Erin Giglia is the Co-Owner of Montage Legal Group. As you’ll hear, Montage was founded more than a decade ago to exploit a “gap in the marketplace between freelancers and law firms.” Since then the model that Erin and her co-founder Laurie established has been emulated, adapted and admired by firms and freelance legal business across the legal sector. Erin is incredibly insightful about how and why they built Montage the way they have, the opportunities that they saw in the market and how and why the capitalized on them and how we can attract and keep talented women in the legal sector. She also emphasizes that they like to make it easy for their clients to pay. We liked that part too. Enjoy.

Kim Bennett got burned by hourly billing. She lost a bunch of money and, having come up as a young lawyer in a corporate, in-house role, the model didn’t make sense to her. One day she pitched a client on a recurring monthly fee and, to her surprise, they accepted. That’s right, we’re talking subscriptions again. But where the guest from our last subscription-based law practice, Jon Tobin, uses almost as lead-gen for his firm, Kim’s “premium” subscriptions make up the bulk of the work that she does. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Kim talks passionately about how one should “show up” for their clients, emphasizing her role as a counselor, and a relationship-driven practice. Tune in and get subscribed. (See what we did there?)

I know you didn’t go to law school to manage financial books or be an accountant, but it turns out that your ability to successfully support and represent your clients is contingent upon running a sound financial business. And Chelsea Williams, founder, and head of Core Solutions Group is dropping some wisdom about how to manage your firm’s finances so that you can worry less about money and more about your clients.

We also cover Chelsea’s hit YouTube video “Four Steps to Effective Accounts Receivable” and the slightly lesser-known TV show "The Profit" with Marcus Lemonis on CNBC. Tune in and soak up the accounting and business genius.

Jon Tobin is running one of the most innovative law firms you’ve never heard of. Counsel For Creators is an LA-based law firm for creatives and entrepreneurs that sells a subscription to clients. In this episode of Financially Legal, we talk with Jon about the inspiration behind his subscription legal services plan, how he made it a reality, how (amazingly) it’s morphing into a profitable, self-sustaining community, how he calls his clients members and what’s next for his bold firm.  

Dan Price is a big deal. Full stop. And we got him on the podcast. The inspirational CEO of Gravity Payments. In 2015 Dan announced that he would raise the salaries of each of his employees to $70,000 annually. In doing so Dan became an overnight business celebrity. He’s been on the Today show, been interviewed by Trevor Noah, and keynoted hundreds of business conferences around the world. He breaks down how he thinks about company culture, why Gravity Payments is investing in Gravity Legal, and how he thinks lawyers can change the world.

Show Highlights:

• Living his values, and integrating them into his business is very important for Dan. 
• Dan discusses how much he has shifted towards being inclusive, making space for many different voices, and agreeing with the values of the community, in his business.
• Dan talks about creating sustainable growth within his business, and the evolution of his business values.
• Anyone that Dan is collaborating with has an impact on what his values are, afterward.
• It can be difficult to incorporate all the different voices.
• Sticking up for the underdogs is very important for Dan.
• Where Dan started, bringing his mission into the world.
• The problem that Dan's company is facing, and solving right now.
• Dan shares his take on the philosophy of Peter Thiel, who wrote the book, Zero To One, founded Paypal, and was instrumental in the founding of Facebook.
• Everyone is trying to become a billionaire in today's world. Billionaires have become like gods and they can act with impunity and treat people however they want to.
• Talking about the temptation to attain and hold onto billionaire and monopoly status.
• At Gravity, there is a collection of people who believe in sticking up for the underdog. And for almost 17 years, they have been building a company that's organized around that principle. This has not been the rule in human history.
• Right now, we're going towards feudalism. We need to recognize that before it's too late. And we need lawyers to fight this fight more than anyone!
• Dan discusses the book Dark Money, by Jane Mayer.
• Whatever the lawyers think is true ends up being true for everybody. 
• Dan explains why he believes that the law in most places is not at all what people think it is.
• Setting things up to effect change and the benefits of putting the people in your business first.
• Things are not fair when it comes to the law, so lawyers need to learn to express their opinions publicly and explain to the general population how the law works.
• Dan shares his ideas for creating a better system for everyone, and for restructuring the way that law firms work so that the mission becomes more important than the money.
• Gravity pays its sales reps in a way that allows them to be service-oriented
• Giving sales reps the right kind of incentive, even if it means making fewer sales.
• Dan talks about the kinds of things that would make his dream come true.

Links and resources:

Dan on Twitter - Dan Price Seattle

Book mentioned:

Zero To One by Peter Thiel

Dark Money by Jane Mayer

We get nerdy this episode talking accounting, trust accounting, and regulatory jazz with Lainie Hammond.  Lainie runs a law firm in Washington State helping lawyers with issues related to IOLTA trust account compliance. Seriously, though, we dig in on the what and why of both trust and IOLTA accounts, how lawyers get into trouble trying to manage their finances, and how they can keep out of that trouble. We even talked about practice management! C’mon, you know you want to get in on this!

Today, we're excited to be having a conversation with John E. Grant, the Agile Attorney. John is a compelling thinker when it comes to law firm economics, law firm efficiency, and law firm productivity. In today's episode, he shares some of the valuable lessons he learned from his experience while working for Getty Images. Be sure to listen in, to find out what John learned about growing and building a business. 

John is an Oregon-licensed attorney with a cool and funny family history. Currently, he is a member of the Board of Governors of the Oregon state bar. He is also on the board of the Commons Law Center, a low-bono legal services organization, in Portland, Oregon. John also runs a consulting practice, to help lawyers use Agile and Lean. He started his career working for Getty Images and he also used to practice as a lawyer. Tune in today, to find out what he has to share with us. 

Show Highlights:

• John explains who he is, what he does, and how he thinks about the economics of law firms and legal services. 
• One of the strongest lessons that John took away from Getty Images.
• Creating much more market through ease of use and a customer experience that is as seamless as possible. 
• Some of the key insights from Getty that John has brought into his consulting.
• Bringing agile and lean to lawyers and law firms.
• The internet has made vast amounts of information available to everyone, for free.
• The biggest hurdle that the legal profession has to overcome. 
• John explains how he sees productizing legal services, and delivering them as a well-defined product, as the way forward for law firms. 
• Thinking about legal products from a Lean and Agile perspective.
• Looking at the portfolio model. A productized service for a flat fee.
• Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture to find the best problem-solving methodology.
• Setting change in motion by first observing the status quo.
• Very few lawyers focus on creating a quality customer experience.
• The Kanban Board is a great tool to make knowledge-work visible. 
• John talks about his courses, workshops, and coaching. 

Links and resources: 

John's website - www.agileattorney.com  

John on Twitter - @jegrant3

Find John on Facebook - The Agile Attorney

You can also find John on LinkedIn.

Welcome to the very first episode of Financially Legal, with your host, Dan Lear, head of partnerships and marketing at Gravity Legal. 

There's a growing recognition today, that to grow, build, or scale anything meaningful, it's not enough to simply understand the law. Modern, small business owners really need to have a wide variety of disciplines at their fingertips, and they need to understand them fully, to grow and build their businesses. 

There's a distinct gap in the conversation today, around the economics and financing of the modern legal sector. The latest technology and modern business practices are remaking the legal landscape, so many questions are surrounding the way that law firms operate, how they acquire customers, the way they think about growing and building, and who is allowed to participate in the legal sector and deliver legal services. And there are some very important, and fascinating financial and economic implications to these questions. 

Tune in today, to find out more.

Show Highlights:

• Subject matter experts cannot thrive or survive in our modern economy.
• Modern small business owners with bigger aspirations need to understand and be able to use, a wide variety of disciplines to grow.
• It's not enough to simply understand the law if you want to build anything meaningful today.
• There's a huge gap in conversations about finance and economics in law.
• Dan gives two key reasons why we need a podcast about finance and economics in legal.
• Dan explains what they will be talking about in Financially Legal.
• Financially Legal wants to bring a smart, compelling, and interesting level of dialogue to the topics of economics and finance, both in law firms and in the legal sector.  

Links and resources:

Dan on Twitter @RightBrainLaw

Gravity Payments