Center Stage
A podcast featuring interviews with small business owners and industry experts to help you solve the marketing and business development challenges that come with running your own firm.
Center Stage
Your Law Firm’s Growth Starts With You feat. Robert Hanna
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💡 Your law firm’s growth does not just come from better marketing. It starts with how willing you are to show up as the leader. Robert Hanna, globally recognized legal recruiter, podcaster, speaker, and community builder, joins us to talk about why visibility, personal brand, and team advocacy matter so much for modern law firms. He explains why small firm owners cannot afford to stay hidden behind the firm logo, how LinkedIn can help build trust with both talent and potential clients, and why empowering your team to share their voice can strengthen the firm instead of threatening it. If you want your law firm to attract better people, create more trust, and build a stronger presence in the market, Robert’s perspective is one you need to hear.
You can get in touch with Robert here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthanna
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The worst thing is for you as the leader to say, I want you to post about this. It's got to be the individual. It's got to come from them because people connect with individuals, their individual stories, their failures, their lessons, their learning. We are craving that. We are drowning in information, particularly AI-generated information, but we are craving wisdom.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Center Stage Podcast. Have a fun guest for you today, Robert Hanna. Robert is a globally top-ranked legal recruiter, podcaster, speaker, and community builder dedicated to empowering legal professionals to land their dream role. So, Robert, thank you so much for joining us on Center Stage. Glad you're here.
SPEAKER_01Ah, thanks so much for having me, Danny. Big fan of the show, big fan of what you're doing, and yeah, excited to get into today's discussion.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Likewise, and always great to have uh to have changed it up a little bit in terms of accent. You're you're from the UK, so we got we got that going on. So uh really, really glad to have you. So let's start here. Just tell tell our audience just a little bit about kind of who you are and and and and tell us about your business.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure. So in 2016, I launched a legal recruiting business in the UK. The principal reason for that, my grandfather ran one of the most successful law firms in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. He built an incredible legacy and I wanted to emulate that success. But he always said, don't be a lawyer. So I went into the world of recruiting lawyers. I think he said it tongue-in-cheek. But anyway, that was how I launched in 2016. I realized very early on nobody cared that I'd launched a legal recruiting business. I had to make them care. So I needed to understand the importance of building a brand, building community, cutting through, doing things slightly differently. Hence, I've built a lot of things wrapped around KC Partners, which in my legal recruiting business. One of those, which folks may be familiar with is the Legally Speaking Podcast. We've been going since 2018. We've been partnering with Clio since 2021. Um, again, legal education, future of law, legal careers, helpful insights, all of that good stuff. We've been providing events, educational resources, and not just trying to be a transactional agency, but actually advise lawyers throughout their careers. We say we don't place somebody for want, we place them for life, and we fuel them with content, collaboration, information all the way through that journey and build a big community um around it. So that's who I am, as you very kindly said, um, trying to help people land their dream roles, have happier, more fulfilling legal careers, and bring that human side of the lawyer out of all of these people and build a community.
SPEAKER_00Love that. Very cool. So, you know, our our our audience, primarily small law firm owners, right? And so obviously many of them are in growth mode, uh looking to build their teams, hire associate attorneys. So let's camp out there for a minute. You know, it's it's it's a competitive market, always, right? When you're looking for top talent. So, you know, what are some of the things that law firm owners should be thinking about in terms of making their firm an attractive place for talent?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I always say, and this is particularly for those small law firms, and let's work on the basis that maybe they don't have the large marketing budgets or advertising budgets that some of the larger players may have. We're no longer in a B2B or B2C world, we're in an H2H world. I strongly believe that. Human-to-human connection. And law firms are not law firms, they are people. You know, the people make up the law firm. That is your greatest asset, that is your greatest thing to sell and communicate. So if you are running a small-size law firm at the moment and you are invisible as a founder, you are leaving so much opportunity on the table to potentially interact and attract talent. So, what do I mean by that? I mean actually go out there and build a personal brand. All the opportunities that have come my way as a business owner over the last five, six, seven years have been as a result of me building a personal brand. Okay, Rob, how do you do that? Well, first, easiest place to start is LinkedIn because ordinarily most of the attorneys or lawyers you're trying to talk to are going to be on LinkedIn. So rather than putting out jobs about your hiring for a family uh attorney or you're hiring for a litigator or a corporate lawyer, you need to first start building up trust with your audience. You need to start engaging. So start sharing some stories, some lessons, some things that you think might be valuable to that junior or future lawyer that you're trying to attract and showcasing who you are. That is a great way for you to start building and attracting and building trust. The second point is if you've already started hiring a few people, enhance that with employee brand advocacy. One of the best ways, if you go and look at any profile, any law firm profile or any organization profile, typically the people that have been building a personal brand probably have a larger follower base, they probably have a higher engagement audience, they have a larger opportunity to get to market than actually the law firms themselves. You similarly will as well. 561% personal brands have power over a law firm brand, particularly if you're a small firm. So allow your people to go out there and share their stories and start connecting with audience and say how much they're enjoying the job. The challenges also be authentic, be open, and what particularly they're enjoying at that point in time, the types of cases they're winning, the types of opportunities they're getting. All of this good stuff is a great way for you to get out there to start building trust, showcasing that you're human, and start getting people actually interested in your firm. So I would absolutely start there. And the biggest thing about all of that stuff that I've just said, other than a little bit of time, and of course we can use AI tools to shortcut that, but I'd still advise using um, you know, using that creative thinking, that human um thought process to not completely automate it. It's all free. LinkedIn is free. So that's the place that I would start straight off the bat to start getting people interested and starting getting talent interest in your organization, rather than just chucking out job ads and leaning on people like us as recruiters as well, because I think that's quite lazy in 2026.
SPEAKER_00That is is awesome, Robert. And and there's I think I I love this conversation, not only from a recruiting perspective, which is obviously really important, but you know, law firm owners in particular, but to your point also, you know, employees in a firm, you know, building a personal brand, great for recruiting, great for generating referrals, great for it's just it's just that's such a powerful tool to have for so many different reasons. And and I love that you zeroed in on LinkedIn. So I popped over to your LinkedIn profile, and I'm seeing you're you're closing in on like 47,000 followers. That's that's exciting. So, how did you do that? Like, how long ago did you really dive into LinkedIn? How long did it take you to get to this point? Like, tell us a little about your journey on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I noticed again to the point about nobody cared that I started the business. I was that SM, I was that small business owner, just me with a belief and ambition. I always say BTA, believe to achieve. You need to think enough people think you're stupid to actually get over that to prove them wrong and have that drive and determination. But it also means you're seeing things other people can't see, which is your entrepreneurial flair, your entrepreneurial spirit, and that's your drive and dedication. So people couldn't see very early on when I was sort of jumping on LinkedIn around 2017, 2018, um, I could see the uptick because if nothing changes, nothing changes. And LinkedIn was tanking as a platform, it was just becoming this sort of um, you know, people putting out jobs, very transactional, there was no community, and obviously you had the birth of other social media platforms coming out there, really driving engagement, video, etc., etc. So I saw quite early on that if we start putting yourself out there, start sharing things, I'm gonna start connecting with an audience, and slowly you start seeing a like button on LinkedIn, which 10 years ago would have been insane. Slowly you start seeing the introduction of newsletters to start educating people, video, etc. algorithms having importance, all of these things. So you as a business owner, remember small, small law firm owners. If you set up a law firm, no longer are you the lawyer unless you're going to actually hire people. The reality is you're a business owner, so you need to be working on your business as well as in your business, or finding ways to collaborate, outsource, or bring people if you have skills gaps to get that into working on your business. So I saw that as just a simple working on my business business development strategy. And as a result of that, I was the first creator in the UK to be on a LinkedIn accelerator program. I've been to the LinkedIn head offices over here in London, in Ireland. Um, I helped LinkedIn with their LinkedIn product rollout of the failed LinkedIn audio um testing, which was a new platform. Again, they're always testing new features. And yeah, I've been in and around it, and it's been a life changer. All the opportunities, all the brand deals, all of the connections, law firms I'm working with, lawyers I work with today has come off the back of me leaning into LinkedIn. That's how powerful it is.
SPEAKER_00What would you advise for, you know, let's say a law firm owner that has a LinkedIn profile but really hasn't posted very much, maybe has a couple hundred connections. Like practically speaking, where should they start? Do they just jump in and make a post every day? What should they be posting about? Like, how would you advise somebody to get started?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, firstly, I would say take inspiration from people that you might have been following or lurking in the background, but do not completely copy and be authentic. The second thing I would think about is what do you want to be known for? And I always say this is what is your TOI, your topic of influence? So again, let's say you're a small-size law firm and you handle family law matters, right? Uh, that's your core focus. Then you may probably want your topic of influence to be something linked to that family law matter. So give you a very simple example. I have a legal recruiting business, but I have a podcast. My podcast and the topic of influence that I talk about is legal careers. Okay. Now, why am I doing that? Because I want that to act as lead flow for the recruiting, right? So the content and information I'm putting out is helpful. It's like, how have these partners become partners? What were their challenges, the opportunities? How did they make senior associate? How did they go on to scale from a one-person law firm to a multi-million dollar exit? Or what are they doing in terms of investing legal technology and what impact is that going to have on the future lawyer and future careers? So my topic of influence and what I talk about is legal careers and it's driving interest to my ideal buyer, which is a law firm. So think about the family law example. You probably want to be talking about sort of things related to divorce, separation, and start sharing some stories, some insights, some things that might be helpful, 10 tips to think about if you're going through this, or you know, start actually putting a content plan around that topic of influence. And it should be one or two words that you want your ideal avatar, that pain point, to be coming to you about. And that's a great way to stay consistent. And I see so many people launch podcasts, so many people start a personal brand, but they get so confused or they get so overwhelmed or they stop or they say algorithms hate. If you know what your topic of influence is, who you're trying to talk to, you can double down and you can be consistent.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's such good advice. I also love your advice to sort of dial into one platform. LinkedIn worked great for you. I'm, you know, from an organic social media place, you know, uh that LinkedIn is is is the first place I would start too. And and I and I really think that, you know, not trying to master TikTok and Instagram and LinkedIn and and Twitter, like it is it's too much, right? Like folk, focus on on one platform. I think LinkedIn is a great place to start. And I also do love your advice of follow some people that you admire and some things that see what they're doing that resonates with you, and uh, and you know, learn, right? And and and don't copy, but but take inspiration. I I think that's great advice. So something I want to touch on that you mentioned a few minutes ago, Robert, which I think is really interesting, is this idea too of sort of encouraging, empowering your team, so your attorneys also to get active on LinkedIn and and and begin building their brand too. And I want to have a broad conversation on that, but also have a specific question because you know I talk to law firm owners every day. And I know one of the big uh sort of initial objections to that idea is well, I don't want them to build a brand and then real and then decide that they're just gonna leave and start their own firm and maybe even take some clients and referral sources with them. So I imagine you've heard that objection before. So, like, how do you navigate that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and just going back on your point about the the the learning piece, you know, on on the platforms, you you can also use so much data. So use like keywords uh planner or answer thepublic.com, put in questions, and that will give you data about where your demand actually is. And remember, before you learn, I mean, before you earn, you must learn. So if you drop the L, it spells earn. So it's just a really key point that people need to be continuously learning. Myself, to that point, um, it's completely on the partner. You've got to take self-accountability and you've got to switch up your mindset and you've got to realize we're in 2026. As brutal and as blunt that is, nothing changes, nothing changes. Yes, you want your talent to almost be being headhunted. You want your talent to be getting interest from the market. It's on you to be keeping your star talent. It's on you as the business owner to be thinking of creative ways to keep them excited, interested. It's on you, maybe to give them some skin in the game to actually see this as a long-term partnership and start rolling out equity. So they don't want to go off and see their own uh business and have all that stress and sleepless nights and worries that maybe you've had when you first started. So it's a complete mindset shift. Um, because if you're looking at it from a negative, then you're missing out on all of the positive, right? Because there's a thing called COI. Everyone focuses on return on um investment. What about the cost of inaction? There is a huge cost of inaction for you as a law firm, not changing that mindset of I'm worried about them leaving. What about I'm worried about them being so good we get an increased amount of actual cases that come in, or actually I'm worried about that because we're getting more people writing to us than jobs we can fill. Why don't we look at it from rather the what if, but what is the opportunity from doing this? And why don't I give myself a headache where I'm trying to think about keeping this star talent? Because clearly, if I'm losing them, we're doing something wrong. So remember, if you're pointing the finger, there's many more fingers pointing back at you. Take self-accountability, stop being stuck in the old ages of that form of mindset, switch it up and start getting your people excited, give them opportunity, you'll build trust, they'll love working for you, they'll work harder for you, and you'll have a win-win.
SPEAKER_00Love that. All right. So, so so again, for the law firm owner that's listening to this and is like, wow, never really thought about that. Um, maybe they've got a couple of attorneys on their team who maybe aren't active on LinkedIn yet. Like, what do you suggest they do? Like, sit down with them and just and and and be like, you know, hey, I want you to start building a brand on LinkedIn. Like, what does that conversation look like? What's the role that the owner of the law firm should play in this whole piece?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think they should encourage. I think they should see the value. I think they should see other small firm, small law firm owners. And by the way, if you've not started this, you're already behind, right? Because there will be other law firms that are doing that and are encouraging people to do this. So um be driven by market factors, by driven by what other people are are doing. But I would say be supportive of it, be encouraging of it, and see it as not a nice to have, but as an essential activity. So, you know, it it may be impossible to do once a day because you're too busy. Fine. Maybe it might be once a week, maybe it might be twice a week, maybe it might be something, and have a system in place that allows you to be consistent, that's genuinely valuable, but it is authentic. The worst thing is for you as the leader to say, I want you to post about this. It's got to be the individual, it's got to come from them because people connect with individuals, their individual stories, their failures, their lessons, their learning. We are craving that. We are drowning in information, particularly AI-generated information, but we are craving wisdom. So if we can get that wisdom out and share that, then that is a great way to start building trust with your prospective clients, your prospective talent, and the community around you. And I would also encourage collaboration as well. Collaborate with a number of societies, law societies, organizations in and around, because that's a way again to get into new networks. So maybe run an event, maybe put something out there on LinkedIn about the event, maybe you do it with the Law Society of X. Yeah, great. Then they're going to share it in their newsletter. You're going to get distribution, visibility. People are going to hear and see of your small law firm just by putting in a bit of time. So I think the mindset needs to switch from this is all, oh yeah, we'll get around to it, to this is a central modern business development networking, meeting people where they're at, getting out there, being relevant. Because if you're a small law firm, it's hard because at the end of the day, everybody knows the law. And with AI coming in, the value of knowledge in terms of actually just being able to recite cases and do all that is going down. Is that human judgment? Is that creative thinking? Is that top part of the funnel which technology hasn't got to yet that you as a business owner need to be thinking about? So the more creative you can be thinking about and expressing that from again working on your business, not in your business, is important.
SPEAKER_00So, Robert, you mentioned um, you know, AI content, right? And and all of us who spend time on LinkedIn, you know, in the last 12 months have probably seen plenty of of kind of obviously AI generated, you know, content and and comments. And any any thoughts, any advice for you know, a law firm owner or a lawyer that that's thinking about wanting to be more prolific on LinkedIn and and maybe wants to use some AI tools to make it easier. What's your advice there?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I I'm an advocate for using I'm AI tools, but I'm an advocate for knowing what you want to be remembered for and what you want your reputation to be about and how you want to connect with your audience. So I don't personally have an issue with you brainstorming with AI. The issue you have is if you completely lean on it to do absolutely everything and you put everything out there without any thought, then the reality is you're probably gonna lose that um connection, that authenticity, that voice that people, and that's why the people have LinkedIn top voice. I've been a LinkedIn top voice before. It's that voice that people are trying to connect with. You may lose a little bit of that. So I would always recommend to to use them, test them, um, but make sure you're getting the right prompts in there, make sure you're actually using them to your uh to basically ensure that what you put out there, you're happy to say online as well as offline.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's great advice. I I cringe a little bit when I see the very obviously uh AI postings, right? With the with the M-dashes, and and it's just like, you know, I think everybody at this point uh kind of has their filter for for when it's clearly AI generated. And I don't think that's real helpful for you know sort of the objectives you just talked about. But but I'm I'm a big fan of using AI tools when when it makes sense. So let's let's take a slight twist in this conversation too. And obviously, you know, your expertise in in helping lawyers, you know, navigate um the legal career, the legal industry, and obviously, you know, AI has has really uh shaken things up over the last couple of years. What are you seeing like just in terms of the job market? I mean, you always hear the the rumors of you know big firms don't need associates anymore, they're just gonna get a wall of Mac minis and and and you know and just you know produce. But what's what's your take? Where where do you see sort of the industry going, particularly on like maybe the more entry-level, you know, piece of the industry? Like what what do you see happening?
SPEAKER_02I'll I'll talk more from what I'm seeing over here in the UK, specifically and in the ground, where there might be some some some change. I think the the first thing is you know, innovation teams, AI, and in the main law firms is very much there. So a traditional training route for a legal professional, particularly at the junior end, is going to be very different to the way they would have been trained and upskilled originally, because there is that looking for AI literacy, you know, particularly what they can do, their understanding of it, their base knowledge, etc. etc. So I would say if you are an up-and-coming, uh aspiring attorney, lawyer, thinking about that, you do need to have a basic level of AI literacy. And so go and go on courses, YouTube, even just as a minimum, um, mentors, get yourself out to events, get yourself out to some of the free resources, law societies and organizations in around the legal profession, listen to podcasts like this, listen to my podcast, whatever, but just consume information to upskill yourself. So I'm definitely seeing that trend in terms of you know law firms leaning into this and seeking that that job role is going to change. Um, and I think what we're generally gonna see is a rather than a traditional T-shaped or V-shape or whatever shape you wanted to say in terms of um law firm structure, I think we're gonna see more of a cylinder. So we're still gonna have associates, we're still gonna have partners, but filling the middle of that cylinder is going to be more of these legal innovation officers, project my legal project managers, legal technologists, you know, and so the makeup of what traditional firms and some of the people talent is looking like will be slightly different. I think that's super exciting because you know, there are probably parts of the law that certain people wish they'd never had to do. And so if there's a new job creation as a result of that that could be more exciting that removes the drudgery, I'm all for it. So yeah, I think there are a couple of things that I'm I'm I'm seeing. I think generally, in terms of um job cuts or job shortages, I mean the big law law firm clients, which I know is not necessarily completely relevant to the small law firm clients, are still busy, which says there's still demand. And that also means for the small law firm clients, there's potential talent for you to go at because you can offer them flexibility, work-life balance, all the things that the big law firms maybe can't. Um, so yeah, I I think there's still a really exciting time to become a lawyer, to get out there, and yeah, don't believe all the headlines just yet. I think we're we're moving at a pace with AI where I think we're going to reduce the access to justice um through technology for good, hopefully make law more accessible, probably move away from a billable hour, and eventually, you know, these modern law firms will have different makeups of skill sets, talent, and actually more legal services will be able to be offered to people at all levels, which I think is a good thing because there's a massive access to justice gap that we're all familiar about on a global level.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. That's awesome. Love that perspective. So, Robert, you're based in the UK. Um, do you tell us just a little bit about your actual firm and um and do you do you work with companies in the US?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we typically focus on private practice hires for law firms from small to um international scale. Uh, and we cover the main practice areas you would expect within law. When we first started, we started in corporate law because as a lot of people know, a lot of work originates around from corporate. You've got employment, you've got IP, etc. etc. So we do corporate, we do most of the non-contentious banking, finance, um, as well as uh, you know, litigation, arbitration, all of the main practice areas is where we sit, and that's from a junior level right the way up to partner level. And yes, we do service firms um principally in the UK, but also in the US, and we've grown that through our League of Speed podcast where we've built connections and networks as well. And I'm in the US at least once or twice a year. We also do the um MENA region. I've had a large focus on Dubai given the expansion and interest and growth in in that market, and uh also a little bit in continental Europe as well.
SPEAKER_00Very cool. Well, Robert, thank you so much for joining us. This was really informative. Really appreciate your perspective. What is the best way for folks that are interested in connecting with you, maybe working with you? Where do you want people to find you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure. I'll practice what I preach. Connect with me on LinkedIn or give me a follow. Uh just Robert Hanna on there. Um, it should say legal community builder, you should be able to find me. And yeah, just remember, everyone, if you've seen or heard one or two things that you've liked today, go and take action on it, right? It's not the information it should consume, it's actually the action you take, and the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. Thanks so much for having me. Wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Robert.