How to Build Law Firm Knowledge Management Systems - #212

Steve Messick built process documentation from day one. Five years later: 10 staff, $10M revenue target, zero chaos. Learn about his law firm knowledge management system.

Steve started his firm in June 2020 with just a paralegal. They built their process manual before hiring anyone else—fonts, IT onboarding, billing procedures, all of it documented. That's how you scale without breaking things.

Steve's honest about the challenges too: finding experienced attorneys in a market shaped by the 2008 recession, planning ownership transitions when "no one's going to buy this practice when I'm done," and building training capacity while still billing hours.

If you're stuck keeping everything in your head, wondering how to grow without losing control, or trying to figure out what systems actually matter when you're still small—this one's for you.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Law Firm Knowledge Management: Starting at the Worst Possible Time 

1:08 - Building a Team That Actually Wants to Be There 

3:07 - Why Steve Left a Partnership (And How He Did It Right) 

5:10 - The Judge Who Changed Everything: Mentorship That Built a Firm 

19:00 - Process Documentation: Why Steve Documented the Fonts 

20:26 - Scaling to $10 Million: The Resource Plan Behind the Revenue Goal 

22:57 - The Talent Crisis: Why Hiring Experienced Attorneys is Impossible Right Now

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Transcript

0:00

When Steve was young in his career, he was mentored by a judge that changed his life. His story is an inspiring one. You're not going to want to miss. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, The podcast, designed to help law firm owners build the practice of their dreams. I'm your host, Tyler. Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our law firm marketing agency called Rocket Clicks. That was actually born out of our own family law firm, Sterling Lawyers, that has continued to grow and has over 27 attorneys. Today, we're continuing our law firm on our series. We interview Steve, who has an estate practice in Minneapolis, and, Saint Paul in the Twin Cities. He has a great story to tell about leadership and mentorship, and now he is giving back to his team in the same way that he was mentored as a young law clerk. Steve, thank you so much for your time today. I'm really excited to learn about you and your firm. Would you do me a kindness and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your firm as it is today? Yeah, absolutely. Well, and thanks for. Thanks for having me. My name is Steve Messick. I had, started, Messick law, which is my current firm, in June of 2020. So, right in the right at the start of the pandemic, it's a great time to start a practice. But I had, was a, shareholder in another firm, and I had a, a book of clients. And so it was a good way to start, and in fact, my, my former, partners, were exceedingly supportive, of the venture. And, yeah, I started with myself, an a paralegal, and then we just grew from there. We, my, my main practice areas and trust in estate litigation, and we were able to bring on some very talented, trust in estate litigators as well as, family. We have a family law practice group. And then we do related work in guardianship, conservatorships, and real estate and some of these the family trust in estate always kind of we're we're dealing with real estate. We're dealing with family businesses. And then the related civil litigation that comes with it. So, yeah, we've just, this our fifth year in operation. We now have, I think we have a staff of ten. We're we're still growing. So we have some, interviews, coming up and hopefully some, positions to fill. That's amazing and congrats on your success. In such a short amount of time. Well, thank you. It, it really is due to the team that we built. It was finding the right, people who who want to be here and and, really, it's their investment. In the practice, has really made the difference. great. Talk to me about, starting out, you know, why do you want to leave the firm that you're a partner in already? And what was that catalyst? So really, it was distance. I live, centrally for for your viewers. I live just outside of Saint Paul, which is, we refer to the Saint Paul, Minneapolis as the Twin Cities. And the practice that I was with was about an hour south. And I had been making that drive, since my early clerkship. I clerked for a judge down in in Rice County. It's a beautiful community. It really Minnesota, wonderful town, wonderful people. It came down to distance. It is all and and, you know, with ages of my kids, that kind of hour to an hour and a half in the winter to two hours each way. Kind of kind of cut into that family time. So, you know, it was just, it was the right time to do that. But, you know, the the good part of that was maintaining really good relationship with my, former partners. As I said, when we started, they were exceedingly supportive, of of me kind of venturing out and, really made a difference. That's amazing. And rare. You normally don't see that. Yeah. Go ahead and take some of this business away from us and go do your own thing. Yeah, yeah, it's, exceedingly supportive. And in fact, my one of my former partners is now of counsel, with this firm. And that's just been a great relationship to, maintain. I mean, his years of experience. He's the one who mentored me, in the practice, right? Showed me how to, do what I do today. And so having him on board, is extra special. That is really amazing. I want to venture back. You mentioned mentorship, and we talk on this podcast all the time about how that is such a key element to being successful in building your own law firm and having a law firm and being great attorneys is having people there that have done it. That's why we have this podcast to help the community. Was that did you have a mentor early on, like in the first part of your career? Tell us how you got started and why you were able to be successful. yeah. The first, I mean, really, the first part of my career, I was very fortunate, to clerked for, judge Tom Neville. Judge Neville. It just I mean, it's widely regarded as just an excellent, excellent jurist. Before that, he was in the Minnesota State Senate for, for many years as a just a very, consensus building, individual. And and so that clerkship, you know, at the time, this was 2010, heck of a time to come out into the job market. You know, it was a very, very competitive, to get that in the first place. Hence the driving, you know, an hour to two hours at a at a time to just to get, clerkship, which at the time didn't, didn't pay, payroll. And, you know, they still in Minnesota, they have done the judiciary has done a great job of, investing in the clerks and allowing, kind of a staggered or, or an increased pay scale for years of service because there are there are judges up here who, want to have a career clerk, and there are clerks who who want to make a career out of it. And and they've, they've gone a step closer to making that happen with the pay structure. But, I was able to clerk for him, for two years. We saw every kind of case, from probate to criminal. We actually had a, very, very high profile case. It was a, made national news, and that was a court trial. So we got to be part of that. So that was my first step of seeing being in the courtroom. It really demystified the process, sitting in a jury trials, going and and talking to the jury after the trials to see, what their thoughts were on the process. And, and, it was a, it was the best way for me to learn, and certainly, he had, Judge Neville had practiced for, oh, I mean, 30 plus years. So hearing his perspective, he was one that, you know, very much would, would talk through cases, really wanted my opinion on things. At his retirement party, he had all of his, clerks there, and he said, you know, you were the judges lawyer. That's what your role is. And and so it was just a really great sadly, he he's he's passed away. But, you know, his his legacy certainly lives on with his clerks, many of whom I still, are in contact with, in the legal community, after that, mentored by, who became, later on, my partners, you know, just tremendous, not only they had tremendous experience in the law, but, tremendous experience in the community. And, you know, there I had to I learned a lot about the law and clerking. I learned more in practice. But, you know, coming out of clerking, I didn't necessarily know how to talk to clients about asking for money. I didn't know how to have difficult conversations about billing. I, how important that initial client interview is. Both. Do I want to take the case? And for them, do they want to hire me? And then that that ongoing client interaction. And then obviously, you get into how do you take a deposition, how do you, what is mediation strategy? How do you and so I was very fortunate to be mentored in all of those processes. And, and like, I'm sure you that you know, this is that no matter how long we've been practicing, we're still learning. We're still we're still developing skills. But that's the mentoring side of thing. That's one of the parts I love most about my position. What I want to see my position grow into over the years is, you know, I will as long as I'm licensed, I'm still going to be practicing. But, you know, the point I want to get to in my career is to bring in the clients still have an active caseload, but to have more of that time dedicated to mentoring the younger attorneys, you know, the firm my size that's the struggle is maintaining my full caseload, and still and then managing the practice, managing the, day to day finances and then carving out that time, for the associates to, you know, feel like they can get that done, that quality time and, and, as you know, as an owner, it's an investment, you know, when I'm mentoring, I'm generally not having the associate bill, or I'm not billing. I'm having the associate billing at their rate. Because the size of the firm we're at, our clients are accustomed to seeing multiple people on a bill, but we don't stack them three deep and have everyone run wild. I mean, that's just. I don't think a cost effective, means of practicing. So it's an investment, noting that, you know, there's there's going to be a lot of time that we're going to have to write off, but I think it's essential. There was the, saying, I know of some owners that say, well, what happens if you train people and they leave, but what happens if you don't stay? That's it's that's, you know, and that's a philosophy that I certainly have, taken to heart. Yeah. People will, but we, we have seen more transition in the industry. I think generationally we're seeing people at places for 1 or 2 years as opposed for, you know, ten and 12. Well, to me, I want to make this place, as amenable for somebody to stay that ten years. But, you know, we may not have them, all right, that that people are going to come in, move out. It's it's just part of the part of the job. Family law is unlike other practice areas. Your callers are not shopping for a service. They're looking for someone who makes them feel safe enough to share. The worst thing happening in their life. The firm that hears them first wins every time. And that's what changed everything at Sterling. We eventually built that system into four actionable steps on this free training. Mary Sankey, who leads our sales team, is going to break down the entire four step sales system. She is sterling sales manager. She's the one who runs it every single day. So go ahead and register below for the sales secrets of an $18 million family law firm. I'll see you there. Yeah. Well said. It's, it's really inspiring to hear you talk about how impactful that judge was on your career and on your life. And the fact that so much so that, you know, it's almost like you want to have that same impact on next generation. Absolutely, absolutely. Were there any, like, key lessons or sayings or, you know, things that, you really take away that you impart on, on others? You know, from, from a client perspective, and certainly my, my partner, my prior partners really impressed upon me is it is okay if you don't know the answer. The worst thing you can do is buy a plan. It's the same as, Yes. And the judge, you don't do it. It's. I don't know the answer. We'll find it. And and that's when you ask more questions. You know, in that client consult, there are plenty of times where, you know, the clients can say, well, well, what? What's the solution here? Well, I think we've got a couple options. I need to dig into it. And that's where you then start asking questions instead of just talking. And you know, trying to, to, to get through that process. And I think that's something for a lot of young attorneys is there's I think we all have this kind of an imposter syndrome where, they'll see an amazing attorney who's been practicing, 25 years sitting across the table. And this is their first deposition, and they're scared, scared that they're going to make mistakes, scared they're going to look stupid. It's a natural feeling. And I've always told the associates, don't worry about it. You know, I guess from from my clerking, I've seen people practicing for 30 years. I still don't know what they're doing, but I've seen people practicing five who are great. I said, you're you're going to get into that. You're going to make mistakes. And everyone feels that way. I think everyone, especially at first day of trial, for your first trial, you're going to walk in thinking the other side knows everything and you know nothing, and there's nothing further from the truth. Both sides are stayed up late the night before, are nervous, are, concerned about how they're, going to perform and what their clients are going to think, and that's, you know, the high pressure job that we have, that's what we signed up for. But everyone's in that same boat. Yeah, it's a great point. Being open and vulnerable enough to ask for help when you don't know you were going to go so much further, so much faster. I think people think they're going to get judged like, oh, I can't believe I know this, but you also want to help people out, right? And they want to see them succeed. We've been, my, Patty in my office who is just brilliant. And she's been practicing as long as I have. And, we just got back from, the trust in the state conference, and there were things that I looked. I said, we should have known this. Shouldn't we just, like, know this is the. It's a very in-depth area of law where you're not going to know everything. And, and, you know, we, we chuckle because we're like, you know, ten years ago, we would have just been pale faced, white like I should. Everybody knows this. I didn't know this. And no, I mean, we had a lot we had people in that room been doing this for 30 years. Said, oh yeah, I didn't think of that. Good. Take notes on that. That's, something to consider. That's so great. I want to focus on lessons learned and building your firm and things that, you know, another attorney who's, you know, looking to grow their firm, grow their practice, or come out on their own. What are some things that you learned as you were kind of starting that journey because you had been successful at a firm already? It's not like you graduated law school and then started from scratch. I'm assuming you knew about billing and you knew how to run a business a little bit. Were there any, like, big surprises when you started out? what I found to be incredibly important is having good data. And that's in all aspects of the practice. So, knowing, where your clients are coming from, why they're coming to you. Which of those sources have the highest conversion rates? Right. And I met getting a lot of phone calls from certain advertising, but they're just not the clients that I want. So having that data, capturing it, it takes time. It takes staff time. When you're starting on your own, you want to. You're. You're saying I gotta be doing right now to pay the bills, and, you know, I will get to, filling out those spreadsheets later. And I would say, take the time that the clients will come, you will get your billing done. But the sooner you capture that data, and this is on everything, your expenses. Basically having an understanding of your numbers is going to tell you what you need to generate, and that's going to be essential when you start bringing on staff. That's the scariest thing for, for any employer is when, you're bringing on staff, you are now responsible for, another person and persons. There are obviously rules that that need to be followed. They're going to get paid even if you don't. So it's the having those numbers actually take some of that stress off. You know, right now and it's and it's taken time. But I can tell you exactly what it costs to have an attorney in a chair, what it cost to have a paralegal in a chair, what their revenue goals should be. How how, how we need to get those revenue goals, what the lead time is before, especially if we have a new associate. What that lead time is to profitability. What is the average, data allows you to, to know that that allows me to make better decisions. Specifically when hiring, but when to hire. What to set that pay out what the market, you know, is willing to pay for what? To set our billing rates at. And that's allowed us to to set reasonable goals. You know, one of the, the goals of this firm is that, if unless you're in trial, you shouldn't be here after five. You know that now, with that mindset, we certainly know. Yeah. Okay. Our revenue is going to be down compared to other firms that are requiring $1,900. We know that we're profitable at about an annual between 1000 and 1200. And then I build in incentives for attorneys who they want to do more. That's great. And they should get paid more. If they want to be out by 430 and with their family, I think that's great. You know, as long as we're efficient when we're, we're here, having a feel for those numbers allows me to to be very comfortable, when I set their compensation to be very comfortable when I sit there. Revenue goals, for the quarters. And so, yeah, it comes down to if you think it's, your debt is two minute. No, that's that's fine. You can you can set the filters. You can, as long as you've captured it, as long as you've accurately captured it. That's one of the I think the biggest piece of advice I have for anybody starting out in practice. so good. And the only thing I would add is when you're doing those processes, billing process or things that you know you're not going to do as you scale, document those processes and someone else can do them, and you don't have to go back and reteach That's key. You know, I think one of the other things that I thought was very important is, and I've been blessed with having a paralegal who's been with me from the start. She's, you know, done, a tremendous amount of work, and is very invested in the firm we started knowing we were going to have in place with our process manual, with how we wanted to do things. And, you know, I I'm kind of anal. I said, here's the font that we're going to use in our in our paid pagination. I wanted it in one place. And the key with that is then being consistent about it and then developing kind of our onboarding process. We've had to do that, especially with our I.T of knowing, okay, we've got a checklist. We've got, someone new coming on. We've got a plan for them, kind of the program. And it and it does streamline things. And so again, you know, having looking to the future, I think to your point of documenting that the, the, especially the tasks, that are going to be replicated. Absolutely. That's very There's so many tools out there. And, something that it took me a long time to learn because I'm very like, oh no, figure it out, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as we started document, that's where I really started to scale, because it wasn't just living in someone's head. Yeah. That's right, that's right. See if I love it. Tell me about the future of your firm. What are you focused on? What are you working towards? What are you hoping to achieve? Ideally, you know, the we would like to get to scale the firm to be doing about 10 million gross annually. In revenue. You know, at that size, we're not going to be too big. We're not going to be, you know, something unrecognizable. But but we will have the resources and the people to really be able to train our folks to, you know, like the big firms they send their associates to Nida. Well, I want my associates to have that ability, and we are we're doing that. You know, I want to have an advocate with them. And we do have an education plan for, our associates for each year. But I want to be a much more intentional about that, to have the internal resources, I think, at that, you know, certainly, at some point, equity ownership is going to change, you know, right now, my, my, when I had vision, I'm the sole owner. I knew after about year 5 to 8, that's going to probably change. And the reason for that is one investment. You know, I want the people who want to stay here to, you know, to, to be part of that ownership. Certainly that, assist me in knowing, okay, there's a little more longevity there. I don't need the capital, but I certainly, depending on the model, no one's going to buy this practice when I'm done that those days are gone. And so, you know, the question is, where are you going to have where your income stream is going to be when you are, getting ready to retire? Well, it's either additional owners and that's where you're getting it. Or you essentially get that revenue now with the buy in. Right? And so right now I'm exploring, there are some great, practitioners who really counsel attorneys in that in how do you how do you structure the ownership, but because there's so many different options. And frankly, right now I'm weighing through that of of what's going to make sense. But I definitely in the, in the future see the, the ownership structure changing. I see basically we're, we're, we're going to be adding likely to attorneys in the remainder of 2025. The work is sufficient that if we could find, two more. And that's the struggle. I don't know what you've been running into. In the Twin Cities, finding attorneys that have some experience is difficult. It is, and, you know, and I've talked to people, you know, why is that? And I said, well, you look back at, 2008 and, and in 2010, when I came into law school in oh eight, only about half the people I graduated with got a job in the legal field. So that means, you know, half the people or or little, little less than that. They went off. It did something else. They got their JD. There were no law jobs. And so they're out of the market. And we saw law school enrollment absolutely decline. In the Twin Cities here. We had two, independent law schools. Hamlin. Which was my, alma mater. And William Mitchell, both were struggling. They had to combine, in order to, to just stay alive because of the enrollment. So I think we're dealing with people when you say, hey, who's got ten years experience? That pool is so much smaller, I think, than in other years. And that's the only thing I can think of. But that has been, I will say that has been our greatest struggle is, is, finding attorneys with some experience. And the reason, you know, the size I'm at now, I need to get the folks with experience in so that they can manage. It would be, you know, I have no problem bringing on a younger associate, but if I'm doing so, I want to commit to them that they have, a constant stream of mentoring. And that's where, you know, having a good mix of, of experience is, is essential. And that's kind of that's our main challenge right now. A lot. Yep. No. We, same, same issues here. We've taken it so far to say we're just kind of partner with the law schools. With Marquette and UW Madison here in Wisconsin. And we're going to hire a lot, of lot of law clerks and a lot of law students. And we're going to take a ten year plan and just grow them into the attorneys, that we want them. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. See below. And I'm so appreciative of your time, your insights. This the story around being mentored and what an impact that had on you is really going to stick with me, and inspired me to to be a better coach and leader myself. So I really appreciate it today. I really appreciate it. And this is great. And and, you know, I hope your, listeners, if they have questions, find me happy to shoot emails. I, other thing I tell young attorneys is that anybody in this profession don't be afraid to reach out, especially if you're a law student. Go. I don't know, what I want to do. Get out there or get out the Rolodex because, you know, alert attorneys love to talk about love, they'll talk your ear off. You just have to get one on the phone. So, you know, that's that's the other great part I think, of this industry is that, if you asked, the rare occasion is somebody would say, no, the vast majority, you're going to Worst case, I say no and you move on to the next one to appreciate you. Steve. Have a wonderful rest of your day.