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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Audio Book) – Chapter 5: Banned by the Local Bar
This is Chapter 5 of the free audio edition of Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Second Edition)—only on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast.
In this episode, Ben Glass tells the story of how one local bar president tried to shut down his presentation to young lawyers, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to speak. Why? Because Ben believes lawyers should learn marketing. And some traditionalists can’t handle that.
You’ll hear:
- What happened behind the scenes of Ben’s “almost-canceled” talk
- Why most bar associations don’t support the real needs of solo and small firm lawyers
- A no-holds-barred rebuttal to bar leaders who fear LegalZoom, Avo, and online legal tech
- What we can learn from LegalZoom and Amazon—if we’re willing to drop our ego
- And Ben’s renegade plan to fix lawyer wellness (hint: it’s not more CLE)
This one’s part rant, part call to arms—and all truth.
📘 Get the book + bonuses at RenegadeLawyerMarketing.com
🎟️ Join us live this October at GLMSummit.com
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, and this is Chapter 5 of the audio version of Renegade Lawyer Marketing. If you've just stumbled on to this chapter, go back and find the first episode that explains what we're doing here. If you haven't yet signed up for this year's Great Legal Marketing Summit, go to glmsummitcom. Okay, chapter five was named Banned by the Local Bar.
Speaker 1:Ben, we're very concerned about having you speak to young lawyers. That was the gist of a call I got after I'd been asked to speak about marketing to the young lawyers of one of the Northern Virginia bar groups. I had readily agreed to make the presentation and several weeks before the event, I had sent the materials that I planned to use. The event was to be a two-hour seminar, with the first hour devoted to the ethics of marketing and the second devoted to a more or less open forum panel, with me and two other attorneys leading the discussion. Open forum panel, with me and two other attorneys leading the discussion. I like these speaking opportunities for several reasons, but mostly because young lawyers are more entrepreneurial today than their counterparts were a decade ago and they're open to new thinking. This guy was not a new thinker, but less than 24 hours before the scheduled event I got the Ben we're very concerned telephone call from the president of the local bar association. He called at 5.30, caught me in the office this was a number of years ago and told me he had just found out I was speaking to the young lawyers the next afternoon he said I think some of your marketing materials are really not in line with our mission statement. President, I can't sit by and have you tell a room full of young lawyers that joining our voluntary bar and signing up for committees is not going to help them become good lawyers, even though that's what you believe. We're a voluntary bar association and we would die if no one volunteered.
Speaker 1:Now a little backstory. That's not in the book. This guy and I learned this from some of his ex-employees who came to me after they were no longer employed by his firm and told me that he just hated my advertising. I suspect I can't prove but I suspect that he turned in some of my print ads to the state bar because I would get these letters from the state bar saying look at this ad, your font is too big or your font is too little or the color is too bright. You know bullshit like this which we would fix because that's what we do in Virginia. So I suspect he was behind some of this. He didn't like me and my stuff. Back to the book, brother.
Speaker 1:That's what you'll find yourself up against when you step off the traditional ladder. The elites won't like what you have to say. Off the traditional ladder, the elites won't like what you have to say. Mind you, this is a guy who had not read any of my books, attended any great legal marketing event or even shown up on a webinar ever. If you're a young lawyer, know that he misquoted my position on joining committees. That's what happens when you say things based on what you've heard other people say but you've never actually read any of the material. Right? I never said that signing up for committees won't help lawyers become better lawyers. My position is that if given a couple hours to spend away from the office, you're going to be a lot better off hanging out with non-lawyer influences in your community business leaders usually than if you're volunteering for some law association committee. If building a business is your goal, I can give you a hundred things better to do than volunteer for a bar committee.
Speaker 1:It was a strange call, but this is how I handled it. First, I reminded him that he invited me or his organization invited me, not the other way around. I told him the event was less than 24 hours away and he'd have to scramble to find a replacement. I told him that I was his best advocate for young lawyers, actually, but since he had never heard me speak or read anything I'd written, he wouldn't know that. So the call landed. He did not disinvite me, though I certainly invited him to take that step. I was already thinking of the next great headline banned by the local bar. But they don't want young lawyers to know about marketing. Of course I did my thing, and then the very first question I get in the Q&A session was a guy raised his hand and said should I join voluntary committees in this association? I told him the truth. I then sent the video of that off to the president, but I never heard any response.
Speaker 1:Later he became president of the Virginia State Bar and during his time in office he wrote an editorial calling organizations like AVO a threat to the legal profession and calling for the Future Practice of Law Committee to come up with bold recommendations. I mean, this is all very traditional nonsense. No matter what you think about non-lawyer legal entities like the bar, creating rules to keep these groups out is the absolute wrong way to go about promoting lawyers. So I wrote a letter back to the publication that carried this editorial, and here's what it said. Typical Ben right.
Speaker 1:The only lawyers who should feel that the massive rise of do-it-yourself legal industry is a threat to the profession are those who feel entitled, just because they have a law license, to a consumer's purchase of legal services. It was estimated that the American online legal services market do-it-yourself legal services market in the United States generated more than $11 billion in revenue in 2021. Smart lawyers see these figures as evidence for, if not proof of, a huge opportunity for the established community. Lawyers who are unwilling to discover for themselves what DIY legal knows about attracting the interest, attention and money of consumers will find themselves in the same position that the horse whip makers were in when Henry Ford introduced the automobile and made it easy and affordable for the public to buy. Simply put, if we lawyers are not smart enough to convince consumers that we're the right choice, we don't deserve their business. Diy legal is filling a huge gap that we lawyers have allowed to widen by refusing to even be interested in and, at times, openly hostile to like this guy was the success strategies of great and enduring businesses.
Speaker 1:Over 8 million consumers a month and 100 million consumers a year go to Avvo, either get their questions answered or to find a lawyer. The massive legal services market is there for the taking. Who will take it? Here's a renegade pro tip. No one asked me, but here are my recommendations, and this was the next part of the letter. Number one don't spend another minute or bar dues dollars trying to figure out how to regulate Avvo, legalzoom and the like. It's a game of whack-a-mole and you can't afford to spend mandatory bar dues on the inevitable lawsuits that will follow. In every state this has ever happened Lawsuits. Moreover, bar efforts to deprive consumers of their choice as to how to buy legal services will be seen as monopolistic protectionism and will further diminish our standing in the community.
Speaker 1:Number two eliminate the prohibition of non-lawyers owning law firms. If law firms, particularly the small law firms that make up the bulk of law firms here in Virginia, are to survive, they need to be able to bring on as shareholders experts in business systems, marketing, sales technology, human resources, culture, leadership and finance. This is what DIY Legal has done, and it is mushroomed. Number three reverse course and approve for continuing legal education credit courses that primarily focus on marketing, client development and other business topics that apply to any business. Lawyers need to be encouraged to look outside our industry for ideas.
Speaker 1:This is not so. So Virginia is a mandatory continuing legal education state. We need to have 12 hours every year and the crazy part is it doesn't matter what the classes are. You can have zero relationship to your practice area. You just got to go, so it's just trophies. Go, collect your trophies and when you get enough trophies, then you get a badge. Your badge is your license for another year. So mandatory CLE is really dumb and I've said that over and over. But if you're going to have it, at least make business development a part of the curriculum that you can go and take, because business development is the best thing for lawyers who are struggling for good people who are struggling to make money. Build great practices so they can enjoy the practice of law, so they can keep helping people. It's so stupid. It is so stupid, let me repeat it is so stupid for the Virginia State Bar to say no, no, no, professional development ain't going to give credit for that. It is the answer to the lawyer wellness problem. Anyway, I digress, and that was a rant not included in the book, but a rant that you get for listening to this.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's my lesson to lawyers. Number one don't look to any bar organization to save the profession. This is your life. Take responsibility for it. You don't have to wait for reports from committees. The answers are all around you. God love committees. Number two educate yourself about what makes great businesses great. You should be studying Avvo, legalzoom, amazon, uber and any industry of business to which consumers give their attention and money, and you should be asking yourself how can I import that cool idea into my law practice?
Speaker 1:Number three the unique selling proposition of DIY legal is generally, some version of lawyers are a pain in the butt to deal with and they are expensive. We make it easy, right or wrong. This is what much of the public perceives. They wouldn't be trying to write a will online or they wouldn't be trying to handle their own property settlement agreement. Lawyers who have figured out how to deliver legal services coupled with Amazon-like customer service are thriving. This is what Ben Glass Law does. This is what we're really good at. Our level of customer service is second to none in our market area and we're proud of that. We train on it, we hire for it, we boast about it. Nobody can compete with us in terms of customer service. That's the thing that most lawyers need to fix.
Speaker 1:Number four if you think consumers are making the wrong choice when choosing DIY legal for their needs, then it's up to you to convince them otherwise. Most lawyers do a poor job of differentiating themselves in the marketplace. You prove that just by go looking at any lawyer website. You can't tell the difference from one to the next. Every so often the legal world lights up with a debate between those who say the practice of law is a profession and those who say it's a business. Usually, those advocating the profession side of the argument are really arguing against marketing and advertising. They represent the do good work and they will come crowd. At one time I was a member of that crowd when that was all you heard in law school. That's what you believe when no one argues for or employs you to treat what you do as a business first and foremost. Well, you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 1:Years ago, I was on the faculty of one of those professionalism courses here in Virginia that we mandate all new lawyers attend. As you can imagine, my one-hour talk was a little different from the rest. The official title of my talk was something like the Conflicting Roles of Lawyer as Advocate and Business Person. My talk should have been more aptly titled. You better figure out how to get a business or there will be no conflict to talk about. I covered everything from health and diet to, of all things, making money. My not so subliminal message was if you follow everything the folks on this stage are telling you today, you are going to be miserable and you're going to think that's the way it's supposed to be. I didn't last too long on that circuit.
Speaker 1:There's a reason I want you to become a good at marketing. It's because you're a hero. You help people and the world needs more of you. Truth is, folks who aren't good lawyers with integrity don't seem to hang around me and my organization for long. There are numerous potential clients out there for whom you would be the perfect lawyer, but if you're not pushing every day to make the path to you easy and obvious, they might find Mr Do good and they will come. Who is starving and willing to do anything to get his next fee and keep the lights on. We've seen this over and over again, and if your potential clients go to him, shame on you and the rest of the profession for letting that happen. Damn right, we're running a business first. Without a business, there's no profession to practice.
Speaker 1:Note as I was reviewing the second edition of the book, the headline news was centered around the growing legal desert here in large parts of rural Virginia. Turns out, there are way more consumers in need of legal services than there are lawyers. Thus my next letter to the Virginia Bar will be short. Dear friends of the Virginia Borough, you should have listened to me long ago. Respectfully, ben. All right, that's it for chapter five. Next chapter really cool, the stuff the marketing vultures say, part one, and so I'm going to introduce you to the concept of the marketing vultures and going to tell you probably what you already know is that they're lying to you All right until next time.
