The Sterling Family Law Show

Send us Fan Mail Transitioning from associate lawyer to a partner leading your former peers can be the most challenging jump of a career.  Doing this well demands uncommon maturity, emotional strength, and new boundaries.  Many new partners are reluctant to accept the new differences between them and their teammates. I talk through how to do this successfully.   ---------------------- Ready to fin...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff Kerlin is the President of Sterling Lawyers, my family law firm. Jeff is responsible for managing our firm's operating system, which is based on EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) -- a framework to ensure that the entire firm is executing on the right things.  Today, we have 80+ teammates spread out across three states and three countries. Our operating system keeps...

Send us Fan Mail Feedback is an underrated growth tool for law firm leaders.  It is most certainly a  shortcut to improving as a leader. And, when the leader gets better, the whole law firm benefits.  In this show, I discuss how one moment of feedback from a teammate transformed how I lead.  At first, I was resistant and defensive.  Then, as I listened, I saw my blind spot and weakness as a leader...

Send us Fan Mail We started and grew Sterling Lawyers from 0 to 25 lawyers with over $15M in revenue within the first 9 years.  It has been fun -- and painful. The pain came from the four biggest mistakes I made along the way. Here they are: Not joining a mastermind group with other legal professionals Underestimating how growth can cover serious flaws Failing to keep one or two key things the pri...

Send us Fan Mail James Joseph's journey is inspiring and incredible. He is a deeply respected family lawyer who he has built a thriving practice on Long Island, New York.  In the midst of building his firm and starting a family, he received life-altering medical news.  The prospects looked dim.  The doctors advised him to wait it out.  So, James privately endured four years of  slow progressi...

Send us Fan Mail Leah Miller is a law firm financials expert.  Her career began with a 13 year stint as a paralegal and office administrator.  In that role, she learned the ins and outs of running a law practice.  In 2023, after earning her MBA, Leah  founded LNM Financial Services to help law firm owners achieve their growth goals.  In this show we discuss: The pivotal impact of having a financia...

Send us Fan Mail Attorney Tom Tona's story is incredible. He has consistently defied the odds and built a highly successful litigation firm in New York.   It started with Tom building his grit as an undersized boy as he pushed through regular bullying.  His mindset later pushed him to achieve his black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu--which is a decade-long undertaking in the best of circumstance...

Send us Fan Mail My guest, Mary Sankey, is the leader of our non-attorney sales team at Sterling Lawyers.  We explore the genesis and development of our non-attorney sales team. We also discuss: Mary's experience with divorce as a child and how it shaped her empathetic approach Her transition from the coffee industry to leading our sales team The importance of non-attorney professionals in a...

Send us Fan Mail Terminating lawyers on your team is a very difficult process.  Yet, it is critically necessary for any healthy law firm to grow and serve clients well. Every firm that is growing will have to terminate a lawyer's employment.  At Sterling Lawyers, we have fired lawyers for a range of reasons.   This show details our firm's history  in this sensitive area, including other...

Send us Fan Mail Paid Search is  the second most important component of search marketing for any family law firm.  The first is map listings -- see earlier podcast on this topic.  In this show, my co-founder, Tony Karls,  and I discuss our firm's philosophy and strategy to employ paid search in our marketing mix.  We cover: 1 - Diversifying your marketing tactics 2 - Dangers of leaning too he...

Send us Fan Mail Gary Miles's journey is one of profound transformation.  He battled and overcame the grip of alcohol to build and lead a successful family law firm. In this show, Gary's candid retelling of his challenges and how he prevailed is certainly inspirational.  It also serves as a roadmap to family lawyers interested in building their practice and having personal freedom. Addit...

Send us Fan Mail It's no secret that my Sterling Family Lawyers co-founder, Tony Karls, is the digital marketing mastermind behind our success.  In this week's show, Tony and I reveal the precise marketing blueprint that propelled our family law firm from 0 to 25 lawyers and $15million in revenue in less than 10 years.  We discuss: 1 - Establishing an initial online presence 2 - Early de...

Send us Fan Mail Bo Royal is a former Fortune 500 advertising agency executive turned law firm marketing expert.  After holding leadership positions at eBay’s marketing solutions division and scaling the online advertising revenues of a variety of well-known brands, such as Calvin Klein, Bo pivoted into the world of legal marketing over five years ago and never looked back.  Today, Bo co-owns and...

Send us Fan Mail Map listings are the single most important component of search marketing for any family law firm.  The maps are Sterling Lawyers' most important lead generation channel.  In this episode, my co-founder, Tony Karls,  and I discuss the essential elements that have amplified our firm's map visibility.    If you want to rank highly in the maps, this is the definitive playboo...

Send us Fan Mail When I sat down with Jonathan Breeden for this episode, my intention was to get his blueprint on how to create a hyperlocal podcast for family law firms. We certainly covered that topic.  But, there turned out to be so much value in hearing his story. Jonathan Breeden is a seasoned family lawyer who takes us behind the scenes of his North Carolina firm's impressive growth.  W...

Send us Fan Mail The best law firm lead generation system in the world is useless without a good intake team. One of the performance secrets at Sterling Lawyers has been our intake team.  They excel at the critical task of answering the phone and supporting potential clients facing a family legal crisis. In this episode, Tony Karls and I do a deep dive into our family law firm intake strategy and...

Send us Fan Mail Kyle Harbaugh is the Founder and President of Chief Go Officers.  He is a holistic business strategist for law firms and his focus is on helping firms grow and operate better by providing Done-For-You projects and fractional services.  In this episode, we have a full conversation about the challenges that firms encounter to move from the founder(s) doing all the legal work to buil...

Send us Fan Mail The Sterling Lawyers origin story began on a whiteboard in the late fall of 2013, where Tony Karls and I sketched out the strategic blueprint of the law firm. Today, ten years later, we are revealing the essential components of that strategy.   It's not surprising that almost nothing worked out like we planned, including our firm's mission. There are two things that have...

Send us Fan Mail Katie VanDeusen co-leads a team of 25 family lawyers.  She is a highly successful leader, especially when it comes to developing less-experienced attorneys. Katie has always been a top-performer at Sterling Lawyers.  She has set more than a few performance records.   In addition to her own prolific practice, she mentors other attorneys, some of which have surpassed her early perfo...

Send us Fan Mail People are the most important success factor in every law firm.  There are no exceptions to this rule.  At Sterling Lawyers we take hiring (we call it "selection") very, very seriously.  Over the past 10 years we have honed our selection process into a finely tuned machine.   Robin Esch oversees the sourcing and selection of all our teammates.  She is our Director of Tea...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Lenfestey is the founder of The Law Practice Exchange.  He's also a practicing North Carolina attorney, licensed CPA, and Accredited Business Intermediary. Tom is one of North America's most knowledgeable experts on selling a law firm.  In this fascinating conversation we discussed: State of M&A in law People law firms v. Business law firms Law firm ownership der...

Send us Fan Mail Attorney Patrick Slaughter is an attorney coach with substantial "Street Cred." He has built a very successful law firm and sold it.  Now, he helps other lawyers do the same thing. His story is non-traditional to say the least.   Patrick was a magician for 20 years before attending law school.  Once out of law school, he hustled, networked, and worked incredibly hard to...

Send us Fan Mail Business 101: If you are not measuring it, you are not managing it. This principle is true when it comes to a family law firm culture.  My guest this week is Robin Esch, Sterling Lawyers' Director of Team Growth.  We explore how we measure a critical aspect of our law firm -- our culture.  ---------------------- Ready to find the accountability partner you need to build your...

Send us Fan Mail Attorney Jeff Morrell is a Senior Partner at our family law firm, Sterling Lawyers. Since joining our team, Jeff has been a pace-setter. This episode is a conversation between me and Jeff riffing on his productivity strategies. He shares a load of valuable insights on how to improve the efficiency of a family law practice. Enjoy! ---------------------- Ready to find the accountabi...

Send us Fan Mail Jon Morris is the founder of Rise Interactive, a wildly successful digital agency that he exited a few years ago.   Since then, Jon has started two more highly successful service businesses: (1) EngineBi (www.enginebi.net)  and (2) Fiscal Advocate (www.fiscaladvocate.com).   Jon also sits on the Sterling Lawyers Board of Advisors. Over the years, Jon has discovered the ideal ratio...