Starting a Solo Law Firm from 0 to 15 Employees in 7 Years - #220

Laurie went from 0 to 8 attorneys and 15 employees in 7 years. Here's the real playbook for solo law firm growth — no theory, just what worked. 

You'll hear how Laurie built her bench of advisors before opening day, why hiring an executive director unlocked real growth, and the delegation shift every solo law firm owner has to make. 

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Starting a Solo Law Firm: The Bench of Advisors That Made It Possible

3:36 - Why Indecision Will Kill Your Solo Law Firm Before You Open 

5:00 - The Hiring Pivots That Took Laurie From Solo to Eight Attorneys 

6:42 - Letting Go of the Vine: Why an Executive Director Changed Everything

8:34 - The Follow-Up System Behind 75% of Sterling's Revenue 

12:47 - Biggest Lessons Learned From Starting a Solo Law Firm

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Transcript

0:00

There's a lot of trial and error. What I did was when I got the idea to start my own firm, is I built up a bench of people that I knew and trusted people that I knew I could go to and ask questions to because I had never run a business. No one in my family had really run a business. This was all new to me. It was a new language, essentially, that I was learning. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. The podcast designed to help family attorneys build the firm of their dreams. I am your host, Tyler Dolph. And today we continue our owner operator series. Laurie is a great entrepreneur and law firm owner in Baltimore, Maryland. She has grown her firm from 0 to 8 attorneys and now over 15 employees. She has a great story to tell. She's done some amazing things and made a lot of right choices as it relates to hiring. Laurie, thank you so much for your time today. I'm so excited to learn more about you and your firm. Do us a kind and introduce yourself to our audience. And tell us a little bit about how you got started. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Laurie Wasserman. I am a family law attorney who practices in Baltimore, Maryland. I have a firm, Wasserman White Family Law. The firm started with just me seven years ago, and in that time we have since grown from just me to eight lawyers and seven support staff. And we do just family law. That is awesome. So a really quick growth as it relates to family law firms. Up to eight attorneys did. What were we doing before you started the firm? I was practicing in what is in Baltimore, big law, but probably nationally a medium sized law firms at one of which had about 30 attorneys, was the first place I worked to worked at post. After doing a clerkship, I was there for 13 years. I was an associate and a partner for part of those. And then I made a transition to another firm who now has about 200 lawyers. So I guess they are a big law firm. And I was there for two years when I got the bug to start my own firm, and I started my own firm in May of 2018. What were those first couple of months like? You know, you had had experience running or like being a part of a large law firm, assuming that you had lots of support and process and help, and now you're starting out on your own with none of that. What insights did you bring based on your experience and what were some new like, Holy shit, I didn't think about that. There was a lot of the second one of those. There's a lot of trial and error. What I did was when I got the idea to start my own firm, is I built up a bench of people that I knew and trusted accountants, advisors, people that I knew I could go to and ask questions to because I had never run a business. No one in my family had really run a business. This was all new to me. It was a new language, essentially, that I was learning. I also went and talked to a lot of people who I admired, who had come before me and done this, and I asked them what would they do differently and what did you like? And also I asked them for help. Would you support me throughout this process? And I found that the response was overwhelming. People were really happy to give their time and advice and their referrals to, which made me feel a lot more confident. When I originally started to build my business, I gave myself a year. I said, okay, I'll start in January, and by the end of the year I hope to have it open. I got so excited about it, the prospect of doing it. I was ready to open my doors by May. Really. And you had you felt like you had everything you needed and enough support that you could do it. I don't know if I had everything I needed. There was certainly thank goodness for Amazon and Staples and all those places that can deliver. And I think you need to know what you need to open the doors, but you don't necessarily need to have everything on day one. And what I found when I was starting my business to is that I just needed to make a decision. I indecision will be the the enemy of starting your own firm. I decided when I was going to do this that the first thing I did was made a list of everything I used every single day to start my practice. I looked around my office and wrote down everything from the paperclips to the computer to the internet. And then I started asking people, what else do I need? I relied on again on my account, and I had somebody who I knew and trusted, who had done strategy consulting, who was able to give me ideas. But there was a lot of stuff on day one I didn't have. I didn't have furniture. I used a folding table for my basement that we have used for the holidays since then. We had folding chairs. It was it was a little rinky dink in the beginning, I'm not going to lie. But as as I became more comfortable and as we grew, we really grew into our space. We've actually had to since I started the firm, not only did we grow in in terms of people, we grew in terms of size. I started in a 1000 square foot office. We ended up adding on space, remodeling it three times to the point where we grew out of it, moved up to another floor, and then we remodeled that too. So we keep growing in terms of people and space. amazing. During those early days, as you were, you know, constructing and building and and creating the foundation. What were some of the pivot points that really, like, allowed you to take that next step and allowed you to hire that next attorney? Well, I think I tried to rely on my instincts a lot to and I was willing to take a leap. And I think knowing also that it's okay if it doesn't work out the way you want to. Every decision I made, I always felt like if it doesn't work out, I can make a different decision. It was the same thing with starting my business, and it is when it came to growing and hiring, I had a lot of people who knew me and came to me about wanting to join the firm or wanting to work for me, and that was really great. We did do some hiring to just by putting out ads, but every decision I made was with the mindset of that. This is going to make me be able to practice law more and run this business and allow us to grow, because you could really open a business and work to the point where you're like, I am fine with this income. I'm comfortable with it. I don't need to grow anymore. But if you want to get even a little bit further than beyond that point, you're going to have to take those risks and hire people. And every time you hire people, than it brings in HR and payroll and all those other things. So with every decision I made, it required me to think even bigger. But I have made really great hiring decisions. I've been so fortunate that there have been people with me almost the entire journey, and we have a fantastic team right now. Did you ever have trouble, like letting go of the vine, knowing that you were the founder? You could control everything. Every decision was yours. As you grow right, you have to delegate some of that and you have to trust other people. How is that process? You know, I tried to do it as best as I can. It is hard to let go of it. I felt like this firm was my child in some way. It was my my baby. But as we grew, I realized I couldn't do everything. We ended up bringing in an executive director for our firm when we got to a certain size, because at a certain point, not only was I the founder of the firm and, you know, trying to practice law, but I was also running all of the other aspects. It was not my highest and best use, and highest and best use is our firm motto for every single thing that we do. It was not doing, you know, researching insurance plans, you know, dealing with day to day disputes between staff members over who's supposed to be responsible for things. I could not be everything to everybody when we got to a certain size. So hiring an executive director and offloading all of those responsibilities to me really took our firm to the next level, because it allowed me to focus on practicing law and therefore generating more revenue for us to be able to put back into the business. So while it was hard to let go because it was my baby, it was the best thing I could do. And having those people around you that you have trained and that you can trust to take the reins, it's freeing. I said for the first time, even this past summer, I was able to take a vacation and completely check out. I did not even I disconnected my email from my phone so it wasn't even a choice. Nobody knew how to reach me and it was wonderful. And I was finally able to relax, knowing that everything was going to get taken care of. And that was a beautiful moment for us in our firm. And I really think a milestone for me Huge. this. Yeah. That's amazing. I actually did the same thing this year for the first time in ten years. I took a whole time like holy smokes! Yeah. I mean, I never get to unplug. And it was so wonderful. And I came back and I was refreshed and I knew everything was taken care of. My clients, my employees, everybody. It was great. I'll do it again. When was the last time your team called to book a lead who didn't book? If you can't answer that, neither can your intake team. And that means every lead. Who said I need to think about it is sitting in your CRM right now without an owner, without a follow up date, and no next step? That lead is not dead. That's revenue that you will not get that you forgot about. At Sterling Lawyers, 75% of our revenue comes after that first conversation, 75% meaning even if you just do this poorly, you will change your firm over night. We track this across thousands of cases, and we found the money in the follow up. We're teaching the exact follow up system behind that number in a free training. How do we prepare for every call? What do our agents actually say? And what is the cadence that runs behind every lead until they book? Please see the link below so that you can sign up today. as I think about your story. It feels like some of those initial hires were so pivotal. Talk to us about your hiring process. How were you able to to get so lucky and hire some really great time at the beginning? So when I started my firm, I actually brought over my admin assistant from my original firm, which was great. She knew how to work with me. She knew what I was thinking about before I was thinking about it, and when it came time to actually hire an associate, I put an ad out. I had some really great candidates, and I actually came down to two people. I hired one person, but the other person, when I told her that she didn't get the job, said, I want to work for you in any capacity. I can give me a chance. The other person couldn't start right away, so I said, would you like to do some contract work for me? And she said, absolutely. And she did some contract work for me, and she's like, I'm going to make it so that you don't want me to leave. And she did. So instead of hiring one associate, I ended up hiring two associates. It was serendipitous, for sure, but I really was impressed with the way people put themselves out there and said, not only do I want a job, but I want to work specifically for you. And here's why. And I'm going to show you what my value is. So they made it hard for me to say no. And at that point, that's how I ended up going from zero associates to two associates. And then it's grown over the years with other people as well. I look for opportunities of people that are looking to make changes. A lot of people, like I said, have come to me too and asked if I'm willing to to take them on and if it's the right fit. Absolutely. I am always willing to take those chances in business. Now your firm how many total employees? We have there's eight attorneys and there's seven support staff. Okay. So 15. How has your culture shifted as you've grown and what are you really focusing on as it relates to your culture, given your your size now? So this this firm is almost all women. We have one gentleman here who has is a wonderful, wonderful, good sport here. He has daughters too. So he's used to all of us. I love that we have a lot of strong women here. That's part of our culture. And again, our motto here is the highest and best use. So we are always looking for what people are most talented at and what really is the best use of their time, and try to encourage them and have them advance. If you want more training, if you want to learn something new. We are always about that as well. We do really try to have and I say, and I don't want to say work life balance because that's kind of a misnomer, the balance. But nobody here is forced to work nights and weekends. I do not expect anybody to be burning the midnight oil. You are not responsible for checking your email after hours or weekends, but I do make it very clear that part of working here is being really responsive and available to clients during business hours, so that's something I push as well. But I want this to be a place where people don't feel like they have a job, they have a career, feel comfortable here. We do a lot of activities together, a lot of charity work, a lot of fun, firm bonding events, and we try to make this a place that that is nice to go to every day, because the subject matter of what we do is so difficult. We really rely on each other for that levity and, you know, to to lift us up when those days are harder. I'm so impressed by your story, the amount of growth that you've achieved. Talk to me a little bit about some of the pitfalls, lessons learned, things you wish you would have done differently. Oh gosh, there's so many of them. I think in the beginning, thinking I needed almost everything on day one, I joke that I ordered 10,000 rubber bands before I started my business. I don't know why. I guess just in case. I still have probably about 9000 of them, but I had. But for some reason I thought I just needed all of those things. There's a lot of things I needed that I didn't get, and there's a lot of things I got that I didn't need. So sometimes it is better to be in the situation and figure out what you need, as opposed to trying to anticipate it and spending money and getting it wrong. Certainly trying to do things that I am not qualified to do, like I could do payroll that is not my best use of time, and it ended up me trying to do it and try to learn how to do it and have to go back and fix things, cause way more problems than it was than to hire somebody. So I think hiring somebody to do something, you know, you can't do is one of the things that every business owner learns the hard way because we all think we can do it ourselves. We're all, you know, overachieving lawyers here. So we all think we can do everything ourselves. And I always say, could I change the oil in my car? Yes. Should I change it? Absolutely not. It is well worth my time and my money and my mental energy to pay somebody who is qualified to do it, rather than me try to do it myself. So that was really part of this trial and error is figuring out what I should be doing and what I should be delegating. It's so big, it's so important. And I talked to so many attorneys on this podcast who, you know, had aspirations of starting their own firm, realized, Holy cow, I can't control everything. I don't like how that feels. And having to work through that kind of mindset shift, and then to trust others and build repeatable process is really, really how you achieve scale. And it sounds like you've done just that. So I commend you on it. Absolutely. here. It's it's a wonderful place to work. It's it's I love being a business owner. It's actually one of my favorite things now about what I do as being a business owner. I love helping other business owners as well. I have found that since I started my business, a lot of other professionals, mostly women, actually come to me and say, I'm interested in doing what you did. Could you mentor me? And it's been such a pleasure to be able to do so, and really a new part of my career that I never anticipated as helping other people in business because I didn't know what I was doing a couple of years ago. So it's been really fun to get to know people and watch them grow as well. great. Final question. If someone is in your shoes, you know, eight attorneys ago and wants to start their own family law firm. What's one piece of advice you would give them in their transitionary period, going from a large law firm to creating their own, hanging their own shingle? First of all, you can do this. Anybody can do this. If I did it, you guys could do it. I would take it one task at a time and one day at a time. Do not overwhelm yourself thinking that you need to start this business in one day, and understand that it is going to slow you down. When you start this business, you are not going to be able to operate full cylinders like you had been when you were in practice before, because everything was already built in. So you need to give yourself some time and some grace and some patience, but you can absolutely do this. It will be the best decision you ever made. You will wish you had done it earlier. Everyone I spoke to always wishes they had done it earlier. I love it. Laurie, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciated learning about you and your firm and I wish you all the best. Thank you.