The Sterling Family Law Show

Tom’s Trek: The Simple Change That Boosts Law Firm Close Rate - #188

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Are you frustrated with your law firm close rate? Tom just signed 5 of 7 consults last month. One change is driving those numbers.


We're tracking Tom's real numbers monthly as he scales his Long Island solo practice. No theory here, just what's working and what isn't.


Most attorneys default to Zoom because it's convenient. But Tom's 71% close rate comes from doing the opposite—showing up in person.


📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@jsterlinghughes 

📝 Get your FREE Law Firm Growth Guide: https://jsterlinghughes.com/


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📄 CHAPTERS


0:00 - Law Firm Close Rate: Why Tom's Numbers Matter 

0:56 - September Revenue Breakdown: $19.8K as a Solo 

2:14 - The 71% Close Rate: 5 of 7 Consults Signed 

3:49 - Why In-Person Consultations Convert Better 

5:01 - Picking Your Second Office Location Strategically 

5:22 - Hiring Your First Associate: What She's Looking For 

8:03 - Quality of Life vs Salary: The Trade-Off That Works 

12:40 - AI and Legal Marketing: What's Actually Happening 

18:46 - How AI is Cutting Patent Fees in Half 

20:25 - Clients Showing Up With ChatGPT Documents


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SPEAKER_01:

One thing we find all the time is that people use uh incognito browsers way more on family law searches than they do for you know anything else because they don't want anyone knowing that they're looking for this stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello and welcome to the Sterling Family Law Show. We are back with attorney Tom Harton on Long Island. We've been following Tom for well over a year as he started his practice, and we just concluded September. We're sitting here in October of 2025, and we're talking about his numbers and results from last month, where he's at on hiring his first associate, and moving his office, his second location is not working out to his satisfaction. We're gonna be moving that, and he wants to move that to a better spot. So we're gonna talk that through, and then we're gonna conclude with AI and some of the interesting things that we're worried about, concerned about, opportunities with AI and family law practice.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, we are back with our friend Tom. Another month of your uh wonderful law firm going. Give us the high level. How was September? And uh, Jeff, I'll let you uh kick it off with a few more questions.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, hey Tyler. Hey Jeff, thanks for having me back. Uh September was uh pretty good month. Uh, you know, I'm shooting, I don't have like a hard number that I'm shooting for. Um like minimum 20, probably trying to, as far as as long as it's still me doing all the legal work, you know, trying to get somewhere between 20 and 25. Uh so this month's revenue was 19,000, about 19,800. So pretty much right there. Um, you know, love for that to be a little bit higher, but um comfortable with that month. Um it also was, you know, as you know, I still do some patent work as well. And it was a it was a busy month on that front. So there was, again, probably similar to the previous month where I had taken a vacation, uh, probably more work. I had more work that I actually did that. Sorry, I could have done more work than I actually did. Um, you know, not a ton, but I probably could have gotten up to that low to mid-20 range um if I had some more time. Um, but yeah, leads leads seemed pretty steady. Um I've seen a little bit of a dip since like I I think I hit a high point in my leads in like May or June, and seeing I don't know if I'd call it a dip, like a you know, tiny, like each month has gone down like a tiny little bit um in terms of like the call volume that I'm getting. Um but I had, you know, still had seven consults this month and and five of those turned into hires. So pretty good month in terms of bringing in new clients. Um, I think two of those cases will probably wind up being pretty good ones because I had uh like I I think, you know, I don't know if this is the same for you guys, but sometimes you just have a couple of those cases going at once that wind up being like most of your revenue. Maybe it's not for you because you're a fixed fee, but you know, where everything is just emergency, emergency, emergency, and and you look back in a couple months and you're like, whoa, I just did like 30 grand on one case in a couple months, which you know that's like equivalent of like five other cases, you know. Um so yeah, that I two two cases that I think will be bigger ones like that, and then three smaller ones. Again, you never know what could happen. Um a small one could turn into a big one and and vice versa, a big one could wrap up immediately. So that's just a prediction, of course. Um expenses again stayed the same. Um, so yeah, bottom line profit of of just under 13k.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a great month. I mean, the the close rate I was the most excited about, you know, have the seven yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

And I I think one of the other ones, I think it was in early September uh that I met with. She I think she's gonna sign. She just keeps having little, she's older and she keeps having little issues with getting here. We had an appointment last week, she had to cancel it, doctor's appointment. And I don't think she's lying. I think she's I I do think she'll sign. And that'll that's actually a good case too.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah. Yeah, I look at the last three months here. You've had 19 consults and 10 hires, so whatever you're doing in the consult room is working.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think I think being able to do them in person is nice. Um, and again, I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Are all of those 19 in person?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh largely, yeah. Maybe one or two of them wasn't, but I I pretty much unless the client asks, I I do them in person.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, definitely. You'll get a hire. Some people, some people.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um yeah. And that's something I'm trying to keep up as I as I look to expand, uh, which is why I'm having some issues that we're gonna talk a little bit about. I don't want to harp on it because I I feel like we keep talking about it. Um, but you know, my next office where it's the location and everything like that. Because I like I'd like to keep that up. The in-person consults.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So you pulled out 7,000 bucks in expenses, ending the month at about 13 grand in bottom line.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, my expenses again, they they stay about, they stay pretty much the same every month. It's Rocket Clicks, office expense, a couple of softwares which are just recurring.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, last month we talked about your second location, which has not been fruitful, and you're getting impatient about hanging on to it. Maybe we should switch to a different one is kind of what you're going through. So let's kind of unwrap that a little bit more. Where where's your head at around that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've I've pretty much made the decision to move that location. I kind of made that decision like a few months ago. Um, but I I definitely definitely am going ahead with it at this point. Um and you know, as I look to hire somebody, I am kind of have this conversation uh, you know, together. I'm looking to hire somebody, and I'm 99% sure I have someone that's ready to go. Um so and I am almost positive she's gonna join. Can't say too much on that topic yet, but yeah, we've we've had we've met a couple times, we've had a few discussions, but you know, we're in agreement on all the all major issues, you know, salaries and and everything like that. Um so I'm I'm really excited about it. She's she's very experienced. She's you know, she was referred to me by somebody who so she's you know she's well liked. I trust this person. So um yeah, I think I think it's it's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a huge next step.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is. So my problem where it comes in on the office front is she lives she lives very far east on Long Island. And the way Long Island works is the further east you go, the less populous it gets. There's still some very wealthy areas out there, right? Like you have the Hamptons, you have you know, Montauk and the North Fork. There's there's there's a lot of wealthy areas out there, but I I'm not I don't want to open an office like way out there where the the population density starts dropping off. Um so trying to find a location that is suitable for me in terms of like the you know, the income, you know, average like household income and population density and and everything like that, but that is suitable for her because I, as I said, I want to I want to keep up doing in in-person consultations and you know, we've gone back and forth a bunch on the location, and I've been like, you know, what about this? What about this? What about this town? And I could tell, like, you know, she even to like the furthest location I would go, the furthest out east I would go is still like a half an hour drive for her. Whereas some of the other ones are more like 45-50 minutes. So I understand where where she's like, you know, I'm okay with that as long as I'm not like expected to come in every day. And I my my thing is I I don't care how how often you come in, I'm not really gonna, I might go there once a week. Like I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna certainly be there every day, so I don't expect you to be there every day. But I also don't want it to get to a point where we're busy and things like in-person consults and and stuff like that start dropping off because I selected an office that's an hour away from her. So I have to take that into account too.

SPEAKER_02:

So how close will your second office be, your new second office be to her?

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I'm still trying to figure out. Uh I think I have like I have kind of three locations that I'm deciding between. Probably two of them are about 45 minutes from her, the other one is about 25 minutes.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, yeah. And she's supportive of the plan? Yeah, yeah, she is. She's coming.

SPEAKER_02:

What have been her main questions she's wanted to understand about joining your firm? I'm just curious as to what she's looking at.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, she so, you know, the firm she's coming from is a high salary but high burnout firm. They're they're known on the island. They're, you know, they are, if not the most well-known, probably one of the top three most well-known firms around here. They advertise. This is a firm that has like a hundred K a month advertising budget. You know, they're they're everywhere. Um again, I don't want to say the name of the firm, but they yeah, so she, you know, I guess concerns are you know what salary hit she she can expect to take. Um, and again, I I'll talk more about this in future episodes when everything's solidified, but she you know, understands that up front that the the salary that I can offer is not you know not anywhere close to what she, I don't want to say not anywhere close, but it's a good amount less than what she's making there, but she's gonna be you know working significantly less. She's like she's so burnt out, she cannot wait to get out of there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um so quality of life is a major factor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right. That's yeah, they're definitely by far the biggest factor. Um, and then, you know, I guess, you know, so concerns for her is you know, I'm gonna put her on, I'm gonna, you know, pay her to an extent based on like performance and and hours and and stuff like that. Um so obviously I have to guarantee some of that, but part of that is also gonna be me getting her busy enough that she can do that work so that I I can get her back to her old salary or or you know, close to it, reasonably close to it, considering that she, you know, we'll be working significantly less. And there's, you know, while we had a few discussions like um, so here what they call panel work. I don't know if if they have the same thing by you, but um, you know, where the state basically you can take work that the state pays you for in family court. Um, and it's it's really good for I think she really wants to do it because it you you still get paid like a decent amount. Um and it's you know it's a good way to get to know the judges. Um, you know, so you might represent like children, like be like an attorney for the child in cases like that. Um so you know, it it she said like you know, while she's making less and she's not overwhelmingly busy, yet would I be okay with her doing that? I said, absolutely, yeah. That's that's kind of a win-win. Um, you know, she'll get to know more of the judges and she'll get to make a little bit of of extra money that I'm not I don't have to pay her as long as it's not you know interfering with the work I'm giving her, I have no problem with it.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was gonna ask if you're gonna count that towards revenue to your firm, but it sounds like you're just gonna let her know this.

SPEAKER_00:

No, definitely not.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So have you talked about incentives above the base with her? Is that been something she's been curious about?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we've we've had a a little back and forth. Um I don't yeah, I I guess I won't talk about that too much yet because you know we haven't agreed on anything yet. And yeah, I don't want to give too much away, but I will I will have those answers. But um yeah, and it's obviously it will be like you know, a percentage of her, she'll get a base salary, you know, a percentage and a percentage of cases. And if you know if that goes over her base salary, she'd get paid that, and and that percentage is higher if she brings in the case. So kind of trying to encourage, especially in the beginning. Um, I know she loves networking and stuff like that. Um, so you know, if she can if she wants to spend some time while she's less busy and go out and get more cases and make more money on those, that's that's a win-win for both of us, also.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah. For some attorneys, even having a networking budget of a hundred a month or a couple hundred a month is a big, big deal. So maybe that might help her, you know. She might find them interesting. Well, good. Well, it's a developing story, so keep watching it for the next couple months.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_01:

Um it's a big step for you, Tom. You know, going for uh being able to multiply yourself and leverage someone else to get some of that work done is uh a step not a lot of attorneys take, honestly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and just I mean her her experience will be invaluable. Like certain certain things for me, still even you know, now that I've been doing it over a year, still probably take way longer than they should, just because I, you know, I have to triple check things to make sure I'm I'm doing them right. And um, you know, she's she's been practicing long enough that she's not worried about I'm not worried about her making mistakes like that. So I I won't, you know, I'm not I won't be micromanaging her cases, anything like that, you know, high-level oversight, of course, but you know, she can she can basically run her cases the way she wants to, which I that's probably another big factor for her as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, switching gears over to a different topic of AI, I know you and we were talking prior to hitting the record button about AI and how that's gonna impact search. Do you have any thoughts as a IP attorney as to what you're seeing?

SPEAKER_00:

Um as an IP attorney, no. I do, I just I'm a podcast listener. Like, you know, I do this when I I I listen to yours. I listen to obviously listen to all yours. I listen to plenty of other podcasts also. Um I've just it's one of those things I'm hearing being talked about a lot more recently is you know, rather not that you know the SEO is is dead. Of course you get some of those. I don't buy into that, but AI might start slowly chipping away at at traditional SEO. Um, you know, in terms meaning instead of someone going to Google to try to find their lawyer, they might go to ChatGPT or Anthropic or something, you know, to find their lawyer. So, you know, I was just curious, you know, what what we're doing or or what maybe what we're planning on doing, maybe we're not even doing it yet, but to make sure that, you know, when that time comes, it could be, you know, that could be years away. That could never happen, but you know, with the way this stuff moves, that that could happen in three months. It's not crazy, right? So, you know, what are we doing or planning to do that, you know, make sure if you know, to make sure if in a I'm coming up in AI searches and same same for them as well. And one of the interesting things I saw is I don't know if you saw this, um, it showed it was like a study of where I think it was specific to ChatGPT, but where it pulls the its data from uh and the number the number one source for the AI model was Reddit.

SPEAKER_02:

I've seen I've seen studies like that or surveys like that, yeah. That's that's crazy. I don't even use Reddit, I don't even have a name for it.

SPEAKER_00:

I know. I I I like find myself on it occasionally, but yeah, same. I don't I don't have a username or anything like that. So um see I don't know is that is that something worth I've heard people say, um, you know, if if you can get on Reddit for 20 minutes a week and and answer a couple questions, you know, find some local subreddits in your area, you know, Nassau County, people looking for a divorce, and you can just answer them, you know, that that might be, you know, that might get give your firm some credit in the A models, AI models, stuff like that. Um and I forget what the second was, but but Google was like Google search was like the third or fourth one down, something like that. So I don't know, other things, things that like you might not have thought to optimize for Reddit six months ago, but if that's where ChatGPT is pulling the data from, it might be something worth considering. And it doesn't it's free, it doesn't take much time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Purpose and intent, right? Like what are people leveraging the different platforms to do? How are they leveraging? Is it just research? Are they ready to convert? You know, are they just looking around? And in this area, uh family law that's hypersensitive and serious. One thing we find all the time is that people use uh incognito browsers way more on family law searches than they do for you know anything else because they don't want anyone knowing that they're looking for this stuff. Uh and so uh when it comes down to attribution on the marketing front, that always gets a little gray area because if people are using incognito, then there's no you know tracking and and all that. So uh the large language models are are gonna play in that as well as it relates to research, but then ultimately, how are they gonna decide which firm to use?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, and I don't I don't think anyone has an answer to that question yet.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, like I assume there'll be a lot of best of who's the best attorney in my area. Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey family law firm leaders, my partner Tony Carls just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from zero to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work, but if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family law firm will succeed. Like you, Tom, I'm concerned about the AI potentially disrupting our model as well. And I know I've talked to the folks at RC about that quite a bit, Tony in particular. And what I've experienced so far, because like you mentioned the firm on Long Island that spends 100K a month, we we spend well over that in our page search. So I'm very attuned to what's happening there. And what we're seeing so far is we're seeing a tiny bit of cannibalization, but more than anything, AI is turning into basically another layer on top of their search engine. Right search. Yeah, so it's not a research space now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, not even necessarily someone going to ChatGPT, but if you what's the one for Google? Is it Gemini? Perplexity, one of those? Yeah, it makes them up. Gemini, yeah. So like when you type into Google divorce lawyer near me, you you're starting to get that AI box up top. And that's you know, where are they pulling? I think it was it might have been perplexity now that we're saying that out loud, uh, that that showed that was getting their information from Reddit. Um so yeah, just I don't know, different just things to consider. Again, it's not not something I'm worried about in the very short term. And yeah, it's not not gonna completely cannibalize local SEO, but you know, like you said, if if now, you know, what is the course of numbers now?

SPEAKER_02:

Over the course of this year, we've invested a ton of resources into just producing content, and that's ironically turning out to help us quite a bit in the AI models. So all the stuff we're posting out there is helping us there. So we're finding a lift, actually. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool's changing right in front of us.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It is, and uh yeah. I the the adoption in uh divorce and family law has been relatively slow. I can tell you, you know, I my other job is very tech heavy and it's been wildly disruptive. Like they, you know, in in in the sense that you know budgets are half cut in half compared to what they were two years ago.

SPEAKER_02:

IP budgets for big companies you're talking about? Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So like uh, you know, if the company was paying 10 grand per patent application and that, you know, they're now offering like six.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Okay. How much faster is it to use AI to write these applications?

SPEAKER_00:

A lot faster.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

I would say again, this isn't a patent log uh what do you call it, podcast, but you know, what used to take me to draft a patent application, I don't know, 20 to 25 hours, now is 10 to 15.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's wild. It's a big difference.

SPEAKER_02:

The cut and piece is justified under that analysis.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is. I actually think you turn out better uh on a per patent basis. But the question on that has been what are companies gonna do with that extra budget? Are they gonna file twice as many patents or are they just gonna allocate that money towards other resources?

SPEAKER_02:

Have you seen anything to indicate what they're gonna do so far?

SPEAKER_00:

Um so far we've seen a big increase in the number of patents.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, who knows how far that will go.

SPEAKER_00:

And that that's again, you know, we it's a it's a small to mid sized company that gets most of their work. They they represent like two of the large top two of the The world's top five patent filers. So pretty much all of their work is from like two major clients. So I can only speak to those two clients. You know, what other companies are doing, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, transferring translating that to family law. I mean, drafting an MSA, I remember that used to take me four or five hours total if there were any sort of complicated provisions in there. I'm sure that's way, way faster now. So we're we're seeing a little bit of that already in our in our practice.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right. But it's, you know, that's that's always going to be a smaller part of what we do, just you know, in terms of you know, writing, right? I I don't know you what percentage of your you know job was was drafting motions and and stuff like that, but you know, it's not definitely not 100% like it is in patent law. You know, that's the job. Here we're you know, there's always going to be client counseling, there's always gonna be going to court. And I don't think in my lifetime that's that's getting replaced by AI anytime soon. So I think we're definitely definitely safer on this end. It's much more people heavy.

SPEAKER_02:

I haven't drafted an MSA in probably 10 years, so I'm I'm going off old data.

SPEAKER_01:

Try one tonight, Jeff, too, you know, report.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we have clients coming to us a day with like everything drafted. Say here, here it is. Here's here's what chat GPT gave me. So does this work?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you take that because I I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we would take them under a coaching, they wouldn't be a normal full-fledged client. We'd just be like a doc reviewer or something. But yeah, sure, we'll take them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I guess I'd equate it to like taking work, you know, where someone's had like two or three attorneys before that. And uh and I still take the work again because I'm you know I'm newer and I'll take you know reasonable cases that come in. But I I've had a few cases where I'm like, even me who hasn't been doing this, you know, long compared to a lot of the other attorneys, I get these dockets and I'm like, what the hell happened? That's I I mean I see the same thing from Chat GPT. I'm I'm like, I'm gonna submit this and one of these cases is gonna be fake. Like in the amount of time it's taken me to check all the you know citations and everything, I could have just written something myself.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Why why come to me with something that's already drafted?

SPEAKER_01:

I I don't know, that's an interesting point. If we believe that that the models are gonna continue to get smarter and better, then it would behoove us to not build a process for assuming that this is gonna continue to happen, right? People are gonna continue to try and get as much work done or leverage Chat GBT to get the docs. And whether they're right or not, they're gonna become probably more right over time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I I also just think that again, comparing it to the other work that I do, there's this emotional component that you could point people to a textbook and say, here's the answer, and they're gonna, they're still gonna say no. I want to get in front of a judge and argue my point.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, right. True.

SPEAKER_00:

So happy to help. Yeah, right. Yeah. So well, good.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Tom. Thanks for coming back on. We'll see you uh next month.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, of course. Thanks, guys.

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Jeff Hughes

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