The 3-Year Law Firm Consultation Training Process Behind $18M Growth - #237

➡️ Register Here: https://rocketclicks.com/unlock-hiring-secrets 

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Law firm consultation training in the US is where most firms lose the client—long before anyone signs. Here's the system we built.

If you're serious about how to scale a law firm, it starts with building a law firm team that's trained, not hoped for. 

This is an associate attorney development and client intake process design working as one system for predictable law firm growth.
 
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➡️ Register Here: https://rocketclicks.com/unlock-hiring-secrets  
📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@karls.anthony
                             https://www.youtube.com/@TylerxDolph
📝 Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/
 
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📄 CHAPTERS  
0:00 - Law Firm Consultation Training: Why We Built a 3L Pipeline
0:47 - Associate Attorney Development From Year One of Law School
1:44 - Hiring Associate Attorneys: Why Testing the Role Beats Guessing
2:32 - Console College and the 9.8 Score Out of 1,000+ Calls
5:47 - Law Firm Hiring: Build a Bench vs. Buy a 20-Year Veteran
6:32 - The Mission-First Framework for Building a Law Firm Team
8:24 - Law Firm Owner Advice: How the Next Class Hits 9.8

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Ready to find the accountability partner you need to build your dream family law firm the same way we grew Sterling Lawyers? 

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3. CONNECT WITH US: 

LinkedIn: Jeff Hughes, Tyler Dolph, & Anthony Karls, 

Facebook: Jeff Hughes, Tyler Dolph, & Anthony Karls, 

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4. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT:  
Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.

Transcript

0:00

when I'm introducing consult College, they're hungry for that experience. They want to see themselves in the consult room. They want to believe that when it's time for them to initiate a relationship with a client, they're ready for it. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. I'm your host, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our family law firm only marketing agency called Rocket Clicks that was born out of our very own law firm, Sterling Lawyers. today we have a very exciting guest list. We have Mary Sankey, who owns the sales team at Sterling and does all of our intake and follow up and manages a great team over there. And we have Olivia, who is A3L just graduated in May from the University of Illinois, Chicago and is on her path to becoming an attorney at Sterling. But in the meantime, Olivia, give us a little background on what life at Sterling has been like before you take the bar. So I started at Sterling right after my one year of law school and really hopped right in. They had me doing substance stuff, substantive stuff, right from the jump, watching attorney workflows and seeing how day to day stuff was conducted, drafting initial documents and sitting in and really seeing the day to day navigation of cases from start to finish. Now, I've kind of transitioned a little bit in through the last year of school, where I'm working with a team of two attorneys and then a paralegal that supports them. And so I'm like an extra branch of support for the three of them. And so it's been really exciting and cool to see cases, you know, focus in on this group of cases from start to finish throughout the past year. It really feels like you've had the opportunity to test this role before you actually get into it before you graduate. Is that different than maybe some of your friends in at law school and the experience they've had at different law firms? I think Katie and Kim have been so willing to hear my feedback and, you know, get me opportunities to do things more hands on shadowing core and, you know, really be involved day to day. Whereas some of my friends have not been afforded that opportunity, unfortunately. But I'm really grateful that I've been able to do that here. Mary, tell us a little bit about your time with Olivia and why we set up this system the way we do. Yeah, I would love to. So Olivia joined me at the beginning of March for Consult College 3.0. The third round that we've ever done, and it was actually the first round where we invited our three ls to attend with us. And the reason that I asked you to have Olivia on is I am pretty blown away by her. And I think all the three L's really fell into this bucket of. They just had a hunger and a drive that I had not yet seen before. And it, I think, was really rooted in the fact that they were still going through law school, but also able to see themselves as a future product at Stirling. And so when I'm introducing consult College, they're hungry for that experience. They want to see themselves in the consult room. They want to believe that when it's time for them to initiate a relationship with a client, they're ready for it. And Olivia really stood out among that pack. I have shared over a thousand phone calls this year, and I have given one nine score, and it was to Olivia, and her score is actually a 9.8. So I know it was phenomenal. And I just really wanted you to have her on because I see a difference in working with three L's, and I think it's something that we're going to continue at Stirling, and it really was based on her group. But then I really saw something in Olivia that was quite, quite cool and I thought was was something that we should share with our team. I love it. Yes. Amazing. Olivia, do you feel like. Wow. I'm. I'm doing a great job here. Like you feel in the love. Well, I really appreciate it. It's always really nice to get feedback like that, especially coming off of law school where you know you're not you're not getting A+ is in anything that's not the norm. And so it's been really great to, you know, jump into this. And I agree with what Mary said. I do think that it's rooted in this is like one of the first big steps to see how, okay, this is really what it's going to be like once I take the bar, passed the bar and am licensed. This is something that I can do now to set myself up for success in the long run. And I, you know, it's great to hear. I'm glad that you think I've been doing so great. What if you're always hiring three months too late and you don't even know it? By the time you think you need another attorney, the damage is already done. Your team's burned out. Cases are piling up utilization through the roof because hiring was never about gut feel. It's about data. Sterling lawyers built an 80 employee family law firm by forecasting our hires every single month. We're teaching the exact method to predict your next hire in a free webinar when to start recruiting, what roles to fill each month, and how to protect your profit margins. The link is in the show notes below. from your perspective? What do you think makes sterling special place to work at? I think that the group of people that work here is second to none. It's been great. Everybody's been so supportive throughout my time in law school, and even now I'm studying for the bar that is vastly approaching and everybody's so understanding. I also just think everybody has the same mission, you know, being rooted in family law. That's what everybody's passionate about. Everybody wants to help clients and, you know, really serve them. And I think that it's really unique to only be focused in that practice area or in one practice area in general. And I think that it really just it cultivates a different work environment, which has been awesome. I love it so far. so good to hear. You know, we were doing a webinar on recruiting for family law firms coming up later this month. And one thing that we always encourage our clients to do is to think about building a bench of young attorneys, because so many family law firm owners think, well, I got to go find someone with 20 years of experience and this perfect candidate. And the fact is like, that's that's not realistic. And so Sterling has spent a lot of time building this program, which has been wildly successful for our growth. Mary, can you give us just some examples or samples for for our listeners on what it takes to build this type of program with young attorneys like Libya that are coming in? Absolutely. I think it starts with what she mentioned, our mission. When you can pinpoint what your mission is at your law firm and then point everything towards that mission, you have drafted the first version of everything that you're going to do, from intake to your non attorney sales team, to your paralegals, to your three L's, to your attorneys as they climb the ladder themselves. It's that mission. If you understand your mission and are passionate about that mission, everything you do is just a beacon towards that. And I think it really creates solidarity among team members, but it also creates a path forward. We all know where we're going, and as a team we get to deliver that together. What a win. You have an invested interest as a law firm, as a group of people working towards that same goal. For Olivia, what's really been fun for the three L's, I think as a whole is watching them develop skills one at a time that anchor to the next skill. So we talk a lot about consult college, but she didn't start in consult college, right? That didn't come until year three. She started with us in year one where she was doing a lot of watching. She was watching an attorney succeed. She was watching workflows. She was watching the attorney interact with her paralegal. What came next was the next rung of that ladder and so on and so on and so on. Until she gets to me doing things like consult college, where she gets to display her legal knowledge, yes. But she also gets to display things like empathy that she learned while watching an attorney display empathy. That's what matters is you need to understand your mission. You need to understand your goals, and then you develop a program that slowly, foundationally builds upon each layer so that when I get Olivia, I can be blown away by her. That's the whole goal. 100%? Olivia, what advice do you have for the next group of three ls that are going to come here, that want to be successful and want to be scoring 9.8. I think lean into it. This is something that I feel like all of law school, you're kind of like, okay, I'm reading the books, I'm learning this law I like, let me get my hands on it. Let me actually put this into practice. And this is one of the first opportunities where you can, you know, test out the skills that you've been building through watching through observation and, you know, picking pieces of each attorney, picking pieces of each paralegal that it's like, okay, I like that. That's what I want to emulate. And so I think, you know, taking the opportunity that Sterling gives you to do something like consult college and, you know, really it is what you make of it. You can put in as much work and get out what you put in. Well that's great. Ladies, thank you so much for your time, your insights. Love hearing these success stories. Go have a great rest of your day and we'll see you soon.