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Owen McGrann, From BigLaw to Solo-Preneurship
144 Plays1 year ago
Meet my new friend. Owen McGrann. A self-identified "Entrepreneur & Troublemaker" who manages not 1 but 2 successful small law firms. Learn how he got there after trying hard NOT to go to law school, making a go successful of it as a BigLaw associate, and navigating a health crisis that LITERALLY freed his mind and helped him re-establish his priorities.
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm sorry, I just I hit the record button on just I won't publish or release any of this without any of your permission or anything, but Go ahead And so I went to graduate school with the I'm sorry my the UPS guys coming and my dog is losing her shit lovely lovely
Career Shifts & Realizations
00:00:20
Speaker
So I went to graduate school with the idea, okay, I'll just be a professor or something like that. And then I realized that the politics of academia were absolutely batshit crazy. And, you know, I did a hard pivot away from that. And, you know, at that point, I had an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a master's in English, which in my dad's words was a pre-homelessness degree.
00:00:46
Speaker
I've never heard it expressed that way, but that was a pre-homeless, I have a degree in pre-homelessness, awesome, gosh. And so I ended up, after a year of working in the nonprofit world, going to law school. Okay. So not only not your first choice, but you actively tried to avoid it for a time at least. I tried to avoid it. You know, I mean, I saw for most of my childhood, the times that I got to spend with my dad were Saturdays when Notre Dame played.
Family & Early Career Reflections
00:01:15
Speaker
Um, or, you know, weekends when he would take me into the office and say, Hey, I need you to find this book in the library. Okay. Yeah. Alongside me as we, as we delve into the live live law library, every kid wants to hear that. Yeah. You know, it was not, it was not your usual childhood. Um, you know, from there, I clerked for, uh, for a judge right out of law school. Uh, it was the best job I will ever have. Yes. Uh, agreed. Amazing.
00:01:45
Speaker
Uh, and then I went into a couple of medium law firms, you know, size law firms, you know, 200 lawyers, 300 lawyers, um, ended up in a national international firm with about 2000 lawyers. Absolutely. Hit it every minute of all of it. Like, did you know it going in? Like, would you like knowing you're going to hate it or you're like, well, maybe, or when was your mindset like, yeah, I did. I had, it was a.
00:02:15
Speaker
confusing thing, right?
Illness & Recovery Journey
00:02:17
Speaker
Because I got into these firms and I was getting, um, what was considered by other people to be really interesting cases, right? I was, I was litigating, you know, high stakes, billion dollar matters. I was briefing stuff for the U S Supreme court and doing, you know, all the stuff that to the outside world looks like, Hey, I made it. Yeah, exactly. All the, all those golden rings that are sort of hung out there. Like this is, this is everything that we train for and aspire to. And it was so empty. Hmm.
00:02:45
Speaker
And it, it was just, you know, when I did go to law school, I said, okay, I'm going to do it because I want to help people. Right. Right. Which a lot of us do. And even if we, we don't have that intention, we at least project it on our applications. Right. That's right. That's right. Um, and you know, in, in the, you know, there was a period where, you know, I realized that I was hoping, you know, fortune 50 companies make a lot of money.
00:03:13
Speaker
or not lose a lot of money, depending on the circumstance. But I wasn't helping people. It just wasn't what I wanted to do. It might sound funny to say this way, but I got really lucky in that I came down with a very severe illness and had to step away from practicing law for a while. Wow. Wow. Okay.
00:03:37
Speaker
I ended up getting an organ transplant as a result of this. Oh, and oh my gosh. Oh wow. Like you're talking major serious, like disruption. Oh my gosh. What was the first sign? Like, how did it first show up that something was off or was it just one day or kind of gradual? No, I mean, it, it, it was, it was gradual. You know, there were, there were just bits where I was getting really tired that I would lose track of things that I normally wouldn't lose track of, even with my ADHD.
00:04:07
Speaker
Okay. Another point of connection we'll get to. Yeah. And, you know, so I had liver disease, hereditary disease that, you know, it's a liver disease. Right. And one of the things that is attendant to liver disease is what's called hepatic encephalopathy.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yes, yes. In fact, a woman who worked with us at real time creative learning experiences for a while actually also had, I don't know if it was the exact same thing, but she had to have a liver transplant as well. And like her late twenties, early thirties, major, huge, big deal. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and it presents like early onset Alzheimer's. You just, oh my gosh, forgetting things. You tell the same stories over and over again and don't even know it. Yeah. Yeah. And you're totally unaware of it.
00:04:52
Speaker
Um, you know, and I had, um, family members, loved ones who are just like, Oh, and you don't seem right. And I'm just like, screw you. I'm fine. Right. I couldn't, I couldn't see it. Right. Wow. Um, you know, and it eventually got apparent enough that I was like, okay, something, something's wrong. I would be committing malpractice if I continued on in the, you know, condition. So I stepped away from practice for a while.
00:05:21
Speaker
And did you have a diagnosis yet at that point? Or were you still trying to figure it out? Yeah, I mean, we knew that something was going crazy. I had an upper GI bleed where I had an ulcer and a blood vessel burst through it. Oh my gosh. I should be dead because of that. Yeah. I had a severe GI bleed.
00:05:47
Speaker
Um, and I had to have a, uh, sort of last, literally last second surgery. Oh my gosh. I had about a 10% chance of working. And it was at that point where I was like, okay.
00:06:01
Speaker
Let's, let's figure out what's really going on here because I don't ever want to do that again. You sort of got forced to hit the pause button and say, you know, literally it's life and death. Right. Got to focus on this. And, you know, in some senses it is, you know, an extreme version of what a lot of lawyers go through. Yes. Yeah. Right.
00:06:22
Speaker
So I took some time off. I tutored, right? I was like, I can't really remember stuff, but I can TC SAT. That's, that's okay. Okay. You know, AP US history. I know that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. Nice. Um, and after my transplant, when I w it's, it's weird. When I, when I got the transplant, literally I woke up and it would like the light turned on again.
00:06:48
Speaker
like in terms of the brain fog going, like your brain is actually now functioning. It doesn't have like, whatever poisons not being filtered or whatever's happening, you're like clarity again. And you hadn't even, you hadn't even known how you drifted. Wow. It was the most surreal experience of my life. I would have to be. Oh my gosh. It was like, you know, to use the, the sort of, um, worn out trope, it was, you know, in, in which it was going from black and white into color. Yes. That's a great picture. Yes. Oh my God.
00:07:18
Speaker
Whoa. And you had known color before is the thing. There was part of you, it's like, whoa, wait, I'm back. I'm back. You know, it's interesting. If you talk to people who there's the eye surgery that a lot of older folks get now where it's the LASIK. Yeah. A lot of the times as a result of doing that, their sense of color comes back.
00:07:45
Speaker
really they don't they don't realize that it had dull because it it happened so gradually okay right that's like oh that's what green looks like yes yes oh my gosh that's yeah that's a great way to picture it wow and it was like that but for all cognitive function right
00:08:04
Speaker
It's like, oh yeah, I can do mental math again. Yeah. And that's huge. Again, having already gotten through undergrad law school, graduate degree at that point, you knew what it was like to have a firing functioning brain and like it had slipped away. Like it wasn't like you lost it one day. It was like one day, you know, it's just when, when I finally became aware of the fact that I was being diminished and that's the most frustrating and frightening thing on the face of the earth. Right. Because people like you and me, we live a life of the mind.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yes. And we are stocking traders, our quickness and our communication ability. And I hate it when I can't think of a word, but like not being able to access any of my logical thought process get out is maddening, a maddening thought. Wow. So the light comes back on post-surgery and you're like,
00:08:53
Speaker
Here I am. Right. And then you have that thought, you know, as you're recovering from the transplant, learning to walk upright again and stuff like that. You're like, oh shit, I need to make money now. Yeah. Like I'm capable of working. So I need, I need to work. And had you taken a medical leave or had you just said, I resign. Okay. You just, you just quit. Okay. I just left. Okay. You know, I, my wife is amazing and she supported us throughout
00:09:20
Speaker
that whole time. Wow. And, you know, afterwards, after I was in a position to work again, I was like, I think I probably need to start contributing. Yes, yes. Let me become productive again. That would be good. Like, thank you, my love. But it's time for me to help out here. Yes. And, you know, initially, my thought was to just go back. Right. And so I started putting out feelers to firms and people were like, yeah, come on in and talk.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I started getting heart palpitations at the thought of going back. I like just like physical. Yeah. No, you're not. You're not going to do this. Your body is telling you something. It's like, hang on, hang on. Right. You know, and and after you've gone through what I went through, you start listening to what your body tells you. Right. Yes. And I'll pause to say how maddening, of course, and frustrating it is that it takes something like that for us lawyers.
00:10:15
Speaker
I feel like I'm on this journey and I'm in my 50s, but I am just been learning through the guidance of somebody like listen to your body. It actually knows some stuff. It's telling you things and you ignore it at your peril, but we're really good at sort of ignoring it, shutting it down. I got a soldier on absolutely. Wow. So you pay attention to the palpitations. And you know, I spoke with my wife and I said, I don't think I can go back. And she said, then I'll go back.
Entrepreneurial Ventures
00:10:44
Speaker
I was expecting, you know, Fire and Fury from- Right, right, right. You just got back. Can you jump right back in? And she said, so what do you want to do? And I said, I think I'm going to try to open my own firm. And she said, okay, you got a year. Okay. Nice. Okay. That's enough runway. She said, I don't need you to be making six figures at the end of the year, but I need
00:11:08
Speaker
I want to see some progress there. And she was like, we need to know it's viable. Yeah. Right. You know, you have a JD, you know, you can use that for any number of things, even if it's not practicing law. And if it's if it's viable, great. You run with it. And if not, then we'll we'll take a look and see what other options are available. Wow. And what year was that? This is 2020.
00:11:30
Speaker
Oh, okay. So I had my transplant on January 22nd, 2020. Oh my gosh. I was trying to become immunocompromised. Oh my gosh, yes. I know that timing all too well. Around January 2020, I was working with my dad on trying to get him to accept kind of transition to an assisted living. And we just had gotten him and taken advantage of he had had some health issues that sort of called the question. He couldn't debate anymore whether he needed
00:11:57
Speaker
And literally, I'm scouting out places like, well, we have there's this disease thing, but don't worry about it. It's not affecting us. I'm like, what? But so when you say January 2020, I'm like, oh, snap, you got just in and out before everything I guess went, you know, I mean, if if if that liver had shown up two or three months later, I don't know that I would have been able to have that transplant.
00:12:20
Speaker
No, it would have been chaos because, yeah, nothing was happening for a short period of time when they tried to figure out how do we contain this and how can we keep operating? Right. That is nuts. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You know, it's that, you know, Chinese curse, you know, you live in interesting times. I've had very interesting seven or eight years. Oh, my gosh.
00:12:45
Speaker
Well, and I'm finding as I talk with people, like everybody's got a story and I keep hearing more and more amazing ones and it's a reminder.
00:12:54
Speaker
which is helpful for me that how disrupted the pandemic was and life had its own chaos and challenges. And then this pandemic has thrown everybody for a loop, but I love it when lawyers, when we can tell our stories of, hey, look, this is what it was like for me. It wasn't just like, oh, a little bit changed, because I did a presentation back in the fall and I went to a remote town, this little smaller town than where I am. And I was like, what's it like for y'all working from home? They're like, we didn't stop, what do you mean? It's like, well, the rest of the world has like,
00:13:24
Speaker
Okay, shifted gears, maybe y'all were able to go along with small town life, fine, but okay. So in 2020, then you decide, okay, I wanna open a firm. And so what was your path from there then?
00:13:37
Speaker
So my path from there was, you know, like any first time entrepreneur, um, stumbling. Um, you know, I, my background was in complex commercial litigation for big companies, right? And I was like, okay, I can do that. Not realizing that none of those companies is ever going to hire a solo Lord, right? No, there's a reason they're hiring the big law. Yeah. You know, and so it took me about three weeks to realize, all right, yeah, that's, that's not going to work. Yes. Um,
00:14:05
Speaker
So I, so I pivoted to think, you know, there are a lot of things I learned in the process that big companies do that small companies just don't know to do.
00:14:15
Speaker
Um, and so perhaps I could use some of the learning that I, that I had about how the bigger companies leverage certain things and, and offer that, you know, to, um, smaller companies and not $1,200 an hour. Right. Um, and so, you know, I did that and I started getting some traction, right. The difficulty was all of my contacts were in a different world.
00:14:41
Speaker
Right, because when you go into, and I've summered at Big Law, I've worked in medium-sized law firms, small, large, not as much large, but you as a first or second year associate, you're not really developing your own clientele yet. You're still performing your function in this massive bet the company huge millions of dollars thing. And so you don't have anybody, you can call and say, hey, if you ever need a will, or whatever. Right, that's right.
00:15:12
Speaker
you know, there was a transition period of, okay, well, how do I meet the kind of people who are going to want the kind of things that I'm offering now? Right, right. You know, there was, in some senses, it was fortunate that it happened during COVID because I wasn't able to go out and meet people anyway that first year, right? Because I was right. That's right. If I got a cold, I would end up in the hospital. Right. Oh my gosh. That's right. So the fact that zoom became normal,
00:15:41
Speaker
was actually an advantage to me. Perfect timing. Wow. I can hop on a meeting without any trouble. So I use that to my advantage because I knew that that was going to be, if not the model, like a large part of my model going forward. Right.
00:16:05
Speaker
setup. Yes. So I really leaned into that and you know started getting you know enough of a enough traction that my wife at the end of the year you know said okay let's it's like we can see some some some momentum starting to build we can see enough to keep going which which that's another
00:16:25
Speaker
another interesting point. And by the way, I think I made like this first part is we're getting, this is book related, but this will make a great podcast. If you don't mind, I may just put this on the Thriving Lawyers podcast. Sure. Instead of asking you to come back another time, this is great stuff. But what I love about that is when we're making changes and we're making choices and moving forward,
00:16:48
Speaker
I keep wanting to get like all the signs right now, like all the confirmation, like here it is. Yes, you opened your firm and here are 20 cases and you're off to the races, but you often get just enough light to go. Yeah, keep going, but not enough necessary to go. And this is it. And maybe, maybe the, this is a comes at some point in time. I'm still waiting, but I haven't got there yet. You know, and, um,
00:17:14
Speaker
You know, there's enough that you can see that you can go further, right? And that is enough. That's all that you can really hope for. Right. Some people chose you. Some people said, hey, yes, I want what you have. And then they come back to you maybe, and it kind of depends again on what kind of area you're practicing in. So what did you start seeing in traction with? What kinds of offerings did you have that were starting to at least show some sign of, hey, we could do this and maybe do it again and keep doing it better?
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I started working with a bunch of small business owners, right? So this was everything from, you know, doctors that I knew who needed help with their corporate formation. Yeah, an LLC or an LLP, you're right. Yeah. To, you know, I got a call from a auto body who was dumb.
00:18:07
Speaker
a little bit down the road. And they're like, so I think it's about time that we incorporate. And I was like, you've been around for 28 years. How have you not already? Have you not talked to anybody about taxes or liability or anything? So, you know, it was an education in terms of, oh, people really don't know what they're doing a lot of the time. Right.
00:18:32
Speaker
And there are more of those people out there than you realize. It looks like an established business kind of from the outside, but maybe not very sophisticated. Or what they did worked for a small stage, but they start to grow, they start to scale, and there's way more things to think about, and they need an advisor.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and the thing that really hit me was, you know, I was doing stuff that I did consider particularly sophisticated, but it made a huge difference in these people's lives. Yes. And yes, grateful and so happy to work with me. Right. And the contrast between that versus you are one of
00:19:08
Speaker
Four or five have remain lawyers handling one small tentacle of a big octopus that maybe you contribute. You can't necessarily tell or you don't necessarily see sometimes if you're lucky, but especially on the on the early years. Is anybody appreciative? Does anybody know you're even there at all? That's right.
00:19:25
Speaker
Big change. And so I had this realization pretty early in practicing law that I didn't find law intrinsically interesting. And something that in and of itself I found particularly fun to do.
Innovative Legal Practices
00:19:42
Speaker
If people didn't pay me to do it, I wouldn't do it.
00:19:46
Speaker
Right, right. Which is a hard recipe then to say, and this is how you can make your money the rest of your life. It's like, it feels like great. Right. And the sort of needle that I threaded there was, I do like helping people. Yeah. And so when you start getting your satisfaction from helping people, not doing interesting legal work, the game changes, right? Because then it's just about, how can I help more people? Yes. Oh, yes. And I do a really interesting operating agreement here, right?
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh, and you're talking about something, though, that's so fundamental. I spent a few years as a law professor, and so I've worked in the academy. I've thought about it a lot, and I've been coaching, teaching, and training for a long time, but definitely that's the mindset in law school. Like, find interesting work. I wanted sexy work, interesting work. I wasn't as driven by, I need to make the most money. First of all, nobody told us, you know who's making more money than all, you know, the big law, the personal injury lawyers. Nobody even mentioned at my law school that personal injury was really a thing that lots of people did.
00:20:45
Speaker
because law schools have a perverse symbiotic relationship with big law. Yes, which which makes no sense because the vast majority of people do not end up there. It's it's especially in the you know, the wide ranging number of law schools out there. It's it's it's insanity. If you're trying to play for a game that almost nobody that you're going to graduate is going to end up there just statistically, not about marriage, just statistically, everybody can't be there. Right. But but but how do you justify tuition unless you say you can make $200,000 a year?
00:21:15
Speaker
And to me truth bombs we might get, I don't know. But you're right though. You're right. So I wasn't trying to make that much money, but I did want to do interesting work and I had these preconceived notions of what would be interesting work. Oh, constitutional issues. Oh, this or that. And I kind of turned my nose up at things that didn't have that zing. But it turns out, gosh, that's a lot of what people need, isn't it?
00:21:45
Speaker
It's mostly what people need. I ended up moving into estate planning because the small business owners that I was working with needed business succession planning. And you can't do that unless you also have. Bingo. Bingo. So it was just a natural progression of, oh, my clients need all of this stuff.
00:22:07
Speaker
and you can become that trusted resource that says, hey, look, whatever it is you need for planning purposes, and then hopefully if there's a crisis, if you're not doing litigation, but you have a network of people that you know, well, I know who can help you with that, you're in the prevention and the wise planning mode, and there's so many things that sort of go with that. I love that.
00:22:32
Speaker
Absolutely, right. And, you know, I still don't particularly care for law, but I really like helping people. And, you know, I'm masochistic enough that I now have two law firms or hate rather than just one. Okay. So you have, you have McGran law and is that Alt MBA also a law firm then? So no, Alt MBA is a program that Seth Godin runs.
00:22:59
Speaker
Oh, OK. Yeah, so it's it's it's just it's a program where, you know, people who are a little bit further along in their careers who want to learn about business in a different kind of way. Oh, I've heard about that. OK, OK, so what are the two law firms then? Is it McGranelaw and Purely Estates Law Group? That's right. Gotcha. OK, and so what's what's your relationship with each one and which one came about first and how do they operate? Yeah, so McGranelaw is the first firm.
00:23:30
Speaker
Confusingly in the process of being rebranded right now. Okay. So I had my grandma for a bunch of years and then last summer, Wendy wit, who you may have run across at some point on LinkedIn.
00:23:44
Speaker
Um, she's also in Pittsburgh and, and we were talking and, and, and she said, you know, would you be interested in starting an estates firm? Right. And she said, I'd like to get back into the practice. She had, she's, she's a law firm, a strategy coach. Okay. Um, and she hadn't been practicing for about 10 years. And she said, I'd really like to get back into practicing, but I don't want to do it by myself. Ah, awesome.
00:24:10
Speaker
And one of the things that I had been really struggling with on a just basic marketing level was when your two primary client bases are founders of startups and estate
00:24:25
Speaker
Those are two very different audiences. Yeah, yeah, it's taught I've written realize that too as I tried to serve a couple different sectors. When the messaging needs to be different that when you do that sort of and again, none of this we learn in law school, but when you do that sort of ideal client exercise of like, whose problem do I want to solve.
00:24:44
Speaker
You got to be careful, like, you know, well, these people's and their problems are different from these over here. And how do you message to both? Yeah. Right. And the tonal voice that you use and the words that you use are going to be different. Like if you're talking to a 25 year old founder of a tech startup, you're going to be a little bit freer in the way that you express yourself than if you're talking to a 65 year old person who's worried about losing their home. Right. Right. A nursing home.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yes. Different vernaculars. Right. But what I love, though, is you've got a little bit of a different solution for that, because what a lot of people, and this is the third one of these conversations I've had today, they've all been fantastic. But it's helping me sort of crystallize something, because that's part of the challenge I've felt, even as I've tried to focus, I have a smaller law firm that's been called Osborne Comic Resolution. And
00:25:32
Speaker
the kind of people I want to serve, you know, in one area, like how many can you serve at the same time, unless you just say, hey, I'm general practice and I'll take whatever. And I've wrestled with that. But what a lot of people wouldn't do, but what I love your creativity is, oh, well, I don't have to be just one law firm, do I?
00:25:48
Speaker
I may be the same, or I may be with somebody, but I can be part of two law firms, and that's becoming, I know, a few other people who are doing that sort of thing because it respects that market segmentation aspect of it. I checked. There's no ethical rule that says you can't do it. That's a good point.
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, they are different firms. They do different things. I don't know why, I mean, I understand why I had them under the same roof for a while because they evolved that way. But if both of those practice areas were going to grow into what I want them to, they couldn't be together.
00:26:26
Speaker
Right, right, because you've got to focus the messaging, the thought leadership, and the conferences you would go to, if you're going to speak, or if you're going to conferences, or if you're going to network and hang out, very different audiences. And there may be some overlap, sure, if you get some, you know, startup person who hits it big and has never thought they're great.
00:26:45
Speaker
But yeah, because then you get into also the processes. The processes to support one and support the other are a little bit different. If you want to make them most efficient, each one needs its own process, I would guess. That's right. That's right. Brilliant. You know, and, you know, early on when I, when I had McGrainlow, when I was starting, I realized that there's nobody that's telling me that I have to bill by the hour.
00:27:12
Speaker
Right. Exactly. And I was like, I hate doing this. Like my brain literally is wired so that that doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I just started experimenting without knowing that there was this whole community online of people who are like, yeah, let's not do it this way. Right. Yes. Yes. Well, and there's been there's this voices out there always out there saying, hey, let's kill the bill and let's do and yet
00:27:39
Speaker
What we've started learning, I think, is certain segments, sectors. I had a great conversation with a guy, I don't know if you've met him online, Patrick Patino, if I get his name right. Oh, I know of him, yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, great guy. And he's all his work is flat fee except for litigation, because there are too many, we talked about there's too many variables or too many, I can't control if the other side's a jerk, the other side's cooperative, what the judge does all that. But for anything where you're producing documents, you're producing an end product, a result, and real estate lawyers have known this for years, the name of the game in real estate is processed, you need to be efficient, you're going to charge a flat fee because ain't nobody paying anything different.
00:28:15
Speaker
So you better get your processes down. But that mindset can be applied to the other areas of law, like you're talking about. Yeah. I mean, I think that you can do it for some litigation. Yeah. Not for some litigation, but it is incredibly more difficult. Yeah. You know, especially because if there's any sort of fee shifting statute involved, that only understands the billable hour. And so. That's right. That's right. You find yourself keeping track of time, even if you don't actually. Which defeats the purpose. Like what is the purpose, right?
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, I did that. I took them in my, I've had a small firm for seven years and I have had mostly hourly work, but I took a few contingency cases here and there, which I'm thinking like everybody is, you know, yay, upside, this'll work out great. They almost never ended up working out that way, but I ended up having to track the hours anyway. And it was, and I grew in respect for people who have a personal injury firm who are in that mode or an employment law plaintiff's firm who are in that mode all the time, and they can cash flow and project.
00:29:12
Speaker
Being part hourly and part continually contingency is actually was awful because I got some cases that that I need to run this way in some case I need to run this way and yeah, yeah, well, you know the You own a small firm so you understand this one of the hardest parts about running a business like that is the moving bus cycle Yeah
00:29:32
Speaker
you'll have months where you're just killing it and it's amazing, right? And you're like, okay, this is going to last forever. And then the next month you're like, can I pay my mortgage? What happened? Yeah. What's like, where did this get like? Yes. So one of the things that I've really moved into for my grandma is it's all, it's not all it's mostly subscription based. So you are doing subscription based. Okay. I've known a few people here in North Carolina who've experimented with that. How is that going? How are clients responding to that? And how's it work for you?
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, I have back in the end of October, early November, I launched, um, the subscription service that is effectively, um, you know, it's for scale up companies rather than startups where they're funded. They've got money. Good call. Yeah. And it's, they don't have enough. They don't have enough funding or enough need to have an actual in-house person, but I act as an outside general counsel. Right. Um,
00:30:33
Speaker
People love it. Wow. You know, it's, you know, one of the things that, that I really like about it is it, it takes away that, that sort of question of, did he ask, did he just ask me about my children? Cause he's trying to get an extra 0.2. Right. Right. Right. Which I wouldn't blame, blame clients for being worried about. Like they asked, Hey, am I paying for this? You know, if you're nice and we need to be able to connect with them on that level. Now they know I just care. Yeah. Right.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah. And it allows, it facilitates a much more authentic and meaningful relationship that you can build with people that way. Yes, because it's a set fee and they know how much they can get. I'm sure you put parameters around it like, look, you have this much access. Yeah. And you probably can, you know, if you can make a judgment call, hey, this client is only supposed to get five hours a month, but you know what? They need an extra hour. I'm not going to be crappy about it. You can make that call. And I don't do it by hours, right? Right.
00:31:29
Speaker
You know, I sit down with a client and I get a sense for what it is that they need. So far it's been fairly, it's been fairly straight forward because they are clients that I've had previously transitioned into. Okay. Um, but you know, the deal that I have with them is at 30 days notice that any one of us can raise our hand and say, I think I'm being ripped off.
00:31:47
Speaker
And then we talk and we figure it out. Either of you can. Oh, that's genius though, because you could say, Hey, you know what? I price this thinking you'd need me five hours a week, but you're calling me every week, bro. And, and you know, I'm, I'm doing a lot more. So, so how about we adjust this? Yeah. Or, and this has happened. Um, I called them up and I said, it's been three months. Um, I've been charging you $5,000 a month. I think I'm ripping you off.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah, you haven't done it. You haven't needed it. It's like, let's, let's talk about, you know, uh, you know, and he, and the client was like, no, this is worth it. And I was like, okay, but you know, I want, I, I just, you know, I want to create a relationship.
00:32:26
Speaker
where we can have that honest, this doesn't feel right. I feel like I'm being used or you feel like you're getting ripped off or whatever it might be. But what a trust builder for, I'm just sitting here going, man, this needs to be like an ad, like a lawyer calling their client and saying, hey, have I been charging you too much? I'd be willing to adjust that. And the client has a heart attack on the other side. What is happening here? But what a trust builder, you've got a client for life there. And if they say, great, or if they say, you're right, I haven't been using much, maybe we can dial it back. Or they say, look,
00:32:55
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't, but I know stuff is coming. So can you just hold on to that? And you're going to go, hey, you pay me $15,000 for three months. I haven't done anything. So I'm yours when the shit hits. Yeah. Wow. And the core of it is,
00:33:18
Speaker
It just comes back to a basic sense of fairness and all of us have very finely tuned senses of fairness. We think that we don't and that we need to do some complex pricing mechanism. We know when we're being ripped off.
00:33:33
Speaker
I like that because there's trust and there's also, hey, let's revisit it. It promotes relationship with the client. I mean, I can imagine you get loyal clients who are like, I'm sticking with this guy because he's going to provide value. If he doesn't, he'll be honest about it. He'll be receptive to my feedback. And that sounds infinitely better than the conversations I have with clients about
00:33:58
Speaker
how many hours something took and how complicated. Hey, you said this was going to only be 1,500 bucks. Yes, that's before Jay Richards jerk became the other side's lawyer and all of a sudden everything. And what I've learned that I hate and part of the reason I'm kind of moving away from practice more is I hate having the same kind of bill that's going to surprise them.
00:34:20
Speaker
Hey, you didn't know it, but I was working on it on a brief for you for 10 hours, and they haven't seen that, and they don't know if it took that. Even if I know it's accurate, I probably cut it, but it still feels crappy. Yeah. Now imagine saying to your client, you can budget for me. Yeah. Right? Yes. It's just going to be the same. You build it into your budget.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm hearing more lawyers that I talked to in various realms look towards that. I've actually met in recent weeks a couple of family lawyers who, a family lawyer. I couldn't believe this when this guy said this. He has his own firm, but he's also a coach for another firm that I was looking at as a possible source of referrals, clients, all that stuff. And he basically says, here's what I tell a family law client when they hire me. I am your lawyer for the next six months for 5,000 bucks, come what may.
00:35:10
Speaker
I'm like, that's pretty gutsy. Okay, he's like, I'll handle whatever. And it's like new family law case motions, blah, blah, blah. But at six months, if if we're not done and everything, well, then you're gonna, you know, I'm gonna have to ask you to subscribe for another six months for 500 for another 5000. And I said, God, that sounds, that sounds risky says what it is. But you can, some of them I don't do that much work. Others may be a little bit more. But I tell you what happens is when it comes time to re up, people get serious about settlement over
00:35:39
Speaker
Right. There is a forcing mechanism to actually. Yes. They can actually say, hmm, wait a minute. Is it worth going further to keep fighting? And sometimes it might be, but I'm like, you know, there's a sense in which there's some, there's some good client autonomy in that. And there's some genius in that because that's what clients routinely, every hourly client I've worked with absolutely hate. You can't tell me how long this is going to take or how, what's going to, I'm like,
00:36:05
Speaker
I'm sorry, you know, I can't, even in, I've done mainly collaborative family law where we keep everybody out of court, but I've tried flat fee pricing on that and it's challenging because the degree to which people decide to stick with the collaborative process is not something I can control when I do my best.
00:36:23
Speaker
And it ends up being, well, this is costly. I can always tell them, hey, this would have been even worse if you had been in the litigation grinder, but yeah. And so I like what you're doing though. Everybody knows the deal ahead of time. And so many other industries work that way, really. Right. I mean, the way that lawyers price things.
00:36:44
Speaker
When you, when you look to everything else, like it's, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. You know, if, if you walked into an Apple store, right. And they've got a new iPhone and you say, Oh, cool. This is awesome. How much does it cost? And they say, depends on how much you want to use it. Yeah.
00:37:02
Speaker
You would lose your shit. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. What are you talking about? Even cell phone pricing has gotten so far away from that. Remember, it used to be so all the plans in the early days where you get so many minutes and then you might go over and this is that. And they realize quickly, nobody wants to have to police that and do that. It's just you sign up and you get whatever you need, but they're going to price it, you know, and then there's some false there's some fail safes in there.
00:37:26
Speaker
They're able to price it at a point where they're going to make more money anyway and people aren't going to complain about it the same way. Well, it's what contractors do as well. If any contractor shows up, say I want to renovate a bathroom or something, and they're going to say, we'll see how long it takes me, and I'll send you a bill at the end. I'm like, do I accept that? No. I'm like, give me a price. And most of them will. And I think that's part of that. I was having a conversation with somebody earlier today about
00:37:52
Speaker
being entrepreneurial in the field of law at all, okay? First of all, congratulations to you for anybody who is, partly because law school is three years of risk is terrible, risk is bad, we always avoid risk, nobody does risk, risk is terrible, and you get sort of stuck in that mindset.
00:38:08
Speaker
And risk is the currency of business. Yes, the buildings exist and projects are done and contracts are entered because an art is made because people make risk or take risks. But we are so ingrained against it. And again, it's a useful skill.
00:38:24
Speaker
helping people avoid risk, mitigate, plan for it, all that. But the problem is, I noticed this in myself, but in a lot of lawyering, we don't know when to turn off the lawyer skill and the lawyer mindset and to go, hang on.
Business as a Creative Endeavor?
00:38:37
Speaker
And I've been fortunate as I've gotten experiences in the educational realm and I've invested in a product or invested in a program. I develop a program and then I get to use it five times, 10 times. What's that like?
00:38:51
Speaker
Right. You have an asset. Holy hell. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because at times I'm like, who, how did I, you know, I, but I was so naive when I went to law school, I was an English major, English and poli sci, at least any of that part. But I didn't know a thing about business. I didn't know what they talked to my friends who went to business school. I didn't know what they talked about, buy low, sell high as I thought all there was to it. You know, the, the, the thing that got me about business when I opened my firm, I thought I was going to hate it. Right. Because, you know,
00:39:18
Speaker
There was nothing in my background, or were my upbringing that said, doing business is something that is good, right, you know, right, right.
00:39:29
Speaker
When I got into it, I realized that building a business is a creative endeavor. Yes. It is no less creative than writing a book. Yes. Or, you know, playing music. Right. You know, when you're doing it right, it is a really creative and invigorating kind of thing. Oh, that's super helpful. That's super helpful. And I love that you've been able to you can do that while still in when the business is a service industry because you are serving other people's needs. I was responding to somebody recently on LinkedIn. Somebody said,
00:39:59
Speaker
kind of, you know, make a name for themselves as a fame lawyer. Here's what you need to know to be a fame lawyer. You're available 24-7 and you have to be a therapist. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I get that people have needs a lot and I get that people
00:40:17
Speaker
you know, are in crisis. Those are true. And I think we can be a lawyer who is sensitive to that. But I tell people if a conversation client turns into feeling more like therapy, I'm like, look, hang on, I'm underpaid, overpaid and underqualified for that job. There are people who
00:40:32
Speaker
Right, and there are professionals. I might be called a counselor, but I'm not that kind of counselor. Right, exactly. Or if you're okay with it, we can be explicit about it, but let's just make sure. In business decision counseling, yes. Conflict resolution counseling, should we litigate or not? I'm your man. That's it. But the key is, yes, service mindset, yes, responsive.
00:40:52
Speaker
But clients will also take as much territory as we allow them. And we train them, essentially. If they think they can get you 24-7, then they will expect to, and then you set that expectation.
00:41:07
Speaker
One of the things that I learned the hard way, right? When you run the business, you were responsible for setting the boundaries. Yes. Yes. Right. When I get a new client now, they get not just an engagement agreement, they get a communications agreement. That's beautiful. Beautiful. Sets expectations. Right. You know, they know that I will not pick up like an unscheduled phone call.
00:41:32
Speaker
Which almost nobody does these days, by the way. But what a good thing to just say, hey, just so you know. Yeah. But but here's a link that you can go to and you can schedule a call with me within 24 hours. Bingo. Yes. Right. Yes. Access within boundaries. Right. I'm not unavailable. Right. But you're going to schedule it. You're going to tell me what you want to talk about so that we can have a 15 minute
00:41:54
Speaker
all that is pointed and that is substantive. And when you think about it, isn't that how your doctor works? I mean, you don't just call up Dr. Jones and say, hey, can I ask you something about my liver right now? No. You're going to make an appointment.
00:42:12
Speaker
And the other thing that I think we're going to hopefully be learning from in law, and it's going to hurt and it's going to be hard, but look at how medicine has had to segment more, like there are more professionals you can see depending on what you need. You don't necessarily have an MD on everything because you don't need an MD on everything. Your nurse practitioner, your PA, your... Yes.
00:42:33
Speaker
And we have resisted that. We've got like paralegal, and we don't even want to have them, some lawyers at least. But now, limited legal license technicians are an idea. Again, now, are you concerned about that since you're doing work in estates? I know that's one of the places where they're talking about having technicians. Would you embrace that and say, great, I will hire some of them. That works, or whatever's best for the client, or what do you think? I mean, Chris, in five years, I don't want to be practicing law. I want to be running two companies. Yeah, there you go. OK. Period.
00:43:03
Speaker
you know, the way that I'm setting it up is so that, you know.
00:43:08
Speaker
and this is hard for me to do because it is not my nature. Right, because you're a creative writer like me. I have been documenting and making processes for everything. Wow, wow. And the way that I do that is I will just open Loom and record myself doing something. You got the steps, yes. And then send it to my assistant who then puts it into a step-by-step system. She then teaches it back to me to make sure that she understands it. Beautiful. And then it goes into the manual.
00:43:37
Speaker
Beautiful, beautiful. Oh, and hang on. Let me pause on what you said. I want to let the significance of that sink in because it's meaningful for me and I think it'll be meaningful for people who hear this. I love that because lawyers don't think in terms of I will work myself out of the daily grind job. We actually posit ourselves as central to everything
00:44:01
Speaker
And or we have this naive vision of there's some day when I can from part from afar be a puppet master and I'm at the beach and I have nothing to do with what's going on. But but there's you've got to get there first and foremost. But you had to have that mindset of, hey, I would love to build operations that don't need me every day.
00:44:20
Speaker
Right. Because you and I don't scale. Right. Oh, that's brilliant. Yes. There's only one me. Right. Right. So if I am the critical piece, I am also the rate limiting factor. Yes. Yes. So, you know, I want to get out of doing as much of the work as possible, partially because I'm a little lazy and partially because it's the only way to grow.
00:44:44
Speaker
It's the only way to grow. And again, you're also thinking about who is the best person to have do this. And I learned a lot of like intake. I learned by having a small firm. I need somebody doing triage. There are things we can find out in initial conversation that an admin person can find out that will be deciding factors of do I need to talk to them further? Is it my kind of case? No, it's not. Do they sound a little unrealistic in their expectations?
00:45:14
Speaker
Do they not have information? What's going on? But learning and thinking in terms of triage and process and all that. Did you have a class? I'm curious, in law school, about legal processes and how to make them efficient?
00:45:27
Speaker
Nope. Because nobody has. Nobody has. It's starting to change. There are people who are doing some good thinking about that. But really, the change is happening because there's been legal tech and entrepreneurial minded people who are going, hey, we got to
Evolving Legal Education
00:45:41
Speaker
change. The world has changed. In fact, I heard a scary, I was at a symposium recently on professional identity development and skills development law. And law schools are having to change, probably because the ABA is saying you have to. The bar is changing all this.
00:45:54
Speaker
But this person said, hey, my grandfather went to law school in like the early nineteen hundreds. If he showed up in a law school today, it wouldn't look unfamiliar. It would feel very similar. And you sit and think about that. That's not a good statement. No, you know, and I mean, I joke about this, but the joke is true that, you know, I never have to worry about, you know, being involved with another law firm and being behind them intact.
00:46:23
Speaker
behind the what and behind them in tech. Yes, because it's not that I'm super advanced, but I use it. Yes. Yes. And as as an industry, we are 20 to 25 years behind everybody else. Chronically, chronically. And again, it's sort of picked up.
00:46:40
Speaker
It picks up on your theme though, to bring it back full circle a little bit to the liver disease and diagnosis that it disrupted you. And it turns out, I mean, in a way, I can see why you say it's kind of a gift, it's kind of a beautiful thing. Not wishing it on people, not saying, hey, do this. I wouldn't wish anybody to go through it, but it was interesting for me to have done that.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yes, because you basically you're on the hamster wheel and somebody stopped that sucker. And you're like, wait a minute. I don't, I don't like wheels anyway. I don't, I don't really want to be here, but the pandemic sort of did that to all of us in law in the sense that we have this exalted sense of place and you must come to my office and I must speak to you and all this and everything must happen in person. And I had to let go of myself as a presenter and facilitator. I'm like, I love being in the room and I liked the live energy, but
00:47:26
Speaker
What, okay, can you do it other ways? And the world is changing such that, yo, the clients, especially people in their 20s, 30s now, founding companies, starting businesses, they have a way different mode of operation. Their expectations are different. They're operating differently from a totally different set of premises on multiple fronts. Would you agree?
00:47:46
Speaker
100%, you know, and let's think about some of the ways that we've been trained by the internet, right? Yeah. Say you order something online, do you start getting itchy if it doesn't show up in two days?
00:47:58
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, unless, but I try to track it. I know where it is. Right. Yeah. But, you know, we've been trained to expect almost instant gratitude. Pretty instant. Yes. Oh, Instacart will show up at my house later today if I need groceries. That's right. You know, and, you know, if you want to purchase something, you want to be able to go online and find it and say, I want that. Yeah. Right. And I want to see a bunch of product reviews to let me know, is this going to be good or not? Or is this a knockoff?
00:48:22
Speaker
Are you going to find that when you go to most law firms websites? What are you going to find? A bunch of people listed with where they went to school and the awards that they bought.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yep. Awards they won for people that, yeah, for a lot of things that people don't understand, what's the significance of that? Or they bought, you're right. And you're seeing more, I think in consumer facing law, there is a little bit more of a movement towards gotta have Google reviews, practice reviews, things like that, you know, because we're used to seeing it, you know? Hey, did everybody who works with this guy say they suck? That's important.
00:48:55
Speaker
Right. You know, but most websites are about us. Yeah. They don't say anything about, Hey, I see you.
00:49:05
Speaker
Here are your problems. I know what you're paying. Yes, you learn that if you start studying marketing, which I only did later in life, I feel like I've got my crash course in it. But the idea of put your no really put yourself in a position of the person who needs your services. It's not about you. Right. But law school, even even in the curious to know if your experience was different, but even on the clinical front.
00:49:26
Speaker
Even if we're designing a clear point, we're still thinking about how can we deliver the services we know they need and we architect and set up before we actually ask and listen. Well, you know, it's the same way that, you know, again, every attorney website says we're client centered.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah. What does that mean? Right. Because, because it's sort of seems to me that almost every law firm is designed to serve the lawyer. Yeah. Right. You come to my office, you take the day off work and pay for parking downtown. You come to me. Yeah. An uncomfortable, uncomfortable teak clad office with a bunch of overdressed people making you feel small. Yeah.
00:50:05
Speaker
Well, and the other thing is, even if a law firm starts to change the outward face and try, oh, we're going to be, you know, not much has changed about the internal workings of law firm structure, particularly in the larger senses.
00:50:20
Speaker
Because, and I've done DEI programs and wellness programs for law firms, and part of what we challenge and think about is like, well, what behavior do you not have that you want? Okay, so you want people to be in teams, you want them to be more inclusive of all this stuff. But what do you incentivize? How do you count people? How do you reward them? It's all individualistic.
00:50:41
Speaker
Right, and this is one of the things that I learned too late in life, is the incentive structures create the culture, create the way that things work. And if you want to incentivize people not working together,
00:51:01
Speaker
what you're gonna do is what Big Law does, right? Which is, I wanna make sure that I get all of the origination. I don't wanna share work with other people. If I get a bigger cut from sending a referral to another firm from another partner that I know, I'm gonna do that rather than keep it in the firm. Everything is perverted incentive structure. But if you ask them, they're like, well, there's no other way to do it.
00:51:28
Speaker
It's like, really, there is no man. Ali, nobody's thought of anything. And nobody can think of another way to do it.
00:51:37
Speaker
Well, you are starting to see at least some larger law firms that will hire a COO or a CFO who's not a liar, who is just somebody with MBA or somebody who has administrative experience. I love the organization, the Association of Legal Administrators. They're like, you know, hey, look, we actually know how to run stuff. And we don't know, Jack, about a summary judgment motion or drafting a will. That's because you don't need us to.
00:52:02
Speaker
That's right. We'll help you do that. But it has taken a long time for the paradigm and what you always hear about. It's Perry Mason and everything else. The lawyer is also the manager and operator and all. And we don't always have that skill set. Most of us, in fact, don't necessarily or mindset. If you look at most law firms, now some of the really, really big firms are different from this now.
00:52:27
Speaker
But most law firms, the person who gets elected managing partner is the person with the biggest book of business. Yeah. Do you want number one to take your best rainmaker out of the game? Right. Right. Who he's not going to stay out of the game or she's not going to stay out of the game and she's not going to actually do the management. So you get the worst of all possible worlds. You get somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and is distracted from the thing that they are going to do.
00:52:55
Speaker
Well, and I've actually I've had a couple conversations with folks who are high up in in, you know, good sized regional law firms, not massive New York, you know, Chicago, but big for North Carolina. And one guy, a guy I know who got to be managing partner of his whole law firm, you know, the U.S. in operations, all his practice tanked.
00:53:15
Speaker
He's supposed to still be practicing at the same time, but he could not keep up with the client demands at the level that he was and the level of mostly uncompensated work that he did just running the operations and just to respect at some point that it's partly a humility issue for us lawyers to recognize there are other people who know stuff.
00:53:38
Speaker
that's better than what we know. And they're smarter and let them do their thing. Like we, like business knows how to, you know, you have different people doing different jobs because they're good at them and you can set up different systems process. And we're so behind in that. And it's also endemic in, you know, the bigger law firm is at least they might get some structure, they might get some infrastructure or something.
00:53:59
Speaker
I've been on my own as a solo. I've had a little bit of staff and stuff, and it's been a learning process like you've experienced as well. Let me ask you a couple questions. I want to be sensitive to your time too. How are you doing on time? I'm good for another half hour.
00:54:11
Speaker
OK, I are good. There are a couple of questions I want to ask you then that relate to sort of the idea of this book that
Balancing Work & Personal Life
00:54:20
Speaker
I that I am am doing the research on and think about writing and kind of what got us together to start with is the idea of of, you know, what are the things that work for
00:54:31
Speaker
lawyers who are trying to navigate, hey, I do want to have a life and not just be about my work and work consumes me. There are more and more people who would articulate that as a goal and who are, you know, I think it's more important in younger generations and part of what this conversation is
00:54:48
Speaker
Helping me think about is I don't want to just write here's what worked for me Mr. Jen, you know, Mr. Gen X at my age This is kind of my journey, which I think there might be some useful pieces about but you're the third your second conversation I've had today with somebody more in your category age range and life experience and you all have a whole host of creative approaches and ways that you're making this work and so it's kind of blowing my mind in the best way and
00:55:15
Speaker
But tell me kind of what it's been like so you you you've launched the firm and You've had this kind of you've had your sort of comeuppance that that's you you know you and but you but it's not just health crisis It's also kind of a it forced a realignment with who you knew you were to start with
00:55:32
Speaker
So how's it been in terms of navigating, okay, startup firm, now firms, and then kind of family life and where that is, and what are some things that you do that are helpful to navigate all of those kind of different challenges? Yeah, so like a lot of attorneys,
00:55:55
Speaker
Um, I like to work. Okay. Right. I, sure. You know, not necessarily like to do legal work, but, but I like working on things. I like projects, you know, I like to have something to do. Um, and one of the things that, that I realized was that in the, in the eight years, nine years of practice before I got sick.
00:56:25
Speaker
all of the things that I would do that were not work, I stopped doing. The only thing that survived was I continued to read. But that was the only way that I stayed sane. At the end of the day, I was like, I have to remind myself that the language can be beautiful. Yes. Give me something to hold on to. But I stopped playing music. I used to play in bands all the time.
00:56:50
Speaker
Now, I see your guitars in the back. I was going to ask about that. I can't know what it is, though, because you got the capo on the top. It's a it's a Washburn acoustic and it's there to get commented on in Zoom calls much more than is to be played, sadly. Well, you know, the the background that I have here is curated so that if people don't like it, I know that I will not work well with. There you go. There you go. Well, I know I was a fan. I've seen electric on the left and hopefully an acoustic on the right. So that's right.
00:57:19
Speaker
So you had let go of a lot of the things that you brought you, you know, joy and refreshment and energy. Right. You know, and, you know, I realized that if you don't have those other things, your work will just fill that vacuum, right? Because you don't have, I didn't have something else to go look forward to, right? And so, you know, I found that, you know,
00:57:45
Speaker
it was really important for me to start cultivating some, um, some things that I really love doing outside of the practice or running a law firm. Um, and you know, I, I consider, um, you know, so I don't do any hour billing, but you know, I have a, um, you know,
00:58:11
Speaker
on my to-do list, right, for all my work. It's also, hey, did you play guitar for 20 minutes today? So you do like time blocking, but not just for work tasks, but for what's going to be restorative replenishing that sort of thing. That's right. Nice. You know, I am writing a novel.
00:58:31
Speaker
Really, which, which I started writing 10 years ago. Yeah, and this sort of wrote, you know, 500 words every year, you know, I love it. In May, I decided, No, I'm gonna write the stamp thing. Nice.
00:58:50
Speaker
I started doing it and the only way that I got traction was when I decided that this was just as important as the work that I did for the law firm. You made the choice to say, I'm going to blot time to make that happen. Yeah. In the same way that, you know, if I, and I'm sure that you know this because you're an attorney, when you start getting antsy, when you're like, I don't think that I've worked enough on this. Yeah. Yeah. I get that way about my book now.
00:59:17
Speaker
That's so good, though, because yes, you've internalized it as, oh, and this is so helpful, because I mean, as I'm, I mean, the occasion for this college, I'm supposed to be writing a book, I'm trying to write a book, I am finding, I'm struggling with the solitary aspect of it. And I'm partly struggling with also the end use, the end product, because the book itself, nobody ever may read it, but you're doing it for the joy
00:59:40
Speaker
of the creative process, you've written and you've written enough to know that you love making that come alive on the page. I do. And one of the things that I did as a forcing function for myself, behind a paywall, I am making the book, The Shitty First Strap Public. Lovely. Oh, lovely. And I love that concept and Lamont, yes. Right. Because I know people have paid me money.
01:00:11
Speaker
to see me, you know, shit all over a page. And so that's genius, though. Right. But I mean, it makes me feel I'm obligated to do this. Right. I took people's money, promising them an insight into what it would be like to write a book. Oh, and that's beautiful. And I would I'll sign up right now. Send me the link because I will. Crazy enough, I will pay for that because.
01:00:34
Speaker
I love the creative process. And even as I've been trying to morph into, okay, I'm gonna do some more writing, part of what I've wrestled with is I don't like the solitary nature of it, but getting to have these conversations is curing that, it's helping. But also just being around people who are creating art for the sake of art and trusting, hey, what will happen with it? Who knows? But nobody's had a, I mean, Grisham wrote his first book. He did not know anybody was ever gonna read that set.
01:01:01
Speaker
No, you know, and one of the things that was the tipping point for me when I decided, okay, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to put it. Most of the time when we read books, they are finished. They've been through professional editing. And so we've got this idea that books just come out that way.
01:01:20
Speaker
Well, and we have, I think, a particular problem in law with that. I've been talking with a lot of people about this, especially if I've been trying to make this shift to know I'm a writer for a different purpose. And I've known it some in the program aspect in designing PowerPoints and all that.
01:01:33
Speaker
When I am writing a brief or a letter in law or pleading or whatever it is, I am editing as I write. I cannot do otherwise, and it's laborious, but it comes out, this is pristine. And part of it drilled into it. You get one brief, one shot, the judge will read this one time, the other side, all this, and we edit as we write.
01:01:55
Speaker
And everybody I've been talking about in the book writing world, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, says stay in writing mode, vomit out the shitty first draft, get every all the content out, come back later in editing mode. And then I realized, oh, to do that, I got to just dictate. I got to I got to just run my mouth for 30 minutes and I've got content galore. Then come back and clean it up. And it gets me out of that, you know, have to make it perfect as I go.
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it's really difficult to get out of that mode. It's so hard. And one of the hard things for me is the context shifting from
01:02:32
Speaker
as you say, like writing an operating agreement. Now I'm back in 1946, writing about jazz, like what's going on? So, you know, the thing that, you know, has been so important for me is making sure that they're enjoyable, viable, and intellectually stimulating outlets other than just work.
01:02:56
Speaker
Yes. And what I love about what you're saying is, so is there a particular time of day that you do that 20 minutes? Do you schedule that? Or do you just kind of have it there as a question each day? Or how do you how do you make that happen? So, I mean, as you know, sometimes our days as attorneys are unpredictable. Right, right. But one of the things that I've begun doing, you know, I'm not a particular, I'm not really a morning person. Yeah. But I started waking up early. Yep.
01:03:23
Speaker
early for me is like 6 30. Sure. I don't start doing work for the firm until 10. Okay. I don't schedule anything before 10. Right. And, you know, some of that time, you know, I get up, I take my dog for a five mile walk. Yeah. Right. You know, just sort of get limbered up both mentally and yeah, yeah, physically. And, you know, I come back and I'll read for an hour, typically. Right, right. And
01:03:55
Speaker
I do morning pages, if you're familiar with that journaling method. Yeah. Yeah. I have heard of that. The general idea. Right. You just write three pages. It doesn't matter what it's about, whether it's coherent, you just sort of brain dump. Yes. Yes. I've toyed with it. I've never officially called it that, but I've done it sporadically. I need to do it more. Yeah.
01:04:18
Speaker
And then typically what that does is it empties me of all of the sort of brain chatter, the monkey brain going. And I will take notes on what I've been working on in the book. I will usually have a couple of ideas of where I want to take certain scenes and do that. I'll work generally from 10 until five or six.
01:04:45
Speaker
Okay. And you stay in work mode. When you go into kind of, I am now my grand law mode, you kind of stay in that mode. That's right. Okay. Cause that's one of the things I've been learning about as well. Part of my challenge that I've always had either, you know, an entrepreneurial thing going and law firm going and, and what I recognized was getting difficult is the switching too much switching during the day doesn't work as well. No, it doesn't. I've got to have blocks of kind of here and there, you know, I'm now in this mode. If I stay in that mode, I'll be good.
01:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, although it's hard to do. It is, it is. Especially if you're neurodiverse. I was about to say, you mentioned earlier ADHD and I want to talk about that because that's part of my journey as well. Talk a little bit about that. When did you know that? Discover that? And what have you found?
01:05:28
Speaker
You know that is helpful to try to because you can't get you know, as I said, we can't get cured of it medicine helps but it doesn't fix everything and there's I've been reading Gabor Mate a lot who's one of the leading thinkers on some of this and It's also about development.
Living with ADHD
01:05:42
Speaker
It's about community There's a lot of aspects but tell me kind of what your journey has been with that when you when you learned about that and how it shows up and then what? What you've learned to do to help. Yeah, so I was diagnosed when I was six. Okay, I
01:05:55
Speaker
My dad said, so this would have been like 1987. Okay. My dad said, that's not a real thing. Lovely.
01:06:06
Speaker
The joke is, if you know ADHD, it's about 90% hereditary and I can guarantee you that it's not my mom. Yeah, yeah, I understand. So, but, so I was, I was diagnosed and basically probably forgot about it because I was left to fend for myself for years. Common story, sadly.
01:06:27
Speaker
You know, and I got by well enough because I'm bright enough that for the most part you can wear the mask and get through it. Yes. Yes. Same for me. Nobody discovered it for me at all in adolescence because I didn't have the hyperactivity component and I could pull stuff out of my butt at the 11th hour and I'd still get eight. So everybody's like, what? He's fine. Right. Yeah.
01:06:47
Speaker
You know, and, you know, my grades were inconsistent in classes that I was interested in. I was literally the top person in the class and in grades and in classes that I had no interest in. I just didn't do the work. I almost didn't graduate because my senior year in AP Calculus B.C.D.
01:07:09
Speaker
I would do the homework until I figured out how to do it. Okay. And then just stop. I wouldn't do the rest of the homework because I would know how to do it. I know it for the test. I'm good. Right. I would, I would get A's on the test and my teacher would say, you shouldn't be able to do this. I was like, says who? You gave me 20 problems. I figured out how to do it in 10.
01:07:29
Speaker
Right. And then I went, you know, I read, you know, Camus for an hour. Yeah. Which is the better use of my time doing a bunch of bullshit that I already know how to do or actually expanding my mind. Right. Exactly. Every single time. Beautiful. So, you know, I got through because, you know, as you say, you know,
01:07:48
Speaker
I never missed a deadline. Right. Everybody thought that I was going to miss every single one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You took everyone right up to the wire and negotiating. Oh, I had a little printed problem. Let me get. Yeah. Know the drill all too well.
01:08:00
Speaker
And that worked fine until I started practicing a lot. I got through law school that way and it was fine. Did you caffeinate a lot too? That's what a lot of us do. That's a good form of self-medication as well. Yeah, because the neurochemistry, the caffeine actually calms the brain as opposed to for most people which speeds it up.
01:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, it stimulates, as I understand, it stimulates the sort of regulator, the frontal cortex regulator that's like, oh, let's decide what to pay attention to instead of just drifting with the wind. That's right. It's the same reason that Adderall is basically methamphetamine. Yeah. Right.
01:08:44
Speaker
So I got into actually practicing and all of a sudden there was just too much to keep track of. I mean, there was just too much. I was managing a case load of like 90 cases and it was like missing deadlines. I don't know what's going on.
01:08:58
Speaker
And you're trying to probably, what I was doing is trying to staff, well, okay, I better have the crack best secretary in the world. Who's going to keep track of all the deadlines, but they're still having to kind of push me and like, Hey, did you see that coming? I'm like, and what I've been learning is it's, it's, it's partly about a relationship to time. Like the future doesn't exist for the ADD brain. It's like everything is now I'm present. Everything is now or some undefinable future.
01:09:20
Speaker
Yes, yes. And it's all this, I would say, oh, I got two hours. I can get 20 things done. Sure. Time is fungible. Yeah. Renewable. My wife, who God help me, is a psychiatrist. So she knows, but she's like, you're a time optimist. Time optimist. Yeah. Chrono-optimism is what I heard. Yes. Chrono-optimism, yes.
01:09:48
Speaker
I did the same thing. I made sure that my secretary took care of all of that.
01:09:57
Speaker
I don't know if you experienced this. It becomes a sort of resentful relationship. Yes. Because they feel like they're nagging you. You feel like they're nagging you. Yes. You know that you need it. Yes. And you feel like it's what's wrong with me. I just, you know, because when you see other people who like whenever I'd go in anybody else's office, for the most part, I'm like, dang, this looks neat and nice. How do y'all do that? Yeah.
01:10:23
Speaker
Well, right. You know, and, um, people will come into my office and like, how do you find anything? I was like, actually know where everything is. Exactly. Oh yeah. Like, like this, you know, is, is about three quarters of the way down this pile and I'll pull it out and it's right there. Yeah. Nobody else can find it, but I can't. Exactly. Until, until you can't, but yeah. Right. You know, and then, but there is that breaking point where there's just, there's too much. Yeah. Um,
01:10:52
Speaker
I sort of continued and faked it that way until I got sick. Okay. Um, when my, when my, when my brain turned back on, it was like the ADHD was in hyperdrive. Really? Oh, okay. Um, you know, my brain was moving so fast and I couldn't, like it, there was no control. Right. Right. I mean, you know how it goes. I mean, what we do is.
01:11:22
Speaker
apparently unconnected things are very connected, right? Yes. One of the strengths of ADD, as I've learned, is seeing connections that other people don't see. I used to think, wow, that goes with that. How do you not see that? That's obvious to you.
01:11:38
Speaker
But yes, it's one of the, it's like, it doesn't, I love, I'm actually watching some of these TikTok videos later where there's like this young teenage dude and he's like playing himself, explaining to somebody else like how the ADHD brain is different from normal brain. It's like, oh wait, you don't think like, wait, like no, what are you talking about? You know, it's crap. It's great though. Good perspective. Yeah.
01:11:59
Speaker
I remember, um, learning that there are some people whose brains aren't constantly yelling at them. Yes. Yes. It's like, wait, your brain is like your silent up here. Yeah. You have silence or you think in pictures and not words always about everything. Yeah. Yeah. It blew my mind. Yeah. Um, so what'd you do at that point then you get, you kind of, you come back online and then you're like, whoa, I'm back up, amped up, you know, at, at, at that high intensity level. What do you do?
01:12:26
Speaker
So I initially, I was like, okay, why I finally need to get medicated, right? Except all of the medications are metabolized to the liver. So I cannot take any medication. Oh heavens. Oh, right. You know, and I mean, obviously don't drink, right? I can't smoke weed or eat edibles, also metabolize to the liver. Oh, wow. There's no way to slow it down.
01:12:55
Speaker
And you got a liver transplant. You got somebody else's liver. Was it somebody you knew? Was there a, was it just an organ donor out there? It was, it was an organ donor.
01:13:04
Speaker
who was in a car accident and passed away in the hospital where I was. Wow. Wow. So, so with that though, you can't take a chance on anything that requires massive talk screening in the liver, you know, what's, what's doing. Okay.
Health & Well-being in Law
01:13:19
Speaker
So, so, you know, you know, I mentioned earlier that, you know, one of the first things I do every day is I go for a five mile walk. Yeah. If I don't get that exercise, my brain never calms down.
01:13:32
Speaker
Interesting. Ooh. Dot's connecting for me. Yeah. Right. You know, and there's a really interesting book by a fellow named Dr. Rady. Oh yeah. Rady. Yeah. Yeah. Rady. Halloween. Right. You're fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. He has a book about exercise. I think it's called spark. Ooh. Okay. I'm going to grab that then. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I read that and I was like, Oh,
01:13:59
Speaker
That makes sense. Nice. So exercise and diet. Okay. And what have you found is are difference makers in terms of diet? I mean, shockingly, it's basically don't eat shit. Avoid processed foods if at all possible. Yeah. You know, if it's green, that's probably good for you. Okay.
01:14:23
Speaker
You know, but also just lean meats as opposed to, you know, fattier cuts, stuff like that. I actually feel a difference, you know, when, when I, when I go over to my parents' house and my mom makes, you know, a stew with a very fatty, you know, beef, I feel it.
01:14:40
Speaker
Okay. And that, but that you're, you're keying on something else that I'm fascinated with. And I think we talked about a little bit to the idea of paying attention to your body as a, you know, that again, not a subject that comes up in law school at all. In fact, there's, there's no, there has been, it's, it's
01:14:56
Speaker
people are trying to change it. There are people who've been working on changing it, but it's all about the mind. It's all the intellect. It's all being sharp, and we don't, you know, encourage, I mean, again, people are trying to change this. Take care of your body. It is part of your instrument as a lawyer. You need your physicality.
01:15:13
Speaker
It feeds your brain. It senses things, it has memory, trauma is stored there, and it will also be the warning signs. They tell you, I love the story about, like you said, the heart palpitations. When you were starting to interview for a job again, it's like, wait, hang on. I'm not sure we're comfortable with this. And you listened to that and said that, actually, because a lot of people would push through that and just say, that's just jitters. I got to just get over it.
01:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, five years before I would have. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but, you know, so that I have, you know, I don't eat a whole lot of sugar anymore. Okay. Again, I think that that has some ADHD implications. Okay.
01:16:01
Speaker
What about, let me ask you one other question. I know you got to go in a second. I do, but, um, do you have any tools? This is one of my challenges, uh, as, and, and, and it's been helpful. I think identity has been helpful in realizing, Oh, I'm actually more of a educator kind of consultant coach than a lawyer. There's a reason I don't want to sit and draft long legal briefs anymore. I used to be great at it. I used to do it like nobody's business, but it does not, you know, I tasted other things that, that feed my soul better than enjoy more. I'm,
01:16:28
Speaker
working on, you know, how do you monetize that? But keeping track, especially you got two different law firms. Okay. So how do you keep track of calendar to do this things like that? Have you found tech solutions or yet some people say old school write it on paper? What has worked for you? So there have been a mixture of text and old school solutions. Okay. You know, I have two firms, but I don't work on two firms in a single day.
01:16:53
Speaker
Okay. So you have a day that's purely estate and a day that's more McGran. I'm in startup mode. So even segmenting who you're serving as a lawyer is, uh, that's, that's genius. Um, you know, because again, it's that context switching kind of thing, right? If I have to go back and forth between, you know, um, negotiating a commercial lease, you know, and you know, uh, a probate matter,
01:17:21
Speaker
Right, like you get lost in it. Well, and we don't we don't pay enough attention to how inefficient that is. Like I and as part of one of the dangers of again, a quick mind, a quick, you know, smart person, ADHD brain is, oh, I think, I believe the lie, I can multitask. It's not true for anybody, really. But I'm especially I've only learned in recent years to go actually, you know, the idea of flow, but
01:17:47
Speaker
Chicken tally and all, you know, talk about, you know, staying in flow means stay on the same mode of operation and see what you, you know, do all your things that relate to that while you're in that mode. And if you have to do like even pausing to just email somebody about your other thing is going to disrupt it. Yeah. Yeah. So do you set like expectations with clients, I guess, as far as what days are going to be more regular for you for the different needs of things and all?
01:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I find that if you attract the right clients and you're honest and upfront with them, they won't forgive or accept almost anything.
01:18:30
Speaker
Yes. You can have conversations. Once again, what you've talked about too, you build that trust and you build that relationship and you start learning the ones who can say, oh yeah, I, you know, I told you I need it Tuesday, but really Thursday will be fine. Because what I used to do is another, uh, an intense form of chrono-optimism is, um, uh, you know, not falling for the illusion that I could satisfy everybody every day on everything and not talk to them and just sort of, you know, hope it all works out and then it doesn't. And then I'm begging for, you know, hang on, blah, blah, blah.
01:18:59
Speaker
And actually, I've told this many times in workshops, and I'm reminding myself because I haven't done it in a while, but it's better for me to start my day with the assumption, I am sure I'm going to disappoint somebody today. How about I make a purposeful choice about who it is and I give them a heads up and a chance to plan for it instead of entertaining the delusion that, oh, I will fit 20 pounds and you know what, and a 50 pound bag.
01:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. And people will appreciate that because they have their stuff that happens too. And then you can have, Hey, you know what? No, that Osborne that Tuesday, that is a hard deadline. Yeah. I need that. Cause I'm going to fricking knock up. I'll call tomorrow or something. Right. Yeah. You know, and just having the conversation is so much better than, you know, hoping to get by. Right.
01:19:42
Speaker
Yes, well, and it's trust building. And again, it's one of those things that you have to learn somewhat in practice. And this is the other thing that I think I think about a lot of systemic level, but law schools have also operated. We just teach them to think like a lawyer, analyze and learn stuff. And of course, the bar exam is changing. Like in the future, you're not going to have to memorize shit on the bar.
01:20:01
Speaker
You don't have to have no secure transactions to take the bar because it's going to start testing, beginning 26, judgment and evaluation of things and ethics and conflict resolution strategy and things like that. The stock and trade things we do. But for so long, it's going to be fascinating to watch this unfold.
Practical Legal Education
01:20:19
Speaker
the legal academy because legal academy for a long time is dependent on we don't have to teach skills because you'll learn it on the job the problem is what people are getting in terms of on the job training varies widely from setting to setting firm to firm and there are great mentors and great people i've been fortunate to have some great trainers and people who have given me good guidance and mentored me i've had some awful awful ass people
01:20:44
Speaker
who shouldn't have been mentoring anybody and who didn't want to be mentoring anybody. And so we've got to, you know, everybody knows to some degree, we've got to change that. And the ABA is saying law schools, skills, experience, that actually counts. This is not some academic esoteric exercise. We should be preparing people for practice because a lot of them are going to hang out a single from the start because they want to. They don't even want, you know, big law firm doesn't even sound appealing to start with. How do we equip those people?
01:21:13
Speaker
But I think you're going to be one of the people, certainly, that we're going to be listening to. And how do you do this and do it differently? Well, I mean, part of the issue is that the professoriate at law schools are academics. They view what they're doing as academia. Yes. But they're at a white collar trade school. Yes. But they will bristle. We are not a trade school. Yeah, you kind of are. The work that you're interested in might not be a trade school. Right.
01:21:43
Speaker
Right. And there need to be some elite institutions that want to think about law at this at this uber high level about how do we change systemic that is great. But 85 percent of lawyers who finish in any law school anywhere are going to be in some kind of small organization, small company, law firm, whatever. And they need skills. Have you ever encountered a Yale lawyer on the other side of the V?
01:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. No. Rarely. No. I knew one. Yeah. There aren't a ton of them in practice. You're right. Right. And if you do, guess what? They have no idea what the fuck they're doing. They're not good at it.
01:22:28
Speaker
They also are on every single law school faculty in the United States. Yes. And people have been sort of pulling back the curtain on that. And I'll give you one exception. I did a podcast not too long ago. In fact, I got to go edit it because it's dropping soon. But there's a woman at who is now a professor at Fordham, Jordana Confino. And if you follow me for stuff on LinkedIn, she is
01:22:51
Speaker
She kind of had her comeuppance as well, realized after being at Yale undergrad, Yale Law was a machine, but she was working herself to death and like had this high achieving A plus perfection type stuff. And she got the plum clerkships in New York and Second Circuit. And she realized, I don't like this. I don't want to do this. This is too isolating. This is not good for me. And she realized and kind of got some kind of counseling coaching type, different kind of help.
01:23:20
Speaker
And she is the dean of professionalism at Fordham and teaches a class on positive lawyering, which gets into a lot of this that we're talking about of, hey, think differently and don't just follow all the lemmings over the cliff. But that's one thing she talks about. It wasn't hard to stay in that mode. And everybody's rewarding and saying, yes, you're a brainiac. Keep going. This is great. And thankfully, she had the wisdom to listen to herself and go, but I'm going to die.
01:23:48
Speaker
But there is a mindset of, well, I've invested in this, it costs so much, I have to do this. Even as I've done in different periods of my career, less pure law, more teaching, you feel like, am I betraying something? Am I betraying a part of myself or an identity? I think a lot of this comes down to that concept of identity that law schools are starting to talk about more as well. What is a professional identity? And it's not everybody's going to look like this and do this. It can't be.
01:24:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, oh, and this has been a treat and absolute trip. Thank you for your generosity with your time. And this is going to be at least two episodes of the podcast, I think, because I listened to it out of half, but people might not. I'm going to subscribe to you. You're on the record. Blog is not just law related. It looks like that's about like music and all different kinds of stuff. But is that the same thing as the behind the paywall where your writing is? You can go to penhollow.com for that. Penhollow. P E N P E N N.
01:24:49
Speaker
I will check that out, but thank you for your generosity as we develop. We're still not sure exactly.
01:25:00
Speaker
What's going to come, we're toying with, we've been toying this idea of a collective of people together called the thriving lawyers collective to get together and be a community of people sort of talking about what does it mean to thrive in law? And we're not giving a one size fits all answer. We're not like, there are a lot of people who are like, mindfulness is the key to everything. I'm like, it helps. And it helps some people. I actually read some recent said for AD person, mindfulness is not going to really help us because I am aware of a lot of thoughts. I need to know what I need to figure out what to do with them and get out of my head into action.
01:25:30
Speaker
the knowing what's going on up here isn't our problem. Right. It's the constant awareness of what's going on up here. That's a great way to put it because I've wrestled with why have I not just when everybody says mindfulness and yeah I'm like I know I there's something it has to do differently for me and for the anxious brain it's probably wonderful and and I'm still learning about the relationship there's a for me the ADD brain is actually a it's a flight from anxiety it's like oh I'll never feel that shit
01:25:58
Speaker
I'm going to be over here in my head. And so for me, what what helps a lot is, oh, I am feeling things. What am I feeling? And so it's even, you know, folks in my mind know what is body awareness. It's like, what am I feeling and what's coming out, what's leaking out? But that's, you know, learning to study yourself and listen to other people. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I'll leave you with this. Yeah. Hit up J.D. H.D. dot com.
01:26:23
Speaker
I just saw that the other day. I just saw that there was such a thing. And so I'm going to check out jdhd.com. Yeah. Or I think it's the JDHD. The JDHD. Yes. I'm going to check that out and seek that person out by a guy named Marshall Lichty, who is one of my really good friends. And he's amazing. Brilliant. Thank you for the connection. Thank you for that moment. Thank you for your time, Owen. I will let you know where all this drops and you can find Purely Estates Law Group and McGran Law.
01:26:49
Speaker
on LinkedIn and follow Owen's post because he's got some good thoughtful insights out there. Thank you, Owen, so much. Really appreciate it. Take care. Bye.