Run Your Law Firm Client Experience Like an ER - #196

Law firm client experience is everything. Todd Burnham filed bankruptcy, then built an $18M firm. Here's what he figured out.

Todd walks us through the whole journey. Starting a firm in a basement that was in foreclosure, filing personal bankruptcy, and then building one of the largest family law firms in Colorado.

Now, he runs his law firm intake like an ER triage and scaled to 30 attorneys. He hired for emotional intelligence, not legal credentials. That one shift in law firm team culture changed everything. 

We get into law firm leadership development, why your intake person matters more than your best attorney, and what it actually takes to delegate when you've been doing everything yourself.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Law Firm Client Experience: Meet The $18M Founder 

2:11 - From Bankruptcy In A Basement To 30 Attorneys 

4:05 - Working ON Your Law Firm Changes Everything 

9:55 - Your Intake Department Is A Trauma ER 

12:48 - He Hired A Café Server For Intake (Best Move Ever) 

15:11 - Scaling From 3 Attorneys To 30: Real Talk

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Chapters

• 0:00 Law Firm Client Experience: Meet The $18M Founder
• 2:11 From Bankruptcy In A Basement To 30 Attorneys
• 4:05 Working ON Your Law Firm Changes Everything
• 9:55 Your Intake Department Is A Trauma ER
• 12:48 He Hired A Café Server For Intake (Best Move Ever)
• 15:11 Scaling From 3 Attorneys To 30: Real Talk

Transcript

0:00

Todd has built a 30 attorney, $18 million law firm and is crushing it out in Colorado. He came from nothing, had to bankrupt his first business. He has built the tools for truly scaling a firm. You are going to love this episode. Todd, thank you so much for joining us on the Sterling Family Law Show. We were catching up before the podcast with very similar stories, which I think is so awesome. And congratulations on your success. For our listeners sake, let's start at the very beginning. Tell us how you started your firm, where it's been and where you are today. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you for for having me. I love what you're doing. And, it's exciting just to share some, some, some experience. Right. Like, get it out there, you know, be of service and see if you can help some people out. Right. 100%. So, I started, I moved to Colorado in 2008, 2009, started in a basement that was in foreclosure. 2010 had, first I was a, stepfather. Immediate stepfather. With two, two great boys. And then, 2010 is when my first daughter was born, and I also filed personal bankruptcy. So, coming out of the year. Yeah. Great year. And it was it was fantastic because, coming out of New York, where I had a firm before I moved to Colorado, I was in real estate. So it's like, I'm like, I'm going to be flipping houses. I love real estate. I love that the creativity of it. And boom, recession hits. And then I move out here and I, and I get into bankruptcy. One of the things I start with, because I was like, I just felt bankruptcy and I think I can do it better than that to just it, you know. So, you know, over time, I just, you know, kept failing forward. You know, leaned a lot on my family, and, and having, you know, that kind of motivation really pushed me through. Of course, I was raised by a single mom social worker, and so. And I eventually got into family law. I had a passion of passionate about it that, helped a lot in terms of the hard days of when you're first starting out and how do you how do you make a buck in this thing while being of service, you know, and people would ask, what kind of law do you practice? And I say, what kind of law do you need? You know, in the beginning it's whatever you can do. And revenue is oxygen. Exactly. And so, after a while, we just became better and better at it. We attracted better talent. The better leader that I became, I think the more, longer people would probably stay in the practice with me. Highly stressful. I, suffered Guillain-Barre syndrome as a result of the stress in about 2013. You know, just kept failing forward learning lessons about mental health, physical health, spiritual health as you keep going. And now to a point where, you know, we've always been focused on performance and that's, that's something that you can always control. I found and, and that's what Vernon Law is based on. And we, we're one of the larger family law firms in Colorado. And we do exceptional work in other areas. So, that's like the longest short of it, man. like this? I love it. Did you have aspirations when you started this firm to to grow to where you are? I mean, doing over 18 million in revenue and having 30 plus attorneys. That's a it's an outstanding achievement. You know, maybe from the get go, you're like, Holy cow, had this happen. You know how it happened. I appreciate that. Thank you. In the same way. Same with you. Like, it sounds like we have very similar firms with similar mindsets of being of service. And I think that's kind of really important piece, you know, 100%. So I think the the thing that that happened for me was that I knew that I was I was passionate about law and advocating for people. I was also I also knew that I was far better at the business of this. And understanding the having the emotional intelligence kind of piece of this, to see how it can be a living, breathing thing that serves people right. And to do that, I had to make a commitment to work on it and not in it. And it was like a transition of like very much intentional move of this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to do it, because otherwise it doesn't work for me. You know, it's just that's that's just the choice. And so when I have that choice and I put it in those words, and you have your family that you're responsible for, and that's what my why and, then those things just work and you fail forward. You get kicked in the teeth every single day. You've got to keep inspiring others around you to appreciate the kicks in the teeth. And if you can do that, then I think you have a chance of staying alive. And and, you know, it's pretty much that, like, just get your friends and family to, you know, you know, support you and sponsor you in the beginning. Really focus on performance because it's, you know, one person wins the cost race, you know? We can all compete for the performance side of it. Like, I want to be better than you, right? I want to do a better job than I just want to be the best version of ourselves first. Like, how do we just keep getting better, right? Let's look in the mirror rather than compare to other people within the competitive side of me. It's like, yeah, I still want to beat your ass, you know? Like. And I think that that kind of mentality is something that's, you know, from an athlete's perspective. I think that that's what carries on and that's what we want to be like. Right. And same with you. You just finding a different way of doing it and kind of getting your message across. Right. So I'll, I'll now speak to law students at Colorado at CU law and give, you know, inspire through experience. But you know, great is usually on the opposite side of hard. And I think that's really the thing we want to get across to these to law students that I teach, lawyers that I consult with, things like that and especially the people that brought in laws, I think, get that. It's kind of like if you can have that kind of mentality that like, I want this shit, then you're going to do fine. You started in 2010, 2009 from Albany, New York, to 2010 to Boulder to outside Erie. Actually, to bring us back to like those early days when you're grinding dude on like, you know, because I think whenever I tell our story, it's Sterling. Everyone's like, well, how do you do it? It's like, well, we just, you know, one lawyer at a time, 1 or 2, three time when we started, we were everything to everyone. Same as you. And once we got focused and we said, we're only going to do family law and we, you know, we got things in order. It really started to, to explode. Was that a similar story for you? I think that when you're really good at something, it you you it's undeniable. Right. And then the key is to just keep getting better at that thing that you're good at. Like, let's don't don't put me in a patent law firm, you know, like, I'm a grind and I get to be 20% as good as the next person who's naturally gifted at it. Like when you have a lot of people that are passionate about family law, especially, it's easy to build, right? It's easy to build. And then the harder piece over time is like, you're you want to be really dialed in on quality control, matched with career control. And the other people like you want this thing to be a team. It's not a family like never a family. You know, this this is a team. And there's and you have to be really protective of the people that are on that team. And you can't just fill spots and think that, oh, it's because I make X amount of dollars, you know, and it doesn't work like that. Cultures will get ripped apart quickly when, you know, Mr. Green shows up and people are focusing on those kinds of things and Mr. Green follows service like that's the key. Money chases service. So that's the motto. I mean, it's a business and it's the providing really important services, right? It's great. How have you had to change as a leader, going from one attorney to 30? Hiring. Really? Well, the people that that work directly with the attorneys, you know, Leslie Schaefer and Dana by strictly, you know, they with the leadership board, the way that we structure it, it's a collective leadership model. And so these all these people, they all have different pieces to it. And, when you get to that, that level, you focus on the things that you can control. And as a founder, I knew that this was only going to be as good and as big and as impactful as I could let go of. Right. And so I let you know strengths and strengths so that the people that know what the heck they're doing really, really well focus on those things. And, I focus on the things that I know that I'm good at. And so that's what teammates do. Like, you can only have, you know, one of each of us and let's add some real value to it. And when really lucky to have a lot of good people that have been here, burn them off for a long period of time, I think you touched on something so important for scaling a law firm and really hard for founders to do, which is let go of the one that's to trust and and verify. But I talked to a lot of founders on this podcast and, and a lot of them early on in their career before they really started to grow, wanted to control everything, needed to validate everything, needed their eyes on every single thing. And once they learned to delegate and learn to trust, that's that's when their firms blew up. Well, and then you start figuring out what you're what else are you good at? You know, you start working some other muscles. You know, you start doing some reps a different way that you haven't done before. And you might find out, you know, damn, I'm creative. Well, I'm really good at marketing. Well, my messaging is really dialed in. That's really interesting. When I'm not in it and I'm working on it, you're forced to find different things, like you know, after a while, when you're in family law and dealing with trauma all the time, like we at Burnham Law, we like kind of compared our, the, the practice itself to a trauma hospital emergency room. Right. It's the same kinds of concepts. And so the way that we care for a client is like a person going through the process. It's not the it's more like the it's the triage. In the beginning. We're not like the surgeon at the end isn't the person that's calling the shots up here right. Can you confidently answer this question in three seconds? Do you know if your firm is winning or losing? If you can't, that's something we need to fix urgently. We are hosting a free webinar that shows you the eight numbers that answer that question. You'll learn where you're leaking revenue, what to do to fix it, and how to embed this into your daily operations. It's called how to Moneyball your law Firm. Get bonus templates, checklists, and worksheets. If you show up live, link in the show notes to register. you know, as your firm continues to grow. And you had mentioned being having care and in your firm. And I think one thing that we've found working with a lot of firms is when they're small, you have your paralegals or you have your assistant doing intake, and when your assistant is busy and is doing all the things and dealing with all the fires, and then they have another call come in, that irritation comes through on the phone. And what I always remind our clients is when someone calls your law firm about a family matter, often times this is the first time that they're telling this horrific story about their life to someone other than their immediate family. And if you can't be compassionate during that moment, you're going to lose. You're going to lose out. Intakes to me is the most important. I tell us all the time. So the most important department that we have, it's the first time that you're going to. When they call, they're already sold. They're sold to a certain extent. Because what they've seen in the outside, they believe in and it's whoever then gets back to them quicker and who actually has substance behind it. Typically people in these situations are going to be able to spot bullshit and people that are just going through the motions and not really empathetic, they're not really connecting. Yeah, they don't have to necessarily connect. I'm not looking for a social worker when I hire a lawyer, but I do want is like a team that can be there for me in that respect if I need it. But primarily, you're there to be successful in a case, depending on whatever success means in the case, right? It could be settlement, it could be Galway, whatever it is. When I, when I look and I see that, you know, the ability to, to have that kind of connection, I think it's, it's very rare. And I think that those are the pieces that are missing and that can, you can you can be different than other people, which is a differentiator, right? With intakes in particular, I hired, a person that's been here nearly ten years, I think, Karen, she was, at the cafe, and she was serving food, and she's from Long Island, and she is very opinionated and she's very fun, and she's energetic and she's honest. And I said, what better person would we would I want answering the phone and letting people vent to see crisis. So caring all of these things that make you a great listener, right. Which is the thing that most people want first. Then it's followed by like the can you execute? Can you execute? Are you just really good at this part, or can you also be a killer if necessary, depending on whatever mindset or framework they're already in their head in, in the in the end, the killer piece is always like negotiating and settling that you control, right? Like these are the things that we just learn over time. And so to be able to have those kinds of emotionally intelligent people in your intakes department and then also have just the constant idea that this is this is triage. We're in a trauma mode here. These people are part of the recovery for them is being able to be heard right. And then it's like, yeah, I need a diagnosis, I need an x ray and I need a prognosis. We're just in the E.R. here, and then we got long term care, right? So it's the same stuff. And if you have that kind of approach. Like what? What's in the client's best interest right now? We should check in on that. Boom. That's a that's a that's a workflow. That's something that you put in your system. And like, you know those five star reviews come. It's because it's not what you did. It's how they felt during it. Right. How did it make them feel. How did it make these people feel so yeah, people forget when you say they'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Ty, I really appreciate your time today. Again, congrats on what you built and what you're building. Let's assume that our listeners are trying to scale, and they have 3 or 4 attorneys, and they're trying to go to 20. What's the best piece of advice or pieces of advice you can give them to to go to the next level? A couple of things. One is, if you have a link that we sent you, it's for what we're doing every Thursday at 11:00 mountain time. I'm just going to it's called Ask Anything, and I'm just going to do for like every week at the same time for one hour. 45 minutes. It's 45 minutes. I'm going to, like, open up just to my time and just answer questions. And I think that that's just a good example of of what I would do. I would keep educating myself, understand that the mentality of all of this starts and ends with an obsession. Right? And you have to keep grinding. Don't don't think about this as any balance. You know, there's there's no balance here. There's just grind and not grind and try to come out of it. Happy, healthy and more educated on the life that you actually want, right? Rather than the life that you're grinding for. So like what is going to sustain you in the end? And then when you are comfortable in that space, then I think you're going to be able to lead and figure out how to attract people more easily anyway. So from going from 3 to 38, it's like a a embracing and appreciating every time you get to get your teeth kicked in because you're open to get better, you're going to find different people, you know, that will try to teach you like, oh, you know, spend this on marketing and this and that. I think just follow, get as much information as possible. Keep yourself educated. Depending on what you want to do, have that intention and set some deadlines. Right. And if you do those things and have the mindset of service first, like remember that money chase service, if you do that and you don't worry about the money, then you're going to add and you grow and you'll scale and do all those things so good. I so appreciate your time. Wishing you the best. Looking forward to the ask me and anything I'm going to show up and ask our questions so you better you better man. I'm not. I'm going to make sure I have control over the key. My there. So I appreciate your time today. We'll talk to you very soon.