The Sterling Family Law Show

How Specialization DOUBLED This Law Firm’s Revenue in 2 Years - #178

• Jeff Sterling Hughes • Episode 178

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Discover why Bob Tharp's firm was stuck for 10 years doing multiple practice areas—and how going divorce-only doubled their revenue within 2 years.

This law firm specialization story reveals the multi-practice area challenges that keep firms stuck at revenue plateaus and unable to build scalable systems. Bob Tharp shares the exact divorce-only law firm strategy that unlocked explosive growth after a decade of struggle—including the difficult transition of saying no to work, letting go of attorneys outside family law, and choosing single practice area focus over short-term revenue. 

You'll learn the law firm systems building advantages that only come from focus, plus proven law firm revenue growth tactics including geographic expansion strategy, law firm office location strategy for local SEO dominance, non-lawyer sales team structure for intake, and the review generation system that pays staff $250 per Google review.

📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@jsterlinghughes 

📝 Get your FREE Law Firm Growth Guide: https://jsterlinghughes.com/

📚 Order the Waterfall Method Book Now: http://www.RocketClicks.com/pre-order


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📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Law Firm Specialization: Why Divorce-Only Built a 30+ Attorney Firm

1:00 - The 10-Year Struggle: Multi-Practice Area Challenges That Stunted Growth

3:00 - Making the Cut: Transitioning From Business Litigation to Family Law Focus

6:00 - Law Firm Revenue Growth: How Specialization Doubled Numbers in 2 Years

10:00 - Scaling Focused Law Firm: Geographic Expansion Across Georgia

15:00 - Law Firm Office Location Strategy: Google Maps Algorithm Secrets

20:00 - Building Systems Through Single Practice Area Focus

27:00 - Law Firm Review Generation System: $250 Per Review Incentive Structure

29:00 - Law Firm Intake Team Structure: Non-Lawyer Sales Team Model

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4. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT:
Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.

SPEAKER_02:

46% of all local family law leads come from the maps. They come from someone searching for divorce attorney near me, divorce attorney plus city name, and then leveraging, of course, paid resources above that to take as much for the can. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, the podcast designed to help family attorneys build the firm of their dreams. I'm one of your hosts, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our law firm consulting agency called RocketClicks that was born out of our own law firm, Sterling Lawyers, that has grown to over 27 attorneys. Today we have Bob Thorpe of Merriweather and Thorpe, a 30 plus family law firm in Atlanta. He tells his story of growth. Him and uh the co-founder of our firm, Jeff Hughes, talk back and forth about what it takes to actually scale a law firm and the power of focus. You do not want to miss this one. Really appreciate you being on the podcast today. Excited to learn more about you. If you wouldn't mind, just introduce yourself to uh our audience and give us a quick high level on the firm today. And then as Jeff was saying, we can uh we can go back to the origin story.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. Um my name's Bob Tharp. Um appreciate y'all having me on. Um I'm in Atlanta, Georgia. We got a divorce firm. We started 27 years ago or so. Um and you know, they go fast. Um we are divorce only and we practice um slowly, we're moving throughout the whole rest of the state.

SPEAKER_01:

I love the divorce only, by the way. So um so many of these big firms was want to throw everything in there. And I feel like we have we have prospered because we've just stuck the divorce paternity and post-judgment period, no, nothing else.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, we discovered the hard way.

SPEAKER_01:

What what was the pathway to get there?

SPEAKER_03:

We discovered it the hard way. Um, we went out and tried a little bit of everything, and I, you know, remember one moment where I was doing mainly business litigation, Lee Merriweather, um, the other half was doing divorce, and we're like, we gotta go all in. We can't build systems, we can't get routines going unless we have one thing we're doing. And I was like, Yeah, that's half our revenue. Um, can we really make that move? Um, and we talked about it and you know, probably more than once, but um made the call to go, we've got to go all in. You can't do this partial. Um, if you get two practice areas, which seems kind of reasonable, it's too many. Um, because you can't master every system, especially from scratch, every you know, procedure, get your attorneys trained, get everyone rolling in the same direction uh on two different things. Um so I love you know just the singular focus of a practice, regardless of practice area.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, whenever you explain that to other attorneys who who think they can do more than one, what's the typical pushback they give you? Because it's a hard, it's a hard conversation for me.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, one, I think it's just a passion. I think that sometimes they just like doing different things. I mean, um two, I think they're scared, um, you know, giving up the revenue. I got money. This person wants to give me money. I can do what they're asking, um, and I should take it. Um, but I think they're missing the opportunity cost of taking that means you can't do something else. You can't build whatever your primary focus is. So, you know, I can cut the grass, but it's probably not the best use of my time. And I may not be the best at it either.

SPEAKER_01:

So, how far in or how long into your practice, your startup were you when you got to that realization? Let's go all the time. Like 10 years.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, way too long. Yeah, 10 years. We were 10 years in, it was probably 2006 or so, um, before uh we struggled for 10 years trying to get things going, give or take. And we're like, why can't we really get over the hump? Why can't we really grow? And I think that was one of our first major hurdles was like, how are we going to start to grow? Well, we can't grow if we're doing recreating the wheel with new stuff every day. We've got to do something that we can leverage what we did in the past for future growth.

SPEAKER_01:

And how did you make the cutover? What'd you have to go through with that?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, probably with a couple tiers. Um, you know, uh, you know, we we just had to say no. Um, it's actually as simple as that. Um, but it sounds so simple, it's so tough to do. I had clients that were business clients of mine for a long time. I was like, well, you know, I got some good friends in the industry, let me refer you out. But I liked working with you. And you're like, but in in your mind, you're always a better attorney than anyone else. I think that's one of our problems is we always think we can do it better. So it's like, yeah, I probably could do it better than you know, the guy I'm referring it to. But the reality is they're good attorneys, they know what they're doing. Um, but what it is, it's impacting our business and stopping my ability to grow in one practice area. So, you know, it I'll say painfully, um, but it's as simple as actually just saying no.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Did you have attorneys that you had to let go because they were not in in the family area?

SPEAKER_03:

Um, truthfully, we did. Um, and we gave notice um about two years before we we pulled the cord and said, go find other jobs. I try to help them out find new places. I let one attorney kind of stay until she could find a job somewhere else. Um and we needed to wrap up the cases anyway that were there. Um, but um it was sort of some tough conversations saying, I hear you, you're great on this practice area, but that's just not where we're going. But there's a lot of good places, and I made a lot of good friends over the years. Let me see who I can at least call and put in a good word for you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So your your revenue pre-cutover, your pre-focus, let's call it, and then and then your revenue a couple years later, what was the the variance? What what did you see happen financially to your firm?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, it it was like almost an instant lighting, lightning rod. Um, I think you know, we're sort of I can't remember the exact numbers, um, but you know, staying at the same number roughly year to year. And then, you know, two years out, we're doubling numbers or tripling numbers, and we're causing a clear momentum that you can see, oh wow, we can actually you know make you know 10 million or more. Um, this isn't as difficult as we thought. Um, but it happened a lot faster than I thought. That was a very rapid growth coming out of it. The first year is a little rough. Um, I was just trying to break even with the swap of business, but after that, the foundation started to build upon themselves. And I think that year two is where massive growth happened for us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So in just for our audience sake, I I counted up on your site this morning. You've got 32-ish attorneys, family attorneys on your team? Um at least probably more.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, there's probably a couple that aren't announced with you saying that. But um, you know, uh yeah, 32 for today sounds good.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, well that that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I think, you know, don't we all have a couple that are about to be announced uh that we're just kind of waiting for certain things to fall in place?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and sometimes it's as simple as our our web people haven't gotten to putting the pictures on the website yet, sort of thing. And yeah, so yeah, we've we've got a little bit of that too. So um okay, so when you make the cutover, you then you see your growth in year two. From a system standpoint, when did you start having to re reconfigure your systems when you're outgrowing them? What what was that like?

SPEAKER_03:

To me, um it kind of uh the day-to-day how to run a case side work hard and naturally. You build the system side of the case, you actually get foundations, and you know, every you know, complaint, every answer, everything you have is templated, um with you know a bunch of variations that covered most of your major, you know, uh situations. Um that probably was a one or two year barrier. I think my next problem really ran into me. Um I really enjoyed practicing law. Um, but I also recognized I couldn't train more attorneys to do the level um of care um and quality that I wanted to maintain. And you know, I felt like I was always like debating this, you know, my working on cases, but I also need to train people up. Um and I think that was one of the next big challenges is you know, I can't keep doing this on a case-by-case basis. I can make a bigger impact for more people if I could train a group of attorneys to handle it in a certain way. And so that was kind of the big second part. That's probably tougher than the first one for us, um, because I had to let go of doing cases.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So today, what's your role? Are you managing the the attorneys directly or are you overseeing the business? What what are you doing day to day?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I would don't do cases anymore. Um, I would say running the business. I run with all departments, so marketing and intakes, I oversee, you know, department heads in each one of those categories. I have someone in charge of case, actually, several different people and the variations of it in charge of case that kind of report to me. Um once in a blue moon, I may look at a case a little bit longer because I can't help it. Um, but very rarely do I uh you know actually get involved in the day-to-day of a case.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And do you have some attorneys that are managing other attorneys that's all they're doing is just overseeing them?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's the I think the next level you got to work on after you kind of start that growth is now you only have so much time. So how do you leverage that? And so I think the natural adjustment is well, I need someone to do the training at the attorney. So let's get one of our attorneys to kind of shift a little bit more into that training role. Um, I need someone to be doing the marketing. Let's get someone in charge of marketing. So lots of little shifts.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. What what was the process like when you elevated your first attorney to managing partner? What what did you go through to get that done? Because we've had some stories there.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, you know, I I carefully avoid titles. Uh, that's one thing, um, whatever we can on some of that thing. So um, I always try to keep, you know, a bunch of team leaders, that's the way we'll kind of bracket it, and then leaders of the team leaders, um, and and sort of keep that side. But I think we all have struggles. Um, I probably didn't do a good job training leaders um in the beginning, and it took a while to go, oh wait, that was important. Um, they didn't know everything I knew, and I'd see mistakes that um I should have thought about earlier and trained on. That was the system development, if I had to say, on the growth pattern, that was the one I probably missed building the system first on. Was we got to train the trainers, right? We gotta train the leaders. Um and you know, that happened a lot sooner than I thought it was going to. Um, us thinking that was always ways down the road, but as you're growing, you gotta have that. And if you don't, you take a step back real quickly. Yeah. And you know that. You've had that problem, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, we've had fits and starts for our history for sure in that area.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, step forward, two steps back that time, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. Leaps backwards sometimes feels like. Uh now you folks are doing uh fixed fee on it. Seems like you've blended in fixed fee with hourly. Is that am I reading that right on the site?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we do both. Um, you know, we have uh brackets, if you will, of how we're doing cases. So we have uh certainly fixed fees, we have monthly subscriptions, and we have what I call traditional billable hour cases.

SPEAKER_02:

Is that three separate systems, Bob, that you're having to run, or is it these attorneys specializes in fixed fees, so they get the fixed fee cases? How does that work?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we have them in three brackets. So the attorneys are kind of grouped off into three sub brackets, if you will. And if you're in bracket A, for example, those are the cases you're handling. If you're in bracket B, those cases. You may you know progress out of bracket A to bracket B and you know kind of get promoted in certain places uh depending upon you know strengths and skills.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, family law firm leaders, my partner Tony Carls just released his book, which he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from zero to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work, but if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family law firm will succeed.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, of the three, which one is is viewed as the most plum one to be in? The one that the attorneys want to strive for.

SPEAKER_03:

I think it's still probably the traditional um billable hours. Attorneys like it, they see that, they're familiar with it. Um it depends on the attorney. Like some attorneys are, I want to bill hours and that's their focus. And some really don't. Um, some really want to deliver great customer service as their focus, and you know, let's not worry about the you know every little billable hour. So I find that you get great attorneys on both brackets. Um, it's fairly a personality fit for how they're trying to achieve stuff. You get clear KPIs with billable hours, that's that's for certain. Um, but there's plenty of KPIs you get on the other side too.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Probably makes recruiting a little easier, though, as well, right? It does. It opens the door for a lot of different individuals that frankly we may have said no to in the past. Um I even look at some attorneys that didn't, you know, kind of make it with us um and go, wow, they would have really worked better under this current system. And I could have put them in a different place, and they've been very successful. They were good attorneys, but not necessarily good billers. And with adjustments, I could have, you know, actually had them stay here and work well. But, you know, that's what we live and learn on, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, I've had that exactly that exact thing happen to me. We had we lost an attorney named Hannah um a couple years ago, and she said, Jeff, I I love the firm. I just don't want we're 100% fixed fee. I don't want to do any fixed fee. I want to go back an hourly, and so we're like, oh, bummer to lose her. But how do you structure your fixed fee cases?

SPEAKER_03:

Um I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you structure your the fee? Like how do you determine the fee and uh for a fixed fee divorce case, for example?

SPEAKER_03:

Um we've really kind of went through about I don't know, about 10,000 cases, studied the data on all of them. I'm a data junkie, um, and pinpointed out what was the average cost over you know, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of cases in different brackets, and said this is the range that it usually comes in. And we probably took a midpoint and bumped it just slightly. So we, you know, the house would hopefully make a little bit more of on the fixed fees than it was traditionally. Um but you know, we really microanalyzed it, probably too much, but um it helped you understand and go, okay, how do we get comfortable? This isn't going to be too much work for us on some cases and you know, break the bank, if you will.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. Very, very similar to how we've gotten there too. Do you is it all one fee up front, or do you break it up into different fees for different aspects of the case?

SPEAKER_03:

We have both options. Um, so we do have the upfront, and we don't include trial with our upfront, but we do have like a fixed flat for pre-trial uh work. Um and then we have you know a monthly subscription amount that we've worked out pretty comfortably with. Um and then we do have some other models in there that you know can be add-ons if we like to call them. Um additional things you can do, like you want that special deposition. Really don't think you know that would be part of our routine, but um, if you think it's needed, the attorney thinks it's needed, we can do it, but that's additional flat cost on that side.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And do you have non-attorney sales? We don't. We still go with attorney sales to this day. Oh, okay. Um, I know a lot of the vast majority of the marketplace has gone the other way with it. I think y'all have gone the other way with it. Um, certainly you know, would love to hear and learn more from other folks, but we've been very successful with attorney sales, but we had we handpicked the attorneys that were very good sales folks to begin with, right? Um, and so it wasn't a casual move. And then we put them through training, um, classic sales training with different you know training organizations over the years to kind of focus them that way. And that's all they do. They aren't doing cases, so they're exclusively focused in on handling the sales calls.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And are you doing the majority of your consults in person, or are you still are you allowing remote?

SPEAKER_03:

Um, we are actually very friendly with remote. Um, one thing I learned about expansion is I got offices throughout the state already. And it's like a five-hour drive from here. So I'm not gonna go in person down there all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um show.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that would have been pretty harsh. So um, you know, we went um and enabled remote coming out of COVID. Um, our all employees can work, you know, remote or they can work um in person. We have offices at all these locations um and sort of their choice. Um a lot of, you know, I think different people like different things. I love coming in every day. Um, it was painful for me to stay at home um and not being able to come into the office. It's it's clear distinction in my mind. I know this is work time, I know that's home time. Um, as much as you can, I like the distinction better. Um, as to the actual question, maybe underneath it, though, is the client side. We're I've been stunned coming post-COVID. Um in the metro area, most people want to do remote consultations. Uh, they want to do remote representation. They're wanting to do remote trials if we, you know, the courts would let them. Um, you know, it's it's weird for me as an older attorney that, you know, did everything in person and frankly would never think about doing that before COVID, um, to sit back and go, this actually has worked as a complete culture shift. Um, we find that to be true in metro areas, a little bit more so than you know, some of the different parts of Georgia. But um definitely in Atlanta, I'd say 80, 90 percent never come in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, just anecdotally, we're 95% remote for all of our consults, and I would say at least half of our firm is considered um just out in the rural areas of Wisconsin. So even there, they don't want to drive 10 minutes with nothing.

SPEAKER_03:

We haven't done an in-person consult in it might have been pre-COVID. Um, you know, we've gone completely in the consult. I was talking about full time all the way through the case.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's kind of blowing me away how I thought, you know, okay, consultation, fine, but no, they actually like it all the way through to petrol prep. And you're like, kind of need some nonverbals. We're actually gonna be live in front of the court here.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Wow. Tyler, I'm monopolizing the time here. You got I know you got questions.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I love it. I love it. Uh I feel uh you both have grown uh your respective firms so much. And I've talked to Jeff all the time about the future of Sterling and where we're going. Bob, I'd love to hear about your future plans. You know, you've accomplished uh an incredible feat, you have an amazing firm. How do you stay motivated? What are you thinking about? Uh, what's on the horizon for you and your firm?

SPEAKER_03:

Um there's always, I think, that hunger that you've never kind of stop. So we're going to keep expanding. Um we uh got a couple cities left in Georgia. I want to make sure we have complete statewide coverage. Um, and then um we'll we'll see what goes from there. Um we also have some new products that we haven't even brought to market yet that we're kind of studying and in the hopper, if you will, that I think it could be um a little bit more competitive in a fastly evolving world.

SPEAKER_01:

Hmm. Are you uh is this an AI product that you're looking at? Are you developing?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you know, we we're not talking about it yet.

SPEAKER_01:

So uh we're working on one right now in the uh basically it's AI enhancing our lawyers, so where the they'll get unlimited contact with the lawyer and it will be AI assisted, but it'll be the final product will be a lawyer eyes on sort of stuff. So um we think AI does some wonderful things.

SPEAKER_03:

Um if you leverage it right and you get if you're study the prompting, it can do some amazing things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we've we've had a lot of success with it just just with it within the firm with email management, doc management, and that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Even if you just use it for help me respond to this email, it's a heck of a step forward.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So kind of back up to the the brackets of the lawyers. So when you're going through the interview process, what are you looking for for the fixed fee bracket? What are you looking for for the hourly bracket in terms of uh just the lawyer's approach to their practice, their personality? Are you trying to like fit them into different brackets when you're going through the interview process?

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, probably somewhat. Um, I'm still looking at core fundamentals. Are they hungry? That's always a major factor for me. Um, I think I can overcome any challenge someone has. Maybe, you know, I'm wrong on this, but I really do think you get someone that's hungry, willing to work hard, they're already lawyer, they got some base, you know, online knowledge. You can train what they're missing. Um I think the difference of putting in different brackets depends on, you know, somewhat experience. Um, you know, and they're not just how many years you've been doing it, but actual experience in the field. Um, it's also actual experience with billable hours. You know, people that haven't done billable hours and 10 years out struggle to, you know, transition to a billable hour role. Um they can do it, but it depends on the person.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you work with any outside uh organizations, coaching organizations, um, anything like that within your firm?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh not currently. So uh definitely looking, guys. Um, but uh I have in the past. Um and I found it really valuable. I thought, you know, I don't know um, you know, as far as talking about who it is and stuff, but I think what's best about any group is the community, getting together, being able to challenge yourselves. Um some of the strategies really came from internal challenges that I would have at a coaching group where we're all talking and brainstorming and like, all right, who's got the best idea for moving this forward? And you know, you you you know, natural attorney instinct of wanting to win comes in, I guess, maybe. And so you put that on your business side and you start thinking through. Um, I think there's such a value to talking to peers and community that you know are doing what you're doing and thinking and frankly want to grow. Um, bar events don't always have that. Well said. We talk about the power of a mastermind all the time around here. There's something to it. Um I wish I could just like put in a little box and you know hand it out to people, but um it's the brainstorming. It's not you telling me what to do. I could probably read a couple books and get a pretty good roadmap. Um, it's the actual school of hard knocks and thinking it through, but fast-forwarding that knowledge and a mastermind group really accelerates your learning path.

SPEAKER_02:

Love it. Bob, we're in a unique setting where uh, you know, you mentioned you've been following Jeff and the Sterling story for a little while. Uh anything you want to ask uh of Jeff? I I love the opportunity to you know get some of these old stories out on the air as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, it you know, we've been watching y'all. Um it's practically the other side of the country for someone from Georgia, um, but I've monitored you know nationwide trying to see who's going, you know, doing what. And y'all stood out on the radar, um, saw the growth of locations. Um I noticed you did amazing with your local um marketing uh pack or mark local marketing approach. Yeah any kind of things you're willing to share about how you approach that?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, Tyler, you've you've been on the podcast with Sony. So I might I have a non-lawyer partner in the firm, and he's he's the marketing brains behind everything. I'm just I tell him I'm just a pretty face, even though he's better looking than me. Um but I brought the law the law license to the deal, so that that's pretty much was my biggest contribution. But he has um he's built an incredible process for us on the local side. So we get the vast majority of our leads from our just the local local Map Pack and local. So we've got 25, 26 locations. I think we have two more coming online in Illinois next month. And that those are by and large our they're they're they're part of our marketing expense more than anything, um, even though we use them legitimately and we do it all right from a standpoint of how Google sees it. But uh it's it's been the catalyst for our growth, without question.

SPEAKER_02:

46% of all local family law leads come from the maps. They come from someone searching for divorce attorney near me, divorce attorney plus city name. And we've built an entire marketing strategy around helping our clients and obviously helping Sterling show up in that map pack so that we can garner 50% basically of the lead share in any given market that we're in, and then leveraging, of course, paid resources above that to take as much market share as we can.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I've done an excellent job with it. I've kind of looked through all the locations and studied local maps and see what all y'all have added to it and stuff. And um it is a you know a brilliant way of approaching it. You know, when we started, they didn't have maps. Um I'll take myself a little bit. Um so we worked much more the classic SEO build, um, did a lot of content and and developed it that way, going for that other uh target uh of it. But um we we see the value of it. Um the the world has shifted. Maps are so important, especially with you know AI coming in. Um it may be the number one differentiator. Um one thing I noticed y'all did especially well was getting reviews. Um, you know, I'll look, I think almost every office has 30 or something more reviews. Any tips or tricks that you you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So um we use uh I'll give you a long answer to that, but I'll kind of share how we've we've done it. We've we get about 60 to 75 a month that are four stars and north of that, four and five stars. So we up we apportion those to where we need them. So we'll send the client the link. Hey, you want to give review? Great, go to this link, and that link will point to one of our locations that maybe we're opening up. So when we open up, we we want to open up with with 30. That's our goal is to have 30 day one. We open the open the doors. So the way that's how the client the client doesn't, it's it's the same experience. They just get a link, we make it easy for them, um, and then they just fill it out and they submit it. So that's how that goes. But in terms of getting them from our our team, we use a process called net promoter score every at certain cadence within the case. And so we watch that pretty closely. And if we're getting good scores, well, that's when we'll approach a client and ask them to give um to give a review. The attorneys, we also we we have a huge emphasis on the client experience within the firm, as you probably do. And so we want to do everything we can to reward the attorney to produce good client experience. So one of the ways is we spiff them is like when they get good reviews. So I think they if they get a client review, I think they get like 250 bucks for every four-star or five-star client review. Um, and so for them, that's a that's a lot of money. And then we track it every every month in our weekly, our monthly newsletter called the money list, kind of like for golf or something, like where the attorneys track where they're at on the money list, you know, and we'll we'll pay out$15,000,$20,000 a year to the high people on that list. That's just extra money for for getting good reviews. And so that's how we we try to reward them internally to offer a good service. We don't pay anything to the client, you know, they just they they're giving it gratis. We don't give them anything for it, but we give our team when their clients do leave reviews, and they can leave a review on Google, they can leave it on Facebook, they can leave it on Yelp, and they get$250 per. So if they can get a client that'll really go out and give them like four or five, they'll they'll make a grand off that one client at the end of the day. So that's how we that's how we reward for it.

SPEAKER_03:

It's critical. I mean, um, GVP and map placements are one thing, but reviews are clearly a major factor um to doing well there. And y'all have done an excellent job uh compared to a lot of competitors I see out there. So, you know, kudos on that.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

One more point on the location um strategy that I think is important for the audience. It's not just any location. Knowing where to put your office is extremely important because the maps algorithm is based on drive time and the average drive time that a user has in a given market. So, for example, if we wanted to rank high in Chicago and rank for a divorce attorney Chicago, we would need an office uh every five or six city blocks. Because if you live downtown Chicago, that person is used to getting everything they need within such a small radius. Uh, conversely, we have a client in Fargo who pulls traffic from an hour and a half away because people are so used to driving large distances in that area of the country.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we're seeing a similar pattern. I'm from South Georgia originally, and you know, driving an hour to you know, go to the mall wasn't actually that big of a deal. Um you know, here, you know, we might still be driving an hour to be honest, but it's only five miles down the road. Um, so uh, you know, um there is a limit of how far we want to go um as humans, and being near people matters. It's not just a Google thing, it's a actual people want to be able to go in person, even if they don't go to the office. That's what stuns me. Um they'll never come in, but they want to make sure you have an office close to them. Um so it's an important factor. Love it. This has been awesome.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, any other any other questions or comments before we wrap this thing up?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I hear y'all do a lot of stuff with intakes, and that's a you know thing I love. I think it was, you know, one of the challenges growing the firm was I had attorneys and paralegals all trying to do the thing. And you know, paralegals were too busy to take the call, then attorneys were too busy to take the call. The whole thing was just missing as much as it could. You know, brought in some intake coordinators, kind of start replacing the paralegals, and then they started complaining that attorneys never want to take the call. Attorneys say, hey, I never get a case. I introduced them. I thought they knew each other, but you know, have a big seminar, everyone all hands meeting and you know introduced them. It didn't work. Um and so we brought in closers. What y'all said y'all go with a different approach. So love to hear, you know, y'all's process on that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we we have an intake team, and within there, there's probably several different roles. You have just the folks that are just answering the phone right away, and then we have a follow-up component of that where they're following up within that team too. They follow up pre-consult and they follow up post-consult whenever they're qualified. So once they go from the intake team, they'll set the consult. About 60% of our consults are done by non-lawyers, 40%, maybe a little higher in that range, but directionally accurate, are done by lawyers. Um, and then the follow-up team will follow up whether it's the non-lawyer that's doing the consult or the lawyer that's just their whole job is to follow up. Our non-lawyers, so we have right now we have four what we call regional offices. Um, we're gonna add another one in Illinois here soon, but then we have a non-lawyer salesperson assigned to each of those, and they're following up on certain cases that are that are really good potential cases, with um, they're following up within their region, like you know, so they get to know the lawyers really well. So they sit in on the weekly L10s, the the management meetings that all the lawyers have, they sit in on those and they're they're really integrated. So the lawyers really get to know them well. Um, so and and they're probably the equivalent of what you call the closers, except they're non-lawyers. So the closers will sit in on those meetings. Um, so that that's worked well for us. And I would say of our intake team, we're blended between onshore and the Philippines. Um, we've gotten a lot of really good talent and great teammates from the Philippines. And so, um, and they're client-facing, so they do great, just as just as well as someone who's native born here and lives here. So that's been the process that's worked for us. We have one sales leader over the whole organization, both intake and the non-lawyer. Um, so we call the non-lawyer sales team CLAs for consult legal assistant. So that's what that's what they do. But one person oversees that whole group. Then we have one guy that reports into her named Mark, and he oversees the intake team. But that's been for us. But when you talk about the kind of the communication between the intake team and the lawyers on you know, qualifying cases, qualifying consoles, that's all that was always a point of tension for us. And like you, you know, the what are you get you get the tension, the the ways there could be tension there, where they get a case and that person's not a good person and just really scary, for example. That's been a that's happened quite a few times, or they have a case that is in Georgia and we can't service it in Georgia, but yet the con the consult schedule, the lawyer's there, they've prepped, and it's not even a case in the state. And then there's like, you know, intake sucks, you know, we don't want to work with you anymore, sort of thing. So it, you know, it's taken us a while to work through that and build the process is to make that work well and get them to trust each other and and to communicate with each other was has been a challenge. We didn't get it done in a year. It's been several years of kind of getting that all figured out, and it coalesced pretty much when our current sales leader was in place, and she just got got them together more. And so she sits on in our on our executive leadership team with our our top lawyers who sit there too. So there's been trust built up over years now that they're gonna make mistakes, they're gonna give you cases that you probably shouldn't have, but you're not perfect either. You know, you're gonna screw up on a consult too, you know. So it's it's getting the lawyers to see that part is it can be challenging, but it we got great people and they figured it out.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome. This was fun. Um, really appreciate your time, Bob. Love your insights, your journey, you the the ability that you've been able to scale your firm is is really remarkable, and I think it'll be insightful for our listeners. Um I don't have anything else. Jeff, anything else? Uh I have lots of else, but for the sake of time, we probably should cut it off. Love it, Bob. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time and insights. Looking forward to following your journey as you expand across Georgia and everywhere else.

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Jeff Hughes

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