Is Your Law Firm Built to Grow — or Built to Keep You Trapped?

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dominate Law Podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Angie, and today we are asking one of the hardest questions in legal practice. Is your law firm truly built to grow, or is growth just creating more pressure and more dependency on you as the owner? Before we dive in, a big shout out to our sponsor, equa Marketing. Here is what runs underneath today's entire conversation. You can hire the best team by the smartest tech and refine your pricing, but if the right clients cannot find you online, and if your reviews and trust signals are weak, none of it converts into real growth. Qua builds exactly that missing layer. For over 15 years, they have helped law firms across six countries strengthen their visibility, positioning, and intake. They are offering listeners a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900 with a full online audit and a custom growth roadmap.

Book it at www.dominantlaw.com/msm. Now into today's deep dive across five key pillars, we cover the mid firm audit pricing architecture, the hiring decision framework, the technology stack for scale, and a practical 90 day redesign roadmap. Joining us today, three of the sharpest minds in law firm growth. Karen Skinner, co-founder and CEO of Gimbal, lean Practice management advisors, a lawyer and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with over 20 years of international experience. Seth Price, managing partner at Price Benoit's, LLP, and founder of Blue Shark Digital, who has grown his own firm from two attorneys to a multi-office practice and Gakis, president of attorney sink, nonpracticing lawyer, and one of the most respected voices in legal marketing. Accountability. Let's get into it.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

That's amazing. All right. Um, I would love to start with Karen. Uh, let's start with you right now. Which operational bottleneck is the most trapping growing law firm owners inside daily decisions?

So, I actually think the biggest bottleneck is the owners themselves. And it's not for the reason that a lot of people think it's not because they have a discipline problem or a delegation problem, or even a time management problem, which is actually what most people seem to think that it is. It's really that their practice was never designed to operate in a way that they were not always at the center as mm-hmm <affirmative>. As lawyers, we are conditioned to be like the fixers. We're the ones who solve people's problems. We step in and on top of that, we have our professionalism. We like things to be done, right? It's very important in the profession. And also many lawyers have a bit of perfectionism, right? So it's very difficult to accept that tasks are not done perfectly. And in that scenario, the immediate instinct for lawyers is to step in and solve the problem when it goes wrong.

So if there's something happening in operationally, excuse me, in the law firm, they will step in and do it themselves, right? Everybody's got a delegation story like that where something didn't work out, and they step in and they, they take it back and they do it themselves. But the problem with doing that, and this is what we see over and over again in the lawyers in, in our coaching program, and it's what we, we actually did a webinar on this topic yesterday too, and it, the exact same thing came up. It's a bit of a savior dynamic. So you step in, you solve a problem, but what does that do? It, it does fix the problem in the, in the immediate term, but over time, it creates this dynamic in your firm where you are the solution to all of the problems. So you're actually training your team over time to become more and more dependent on you.

They stop resolving things independently because you are the fastest answer. You're the safest answer. And if they don't know exactly what they're supposed to do, if the delegation isn't set up properly, then their instinct is always to default to caution, and you are the safest answer. So they come back to you. Um, for us like that, that's the biggest operational bottleneck that we see. These owners are stuck at the center, and they often will look out at their team and they'll think, oh, you know what? It's, my team isn't capable enough. I've got the wrong people. I've hired the wrong people. Or they're not taking ownership, they're not sufficiently, um, independent, but often that's not the case. It's often that nobody has really clearly defined for them mm-hmm <affirmative>. What authority they actually have, what decisions they're allowed to make on their own versus which ones are re require escalation.

And in that scenario, any logical, reasonable person is gonna default to caution, right? They're gonna say, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to make this decision, so I better not make it. Uh, and that's the trap. That's the trap that we see owners in all the time. They get stuck in that, you know, they've built this firm, but what they've really done is built a job that they can't quit, they're stuck, they're trapped, um, and that, that costs them a lot of money. But that to me, is the biggest operational bottleneck. It's not a particular process or a particular, um, workflow in the firm. It's the fact that all of the workflows are built with them at the center.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Seth, let's build on that because many firms experience growth, but growth does not always make the business easy to manage. So, which real growth mistake taught you that revenue can rise while the business gets harder to manage?

Well, I'd say the thing, you know, Karen, you know, yes to, uh, what Karen said, I think that what I see law firms, the mistake they make is not getting a non-lawyer administrator of some sort. And I say that if you're a solo, it may be your office manager, your admin, very sorry, an admin and office manager. As you get bigger, uh, you know, a director of operations and a VP of operations, your really largest COO, that continuum, that person, that rock is what allows all of what Karen just talked about to happen. So once there's a person, not you that has trusted, that is at the heart of which is tough, when you start that, that admin, that that office manager may be a dud, but the sooner you can find that rock, the easier it is to scale, because the lawyering, whether it's you or whether it's lawyers, you hire the, all the other pieces from marketing to intake, to admin, to HR, to hiring, all that stuff, it, you're just going to kill yourself and not be able to grow unless you start to put it in the very first piece is making sure that somebody who's not you, not a partner.

I mean, although I started with where I sort of had that role, you know, where there was a lawyer and a, and an operator. But the sooner you can get, especially as a solo, to then have somebody that is what's needed to be able to get to the next level.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Gee, I'd love to get your perspective, uh, which shift in client trust is forcing firms to rethink how growth get earned in 2026.

Um, ask me that question again. I was getting ready to respond to all this, uh, hiring and bottle deck stuff. I mean, I, I think so much of it is mindset because it's, it, it depends on where you are in your journey. But, you know, and I don't wanna rehash everything Karen and Seth said, but like, you start out, a lot of these lawyers, they're just like, I, all of this stuff. Like, it's like a consequence of actually practicing law, but like, that's what they're there to do. And I think so much of it is figuring out like, what you love to do in your firm. Like that's the real starting point to me. Like, do you wanna be the lawyer? I mean, how many lawyers do I know that are like, oh, you know, I started a law firm. I practiced law, but I actually like the business side more.

And so they wanna become like CEO. And so that sets you on a totally different path than if you're gonna actually be the practicing lawyer, or if you like being marketing and you want to be, you know, out doing, uh, marketing activities. But for sure the mindset's a bottleneck starting point. And then after that, like once you've made the flip, like to Seth's point, like you have to find, you have to delegate and just accept that, uh, you know, take whatever framework you want. You have to have other people, uh, doing functions of your business. And I think the, the thing that I tell folks too is I think the hardest thing is like, to make the commitment to have like a full-time hire. It's like that thing that scares a lot of people, especially solos. And so, like, there are fractional ways to get this kind of work, uh, that the support that you need operationally, uh, that don't necessarily require a full-time hire.

So there's lots of different ways to build a law firm. There's lots of different ways to have success and to scale. But, you know, I, you know, and we'll get to the marketing side of the house, but like I tell firms, you have to have your operational service delivery infrastructure in place before you pour gasoline on your growth from a marketing standpoint, because you're just gonna waste so much money. You're gonna, you're gonna deliver bad experiences to clients. Uh, you're gonna, I think you had talked about this issue of client trust, like, clients are not gonna trust you and they're gonna go online and talk about it. They're gonna go leave reviews, they're gonna tell their friends, like even firms that are, and we see this in the referrals, uh, referral relationship context all the time, but like, lawyers don't wanna refer to other lawyers that don't have their service delivery locked down because they know that those clients are gonna be mishandled.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. The next question is also, again, to you, what shift in client trust is forcing firms to rethink how growth gets added in 2026?

Yeah, I, I think in general, I mean, I, I always put myself in the legal services, consumers shoes, and, um, you know, right now, I mean the, whatever you, everybody's talking about ai, right? In all these different contexts. And I think that, uh, a lot of firms have, like, uh, they're leading with, we are tech enabled. We are AI enabled. We are, we've got, we can handle, you know, we, we can do, we've got AI chatbots, we've got AI law practice tools, like, and there, there a lot of'em positioning it as a competitive advantage. And I think that some of it is kind of tone deaf on the market, because in a lot of contexts, in a lot of communities, AI is, uh, creating hiring freezes, and there is skepticism. And we see all of the, uh, hallucinated cases. And, you know, I don't want to go into deterministic harnesses and ways to deploy AI because I'm not, I'm, I'm not anti AI at all.

But I do think at the end of the day, like, we have to remember that this is about building trust, and it's, you can't, I, I I, my advice would be not to sacrifice, uh, efficiency or cost savings or visibility in the marketing context for trust. I think that there is going to be a massive market for consumer trust, uh, and for the firms that actually lean into that and do things to position themselves as trustworthy, which means a big part of that is, is earning their trust through the experience you're delivering from the time that they get exposure to your brand all the way through the representation and after

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, what do you think that clients expecting today that they were not expecting a few years ago?

I mean, I'm gonna say speed, but it was true a few years ago too. But again, I, you know, if you create friction, if you're slow, you know, the, the classic tale historically has been, you know, we'd have lawyers that we talked to, and we'd be like, so talk to me about your intake process. Like, well, people that wanna get ahold of me will leave me a voicemail. And I'm like, you're outta your mind, especially when you're, you're, you're doing, you're trying to, you're spending money on Google ads, which are people that they're not necessarily know you. They're not referring business to you. And so you've gotta be fast and you've gotta deliver a frictionless experience to them on their terms, or guess what, they can move on. There is no shortage of lawyers. There is no shortage of advertising. Uh, there's no shortage of exposure to legal brand messaging. And so I think, uh, you really, in my opinion, you've gotta double down on this idea of trust. And the, the biggest change over the last few years is that it's only getting faster and the expectations are only going up.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I really love to stay on this topic because I think this topic is something that a lot of, um, law firms are looking for. Uh, Karen and Seth, I'd love to get your opinion as well on this topic. Once again, I, I I, I, I repeat the question. What shift in clients' trust is forcing firms to rethink how growth gets earned in 2026?

So, I'll, I'll go first and then Seth can jump in. But what, when, when Gay was talking, what really struck me is people hire lawyers to solve their human problems. And they don't, they, the transformation that you get, that you deliver is just that it is a transformation that impacts their, their human life. It may be a business problem, it may be a family law problem, it may be a criminal problem, but ultimately what it comes down to, is it a human problem? And so the firms that can deliver their services in a way that does have the speed aspect, because yes, people do expect instant responses now all the time, but at the same time, the firms that can do that while maintaining the human element of the client experience, that's what's gonna continue to build trust. That's what's going to create sticky relationships.

People want humans, they want. And, and I think that's the gap right now that we're seeing is there's all these services that you can access yourself and all these things that you can do, that you can, that, that you can use AI for, that's fabulous. But actually they want a human. And in some faith, some types of law practice, family law, criminal, they need a human. And they need a human because the problems that they're facing are so emotionally fraught that they figure they've gotta be able to speak to a human. They do want that human fast on the phone, otherwise they'll find another human. But lawyers, the firms that are able to change the way that they deliver their services in a way that maintains that human aspect are the ones that I think are gonna be the most successful. That's where the trust is built. It's not built with, I can produce a contract for you in 30 seconds using code. It's not built that way. It's built on, you came to me with a problem, now you feel better after you've left my office,

I'll push back on. Yeah, I'll push back on that. Like, trust important intake has to be fast. Love the human touch. But at the end of the day, people come in for solutions. Yeah, right? Injury lawyers want money. Criminal lawyers wanna make sure they don't go to jail. Family lawyers wanna navigate that. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I think as a law firm owner, you have to balance a lot of things, which is where is the money that you're getting? There's downward pricing pressure in the fee for service space. And so anything you can do that meets people where they're at, so that, well, there are some clients, Karen, that may want a human touch. There are others that don't really want it. They wanna deal with text. They wanna be able to get their information quickly and, and deal with it. And if you can find ways, because it's all about profitability.

If you can find ways to deliver that great service, whether it's a human or whether it's somebody offshore, that's also a human, but not in your home country, or if it's technology, if you don't start layering those things in, and it may be slightly less good than somebody who's a hundred percent human touch, but profitability is so difficult to manage. And so at the end of the day, if you can get the results somebody wants, yes, you want them to feel heard. But for half the people out there, the younger generation, they just want that information as quickly and in their world, you ask my kids to pick up the phone, I'm like, it's as if I'm cursing at them. They, they, the idea that they're just texting back and forth. So meeting clients where they're at, my sensibility, I'm sure Karen's group is that, oh, yes, it's better to have somebody on the phone all the time with them, but that comes at a cost. So how do you balance making sure that there's, there is a connection, but then meeting them where they're at in a cost effective way?

Yeah, and I agree a hundred percent. I think that it's that real, it's that blend. And that's the secret sauce right now, right? That's, it's that blend of, of giving people the services they want quickly using the techno, using whatever method they wanna use to communicate with you, but still keeping that human aspect where it's needed. That's, I think that's the struggle right now. But I, I agree. There is a ton of client, there are a lot of clients who don't wanna talk on the phone. They want everything handled by text. So it's a ba it's, it's a real balance. You're right, they're balancing a lot of things right now.

And I would just, uh, jump in there. 'cause I totally agree. And the key is, is that you have to create feedback loops to understand what people actually want, right? You have to give, like, Seth used the phrase, meet people where they are, give people options. This idea that, you know, back to what I was saying before, like, people that wanna get ahold of me will leave me a voice message that is not meeting people where they are. Right? And some people to the point, it's not, it's not the, um, necessarily the medium or the tool or the technology that you're using. It's like, have you created a feedback way and have you created, are you meeting people in the context where the technology can be assistive? I mean, I use this, I think, and, and I think some of this stuff is evolving 'cause it's still very brand new, uh, to our zeitgeist in general.

But, you know, I think about some of the experiences that I have, like if I call business up and I, I'm trying to find out like, uh, you know, I wanna schedule a time or I wanna try to find out when an appointment's happening or something. I'm great with technology doing that. In fact, the technology is usually faster and gets it better than the human being that has to go and like, talk to somebody. And then they like put you on hold and you listening to music and they're eating lunch and you're like sitting there waiting for them to come back. Like, that's a great example, uh, of using technology. Um, and I think figuring out those contexts, I, you know, I think that, uh, that's the real hard part. And the only way you can do that is to listen to what people have to say and, and give them, uh, platform and, and, and voice to be able to give feedback about what their experience was with your firm.

I think we've got some great insights on that. Uh, Karen, coming back to you now, when capacity feels strained, which trade off should leaders make first between speed, quality and owner involvement?

So, this is a really interesting question, and I think the instinct is people would go, people would answer, oh, you know, we've gotta protect quality above everything else, right? We have these professional standards, we have, you know, expectations, we have reputation. Um, but the assumption there is that in a lot of cases, especially with the small firms that we work for, is that for me to give that kind of quality, I always have to be involved. It's that owner involvement that has to be there. And I think that's wrong. I think that if you have your processes set up, if you've got workflows, if you've got some standards built in, then the owner's job is to enforce those standards, set them, and then enforce them. Um, but not necessarily be involved in every file and delivering it themselves. So, you know, ideally for us, when we're working with clients, we work on them first, reducing owner involvement.

So, you know, finding the new assistant, finding the offshore first, and finding the technology that can support and provide that service at the speed level that the clients expect without the owner having to be involved. Um, I think people just get sucked back in. And the more that they feel under pressure and they feel that the capacity is strained, the more their instinct is to, is to jump in and do it themselves to get it done fast. Or they make a bad hire at that point. And that's that. And I see he's, he's nodding that, that's when they, they make mistakes. You have to break this cycle that a lot of people have. It comes back to mindset. You have to break the cycle that I'm the only one who can fix this problem, so I've gotta jump in fast. 'cause that just creates a vicious cycle where you're always the one jumping in.

Um, you have to be really good if you're gonna do that. If you're gonna really pull yourself out without sacrificing quality, then you've gotta get really clear on, on really what good looks like. When we talk to people about creating delegation systems, we are really specific on how they define done and how they define good enough when they're delegating a task. Because if you don't give people a really clear picture of what a good completed task looks like and what the quality level is that you expect, then those people will make mistakes. You want that process that you build for them to actually have the built-in quality control so that they can actually check themselves. Did I, did, you know, Karen told me that for this to be done, it has to be, um, I don't know, written in the firm style, put on the right document with all my citations checked, especially if I used ai.

All of these things, it becomes like a checklist for them. And then they're the ones doing their own quality control. That's what allows the owner to step out of the way. Um, I think that speed is, speed is a really interesting part of that because yes, clients want results right away, but once they're in your practice, a lot of, apart from court deadlines, for example, a lot of deadlines are sort of artificial. And so we're under pressure to produce something by Friday at four, when really nobody's gonna look at it until Monday at noon. So there, we do have to be careful of these sort of artificially imposed needs for speed and really only focus on speed as the main constraint when it truly is when you have an honest, urgent issue.

That's perfect. Now, Seth, let's look into the hiring side of things. What criteria separate a smart next hire from a reactive high in a growing law firm?

Well, I'll, I'll sort of dovetail on, on something which Karen was talking about, because all of those things are right. The question is, in a active building business stuff starts to break. So even if academically, you set everything up, you have your tech stack, you have your employees, they have, god forbid, actual standard operating procedures, they're following, all of a sudden you get busy, right? Attorney sink turns on the knob and all of a sudden clients are coming in mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it, okay, well that person's been used to handling 50 clients and now they have 70 clients and stuff starts to break. So a couple things. One is making sure that the owner is aware of those break you. It sometimes, you know, you, I know early on we started adding, for instance, plaintiff, uh, pre-lit paralegals. When those numbers get to a place, um, you know, numerically at some number, 1 20, 1 30 files, there's no way anybody can give the right service.

Maybe a little bit better. Now with AI being able to do some extra tasks, maybe if you have some offshore labor help, but as stuff starts to break, how do you see that bad Google reviews? First one, you think the person's crazy. But if you see a succession of them that talking about sort of the feedback and you wanna meet people where they're at, well, people are not being met where they're at. Taking that seriously and then figuring out what, what that means. What are those hires? And it's really tough in today's economic climate. So I'm now at the point where I've sort of built something. But as you're laying their, layering those people in, one of the questions I get most is, when do you hire? Or do you have a full need? And I think one of the things that my partner did really well over the years was thinking about it, Hey, the salary is not a salary taking right now.

Look at it in three month, six month. You know, can you afford it for those periods and build into it? And so that if you continue to make hires sort of on the come as the need starts to arise rather than when it's desperate, you're making a desperation hire. But understanding that if attorney's sending you all this business, you are gonna need that in order to sustain yourself so that you start to make the hires in anticipation that's best world we all have people quit. There is a spike that you're not expecting. All those things happen, but the more those are not a good place to be, that's when the bad hires are made. The more that you can anticipate that and start to slot the things in, the more likely you're gonna have that continued positive client experience, rather than spikes where you're either overstaffed or understaffed. And then looking for those clues, whether it be morale of the staff, whether it's bad reviews, whatever it is, but keeping your out or just your, your, your KPIs. Do you have too many clients per admin or per lawyer? Those are the things that will help you make those smart decisions in advance rather than before. It's, you know, once it's too late.

Uh, gee, I'd love to stay on the topic of growth. Where should firms draw the line between visibility, investments, and operational readiness to serve new demand?

Well, I, I, I already said this. I'll say it again. Like, you have got to get intake and service delivery locked down before you start pouring the, the gasoline on growth. Um, you know, grateful for, uh, Seth's mention of attorneys saying same thing with, I'm sure Blue Shark sees the same thing, where you, you, you, you, you finally come around to, you're gonna make these marketing investments, these growth investments, you're gonna start buying media. Maybe you're gonna invest in SEO, maybe you're gonna do all this stuff and blue shark sets sets you up for success and then the phone starts ringing and all of a sudden, uh, you, you can't answer the phone. You have missed calls or whatever. And that's most basic one. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But bottom line, you have to have operations in place first. And, and I get, I'm sympathetic, you know, I'm a small business owner myself.

Like sometimes you feel like you are building the plane while you're flying it and all that kind of stuff. And I, I get that, but I, I, I've just seen the story too many times of the law firm owners like gets to this point where they're like, alright, you know, maybe in, in the, the plaintiff, uh, PI space, we see this all the time. Someone gets a big settlement or they get a, a big verdict and they're like, all right, we're gonna go invest in growth. And they don't have the operational side of the house in place. And I, so I would start there. I I always tell people, I'm like, optimize intake minimum first. But you've gotta be able to really understand your capacity. And, and so many of these things like, you know, it's funny because like as a, a marketing agency, that's not really our bread and butter. You know, we talk ab we, we get sucked into these like business consulting conversations about capacity and operations and these kind of things out of necessity because to Seth's point, I'm sure he experiences the same thing. We have clients that the phone starts ringing and then things start breaking and they, they want to turn to us, uh, for help. And so I just can't, I can't reiterate that enough, that fight the urge to just pour gas on the growth side of the house if you don't have a solid foundation on the operation side.

All right, let's jump back into the discussion. Uh, now, Karen, I'd like to come back to you. Uh, what workflow helps owners remove themselves from recurring decisions without losing standards?

So, another good question, and I wanna just jump back to something that I think it was GI said at the very beginning, which is you really need to understand what it is that you wanna do. What, what you wanted your practice of law to look like. And some lawyers do wanna be the ones right in the courtroom doing the stuff, and others wanna be more of the CEO running their law firm business. And, and the way that we talk about that with our clients is we get them to focus first on what, what they define as their power zone. So everyone has a power zone. It's the, um, the, it's, it's built on three things. The work that they're uniquely qualified to do because they have the legal background because they own the business. Um, but also it's the work that they love to do.

So that's what he's talking about. What do you really wanna do? What is the work that lights you up because you're more effective and more productive when you're doing things you like? And the third thing is you need to be doing the work that adds the most value that you can add to the firm. And those three things together, when you get it right, that's where you start seeing better revenues. That's where you start seeing, you know, a time, a calendar that really matches what you wanna do and what you want to, uh, what you wanna create out of your law firm business. And so, thinking about that, we get people to really look at where their time is actually going. So if you're talking about a a, a way to remove, for owners to remove themselves from recurring decisions, as you said, without losing the, the quality and the standards, you have to figure out first what you're going to step back from.

And those things that you step back from should be everything that's not in your power zone as much as possible. 'cause you, if you own the business, there are gonna be certain decisions and certain tasks that you have to take, but there are gonna be other things that you don't. So we get everybody to do, um, a post what we call a post-it party, which is over a period of a week or two, they write down every single task that they're doing as they're doing it. They put it on a post-it note and they throw it up on the wall beside them, or they do it digitally. But, but then step back from that, look at everything they've been doing across the week or the two weeks. Some of it's going to be stuff that only they can do that they're gonna hang on to.

The other things are going to be recurring tasks, decisions that don't require their, their input. Things that are, you know, the admin, the stuff that Seth was talking about that they should not be doing. That's the stuff that they're going to be pulling the themselves back from. So the first step is to figure out what exactly are the things you have to keep and what are the things that you can get rid of? And for most of the people that we work with, there are 40, maybe 60% of the tasks that they're doing on a daily basis that absolutely fall into that category of things they do not need to be doing themselves. And once you've done that, then you can start to think about how to delegate it in a way that's sustainable. So what information does the person you're gonna give it to need?

So what process are they gonna follow? Do you have an SOP in place? Do they understand what done means very clearly? Have you given them the authority to actually make a decision? So those are the things that you have to give to people so that they are meeting your standards, they are able to do the work, and they have the tools they need to do the work. And really the absolute basis for that is you need to have a decent SOP. That's the only way that you can get this kind of delegation to work. Not some 50 page manual that's really hard to follow, but just a written record of how that process or that task or that decision has to be handled. And then when does it actually really truly need to be escalated back up to the owner? That's really the only effective way we've seen to, to get yourself out of the work that you don't wanna do. But it starts with what is in my power zone? What is everything else? And then focusing on that, everything else to delegate that first.

What do you think is one workflow every growing firm should prioritize?

Uh, intake? He's already said it. <laugh>. That's from my perspective,

Right? And like most things, you know, it depends, depends where you are, what's breaking, what's not there. Yes. Intake. Very, very important. Uh, two thoughts, uh, on this. Uh, one of these sort of big business, uh, guru book people recently, you know, most of these problems we have are a process problem. Whenever something does break, we look at it. Do we have an SOP for it? We don't, you know, that it's, so one of the things I knew I was guilty of as I built the firm, less so with Blue Shark, was making sure, probably because there were people beneath me who made that happen, but was making sure that we had a process for everything. Law firms, that's harder to do 'cause there's so many one-offs, but as you see something break, creating that process, because that is usually the piece that is, that is going first.

Um, to sort of take what was just said, I think one of the things that opened my eyes, um, you know, growing across the legal industry, a lot of law firms sort of 2 million, uh, dollars and up are using EOS. And one of the first things you do when using the entrepreneurial operating system outlined by Gino Wickman in Traction is creating an org chart. And so when you're small, you're like, Hey, I'm not using EOS org chart, I still think is a really valuable exercise because you're gonna build it out and there's gonna be an intake person, there's gonna head of intake, head of marketing, head of accounting, head of, uh, you know, ops, head of legal, and you may be a three person operation, maybe four. But put all of those things on an org chart. You may be in seven of 10 of those different buckets, but that it gives you a roadmap as to where you're gonna end up and that you can start to see, okay, I'm in too many.

And then as you grow, one of the things that we see break is the number of direct reports. People say, you know, different people with different answers, six to 10 direct reports. I would tell you that every time I've seen somebody go above eight direct reports, it's almost fiction. There's somebody who's like, it's a one kid is being ignored. And that the sooner you can figure out, okay, this is the resources I have, this is what's there, this is my future. I may not be able to afford it now, but I'm gonna get to that, the better off you'll be to building that sustainable operation. And that within that, within each of those buckets, you're gonna start creating the SOPs. Hopefully not the way I did it when I started, when somebody gave notice, I said, use your two weeks notice to like write out your job description and what you're doing in your SOPs.

And like, you can't do it any worse than that because they're already checked out. And likely, depending on the early days of your firm, when you're not hiring great, they're not gonna be people that you really want creating those things. So the sooner, and you know what, we live in the urge of the, the age of ai, a lot of this stuff as a starting point may not be what you need, but as a starting point, somebody else has a head of intake, somebody else has a head of accounting and somebody else has head of ops. You can start with some SOPs off the shelf instead of like hoping that a friend's gonna give them to you. Like, when I started Blue Chip was, gee gonna tell me how to lay everything out. Hey, you might have, you might, might have like left out a few ingredients as my chef friends do when they give you a recipe. So going to AI and saying, Hey, what's my starting point? Can save you a lot of time to make sure you have this. Something is better than nothing. Obviously it can't be wrong, but a lot of law firms out there have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Now you have something, okay, now you can start to tweak it and make it better.

Thank you so much. <laugh>, Seth, getting back to you, which real litigation breakdown changed how you structure accountability across offices or practice areas?

Um, you know, I, I said it, my, my opening sort of, uh, question was operate having a person, not you, who's the traffic cop who can move stuff around. Obviously intake beyond important. You have somebody about an intake you may like, Hey, I can't live without 'em. That is one of those areas has to be handled, but that can be handled potentially early on by a head of ops, somebody who's not you, who's thinking about how are the phones being answered? And the sooner I'm giving you the PhD level, the sooner you can get KPIs, key performance indicators on the percentage of wants that you're actually signing. And it's, it's double, it's double edged in the, in the, in the contingency world, very often your intake signing it themselves. But very often in the fee for service world, for many law firms, it's gonna be the lawyer themselves or a lawyer on the team that's gonna be signing cases, figuring those pieces out. So on the fee for service firms, criminal, family, trusted estates, you need to get to make sure the calls are getting to those lawyers and then hopefully sold. But it's figuring out the two, the two biggest bottlenecks, you know, operations, and then as soon as practical or as possible, getting yourself the intake locked down, which has been reiterated by other panelists today.

I'm really curious though, what would you do differently today?

I would get ops, I would've invested more in ops early mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I would not have, I won't say slept on intake. I always knew it was important, but there are gonna be moments where people who may have started out okay become not okay and having checks and balances on that. We had some really bad years with really low performing intake. And the moment that's gets fixed, I mean, it, it changes everything because we sit there, right? There are all these things. You, you know, the need for a consultant to help you build out your firm with the ops and SOPs, all that's great, but if there's a hole in the bucket, none of it works.

That's perfect. Let's continue with that idea of alignment. What governance process keeps marketing activity accountable to firm capacity, ethics and client experience?

Gosh, it's all about trust. I mean, we talk about this all the time, but like, you have got to be sitting on the same side of the table as the people who are in the ownership leadership seats and what their growth objectives are and what their service delivery plan is. And, and, and I think the biggest miss for so many firms is that people are guarded about this stuff. Like they either they haven't thought about their growth objectives and they haven't, um, you know, thought about how they're gonna scale service delivery and intake and all this kind of stuff, or they don't wanna share it with the people that they want to help them grow, right? So like, uh, you know, keep using these, these examples. But, you know, blue Shark gets a call from a, a law firm and they're like, we wanna grow.

And Blue Shark says, well, what are your growth objectives? Like, what are your KPIs? Like, are, you know, are you, are you trying to grow a certain number of cases, a certain number of clients, like top line fees? And we see firms that will be reluctant to share that kind of stuff. But like, if you wanna hold people accountable for a thing, you've gotta be aligned on like what that thing is. You gotta be aligned on what success looks like. You gotta be aligned on what winning looks like. You gotta be aligned on what the leading indicators of success are. So like, you know, you're headed in the right direction. And so I just think a lot of this accountability stuff, it comes down to building that trust so that you can have these, you know, deeper business conversations about growth and how you're going to service these things.

And, and too many firms, it's like too siloed, right? You've got, like, you got your marketing consultant over here, you got your operations consultant over here, they never talk to each other. Uh, there's, there's no quarterback who's like, this is where we're trying to head from a, uh, a growth perspective. And, and, you know, growth isn't talking to operations. And so operations is like, we're slammed. We don't have capacity to do this. They tell marketing to turn it off. Um, like to avoid those situations, you've gotta have these, uh, conversations. You've gotta be transparent about it and you've gotta have alignment. Uh, and, and it's not just a one meeting once a month or once a quarter or once a year. It's like every day, like how are you institutionalizing and socializing what your, uh, growth objectives are, you know, what your core values are so that people are getting more consistent experience throughout all the way from, uh, exposure to marketing message all the way through retention.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, who should be involved in those conversations though?

Yeah, it's, it's varies right? From firm to firm. But, um, you know, I I, I think as a general proposition, I think it's just more, you know, if you've gotten to a point where you have a leadership team, like obviously the leadership team of your organization, your, your law firm, uh, should be involved in that. Um, if you don't, though, again, I'm, I'm, I'm, I think the, the biggest takeaway from this part of the conversation is to be overly inclusive. You know, if you get to a point where you're like, you know, set the point, I think we start getting like nine, 10 people in a room, uh, it becomes more problematic. But like at the beginning stage, the more inclusive you are in terms of like, this is where, you know, and we use, we run an e os too, but here are our scorecard metrics.

We're we're talking about those things. Here's the plan to try to hit those scorecard metrics. Some of those scorecard metrics relate to growth. Some of them, uh, relate to operations, you know, it might be client satisfaction scores and things like that. Back to this idea of feedback loops, but these are the metrics that we're managing too. And then, um, you know, but for holding people accountable for their individual function. So if you're the head of marketing, you've got marketing scorecard metrics that you're accountable for if you're operations, you've got client service delivery metrics that you're accountable for and certainly the leadership team. But that really should, in my opinion, that should be institutionalized all the way down through the organization, all the way down to whatever, uh, functions, um, that are executing on the firm's behalf.

Mm-hmm

<affirmative>. And partner and partners,

Which operational signal proves the firm is becoming less owner dependent.

There are a couple of different things that we get our clients to look for as they start to pull themselves out of that central position. The first is that they just stop being the first person to call. So they're not getting those problem calls anymore. Uh, the, they start to, because because they're not being asked. They're, they realize their team's first instinct is now to work through a problem themselves. So that's a behavioral shift that starts to indicate that owner dependency is, is decreasing. Um, the second is when they do have work that comes back, it's actually in a better shape. So they have, uh, less of a burden on the review side. So one of the things we do get lawyers to look at is this lawyer burden. So when a document comes back or when they're working with somebody who's doing tasks on their behalf that they've delegated, how much of a burden is it to supervise and then check that work.

So we get them to look at that idea of, uh, you know, are you still correcting the same errors? Are those errors no longer existing? Um, how much review time do you have to put in those sorts of things. So that kind of, um, a timing signal. Uh, we also get them to look back. So when at, at the end of 90 days, we say, okay, well let's look back now at your calendar and what your calendar was full of 90 days ago. And then they can start to see that yes, they have shifted the work that they're doing. Our goal is always to get people to be working more in their power zones. So by the end of 90 days, their time is being spent on work that is work that they can uniquely do, not admin or whatever work that they love and work that's adding the most value, paying the most value to the firm.

So we like them to do that calendar comparison. And then really we look at, can you take a vacation? Like these are really basic sort of behavioral things, but can you take a vacation? Would you leave the firm for a week or two and know that everything was going to be handled? Or do you have to be on your phone every single day? Do you have to be making the decisions for your practice? Um, and that vacation test is, is is like an eyeopener for people and it's also an incredible sense of relief when they know they can actually walk away from the firm and things will happen without them and it will not be a catastrophe.

And just know that's not happening day one.

No. And it absolutely no, that takes that. You're absolutely right. That takes time. They've gotta build a lot of systems and trust, like he was talking about trust. You have to trust your team. That trust goes not just in, not just externally to your clients, but you have to trust your team. So the first time that you take a few days away from the office, you've gotta be testing and checking,

Right? And it's trust, but verify to quote or exactly. Former president because you know, look, I I just heard a horror story of somebody who left, you know, who became too hands off and the, it was a revolt and the firm fell apart. So it's a balance. Just set it and forget it that you can be an independent owner. I'll throw my, my, you know, of all that stuff, gee was talking sort of academically brilliantly about, about that relationship with the marketing and, and, and firm and you're, you're talking about these pieces. I would say one of the things that I've changed my thinking on of all the pieces that has taken that, you know, look, intake no secret, but getting intake to speak to marketing is one thing that I think is very underrated. It may not be the first day, but figuring out how to tie intake into marketing.

Somebody's spending a lot of time on recently and have seen huge dividends from both, from the SEO provider, giving them a feedback loop, especially if you're doing paid search and keeping your own people accountable as far as what's coming in. Is it stuff that you want making changes and figuring things out. So that's, that's my current sort of leave leaving people as sort of a final thought for me on, you know, that the, the tie-in of those departments I think is one of those areas that people are starting to focus on. It pays huge dividends.

Uh, Seth, one final question for you. What checklists should leaders use before expanding into a new market role or practice area?

That's a great question. I don't know. There's a checklist in the sense that you're looking for opportunity, whether it's expanding geographically, which I'm a huge proponent of that local search, that moving geography can, given how Google search works and has continued to expand that local search is so important. So that geography is a no-brainer and is something that I'm really passionate about. As far as other practice areas, double-edged sword, I think you have to be very careful. I was very liberal in moving into multiple areas. I think in hindsight, the tort law in my ca in my jurisdictions was particularly bad. So that other areas were particularly good comparatively, but that if you go to too many things too quickly, that can be a, that can be a challenge as well. So I don't know that there, i I think it's one of those areas that when it comes to the local expansion, just to sort of give you a finite takeaway, it is a combination of figuring out, like, I think of the Booker movie Moneyball, um, which is how do you get like a, a really great ball player for a really fair price?

And so that, as you think and look about a, uh, geographic expansion, thinking about markets that have, that may not be the marquee name market, but where is there the most population with the least competition? So that's something at Blue Shark that we, you know, really focus on and work with our clients or prospective clients to figure out what are those smart growth places where you're not just wasting money, not where you can cost effectively get cases rather than spending money that might have a multi-year approach to getting those cases.

As AI changes how clients discover law firms, what should firms prioritize first? Brand authority, client reviews or operational excellence? Uh, gee, maybe we could start with you on that.

Yeah, I'm gonna start with operational excellence again, but, um, I would say I think one of the beyond operations, when you get the operations part locked down, I think we've really hit that hard, which I think is appropriate. But beyond that, I think one of the biggest things that I see as a mistake is people, everybody's so short term thinking and so they're like, I need clients tomorrow. I need leads now. I need people calling now. And I get that. I'm sympathetic to it, but I would say, uh, you know, whether you wanna do use 80 20, I don't know what the right mix is for you until you like, do a deep dive on your business. But, um, I would be investing in both short-term and long-term, uh, strategies, uh, concurrently, don't wait on brand. I mean, especially right now, the cost per acquisition for clients across the board in the non-brand direct response space is continuing to go through the roof. I don't care what platform it is, we're gonna expect to see that gonna happen. It's, it's certainly happening in personal injury, but it's gonna happen in, uh, more practice areas. And so I would tell folks, do not sleep on brand building. Do not delay it. And people will say, and I'll let Seth jump in here, people will say, well, brand building takes so long and I get it. It's gotta be a mix. It's finding out the right mix that works for your practice

Re really hot topic right now. Um, and it's frustrating 'cause as a law firm owner, you know, I I I don't disagree with anything gee said, right? The the cost of of of search non-branded search going way up. And so it's a mix, but the cost of brand is also going up. So it's not like there's an easy free lunch there. And I, it, it gets, it's very frustrating. I'll tell a story, gee, and I have known each other for a long time and I know when I started Blue Shark, if we went to a conference and spoke and nobody signed up for our services, I would say, I wouldn't say this. My my assistant who was, who was there would say, oh, it's good brand, and she's not wrong, but brand doesn't pay the bills. And that, that's sort of the back and forth.

So Gee is sitting here as a jd, but he's sitting here as, as, as a, as a, as a digital marketing guru. And it's true. And if you don't have brand, you are gonna, it's, there's gonna be problems. But the, the answer of doing it, so there's, this is one of those super complex pieces because you could piss away all your money on brand and never really get anywhere versus if you stay with the, and the cost of your cases is rising. So figure I wish I, there's this could be a 10 hour discussion on how to figure that out, and I still am in the mix of it. As a law firm owner, how do you balance that? Not, there's no easy answer there, Ricky. Yeah,

That's right. And I would just say the, the answers of yours was, uh, you, it was baked into what you said is, is that if it works economically for you, do it. Um, I think the, the challenge is that so many firms, they, they get into one, they don't even have the, the systems of accountability, the systems of attribution in place to actually hold marketing investments accountable, data, infrastructure, data integrity. That's, that's a big one. I think firms are coming a long way on that. Uh, but there is no right answer for every firm. I mean, the economics of firms vary. They vary based on a whole variety of factors. And finding that right mix is very difficult. But I'm with Seth. I, I think that, um, you know, if you find something that works, whether, if it's, if, if Google ads works for you, do it. Yeah. Don't, don't turn it off, but make sure you understand that it's working for you and, and you're not measuring it on some kind of weird vanity metrics that your agency pitched you on.

Yeah, I agree. And I would just, just second what you said at the beginning, which is really the problem with all of this is that if your operational excellence isn't there, if you can't service all those clients coming in, the bad reviews are what's gonna kill you

For more insights from industry, uh, leaders. Now, I know we're a little cramped up with time, but I really, really want to know, um, maybe a, maybe a final takeaway that our attendees can leave with today. Maybe Karen, we could start with you and then we'll go to GUI and, uh, finish off with Seth.

I think if you're trying to move out from the position of feeling like you're trapped in your practice, you need to figure out what it is you really wanna do. So I would say figure out what is in your power zone, right? The work you're uniquely qualified to do, the work you love, the work that adds the most value that you can add to your business, and focus on that and delegate the rest as much as you can. Can't delegate everything, but as much as you can focus on your power zone and move out of the rest.

Yeah, and I would, I, I would just, I'd think about, I'm, I'm huge. I'm a numbers person, metrics person. I would get those metrics in place. I'd get the systems of accountability in place so that when you do delegate, you know how to hold people accountable for achieving that success metric. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, and whoever you're talking to, whether you're looking to make an in-house hire, you're work, you're shopping for a digital marketing agency partner, ask those questions about transparency and accountability as they relate to your business metrics and what success looks like. Not in terms of just like these proxy visibility metrics or vanity metrics like follower accounts and things like that. Focus on how these people are gonna be accountable for driving the value for your firm.

Well, that was so eloquent. Very, very hard to follow that. But I, I'm gonna be much more simplistic since gee gave us the, the, the, the right final answer. But I would say, you know, based on that last question, given how AI is coming into marketing, given everything we talked about as far as how hard it's to get operational excellence, don't sleep on reviews. Make sure that as you're building and growing that that's not an afterthought, but it's a current thought, whether it's through intake, whether it's through people on your team, that those are some of the things that will help you navigate as AI comes in as trust factors that hopefully show that the operational excellence that we talked about today does come through, and that you use that as a feedback loop if it's not.

And that brings us to the end of a really valuable conversation. A huge thank you to Karen Skinner, Seth Price and Zaki for the wisdom they brought to today's episode from Karen's warning that most firm owners have built a job they cannot quit. To Seth's push to hire a non-lawyer administrator before anything else scales to GIS insistence that no marketing budget can rescue a broken operational foundation. This was a masterclass in growing without becoming trapped. The line I keep coming back to is gi do not pour gasoline on your marketing until your operational service delivery infrastructure is in place. That is the order. Build a firm, then scale the pipeline. The firms that skip step one end up burning through leads, generating bad reviews, and losing the trust they were trying to earn. And that is exactly where our sponsor qua marketing comes in. Because once your operations are ready, the right marketing engine is what turns that readiness into real growth. Qua builds the visibility, positioning, and intake systems that make sure the right clients find you and trust you. They're offering a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900 with a full online audit and a custom growth roadmap. Book it at www.dominantlaw.com/msm. If this conversation was useful, share it with one firm owner who needs to hear it and follow the Dominate Law Podcast. So the next episode lands right in your feed. I'm your host, Angie. Build a firm, then scale the growth. We'll see you in the next episode.