Is it odd to always feel like yourself? Absolutely not. While many people do not like the word selling, it is time to reframe our conversation around the word “selling”. I want you to think about this as a purely loving act, something that you’re doing for another person. This is going to be the way in which we make money and opportunity moves. You are selling your value to someone who desperately needs it – so sell it to them!
In this episode we discuss:
- Living in a state of selling.
- Sales as a very powerful part of the way that human beings exchange value for themselves.
- The reality that your employees don’t have the same incentive that you do for selling.
- Strategies around shifting yourself and your organization into a perpetual sales organization.
- How benefits from generating new business are more than just sales
SEE THE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW
Allison Williams: [00:00:05] Hi, everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your host of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you to grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.
Allison Williams: [00:00:29] We’re going to be talking about why you should always be legal selling. Now I know when I use the s word, a lot of people get triggered. A lot of thoughts come to mind. People do not like the word selling, and I’m going to continue to use it even though you don’t like it, because I want to reframe our conversation around the word selling. And so when we talk about selling, I want you to think about this as a purely loving act, something that you’re doing for another person. This is going to be the way in which we make money and opportunity moves. Ok, let’s think about selling from that perspective because if we think about how our lives have been advanced, right? For, for those of you that are listening to this podcast, you are most likely a lawyer and you most likely either already own a law firm that you desire to do something more with or you are contemplating owning a law firm. And so if we just think about who we are as lawyers and how we function in this society, what our professional role is, we have to recognize that selling has already played a major part in our being able to advance the world in a way that we use our profession.
Allison Williams: [00:01:46] So I want you to think about that, right? For, for each of you, if you are a practicing attorney, you had to be sold a legal education and prior to that, you had to be sold an education from an undergraduate university. Now I’m sure there are some of you that have gone through what we kind of refer to as the minibar or the baby bar out in California, where you can ultimately take on an extended, very in-depth apprenticeship and personalized study of law. But you ultimately still had to at some point go through the process of buying into quote-unquote, that process. And then you had to take the test. You had to secure the books. You had to do everything that was necessary to get that information into you, which means you had to be sold on the premise that you were going to take in this information, have to at some point demonstrate that you had that knowledge and ability, and then ultimately use that knowledge to secure yourself the right to practice law. And when you think about that, when you just think about the fact that there was an exchange there, there was an exchange of value, right?
Allison Williams: [00:02:59] Now, we have had a whole lot of conversation in our society about the economic value of an education and whether or not lawyers have been mistreated, not just lawyers, but really anyone who has, has had to use student loans in order to finance their education, whether or not they were taken advantage of. Because the, the debt that accumulates the perpetual compounding of interest on those loans is considered onerous by many people. And this is not a conversation about that, right? So put aside for the moment whether or not it was too much or it should be less or it should be forgiven all of those things. And let’s just focus on the fact that at some point you bought into the idea that you were going to get something of value on the other side of taking that debt that was going to be of greater value to you then being debt-free? Right? In other words, but for the fact that you were open to the idea that there was something better on the other side of the transaction, you would not have been willing to go into the transaction. And that’s true for every form of sale. Right? When you bought your house, right? For those of you that own real estate, at some point, you had to make the decision to either part with a lot of cash or to take on a mortgage, which was debt over an extended period of time. You had to be willing to give that, give the previous state of being debt-free, give the previous state of having hundreds of thousands of dollars of money in a bank account. You had to give that over in exchange for what you consider to be something of greater value. Which is your house, right? Whether it was just the beauty of being able to home house your, your family in a particular home, or even the economic benefit of being able to put money into an asset that would appreciate whatever your decision-making process was, there was something that you saw that was of greater value for whatever you were willing to exchange for that value. And that’s really what a sale is and that happens, all day, every day, right? We’re in a state of selling when we go to a grocery store, right, we exchange the money in our pocket for whatever the goods that are goods are that we’re going to ultimately walk out of the store with.
Allison Williams: [00:05:18] You know, when we are entering into relationships, right? Whether it’s a friendship or a spousal relationship, you ultimately exchange your willingness to give over certain behaviors, certain times, certain benefits that you give to another person in exchange to get back from them whatever those benefits are, that you would perceive that you’re going to receive for that relationship. If you didn’t see it that way, if you didn’t see that you were going to get something of greater value for what you were giving, you wouldn’t ultimately be willing to do it.
Allison Williams: [00:05:51] Now I want to press pause right there for a moment because I know some of you hear that and think, well, that may be true, but I think I get, I think I give the greater bargain in my relationship, right. I, I give more to my partner than my partner gets to me, and many people are in what we might refer to as lopsided relationships in that regard. But even then, right, even if you just like your reduce your, your analytical frame down to the core right, there is still a truth that even if you are giving more of your tangible benefits to another person, right, you might be doing more of the domestic labor or more of the work with the kids. Or you might earn more money and contribute more money to the household, right? Whatever you think of as more that you’re giving over to your partner, you are still exchanging what you are giving for what that person is giving. And if you did not perceive that whatever you were getting from your partner was not of greater value than what you’re giving, you would exit the relationship. And that is always the case, right? So even when you perceive that you are giving far more whatever it is that you are getting perceived or actual is of greater value to you or else you would not be willing to entertain it. And that is also considering the feeling that you get in giving to another person. Right.
Allison Williams: [00:07:12] So there are times where we exchange in a transaction and we perceive that we gave more than what we got. If we’re just looking at dollars and cents right, or we’re just looking at brass tacks, right? I gave X, Y, and Z to get a B and C, we might perceive that X, Y, and Z is a far greater value to the other person than the A, B, and C that we got. But if that were really true, if it was really true that we were giving a lot more than what we were getting, we would either demand to get more because we don’t feel that it’s a fair bargain or there is some intangible that’s wrapped up in that transaction that the, the value that we’re getting from the other side is not just the brass tacks, whatever they’re giving us, it’s also the feeling that we get from receiving it. So that could be in an exchange where you think you have written out the most generous offer of employment to a potential new hire possible. You might say I’m giving over the world to this person and I’m only getting X. But the reality is, you aren’t just getting X, you’re getting the relief from whatever the problem is that you are willing to solve by virtue of making this transaction.
Allison Williams: [00:08:25] Now, when you think about sales, from that perspective, sales actually is a very, very powerful part of the way that human beings exchange value for themselves, right? Human beings need other human beings in order to have the fullest life possible. So when you think about that, you have an enormous, an enormous benefit, available to you when you are in a business because you get to enter into transactions and sales, if you want to think about it that way all the time and when you’re entering into sales all the time, you get to be adding more to your proverbial plate by virtue of exchanging value to other people.
Allison Williams: [00:09:10] Now, I wanted to give us that little opening frame to this topic of always be legal selling, because what I want to talk to you about today really, really dovetails off of that. And it really is the idea that part of the reason why so many lawyers struggle with not having enough, not consistently making enough money, and being in a state of kind of scatter, if you will, around having to go chase money when they have a shortfall is because they are not in a state of perpetual selling, right? There’s almost like a, I sell for a while and then great, I get to stop doing that and then I get to come over here and do what I really love, which is, which is serving my clients. And then, Oh crap, I’m running out of clients, so I’m going to go market some more and then, Oh, I have to sell some more. All right, fine. We got through that next cycle of selling, and now I get to go back over here to do the thing I really want to do, which is lawyer and serve my clients. And the problem is that as a business owner until you fall in love with selling to the point where it is innate, natural, healthy, valuable, enjoyable to you, you’re never going to get to a place where your business is going to be in perpetual sales mode. Ok. And by the way, this is true even if you ultimately do choose to outsource having your sales done by another person. Because if you think about it, even though you might hire the best salesperson in the world, that person could choose to leave your company that chooses, that person does not own the company, so the person does not have the same connection to the necessity of selling as you do. Maybe their compensation, to some degree, is tied to selling. So maybe that person sees, Hey, I got to sell more in order to make more. Right? So the person might have an extrinsic benefit associated with selling. But even so, like once you get to a certain level of income, assuming that your person is not climbing the perpetual hill of selling once you get them up to a certain level of success in selling, they know that they’re reasonably going to acclimate to a certain lifestyle because that’s what they have consistently been able to produce an income.
Allison Williams: [00:11:21] So how do you keep it growing, right? How do you keep pushing? How do you get them to that next level of growth and goal? And that’s another conversation for a different podcast. But for today, I just want you to think about the idea that you know, your employees don’t have the same incentive that you do, it’s not their company. And so it is imperative that you, as the business owner, always have that urgency around the idea of always selling and that you imbue that into your team so that when we talk about how we can not just grow a company, but how we can sustain a company and ultimately how we can scale a company, we get those attributes growing and growing in our company by virtue of having the right mindset. And it really is a shift of mindset. This is not something that you, you just wake up one day and say, Yep, I’m going to be selling twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because if you don’t like it, you’re not likely to commit to that and be consistent in it, even if you understand the value of it.
Allison Williams: [00:12:23] So what I want to do today is, I really want to frame the value of it for you and then give you some strategies around how you can shift yourself and your organization into a perpetual sales organization. Ok?
Allison Williams: [00:12:37] So the first thing I want you to think about when we talk about sales and to always be legal selling is I want you to recognize that sales is not just a benefit that comes with generating new business. Ok. When you think about sales, most people are thinking, Hey, new person, new opportunity to sell that personal legal service, right? That’s what comes to mind. But sales is not just something that is done to new people. It is something that is done for every person that you encounter and that includes your existing clients. So when you think about selling from the perspective of your existing clients, I want you to be thinking about ways that you can expand the pie to give more value to your clients for which you can charge more money. Now, this does not mean this is absolutely not an invitation for you to be unethical or for you to find a way to build somebody something just so you can make some money, right? Because again, if we go back to the conversation we started with today, which is about sales being exchange of value, the exchange of value implies that there is a value that you’re going to ultimately deliver in exchange for money that you’re going to generate for your, for your business. And that requires that whatever it is that you’re offering to a person, that you be ethically entitled to offer it and that you be entitled to seek additional compensation for it.
Allison Williams: [00:14:06] So it’s very important that we get out of our mind the idea of breathing on file, right once upon a time, you know, there was a, I can’t remember who, who, who said this, but it was, interestingly enough, at a legal conference I attended where someone said, you know, always be billing was kind of the mindset of the law firm where she worked. That’s why she didn’t work there anymore. And, and when we asked the question, Well, what does always be billing mean in terms of just every time you sit down, you should, you know, be billing the file, but that doesn’t seem problematic. She said, no, no, no. There was breathing for billing or billing for breathing, right? If you’re breathing in the vicinity of the file, you should be billing somewhere. And you know, obviously, that doesn’t comport with my values or, or frankly, the rules of professional conduct in any jurisdiction that I’m aware of. So we don’t want that to be kind of the default that people go to when we think about how to always be selling because by the way, always be selling does not just apply to our billers, it also applies to flat fee billers, subscription billers, contingency billers. Your goal is to always be in a perpetual state of seeking value to offer to your clients so that you can exchange resources for that value.
Allison Williams: [00:15:22] Right? And when someone is getting what they want and when you are in integrity and offering that thing that they want, presumably they recognize and would be willing to exchange resources for that, right? But that requires that you get into an energy when you get into a state of always be offering to give more value and always be seeking additional compensation for that value. That is where a lot of us have the problem, right? We recognize that there’s additional value to be had, but we don’t communicate about that value to our clients. So they don’t even recognize that what they’re offered is something that’s not included. Something that’s not mandatory, something that is not a part of what they’ve already paid for, and they also don’t recognize that it is something that intrinsically adds greater value to their life, to their legal matter, such that they should be paying something extra for it. And if you don’t learn how to get into a state of having this continual conversation with your existing clients and with new prospects who come into your business, what tends to happen is the only time that you are really trying to make a sale is when you are in need of money. And the problem with that is that the energy transfer that comes when you’re in a state of trying to get money from someone instead of trying to deliver value to someone tends to inhibit people from making a sale. It tends to throw the wall up, it tends to shut people down, it tends to get people into a state of saying, I don’t want this even when intellectually they do want it, they energetically don’t want it because they feel like you are violating them by trying to take something from them, right? That taking energy, that feeling that someone is trying to take something away from you is something that you will naturally convey when you are in a state of desperation financially and you are out seeking to make a sale. So we want to shift our mindset before we get to that state so that when and if money goes up and down in the business as it always will, we will be in a state of I’m not seeking more than I’ve always thought, right? Because I’m in a persistent state of always seeking more money in my business. And the money comes into my business regularly, consistently on a schedule consistent with the rhythm that I’ve created for sales in my business and whether I have more or less money in the bank is not going to change that right. So in other words, it becomes a constant. It’s always there. It doesn’t have to ultimately stop you from getting what you want. All right. We’re going to take a real quick break here, and I’ll be back in just a moment.
Allison Williams: [00:18:21] I bet when you decided to become a lawyer, you weren’t envisioning the life that you’re leading right now, a life where you have too much work, too little income and time, and no plan for how this can ever change. What if I told you that the life you dreamed of is possible? And no, it’s not by working even harder or even longer for years on end. That lifestyle can start right now with Law Firm Mentor at your side.
Sylvia Breitowich: [00:18:44] I’m Sylvia Breitowich. I’m the owner of the Bright Orange Law firm located in Wall Township, New Jersey. I’ve never had such an amazing, supportive group of men and women entrepreneurs who really want you to excel and will also go the extra mile to help you do that. So it’s a really great dynamic and it’s just an awesome, awesome program, and the people that we work with are really, really great.
Allison Williams: [00:19:07] Learn about our B.A.D.A.S.S., MOMENTUM and MASTERMIND programs and discover what it would be like to work with a coach that pays special attention to your needs and provides tailored solutions to your individual situation. Text Connect to: Nine, zero, eight, two, nine, two, three, five, two, four. Again, that’s nine, zero, eight, two, nine, two, three, five, two, four, and one of our growth strategies will be in touch.
Allison Williams: [00:19:40] All right, we’re back, so I want to continue this discussion about always being legal selling by now, talking a little bit about the idea of selling to our existing clients. So again, we talked earlier today about this idea that when you are selling, what you are doing is you are exchanging value, right? You are offering value and you are receiving money in exchange for that value. Now you might be saying I’ve already sold the service to my client and I sold them the scope of all that is necessary. I don’t have anything else to sell them, so that could be something that’s broken in the way that you are actually delivering your service.
Allison Williams: [00:20:20] So I want to talk about it in a couple of different contexts. We’re going to talk about both hourly billers and flat fee billers, and I want you to think about it from the perspective of what is it that I have truly sold my client already? Because you can have times where you sold, you sold them a service, right? The service could include any and all things necessary. Now it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit clearer if you are an hourly biller because you can extend your hours, right, you can offer more hours. But even then, as soon as I say that a lot of people will get pushback back and they’ll say, Hey, wait a minute, you know, I don’t want to have to like, go goosing my client to make more money. And a lot of that comes from this distortion that’s out in the marketplace. This, this theory that lawyers that bill by the hour are apparently unethical, and they’re always out, just trying to chase dollars and cents. And there’s something here wrong with that, and obviously, I disagree with that kind of the zealots that are out there in the world that have now demonized the billable hour. You know, the reality is any billing model can be exploited in order to take care of clients in order to cheat your clients. If you are a person that’s going to exploit and cheat, you’re going to exploit and cheat no matter what system you choose. But I do want to allay the concerns of people that may have started to have a little bit of that seep into their minds that they’re somehow doing something wrong. Because I want you to think about this from the perspective, not just of I’m billing more, but you are doing more.
Allison Williams: [00:21:53] Now, for those of you that are already overworked and underpaid, the idea of doing more is probably really offensive. So I want you to think about it this way. The more that you do, the more opportunities for growth that you create. Right? Because doing more does not mean that you personally have to do more. It means that more work has to be done. It just has to be done by someone in your business. And the beautiful thing about that is that that gives you a golden opportunity to create more jobs so that more people can be delivering value in exchange for whatever remuneration you are charging to a client.
Allison Williams: [00:22:34] I remember many, many years ago, this is back at the start of my career. I was maybe three years into practice and I joined a new law firm. And I remember the conversation that I had with one of the partners and they said, You know, we, it was a larger firm at the time I got there I was lawyering, twenty-six and when I left four years later, I was a lawyer, forty-six. So the firm was a rapid growth law firm. And I remember when we had this conversation, I was told about kind of the, the pragmatics and priorities of larger firms and how there’s a very political process as to who gets the next associate. And my thought was, well, if you have the work and there’s more than enough work to feed another associate, why does it have to be a choice between one versus the other? And that was a bigger conversation than I was entitled to have at that stage of my career. So ultimately, I was told that’s just the way it works. Ok, so we’re having this discussion and I said, All right, well, when I was hired, there was another associate here and now that person is no longer here. So that would seem to be that there is a shortfall. And they said there is, but not as big as we would have thought. In other words, you’re so efficient we’ve been able to take what would have been two client loads worth of work for our associates and give a load and a half of it to you and then the balance of it has been spread between myself and the other several attorneys in the department. So initially, I was flattered, right, I was thinking, Oh, OK, well, great, I’m really cranking it out here. But then I realized what was also happening was I wasn’t just efficient, I was producing more. So what ended up having to happen, right? I was when I say I was producing more. That meant that if out of 50 clients, I had to build two thousand hours a year, that two thousand hours could easily expand to 3000 hours. If I did everything on the file that I felt could be done and should be done. And part of the reason why I lived in a constant state of chaos was because I was constantly inviting more work from the work that I was receiving. So every time I touched a file, I wasn’t just getting through today’s activity and saying, Oh OK, great, I responded to that email. We’re done with the file for the day, right? It was, I responded to that email with an inquiry of what the next step in the process would be for my adversary or from my client or from my expert or whoever it was. And so there was always the invitation for the next piece of work to come in. So I never got to a state where I could say, Oh, I’m quote caught up, right? There’s always more work to do.
Allison Williams: [00:25:23] And once upon a time, I thought that this was just kind of the way you lawyer, right? I, I had certainly been trained by the first group of lawyers that I work with, and certainly in the second larger law firm that I went to. And I had worked for very good lawyers. And so I thought, OK, well, this is the way that good lawyering is done right. Every time you finish something, you invite something else, and that’s not necessarily the case. And a lot of lawyers, what they do, especially when they did not have the benefit of working for a law firm before they started their own firms. Or they have the benefit of working for a law firm, but maybe they were kind of just dumped in a corner and told here, here are some files you go figure it out or look at our forms or see me when you need me or whatever. What they got was do the work that I’m giving to you and then when more work shows up, meaning when somebody else files a motion, when the client calls with a concern, when the discovery deadline is upon us, you then have something else to do. And if you have enough work, then that method gets you satiated, right? It meets the number of required billable hours to meet your financial targets. You’re fine. The challenge with that, of course, is that you’re never truly in control of how much work you have. You’re never producing more work. The work is coming to you. It’s a very reactionary way of lawyering.
Allison Williams: [00:26:47] And a lot of people believe that this is the best way to lawyer because we have had so many negative messages out there about our lawyers are the problem, and lawyers charge so much money, and lawyers are so expensive. And yeah, yeah, yeah. So people now have it baked into their mind. My goal is to do as little as possible so that I can keep my clients bill as low as possible when I’m working on them. And there’s a further incentive to do that when you have a flat fee file, because if you charge a flat five thousand for some legal service and the scope of service was everything from start to finish. And every time you touch the file, if you were to invite additional work, then you’re ultimately going to receive a lot less compensation for your time. Then you otherwise could have if you had just done the minimum in order to spend less time for file, right? Because the goal would be to do as little as possible in the flat fee model so that the amount of money that you charge ultimately gives you some economies of scale. And for a lot of people, this mindset ultimately is what drives the train. In other words, I get the work in, I do as little as possible and when I say as little as possible, I’m not trying to impugn anyone to suggest that you’re not doing what’s minimally required in order to ethically advance your clients. But it’s more than you do what’s necessary in order to get through the work, instead of doing what is necessary in this moment in order to get to the next invitation of more work. Right? The invitation of more work is a form of selling. Right? It is a form of saying to your client, there’s going to be more exchange of value. And if you are the leader, you are the person to whom your client has turned themselves over. You have the greatest opportunity of influence to give them more value because you can tell them what is necessary value that is going to enhance their life. That’s going to get them a greater likelihood of success. That’s going to get them to a greater outcome. And you can do that in a way that serves your client and contemporaneously serves your business interests. Instead of billing to breathe on file, which only served you or working like a slave and not charging additional compensation, which only serves your client, right? For there to be a true sale for there to be a true exchange of value, you both have to be getting something out of it. And if you lead from a place of service to your client and you’re always looking to have them get more out of whatever it is, the work that you are doing that is where you start to expand the pie naturally, right? That is where you are inviting more into your world. That is where you are inviting more economic value.
Allison Williams: [00:29:34] The last thing that I want to say about this is that when you are in a state of always selling what happens with your clients is that you’re not just selling to them when you are delivering more legal services and you’re not just selling to them at the inception of the relationship when you sell them the legal service in the first place. You’re also going to always be selling to them when you’re collecting right. Collecting is a form of selling because even though you think, OK, the sale already happened, right? We agreed you signed it. You signed a retainer agreement, you put down some money and now the next series of payments is due or the first bill after you’ve run out of retainer or if you have an evergreen retainer, it’s time to replenish. However, you have structured your fees.
Allison Williams: [00:30:20] Ultimately, at some point, more is going to be sought, and that collection process is also a sales process. So you might say, well, do I really have to sell there because the person’s already sold because they have a contract? Well, but the reality is you still have to be selling to people to get them to honor their contracts. And one of the things that is happening in our world right now. I don’t want to say that this is a cataclysmic shift. I don’t want to catastrophize the problem, but there is kind of a mindset that people have of life is short and I survived COVID, right? I survived quarantine, I survived the business impact of that. So if I happen not to honor this contract, what’s the worst that can happen? And I think that even though I think there were a lot of safeguards put in place by our government. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, I think Democrats, Republicans, and independents all benefited from the PPP loans and the ways in which we were ultimately putting some stopgaps in place so people wouldn’t immediately be evicted if they couldn’t make their rent and the landlords obviously had some negative consequences with that, but everything was done in a way that kind of put some duct tape on our economy while we were first going through quarantine and related issues. And so when you think about how people experienced life before, there was a very onerous kind of hatchet that was hanging over their head if they did not comply. Now, because of certain changes, whether you’re pro or opposed to the changes, the changes happened, right? And a lot of safety precautions and a lot of protections were kind of engrafted. Ad hoc onto our economy and into our society, and so those changes now gave people somewhat of a different frame. Now, that doesn’t mean that I think all of a sudden, no one is honoring contracts anymore. People are still getting sued for not complying with contracts and for a lot of people that fear that threat is enough to have them say, I’ll honor the contract. But here’s the thing even if your client out of fear of being sued, honors your contract, that’s still not the best-case scenario, right? Best-case scenario is your client would actually be happy to pay your bill because at the end of the day, you want your client who’s not just happy that they hired you in the first instance, but you want them even when they have to part with money that they would like to do something else with. You want them to get tapped back into the value that you’re adding to their lives by virtue of whatever it is that you’re collecting money for so that they have a positive experience of you and your firm when they leave your firm. They’re more likely to give referrals to people in the future who have similar problems, they’re more likely to leave positive online reviews, and they’re more likely to leave your relationship knowing that if something else of a similar or within your wheelhouse, nature shows up in the future, that you’re the resource to help them, right? So that salesmanship, that sales process of always be legal selling to your client is very much about continuing to tap them into what is good about your relationship. The ways that benefited them and the ways that you are going to continue to add value to their life so that when they see that, when they experience that, they recognize, oh yes, this is a positive thing.
Allison Williams: [00:33:55] And when you start to live in the authenticity of that all day, every day when you are always selling, when you have an energy, if I am always looking to give more value and I always expect to be compensated for that value when that exchange of value for compensation happens and it’s a part of the way you see the world, then when you are having a moment where funds are light, where maybe some people are backed up on payments, or maybe you’re not having the same lead flow coming into your office, or maybe your conversion rate has dropped for whatever reason, as you are problem-solving and addressing those issues, the salesmanship continues, and it doesn’t feel like you’re suddenly out on the take to take from someone. You’re actually in a state of doing what you always do, which is give value in exchange for compensation in your law firm.
Allison Williams: [00:34:45] All right, everyone. I’m Allison William your Law Firm Mentor. We have wrapped up today’s episode of the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast, where we talk about always being legal selling. If you need help with this in the future, you can always reach out to us here at Law Firm Mentor. We’re happy to help. I’m Allison Williams your Law Firm Mentor, everyone, I’ll see you next week.
Allison Williams: [00:35:11] Thank you for tuning in to The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast to learn more about today’s show and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you enjoy today’s episode, take a moment to follow the podcast wherever you get your podcast and leave us a rating and review. This helps us to reach even more law firm owners from around the country who want to crush chaos in business and make more money. I’m Allison Williams your Law Firm Mentor, everyone. Have a great day!
Allison Bio:
Allison C. Williams, Esq., is the Founder and Owner of the Williams Law Group, LLC, with offices in Short Hills and Freehold, New Jersey. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Matrimonial Law Attorney, and is the first attorney in New Jersey to become Board-Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in the field of Family Law.
Ms. Williams is an accomplished businesswoman. In 2017, the Williams Law Group won the LawFirm500 award, ranking 14th of the fastest-growing law firms in the nation, as Ms. Williams grew the firm by 581% in three years. Ms. Williams won the Silver Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017. In 2018, Ms. Williams was voted as NJBIZ’s Top 50 Women in Business and was designated one of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. In 2019, Ms. Williams won the Seminole 100 Award for founding one of the fastest-growing companies among graduates of Florida State University.
In 2018, Ms. Williams created Law Firm Mentor, a business coaching service for lawyers. She helps solo and small law firm attorneys grow their business revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money. Through multi-day intensive business retreats, group and one-to-one coaching, and strategic planning sessions, Ms. Williams advises lawyers on all aspects of creating, sustaining, and scaling a law firm business – and specifically, she teaches them the core foundational principles of marketing, sales, personnel management, communications, and money management in law firms.
Contact Info:
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My favorite excerpts from the episode:
TIME: 00:14:16 (36 Seconds)
At a legal conference I attended where someone said, you know, always be billing was kind of the mindset of the law firm where she worked. That’s why she didn’t work there anymore. And, and when we asked the question, Well, what does always be billing mean in terms of just every time you sit down, you should, you know, be billing the file, but that doesn’t seem problematic. She said, no, no, no. There was breathing for billing or billing for breathing, right? If you’re breathing in the vicinity of the file, you should be billing somewhere. If you’re breathing in the vicinity of the file, you should be billing somewhere. And you know, obviously, that doesn’t comport with my values or, or frankly, the rules of professional conduct in any jurisdiction that I’m aware of.