The Sterling Family Law Show

No Law Firm Differentiation Strategy? You're Just Another Option - #186

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Law firm differentiation strategy is everything. Look like every other divorce attorney? You're just another option to them.


Matt built a 15-person firm by going beyond legal work. While most firms compete on price or SEO rankings, he added a divorce coach to help clients transition, not just get paperwork. That's real differentiation that clients actually feel.


He also figured out how to scale a family law practice without drowning in overhead. Cloud systems. Contract paralegals working 15-25 hours based on caseload. No massive salary commitments until the revenue justified it.


The result? A family law firm branding strategy that nobody in Minneapolis can copy.


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📄 CHAPTERS


0:00 - Law Firm Differentiation Strategy: Why "Good Legal Work" Isn't Enough 

1:22 - Meet Matt Ludt: From Solo Practice to 15-Person Family Law Firm 

2:03 - The Niche Decision: Why He Dropped Everything But Family Law 

5:34 - Cloud Technology and Scaling Without Full-Time Hires 

13:16 - Credibility Plus Visibility Equals Profitability 

15:40 - The Recognition: Clients Need More Than a Divorce Decree 

17:37 - Adding a Divorce Coach: The Differentiation Move Nobody Expected 

19:41 - Stealing Ideas From TV Shows to Build Your Law Firm Brand


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Matt has built two successful law firms. His current law firm is fully focused on family law, and he goes beyond just the transaction of a divorce and really helps his clients move past this moment in time by hiring specialists to allow them to move forward post the divorce. He is a special entrepreneur and I really hope you enjoy the episode today. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, the podcast designed to help law firm owners build the firm of their dreams. I am your host Tyler Dolph, I am also the CEO of our hyper focused marketing agency that works exclusively with family law firms across the country, and it was born out of our own law firm that we've been building for the last ten years. That has grown to over 27 attorneys today we continue our owner operator series, and we interview Matt, who is the owner of Atticus, law firm in Minneapolis. He has a great family focused firm that does not only divorce work, but helps his clients move forward after that transaction happens. I really hope you enjoy the episode today. Matt, thank you so much for being with us today. I am so excited to hear about you and your firm. Would you do me a kindness and just introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about your firm today? Sure. My name is Matt Ludt. I'm the founder of Atticus Family Law, serving, divorce and other family law needs across the Twin Cities Metro area, being Minneapolis, Saint Paul and then the surrounding suburbs. We've got 15 people in our firm, four attorneys and actively, building and growing. That's awesome. What were you doing before Atticus? I had a different, firm that I had started and run. It was a general practice. Doing a little bit of everything. And then in 2013, I decided to niche down into just doing family law, and now even more so, more than half of our work is really just divorce. And was there a reason, like. Was there a moment in time where you said, I'm sick of trying to do everything for everyone? I need to focus or what? What happened there? Well, it was a period of transition with some staff leaving and an opportunity to sort of redesign some things. And then in doing so, I had picked up on a lot of the virtues of niching into particular areas. And the more that you could be, concentrated into one area, the greater expertise that you can have there. And just some of the advantages that come with not having to do a bunch of disparate practice areas. We made the exact same pivot ourselves at our firm. And never looked back. So that's fun to hear. A similar story there as you were niching down. For us. We had we got rid of 50% of the cases we had. We let some of our, you know, attorneys go that weren't practicing family. It was that transitionary period difficult for you? Could you tell us a little bit about how you were able to do that? I hadn't been a very big general practice. So then when this my main associate, who was full time, had the opportunity to get her dream job outside of the practice, private practice, and then the other guy was a part timer that also went into the public sector. It was really just all of a sudden, I was down to myself, and I realized that that was the good opportunity to do that. Also, like, by 2013, two things had happened. One. All of the law students that had gone through the Great Recession and couldn't find jobs were really capable of making their own websites and projecting experience. For instance, like the ones that went into criminal defense were doing DUIs for $500. And sometimes that, those potential clients can't really differentiate as to why they should be spending $3,500 on a DUI instead of 500. And so that competition came in. Plus phone books went out by that point. And I with no income when it came to criminal defense. We've gotten a lot of clients from that. And so all of a sudden, just the information age changed, which made it easier to, start scrapping some of those other practice areas that we didn't that had either a troublesome future or just we didn't do a lot of. And That's great. So you've decided to practice solium family law. You're by yourself. Talk to us about some of those early days. Like what? What did you learn about focusing your firm hiring for that focus building process around it? Give us some Having started one firm already ten years prior. There were certain insights and advantages I had, but ultimately, the biggest advantage I came across at that time was being online ready. Meaning we are storing, you know, I had previously had servers that hosted all of our data that then we could access some remotely as needed. But by that time we were into the cloud in 2013 and I was able to start identifying really qualified paralegals that could work part time for me, along with whatever other client, firms they were contracting with. But then being able to pull everything off the cloud, put it back in the cloud, started identifying, case management that allowed for some communications that we weren't relying on email or text. And so then I was able to add staffing as I needed without committing to a full time person and having to worry about having all the, the revenue necessary to keep up with that salary. But instead it was just much more of a as I give them work, they did the work and sometimes it's 15 hours a week, sometimes it's 25. But that was a nice proportional way to start growing the firm, you know, from 13 to 14 and then probably into 15. The the nature of being able to do the repetitive work, the same work over and over again allows you to create a lot of focus and a lot of repetitive process so that your team isn't, you know, context switching all day long. They're able to do the same thing over and over again, which creates a lot of efficiencies and profitability. And so as you were growing and adding attorneys, how did you have to change as a leader to be able to support that? Additional staff know that you couldn't do it all yourself anymore, and you got to let go a little bit right? Right. And there's a lot of advantages of delegating downward, getting rid of the stuff that way below your pay grade, especially as a firm owner. You're like as, Michael Gerber talks about that, like, as soon as you go into working for yourself, you're both the business owner and the technician. So you're wearing two hats that really demand, like, full time attention. And so then it's like, as much as you can delegate stuff off your plate as a technician and not be doing the filings and the drafting and the first drafts, and you can give the stuff to a paralegal or legal system. The more you're able to focus on that law firm development stuff that is so easily relegated and pushed off. And I'll get to that, next week or after the holidays or, you know, when summer lets out and, you know, the kids go back to school, like all those sort of promises you make yourself that, really hinder your firm's development. 100%. Were there any key hires kind of in those early days that have stayed with you that you really are like, oh man, I'm so happy. I found this person. And they added a bunch of value to my Yeah. I can think, of a particular example. There was, by the summer of 18, I needed another full time paralegal. Plus, we wanted to bring in a legal secretary to do some stuff. And so I found this paralegal, that we hired that was, And but then we also hired this, legal secretary, and she was actually, had scrapped her old job, and gone to paralegal school and was halfway through paralegal school when we hired her as the legal secretary. Thinking a little bit about the future relative to when she got done. Well, within 90 days, we quickly realized the paralegal was not very good. So I pulled the legal secretary aside who had started a really impressed me, and I was like, how would you like to take on some paralegal duties? And the next day we let the paralegal go, promoted the legal secretary to our new paralegal, even those who are still in paralegal school and, and that was one of the easiest decisions we ever made. And then that paralegal still with me seven years later, and she is just a rock star. incredible. And is she doing more than paralegal work today? She'll be manage the firm. How's her evolution changed? Yes, she's highly capable, and she's in a position where, kind of even with high caseloads, working with the attorneys that she does, she can offer this opportunity to be kind of a junior case manager, a primary point of contact for clients so that they don't have to worry about being frustrated with their attorneys being in mediations or meetings or court. Yeah. Matt, as you know, you're in kind of unique situation from the other law firm owners we've talked to. And the fact that you've started two law firms. For our listeners who are thinking about either leaving their own, you know, or leaving a large law firm, or they just graduated law school and starting their own firm. What are some like key lessons or experiences that you could share that could help them? You know, take a shortcut. Yeah. So when I started working in like, 2013 and niching in, I identified a lawyer, coach, and the one I happened to find was based in the Twin Cities, even though he was working with attorneys. Nationwide. But it was, like, damn affordable, and I it was like $1,200 a year or something for quarterly meetings. And it was just some really great insight that was like customize going above and beyond any conferences I've been going to or webinars, but it was really tailored to who I was and what I was trying to do with the firm. And so one of my biggest regrets was like, not having started with that back in 2003, when I started my first firm. And just the advantage of coming in and having a really good consultant and, you know, I ended up working with him for like five years before I kind of outgrew them. And then I've consistently worked with some other sort of consultant since then, to make sure that I've got my head screwed on straight. And we're doing smart things for firm growth. That is, that is overwhelmingly the number one answer I get when I ask that question is don't be afraid to ask for help. Find someone who's been there, done that, or a mentor or a coach that can help keep you moving in the right direction. I'm particularly interested in the early days when you had just signed up with, what were some of the things that they were talking about? Was it like, here's how you be an entrepreneur and run a business that happens to be a law firm, or is it more on the attorney side? No, it's mostly on the business side of the firm. Just a discipline around, like. All right. What's been your revenue this last quarter? Because as junior law firm owners, you're not disciplined enough to really be minding all of your finances in a business acumen way. Yeah. You worried about it relative to your own income. But just in regards to looking at it, the way in which business leaders do with a level of sort of detachment, but then also, you know, potential clients, your, your billing, what's your staffing at? So it's really like defining those metrics and being able to track them. yeah. But then also a little bit of like, what are you doing for all of your marketing? In my early days, I picked up a simple formula that served me so very well, which is simply credibility. And visibility equals profitability. And when you design so much like you analyze what your the chance would you have a chance to do? Really organizes and prioritizes, you know, like first time law firm owners, you know, they're always so anxious to set up that damn Facebook profile. And yeah, that's going to give you a little bit of visibility and maybe convey some of your credibility. But it's not that big, you know, compared to all the other things you could be spending your time doing, such as reaching out to all of your high school, college, law school contacts, other colleagues, former coworkers, and really getting, you know, front and center with them and introducing them to the fact that you've got your own practice now. Do you want to grow your law firm, but you can't predict next month's revenue. Do you hire an attorney without knowing if you can actually afford it? I hear you. We have a planning system that forces us to focus. It's built on these three key principles. We are teaching this entire framework in a free 45 minute webinar called the 2026 Annual Planning Live. Let's make next year the one that actually changes everything. Yeah, it's still, the people to people connection is still the strongest one. What an interesting fact that we realized as we were building our firm and then building the agency was that, you know, almost 50% of all family law firm leads come from the maps come from a spouse realizing they're getting a divorce and they search, you know, divorce attorney near me or, family law attorney near me. And, and firm owners kind of have to embrace that fact. I think there's so many firms that rely 100% on referrals, right? Just their name and reputation, which is great. Not knocking it. But there's there's a lot of leads out there. And if you can build a system to, to intake them, you can grow a firm pretty fast. Yeah. The new will have your marketing diversified, you know, so you're not drawing too much upon one source. Yeah. So, Matt, as you think about the future of your firm, where are you going? Tell us. Tell us about what you're working on and what you're hoping to achieve over the next few years. So we've gone in, well, a couple of years ago, I came to the recognition that our clients need more than just a great divorce decree. That's important. That's, you know, having a little private rulebook that serves just between you and your ex as to how to govern your finances, your kids, cash flow, all the things that still allow your lives to be co-mingled, that's essential. But ultimately, people are going through a divorce transition towards, trying to make a, you know, their next best life. What? They had a married life. Maybe it was great, but now it's going to be not married life. So they want that to be great. And with that, then, to really be successful in that divorce transition, they need mindset management and then the right information and, and introductions, you know, if they weren't managing their finances before, maybe they need an introduction to great financial planner, tax accountants, real estate people, some of these sort of core people. But with that perspective in mind, we've shaped our brand around the fact that we're really just interested in helping you get to that great transition. So that because we've all seen in family law, there are people that years after their divorce, they're still languishing, they're still suffering, they're living in the past. And it's really hard to let that go. We want our clients to make that mental transition and have those resources to be thriving within months after their divorce. If not, you know, a year they got the new home. They're happy, they're reaching out, they're getting promotions at work, all these things. So we've added a divorce coach on staff. We've got, a bunch of resources, and we're really mindful around introducing people to the the other professionals they need. And that's our brand. And as we're trying to grow and develop, it's really just a matter of getting that out there. And understanding that for the legal fees you're paying, which are not insignificant, we want to make sure that people have that ability to, transition fully as opposed to just end up with a great divorce decree. I love I love that differentiation strategy. I like, like you mentioned, there's so much more to to, to a divorce than simply getting the paper signed. Right. It is. It is. How do you transition your lifestyle? And being able to communicate that, I think, is going to give a lot of comfort to, to your clients. So I commend you for thinking through that entire process and what encourage all of our listeners to do the same. Right. Even if you're building a factory because you're focused on rinse and repeat, you know, work, that doesn't mean that you can't also include the human side of how are these people actually going to feel after this transaction takes place, and how can I help add value to that? Yeah. It's, you know, on the matter of mindset management with our divorce coach that we put on staff, that there's contractors out there I know that do this stuff for law firms. One of the things that's great about it is, you know, they're working with the coach, they're neutralizing the buttons that their soon to be ex spouses traditionally pushed. But as a result of that, they always work with the coach in advance of any mediation sessions we do or other ADR. So that then they can make really good decisions. They can look at things objectively. They're not, so emotionally distraught or tense and anxious and those things. And so they're making better decisions in their divorce settlements. Plus then they take those skills on to their, future life. That's so great. That's a really, really unique perspective. That I think more law firms can adopt. Yeah. I, I'm a big fan of looking at other industries. You know, frankly, I was influenced by a couple television shows over the last couple decades. Back at the turn of the century, there was a show called Nip Tuck with plastic surgeons that had a psychiatrist on staff to make sure that their patients weren't, you know, so something that they were pursuing plastic surgery. And that was kind of interesting. And then years later, I saw billions where they had the performance psychologist on staff to really make sure that their staff members were in the right headspace for all the work they were doing. And it was just sort of like, well, our clients are so bereft with so many of these emotions around the demise of their marriage, fear for what's going to happen with the kids. I'm going to keep the house, so I have to divide the retirement that was they really need to be like, I'm kind of, you know, I was going on almost 20 years of pseudo coaching clients without any training, as so many family law attorneys do. And and I was like, no, these people really need a professional to help them with this. And being able to integrate that into your process and communicated in your marketing and have that be part of the ethos of your firm, is special. I love it, Matt. I am so appreciative of your time, your insights. I love your differentiation strategy. Wishing you all the best and look forward to having you back on the show soon. Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it.

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Jeff Hughes

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