Law doesn't have to be that way with Aaron Baer - Episode 34

In Episode 34 of the Legal Genie Podcast, your host, Lara Quie, is in conversation with Aaron Baer. 

Aaron is an entrepreneur first and lawyer second. 

He is a corporate Partner and Head of Business Development and Training at a Canadian digital law firm called Renno & Co in Toronto.

Renno is focused on innovation, emerging technology and business development services for the modern entrepreneur.

Aaron himself is passionate about mentoring and technical skills training for new Canadian lawyers. He is the co-founder of the 4L Academy. 

Together with his colleague, Dharwal Tank, he is also the co-founder of the Build Your Book Podcast. 

Aaron’s goal is to make the legal industry a kinder, more authentic and compassionate place for lawyers and clients. 

I hope that you enjoy this episode.

You can connect with Aaron Baer on LinkedIn here

By email here: aaron@4Lacademy.ca

And on his websites here:

www.4Lacademy.ca

www.buildyourbook.org

Also:

·         If you liked this episode, please rate the show, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts to help the Legal Genie reach a wider audience.

·         Look out for the next episode coming soon.

You can connect with Lara Quie for executive coaching:

·         On LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laraquie

·         Website: https://www.laraqassociates.com

·          Or e-mail at Lara@LaraQAssociates.com

Lara Q Associates
A boutique business and executive coaching consultancy

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

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The Legal Genie Podcast Episode 34 with Aaron Baer

[00:00:00] Lara Quie: Hello. And welcome to the legal genie podcast hosted by me, Lara Quie. This podcast is anyone looking for some career inspiration and mentoring in the legal industry. I interview movers and shakers with interesting stories to tell about the highs and lows of their careers. They share loads of useful advice that I hope will help you to move forward in your career. Please follow and rate and even better, leave a review on whichever platform that you're listening to this on now. Right, on with the show....

[00:01:04] Lara Quie: Hello, and welcome to episode 34 of the Legal Genie Podcast with me, your host, Lara Quie. Today, I'm delighted to be talking to Aaron Baer. Aaron is an entrepreneur first and lawyer second. He is a corporate partner and head of business development and training at a Canadian digital law firm called Renno & Co in Toronto.

[00:01:42] Lara Quie: Renno is focused on innovation, emerging technology and business development services for the modern entrepreneur. Aaron himself is passionate about mentoring and technical skills training for new Canadian lawyers. He is the co-founder of the 4L Academy and together with his colleague Dharwal Tank, he's also the co-founder of the Build Your Book podcast. Aaron's goal is to make the legal industry a kinder and more authentic and compassionate place for lawyers and clients. Welcome to the show, Aaron. 

[00:02:15] Aaron Baer: Thanks so much for having me today. 

[00:02:17] Lara Quie: Tell me about your background and where you grew up. 

[00:02:21] Aaron Baer: Yeah, so I was born in Toronto, in Canada. Went to a really small school for most of my life where pretty much no one went into law. Everyone was doing math and science and things like that. So I had no exposure to law, no exposure to lawyers and so I went to school there went to university in Canada, did an exchange in Singapore, and I did a dual degree in business and law. 

[00:02:39] Aaron Baer: I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but sort of knew was going to be one of those two things and ended up going the law route, which will talk about more in a second. But yeah, so born and raised in Canada and currently practicing as a lawyer at a boutique firm in Canada. And prior to that was the partner at one of the big law firms in Canada and doing lots of entrepreneurial things along the way. 

[00:02:56] Lara Quie: So it sounds like you kept your options open by doing law and business. But you did eventually go to law school and decide to be a lawyer. So tell me a bit about the Canadian requirements to qualify as a lawyer.

[00:03:12] Aaron Baer: Yeah. So Canada's always interesting when I was on exchange in Singapore, it reminded me, Canada and Singapore, both, UK backgrounds, but Canada draws a lot from the US in some places. And then it draws from the UK in other places. And when it comes to law, common law, so lots of things from the UK, but when it comes to law school, very much US-style.

[00:03:28] Aaron Baer: What I mean by that is you do an undergraduate degree first. So I did mine in business. And then you do law school as your second degree, which I know is not the case in a lot of places. So I was always interested in business as a kid was, sort of entrepreneurial in lots of ways, interested in how these things sort of worked.

[00:03:43] Aaron Baer: And when I was in business school I enjoyed it, but it sort of felt like the paths were constrained, which I now know isn't true, but the school I went to was a good school and people went into either consulting or investment banking or accounting or marketing. None of those big bucket jobs, like seemed like the kind of thing I wanted to do long term.

[00:04:00] Aaron Baer: And the school I went to had a dual degree program where you could, instead of finishing your business undergraduate degree, you could start law school a bit early and then finish them together. Sort of doing a little bit of each. And so I had written the LSAT, which we need to write to get into law school.

[00:04:14] Aaron Baer: I done well enough and I thought, okay, I like business school. I'm not seeing any of these jobs as the thing. So, did this dual degree and ironically, I actually enjoyed business school a lot more than law school. I found the business school I went to was way more practical and hands on and engaging.

[00:04:28] Aaron Baer: I enjoyed law school but I found a lot of the education pedagogically, quite dry, very much, just, not overly engaging basically lecture style. Whereas the business school I went to was very case based modelled after sort the way Harvard does their thing. Practical, engaging, learning, and that's maybe foreshadowed some of the things I've done later in life. But I enjoyed it enough. Got a job in the summers at a law firm. And I found it interesting. And really for me, I think what I've really enjoyed is this blend of business and law. And I think because I have not just a business background from an academic standpoint, but also various businesses I've run on the side.

[00:05:02] Aaron Baer: And just a way of thinking that is, very business like. It's been great as a lawyer because really what I think I do is I'm a consultant. Companies hire me to solve their problems. It just so happens that they have legal problems, but I need to understand them and their businesses.

[00:05:18] Aaron Baer: And so I work with a lot of early stage tech companies, a lot of entrepreneurs, things like that, where you need a decent business understanding. To give practical advice because they have all sorts of legal issues. They don't have unlimited money and they want practical solutions. And if all you can say is, well, the statute says this, the law says that, you're just a problem person.

[00:05:41] Aaron Baer: You need to be a solutions person. And so to do that, you need to blend both worlds. And so I'm just an extremely curious person. And so getting to work with all sorts of different clients, understand them, understand their business and figure out what they care about. Then to me, it's just problem solving, which is not the worst way to get paid, to help other people. And for them, ideally, to be grateful that, you got to help them solve some problems. 

[00:06:03] Lara Quie: Definitely. And it sounds like it's quite a unique thing that you had the opportunity to do law school and business school in parallel and in effect compare the two. And you really noticed how practical it was at business school and how dry and pedagogic, as you mentioned, it was law school.

[00:06:23] Lara Quie: Certainly, this is something that really comes out in the practice of law in the way that many lawyers are very, letter of the law. And as you say, not all of them approach it with so much of a commercial mindset and they don't understand that they are problem solvers. And so quite often they'll just say, no, you can't do this rather than telling their client, "this is what the law says, but this is the way that we can do things so that this is going to be both legal and practical and commercial as well." So you mentioned that you had been an entrepreneur as a young student as well. So what kind of business had you gone into for your very first start-up?

[00:07:06] Aaron Baer: So I would say a lot of my earlier businesses, I wouldn't necessarily qualify startups. I'd call them, very small scale entrepreneurial things. So when I was a kid the school, I went to had a vending machine, selling pop or soda and chips and all that kind of stuff, snacks.

[00:07:20] Aaron Baer: And so when I was younger, figured I can undercut that. You're charging a dollar for this so we can charge 50 cents. We can make good profits. So the earliest ventures, other than like a newspaper route, which I wouldn't call that entrepreneurial. Was undercutting the school's vending machine when I was in like grade six or so, maybe 11 or 12 did that for a little bit that obviously wasn't fully allowed.

[00:07:38] Aaron Baer: So, stop doing that. Various other things along the way. Did a lot of tutoring and mentoring when I was in university some obviously for free, some was paid. Went from doing a lot of one-on-one things to running big group sessions: 80 a hundred people at a time. And I sort of built a reputation as someone who was in business.

[00:07:54] Aaron Baer: I was very good at, I think, explaining these concepts to people and I've always liked helping people and always, I think yeah, like I know what it's like to not understand things and I want to be able to explain them to people. And I take, I think atypical approaches to get there. And that I think is really key.

[00:08:08] Aaron Baer: You know, a lot of lawyers for example, are great lawyers, but being a good lawyer and being able to explain things to other people and also understand how little they might know at that stage and really thinking through like how do I get you to understand the big picture? So you understand where this fits in and not just, oh, let me answer this question.

[00:08:24] Aaron Baer: So always doing a lot of that stuff. When I was a lawyer, I was not supposed to be running any side ventures, but there may or not have been a few small things on the side that were just sort of opportunities I saw that were low time intensive good arbitrage or other opportunities. So, so always sort of thinking about these little things and very much reading and learning about business and entrepreneurship and things like that.

[00:08:46] Aaron Baer: But when I was at my prior firm and maybe we'll get to that in a second, I would say I was very much an intrapreneur. So, I wasn't allowed to do a lot of these things externally. But I was very much looking at what we were doing and saying, Ugh, I want to change everything.

[00:08:58] Aaron Baer: I've got a million ideas and I'm happy to do this on top of my law job. So I was always thinking about the kind of things entrepreneurs do. It just took leaving and we'll get to that to be able to really see out some of that entrepreneurial spirit that was inside me without as many restrictions.

[00:09:13] Lara Quie: Yeah. So you did mention that firm. So the firm that you ended up staying at for quite a long time and becoming a very young equity partner. What were the things that made you feel like perhaps it wasn't the right fit for you? 

[00:09:29] Aaron Baer: Yeah, so I started law school when I was 20. And I know in the UK, Singapore, that's not young in north America. Again, you're supposed to have done a first degree, so that's young. There are not a lot of people that get summer jobs in the first year of law school. We typically do a three month placement. I know that in the UK and other countries, it works differently. And so I was lucky. I did quite well my first year of law school. I will say that's partly due to a number of factors including just, I studied differently than other people. Even at that stage, I was thinking a lot more practically than other people. I'm like, what am I supposed to be learning here? And how am I going to achieve that? Everyone else was reading all the cases. I stopped reading cases very early on in law school, but I wasn't slacking off.

[00:10:08] Aaron Baer: I was just going, I'm going to read some secondary sources to try to understand what I'm supposed to be understanding, because I don't understand how reading a case to take one point out of it is going to get this big picture in my head that I'm supposed to get to. And so a lot of this comes down and I think to the big picture, but let me come back to that.

[00:10:22] Aaron Baer: So, I did well, my first year of law school got one of these unusual summer jobs at a big firm and I spent 10 years pretty much there. So my first summer of law school, my second summer in Canada, we do articling similar to pupillage in the UK, was an associate for a while, and then was up for partnership.

[00:10:39] Aaron Baer: I never wanted to be a partner. My plan was never even to be in private practice this long. My plan when I was hired at the firm was to go in house, work for a business after about two years. And the group I joined when I was hired back was the corporate commercial group, because I figured it had the best exit opportunities and it was the one that dealt with a lot more day to day business issues in addition to doing M&A work. So very much aligned with my business interests and sort of entrepreneurial interest. In my first little while I wasn't that busy which wasn't a bad thing. I was working very good hours and getting paid the same as if I was working more hours and that was a decent deal.

[00:11:12] Aaron Baer: So there was no reason to quit. A lot of my friends at other big firms were all already very miserable and working absurd hours. And of course they all left, quite early on. I figured, okay, this isn't so bad. And then I started getting much busier, my through my fourth year. And I was like, oh, now I understand why people leave.

[00:11:29] Aaron Baer: Well, you guys did this for this long? This seems a little interesting, like really okay. I get where you were coming from, but I was also at a point where it didn't feel like I knew what I was doing. Um, Partly because I had done less work, but partly is the training I got was not good. We had all your standard, big firm trimmings of formal mentors and lunch sessions and this and that.

[00:11:49] Aaron Baer: But the training I was getting, as I was realizing, wasn't good, but it took me a while to figure that out because the reviews I was getting were good, clients were happy with me, but it was once I was starting to be asked to, run files on my own and do things like that, where I went, whoa, hold on a second.

[00:12:06] Aaron Baer: It was one thing when you were telling me what to do, but now I'm supposed to figure this out on my own. How am I supposed to make the jump from one, which is follow instructions, which you're still learning a lot. It's not easy at the time in hindsight it's easy now to, okay. Here is a fact pattern, which is like law school gives you fact patterns.

[00:12:23] Aaron Baer: Real life is fact patterns. The client calls and says, I'm trying to do this good lawyers know. Wait a second. Let me ask these 15 questions. Oh, you don't actually want to do that. You actually want to do this and oh, that little fact you mentioned that changes everything. Hold on a second. Let's explore that because that one thing really matters.

[00:12:43] Aaron Baer: How are you supposed to go from following instructions to that stage? I just described by flipping a switch. And that's what they wanted me to do. And that's what every firm wants people to do. And that makes no sense. And the result of that was a ton of anxiety, a ton of stress. It was terrible for my mental health.

[00:13:02] Aaron Baer: And I said to people like, I can't run this deal. And they said, no you have to, it's a small deal, client can't afford. And I'm like, Nope, I, can't not fair to the client. And so what I ended up doing is a ton of independent learning, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of independent hours of reading everything I could. 

[00:13:18] Aaron Baer: Overthinking stuff. And then reaching out to some good mentors at my firm. Now that I knew I did had these gaps to be like, Hey, I have a hundred questions on this topic. Can we sit down for an hour? Because what I was trying to do was get this big picture, understanding in my head of how things work, because what I realized is I had been doing stuff, but I had no idea why I was doing it or what I was doing.

[00:13:40] Aaron Baer: If you don't understand why you're doing things, how the heck are you going to do a good job? And how on earth are you going to run a file and you can't do it successfully. And if you're doing it, you're probably either really stressed or you're screwing over the client, because they're not getting good advice.

[00:13:55] Aaron Baer: And so for me it was this big jump from being like, how do I become the lawyer I want to be, which is truly client focused, truly practical. How can you give practical advice? If you don't know what you're doing? It's impossible. You know, How can you make good decisions? If you don't know, like, what do clients care about?

[00:14:11] Aaron Baer: When should they care? Because every client comes to you with different circumstances, different backgrounds. You need to be able to help them out and ask the right questions and figure things out. And especially when you work, like I do with a lot of, younger clients earlier stage companies, tech, like in many cases, they're doing stuff for the first time they're looking to you.

[00:14:32] Aaron Baer: And I remember being like, don't look to me. I don't have a clue what I'm doing. No, you've got the wrong person and that's not a good feeling. So in any event uh, I got myself through the training kind of thing by teaching myself. But even when I gone through that, I just sort of knew like the traditional firm model.

[00:14:47] Aaron Baer: Like, I didn't want to be a partner. I became one sort of, I said to them, you tell me why I should be a partner. And they were not happy with that. Decided to become a partner, just did some cost benefit temporarily. And I underestimated the value that other people put on the partner title.

[00:15:02] Aaron Baer: Like, it sounds good when I can say, I was an equity partner at 29 and all these things, but the reality is, it was what I expected it to be. And I finally made the right choice, which I knew I needed to make ages before and left the firm about a year and a bit ago.

[00:15:16] Aaron Baer: Lots of reasons for that, which we can talk more about, but I would say, my mindset is very non-traditional. I think my mindset is probably fairly similar, honestly, to a lot of, gen Z millennial lawyers. Maybe a little bit more extreme because of the business background and the way I think very entrepreneurial, but there was a lot of stuff, how we treated people, how we thought about things, how we thought about growth, how we thought strategically, all these kinds of things where I'm looking and saying, "this is not what I want." It's not that they were doing anything that differently than the average law firm. I just think the average law firm is the last thing I would ever look to as a good comparison of what things should look like.

[00:15:53] Lara Quie: Right. Yeah, you covered a lot there and I think, when I compare that to the kind of training that I got. We were very fortunate in terms of I did a non-law degree. And then I went to law school for two years. Then I did a two year training contract where I got to sit in four different departments in the same office as a partner learning by osmosis.

[00:16:17] Lara Quie: Hearing every single conversation that they had with clients, reading emails, having them check emails before I sent them, the level of supervision was quite extraordinary and they were constantly giving feedback and mentoring and teaching. And so I think, the model that I was exposed to one did feel quite well nurtured.

[00:16:40] Lara Quie: And also at the law school actually, the course was quite practical. I think most of the textbooks that we had were quite good in that regard, at least to get you to the point where you could be a decent trainee. So it was, limited. So it was very much the foundation skills, but then I think because everybody was going through the same pattern, you didn't feel too much out on a limb.

[00:17:06] Lara Quie: But you're right. That when you hit qualification and you're suddenly there running your own files and the supervision just isn't that intense because obviously, that's only for trainees. That is a very scary time. And you are right that most law firms just expect you to know this stuff, and everybody will have different ideas of how much you need to know. It sounds like you invested a lot of time and effort in teaching yourself, but that's not the way it should be for sure. And then having mental health issues, anxiety a lot of people get depressed and stressed. And of course the overwork, it's the very, very long hours culture.

[00:17:49] Lara Quie: The fact that, there is a sort of lawyer personality and that many lawyers are very urgent. So everything is super urgent. So they haven't got time is not just the billable hour. That's making them stressed about the time they spend with you, but it's also mentality isn't it? That they don't want to take the time to go through all of the work and give you that big picture, because what you mentioned was wanting to understand the big picture and why am I doing this little piece? Well it's because this is a condition precedent and if we don't have this, we can't do that. And it's all the building blocks and understanding how everything fits.

[00:18:33] Lara Quie: But also why commercially it matters to have all of these bits of paper and all of these different contracts. And every time you change one clause, the repercussions on all of the others. So, you mentioned then that, you were there for nearly 10 years. So obviously you got the opportunity to do some business development of your own. When you were made equity partner, was that because at that stage you had already begun to bring in some work?

[00:19:04] Aaron Baer: It's interesting. So the firm, I was at runs a different model to some extent than other firms. So they actually weren't as fussed on your book of business to become an equity partner as the average firm. So, most US firms or north American firms, you're going to need a big book. At the firm I was at you didn't.

[00:19:22] Aaron Baer: But I think like every firm, whether a book of business is a criterion to become an equity partner or not, the bigger your book of business, the more you get paid. That's just a fact. So, there's never a bad time to have a larger book of business. One of the interesting things and again, I was never really planning on staying in private practice so early in my career, I was absolutely not invested in business development. I was like, if you're going to go work for a company, you don't really think about these things as mattering. But I was doing a lot of business development for another partner. And so even as an associate, I was building her practice with her and we built it up, to a multi multimillion dollar practice.

[00:19:59] Aaron Baer: And she obviously laid the ground for a lot of it. I got her to the next level. And so in a given year I actually started tracking it because no one was believing like Aaron, everyone does pitches for other people. It's part of the job. I'm like, don't think you understand how many I'm doing.

[00:20:13] Aaron Baer: I'm doing like 75 a year where I run the whole meeting. I get the client, I do the work for the clients. It brought in a lot of money from these. And so I was doing a lot of business development in my later years as an associate for another partner. And I realized, you know what I think I can do this much better.

[00:20:30] Aaron Baer: And I think I can do this in a much more authentic way because I was basically getting practice on the fly. And what I started to realize is, and I would see somehow my colleagues were doing business development and I'm talking, partners and stuff like in pitch meetings and intro calls. I.

[00:20:43] Aaron Baer: This is terrible. What are you doing? Like you're not a role model here you are delusional. If you think that what you're doing is working, you are not understanding basic psychology. Not that I'm an expert, but always been very interested in like behavioural psychology, things like that. I'm like we are breaking a lot of rules here.

[00:21:02] Aaron Baer: I can also see the reactions from the other people. What works on someone who's 75 years old and has worked, at a Fortune100 company for a billion years is very different than what a younger tech entrepreneur for example wants. And a lot of lawyers I found were not very good at, being a chameleon or changing their delivery for different audiences.

[00:21:21] Aaron Baer: I've always been someone, I think who's quite good at that. And so that's one thing I recognized early on is like, you can't treat all clients or potential clients the same. I think that's one thing clients like also that work with me is like, I treat them all differently. I know these clients like to have small talk before we do this, this client don't email them at night because they get really anxious and they're going to overthink the problem.

[00:21:39] Aaron Baer: So only in the morning, like you start to learn your clients and I treat all of them differently because all of them are different humans and potential clients work the same way. So, what I found was, we seem to be doing a lot of selling about why we're the best without understanding what people wanted and needed.

[00:21:57] Aaron Baer: And that made zero sense to me. Because one it's objectively not an effective strategy. And number two, like, I don't know, if we're the best. We're good at some things. Why don't I listen to you, figure out what you need, then try to figure out if we can help you, but also it'll help me figure out the strategy for you before you formally retain me because I'll be like, oh this, oh, what you really need is this right now, I seem like the best lawyer, because I've already figured out that what you thought you needed. You didn't need. Example of that with a potential client yesterday on a call that someone introduced to me, they came in saying, oh, we need this.

[00:22:32] Aaron Baer: It's a UK company, a Canadian company. We're going to do it this way. I'm like, I am 99% sure that is not what you're going to do. I could tell you that every other client I've worked with doing similar things to you, we normally do this. Here's the question I would ask back to your UK, solicitor, pretty sure I know what the answer's going to be.

[00:22:49] Aaron Baer: If that's the case, we don't need to do this and Hey, here's the five other things you're going to need to do. So, I mean, that's a intro call pitch call. I'm not getting paid. I'm not giving formal legal advice, but I seem really competent and that I've done this before and that I'm committed to them because they spent 95% of the time talking.

[00:23:07] Aaron Baer: I'm listening, I'm asking probing questions and I'm going great. If you're going to work together, here's what we're going to. We can do a fixed fee. We can do hourly. If you want a fixed fee, here's what it's going to be. Cuz I now know what you want and they're happy. The average lawyer is just we're the best.

[00:23:24] Aaron Baer: We're the best. Let me tell you about all the awards we've won. I've been practising for 40 years. Like no client wants that anyway. So your real question was, had I done a lot of business development or did I have a big book of business? The answer at the time was no, didn't have a big book of business myself, but had built another person's had good business development tendencies. But what I quickly realized was there was no good business development training at all for lawyers. And that was obvious because the training I was getting formally as an associate was a once a year talking head session where a bunch of partners would be like, here's how I got clients.

[00:23:57] Aaron Baer: And I remember thinking that's really great. You got them from your cousin who's rich. You got them because this industry happened to explode at the time you got them for some other reason, none of these things are replicable or reproduceable. So, how are they helpful for me? And I hear this all the time from associates, from partners, from law students. How do I do business development?

[00:24:20] Aaron Baer: And the answer is you need training on business development and there's real world strategies. There's a whole industry called sales and they have best practices. And so one of the entrepreneurial things I started doing, which I turned into a business, but sort of started when I was a partner. Was after all these experiences of working with this other partner and being like, there's got to be better ways.

[00:24:42] Aaron Baer: Like we were really successful, but I'm like, I know that we're making this up. So clearly there must be some best practices. And I reached out to an old friend of mine who had done sales for ages. And I was like, Hey, like what books should I read? What podcasts should I listen to? I want to absorb some knowledge, just like I've absorbed a lot of knowledge on how to be a better lawyer.

[00:25:01] Aaron Baer: I'm pretty sure this one's a bit easier in the sense, like there's literally just like follow these scripts, follow these best practices, practice this way. And so started learning a lot about business development and sales. Reading books listened to podcasts, talking to him. And obviously it's way more complicated than I thought and ended up with him starting this thing called "build your book", which is a company that trains lawyers on modern sales in the authentic way, in the way that's backed by the science.

[00:25:28] Aaron Baer: In a way that you actually enjoy doing it in a way that works. It went so well that we ended up actually hiring him unfortunately, to work for our firm because I'm like, oh, this is going to take away time for this business. But I want, I want to put what you're, we're talking and working with people on, let's put this into practice at our firm, not just for me.

[00:25:44] Aaron Baer: I was already doing a lot of this stuff, but at the firm level. So we're currently having some fun building out a sales function that looks nothing like any other law firm. We're doing stuff where clients are telling us, no law firm has ever done this. And we're just laughing. Cuz we're like, this is like, customer success, 1 0 1 in the tech industry.

[00:26:02] Aaron Baer: And that is already revolutionary in the law industry. This profession is so far behind, it seems around the world, but really I think everything I'm trying to do and we'll talk about the other things in a second is just saying it doesn't have to be the way it. What is the best practice for X and let's do that, right?

[00:26:20] Aaron Baer: What is the best practice to train lawyers? Let's bring that to law. Let's combine it with some law stuff and let's do that. What's the best practice for sales? Well, they don't all work in law, so we got to tweak them for the legal industry and let's do that. And people are craving this. And like, we've worked with partners at major law firms who are like, I don't know what to do.

[00:26:39] Aaron Baer: We've worked with junior associates, like everyone is struggling and they're spending all this valuable time, which you alluded to earlier. Lawyers don't have. So, if you're going to spend time doing business development or time doing substantive training, it better be good training and well spent because otherwise you're going to be frustrated that you spent another, three hours out of your day after a long week of overworking after not doing stuff.

[00:27:01] Aaron Baer: And you're not seeing results like that sucks. And that's going to make you more anxious, more depressed. If you're already in that frame of mind or you're suffer from depression, more insert every other negative mental health aspect. That's not good. And really my view also is good training can solve a lot of the mental health problems with this profession.

[00:27:20] Aaron Baer: Not going to solve all of them. Can't solve over work. Can't solve abuse, can't solve those things, but if you don't know what you're doing and you're expected to be perfect and not make mistakes and get things done quickly, that is a recipe for a mental health disaster. And we're trying to help fix that.

[00:27:35] Lara Quie: I think the thing that stands out for me when you're talking about all of that, Aaron, is, the innovation, the fact that you are constantly asking, how can we improve this? What are the best practices? And you're looking at other industries, and you're looking at the fact that most lawyers don't acknowledge that they're in sales.

[00:27:58] Lara Quie: And that's why they have to call it business development. When we all know actually it is sales and that they are the product, they and their brains are the product selling their time. But actually what you want to be moving towards is. A value based proposition in terms of what is the problem that the client has and how am I going to solve that?

[00:28:23] Lara Quie: So how big is this problem? And if it's a, multimillion dollar lawsuit and you make it go away well, is it really. Only because you spent five hours on that, that's only worth five hours’ worth or is it worth the millions that you've just saved them? So I think we definitely are on the same page when it comes to billable hour and all of that.

[00:28:47] Lara Quie: but it's very interesting how you mentioned that you've hired Dharwal for your firm now, and you're coming up with all these fantastic solutions for Renno & Co. And so when you first started coaching with him and he was telling you about the sales process. What were the main things that really stood out to you and made you go, oh my goodness, I don't believe, I didn't know this. 

[00:29:14] Aaron Baer: So I think I had a lot of decent gut instincts. I was ahead of the average lawyer, but I was very far away from the average salesperson. And it's funny when I watched Dharwal work his magic and like super authentic guy. There's nothing salesy about him. And that's, I think the first problem lawyers have, it's a mindset problem.

[00:29:31] Aaron Baer: I had a mindset problem. And every lawyer we've ever worked with on our coaching had a mindset problem. And in fact, at our firm, we've been spending a lot of time, the last three, four weeks on our all hands kind of, firm meetings. We started talking about business development, but it always gets back to mindset and, some vulnerable conversations because at the end of the day, as we like to say, your first sale is to yourself. Firstly, you got to believe in what you're selling.

[00:29:55] Aaron Baer: But secondly, like you've got to feel like someone should want to buy from you. So we see a lot of issues and I had all of these lawyers have one is they don't have an abundance mindset, meaning they're so afraid of not getting the client because they believe clients are scarce because when you're starting out and have no clients they feel scarce..

[00:30:11] Aaron Baer: So you have zero. You want to get them. I have learned the hard way, many times as have far too many people. There are lots of clients that you don't want. They don't pay the bills. They're fighting you on everything. They are more trouble than they're worth. They're good training clients. I would say to get these mistakes out of the way to learn how to manage a we'll call it a lower value client, but you don't want to build a practice of being at the client's mercy of having clients who don't respect your time, the value offer, things like that and who you're not happy to work with.

[00:30:40] Aaron Baer: So firstly, I fired clients because I don't like working with them and they were mistake hires. And I always knew at the beginning there were always red flags. I ignored them. But you know, if the client's haggling you over a few hundred dollars at the outset. Probably not going to make sense if you're taking them on, and they're like, oh, we can't afford to pay now, but maybe we'll be able to pay later.

[00:30:58] Aaron Baer: And you're like, oh, I'm betting. They're going to be the next big thing. Had this conversation recently with our juniors saying, look, you're welcome to do that, but just understand like, that's your risk. There are many things I've done unofficial pro bono. I'm like, look, you guys can't afford this I'm happy to help for now. And that's my choice, but not believing things will magically work out that way. And then the mindset goes from, dealing with billing, being comfortable, talking about cost upfront. Lawyers love to avoid this. It never works because guess what?

[00:31:28] Aaron Baer: You got to send a bill eventually. And there's nothing worse than having done all the work and not getting paid for it. I don't want to know upfront that it's not going to work or, Hey, how do we scope this in a way that can work with your budget, but I'm very happy with me saying, you know what, honestly, I don't think it's the right fit.

[00:31:44] Aaron Baer: I've got a recommendation for you, someone else who might fit with you or, Hey, come back at this stage or how do we scope this here? But what I don't want to do is just take on anybody and you got to believe you're worth working with that. You have value to offer. I believe clients are lucky to work with me and I don't mean that in an ego way.

[00:32:02] Aaron Baer: But that was a big mindset shift from like, I should be so lucky to work with them, which means they have all the power I'm bending over backwards to do whatever they want and don't get me wrong. When clients need stuff and need it done quickly, we get it done. But I also know how to set boundaries, right?

[00:32:19] Aaron Baer: If a client is asking for the moon and it's unfair and unreasonable, they're not getting. Or they'll get it once, but they're not getting it like on a regular basis, other than when there's exceptions. So respecting yourself but mindset is this big thing comfortable following up lawyers are like the worst at following up.

[00:32:36] Aaron Baer: They, have a call with somebody. It goes, well, the person's supposed to follow up or they leave it ambiguous. It's like," yeah, let's grab lunch soon". When you say that to a friend, it never happens in most countries, a couple countries that happens. Like they don't know how to set a time and date and all these things.

[00:32:51] Aaron Baer: And then they don't follow up. They're like, oh, if the person wanted to work with me, they would've followed up. And it's like, holy crap. The power of the follow up where we're so worried about burdening people. And I was always so worried about like, am I being a burden? No, people are busy, and they forget.

[00:33:07] Aaron Baer: And I cannot tell you the number of times, both for my side ventures or for clients of my firm were like that follow up or couple follow ups made all the difference. So I really would say the average lawyer has no foundation of good sales skills, not good at talking to potential clients, converting them in the funnel. What is a funnel exactly?

[00:33:26] Aaron Baer: To, to becoming an actual client, managing the actual client relationship, as things come up, having conversations about cost, things like that. And then figuring out like, I go to a conference, I go to an event, like, how do I handle these people? I met, like, what is the process for that?

[00:33:41] Aaron Baer: And pretty much every lawyer we talk to. Is just making things up and they're not working. They don't even track these things. They're not taking notes. Every single conversation I've had with every person I've talked to in the last two years, I have notes on. So when I hop on the next call and I say, oh, like, how's your mom doing?

[00:33:58] Aaron Baer: Because last time we talked, there was an issue. They're like, oh, wow. Oh, like you remembered. I'm like, yeah, of course I remembered I wrote it down. I don't say that to them. But like, that's what you do in sales. You have notes, you have institutional knowledge. There are no best practices at most law firms.

[00:34:13] Aaron Baer: For most lawyers, they're just making this up. So part mindset, part, best practices, combining them together. And you're you just have an unfair advantage because this profession is, the bar is so low. We can't even call it sales. 

[00:34:24] Lara Quie: This is so true. You're saying exactly the things that I definitely experienced in the legal industry as well, and also what caused me to move from being a lawyer into business development and marketing myself, because I felt that it's an area that people really do need help with.

[00:34:45] Lara Quie: And. As you say it's something that doesn't come naturally to lawyers. They feel really awkward about it. They get so anxious and uncomfortable when it comes to talking about money, about their self-worth, when it comes to asking for the business. And as you say, they just find it really hard to do the follow up.

[00:35:08] Lara Quie: You're talking about the funnel but there's this setting on HubSpot where you can literally set up this email thing where it follows up three days later, if they don't open the email. Honestly, the number of times when people replied to that email and they said, wow, thanks for following up.

[00:35:29] Lara Quie: And it's like, whoops, I just ticked a button on this, on this fantastic email thing. I didn't even have to follow up myself either, but it's that concept. Actually, you're not bothering people. You're doing them a favour because actually they had meant to reply to you, but because you've been the one to be proactive, they have then gone.

[00:35:52] Lara Quie: Wow. It's great to hear from you again. I'm so sorry. I was busy. I couldn't get back to you when you asked me this question. Yes, I'd love to go ahead. And then the client goes, what are the next steps? And that's when the lawyer is supposed to go, right? Well, this is how I work. These are the things you need to do.

[00:36:12] Lara Quie: This is how I will guide you and the client is in your hands and for you to set out exactly how things are going to work and to make it work for you. Cuz as you said, there are a lot of bad clients and there's nothing worse than wasting your time with a whole bunch of bad clients who give you. Very bad debt.

[00:36:33] Lara Quie: Always chasing them up, never paying their bills and it's excruciating to work with them because one thing I noticed about you and your enthusiasm for your clients is the fact that because you are choosing them as much as they're choosing you, the mindset is different. This is about, what are your problems?

[00:36:53] Lara Quie: What's your business? That's a very interesting business. I'm interested in your business. What are the commercial realities for this? How can I help you with that? And the insights and that shared journey, the learning journey, but the guidance. And it sounds like, you're such a natural teacher.

[00:37:09] Lara Quie: You taught with passion since you were a student yourself. So you're obviously someone who likes to be a mentor to these start-up entrepreneurs and I can imagine how valuable they must find feeling safe in your hands not only the law, but you've got experience of very similar type situations, because obviously now that you are a senior lawyer, You've got, you know, good track record and you've seen the patterns.

[00:37:35] Lara Quie: So, mostly it's not going to be something brand new this is something that you go, yeah, I've seen this before. This is what these guys did. This is the best way to do it. Let's do it this way. And so they feel safe and you're right, that's what clients are looking for. But tell me a little bit about your build your book podcast and why you felt the need to launch that. 

[00:37:55] Aaron Baer: So, uh, Dharwal, and I launched the, build your book podcast a little bit over a year ago, and this build your book is our sort of business development our training company.

[00:38:02] Aaron Baer: And so we launched the podcast partly out of interest. But partly I think we, we wanted to have these conversations. And so the first, I can't remember maybe five, six episodes, were just Dharwal and I talking about just things. One of the fascinating things, you know, I think why we work well together and why, what we're doing doesn't exist elsewhere is Dharwal is not from the legal industry.

[00:38:22] Aaron Baer: I am from the legal industry. And I spent a lot of time seeing business development done and then doing my own stuff. And I'm doing it, live in real life now. Right? Like everything I'm doing, whether it's 4L academy, which is my substantive training company, we're focused on corporate law.

[00:38:35] Aaron Baer: So M&A contracts, things like that. Myself and all our other instructors, we're practicing lawyers. So we're living and breathing this and training people at the same time. And that's unique, right? A lot of the time it's like you choose one those who can't do teach. We're like no, those who can do and who are also good teachers and mentors, you get to teach.

[00:38:54] Aaron Baer: And so with build your book and the podcast. So Dharwal, as I said, was coming from this tech sales background. And so bringing a different lens. And so he was learning the legal industry as I was learning sales. And we were having all these interesting insights because he'd be like, well, like I don't want to bore you what about this? And this I'm like, no lawyers don't do any of these things. I don't think you, like, I remember saying to him, I don't think you understand, there are no best practices in this profession. People don't know the basics. And like he would continue to be astonished. I'm like, I'm telling you, these are novel concepts for lawyers.

[00:39:26] Aaron Baer: And so we had all these interesting conversations for ourselves. Then we started bringing on different people, different guests. So we talked to a number of in-house counsel, I think private practice lawyers, lawyers, working firms do not spend enough time understanding their clients or potential clients in house because most in-house lawyers are not happy with private practice lawyers.

[00:39:46] Aaron Baer: And if you just ask and listen, you will learn so much about what they're really looking for. Therefore, how to get their work or how to keep that work. Right. And a lot of the time in house counsel, there'd be like, I knew this before the podcast, but it was good to hear. They're like, I wish lawyers would take more time to learn our business.

[00:40:02] Aaron Baer: Call us, let's chat for an hour. Or I want you to understand my business so you can do better work. And they're like almost no lawyers do that. Like my current firms aren't doing it. I would love a firm. Who's like, Hey, I want to take three hours to learn your business. I go give them my.

[00:40:17] Aaron Baer: Why aren't people doing this? They're giving away what they want and lawyers aren't doing it. So we got those kinds of audiences. We had lots of people in private practice doing things very differently or who had very different perspectives. And those were great to hear. We heard from people, we had guests in other industries, because again like business development and sales is not a law thing.

[00:40:38] Aaron Baer: It's a cross industry thing. One of the things I've really grasped in the last three, four years is if you get good at sales or business development, firstly, you can make a lot of money. Secondly, that's not lawyers' main goal with business development. It's actually control. We've done a lot of surveys.

[00:40:53] Aaron Baer: They want control over their days. Cuz as a lawyer in private practice, you generally don't have much control. You got the firm, you got the clients, you got all this stuff. If you have your own clients, you can leave your firm. You can start your own firm. You can join another firm. People want you. You get to choose who you work with, what you work on and where you work.

[00:41:15] Aaron Baer: You are not at the mercy of anyone else, at least in theory. And that's pretty cool. Like that is the bigger driver for people. But obviously, we brought on guests from other industries because the same things apply. Like, yes, you got to do things a little differently in law because its profession's a bit different, but by and large, those best practices, the things they did, they work.

[00:41:36] Aaron Baer: And so we did the podcast for about a year. It went great. We sort of put it on hiatus for now.. But I'd highly encourage anyone to listen to it, build your book podcast, all about business development and sales, just for lawyers and really great conversations. We had a lot of fun doing it and people loved it.

[00:41:52] Aaron Baer: We got so many kind words and really great feedback. Cuz there wasn't stuff like that out there doing what we were doing. 

[00:41:58] Lara Quie: That's right. And I was a big fan of build your book podcast, which is why I reached out to you because you're right. it is a difficult area for most lawyers and law firms really awful at providing decent training on this.

[00:42:13] Lara Quie: And so I think that those lawyers who take the time and make the effort to listen to podcasts, like build your book really can learn so much. And you mentioned as well, autonomy. That is the number one driver and the number one most important thing to most lawyers. In terms of, their mindset and the way they are as people.

[00:42:36] Lara Quie: And that is why being in a very controlled situation in a law firm is so soul destroying, if you are that kind of highly independent person, but you're constantly a slave to other people. Over time, it breaks your spirit. And I think that's what happens when young lawyers start to realize that this is a long term thing that even as a partner, you are constantly being told, these are your targets.

[00:43:04] Lara Quie: You're not hitting your goals, bring in more business, where are the hours, and there's just always stress like that, even though you're supposed to be a partner and an actual owner of the firm. They don't actually become true business owners and they don't get the entrepreneurial benefits that you do as a true entrepreneur.

[00:43:28] Lara Quie: And I think that's one of the main things. And until you have your own firm, and so, a really small boutique where you can work with other people that you see eye to eye with, and then you create your own culture and you have that feeling of autonomy only then is law a truly satisfying career.

[00:43:48] Lara Quie: But it is what you make it. I know you spoke to Norman Bacall. He's very keen on the whole concept of, taking control, take charge is his book. Genuinely it's hard to be a lawyer. And when you've got a whole firm full of people like that with alpha personalities, all thinking that they're amazing, it's a very difficult place to work. I know that we are going to round off in a second Aaron, but I do have another question.

[00:44:18] Lara Quie: You've been on such an interesting entrepreneurial journey and it sounds to me like you must have more than 24 hours in the day because of all the stuff that you do. I don't even know how you do your client work, but juggling all of these other things, but what is your actual long term vision?

[00:44:38] Lara Quie: I mean, are you genuinely going to be remaining in a law firm or are you part of a movement? Do you see your role as fundamentally changing the legal landscape in Canada? 

[00:44:53] Aaron Baer: It's a good question. I don't know the answer yet. Yeah, it's very clear. I'm doing a lot of things.

[00:44:58] Aaron Baer: So the current day job is being a lawyer doing work. I mentor and train younger lawyers. I run our training. I have a lot of clients. I am managing those. I also co-manage our firm so involved in a lot of stuff from about 12 or so lawyers. I'm stepping down from some of that stuff just because the time is too much.

[00:45:13] Aaron Baer: And then on the side two ventures, one is 4LAcademy that's this training business where we're doing substantive, corporate training right now in Canada, working with some of the biggest firms and obviously some smaller mid-size firms and expanding to the US in 2023. We've got "Build Your Book" where we're doing the sales stuff.

[00:45:28] Aaron Baer: We've got a really cool event coming up in November that we will see by the time this air is, if we've publicized it yet, but it's going to be free. And we've got business development and mental health and so much more open to anyone in the world. So, we can chat more about where to learn more about that, but there's a lot going on and something I've thought about is okay, like how do I make this more sustainable?

[00:45:45] Aaron Baer: And. I would say over, since March 2020 start of the pandemic, certainly been working a lot. But I was in Toronto. We were one of the most lockdown places in the world, depending where you live, you may have been slightly more lockdown, but you know, there was not much to do and I get bored easily.

[00:46:01] Aaron Baer: And so, underestimated the time some of these things were going to take as well, but glad I did this, it's kept me going throughout, you know what, otherwise I think for a lot of people. Was a challenging time. I've never been more social in some ways without leaving my house. So the number of people I've met, like, we're doing all these classes, we're changing people's lives through some of our training, all virtually has been really rewarding.

[00:46:23] Aaron Baer: And so I think you sort of alluded to this, like, this lack of satisfaction or fulfilment for a lot of lawyers. And I certainly felt that earlier in my career until I sort of took charge. Did my own stuff and really left where I was at. Cause it wasn't working for me, but the stuff I'm passionate about, I love teaching people like it's great.

[00:46:38] Aaron Baer: It brings me joy. I love building classes. So like, last weekend I was building this contracts course and there's nothing like this. I don't think in the world's going to be incredible. And like I was having a great time. It was a Saturday and I was building this course. Like, oh, man, this is awesome.

[00:46:55] Aaron Baer: I'm so excited. We're test driving it starting next week at our firm for a period of time. I'm like, I can't wait to see how this goes. I think this is going to be awesome. I've got all these ideas they're coming together. So that for me is fun. Maybe not for the average person, but for me, like, I enjoy that.

[00:47:08] Aaron Baer: I like working with clients. Like I like what I do, obviously when you put it all together, it's a lot. So for me, part of my goal right now is also how do I grow our firm. So, we are the top web three crypto digital asset firm in Canada. We're working with almost every top client in that space. I do a lot of work with normal tech companies and other companies, things like that, but I don't want to work indefinite there aren't indefinite hours in a day.

[00:47:31] Aaron Baer: I need to work less. So how do I. Get other people helping me more with my clients, without the clients losing what I bring to the table. And so that means really thinking about hiring. That means really thinking about training and that means systematizing so much of what we do so that I can be comfortable.

[00:47:48] Aaron Baer: Yep. I can be hands off here, but the client's not losing out on this sort of stuff. And so. Everything ends up tying together the training I'm doing for our juniors, or I work with them on files that becomes a foundation of future 4LAcademy classes, because I'm like, oh, huh, right. This is a good learning here.

[00:48:05] Aaron Baer: The work I'm doing with potential clients are at our firm building out our sales strategy. Guess what? That's playbooks for our consulting for other firms with build your book or the courses we're running, everything sort of fits together. I've gotten clients out of 4LAcademy. People I've met out of other things.

[00:48:20] Aaron Baer: So Where does it end up? Obviously, it's elevating myself up. So as we grow up 4LAcademy, for example, we spent a lot of time earlier this year, training new instructors. Cause we teach in a very different way. We are so engaging and so practical. We use a lot of software and different things that people running legal training do not use.

[00:48:39] Aaron Baer: Which means we had to train people on this. We had to run mock classes. We spent five months training them which was a huge investment of time. It's much easier for me just to teach every class, but that's not scalable. So really what I'm trying to do and spent a lot of time reading about this is build good systems, build good training.

[00:48:59] Aaron Baer: So that we can scale these businesses and have the impact I want to have on the profession in a way where not everything has to be me. And so I think my overall vision is to help drive this profession, not just in Canada, but elsewhere into a better place where clients get better treatment, but more importantly, where lawyers are happier, they feel better.

[00:49:19] Aaron Baer: They're just feeling fulfilled. And I think there's a lot of people in this profession, focus on helping lawyers leave private practice, and I don't blame them for that. I would say part of my goal is for people to be happy for however along they're in private practice or in-house or whatever, and really for lawyers not to have all these terrible mental health things, we know depression, suicide, alcoholism, you name it are all elevated.

[00:49:40] Aaron Baer: We know it starts in law school. There's lots of evidence for that. So how do we try to solve some of these issues? In my mind, we can't get there through everything, but training is one thing and then having conversations. So a lot of the stuff I do on LinkedIn, a lot of the stuff I do when I speak is talking about topics that no one is talking about, but everyone is thinking about and being like, let's call this out and let's help people realize they're not alone.

[00:50:02] Aaron Baer: And let's slowly, because it's not going to happen overnight. Try to shift some of this culture because there's a lot of toxic stuff going on. It doesn't have to be this way. I know the effect it had on me, but I've talked to a lot of people and it's having similar effects on them and that's not fair and not good. And it doesn't have to be that way.

[00:50:18] Aaron Baer: So that's, I think the overall vision, how we get there, we shall see but that's what I'm hoping to accomplish. 

[00:50:23] Lara Quie: Well, it sounds like a big audacious goal, and I'm sure with your passion and energy, you definitely are well on the path to achieving all that. And I look forward to seeing you take over the world And do all of that. It just sounds amazing. So Aaron, let's just end on where people can contact you if they want to reach out. 

[00:50:48] Aaron Baer: Couple different places. So if you're looking to learn more about the different ventures, so for www.4Lacademy.ca I think .com also works for now just focused on Canada. Some US stuff launching in 2023. www.Buildyourbook.org.

[00:51:00] Aaron Baer: We in the past have been running a lot of these small group classes. We're going to be running this big event. As I mentioned in November, it's going to be free business development, mental health stuff, a lot of topics that no one is talking about and needs to. So stay tuned for that. You can join the mailing list there to get notified about that best place to find me is probably LinkedIn.

[00:51:16] Aaron Baer: So Aaron, a R O N bear B a E R. You'll see me posting fairly regularly. There's a newsletter on there where I do a bunch of long form stuff that you're welcome to sign up for. And then if you just follow me, you'll see. Or I think there's a bell thing too. Now you can click or something to make sure you see the post.

[00:51:31] Aaron Baer: I tend to post a lot on there about training, about the legal profession, about just general musings, about things that I think again, seem to be resonating with lawyers. And yet nobody else traditionally is talking about, which tells me, again, there's a lot of work to be done here and change is slow and steady, but LinkedIn is definitely the right place to see a lot of that stuff. 

[00:51:50] Lara Quie: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Aaron, and I really appreciate it. 

[00:51:55] Aaron Baer: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:51:57] Lara Quie: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Legal Genie Podcast. Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts. It helps other people in the legal industry find the show. And don't forget to share this with anyone you think would benefit from listening to it as well. Until next time, have a magical week ahead.