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
Ep. 195 – Firing Your Whole Team (Twice) and Building Back Stronger: Behind the Scenes at the GLM Summit - Mastermind panel
In this raw and revealing episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben Glass shares audio from a live Great Legal Marketing Summit - Mastermind panel discussion where members open up about one of the most difficult parts of running a law firm: building (and rebuilding) your team.
You’ll hear directly from a GLM member who fired her entire staff—twice—to get the right people in the right seats. Another member shares how he's seen as “mean” inside the mastermind, but viewed as “mom” inside his firm—and what that reveals about leadership and perception.
💡 Highlights include:
- What to do when your current team isn’t cutting it
- The cost of hiring too quickly—and how to fix it
- Moving from reactive to intentional hiring
- Replacing your 10-year receptionist with an AI voice agent
- The power of mastermind communities for vendor accountability and implementation feedback
- Transparent conversations about failure, rebuilding, and growth
Ben also reminds listeners that GLM is the only conference organizer that offers free downloads of the notes and slides from their events—even if you weren’t in the room.
📎 Get the notes: GLMSummitNotes.com
🎟️ Join us in February for the Analog Marketing Bootcamp: GLMBootcamp.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.
Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, and still make it home for dinner. Each week, Ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the status quo. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_03:Not once, but twice. In this panel discussion, we went a little bit deeper into that relationship between law firm owner and his or her employees. We talk about uh one of our members talks about how he is perceived to be mean in the mastermind group, but actually he's perceived to be the mom in his law firm. Listen in, you're gonna find this interesting. By the way, if you do find it interesting, know that we are the only conference organizer that makes available for free its complete set of notes and slides from the event to anyone, even if you weren't at the event. So go on over to GLM SummitNotes.com. That's GLM Summitnotes.com, and you'll be able to download your free set of notes. And you may have heard Brian and I talking on social media about a cool boot camp we're doing here in the offices in February. It's called the Analog Marketing Bootcamp. We're gonna show how we built Ben Glass Law without using any paid advertising. We use a lot of direct mail. We're gonna have some great speakers at this one-day event. And you can go over to gillmbootcamp.com, gillmbootcamp.com to find out more about how you can come and learn directly from us and from our carefully handpicked speakers about how you can increase your cases, your clients, and yes, your revenue without spending a ton of money on any sort of advertising, but most especially digital advertising, which of course is what all of the marketing vultures want you to do. So that's GLMbootcamp.com. All right, now enjoy this episode.
SPEAKER_00:Since being a GLM member, I have fired all of my staff twice and started fresh because we really focused a lot on building the right teams and systems and having the right people in the right seats. And it became very clear through everything that I had been learning that they weren't the right people and they were all in the wrong seats. So we recreated different roles and found the right people and took some time hiring instead of hiring out of a need. We hired for the position. It certainly wasn't easy. So there were some setbacks to do that, but it was well worth it to have the functioning team that we have now for sure.
SPEAKER_03:Jason and Michelle. Jason, have you become nicer? No. Well not, okay.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no, no, not nicer at all. Four-day work week guy. Yeah, no, and actually, like it's funny that you know that's the perception because in the office, I'm mom and Patrick is dad. So people will actually come to me with problems, not necessarily because I'm nicer, but they know how I'm gonna respond more. Everybody's afraid of Patrick, believe it or not. But I would say that that, you know, one of the things that you uh uh you figure out pretty quickly when you're in a group like this, and you know, specifically this group, is uh the key to having a successful practice, one of the keys is instead of being reactionary, and and when we get new members of the group, they're dealing with a lot of reactionary issues, it's uh be intentional. And so, you know, intentionally uh hiring for certain roles and intentionally having the role be the thing, and you know, intentionally taking longer to hire instead of just reacting like, oh, I need to fill this seat. And like it we talked about at the meeting. An example is our 10-year receptionist just quit and she decided to move to Florida, which is fine. And so we intentionally didn't replace her, and we're intentionally moving to an AI voice agent as our new receptionist. Um, you know, just being really intentional as opposed to reactionary is a is a key component of, I think, where we get to in the journey.
SPEAKER_03:So, and what's cool about that is that the AI receptionist may or may not may or may not work, right? We don't know until we actually go and do it. Jason has taken action, and yesterday morning he reviewed with the group exactly how he's been working with the vendor to refine the AI agent before letting the AI agent loose on potential clients. And so that's part of the discussions that we have. And then, of course, you know, this will either be like a rock star success or a miserable failure or somewhere in the middle, but you will be able to ask Jason open and honest questions about his experience, both with the technology and with the particular vendor who is selling the technology. And, you know, there's a lot of sales made or not made because of discussions that go on in the in the group.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. And you get like brutally honest feedback about you know the vendors that you're thinking of using. And sometimes people listen and sometimes they don't, and sometimes it works out differently too. Like that's happened, right? You know, so but yeah, everybody, like Michelle said or uh or Carol one of you said it, but everybody's very generous. There's no secrets, and you know, it's like here's here it all is transparently and um including our failures. I mean, I think that's a big part of it.
SPEAKER_02:That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
