The Freedom-First Law Firm: Grow Without Becoming The Bottleneck

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dominate Law Podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Donna Desha, and today we are asking a question that touches every law firm owner who has ever felt the weight of their own success. Not just how do I build a bigger law firm, but how do I build a law firm that gives me my life back Before we dive in, A big shout out to our sponsor and growth partner, Equa Marketing. Here is what runs underneath today's entire conversation. Marketing is one of the biggest things law firm owners try to do themselves. It is another way you become the bottleneck. If your firm's growth depends on you writing the content, posting the updates, chasing the leads, and running the numbers, you are trading time and freedom that should be going somewhere else. Qua takes that entire layer off your plate.

They build the systems that bring the right clients to your door consistently so you can focus on leading the firm. Instead of running the marketing engine, they're offering listeners a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900, where a senior strategist audits your online presence, your competition, and your local seo before the call, go to www.dominantlaw.com/msm to book it now into today's conversation. The Freedom First Law Firm Grow without becoming the bottleneck. We are unpacking why so many owners quietly build the trap they end up living in. And how to design a firm that scales without swallowing your life. To guide us, one of the most trusted voices in this work, Gary Mitchell, founder of OnTrack coach, and four time author, including his newest work, the and approach with over 20 years working alongside law firm owners. Gary has become the person you call when your firm is growing on paper, but your calendar is drowning. He helps owners move past the identity of being the best technician in the room and step into the identity of being the leader the firm actually needs. Let's get into it now, Gary. Most law firm owners become the biggest bottleneck in their own growth. You help an owner identify the exact point where their personal involvement starts limiting the firm.

I think it's first important to point out why they become the bottleneck. Okay? I don't think they set out with that intention. I think it comes with the natural personality traits of the lawyer. Lawyers don't like to give up control that's widely known, right? They're perfectionists pull themselves to a very, very high standard. So they've been used to working on their own or in smaller teams and having that, that standard of excellence, uh, all the time. So what typically happens, I've seen it over and over and over again, is the lawyer reluctantly will try giving up a little control they've hired in haste because the firm's on fire and they need help. So they're not hiring the right people. That's mistake number one. Not properly onboarding those people or getting them in the right roles. And the nail in the coffin of this whole scenario is that they're not properly delegating.

They're not giving full in specific instructions and following up. What inevitably happens, Dawn, is that the junior lawyer fails. It's put back on the, on the desk of the managing partner, the owner, the founder, and this cycle perpetuates itself because the, the owner will say to him or herself, yeah, I should have just done it myself, like all along. So there they are again, working till 11 o'clock at night, working on weekends, missing their daughter's socket practice or their son's, uh, baseball game. Um, I believe in their anniversary dinner, vacation, what vacation? They're glued to their cell phone, right? For texts and messages. So this is not, none of this comes with judgment. It's ob years of observation. The same challenges plague. Most of the law firm owners I've worked with, they could have success. I mean, on the outward part of it, they've built a firm, they've grown in numbers of lawyers, they've grown in revenue, right?

But everything still goes through them. So we understand why. So they understand that basically they have created this culture. They have not properly set up their people to succeed even in the di direction when they're not giving the proper direction. Of course, the junior's not gonna succeed, right? The problem is that managing partner or owner has done the task a thousand times. So in their, in their brain, right? It's like, it's like drinking water or breathing, right? Second nature. But it's not to the junior lawyer. And so I advise 'em to go over the top with specific direction, make sure that Junior knows that their always open for feedback and support. And there's ongoing training and mentorship, right? The only way you can successfully grow without being a bottleneck is to expand the team and build a great a team around you. And it can be done. There's amazing talent out there. Amazing.

Gary. Uh, what are some of the conversations that you might have with an attorney with that? Uh, nobody can do it as well as me. Mindset. How, what are you talking to them about? How are you breaking it in?

Yeah, that's a really good question. 'cause it's not easy. Uh, as you know, lawyer, another personality trait common to lawyers is they're perfectionists. And I will just say this, it takes one to no one. I am a recovering perfectionist. I'm, I'm four, four times published author. You can't get published if you hold onto that perfectionism, because at the end of the day, dawn, there is no such thing as perfectionist, is it doesn't exist in anything in business or life, um, syndrome. I call it the perfectionist syndrome. It's very common among artists, songwriters, there's cre, creative types, fear. There's always, always be something else you can add, right? Even the latest book, you know, it gets printed and it's like, oh, I could have added that, or I could have added that. The the way to shift that is good. It's really, really good, and we're gonna continuously improve it.

You know what, I always use the story of Microsoft. Can you, I'm older than you and maybe half your audience, I don't know. But can you imagine if Microsoft waited in the early days to perfect their software? I'll still be waiting around. There would be no, there would be no trillion dollar company, right? Because it just, I mean, it was flawed. They sold it, they kept improving on it, and they sold more and they kept improving on it. That pretty much sums up the, the philosophy. Now, fully understand in law, things need to be tight. They have to be succinct for the clients. Mistakes are very costly and can have huge negative impact. I fully understand that. But in business, mistakes are not life and death. We learn from mistakes. So there's a whole combination of a little bit of shift in mindset. Um, again, building the team, building the systems, making it easier for them to let go of control.

And here's the other thing I say, no one will ever possible have as much skin in the game as you do. This is your baby, right? And no one as fantastic as staff, you will, you will attract and bring on just no one is. It's not, it's not important to anyone else more than you. And you've have to understand that. But you can still get excellence, right? In fact, perfect. So these are limitations that, I mean, these things have been ingrained in these law firm owners from a very young age. I mean, part of it's a personality trait and why they went into law and then law school and then ling and then working at big firm as many of them do when they start out. So again, none of these are, are just criticisms. They are merely observations of working with these guys for over 20 years. And I have developed, I have developed ways and strategies of helping them move past these challenges into more of the entrepreneurial mindset.

Let's get a little bit into those ways, right? So when a law firm has reached a stage where the owner is overwhelmed, how do you practically redesign the operation? So the business is no longer dependent on that owner's daily decisions.

Another very good question. My process is I start out by conducting the SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Little point on that. Back in the early olden days as I am older, uh, late eighties, early nineties, the theory around the SWOT analysis was, you did this so that you could identify your weaknesses and improve them, right? Like the whole pick up your socks done, fix this, fix that. How long came my number one business and leadership guru, Steve Jobs? And he turned that theory upside down. He said, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do not waste any time on your weaknesses. Focus everything on your strengths. Master them. Come to tell my clients, become a Jedi master. You know, everyone understands the Star Wars metaphor. Absolutely become the very best at what it is you do if, if it's litigation. And that's what you wanna focus on.

If it's your entrepreneur, Ben, and desire become the best leader and CEO that you can be and leave the legal work to your team. So what we do is we do the swap, and then we systematically look at where to fill the holes left by the weaknesses. And we attract very strategically talent based on that. What happens, dawn, is that you're building a system and a team of extraordinary professionals. So we're not recreating the wheel. We're not having more law firm owner, uh, um, uh, what do you call it? Homes. We're filling all the, the weaknesses. Another point, lawyers try and do everything mostly because they can do most things. They're very intelligent people. They're highly functioning human beings. More, way more than average. I keep telling 'em, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Because what happens is, the other thing they trait they have is procrastination.

So when they're doing a mundane task admin, which most of 'em do not like at all can do it, it can pass. They're not great at it and they're never gonna improve because they don't enjoy it. There are talented people out there who are truly exceptional at admin tasks and do enjoy it, thrive in that environment. So just as you are the master in your area, you're looking for other masters in complimentary areas, and slowly but surely, you build your a team that allows, okay, as we spoke earlier, that allows you to feel more confident in letting go some of the control in delegating, right? That first key is getting the right people, getting them in the right roles, giving them the right direction, giving the right follow up and ongoing mentorship and training. Creating a culture that inspires innovation, collaboration, and cooperation. Have to give your people permission to fail.

Come up with ideas and maybe they don't always work, but that's okay because we're a team and we're gonna figure it out at the end. I have a client, one of my favorite clients, as a matter of fact, a very entrepreneurial client who had already built at a young age, uh, a firm with five lawyers under him. I think he was 34 with him. Between 2018 and 2020, he's now up to 20 lawyers. Okay? He's still the bottleneck. He sees every communication and email coming in and out. I've been trying to sit down with him 'cause it hurts it be to see, on the one hand, he has built like the revenue and the culture and, uh, lawyers and everything's up, but he doesn't have a life. And I just think when people put that much time and effort into something, they should enjoy the fruits of their labor. So I've become on a mission. It truly has become my mission to spread the word about the, and approach how to grow your law firm and gain more freedom and built with the toughest audience, the most analytical, critical, skeptical people on the planet has been tough, but also may be a better coach and strategist built these strategies and they work.

Good question there. So we are building the team to thrive with innovation, collaboration, cooperation, uh, filling out those where we find our own weaknesses, right? About accountability. How can we get all this good stuff? And accountability.

Okay, that's also a good, a good question. Building in systems, templates and communication. So there's open and regular communication. Um, you say you're, I'll use delegation as a, as an example. When you delegate a task before you leave the room or the meeting or whatever, if you're doing a virtual meeting, get sign off and buy-in that there is an absolute hard deadline for this task to be completed as the, as the leader, whether you're a firm owner or maybe, um, leading a team. Don't wait till the deadline. You follow up a couple of days before the deadline and check in with the junior and see how they're making out. There's any hiccups. If there's anything you can help 'em do this ensures that the deadline will be met. Okay? But open and regular communication is the key

Of that, because waiting until the deadline has arrived, you're already too late.

That's right. Yeah. And there's inevitably gonna be issues. I mean, again, there is no perfect. We're humans. We make mistakes, right? I don't think anyone likes to make mistakes, but the important thing about mistakes is that we learn and grow and not make them again. Right?

Absolutely. Expecting that we are human. Sometimes we tend to forget, you know, amidst all this AI and all this stuff.

Well, one of the, one of the things I have come to everybody wants to segment them, segment themselves and create these little, you know, uh, silos. And I'm like, okay, what are you before you are a lawyer, have to think about for a minute. Like, what are you, before you're a doctor, what are you before you're, uh, a hairstylist, a dentist, a taxi driver, or a human being? We're flawed. We are not perfect. All we can do is strive for excellence, try do our best, learn from our mistakes, pick ourselves up and go at it again with the information that we've learned from the mistakes. And any honest entrepreneur will tell you, I've learned everything from the mistakes I've made.

Let's get into that entrepreneurial mindset a little bit, because many lawyers are trained to be excellent practitioners. Yes. But not business leaders. So how do you help a lawyer trans transition from being the best technician in the firm to becoming the CEO of the firm?

So they have to have a desire to do that. Not all of them do. Like I have worked with firm owners that really like, love lawyering, okay. Comes to mind. Recently I've worked with where he built a very successful law firm, very profitable, but his juice is being in the courtroom advocating for his clients. He wants to grow the firm, but he has no interest in actually leading it and managing it. Mm-hmm. Has no interest in hr, which is critical. And marketing, which is also critical. And the skill sets are very much related. Again, going back to the SWOT analysis, we look at building the team around him, looking at maybe bringing on partners, right? That will assume some of the management and leadership, uh, responsibilities and or a combination of professional management. It's always a solution, but we always build from strength to take that lawyer who's passionate about advocating for his clients in the courtroom and try and make an entrepreneur out of him would be a foolish endeavor.

Okay? So I'm never, I'm never gonna try and change someone who they are or make them something they're not on. On the flip side, I've had many clients who really gravitate to the entrepreneurial operations and the entrepreneurial drive. They could leave the law many minutes. We'll probably keep some, practice some clients and all that, but they're truly driven towards that CEO image of running an enterprise, as you use that word as you mentioned earlier, that I can work with, comes down to different, you know, the left side functions and the right brain functions. Here's have excelled in left brain functions. Analytical, critical thinking, um, you know, just all the things that we absolutely hire them for, right? Mm-hmm. Right. Brain functions of communication, empathy, empowerment, collaboration. Those have not come naturally, and there's a reason for that. They've never been nurtured, right? I, I make a little joke that left brain has been Olympian level training or world cup football level training.

Uh, 'cause the right brain has been, uh, binging net. Netflix on the couch. Like just a personal trainer. I'm gonna get their their right brain off the couch and we're gonna start exercising the right brain functions. And lawyers are smart. You know, you give them the right direction, you give them the right approaches, understanding and, and you're building the trust because you understand the way their brain works and they understand that you're not criticizing them never, but you get them. And then helping them with different techniques and exercises. And this is really back to the end approach because this is all related. It's all related. Like tackling the bottleneck with their personality traits, growing the firm, building the team, increasing growth, increasing pro, it's all, it's all intertwined. It's, and, and, and, and it's not like we have to go, okay. It is not part like compartmentalizing. Like this is one thing and then we, then we do this and then we do this. No, there are certain circumstances where you can do several things all at once because they make sense. It's not more work. It actually makes sense to do them. At the same time.

Gary, let's get back to our conversation. A lot of firms grow revenue but never create freedom for the owner. How do you build systems that allow a firm to scale without increasing the owner's workload?

I hinted on this before. You need to build more leaders within the firm, whether that be professional management or in the partnership and even associates. You need to start, uh, shifting some of the responsibilities away from yourself and dispersing it. So again, before you get there, you have to hire the right people in order to be able to do that. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right? When you do hire the right people, you don't have to micromanage them. Yeah. You can. You they want to be a part of the growth. They're gonna come to you with ideas. You have to give them the permission. You have to build this culture where they understand that they can, they're empowered to come to you with solutions and ideas. Again, I use this recent example because he was complaining about the office manager not taking proactive approach to a all detail. I'm thinking to myself, well, whose fault is that?

Created a culture where your entire staff feels they have to go through you. So we, we, to help the law firm owner understand they need to take responsibility for the culture that they probably unintentionally create it. I don't think they intentionally created that. Mm-hmm. Right? They're just, they wanna do the best they can. They want to grow, they get bogged down in the weeds of being in the business and not working on the business, which is another challenge. That's right. So that's one of them. You gotta build leaders, build systems and templates so you're not recreating the wheel. I'll give you an example. The whole onboarding process needs to be very strateg, strategically set up so that you are giving your new employee, whether they be a lawyer or a paralegal or a legal assistant, biggest chance for success. And there's follow up and again, communication.

There's regular check-ins. And it sounds simple because it is, but I warned, I warned. Simple doesn't equate to easy. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Our dealing with human beings, and I've always maintained the human part of the business is by far the most challenging. And a law firm is probably at the height of all of that because it's all about your people. It's all about talent, professional services. That's what your clients are hiring, they're hiring your people, right? Um, another another example too about where the bottleneck occurs is a law firm owner does not start introducing the juniors or the junior partners or senior associates into the client relationship at an early date. Okay? So that client has be, become addicted to that one practitioner, right? And so the owner thinks, well, I can't delegate this work 'cause the the client will not have it. They only wanna work with me.

Whose fault is that? Again, I gently help them understand you need to take responsibility for creating that situation, those circumstances when it happens, when you start. This is the other thing. This is another part of the and approach and it's a gem. You do that. Not only are you weaning those top level clients, off you bringing up your juniors, you are involving them in the client relationships. You're offering them learning and growth opportunities to grow in their career. That's, and, and tennis, you're starting to gain more freedom. Well, later on when you're say closer to the end of the career and you need to transfer that, uh, client management relationship altogether, there's no excuse. The relationships have been built, right? It has been passed on over a period of time. Your juniors are comfortable with the client, the client's comfortable with the juniors, and you can be freed up semi-retirement or fully retire. So this is, and and, and

I've been talking about and a lot, and I must ask you this question, where did but come from?

That's a good question. I don't know if I have the answer to it, but I can tell you this really are are conditioned to be told you can have this or this or, or, or we can do this. But, um, I do remember child, I do like to go back and understand where, where things happened. I do remember going, uh, to a ice cream. My parents would treat us on a hot July summer, evening night, and we'd go for ice cream basket and Robins 32 flavors. And it was, it was a real treat, right? Uh, who doesn't like ice cream? <laugh> go to the counter and the clerk would ask, uh, which flavor would you like? And I was like, well, I want that one and that one, right? Like, I good, I'm gonna have two scoops. Why would I only choose one flavor? Somewhere along the line we're put into boxes.

I don't know exactly where or how, but it happens, I guess first throughout school. I would suggest some of the conditioning happens there. But certainly when we get out to the work working world, I think it's easier for people to just create boxes and say, you, we can do this or we can do this. Instead of looking at it from how do we do all of it. Lots of examples throughout history where people are doing both or all, or, and if you think about these strategies that we've been talking about, it actually just makes sense. It's not harder. And in fact it makes sense to me doing it all together. As I said earlier, they're all interrelated, right? That's right. They all, they all affect each other and the success, uh, other, so mm-hmm <affirmative>. It's not actually harder to adopt the end approach. It's actually easier in the long run and it saves time. It will save time, right? Yes.

And it's a very positive approach at that too, because, uh, the conditioning of but or is very limited.

It is. And we all, we already have the negative limitations from the lawyer mind that they have to get over in order to become good at business. We don't need any more negative, I've always maintained attitude is 99% of everything. I really do believe that when I, I'm a big lot of sports analogies in my writing. Uh, I mean, I'm, I'm an active, I've played sports, but never, you know, a star athlete or anything like that, you know, watching the Olympics or the World Cup or anything on that level. I just have such a huge admiration for people who put so much time, effort, energy, and discipline and focus into achieving that level. They have a team around them. They have coaches and they have trainers, and they, they have, you know, purpose and amazing amount of people helping them should lawyers expect to reach that level without building a team around them, right?

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. They've put that same level of dedication, time and effort into their career and getting to that level of excellence. Again, we do this on our own. You know, one of the inspirations in the book interviewing a very successful, uh, law firm owner from Long Island, New York, E success point number one, because in her time growing up through the legal industry as a female law firm owner was no easy feat, okay? But she built a multi, multi figure seven figure tax law firm in Long Island, New York, only being in the office two days a week and in action, okay? Her, which she did with intent was building a law firm so that she could be parent to her two daughters, not, you know, have them be taken care of by a nanny, always at the office, never seeing them grow up. So she's, she's home working from home with her two daughters and in the office two, two days a week building a multimillion dollar law firm.

In my interview with her, she leans back and she smiles and she says, Gary can't have everything, can't do it all your own. And it really struck a chord to have, I mean, I know that have a successful law firm owner tell me that it really hit home. And so she's one of the people I dedicate the book to because I had nothing to do with her success and her living and breathing the and approach. It was just an inspiration to get the word out to more law firm owners with everything that you put into your career, all the hours, all the study, all the money, investing in your study, and the continuous education you really deserve to enjoy the fruit of your labor. And I don't mean things, I mean time, I mean life. I mean experience, right? Whether you wanna be climbing a mountain or laying on a beach law firm behind you, churns away and continues to be profitable, wanna do explore explor, uh, travel to Peru, right? Picchu your end is my job. My job is to help you get there faster with less stress and fewer mistakes.

Gary, when you, uh, said that quote about you can have everything, uh, can get there on your own, I got goosebumps.

Yeah, well that was basically my reaction when she said it. It was like, wow, okay. I've always known that very successful law firm owner who worked two days a week and built multimillion dollar firm is telling me that. Ow, <laugh>.

Wow. Now, Gary, we almost made it to the end of the podcast without the talk of the two letter word. That is everywhere. I, but we gotta have a little bit of AI in our conversation. Okay? So with AI changing client expectations and increased competition reshaping the legal industry, how should law firm owners build a future ready firm that creates both growth and personal freedom?

A good question, and I'm not an expert on ai, but I don't believe anyone is in these early days. The two areas where I see law firm owners benefiting from AI the most are marketing, okay? In, uh, and, um, social media posts and things like that, interacting with the clients or prospects, uh, for sure. And the other side is the operating systems. Okay? So earlier I was talking about systems and processes and templates, right? The whole backend of a law firm can be run by ai. Okay? So there's all, again, I'm not an expert, so I work with other service providers, but I know enough to know that AI can be a game changer for law firm owners. Amplify the backend. I'm making it more efficient. Everything measurable, right? So you can see at any given time for, for what's happening, what, where, where, where is growth happening, where is it not, where do we need to focus more on, uh, to drop?

Uh, it's incredible and you know, one piece of some of my clients are using it, some are not. It's the same. I mean, there's not stick all law firm owners into one category, but I will just say this, don't be afraid of it. Embrace it, learn as much as you can about it and bring in professionals who are really, really well versed in AI and on top of it. 'cause it's changing. I mean, in the time that we've been speaking Don, it's already reinvented it. You know, all that stuff though. I'm like, wow, that's incredible. Right? That's my few words on ai

And that is a wrap on a conversation. Every law firm owner needs to hear at least once. A heartfelt thank you to Gary Mitchell for opening up the coaching room and sharing the patterns. He has watched play out for over 20 years. We covered the personality traits that quietly turn owners into bottlenecks, the delegation mistakes that keep juniors from succeeding. The SWAT reframe from Steve Jobs, the and approach to strengths and hiring, and the story of the Long Island tax attorney who built a multimillion dollar firm working two days a week so she could raise her two daughters. That story is the one that keeps echoing for me. She told Gary, you can have everything, but you cannot do it all on your own. That is the whole message of this episode in a single sentence. The firms that give their owners freedom are not the firms with the smartest owner in the room.

They're the firms with the best team around that owner, empowered, trusted, and given permission to grow. Now, a quick reminder about our sponsor, equa Marketing, because if you are trying to build a freedom first firm marketing is one of the first things that needs to leave your desk. Equa specializes in exactly that. They build the visibility, positioning, and intake systems that bring the right clients to your door consistently. So your firm keeps growing. Whether you are at your desk or on that mountain in Peru, they are offering a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900, where a senior strategist researches your firm before the call, book it at www.dominatelaw.com/msm. Before we go, you can connect with Gary Mitchell, an on track coach on LinkedIn, and keep an eye out for his upcoming mastermind group and audiobook release. Please follow the Dominate Law podcast and share this episode with one law firm owner who deserves both success and freedom. I'm Donna Deha, build a firm, but build a life too. Keep on leading. We will see in.