Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Fireside Q&A: How To Find Your Second in Command
Our latest episode peels back the layers of complexity that come with steering a law firm to success. We delve into the Great Legal Marketing Summit's Q&A, unearthing the challenges lawyers face when juggling visionary ideas with practical execution. Discover how to streamline the collaborative efforts of family members who work together, and learn why clear definitions of roles and responsibilities are crucial. If you're seeking to foster open communication and master conflict resolution in your professional and personal spheres, this episode is laden with real-world wisdom from fellow legal eagles.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Hey guys, welcome into another Friday episode of Life Beyond the Briefs. So today's episode is the Q&A session from the number two talk that I put out last week. So if you're out, hey guys, welcome into another Friday episode of Life Beyond the Briefs. So today's episode is the Q&A session from the number two talk that I put out last week. So, if you're out at the GLM Great League Marketing Summit in Orlando in October, you have already heard this talk, but you didn't, because this was a breakout session and so not everybody would have been in this talk. But this is the Q&A session.
Speaker 1:We do a little bit of discussion from the group about what problems they're having, so that's interesting. If you have not been in one of our summits and you have not been around the Great Legal Marketing Tribe, this is a great episode to kind of get a flavor for the kinds of questions that smart lawyers are asking. And, by the way, if you still don't have your free set of notes from the Great Legal Marketing Summit in 2023, I want to make that offer to you again. If you just go to wwwglmsummitnotescom, trade me your email address, I will give you 186 pages of professionally developed notes from our 25 speakers. Sorry, 25 hours of content across 18 speakers. It's really good stuff Help you grow your practice, help you acquire more clients, help you make more money and, of course, help you spend more time with your friends and your family. So again, wwwglmsummitnotescom.
Speaker 1:And now on to the Q&A. Alright, I promise you we would spend some time on problems that you all have. So who has a problem or an issue or an opportunity that they want to bring up for the group? I can't see names we have. You have throw boxes somewhere. Yeah, okay, can you do me a favor and just pick up? Can you toss that blue box to her?
Speaker 2:I will catch it. Okay. Hi, I'm Faith from here in Orlando and I am the former administrator. My husband is the number one, so we work together in life and in work and it's going very smoothly and it's fine, everything's good, except that I was asking you, because you're related to your number one here, what happens when you we have a lot of things that we agree on and we have a lot of things that our visions are not the same all the time, and so that we're wondering how you handle it in a family relationship and a work relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. So you're really asking two things there, right? Because there's the visionary integrator dynamic, which is one of us cast the vision and one of us helps execute the vision. But you're asking about we have divergent visions. Am I right about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah not totally divergent, but maybe you know 20% of the ideas that he comes up with. I'm kind of like I don't know about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what have you done to memorialize what his vision and what your vision is?
Speaker 2:We do have it all written. We do have it written. We do know just when you have to make some big decisions. A lot of this resonated because it's exactly that. He's the visionary.
Speaker 1:you know, I'm the integrator, so I just wanted to know how you Could you do me a favor and just move that a little bit closer to you? Sorry.
Speaker 2:How you worked past that. How do you get past that when you say, okay, that idea isn't so good?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I don't have a great piece of advice for that. Okay, that's okay. We have been really fortunate to not have to work past too many of those right, because we're really good at identifying what's in my box, what's in your box, both with him and with my wife, who's our HR professional, right, and I view my wife really as my integrator when it comes to my life and when it comes to the firm HR and I go I don't have any opinion on that Like whatever you think is best is good, and so I think maybe for you, the suggestion that I would have is like clearly identifying the roles in there and just being really deliberate. On it's Ed, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ed, this is mine. You're not allowed to have an opinion on that and working around like how do we get there in a way that's not conflict heavy? Is there anybody else that has a suggestion on that? Mike says tough love. Mike. Would you do me a favor? Grab one of those boxes, because we're recording and I-.
Speaker 2:Here you can have this.
Speaker 4:So I was saying, tough love my second in command. We're not blood related but we're like family and she has no problem telling me that idea sucks. And I know that she's demonstrated. She's been right enough times that I know that if I listen to her, things are going to most likely work out. So if she tells me that idea sucks, then I say yeah, okay, probably does, and we move on.
Speaker 2:And you know-.
Speaker 4:Put me in my place. That's hot.
Speaker 3:Jim. Yeah, one quick thought for me. I think about my wife and I like how we deal with conflicts. I don't know if you and your husband have like a good like I think we do well in business to have like meeting rhythms, like what is y'all's marriage rhythm in terms of communication and so is yeah, I just think. I think. I think they're certain, especially if y'all disagree, like when is a safe space to tell him like I don't really disagree with that and it's the end of place where he can receive it well and y'all can Okay.
Speaker 2:We're fine with that. It's like now, what do you do?
Speaker 1:So he has this great idea here and I'm the idea pressure over here and then have you been told or do you refold with his idea? No, no, the integrator is the tiebreaker, okay, so again, you've got to break out. Is it an idea or is it the vision, right, is it? I want to go I want to go travel the world for the next year would be vision. Okay, when we're traveling the world, I want to go to these 75 countries would be execution. And so if it's vision, then I think the visionary gets to create the vision. Now you have to sign off on I'm, I'm with the vision, but the visionary is the one that casts the vision right. If it's execution, that's really your area. You say I don't want to go to those 75 countries, I don't want to travel by train, like whatever. That is right, but does that help? Okay, cool, jim, you had a question.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and then I wasn't trying to shortstop the discussion on her situation, but I'm. I assume we're, we can also have a number two as, like our, not another attorney necessarily, right? Okay, well, you know, I've had a heck of a time trying to find somebody for that role and since I'm not supposed to use recruiters or Advertise on indeed now and just it's probably somebody I know, how in the heck do I find somebody like that? I mean, it's almost like let's try this.
Speaker 1:What's awesome about working for you?
Speaker 5:Working for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about it? What?
Speaker 5:about it is so great. I mean, I'm empathetic, I want my people to grow. I want to give them responsibility. I don't micromanage them. I want and solicit their input and value.
Speaker 1:that Give me a story about how you were empathetic, helped somebody grow and solicit their input, and did not micromanage them.
Speaker 5:I usually empower my staff. If they come in and say you know somebody, this potential client, called and I just don't have a good feel for that sort of thing. Or you know for them as a client, I'm like that's good enough for me. I mean, I want you to be empowered. You know, for enough of this. You've been doing it for a while. To talk with people and get a sense of are they going to be a royal pain in the ass and I tell my people just to do that. I don't know if that's a good example.
Speaker 1:So I think the thing is like creating the really exciting place for somebody to work right and being able to tell that in a story, because everybody says I'm empathetic and I let you do what you want, you can work with them, like everybody kind of says those things. But the more that we have stories that we can say about our team members who were able to execute on this, this and this, because they were helping us with the vision, the more likely you are to attract people that are excited to work for you right. And so a lot of that is we've got to create the environment. We've got to tell stories about the environment first before we can expect people to want to come into work. And so what I would do, jim, is craft that Like I'm looking for office administrator.
Speaker 1:Here's what I love about my last office administrator she helped me with this, I helped her with this blah, blah, blah, and I would send that to everybody who's in your universe all other lawyers, especially people in our world, people on the other side of the V, right, like I tell my team all the time if you were dealing with a paralegal or an office administrator in somebody else's office who you think would be a good fit here. Bring them over, like, start telling stories about us. To get them over, right, I would just put out into the universe what it is that you're looking for, with a good story about why it's awesome to come and work for you and see if somebody knows somebody. I think it's. Yeah, I wouldn't be shopping on Indeed or with recruiters because I think it's a long, short-term solution and I think that you know it's people that don't have jobs that are looking on Indeed, right, all right, okay, can we just toss a microphone? You can throw those. Just throw that at her, she'll catch.
Speaker 3:All right, here we go, oh wow.
Speaker 6:So I just wanted to add into well, I had a question first, how are you first? So I'm understanding that you're having trouble finding people or finding these. You know the type of person that you want to work at your firm. I would suggest LinkedIn, if anybody. Linkedin is a place where you can. I mean, I have a job right now. That actually. So I work for Filevine. Before, I never even imagined working at a tech company, but I received a message on LinkedIn and we started communicating and I decided to you know, look more into it and it turned out to be the perfect place for me, although I wasn't working at I wasn't looking for a job at- the time.
Speaker 6:So LinkedIn is magnificent at being able to reach people. As far as you know, leads or looking for cases, but also looking for employees, looking for other colleagues, business ideas, yeah so.
Speaker 1:LinkedIn. Here's what I would add to that is that start now. Start before you have the need, and start telling those stories that we just talked about about your employees, not about you, right? Nothing. Most people do LinkedIn wrong because they humble brag about themselves all the time. Nobody cares that you won best lawyer in Cleveland for the 25th year in a row. Nobody cares, right? I've been using LinkedIn for the last year to tell stories about my team, clients, business. I don't talk about myself hardly at all. Right, Couple selfies every once in a while. But building up that base so that you have somebody's attention before you need it, before you need to go out and say, here's what I'm looking for, because it's much easier to fish in a pond when you're looking for somebody. When you've been putting that bait into the world for the last year, Nick Got the mic.
Speaker 7:I have a comment on that as well and then a separate question. So I don't know how big your firm is, but for me my second in command was someone who already worked for me that I did not expect. Like started out as an admin answering the phones and making copies, you know, got a degree nothing to do with legal, and she was an all-star, did everything great. She was young, so you know all the stereotypical millennial stuff just didn't happen and I just kept having to promote her because of how good she was. And now she's our main estate planning paralegal and I just promoted her to be kind of director of operations and now she's in charge of literally everyone besides me. And it was my, when I hired her, a 24-year-old admin with no experience, kind of staring me in the face. The nice thing about that was she already got it, she already understood. I didn't have to, like, interview someone and, I guess, try to convince them that we're awesome. Right, it was. She already knew it and it's hey, you're amazing, I already know you, I know what you do, I know you believe in this, so I want to give you more responsibility. So I don't know if your firm's that big or has someone like that. But if I wouldn't have got creative, I would have. You would never think the person answering your phones a year and a half later should be second in command. So maybe that's there.
Speaker 7:And then my separate question kind of goes on to that. I have a paralegal who is an attorney. He's part-time but he just has paralegal stuff. He wants to kind of be in charge because he's in his 60s. He has the resume ahead of everyone, but I don't really want him doing anything but probate legal work. I'm also looking to bring on my first associate. I'm the only attorney and the guy I'm looking at is a good technician, get work done. I don't necessarily see him as being my second in command. From that standpoint. It's this 26-year-old lady, even though you would think the full-time associate would be it. So I'm kind of setting myself up for failure or hierarchy issues, you know, for people who, I mean, both of them have resumes better than me. Okay, and it's hey, you're great, you're an attorney, you're wonderful. Do the legal work. I'm a 26-year-old girl who has a college degree and something else, but she's going to tell you what to do operations-wise, but she's the one. The only thing is she's not an attorney, right.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I've got 45 seconds, so let me, as best I can answer that Maybe you're setting them up. I don't know the inner dynamics of that firm and I don't know what her gravitas is when she walks into a room. Right, if I would talk to Mike, mike Montefioreto, about this, because that's what Mike has, mike has she's like 26, right? Young girl running his firm number two, not a lawyer, managing two lawyers who aren't Mike. It's the exact same thing, but it takes a certain type of personality and you're a 60-year-old paralegal who's a lawyer, which I didn't totally understand. That person's going to have to deal with it or move on right. Your job, nick, is to do what's best for you and for your firm, and it sounds like what's best for you and your firm is the 26-year-old. If it's at the cost of the good technician 60-year-old, there's other good technicians in the world.
Speaker 7:Okay, all right Thank you All right?
Speaker 1:I hope that's helpful to everybody. I'm happy to sit down and one-on-one have conversations. If you have number two questions you don't want to bring here, that's cool. I'll be around the rest of the weekend, thanks.
