The Sterling Family Law Show

Send us Fan Mail This is a timeless tale of guts and courage. My guest this week is Jonathan Hawkins.  He had the guts to not take the safe route and the courage to  stay focused on his niche.  Jonathan has built a highly specialized practice serving lawyers and law firms, from firm formation to dissolution and all stages in between. Jonathan's intriguing journey took him from learning Spanis...

Send us Fan Mail Do you ever feel like you're operating in the dark when it comes to managing your law practice?  This episode describes a simple by extremely effective tool that identifies almost every operational problem in a law firm.  Our marketing waterfall, often referred to as a funnel, tracks our clients' journey from their initial visit to our website through closing their case...

Send us Fan Mail Working with the right business partner can generate massive success. Conversely, working with the wrong partner is a study in frustration, loss, and heartache.  In this episode, I share my three-part formula for highly functional business partnerships.  I take you through my personal journey of forming successful partnerships, and share the lessons I learned along the way. We&apo...

Send us Fan Mail This is the fourth episode of four  on how to convert a law firm from hourly to fixed fee. We wrap up the series by describing how to practice fixed fee. The name of the game and the secret is to be proactive in everything you do. It's like playing a game of tennis. The ball can never be in your court. It always needs to be returned as quickly as possible. The lawyer must dri...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is part three of four on converting a law firm from hourly to fixed fee billing.  The most difficult part of the process is articulating the fixed fee value and selling it.  If you try to do it the same as hourly, you will get killed and lose big time.  With hourly billing, the client bears the risk.  This is one of the main reasons why lawyers use it and  like it. Bu...

Send us Fan Mail The Sterling Chronicles series presents a month-by-month account of the victories, setbacks, and lessons encountered while establishing a rapidly growing family law practice. My objective is to record and share the successes and challenges within our law firm, with the aspiration that you can glean from our experiences and expedite your path to success. In this installment, I delv...

Send us Fan Mail This is the second of four on moving a law firm from hourly billing to fixed fee. This episode demystifies how to structure fixed fee agreements.  In our family law firm, we break agreements up into stages along natural settlement points.  It all starts with the leader.  The law firm leader must enthusiastically support the conversion to fixed fee.  A half-hearted attempt will fai...

Send us Fan Mail This is part one of four of "How to Move a Law Firm from Hourly to Fixed Fee." Way back in  2016 we white-knuckled our way through a significant business model transition.  Today,  our fixed fee practice has grown into a major success.  We are a 100% fixed fee firm with 26 family law attorneys spread out over two states and serving almost 3,000 clients a year.  In this f...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we welcome special guest Paul Hanon, a professional photographer specializing in headshots.  Paul is the owner of PremierHeadshots.com in Bay View, WI.  He has rapidly grown his business by focusing on one thing and being amazing at that -- Headshots. There are many business lessons to be gleaned from this discussion that apply across disciplines and markets. Paul...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine if your law practice could be transformed, not by new laws or regulations, but by a simple change in the way you conduct client consultations. That's exactly what happened in our firm when we implemented a streamlined consult process that significantly improved our client experience and financial stability, raking in over $45 million in service fees.  Join me, Jeff Hu...

Send us Fan Mail Ever wanted to get a sneak peek of truth into a thriving law practice?  In this Sterling Chronicles series I will open the kimono each month and share with you  what happened, why it happened, our response, and our numbers.    This info is exactly what I wish I had when we started Sterling Lawyers. I'll walk you through the key projects we've been focusing on, including...

Send us Fan Mail Many lawyers unintentionally sabotage their credibility. These are the top 10 credibility destroyers I've seen.  Avoid these pitfalls to build a stronger, more successful practice.  In this episode, I'll share my experiences and tips that have helped us grow a law practice from zero attorneys to over $15 million in revenue. We discuss everything from mastering the perfec...

Send us Fan Mail We  discovered three power levers  to massively grow our firm from zero attorneys to over 26, doing over $15 million in revenue.  Join me as I document what's working and what's not in our practice, offering valuable lessons that can be re-contextualized for your own firm to shorten your success curve.  Along our journey, we attribute a large amount of our success to  th...

Send us Fan Mail What do you do when you're the younger lawyer and the more senior lawyer is completely wrong?  Standing up to them can be tricky due to social pressure, seniority, and ego.  However, you can successfully navigate this challenging situation and help the senior lawyer see another point of view.  First, we discuss the importance of earning the respect of the senior lawyer throug...

Send us Fan Mail Are you looking for a way to shave years of struggle off your firm or business journey?  Join me as I share the story of how we changed the direction of our law firm and the four fundamental strategic bedrock questions that every business must answer as they start.  Discover how we stumbled onto these questions, wrestled with them, and ultimately found our answer, focusing on fami...

Send us Fan Mail A tsunami of AI disruption is on its way to the legal space.  It will affect my firm, and yours. The threats are dramatic.  We have somewhere between 3 and 24 months to change before we are forced to. Our firm is preparing for: 1 - A seismic shift away from hourly rates as a business model 2 - Mass layoffs among in the associates in BigLaw 3 - Rise in Pro-Se rates 4 - Deregulation...