ve accomplished the goal, you won’t need me as a consultant right now. So the team knows what to do. However, we visit in a couple of months from now because their engagement with me is month to month. So however we visit in a couple of months to see how you guys are doing. You guys are fine? Great. So we did- we checked in with each other. If we need me to be back, I’m available. So I can come in and we’ll spend the month with you and we’ll sort out things that are not working well, and then we’ll just move on to the next journey. So Lucine talk a little bit about expensive versus necessary. A lot of times the thinking process is if I hire this candidate or if I bring in a consultant or if I spend money on technology, or if I hire this marketing firm with advertising and I need to put an advertising budget, it will be expensive. So if hiring and let’s just go talking about in each one of those. If hiring the top talent, that’s a Type A employee, will give you a good ROI on the investment on this employee. A lot of people ask me, what’s that mean? Then I would be talking about, all right, so have you ever done a cause cost analysis of what this case has cost you in an overhead in comparison to what you are actually priced your cases at. So in a lot of law firms will not have the answer. And then I kind of dim it down and say, “If I have this attorney or a paralegal or legal assistant that is at this price point quote and quote, taking care of, let’s just pretend as giving numbers, taking care of 100 cases versus three of them at a lower rate. Wouldn’t it the better to hire one person that knows how to do all of this stuff and be very cost effective and efficient?” And actually we may actually learn something new from that person. So we don’t want to hire people to teach them what to do. But one want to hire people that know already what to do so that’s one. So we’ll just talk about that. And then bringing in a consultant could be expensive. But you know, what If that consultant not what if, but that consultant will if the right consultant will help us scale, help us actually get organized in in a way that we can see what is it that we’re doing with our practice and make it measurable and make it scalable in nature. We bring in the right technology to you, to your firm. So then it will not be expensive because you’re actually going to be making money on the knowledge that you gain spending time with that specific consultant and marketing. So there are a lot of marketing companies that will come in and talk about what they will do for you. But is this the right marketing firm that really understands your practice area? So yes, it can get expensive If you just hire someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing. You don’t get a return. Yeah, and there’s going to be no return. That’s definitely going to be expensive. For instance, I worked with a firm that had four marketing agencies, never had that before. It happens, and they really didn’t know why they had four marketing agencies, but they thought that was the right thing to do. So obviously we ended up fixing the situation and making it more manageable. But yeah, it can be expensive if we don’t know what we’re spending on, but it will not be expensive and you will actually get your money in return for what you’re doing. If you do your research a little bit better and ask the people that know. I always say I know what I know and I’ll pay people to do things that I don’t know because we all have limitations. And there is someone else that knows how to do it better. We need to ask that person. Yeah. Fantastic advice. This has been really eye opening because I think people need to hear from someone who can help them that knows how to manage a law firm and has grown many, many firms. And you’ve done that and you’ve done it with family law firms, with immigration law firms, personal injury law firms, And so thanks for the feedback, for the ideas. I would encourage people to reach out to Lucine and to ask for a session and just strategize. You’re really great about offering these strategy sessions to people and just see if maybe the LT Global solution might be the best one for you. Tell people how to get a hold of you if they’d like to have a session. My email is la- it stands for my first initials, Lucine Aghajanyan. So la@asklucine.com I’m also easily reachable on my phone, The e mail is probably- would be the best so that we have a reference point, but feel free to text me, call me, email me. Thank you for spending time with us. Thank you.