Seth Price is joined by Ali Katz, the founder of New Law Business Model, on this episode of SEO Insider. Seth and Ali discuss how legal marketing has changed over the years and how the legal marketing industry is entirely different to how it was 50 years ago. Ali explains how the New Law Business Model was designed for lawyers who want to make a real difference in their clients lives while staying competitive. Listen in to hear Seth and Ali discuss new best practices and how best practices have evolved.
Seth Price is joined by Ali Katz, the founder of New Law Business Model, on this episode of SEO Insider. Seth and Ali discuss how legal marketing has changed over the years and how the legal marketing industry is entirely different to how it was 50 years ago. Ali explains how the New Law Business Model was designed for lawyers who want to make a real difference in their clients lives while staying competitive. Listen in to hear Seth and Ali discuss new best practices and how best practices have evolved.
BluShark Digital
Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price founder of BluShark taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
Welcome, Ali Katz. So thrilled to have you here. Tell me, you know, I've heard so much about you in the process you've worked with so many lawyers, tell me about, you know, who you are and how you help law firms.
Ali Katz
Great, happy to do so. So my name is Ali Katz, and I'm the founder of New Law Business Model. And I help lawyers who want to create a New Law Business Model in their law practice in their communities to become the go to lawyer for families and or small business owners, using our specific practice model that I created, because I found that there were some big problems in the way that we were taught to build our practices that we were taught to serve our clients, that we were taught to, you know, charge for our services and ultimately deliver on the services. And so this all came out of, you know, graduating Georgetown first in my class.
Seth Price
I was I was GW but I was at GW law.
Ali Katz
Got it. And so 1999 And I, you know, I did not I, I didn't understand the doors that that would open for me. And the door that that open for me was being able to start my career at one of the best law firms in the country, Munger, Tolles, & Olson, Charlie Munger, as law firm, started, you know, it's, it's, you know, he's Warren Buffett's personal lawyer. And I thought that I was going there to be able to have a personal relationship with my clients be, you know, when I thought of as like, the trusted, you know, advisor, and of course, it was nothing like that. It was like complete disillusionment, you know, as soon as I got there, right, and and discovering that, the way that we were taught to serve clients, as estate planning lawyers, was really broken. And we were talking before the show about your dad, 85 years old, you know, the original old school estate planning lawyer. And if we think about when your dad, you know, so that, you know, your dad must have started doing wIlls for people 50 years ago.
Seth Price
Right, and to be fair, he started doing more as you-small business.
Ali Katz
Yeah.
Seth Price
He-it was, it has morphed into only trust estates. But he was a family business advisor for small businesses, that over time he outlived his clients. And that's how trust estates guys made their money.
Ali Katz
Right. And if we think about the world, 50 years ago, when your dad started, it was an entirely different world. Like not just little things, right? But there was no computers.
Seth Price
No
Ali Katz
Every document, every legal document that needed to be created needed to be hand typed, in triplicate, and if you messed up, you know, you could like do your back back back a couple of times. But the cost of producing documents was incredibly high. So then you fast forward to 20 years ago, when I started at Munger Tolles and computers were still new. Right? Like not everybody had a computer at that point. It's kind of hard to imagine, especially for the young people coming out of law school today, right? We're in this like, completely 100% different reality. So I was in this transition time where computers were still relatively new document drafting software was really very, very new. You know, I let part of the reason that I left Munger Tolles is because they wouldn't let me bring in document drafting software. And so I, you know, I'm still I'm working with the partner. And every time we take on a client, he says, Go find, you know, the Smith matter and change the names to the Jones matter, because it's the plans are kind of the same. And I could see that like, this is no good. This is people are paying us three, four or $5,000 for an estate plan that is full of mistakes, because I'm doing like a search and replace. And because of my own experience in law school, when my father in law died, I knew that those plans were likely going to fail. Because my father in law had spent $3,000, to work with a lawyer in Florida to keep us out of the probate court to keep us from having to deal with his ex wife. And then he dies and all of a sudden we're stuck in the probate court. And we're dealing with his ex wife, and I'm thinking this must be malpractice. But then I go to Munger tolls one of the best law firms in the country. And I find out this is not malpractice. This is common practice this common practice and I'm like there's something wrong here. And then I realized Is that as a new mom because that my daughter was born my last year of law school. And I, you know, my husband and I are out to dinner and our, you know, probably toddler at that point is home with a babysitter six, you know, 16 year old babysitter and I and I say to my husband, like, what would actually happen if something happened to us? We didn't make it home tonight. Yeah, I've done my estate plan. But everybody I've named as guardians I named in my will. They all live 3000 miles away, because we moved across the country away from our family, and the police are gonna get to our house, find our daughter with a 16 year old, they don't know where our will is, they don't know what to do, oh, my God, she's gonna end up in the care of strangers, at least temporarily until everybody could figure out that is not okay with me. I did my estate planning and yet there's major holes. And so I'm just starting to see all these places where there's all these holes in the traditional.
Seth Price
So basically, you're taking it from just the the rote legal, which is what will happen down the road to what is practical for life in order. And look, I have similar stuff, you know, where do kids go? And as they get older at each stage, they're different, right here. It's like physically, where do they go? Right now? They know enough that they could, you know, you know, and it depends if you're with family and friends. Or if you're a wave, it's all that starts to blow your mind about the permutations.
Ali Katz
Yes. And so I start to realize that I need to change the way that we're doing estate planning, couldn't do it at Munger Tolles. Because you know, they're a big firm, that's not what they want to do. And luckily find a coach through you know, many various permutations, you know, life leading me, which I actually wrote about in a new book that I just came out with called New Law Business Models. So people who want kind of the details of the story and how it all happened, can get that book. But I realized I have to start my own law practice. And I do that, in 2003, knowing nothing about business whatsoever, I'm the breadwinner. In the family, we have two kids at that point, my husband is staying at home with them. I have no savings in the bank, I go from my, you know, secure six figure paycheck to being the one, you know, that needs to make all the money. And I, the way I made that transition set is I found a lawyer in town who had been doing estate planning for 25 years asked him if he had any office space that he could trade me in exchange for 20 hours a month, I'd give him 20 hours a month of my time. He gives me an office, he says yes. And so I do that. And very quickly, I start to realize, again, more problems. You know, I see that he's in practice 25 years. And one of the first things that he says to me is, you know, 20 years ago, my clients were coming to me asking how they could protect their money for their kids. And now 20 years later, they're coming to me asking how they can protect their money from their kids. I think there's something not right there. And you know, my kids were little at that time. Now, now that I'm
Seth Price
...right in the middle. I'm like, I need to get them the money. At the same time. I'm starting to see from the 14 year old I need to protect them from the money.
Ali Katz
Yeah, you're, you're heading right into the worst possible age of of humanity. You're now on the other side of that.
Seth Price
Yeah, we're in the thick of it. And our middle one is sort of precocious. So he's now in that and the oldest one is immature. So he's in it. So yeah, it's miserable.
Ali Katz
Yeah, it is truly the most miserable time of of humanity. And I can imagine only worse, during COVID life.
Seth Price
The only good thing is, you know if you're gonna miss a year of school, yeah, middle school is the best year to miss like, you don't want to miss high school, you don't want to miss elementary school, but Middle School, who cares?
Ali Katz
Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, they can't go anywhere. So it's kind of nice, because they can't get in trouble. But my kids in our 17 and 21, I found my way through it and found a lot of a lot of answers. But what I what I realized, you know, through all of this as well is that all of the attorneys in that office that I was sharing space with were working all hours of the day and night, and they weren't doing it because law firm management was making them do it. They were the law firm management, they were doing it because they had new systems. Every client that came in, they're reinventing the wheel. They're starting from scratch and, and I'm saying to myself, I'm a mom, I have two kids. I just want to serve my community and you know, make good money. And I'm going to need to figure this out. And so
Seth Price
...my guess is you started building systems.
Ali Katz
I started first of all learning what that even meant, because I didn't know even what that meant. But yes, over, over a three year period, I figured it out. I learned how to build systems. I did build a million dollar a year practice in three years as a result of that, on this New Law Business Model that I created at that time focused on serving families with young children. And every lawyer I talked to at that time said, Alexis, you're crazy. families with young children don't want to think about estate planning, they don't want to pay for estate planning, you're gonna starve. And I was like, I don't think they're right. And I'm gonna give this a shot. And I did and wrote the best selling book on legal planning for families at that time, called Wear Clean Underwear, did a whole bunch of TV and started training other lawyers on the model and in that process, became a business owner, and realized through that process that lawyers really need to actually serve business owners differently, too. Because, you know, your dad probably was doing it the right way. As a trusted adviser.
Seth Price
He was trusted advisor. There were no systems he built his hours.
Ali Katz
Yeah, right. He was building hours, but he was a trusted adviser. And and that model completely disappeared, primarily because the hourly, I think, primarily because the hourly billing model simply doesn't work. And so, you know, it's hard to be a trusted advisor when you're charging hourly, because nobody wants to call you because they're afraid of that invoice that they're going to get. And so I also realized that as lawyers serving business owners, we are actually not trained properly. To do that we are trained to avoid risk, we're trained to spot the issues, the hourly billing model does not incentivize us to be on the same side as our clients. And nobody ever taught us that not just legal parts, but the insurance, financial and tax parts, which are actually key to business, you know, as I'm sure you know. And so then I had, you know, to kind of revamp this model for serving business owners. But in order to do that, I had to make all the mistakes, the hard way and learn these lessons cost me about 10 years and about a million dollars of just mistakes made. Because I didn't know nobody had ever taught me. And so today, the New Law Business Model is really an an antidote to the traditional law practice model that keeps lawyers stuck in either charging hourly, and not being able to have a great life and malpractice, or charging too low of flat fees competing with, you know, the online legal document software providers that are getting, you know, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment from venture capital that we cannot compete with, and nor should we compete with them, because we're not them. But we can leverage them actually, with the New Law Business Model. And it is a model for lawyers who want to make a real difference in their clients lives, serving families and or business owners while having a great life.
Seth Price
Sounds like one of those Shark Tank moments where you're like, um, you know, I saw a problem. And this is this is how I, you know, this is how I solved it. So, yeah, so what so what is it how does a lawyer fall into that model?
Ali Katz
So, a lawyer chooses to say, I'm tired of practicing the old way, I don't want to take whatever walks in the door, I don't want to be a door lawyer, I want to become an expert, I want to become known as the go to lawyer for families and or small business owners in my community. And I'm going to make the investment of my own time, energy and attention and money, we call those team resources to learn how to serve families and or business owners in this new way. And then once I've learned how to serve families and or business owners in this new way, as a trusted adviser with a model that actually works, and that model, by the way, is where you are serving families and or business owners, and I say and or business owners, because some lawyers don't want to serve business way more complex, and just want to serve families. And there's plenty of families out there to serve. But then some lawyers do love the, you know, kind of juice of serving the entrepreneurs and the business owners in their communities. And so in the model, what the model really looks like is that the lawyer is going to get paid an upfront fee that on average ranges between three to $5,000. And I say on average, because of course, some people, they just need a, you know, what we call a family plan, a simple family plan that is comprehensive, still comprehensive, and still is going to work for the family and meet their needs, but is going to be you know, maybe it's a $2,000 plan. Some families because of the complexity and that sort of thing. They need a $10,000 plan. So But on average, it's going to be three to $5,000 for the average family. That is you know, your neighbor. And then if you're serving the business owner community, then the model takes you into recurring fees between 750 to 3000 a month, per client, where you're not just providing legal services, you're really a strategic business advisor.
Seth Price
Like it outside General Counsel type role.
Ali Katz
Well, it's even really more than that we see I call it a lift business advisor, it's legal insurance, financial and tax. As an outside General Counsel, you're really focused just on the legal, okay, from my lens, as a business owner who needed the kind of guidance that we teach lawyers to provide now, you've got to be able to look at the insurance, financial and tax pieces.
Seth Price
No, I and Joe, you're not you're not suggesting people broker that, but just to be able to help them as a fiduciary figure out what you need.
Ali Katz
No, I and Joe, you're not you're not suggesting people broker that, but just to be able to help them as a fiduciary figure out what you need.
Seth Price
Yeah, so it's a choice. Some of our lawyers do get insurance licensed. And I think more and more will some of them even become financial advisors. Some of them are very well versed in the tax strategy, that's a choice. But at the very bare minimum, it's issue spotting, and bringing in the team and getting the and getting to be in that role of Team Quarterback. Right. So imagine that you're serving a business owner, and I do this a lot for my clients. When I'm doing this, we I get paid $5,000 a month, really to provide like an interim outsource CEO CFO service. But it's lift business advisory. So I'm bringing in the financial team, I'm bringing in the insurance team, I'm bringing in the bookkeepers. I'm bringing in the tax strategists and I am helping the business owner navigate these relationships, because business owners don't know how to navigate these relationships.
Ali Katz
Look, I get this every time you get something new malpractice insurance, you have to become a mini expert in it, you like each thing that you need to do in life. So if you're able to cut people's learning curve down as a digital agency, there are so many different factors. I mean, we always say people are partners in the digital agency, it sounds like as a lawyer, we're your partner in your business to help navigate all that stuff.
Seth Price
in a partner in a way that is going to create a healthy relationship. And so...
Ali Katz
That's exactly right. And that's how the clients feel like, wow, I have a partner in my business, because small business owners all want that. Right. But they don't necessarily even have the knowledge to bring in a partner in a way that is going to create a healthy relationship. And so...
Seth Price
So how does somebody start that process? Well, somebody
Ali Katz
Starts that process by talking with a law business advisor on our team. And so our website is NewLawBusinessModel.com. And we have webinars available there. We have resources available there for lawyers to check out. And then they talk with a law business advisor to determine is this the right model for me is this the is this going to lead to the life and law practice that I want to invest in creating for myself over, you know, and be in for the next 10, 15, 20 years, because that was really what it was about, for me, Seth is when I looked down the road at my life, 20, 25 years in the future. I could not imagine continuing to do what I was doing. There was no growth path for me. And so I think that all lawyers need to be doing that when we're looking at what are we building? Why are we
Seth Price
You are officially the lift for the lawyer to help them lift the people in the community.
Ali Katz
That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, you got it. You got the layers of the meta.
Seth Price
I get it. And look, there's so many different options out there. I mean, what I like about it, like, truth be told, I mentioned to you off camera that I sort of had brought started trust mistakes, practice, in part, because it was sort of passionate, like my dad was doing it. And he was doing it old school. I don't think he's ever used drafting software. He did everything himself. But he was that trusted advisor. He did many of the things you're talking about here, you know, introduce them to the financial advisors, and the insurance and all that stuff. But I don't think leveraging at the way he could, but what I've seen, though, is that as I built a traditional Trust and Estates practice, which really is based on its least on the family side, because we haven't done as much on the business side. It is without that it is a less exciting financial model. You're killing yourself to do those estate plans and the room the actual numbers, unless you find some other more expensive widget is just not all generally, sort of when you look at the b2c poll that I deal with a world that I deal with on the marketing side, PI the case are worth a ton because you have those monster cases criminal family, immigration, trust & Estates is sort of at the bottom of that rung as far as earning potential for most people with rare exceptions. It's neat to see somebody trying to figure out how do I make this a little bit more sexier, exciting?
Ali Katz
Well, yeah, and how do we make the business model work? So what you're seeing is that most estate planning lawyers actually cannot invest in their marketing because the model doesn't work. Look, if you're only getting paid $1,500, or $2,000, for the state plan, you cannot afford to invest in marketing and you actually cannot afford to deliver a service that is very much different than what somebody could go online and do themselves
Seth Price
A commodity. So if you're just if you're if you're gonna play to that you how do you differentiate yourself, so you can get a higher fee, you know, that commoditized. And I look, I tell people on the SEO side, you know, unless you're doing 350, sometimes three, but 350 is what I call the Mendoza line, if you're baseball fit, if you're not a baseball player hit like 200. And if you're below him, you shouldn't be in the majors. You know, and so what I look at here is, unless you can get critical mass, you can't invest in the marketing to take yourself to another level, so that it's a vicious cycle. So again, there are plenty of people that have figured it out some more dubious than others, some with some trust products that's in there. But unless you can get over that 350 gross revenue, you never have the revenue to spend to market to build the firm.
Ali Katz
Yeah, and so we have three different practice models that lawyers can choose from the true solo model, which isn't really a true solo model, but it is, you know, it's it's that 250 a year, it's not to the year, it's not the best, right, because at 250 a year you are maybe you can take home 100 Maybe you could take home 100. But you're working really hard. And I say take home 100, because you still have to invest in outsourcing and you still have to invest in marketing. And, or you're working all the time.
Seth Price
Understood.
Ali Katz
So then the next one is what we call, I call it the part time law baller model, my team calls it the staffed practice. But it is you know, that 650 700,000 a year revenue, keeping 250 and working part time, that's a pretty great model, we have a lot of lawyers who are super happy to stay there, then we have the million dollar empire builder model. And that's the model where you're now starting to bring in other attorneys to work with you, we've got a very specific model to do that. So that you're not hiring a bunch of associates like you, you're the million dollar empire builder in the traditional models, that's where you
Seth Price
… I did that I took each person, okay, my attitude is give people a piece of the practice, that's my philosophy. And you can scale in a way you couldn't scale other rather than, like, I don't bring in junior people if I can avoid it.
Ali Katz
Right. And so in our model, with the million dollar empire builder, it's actually quite interesting, because the way that it's structured, the people that we're bringing in are basically all they have to do is engage the client, the lawyers that are coming in, all they have to do is learn the 2 hour what we call family wealth planning session, to engage the client, and then they get enough of the fee. And we've got a whole structure for this where they get enough of the fee where it makes sense for them to engage the client. And then the team is providing the service to that client on the back end. And it's a really high level of service. But the lawyer who's engaging the client is typically a parent themselves. They don't have time to manage a team, they don't want to manage team, they're not entrepreneurial, they just want to be able to engage and counsel the client.
Seth Price
So in the non-attorneys, you don't do the non-attorney salesperson, you actually use the attorney counselor to come up with a plan and then have non-attorney staff and provide the service.
Ali Katz
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there can be a non attorney salesperson model that is embedded here. I think it's better to have the attorneys do the actual engagement and design of the plan. But there could be there is an expansion model that does include non attorney, you know, salespeople, I like to keep those people on the pre, what we call family wealth planning session. So we have a very specific process for client engagement, you know, leading up to that family wealth planning session taking over immediately after the family wealth planning session, and the lawyer or lawyers doing that family wealth planning session that feels most right to me in my system.
Seth Price
I get it. So I get on the business side. And like I just as you're saying this, I have a employment lawyer who should have me on a monthly retainer. And instead, I just feel hours, whatever I call him with nonsense that said, how do you extract further out of the the consumer side to the fat the young family, they're doing their will? How do you have a recurring revenue stream with them?
Ali Katz
So there are there's a membership/maintenance model on the back end. It's not super profitable, right? So for a young family, we have two different models. One is the $99 a year program and it's basically...
Seth Price
...just keep them engaged. They come back to you for the big stuff.
Ali Katz
That's right. So they come back to you because the reality is that, when you when you engage a young family, they need plan updates throughout their lifetime, but their life changes, the law changes, their assets change. Most estate planning lawyers do not have systems in place to ensure that those changes happen. So what we know is going to happen is that when something happens to that person who did their estate planning, that plan is going to fail, their family is not going to know where to go, those documents are no longer updated. And this is what happened to my father in law into our family. The assets, who even knows where the assets are.
Seth Price
It always reminds me I don't if you remember, the kids were born the blood, the blood cord, guys, yeah, you could pay them monthly, or, you know, or you could sort of like pay a lump sum and be done. And you have that for your lifetime. But it's the idea that like, it's something you don't want to think about. But you want to know that it's always there. And is the idea they think and pick up the phone and ask questions at any time.
Ali Katz
Yeah, so the night so again, we have these two plans, kind of our basic plan at the 99 a year, some lawyers like that better. We also have a plan that's somewhere between 49 and 249 a month, obviously that comes with more service. And I built this based on when I first got into practice, I tried out the what do they call prepaid legal model, right. I thought it was so cool. I was like, Okay, great. Let's see if this works. I'll become a prepaid legal affiliate. And I'll just sell prepaid legal. Let me sign up and see if it works. But it was horrible. Because every time I had to talk to somebody, I'm getting some junior inexperienced new lawyer who doesn't know me doesn't care...
Seth Price
...not just junior experience, but the worst of the worst. I had a real estate dispute. And I was going up against a prepaid legal person, and I sat there having to instruct them on the law as opposing counsel. It's kind of a joke. And so it sucks. Because look, we access the justice is so so important. And in theory that checks the box. But it's just such a broken piece, in my opinion.
Ali Katz
Yeah. Yeah, so so bad. And so but I love the idea of it. You know, I love the idea of this personal relationship with a lawyer that you could call and it's your personal lawyer.
Seth Price
And the truth is most of what you're doing there, you'd probably do for free, but you want some sort of skin in the game on the consumer side, that you're their person, you think about it, and you're there.
Ali Katz
Well, that's the thing. Many lawyers are doing it for free, right? But it's not sustainable. So if we look at the lives of lawyers, right, we have incredibly high percentages of depression, suicide, addiction, why? Because our business model sucks. It just does. And so we need a new business model. I created it, I teach it to lawyers, my next level is to use technology better, we're doing it, we do install technology.
Seth Price
So what what software's do you guys work off of?
Ali Katz
So we've built an entire automation system. So once that once lawyers come in and get trained on our model, and, and I stairstep, the investments for the lawyers, so you know, we come out of law school, and it's not like dentists, right? Dentists come out of dental school, and they know, I'm investing $150,000 to build a practice.
Seth Price
Or more.
Ali Katz
Or more. They know they need to get an office, they know they need to get all the equipment. It's just embedded in their system.
Seth Price
That's why they went to school.
Ali Katz
Right? Lawyers come out of law school. And now what? Yeah, well, well, and we think, Oh, I already made my investment. I'm not going to...
Seth Price
I see Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.
Ali Katz
I don't need to invest in building a business, I should just be able to get a job...
Seth Price
God and a bit of That's exactly right. So people get the job. And then they either hope that something happens or that it serendipity wears out. I think the dental model is really interesting. Because people come out they generally work with somebody else. Yeah. And then by their practice, that's that's a pretty well entrenched thing that I've seen from the marketing side. It's very fascinating because dentists don't generally have the revenue to spend on marketing, because they just they have a debt service for buying the practice out from the old guy they started with.
Ali Katz
Yeah, or from having a, I guess, set up their own you know.
Seth Price
Yeah some people do but most people seem to that I've seen you go in with somebody and then eventually again, pick your poison your debt service, either way, building your practice or buying your practice.
Ali Katz
Yeah, either way, right? That it's about knowing
Seth Price
Yes, that that's gonna happen. I'm gonna I'm gonna have debt somehow to do this despite-
Ali Katz
Beyond dental school.
Seth Price
Exactly.
Ali Katz
I came out of law school. I think most lawyers come out of law school with this idea of I've paid my dues. And now I should be able to set up a practice or you know, get a job, but now we know the jobs are really not readily available.
Seth Price
That's but that's the key, right? They're getting a job. The question is okay, you could keep that job theoretically, and be at somebody else's beck and call and be miserable. But if you want to give off the idea of like that pivot onto your own, there is no roadmap again. That's why I have the Show with Jay where we talk about like growth, where people come in If you know the Max Law community with 1000, things, just like you're talking about the business advisor, there are 1000 things you need to know before you go off on your own that you would know from law school.
Ali Katz
Totally. And so So what we see a lot of is, you know, lawyers who who come out, they don't want to invest anything in their practice. So what we've done is we've like really stair stepped it, right, rather than saying, make a $75,000 investment and get everything, right, what we do is, first we teach how to serve clients, in the way that we teach how to serve families and business owners in the way that we teach, and most importantly, how to get hired and get paid. Right, How to get because if you can't engage clients, it doesn't make sense to invest in marketing. Right? And so you, I'm sure you see this all the time, where you can ramp up somebody's marketing, absolutely. They're getting calls, calls calls...
Seth Price
The phones already answered and converted. What was that you're not doing it for your health?
Ali Katz
Yeah. And so we've got a process that when lawyers are following our model, they're going to get hired by 100%. And then that's a big, I know, that's a big statement, but it's true 100%, many of our lawyers have a 100% engagement rate of the people that they sit down with, at an average fee of three to $5,000. Now, it makes sense to invest in marketing. Now it makes sense to invest in technology and systems and hiring team. But before that, it's terrifying. Like, I don't know how to engage clients and get paid I and I now I'm going to like spend all this money to invest in marketing and team and creating systems. So we do that first.
Seth Price
And let me let me ask you that, because we don't have time to go into all of this today. But where would somebody go to sort of get a sense as to if this is right for them? Like where do you have like a webinar online? A book? Like what how does somebody get get the 360 evaluation?
Ali Katz
Yeah, everything? Is it NewLawBusinessModel.com. And I did just write a book, I did just come out with a book on the New Law Business Model. And I did that for a couple reasons. One is that we've nailed the New Law Business Model for lawyers who'd want to serve families and business owners with estate and business planning the way that we teach. But I would like to see this model expanded to more practice areas, like I think the New Law Business Model way of doing things is needed in personal injury, divorce employment, like you said, your employment lawyer should be charging you.
Seth Price
He should be, I'll send them your way.
Ali Katz
Yeah, ridiculous. That every time you call, maybe he bills you. Maybe he doesn't believe maybe you're scared to get the bill in the mail. Maybe you're not even calling him because you're scared of the bill. Right?
Seth Price
Look, throw this out? You know, with our pediatrician, I remember if you think back that far, yeah, they had a rule that there was a 24 hour helpline you could speak to like the nurse practitioner on call, or did they get your doctor if you needed it? And it was like a $20 copay wasn't huge, wasn't official from insurance, it was like, Hey, call whatever you want. Now, two things about that one, I barely ever call because I would say 20 bucks, I just call my friend who's a doctor to get the answer, and two, I'm not ever sure they ever charged you it. But they want you to think about it. So it did its job. But in a way you want the opposite as a lawyer, you want those calls, because those calls lead to more work. So if you have the subscription model where they feel happy to call you, that's where you brainstorm and realize, hey, there really is an issue I can make money on?
Ali Katz
Well, we've got a twist to the model, okay, there's an up level. And that up level is, don't just call me whenever we're going to have pre scheduled calls, either weekly, twice a month, monthly or quarterly, depending on what you need specific to your growth plan. And so as your lawyer, I'm going to understand enough about your business to recommend which plan is the right one for you gotcha, based on how I can best support you. So that I as a lawyer can structure my time as well, not just, you know, you're gonna call me anytime. And then that, you know, kicks up my whole schedule, but we actually have pre scheduled calls, I'm gonna be able to do the best service for you that way.
Seth Price
And that's more business side then family side, presumably.
Ali Katz
That's the business side. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. On the family side, again, depending what the membership or maintenance program is its annual, you know, we're going to look at your plan annually, we're going to look at your assets annually. And the reality is, is that lawyers need systems in order to be able to do this, like I can tell you all the details of exactly what to do. But without the systems in your practice to do it. There's so many breakdown points that are going to happen, where, you know, I went through all those breakdown points, learned how to solve those problems. And so that is really what the New Law Business Model is all about. And ultimately, I really want to see the legal industry transformed. I believe, that, that, that lawyers are people who go to law school because they, for the most part is not across the board. But for the most part, go to law school because they have big hearts. They're really smart. They want to help and serve. This is who I felt like I was...
Seth Price
…I agree that that's, you know, the least everybody gets into it for that reason.
Ali Katz
Right. And then what happens, we go to law school and something happens thing weird, I felt it happened to me, all of a sudden, I became this person who was competitive, controlling, perfectionist, and completely money focused. Because I felt as if I had to be, I had to be like, somehow, law school like, made me into this thing. That was not the truth of who I am. And our our law business model makes us into people that we aren't. And it's interesting stuff because I was there was a lawyer who was in one of our live programs, and we're going around and saying, Why, why are you here? And he said, I'm here, because I had filed, I was a litigator, and I had filed interrogatory fees. And when I calculated when the interrogatory is were due, I had seen I saw that I was going they were due at Christmas. And therefore I was going to ruin opposing counsels Christmas and mid fist bump celebration that I was going to ruin. What have I become business? Yes, I said to myself, Oh, my God, who have I become, and I realized that I became somebody who celebrates ruining somebody else's Christmas, and that actually had started to bleed over into my home life. And I realized I can't do this, I have to find a different way, I have to find a different way. And today, that lawyer is serving families in his community in a way that truly allows him to be the man he went to law school to be.
Seth Price
That's awesome.
Ali Katz
And I believe that we can, you know, radically transform the legal services industry by providing lawyers with a business model that works. Now I'm doing it for estate and business planning lawyers. You know, I hope other lawyers will do it for the divorce lawyer community, because that is, you know, it's desperately needed there. I think the personal injury, you know, lawyer community, it's, it's really needed.
Seth Price
And final question, how would you even approach those I get the recurring model for the business side, but like on the personal injury side? How can I get on the family law? There could be some of that, because there's always ongoing crises and calls, it's usually just build. But how do you on a personal injury? What I'd be very curious, how would you apply that to it?
Ali Katz
I mean, what I would love is for a person innovative personal injury lawyer to pick up my book, New Law Business Model, read it, and then come to me and say, I've got all sorts of ideas. Work with me to figure out how we can apply these ideas in the personal injury world, I think, Ben Glass of you know, I don't know if you know Ben Glass right?
Seth Price
Of course.
Ali Katz
You know, kind of original teacher of personal injury lawyers in this in this area. I think that he's done quite a bit of it in his practice, you know, I mean, he's got eight kids and something like that, maybe 20. At this point. I haven't talked to him in a long time. But maybe he has done some of this throughout
Seth Price
The work life balance of that.
Ali Katz
Yeah. And I don't know, you know, if there's been a transformation of the model, or just the way he's doing his marketing and client selection...
Seth Price
…that's a lot of it. As you know, you live and learn. I see on the law firm side, it's the clients, you don't take that same view. And on the marketing side, the same thing you can tell, you know, just the same type of relationship, right? You have, we've talked about it before I can relate even more so on the marketing side, where you really are that trusted adviser on all these different pieces. But if you have somebody as a client that I assume you talk about this, that's not the right client, knowing when that person is not cost effective for you, and moving on.
Ali Katz
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and within our model, what I do like about our model for estate planning is that if you think about it, I mean, your firm probably, you know, certainly your dad probably worked mostly with high net worth people. Because back in the day when it cost so much to produce documents, estate planning attorneys actually could only work with high net worth people right? Estate planning was only for high net worth people but what we've discovered over the years is that the truth is is that estate planning is for everyone and in fact more important for people who are not high net worth because the cost of court and conflict relatively speaking is so much higher have an impact on families that keep.
Seth Price
All the money you fight you spend the money you're fighting over
Ali Katz
Yeah, I mean, the money is gone. We're like really decimating you know, the the generational wealth that can be created with just a little bit of estate planning. And so adjust a little bit of forethought. And so what I like about our model is that you're really pre screening, right, you know, educating, educating a lot up front, our lawyers become educators educating upfront, pre screening through the systems. And then every single person that you sit down with the reason that we can say 100% engagement rate is because you're helping the people you're sitting down with choose how they're going to work with you at the fee that is right for them based on what they want.
Seth Price
Right? So basically, if they have if there's less resources, if you're doing less, you're not trying to say I'm the most expensive for the sake of being most it's what do you need? And what's right for you?
Ali Katz
Yeah, what's the right plan at the right budget based on your needs, and then what we're doing in the background, and again, this is the next frontier, at my company is trying, not trying, but doing everything we can to leverage technology and systems to bring down the cost to the lawyers
Seth Price
So that they can produce the actual work product for the least amount possible.
Ali Katz
So that they could be as efficient as possible.
Seth Price
I get it...
Ali Katz
Leveraging technology, leveraging things like the digital marketing, you know.
Seth Price
How does does yours compare to sort of like the the two or three big names in estate planning software that's out there? Are you are you like, essentially, you have your own version of one of them?
Ali Katz
No, no, no, no, we are actually software agnostic. We do recommend that our lawyers leverage software, you know, I would not have gone on my own without wealth counsel, back in the day, but some of our lawyers choose for trusts, some of our lawyers choose interactive, legal, those are like, you know.
Seth Price
I understand, and you and you basically are playing on top of all of those software's
Ali Katz
Exactly. But we do say you've got to, you know, leverage software, we help them to leverage outsourcing. And then we help them to leverage all of the, you know, resources that we create for them. So for example, one of the biggest challenges for me in my office was to get my weekly email newsletter out the door. This is back in the day when you know, this is pre technology, you know, pre email automation, right? I was very early in the game on that. But you know, once we were able to start to get some, some, you know, email automation going and understand how it worked, and all of that, it was still very difficult for me to get my email newsletter out the door, because I had to produce it every week. So for example, one of the things that we do is we produce the content for that email newsletter.
Seth Price
Every show that doesn't need to be done in house, I get and for yours, it makes so much sense in that it's substantive. If you're doing a substantive one. It's not like you don't care about like what's happening around the office, you Oh, and I remember when I first got married, and for some kids, like I got an email for quarterly, I think, but it was like, it would remind Hey, I gotta call you and update it. It was just, and it didn't matter what it said. It was just their freakin name on it, that reminded me.
Ali Katz
That's right. That's exactly right.
Seth Price
It's something that reminds you, which is not obnoxious, that you're gonna want to delete.
Ali Katz
Exactly. And it's personal. You know, when I when I sold my law practice in 2008. I had 5000 people on my email list that had been hearing for me every single week for years, and people would come in and they'd meet with me, and they'd say, and this one woman, I remember, she had like, the folder of all my email newsletters printed out, you know, and so many lawyers, by the way.
Seth Price
You went from from 2003 to 2008, you had 5000 clients
Ali Katz
No, prospects, 5000 people on my...
Seth Price
...database of 5000 that
Ali Katz
Yeah, exactly. The database of 5000 people who was emailing every week and-
Seth Price
Keeping it warm, keeping a lot of lead gen, you're bringing people into the funnel, your Click Funnels before Click Funnels?
Ali Katz
Exactly, yeah. Very, very, very early days of a funnel. And this is before lawyers thought about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, then it was, it was me and Ben, basically.
Seth Price
They know if you were there early.
Ali Katz
And, and, and people would come in, and they'd have the newsletters printed out. And they would say, of course, we're gonna hire you. You've been emailing us every week for...
Seth Price
They they knew you just like videos could do now. Well, this is awesome. I really appreciate your time. This is, you know, I appreciate this. And I think that, you know, for people in that space, the fact that you're thinking about systematizing, which is something we talk a lot about, you know, in general on our Max Growth podcast, you know, it's everything and the idea of thinking creatively, because I have seen firsthand how difficult it is to make a buck, you know, without killing yourself in that space. So glad that you're focused on it.
Ali Katz
Yeah, and I'm just looking at you know, at BluShark digital right now, you have a really big team serving lawyers with their online marketing.
Seth Price
We have like fit 50 plus employees domestically, countless people offshore doing tasks. You know, it's, you know, again, just like most things, you know, people come to you there's there's plenty of markets for people who do nothing. But if you need heavy lifting, it takes a lot of labor to move the needle and needle and marketing. It's not like when you started, where if you're no three, and you put a website up at work today, everybody's got a website, how do you have your scene have over somebody else's?
Ali Katz
Yeah, yeah. So you're, you're really doing, you know, it seems like you're doing the custom work that, you know, we've, we've kind of templated for our lawyer firms.
Seth Price
And we created a lower lower dollar Silver Shark product at like 975 a month that gets a website, so that you have something to build off of, it's cheaper than investing seven or $8,000 upfront. So it's basically a payment plan for a website. But what do you need, if you're in non competitive space, your Google My Business done the website optimized. So if we can bring the same best practices on page optimization, that you get a very high price point, for some people, that's enough, if you're in the business to business space, you don't need more like when somebody came to me, if one of your clients who only does business to business work, I won't let them spend more than the 975 on SEO, because they don't need it. And they shouldn't do it until they've done everything else in their playbook, the business consumer side, if you're ripe for it, you can spend more and make more, but we're very much about like, what is going to work because I'd rather I don't want to blow through clients, I want clients that stay with us for forever. And then, you know, and therefore I know that the b2b side, you can't SEO yourself to success, you know, as that sort of trusted adviser you have to bring people in. Whereas on the consumer side, if you're looking for young families, you can people are searching it and you can bring things in that way. And you got to figure out what what you're doing and where to allocate resources that way.
Ali Katz
Well, I really look forward to you know, Seth, talking more about how you know, how are two fractal organizations? You know, my my...
Seth Price
Chocolate and the peanut butter, so to speak.
Ali Katz
Chocolate and the peanut butter, so to speak.
Seth Price
Yes. Well, thank you so much, ally, and hope to have you back on sometime soon.
BluShark Digital
Thanks. Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.