What 40 Years Taught Harold About Law Firm Business Development - #226

Law firm business development is the line between owners and employees. Harold's 40 years prove it. 

Family law firm owners hire smart associates, watch them leave, and never learn the law firm business development that fixes the leak. Teach associates to own clients early. The rest follows. 

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Law Firm Business Development: Why Most Family Law Firms Lose Their Top Associates 

1:00 - Inside the Lifestyle Law Firm Model That Built 40 Years of Attorney Retention 

2:53 - "Partners Are Your Clients": Harold's Partnership Track Rule for Young Associates 

6:48 - The Associate Rotation System That Builds Real Business Development Skills 

9:17 - Building a Legacy Client Base That Survives Generations Through Smart Succession 

10:00 - "No Clients = Employee": The Brutal Business Development Truth About Firm Power 

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Transcript

0:00

if you get an assignment, you're working on something and the client calls and wants to know what the status you probably haven't done the right thing, which is get back to them before they get back to you. I think that's the number one thing. Return phone calls. It's really common sense stuff. Well, welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. Today we're continuing our owner operator partner series. And Harold, it is great to have you with us. If you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself to our audience and give us a little background on how you came to be here today. Great. Thank you. And please call me Hal. Great. Thank you. Yeah. So I am the managing partner at a Cleveland based law firm known as Cabbage Family and Durkin. I have been in basically the Ohio area my entire life. I grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, went to college at Baldwin-Wallace University, which is in a suburb of Cleveland. Law school at Cleveland State. Directly out of law school. I joined this firm and been with this firm for. It'll be 40 years next May. So. Congratulations. That's amazing. It's pretty wild, but it's a great place. And it's been it's been a good run. So very pleased. Well, I have to ask. You know, you've got 40 years at the same firm. What has kept you there? Like, what's created this amount of loyalty? And how have you been able to rise up through the ranks over the last few decades? So we call ourselves a lifestyle firm, which means, you know, we don't expect people to work till midnight every night and or to miss family events and that sort of thing. My wife also was an extremely hard worker, had a, you know, super career on her own. And so she had to be someplace in the morning. You know, I could be a little late here or vice versa. So it's not a sweatshop. We expect people to have lives outside of the practice law and, you know, have good balance. So for me, it was a perfect fit. And how were you able to to increase your influence and, you know, be able to rise up to to the managing partner status? Well, I think part of it is if you're around long enough, you know, you trip into things, right? So but I've always been I won't say aggressive, but a little outgoing and, you know, try to do exercise leadership. You know when the when it was appropriate and started out. You know on the management team after I became a partner, probably five or 6 or 7 years after I became a partner and I was on the management team for a long period of time. We had a managing partner who was was super managing partner, so we both served on the board. And then when he decided to step back a little bit, they I jumped in. So it's it's almost by osmosis. You don't really know how it happens. It just happens. What do you tell young associates to join your firm on the secret to leveling up and advancing your career? I mean, there's no there's no secret from my perspective. I mean, I think it's just work hard, do the right things. If you do the right thing, you'll never be wrong. I always tell the young associates that the partners are your clients, and you should operate accordingly. And if you get an assignment from somebody, you should get that assignment back to them before they ask about it. And I'd say the same is true with attorneys and their actual clients. You know, if you get an assignment, you're working on something and the client calls and wants to know what the status is, you probably haven't done the right thing, which is get back to them before they get back to you. So I think that's the number one thing. Return phone calls. It's really common sense stuff. How has the firm evolved over the last 40 years? So we haven't involved as much as maybe a lot of firms. We've been a mid-size firm for probably the last 50 or 60 years, really focusing on, you know, closely held businesses and individuals. You know, it's a different place, I think, in large part because of your perspective, because, you know, you start out as an associate and you've got all these great mentors around, like George Durkin at our name partners. And then, you know, they retire and go on to better things or greener pastures. And now you look around and you're kind of the old guy. So you know, the firm I guess changes from that perspective just because you've changed so much throughout your career. Things like technology have made the practice of law, including our firm, you know, I think, a little more difficult because, I mean, in the old days when I started, you know, when you actually redlined the document, you did it with a red magic marker and sent it, you know, via us ordinary mail back to the or a messenger if it was somebody in town. Now it's, you know, split seconds. So you, you know, you're redlining electronically. Clients expectations are so much more that you're going to get back to them faster, because that's what everybody's used to these days. So it's a little just just from my perspective, a little more there's a little more pressure these days. On getting back to clients and making sure that matters. Move along. I also think that for the younger lawyers, I would stress stay on top of technology. That's really transforming our practice. We're sitting in a library that is basically a dinosaur. You know, we used to refer to these books all the time. In fact, some of the books behind us, we actually have a relationship with Matthew Bender where we edit their manuscripts and, you know, sometimes, right, new content form that all used to be in the book book. And now it's, you know, on a thumb drive. So it's, it's it's challenging to stay on top of what's going on in our marketplace for sure. it's got to be. That's so funny. The time it must have taken to redline a document and send it and do all the things like days, right, compared to Well, yeah, it would take it would take days to sort of get it out to the, you know, the opposing party and, you know, get comments back just because of how. But I mean, it was also, you know, I feel like now if you mail something, it's 15 days before somebody gets it. And, you know, in those days, you know, they'd get it in 2 or 3 days. And, you know, a lot of Fedex around kind of an infancy then as well. So started using those tools and of course the fax machine. Hal Your practice is multidisciplinary. Has it always been that way, and if so, did you get the opportunity to work across a number of different practices, or did you always focus on one? Yeah. So so my experience is, is that when, when I started with the firm, they would put you in a rotation. So I would do business law firm call it six months. And then I would be involved in the litigation practice for, for six months. From my perspective, after I got through the rotation, I was always sort of interested in real estate. And so I started working with the real estate lawyers. It's one of those things where you like what you're doing, so you'd probably do a better job. They like you because you like what you're doing. And so I kind of grew up as a real estate lawyer for the first, probably 10 or 15 years of my career, very involved in the real estate sections of the Cleveland bar, which I would encourage any young lawyer to make sure that they're involved in these, you know, their local bar, meeting their peers, seeing how they operate, using their tapping into their expertise. But I was an accounting undergrad, and so I always had pretty decent business, you know, background. And as I started to get clients on my own, you know, sort of just spread out to helping them not only with real estate transactions, but other parts of their business. And so from that, I sort of, you know, became a business lawyer doing probably half real estate now and half just business transactions, M&A and those sorts of things. And, you know, the accounting has certainly helped out on that. I would also tell young lawyers and I tell them when we interview them, or a lot of times we get calls from kids that are in college, you know, what should I do to prepare? I would say that if if you know somebody really serious about the practice of law, I would I would advise any sort of business. You know, accounting is great economics because every no matter what your practice is, it always revolves around money. You could be a criminal lawyer, but you still have a lease and you know other things that are happening and you have to understand the practice. The other thing I would encourage is, believe it or not, would be an English major, because most of what we do is you no violence of written communication. Now it's. Pardon me. Yeah, exactly. And now most of it's, you know, via email now. But it is important. It is. Especially if you're getting into family law and, you know, a lot of court appearances, you've got to be able to communicate in writing what you, what you're trying to get across. So absolutely. I really appreciate your time today as we kind of finish up here. Tell us a little bit about the future of your firm. You guys have been around for a long time, done some amazing things. How are you ensuring that the firm, you know, six rounds for another 40 years? Yeah. So we have a very strong legacy client base. You know, they've been with us for a lot of them, have been with us for generations. We spend a tremendous amount of time and resources on associates. So we have a monthly associate meeting we provide during the course of those meetings, in part, a professional type experience where, you know, we're educating them on the law and different things that they might come across. And frankly, the other part of that is business development. We focus on trying to give them the skills so that they can go out and get their own clients. Always tell the young lawyers here, if you don't have a client base, unless you're with a mega firm, but if you don't, if you're with us or another medium sized firm, if you don't have clients, then you're essentially an employee. You know you're at the whim of the people that basically have the clients and pass out the work. So we focus and, you know, in those respects, with our associates, we also give them a budget to, you know, spend on professional development as well as networking type thing. So we feel pretty strong that, you know, they're the future. And we want to make sure that they're successful so that, you know, the firm continues. So that's what we do. I really appreciate your time today. Amazing. Amazing story. The fact that you never hear about people sticking around and being in the same place for for 40 years, so I'm always very impressed by that stat. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and look forward talking to you again All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for meeting you.