How to Build a 5-Person Team: Law Firm Onboarding Tips of a 17-Year-Old Firm - #238

Law firm onboarding is where most US firms quietly bleed good people.

Marylyn built a 5-person team over 17 years by hiring people who stay. Learn how real onboarding kills turnover and saves your sanity. 

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Law Firm Onboarding Lessons From a 17-Year Firm
3:40 - Building a Law Firm Team: Hire Staff Who Stay
7:56 - Law Office Systems and Processes for Multi-Practice
11:34 - Legal Receptionist Training for Client Intake
13:27 - Small Law Firm Management: What I'd Do Differently
19:30 - Building Toward Succession and Firm Growth 

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Transcript

0:00

it's more important for them to get their paycheck than me if I have to change what it is, which is very rare that I have. sometimes you I have learned to move through that stress that used to really eight years ago caused me a lot of stress. And you got kids in college and you're trying to take care of parents and But again, it doesn't do you any good to wallow in anything. Marilyn, thank you so much for your time today. I am excited to learn more about you and your firm. If you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us a little bit about how you got started. Well, my name is Marilyn and I'm the owner of law, I got started, I've been practicing about 15 years now, so I went to did my undergrad in the late 80s where women were told that we shouldn't go on to school and maybe we should get married. And multiple professors told me that I should not go to law school. And oh yes, I went to Indiana State and I can have more than one hand of them that made sure. And it wasn't just male professors, it was also female professors as well. So when I got done with and I knew at 22, I wasn't, say, mature enough to go to law school, but I always knew I wanted to. So I took a break from after I got my bachelor's degree. I had a small business retail shop in a small town I grew up in and ran that for about ten years, had my husband and I got married, had two children and just started. I was on the town council in our town, and I was working with the attorney on some things, and I thought all of a sudden I kept getting this little nudge feeling in me like, well, I can do that. What am I doing here? So I said something to my husband. I said, you know, I think I really want to go back to school. And our son was getting ready. He's the youngest, getting ready to start school full time. And he said, well, if you sell that business, you can go back to school. So I went to put the business up for sale. The realtor I hired said, no, you probably won't sell it. You'll just sell the building. That's what happens with these small shops. My accountant said, you're not going to sell it. Within three months, I had found the buyer had it sold. My realtor ended up paying all my legal fees to do the transaction, because he was so excited about what I was going to go do. Yes, it was I, the attorney that I've been working with, called and said, you don't have a bill. Somebody paid your bill. And I said, what do you mean? So I'm not supposed to tell you, but I'm going to. And I just thought that was the nicest thing. So I had, you know, hardly any. In fact, he even took half his commission from it because I had found the buyer for the business. And then I went to I'm about a two hour drive to Lansing, Michigan. Cooley worked out for my family. Well, for me, the schedule they had. So I commuted back and forth. My parents, my husband worked third shift, so when I would have to leave early in the morning to get to school, my mother would come and stay with our kids to get them on the bus in the morning, and then sometimes she'd spend the night with them. If I stayed in Lansing, my father would drive me to school when I had my finals. So it was just kind of family. And I come live in a small town of about 400 people, and the people there, I am so fortunate to have so many people behind me that were helping and stuff, to make sure that everything still stayed on tack with our family. And so yeah, it does. It takes a village. I'm a big proponent of that. So my business background helps me with, you know, my my business now. So I never thought I wanted my own practice after owning a business. Because I had that business for ten years, I would know, you know, I'm just going to be a great employee for someone. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. And I got in, worked with a firm that the gentleman and the woman that were the partners, you know, they were great to start under, but I just again, you always don't feel like you're valued in the business sometimes. So I left, went to another firm that had both the firms I worked with had really strong reputations in the area that I am in, very strong personalities, and I learned extremely well. Some of them were good business decisions. Some of them were great lawyers, hard to mesh the two. And I just kind of, you know, it's time for me to go out on my own. So I have also been with having an I used to have a gentleman that practiced with me for about ten years that was in his 80s, went through explaining to him that it was time to retire. I wish it would have gone a little bit different. So I've got experience and, you know, having the change. I have a young associate with me. I've been through a couple, but the one I have now is absolutely fabulous, you know. So my advice though, to people having their own firm is staff having staff that are valuable. I have some of the best paralegals, probably in almost the whole state of Indiana. I would say people are always just these. They're wonderful. We have just collected people I would say that have the same work ethic that we do maturity level and stuff, and it makes a huge, huge difference. so great. And so how many employees are you at today? And I have five employees and then a part time bookkeeper. I would say the bookkeeper position is the hardest one to do, but I do, and I have a new person starting in that position soon who was a gentleman who had been a controller at two large corporations and had his own small business for 20 years and just wants to do something part time and stuff. So we are really excited to have him come in. So yeah, it is. Love the story and how you got started and, you know, being told, being told you shouldn't do something at a very vulnerable, impressionable age in school is really interesting and credit to you in your ability to say, you know, I'm gonna figure this out, both in being an entrepreneur at the store and then going back in and getting your law degree. Why did you choose family law? Well, I don't just do family law. That's our, you know, bread and butter. Should we speak? I do, and when I consider family law we do a lot of estate planning, a lot of probate work. So I call my practice cradle to grave. So I do a lot of adoption inspect. I just did three adoptions this week. So we start start there and then you know do wills trust estates I do divorces, paternity cases, guardianships lots of those children that have special needs and are turning adults. You know, they have to have a guardianship them a lot of probate work setting up LLCs for people or some corporations and guiding them through, you know, how do we start a business. So and maybe the occasional criminal case or somebody made just a little silly decision. So sometimes it's like triage in here we call it the emergency room because we'll just walk away in emergency and a real estate do personal injury cases. I've done some wrongful death cases. I've been very. So I laugh when people when I think back about people saying, don't do this, don't do this. If somebody tells me that I can't do something or I shouldn't, or, well, it's like, oh, okay, go ahead, estimate it. You know, underestimate me. It's fine. I love it because a lot of times they don't expect that you actually know what you're doing. So it's fun, I think. Yeah. you been able to build the systems and processes to be multi practice? I'm always so amazed at the firms that are able to do that successfully, because at our firm we're so focused are we only do family law and and we have a hard enough time building processes I think it all together. I really do because especially doing some litigation work that, you know, discovery in a family law case in a divorce case is very similar to discovery in, say, like a personal injury case, because I've got to find out where assets are. I've got to find the coverage of what happened during the accident. So the interrogatories and the request for production might be different, but it's the same mechanism. So I have a ton of I mean, we we are so good about a form banks and stuff and then tweaking for each case. But it helps me to know, you know, like when I go for a family fell off. I've got an evidentiary hearing. Just knowing the trial rules better, I think is a good thing. Now, I've only had a couple federal court cases. I'd prefer to stay out of that arena and stuff, because, again, I'd have to travel an hour. I have shrunk down, you know, really where my radius is of taking cases. But now, you know, I just did a case, a guardianship case, just a transfer from one guardian to another two hours away. But the judge let me just appear by zoom to get that done. So, you know, it's just one of those crazy things I always tell people, hey, you don't want to hire me for something that far away, and if I can't do it, you know, and have to show up there, you're going to have to find somebody else, but I don't. It to me, it all works together. My paralegals, they all can do a little bit of everything, but they each kind of have their own specialties, so they could fill in if necessary. But, you know, they don't. They mostly have their, their specific things that they do. So in our receptionist was a former title company closer. So she does a lot of our real estate stuff, plus answers the phone and takes care of the screaming clients that call them. Hey, family law firm leaders. My partner Tony Carl's just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from 0 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. have you been practicing? 16 say almost 17 years. As you think about that amazing career and the length of time able to do it? Tell us about some of the challenges you've encountered as it relates to to running your business, to to being the entrepreneur and being the leader of the Well, you go through we've been through several, shall we say, poor hires. Okay. Hiring decisions that it was like, okay, this the person maybe looked good on paper. You thought they were going to work out and then, you know, they don't show up. You know, things don't work out. And again, I go back to the people that you work with, make you or break you because they're they're the first face of the firm, you know, they're the ones taking the phone calls so that some of the turnover sometimes, and I always try to stress in the interviews that this is a very high stress job. People, you know, it's the clients are pissed, frankly, most of the time when they're calling in about something and you trying to defuze that situation, it's never they're never calling in on their best day. So have a young 20 something answering the phones. And they're like, they were mean to me. Okay. Well yes they are. And just because someone raised their voice at you doesn't necessarily mean that they're angry towards you. So yeah, I and I'm a big believer in having employees that are here for a long term. The other gentleman that I had in the office, he didn't really care about that. It was, you know, there's always somebody else. And so and you have to, you know, you have to put in things place. I don't drink during the week at all. I rarely even drink now in the last couple of years, hardly have any alcohol, exercise every day. But I am kind of consumed by this, and I'm fortunate that my husband is okay with that. They're very, very supportive and my family is really understanding. They always have been. They have heard me take calls. We living in a small community. People will just drop by your house sometimes. And so then you just and sometimes it's something really bad that's happened, you know, a death in the family or something. And if you can just take 5 to 10 minutes with them, it's just better kind of diffuses it. So and some people aren't built for that. But and sometimes I'll say that gets stressful. I mean, my, my parents lived with my husband and I for several years that, you know, when they passed away, trying to take time or time with them was difficult. But, you just you manage and go on, you know. So. Marilyn, if you had to start a new firm today, what would you do Or systems or processes would you want to have in place so that you could really ramp up successfully? Well, if I just started from the beginning, I like our soft client software. We have, I really like that. And if I would have started from the very, very beginning, if that would have been in place then and the bookkeeper would have known how to use it, that decided they wanted it, that would have been fabulous. But I'll tell you, I probably would do it the same way I did. I have a wonderful IT gentleman that manages our computers and stuff and backs everything up. That that was an important piece. My accountant is wonderful, but getting the people in place that you need again, it'd be the same hires that I had at that time. So I don't know if I'd really do anything two different because when I. So this is funny. When I left the first firm I went left from, I had watched other attorneys leave there, and as soon as you told them, I mean, like one guy, I remember the last gentlemen that left before me, he was giving them almost a month notice that he was going to leave the next day. He was packed up and gone and I had seen somebody else. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. So I knew what I was leaving, that I thought, oh, things aren't going to go well, you know. Yeah, I figured I'd be, you know, packed up and out the door. Oh, no, you need to stay two weeks. And I said, well, wait a minute. Well what happened? You just threw the other kid out the door. Why? It's different. You have a there was a jury trial, civil jury trial that probably was going to get continued, but they weren't having if I wasn't going to be there to try that, I had to be there to try the case. So fortunately, I had a telephonic conference with a judge and the other two attorneys that were there. And when we were talking, gentlemen said that he needed to have it continue because his wife was sick. And I said, that would be great because I'm trying to leave this firm and I cannot unless this is continued. The judge that was on the phone, just like Marilyn, I think will help you out with that. So and I have been I've seen him several times since then and he said, you know, I think that was the best entry I ever made. I said, well, thank you so much for doing that for me. So but it was funny how that happened. Then the other firm I was with when I went to leave, the gentleman was like, oh no, you know, don't you want to stay? And I was like, no, I don't want to say I'm going out on my own. Take whatever you want. I was like, I don't want to take whatever I want. I will take my files and my clients and I'm going. And so, yeah, it was just a very different startup process. Yeah. I mean, I think it's just wild. There's a certain mindset that you need in order to to go out on your own and be able to have the confidence and fortitude to to just figure it out, you To me. I didn't want to say I didn't have an option to fail to. So I, my parents in the late 80s while I was in college, lost our family farm, went through the whole time where, you know, farming, late 80s, early 90s was not kind in the Midwest. The loan, the interest rate was so high and stuff. And so I didn't have my family I come from. But at one time we had something, nothing. And I had to figure out a way to support all of us and working for other people. I just wasn't getting it. And also, I felt like, okay, I can employ people and make sure they're earning a good living. That's something else I think is very, very important. So it's more important for them to get their paycheck than me if I have to change what it is, which is very rare that I have. But sometimes you do. And I have learned to move through that stress that used to really about, I'd say, eight years ago caused me a lot of stress. And you got kids in college and you're trying to take care of parents and that. Yeah. But again, it doesn't do you any good to wallow in anything. You have to get on to the next. And that's why I keep talking to my associate about it is okay, you have a bad hearing that. Move on. Okay. You got to move on. The next client is they're they're expecting a result. You got to move on. You know, I can't get to upset it. And please do things. I mean, they're all human, and you want to go, you know? What the hell were you thinking? Or why did you do that? But you have to just move on. You don't have time. You maybe address the situation. Hey, let's try to do this better next time or whatever doesn't do any good. Move on. One. As an owner, your paycheck is not guaranteed, sure that your employees paychecks are guaranteed When things are bad, the only thing you can do is make progress, else is just a waste. Sorry. It doesn't do. I would say this that I don't have it on today. I have a bracelet that says this too shall pass. And, you know, I just might sit here quite a few times and say it. Always tell clients that you know this too shall pass. Sometimes it passes much slower than we want it to, but it it will. So. one that says to find the good. So that's Oh, yeah. good that's going to come out of this. I Yeah, yeah. That's right. So. Marilyn, this has been awesome as we're finishing up here. Tell us about the future of your firm. What are you thinking about? What are you working on? How are you setting a vision for the future? Well I want to build a mostly female firm which I have to I do have my brother who's older than me, comes in with me part time. He's got some health issues. He practiced in Las Vegas for 20 years as an insurance defense attorney. So coming to this. But he just does all our research and stuff. And that's really cool to to be able to work together. But probably in two more years we'll add 1 to 2 other attorneys. I have two locations, 1 in 1 county and one in another, because we have a heavy Amish population in the other county that I have an office in. So there's a whole different feel to both counties. One is more a resort area. There's a small university here and it's, you know, I don't know, people think they're more sophisticated than the other county that has a lot of huge Amish population. But I would say that my Amish clients are much more progressive than what people give them credit for. So that's a whole nother that's a whole nother podcast episode for you. But to get into. But I just think we want to expand. I want to be able to hand this off to someone, you know, I'm probably going to practice at least ten to, well, I know at least about probably 15 to 20 years more. I have a little great niece that wants to be a lawyer, and she comes with me sometimes to court and stuff, and, you know, she'd be ready to, you know, somebody else will be here to help her manage things. And Aunt Marilyn can just, you know, come in whenever. So. Yeah, because my daughters, she's at Lila in Chicago right now. She works at Sidley Austin in Chicago, and then it's going to school part time there. But she has absolutely zero desire to come back to rural Indiana to practice. So. Yeah. Oh, I love it. I we spend a lot of time up there. And I always say, gosh, is there something mom could do? You know which there but can't leave? You have to be able to pass this off to someone. So I love it. I'm so appreciative of your time. Really, really enjoyed the insights. Looking forward to to watch you continue your journey. And and we'll see you again