Financially Legal

One thing every law firm needs is money. And I don’t think that I’m going out on a limb suggesting that money and financial health are common elements across most successful firms. In this episode, the first of our series of interviews with law firm CFOs, we speak with Scott Shaffer of Winterfeld IP Group . We dig in with Scott on law firm collection rates, collection strategies, whether firms sho...

What’s a lawyer doing running an offshore virtual staffing firm? Starting in 2011 Brett Trembly built a successful business law firm, Trembly Law Firm , in Miami, Florida. They now employ 30+ people and nearly a dozen lawyers.  Along the way, Brett not only realized that there was a shortage of companies offering law firm staffing, more importantly, he saw that helping law firms staff up was...

On this special episode of Financially Legal we’re announcing the launch of our integration with Lawmatics. Lawmatics is a Legal Intake Solution, Marketing Automation, and Law Firm CRM software all in one. Today they are announcing the launch of their time and billing module with Lawmatics payments powered by Gravity Legal.  We talk with Lawmatics CEO Matt Spiegel. Matt's a former criminal de...

Why do lawyers struggle to get paid for the work that they do? Whether it’s the low collection rates that we see in the Clio Trends Report to lawyers offering too steep a discount, to lawyers refusing to sue their clients, and on and on, “Show me the money” is definitely not the #1 mantra for many of our fellow lawyers.  Julie Steinbacher doesn’t know why . . .  but she’s got some ideas...

In this, the fourth and final installment of our discussions with RJon Robins on the seven essential parts of a law firm, we move to the 5th and 6th essential parts of a law firm: physical plant and financial metrics and controls. The topic of physical plant naturally brings up the question of “whither physical law firms in the time of COVID?” We also discuss how intellectual property may be the m...

Have you ever considered the role of profit in a law firm? No, I mean, really thought about what it is, why it exists, whether it should be a part of your firm, and/or how to grow it. If so, then this episode is for you. Brooke Lively is the founder and CEO of Cathedral Capital. Her mission is pretty simple: make law firms more profitable. And she’s written a book for lawyers all about it: it’s ca...

In this, our third installment of our discussions with RJon Robins on the seven essential parts of a law firm, we explore the 3rd and 4th essential parts of a law firm: production and people. While we begin with production, we quickly veer into a conversation about people involved in production and whether every solo or small firm lawyer should try to be an entrepreneur. Of course, we discuss the...

In this, the second installment of our discussions with RJon Robins on the seven essential parts of a law firm, we dig in on the first and second essential parts (of the seven essential parts) of a law firm: sales and marketing. As a reminder, in interview #1 we discussed the eighth and final part of a successful law firm, the owner. In this episode, we discuss what marketing is and how you can an...

RJon Robins is the CEO and Founder of How To Manage a Small Law Firm , the largest provider of fractional executive (CEO, CFO, COO) services for small law firms in the country. This episode is the first of a four-part series with RJon on the seven essential parts of a law firm. These seven parts are sales, marketing, production, people, physical plant, financial metrics and controls and, finally,...

Small law firm owners may not be familiar with the terms "docker," "container," or "Kubernetes." They may even be a bit fuzzy on the definition of “the cloud.” But most firms know that, along with significant opportunities, new technologies often present security risks, interoperability challenges, and significant costs in terms of time and money to vet, test, and deploy. What’s a firm to do? Unfo...

How can a lawyer represent criminal defendants and abuse survivors? Judie Saunders represents children and families victimized by powerful systems *and* criminal defendants. Check out this week's episode of Financially Legal to find out how Judie built a practice representing the marginalized against powerful entrenched systems.

We all know the cliches and the tropes: Lawyers are terrible business people, lawyers went to law school to avoid math, law firms aren’t businesses, etc . . . .  Many of these statements are true in some pretty fundamental ways. But they’re also really damaging.  Super accountant-to-law-firms-extraordinaire, Chelsea Williams, has the remedy. Combining her dozen-plus years of accounting e...

One of my lawyer mentors once told me “if you don’t like to sell, don’t be a CEO.” Many solo lawyers set out to make a difference or have an impact - not to be a CEO. But whether you want to call them CEOs or managing partners, or partners, or business owners - the fact remains that they are heads of their respective businesses - effectively, they are “CEOs.” And if you want to be a CEO, you need...

What started as conversations between two friends - actually a law professor and his student - evolved into a movement. Maximum Lawyer boasts a 5000 member Facebook group, over 200 hours of podcast content, two sold-out conferences, a paid community, and a course to help lawyers and firms grow. Oh, and did I mention that the prof and his former student both have successful law firms in their own r...

Sam Glover, the founder of the popular legal website, Lawyerist, once told me that he started the website to complain about a practice management system he was frustrated by. He gave birth to a technology blog that’s morphed into a large and well-known legal industry website.  But Lawyerist is way more than just content. There's also the free-to-join Insider program and the paid Lawyerist com...

Over the last few years, the social media landscape has become an almost impossible environment to navigate.  The founder of the lawyer community LawyerSmack, Keith Lee, saw the social media meltdown coming and decided to try and do something about it. While it started out as a free extension of his popular Associates Mind blog, LawyerSmack has become a large and very active private online la...

Here on Financially Legal we often focus on the nuts and bolts of finance and economics but some the biggest obstacles to economic and business success are mental - not financial or even business-related. If ever you’ve wondered if it's your mindset that's holding you back, then this episode is for you. We dive in on mindset - and we’re doing it with someone who thinks about this deeply - Allison...

What if I told you there was a tool that could automatically increase your firm revenue by 1%? What about 2%? What about 3%? What about even half a percent? (if you’re not great at doing math on the fly, for a firm that grosses $1,000,000/year, one half a percent is $5000). Law firms that accept electronic payments and implement a cost-shifting technology have an opportunity to dramatically lower...

There’s probably no principle more important to growing and scaling a law firm than delegation. Whether it’s identifying the tasks that need to be done, teaching and coaching others to do them, or simply letting go, you’ll be hard-pressed to grow your legal business if you can’t delegate. If you’ve ever wondered how delegation might work in your firm and how to get started, this episode is for you...

If you’ve ever wondered how to tie together different systems in your law practice, you need to know about Zapier. Like the machine that makes Pee-Wee Herman’s breakfast in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure or the idea of the Rube Goldberg machine (a reference that dates me even MORE than Pee-Wee Herman) Zapier uses “if this, then that” logic to connect otherwise disparate systems and - more importantly - o...

Lawyers are no strangers to tools - even technology tools - but few choose to build their own. In this Financially Legal episode, host Dan Lear explores why six firms chose to pursue a DIY path for practice management, how they went about building what they built, whether they’d recommend that other firms do the same, and what the future of practice management looks like for firms who might want t...

This episode of Financially Legal is a departure from our usual. Normally we talk about law, economics, and even finance as applied to the practice of law. Today, we’re talking about one specific legal issue that has some financial underpinnings. Specifically, the GameStop short squeeze. If you’ve been paying any attention to the news - or especially social media - over the last couple of weeks yo...

If you’ve considered or are considering a virtual, remote, distributed or cloud-based law firm model, this episode is for you.  Parlatore Law Group’s mission is right there on the website: “Our mission is to provide our clients with the highest quality legal services at a reasonable rate. We do this by removing all the barriers, bureaucracy and bloated overhead costs associated with tradition...

“I was told there’d be no math.” It’s a common joking refrain for law students and even practicing lawyers. “I went to law school to help people,” so many lawyers tell me. But a firm needs to pay for you  - and itself - in order to keep helping people. Let’s face it: law firms are businesses. And the better a firm runs, the more people it can help. So understanding the finance and economics o...

Allen Rodriguez is a legal product development strategist who has been serving the legal industry for over 18 years. He’s currently the Founder and CEO of the law innovation agency One400 . Before that he was the Director of Attorney Services at LegalZoom, where he helped LegalZoom figure out their, now very successful, subscription and lawyer-assisted offerings. He got his start in the legal sect...