What I learned running a law firm as junior lawyer

‍Sophie: So welcome to another episode of the file notes podcast today. We're joined by Caralee and to kick it off. I want to read one of your LinkedIn posts because I think it summarizes your story and success very nicely. So here we go at 27. I went through a divorce with three children at 34.

I graduated as a lawyer at 36. I took over a firm that had 460, 000 of debt. At 37, I started employing incredible team members and paid off all of that debt. At 40, I run a seven figure law firm with 15 staff. Now I teach other law firm owners how to scale their business without burnout. I love that post.

And I think it's because we often hear of this linear journey from high school to university into private practice. And you don't often hear a story of a junior lawyer taking over a law practice And running it. So please tell me how you decided to study law and take over a law practice as a junior lawyer.

and

Speaker: Well, I don't know if you necessarily decide all of these things as in I'm going to go and do that. Yeah, it definitely wasn't a linear journey and law was. Not in my, you know, on my radar whatsoever. I was like, I raised in New Zealand and I had a family young as that post suggests and yeah, I wasn't a lawyer and I wasn't thinking about being a lawyer.

And really I think what prompted it was that. I'd been working in like our family businesses and I realized after going through a divorce that I hadn't really looked after my own education. And that being in family businesses, wasn't going to you know, be there always. And I needed to really focus on my own education and career.

So that's why I went into law in the first place. And then taking over a practice. Well, it just sort of. Turned out that way. And yeah, so I just made it work.

Sophie: And when you were studying law, you would have been like an older student in the class. What was that like and how were you balancing that with having a family and

Speaker: Yeah, that was really hard. I was around 30 and I already, I actually had. The third child during, I was two years into uni I was full time at uni. Sometimes I took on more subjects because I just wanted to get it over and done with as soon as I could. And at that time I was living on the Gold Coast and uni was in Brisbane.

So sometimes I drove to Brisbane and was, you know, In the university and other times I was just online and remote and when you're online and remote, you really don't feel like you're a uni student as such. You've just got to get through the work. And I think having a lot of life commitments.

You know, I was working, I was raising kids, you know, And I was a uni student and I was a New Zealand citizen. So at that time, you couldn't get a student loan or anything. So I was having like, one of the challenges was actually paying for uni as I went. That was really hard. But it was just making that commitment and just knowing that it was a short period of time and that would be over soon.

But yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to go back to those days at all. It was really hard.

Sophie: when I look back and when I was at law school with friends and everyone would have part time jobs and it would be, Oh my God, this is the most overwhelming thing. I've got the big 200 level exams and working. So I couldn't imagine what that would have also been like knowing that you didn't have things like student loans and that you have a family to be raising as

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie: Did you feel like you were, I always think if I look back and went to university, Now that I have some more experience that I'd actually note down a lot more and remember a lot more of it and see how it can actually be a bit, be applied. Do you think that you took more on board given that you were doing it at a later stage and you knew that's what you really actually wanted to be doing?

Speaker: I don't think I necessarily did and really like for me, like I wasn't an academic at school and so I was having to learn like Really just how to get through it and to, you know, there's a little bit of a method. I kind of feel like a lot of people could do a law degree if they just work out what the method of like assessment and exams is.

And so by the time I got into like years three and four, it just felt a whole lot easier, but honestly, it was really like, I just need to get this over and done with so that I can start my career. And I always wanted to do family law. Yeah. And out of all of the, you know, 32 subjects that you did, I think I did two related to family law.

So a lot of the degree actually felt pretty irelevant.

Sophie: And so walk me through when you first took over the firm, the post mentioned that it was in debt. What did you first do when you took over to kind of get it back on track?

Speaker: Yeah. So there was a lot of debt in there and mentally it was well, if I'd purchased a firm, I would have paid like a lot of cash for it. So this is I'm purchasing some sort of foundation, but I'm just like paying it back off. through a, you know, debt repayment. That was really challenging.

But what I actually did was I just set up payment plans, whether people wanted me to be in a payment plan with them or not, and just paid it off. So, so the law practice was my ex husband's law practice, so that's kind of how that sort of came about. And he had gone off, And sort of left this law practice there.

So it was an opportunity like it could have just been sort of closed down, I guess. And he could have dealt with the debt a different way, but I just ended up just knuckling down and just sort of really honing in on the figures. It was a great process. General practice. So there was a lot of, you know, conveyancing and then bits and pieces of leasing and wheels and estates and family law and I just worked out what was going to be more profitable and ended up really niching into the family law.

area. And I was focusing on growing the business. So I employed a senior associate and also like I wasn't, I was still on a supervised practicing certificate. So I employed a senior associate, really amazing in family law and just knuckled and getting lots of work in the door and learning everything that I could about actually being a lawyer as well as running the business.

Sophie: Yeah, lots going on. And when you hired that senior associate, I imagine that , working relationship would have been a lot different to other firms. First of all, was it very different to, because if you were running the firm that then you are looking to them for guidance as well. What was that like?

Caralee: I think that we had a receptionist at the time as well. And so the firm had already been established. And so I think that like he came in really as a senior associate and really focused on the legal side while I was still, so there was kind of two parts of me, I suppose, like one that was focusing on the business and then one that was sort of focusing on being a junior lawyer and, you know, learning as much as I could.

from him as a senior, you know, experienced family lawyer. So yeah, it worked really well.

Sophie: And in terms of You niched down into the family law sector. How important do you think it is to niche down for other law firms? I know that you've dealt with all the 250 law firm owners with scalable law. So is that something that you think is important for everyone? Or there's like a specific kind of use case where that pays off?

Caralee: I do think, well, the people that I help are small to medium sized firms. And what I do see is that people, law firm owners are trying to spread themselves too thin. And That's not even maybe law firm owners. It's also employed solicitors who are trying to create their own brand. I think the main thing is that you really can't be everything to everyone.

And if you're trying to create a brand and trying to market your, you as a brand or your law firm, then if you have a marketing message that is trying to be applied to every single potential person you could help it just gets really diluted, so in my view, it's really important to niche and then niche.

So, you know, who, for example, use family law as an example, who in family law are you actually trying to help? You can't help everyone going through a divorce and separation. So who's the actual target and really honing in on that. So I think that the firms that niche, they seem to have a lot more success.

more quickly. And yeah, I think it's really to do with people understanding and knowing how they can help them and what problem they solve. Whereas if you're trying to be every one to everyone, you attract no one. So yeah.

Sophie: And in light of that, what type of marketing did you do when you were first running the firm and you've niched down in family law, because I know you're a bit of a marketing whiz in the background?

Caralee: Yes. Yeah. Well, the thing is that when you are starting a firm or in my case, there was a firm with an, you know, an existing firm with a lot of debt, there just isn't a lot of money to market your practice. You know, you can't go and spend big budgets on ads or whatever it might be. So that was 2012.

So we didn't quite have the digital space that you have now. I mean, some law firms still didn't have websites back then, believe it or not. But I really hit the, just hit the ground in terms of networking with people who we shared the same sort of client base. Trying to like, I built a brand authority around myself and the firm for being experts in family law.

I did BNI, which was really good initially because it actually helps me to. Get gain confidence to speak about the practice and what we offered as well as creating a lot of amazing relationships. And then as the sort of organic started happening then I started doing paid ads, just small paid ads initially.

And now we have quite a large paid ads budget. But yeah, we, and I love paid ads because it's. Tap. You can turn on and off as you need to. But yeah, that's how we started out.

Sophie: And thinking about paid ads more when we've previously spoke, you've mentioned about lead magnets. Can you explain what this is? An example and an example of this in a legal context,

Caralee: Yeah. So, a lead magnet you've probably all been scrolling Instagram or linked or LinkedIn, maybe not so much LinkedIn Facebook, where you've thought, oh, that looks handy. I want to download that. I want to download that information. So that's a lead magnet. So it's basically converting a lead into someone who is then in your mailing list.

So you download that lead magnet in, um, exchange for an email address or phone number sometimes. So we've, and built a mailing list out for our law practice, which works really well. Because then you can start actually creating a relationship through email marketing with the potential clients.

So it works very well for law firms if you're niched and, you know, can sort of create that relationship with a potential client or a Ferra.

Sophie: I think they're a great tool when you think a law firm might be starting to do paid ads, often you see big eBooks or white pages, which seem very time consuming and that you'd need someone to be doing that for you. But there are a lot of other resources there that I know I'd download that are just a checklist.

Like you said, these are the things you should be thinking about if you're going through a divorce and everyone's going to want that list from a lawyer download and. Great way to get somebody in the door.

Caralee: Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Sophie: And so going back to when you were scaling your own firm, you've mentioned to me that you always tried to hire people that were much smarter than yourself.

How did you, what was your approach to hiring and what kind of standard you did you assess people against?

Caralee: Initially my standard or my, you know, strategy for hiring was very much ad hoc, like a lot of law firm owners. And it was really like out of desperation and, you know, who can I get to come and work for me? And I did find that when I was a smaller firm, it's definitely harder to attract the right people.

I now have a much Sturdier strategy. So, you know, ensuring that we know exactly what we stand for and what our core values are and trying to attract people with those same core values. Because as soon as you get a team member, that's not aligning to that. They might be very skilled, but if they're not aligning to your core values so, for example, one of ours is to have an open mind because we love you.

technology and trying new things and having new ways of solving someone's family law issue or whatever it might be. As soon as we get someone in who's not of that core value, for example, it just does not work in our firm. So really establishing what your values are. Has really helped and then also making sure that we have an actual pipeline of potential employees and not just waiting until we're desperate to get one.

So, creating relationships with, you know, great. Family law solicitors who are in our community and, you know, making sure that we're showcasing what it looks like to work at our firm and things like that. Because again, it's like about branding, not just for attracting clients, but attracting a team as well and really thinking more over the long term rather than I need someone now.

Sophie: I love that tip. It's not one that's come up before on the podcast, so definitely a valuable one to be sharing. We also mentioned in the post that I read out at the start that you're trying to help other people build their law firm without burnout. What kind of role do you think that you hired that helps you have the most extra capacity back in your life as a law firm owner, as you were scaling?

Getting burned

Caralee: I think, well, first of all, I'd just like to say that having burnout or being super exhausted or putting out fires all day. And some, these are some of the things that you'll hear in the law world. It's not a badge of honor and it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to work for a firm or be a firm that operates that way.

There are other so many strategies and ways that you can be you know, as well oiled machine running really smoothly so that you're not getting burnout either as a employed solicitor or as a employer. And so for me, there's been lots of different things, but one hiring the right people is important.

Secondly, like having a firm where the. Law firm owner isn't the bottleneck to every answer in the practice. So we have a lot of systems and processes in place. So similar to, you know, you probably, if you've heard any business. Talks or anything or read books. You know, it's like a cheeseburger, McDonald's cheeseburger.

It's done exactly the same way every single time. There's a list on how to do it. So creating that kind of strategy throughout the whole firm for everything from accounts to delivery to operations, to marketing. So we've done that. And that has absolutely freed me up because what that means is that no one needs to come and ask me what to do.

They're empowered to do their role really well without, you know, relying on me as law firm owner, which means that I don't have to micromanage anyone. And it means that everyone can just get on and do what they need to do. And it means that I'm not burning out, but there certainly was a time where I did feel quite burnt out.

Okay. From the practice and it was because I had, you know, a large team that was relying on me for everything and I was still doing legal work and running a business. So that's really what I help law firm owners to achieve is some sort of freedom in their practice so that they're not working 60, 70 hours a week but much more reasonable hours and everything's running smoothly so that they're not burning out and they're not stressing about every last, you know, thing.

Sophie: you did have that period of burnout, was it one day you were like, I need to change a lot of what is happening here to not keep feeling like this,

Caralee: I just felt like at the time, and it went on for probably a few years, just a lot of pressure and a lot of stress and a lot of just where, just frustration and not really knowing, like, why but. I now looking back and when I see other people as well, I can totally say why I got to that point.

Because I'd built everything so that it was reliant on me. So I then started to build things out. So it wasn't reliant on me and really empowered the team to be part of that process, creating, you know, a lot of processes and systems so that they could do their job really smoothly and know exactly what they need to do to, to You know, be successful in their role.

Sophie: I love it. And so you've put a lot of this wisdom over to Scalable Law, where you now help other law firm owners scale up their law firm. Can you tell me the journey to starting Scalable Law?

Caralee: Yeah. Well, that's sort of a journey in itself. I became, I sort of had a hobby where I became really interested. It was a hobby online and I became interested in learning about how to create. Funnels and lead magnets and all this kind of stuff. And I really wanted to apply it to an online program.

And then I realized sort of through COVID when we had all of that sort of downtime that I really wanted to help law firm owners who were saying me five years before that, where they were. Stressed and struggling and burning out and just didn't have any support on how to grow the practice and how to automate it or streamline it.

So I started in 2020 and I didn't take my own advice back then because I started kind of, outreaching to any business, any service based business. And then I realized, no, actually it's just law firm owners that I want to work with. And so I took on my first law firm client at the end of 2020, that client's still in the program because she just loves being part of the community.

And yeah, and it's sort of grown ever since then. So I've got two programs, one to help people with their firms up to the first million dollar revenue. So by then they've got a few team members. And then once they start getting a few team members, we have a second program called Accelerator, and that's more about systemizing the practice and building to your sort of 2 million plus figure.

Sophie: Amazing, yeah, I've seen a lot of the content on LinkedIn, some, saw some amazing retreats, it looks super Exciting and fun, a fun way to scale your law firm. If we're thinking about like the two different programs you have, maybe starting with the first one, the, before you get to a million dollars turnover, you're a small team, what are the main issues that these law firm owners are facing that's kind of limiting them in terms of scaling up their law firm?

Caralee: Yeah, so that one's the scalable business lounge. They are struggling with getting quality clients through the door. Often they're trying to just take on it. Anything and everything. They're not pricing their services properly. So, you know, they end up sort of not being profitable and they are, you know, wondering where am I going to get my next client from and just waiting for the phone to ring.

And they just don't know how to create a legal brand for themselves and get that brand authority. And they don't know what marketing they should be doing. That is sort of relying on a handful of referrals. So we help them to really get a blow of quality clients through the door and also help them to work out where are they best to spend their money and time and effort without wasting it because my journey, I wasted, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on the wrong marketing digital agencies that didn't, you know, do what they said they'd promised they'd do and things like that.

So, but I realized that it was actually my lack of knowledge. And skill, cause even though you're handing it over, it's your business and your funds. So you still need to have input on, you know, who are you trying to attract and all of that kind of thing. So that's sort of what we do in the first program as well as, you know, automating what we can in there and getting the operations, you know, smooth and things like that.

And helping them to employ their first team member. Cause one of the things is like, who do I get? Do I get a junior lawyer? Do I get a senior lawyer? Or they've tried little things and been unsuccessful and they feel burnt. So really helping them step back into a space of confidence to move the business forward.

So that's the first program. The second program, we really focus on creating systems because What I found is, and I was definitely stuck like around a million dollar 1. 2 kind of mark. It's really hard to grow your firm beyond that if you don't have a proper strategy, if you don't have good leadership skills, like you're not yet moving from lawyer to leader.

And if you don't have systems and processes, it just keeps breaking because you keep being a bottleneck. So, and you're working, often those law firm owners are working crazy hours trying to support the machine that they've started.

Sophie: And if you could, Look back and only systematize one part of a law firm as you are trying to get from above that 1. 2 million mark. What would you do

Caralee: That's such a good question. I would probably systemize my data so that I knew exactly like the numbers in the firm. So, you know, from who's calling to where they're from to the performance of each team member, that was a massive mistake that I made was just being very chill about, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

But as soon as I started having a proper debt data strategy and systemizing that, then things really started taking off.

Sophie: And do you think that's something that the first program of firms aren't doing? Like they're not really at that stage yet. So it's kind of, They're not,

Caralee: Yeah, they kind of, I think they sort of think they know how to run the business cause they're just running it themselves out of, and they run it out of their brain. And then I'll say things to them like, Oh, you know, what's your conversion rate? Oh well, you know, well, how many clients ring and, oh maybe two or three, you know, they're just very vague.

Whereas And even firms that are larger can be quite vague around those kind of figures. But when you actually know how many calls you're getting and how many of those are converting to initial appointments and how many of those are converting to actual clients and you actually know what each of your team members is doing to perform and, you know, produce in the business, then you can really start making.

Zeroing in on major or small improvements that will make major transformations in the firm. So, yeah, definitely knowing your data and honestly, most people just don't, and they don't even know where to start. So, if I could just do one thing, that's what I'd do.

Sophie: yeah, that's even from a marketing perspective, I think as we're growing VXT, like each kind of month we're building on how we're operating. And I've noticed once you start to get to that level of knowing the minor detail and data of everything, you're like, wow, that's not what I thought was happening

Caralee: it. Yeah, because I think our gut instinct can put us in the wrong direction sometimes, you know, and it's even just small stuff like, for example, the staff might say, Oh, we're getting so many calls for child support and say child support. We don't do child support. Okay. So, so well, how many are you getting?

Oh, I don't know. Well, it's well, I want to know, like, how many are you getting? Oh, well, we had two this month. Well, that's not so many. That's two. But then why are we getting those calls? Why is someone calling us for child support? And then you can look back at what your messages, what your ads are doing, you know, and really kind of hone in on why are you getting those calls that are irrelevant to your firm?

But that, you know, That example, imagine that over say 15 data points over your business. You can make incredible changes.

Sophie: And so that's like a lot of data points to be thinking about. What tools do you use to kind of. Bring all of that together or try track those different conversion points and

Caralee: It's really hard because I wish there was like a good solution as in just do this, but it is a manual process. We implement our own tools you know, and we pull those, that data from different places. So I check the data like every week in a leadership meeting. So even if I'm away, I travel a lot.

And I'm away from the firm a lot of the time. So I can always just look at the data and know exactly in real time, how many inquiries, you know, right through to how many clients matters close this week, for example um, like important things for our firm. Um, But yeah, it is a little bit manual. Like we pull it from some from our practice management software, some from um, Just recording it as phone calls come in and clients convert uh, some from looking back at figures, you know, like how many converted or whatever.

And some from financial software. So it is a little bit of a process, but it's automated away from me. It's part of other people's roles and it's so vital and important. And yeah, so it's worth whatever effort it is.

Sophie: Big marketing investments that didn't do what they said they'd do. Is there anything else that comes to mind of what you're always seeing?

Caralee: I think one of the things that again, it sort of does come back to data is that they don't met. They don't measure their data. So when it comes to marketing, for example, they give legitimate marketing a good guy. So, for example, they'll go and spend some money on ads, but they'll run the ads for two months and feel disappointed that they spent two or three grand and don't feel like they've got a return, but they haven't Actually given it a proper go and they haven't measured it properly.

And they haven't then been able to have that being empowered to make tweaks. And it kind of, it's an all or nothing or it didn't work. So I'm not doing it anymore. And to me, that's just a massive waste of money. So I think. That can probably be said for lots of things across the practice.

It's not making tweaks. It's dumping instead of tweaking.

Because some like when you're in it, just stick with it, but just tweak it. It's not an all or nothing. And yeah, and making small adjustments and measuring as you go. So whether that's performance of a team member, whether that's. you know, any marketing that you're doing whether that's pricing or whatever it might be.

Sophie: I love it. It seems like from the tone of your voice with the changing things, consider dumping the ads. It seems like you've heard of a lot of law firm owners dumping them after a couple of months.

Caralee: Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie: And what would your advice be to law firm owners to carve out more time to working on the business rather than working just in the business?

Caralee: Yeah. It's really hard because some of these people are genuinely really overwhelmed and bogged down by, you know, cause the thing is like a lot of new law firm owners in the last, say, two or three years, they've come from being an employed solicitor, which. As an employed solicitor, they only had to serve clients.

That's all they had to do. And then when they start their own business, you know, they have to serve their own clients plus. all the other things to run the business and operations and things. And so they just don't actually get time to work on the business itself. I definitely recommend reading the, an old book called Eat the E Myth.

Read it's amazing. About that topic. So it's about working on and not in the things that you do to work on your business, other things that will actually move the needle forward rather than like even service delivery, you need service delivery. But there are other people that might be able to help you with that, like starting to grow a team.

So my advice would be carve out one or two hours every single day. And it's just a non negotiable that you're going to work on the business on that and during that timeframe. And I guess that's why something like scale, the scalable business lounge or the accelerator program works really well because you're paying to be kept accountable.

And so, you know, you show up, you do the work and then you get transformation and the results. So it's, that's just about carving out the time.

Sophie: And I think being accountable to a third party as well also helps you convey that to your team. So if it was just, you've blocked out in your calendar, but your team needs help with something, it's a lot harder for you to say, sorry, I have two hours of working on something. So I

Caralee: Yeah, that's right.

Sophie: think you mentioned a book that I definitely need to make a book list because all of our guests mentioned great books about growing law firms and business in general.

So I think I need to make a list.

Caralee: Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie: And. So when we're thinking about people who might be a solicitor at the moment inside a law firm, when should people start thinking about going out on their own if they think that's something that they want to do one day? You did it very early on, so there's definitely not like a steadfast rule.

Would love your thoughts on that.

Caralee: Yeah. I think that a lot of people think just from forums and things that I say, either Oh, I'm 10 years post admission. Do you think this is a good time? Or I'm only four years post admission. Do you think it's too early? I mean, obviously it depends on your other back experience. You know, like I had worked in the firm previously.

You might've worked in a firm previously. So it's not like you've been at union, you know, Just are very new to working in a law practice. So, and also if you've got, I've got clients who had pre business experience and other businesses, and so they've just applied that to, you know, being in their legal business I don't think there's any hard and fast rule.

It's. When you're ready and you want that next step or that next, you know, challenge yeah, why not? And now it's just so easy to go out and, you know, be in your own practice. And there's so many amazing tools like what you guys offer just to make being in practice so much, you know, more automated than ever before.

Sophie: I love it. And it's awesome seeing people start their firms because they really can start from scratch of new technology and new systems and without having to convince people that this is what we need to do and migrate and a lovely fresh start.

Caralee: Yeah.

Sophie: When solicitors at a firm and they've decided that they're going to move eventually and start their own firm, what can they start doing that day to start preparing for moving into their own firm?

Caralee: Yeah. A hundred percent start creating your own brand authority. So get yourself out there on, you know, and do it representing the firm you're working in now. But I mean, anything you build in terms of getting your brand out there on social media, creating your own online presence, all of that. Is transferable because you're going to take that with you no matter where your career takes you.

So a hundred percent, if you have that entrepreneurial spirit start building your brand, you know, think about your ideal client where you work now and think about the problems you solve and start posting about all of that. And go hard on it. Don't just do a once a week post. Get out there as much as you can because remember that most people aren't going to see you anyway.

And it will help you to build confidence. It'll help you to create a brand authority. And then when you go out on your own, people will know what you're, you know, what you're offering and be able to, you know, Start straight away, you know referring work to you.

Sophie: Any tips on, these people I assume, if they're ready to start their own firm, very busy, very hard working people and if we're wanting to them say, post every day, that's very time consuming to not only think what to post, make the post, the like emotional toll of deciding you're going to start posting on LinkedIn, any tips to kind of make that a lot less burdensome?

Caralee: yeah, so many everything I do is about working smarter and not harder because if you can do it the quick way, why would you do it the slow way? So I actually have a free course for social media for law firm owners So you can just go to my website and download that for free It's like a five part series.

And I give you all the tools that we use as well, but absolutely one have a You image library just downloaded ready to go. So there might be a bit of set up, but then on a monthly basis, it'll just be easier have Yeah, and then get your posts all ready. So we, I do what's called a nine square strategy.

And so, you know, in the nine squares there's nine different kinds of topics, like a case study and a Frequently asked questions and a, this is the problems that we solve. And this is a client journey and you know, all that kind of stuff. So there's just nine ideas to make it super easy. And if you can bulk create, that's just going to make it a lot easier.

And now since I've done that program, that. Free social media course there was an AI when I did it. I did it probably three years ago. So now you can, you also use AI. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using AI. Don't be scared to use it for prompting for ideas. And. For creating your posts, and then you can go through and tweak so you can actually get it done really easily.

You can also then upload to a platform, which will push it out for you. So you can just schedule it all in and if you're really busy and you're employed. There is nothing wrong with you hopping on Fiverr, finding someone who can do all of this for you for like probably 50 bucks. So there It's honestly can be so much easier than you think.

Sophie: I love the nine square idea. I think I kind of do that in my head, but I've never really thought of a way to kind of articulate that, but I feel like people think they need new ideas all the time, but nine times of posting nine different things, you can definitely post the same thing again. Like people will be expecting to see more content like that.

Caralee: Yeah, that's it. And then so like with the nine sort of like categories or ideas that you know if you even do that three times a month, so there's three posts about frequently asked questions like a frequently asked question or three posts about a case study or three posts about a testimonial or whatever it might be.

So, yeah, it just makes it really easy and it's just then easy to prompt so that you're not having to use too many brain calories.

Sophie: Yeah, and this is kind of circling back to your experience as a law firm owner now, but what do you find in terms of marketing works best for your firm? And I know this will be different for every law firm, but you mentioned before that ads are great because they're like a tap you can turn on and off.

What do you think is like the biggest driver for you?

Caralee: Yeah, so it does definitely depend on your practice area. So, and the first thing, you know, is that you have to market to where your people are. So if your people are not on tech talk, do not focus on tech talk, for example. So we have a very strong social media strategy on LinkedIn, which is based like for referrers and then also Instagram, which is more, it's probably referrers more so than that.

like B2C type people. The thing with family law is you can't really pinpoint when someone's going through a separation or divorce. Even say Facebook ads, it can be a bit flimsy trying to like actually target exactly those people. So for us, Google ads works really well. Because if you don't know a family lawyer and this goes for lots of areas of law, what are you going to do? And it's very hard these days to get on the front page with SEO. And even if you are, you're still below the fold. So you really want like ads works brilliantly for us. And as long as the return on investment works out. So for us, it works really well. And also just referral. You know, your referral network, but you can only build a firm on referral up to a certain level because you're only one person and you've only got so many contacts, you know, so, Google ads, it means that you're always at the top.

You're always ready to go as soon as someone, you know, Yeah, hopefully,

Sophie: I love it and I have some quick fire questions to finish us off. First of all, which you can just reply with the first thing that comes to your mind, like a sentence word.

Caralee: hopefully I have some quickfire answers for you.

Sophie: No one ever really does. When a guest comes back with an actual one sentence, I'm like, wow. So first of all, what's the one piece of advice you'd give to any lawyer Starting your own firm tomorrow.

Caralee: Don't overthink it. Just get going.

Sophie: Nice. And what's the most overlooked way for law firm owners to attract new clients?

Caralee: I think really honing in on your brand authority. It's so easy and so cheap and it's just, I don't understand why more lawyers aren't doing it.

Sophie: And what's the best investment you've made in your business?

Caralee: Probably getting an operations manager so that I'm not in there all the time. And so she's, you know, managing team, managing staff. Managing, you know, performance, managing operations yeah, managing finance, all the things I don't like doing.

Sophie: Nice. The worst investment?

Caralee: Oh, there's been so many bad investments over the years.

Probably digital agencies, you know, that promise you the world and then 40, 000 later, you haven't really achieved anything.

Sophie: And if you were to build your firm from scratch tomorrow, what would be the first thing that you would do? From a systems perspective.

Caralee: Okay, I was gonna, I was gonna give you a

Sophie: You can do both.

Caralee: give you a different practice area because after helping 250 firms, there's certain practice areas from a business perspective, not a legal or passion perspective, but from a business perspective, there's certain firms I would never want to grow because it's, I think it's just harder to extract yourself as a lawyer.

And there's certain practice areas where I'm like, Oh, it's like a gold mine. If you can get it running, well,

Sophie: what practice areas are the gold mines?

Caralee: I really love immigration law as a business because one you can do either B2C or you can really get some like B2B kind of work on board. To you, it's document based. And fixed fee and clients are happy.

And when I've worked out what the hourly rate actually works out to be, it's very hot, can be very high if you're charging well. So yeah, that's, it's Ooh, that would be, that'd be good. Or estate planning is another one that's similar, you know, like a document based which just means you open yourself up to a whole lot of, anyway, that's not a quick answer. Systems perspective. I think I would just start building systems more quickly when I was solo and, you know, or early on so that you don't start building out this huge practice that then you just end up bottlenecking the whole thing and getting all burnt out.

Sophie: And I guess the first step to make it not even overwhelming, it's just literally write down what you do to complete a process. And that's kind of the first step that someone else, once you do have to, if you have to hire all of a sudden, they can at least follow that and then build that

Caralee: Yeah, well.

Sophie: Cause it will change.

Caralee: That's it. And also, I think people, you know, they live in fear of Oh, what if that person leaves the firm? What if my accounts person leaves the firm? I'll leave with all this IP and they do or they, there's higgledy piggledy systems on this desktop and that desktop. So really making sure that, you know, all of that is actually built out into your practice rather than retain in someone's brain.

Sophie: And last question, I feel like I might know the answer, but what would be your dream job if you weren't a lawyer?

Caralee: Being a travel blogger,

Sophie: Ah, not what I was going to guess, kind of

Caralee: I'll just be a travel blogger and just roam the world being fabulous. You know?

Sophie: I love it. My guess was going to be a marketer. So I guess that's quite related. And I guess you're doing that on one business hat of your business.

Caralee: Yeah. That's right.

Sophie: Amazing. Well, that's everything I had. Thanks so much for sharing your story and all your tips. If people would like to get in contact with you or listen to your podcast or do scalable law, how can they find you?

Caralee: Everything's on scalable law. com. But then you'll find me under currently underscore scalable law, but yeah, it's C A R A L E E. And I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah. I'm pretty easy to find.

Sophie: Nice. And I'll link it all in the show notes. Well, thank you, Carolee.

Thank you for having me.

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