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How to Start a Law Firm From Scratch | Revenue Roadmap with Scott Ashby
•Anthony Karls
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19:14
After 18 years at a major firm, discover how Scott Ashby, owner of Pacific Northwest Family Law, took the leap to build a thriving family law practice from scratch.
In this episode of Revenue Roadmap, learn the practical steps he took to transition from corporate clientele to a consumer-focused approach, including hiring the right people and mastering local marketing.
Finally, see how Scott continues to expand across Washington with a mission-driven mindset, transforming the lives of families for generations to come.
Leaving the Biggest Firm in Phoenix: A Surprising Origin Story
The Trigger That Sparked Going Solo
Scaling Up: Hiring & Delegation Secrets for Family Law Firms
Seizing Your Family Law Potential
The Mission That Drives Future Growth
You have to hear the story of how a lawyer who spent 18 years at a big firm left and started their own fully focused family firm that has grown to over six attorneys. An incredible story to come. Hi, my name is Stallard Off. I am the CEO of Rocket Clinics and welcome back to the Revenue Roadmap. We are continuing our interview series today where we talk to family law firm owners and hear their story. Today we talked to Scott Ashby, who is an incredible attorney. He spent a number of years at a big corporate law firm working with large companies and and just decided it wasn't for him. After a long time and want to do something new. And so he built the Pacific Northwest family law firm, did it from scratch. He has a great origin story on how he came to this conclusion and what he's done since. Make sure to check it out. Scott, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. Give us a little background on, your story, The Firm, how things got started. We love, the origin stories around here. Oh, sure. Well, I'll. I'll try to make it quick. I grew up on a farm in north central Washington, and, thought I would be a farmer and, at some point, I really became attracted to the, like, a cousin who was, an attorney. And, so, I studied, I did not do well in high school. I did very poorly in high school. Near the bottom of the class. I'm afraid to admit Classic entrepreneur. Yeah, but when I got to the university, that got exciting, and I did very well there and, ended up at, a good law school, a really good law school, and, got recruited to a very large firm in, Phoenix, Arizona. And I was there in Phoenix for, I think, 18 years doing commercial litigation for, mostly fortune 100 companies and, had a successful career. But, I don't know. You know, the term burned out is not really very accurate, and it's so broad, and I think it's over you. So I'm not I don't want to put that label on it, but I thought there must be more and started looking around. I, you know, I was, you know, maybe it was a midlife crisis, but, whatever. I started looking around and I thought, there must be something more. And, about that time, I, found out that there was a, an attorney who was getting ready to retire and had a small practice and, and about 3 or 4 people working for him and, just decided, you know what? I'm going to resign my partnership, and I'm going to go, go start doing some more consumer oriented stuff and see if I like that better. And so, literally, like, on a whim, said. I'm going to get out of the. Well, it was it was it wasn't a whim. I mean, I, you know, I'll be very candid. I was going to counseling and trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and talking with my wife. We've been married 45 years now, so, you know, she's every bit of, she she's very much a life partner that, I talk things over with and, you know, Phoenix was expanding and continues to expand. Don't get me wrong, we love Phoenix. But, boy, growing up on a farm and, you know, when I first moved to Phoenix, my commute was 20 minutes, and we bought a house. And by the time I moved away, it was an hour and 20 minutes one way. And so that starts eating into your day. You know, when you're spending nearly three hours a day in the car, and, and with, with a, 2000, you know, trying to build 2000 hours a year and then spend it three hours a day in a car, started be a little rough. And so, moved, back to Washington where, where I grew up and, joined this very small, largely consumer oriented firm. And it was, for about the first couple of months, I felt I was, Felt, how do you want to say it? I was always, like, almost like being a new attorney or new attorney all over again. But but having said that, I had very, very good courtroom skills that thanks to the big firm and the training programs and all of those things I developed. And so I caught on pretty quickly and started, having a lot of clients come to me. And after about two years, at working for somebody else, and that I'd been a partner at the big firm in, Arizona. And so I was, I guess I was champing at the bit a little bit and regretting working for somebody else because, This other person was not entrepreneurial in the same way that I was and didn't want to. Didn't want to grow, didn't want to, market very much. Didn't want to, look for better and bigger clients. Mostly just had a big sign out front on a, on a busy street, and people would just drop in with all kinds of problems and the lack of focus and the lack of I mean, it just just started drive me nuts. And so, so I left that and, and thought, well, here I go. And, and, open my own firm and, I hired a paralegal who also helped me keep the books. And, you know, the one thing you, when you're moving from a large, firm into, you decide, hey, I'm going to start my own firm, or you move to a smaller firm. The big thing. And maybe you guys have found that out too. Probably is. What do you mean? I got to keep books. And how do you do? Trust accounting. You know, I'm a 20 year attorney, and, like, oh, crap. If I get this wrong, I should get disbarred. I got to be really careful with my trust account. And so I actually went and took. I don't if you call in remedial courses, but, courses from the bar on how do you do trust accounting and, in Washington most bar associations I think have those available lots. It now they didn't they didn't then 15 years ago. But now they have those available, on demand, streaming and so they're easy to get. But back then I had to, travel and stay overnight and go take a course on, you know, my undergraduate degree was economics, and so I'd had a couple of semesters of accounting, but by then that was a long time ago. And, I had to figure out a trust accounting. Had to look at all of the different offerings. There's a plethora of, practice management software offerings and figure out what I wanted to do there. And, there were there was a lot more than I had anticipated. At the same time, I must say, it was hugely enjoyable. You got to make all the decisions. It's so funny. Scott. Your story is is not a unique one, right? You go from working at a large firm where everything's kind of done, and you get to just be a great attorney, which is awesome, and it's amazing. And kind of. That's the damage I'm sure you had when you were in law school and then just transition to, I now have to pay rent, I have to make payroll. I have to understand accounting and excel and business management and all these things that are not, Yeah. And my wife isn't going to be happy with me if I can't pay the mortgage right? And so. And so, you know, if I can't, if I can't get a new car every few years, and if I can't, you know, go on vacation, you know, my wife isn't going to be happy. And so I guess the next stage was is, I became very busy. I mean, I'm a good courtroom attorney, and so I became very busy. I got good referrals. I'd set up a network, and I think that's important. And I wasn't spending a lot of money. I mean, the most money I spent was I had a website hired somebody to develop that, and, it wasn't a great website, but it was just it was a website. And, You know, I was really busy, and I was making pretty good money. Just, me and I had, two paralegals and an office manager who also did some paralegal work. Right. And we were busy. We were really busy. And after a while, I started feeling tired and a little exhausted. It it is exhausting being a true solo. I don't know how people do it. That that is, you know, I tried going on vacation and of course, they took my cell phone and, you know, you get calls from clients that need something, and, hey, you got to file this motion and you got to do this, you know, while I'm on vacation. Well, who's going to help me? Oh, my goodness, I don't know. You know, I can I can get to it next week. It's just me. And so, that that became really stressful and I couldn't be gone for more than just a few days. It seemed like. I mean, one time, my daughter was graduating high school. We decided to take a trip to London for, I think we went for ten days, and, we go to London and, the whole time was stressful. And I still have good memories from it, don't get me wrong. But I did not expect the stress and the number of phone calls and emails from my office staff saying, what do we do? This happened, or what do we do that happened? And when I came back from that trip to London, I said, I've got to do some marketing and I've got to hire another attorney. And so that was the that was really the beginning. That was the coming to that realization was really set the stage. And it's like, and I look back and there's some turning points, but that was the big one when I decided, I don't like not being able to take a vacation. I don't like not being able to set my own schedule. I don't like, I like I like being in business for myself. I like making the strategic decisions. But, more and more, the firm is running me, and I felt like I was working for my staff rather than the other way around. Right. And, I can see some heads nodding. So I think, you all probably experienced the same thing a few years ago. And, so I, took a deep breath and, rented a larger space and, hired an attorney and, started to do some marketing. And so that's the origination. It just, at some point not too far into it. I had never done a lot of family law. I mean, being a big firm litigator for large companies, I mean, you know, I was used to having maybe two cases and, as a, as a partner at a big firm running a trial team and, you know, it's different when you start doing consumer oriented work. You know, you have a lot more than two cases or you're or, you can't pay the rent. And, so I had to learn how to juggle a lot of cases. That's one thing. Skill I did not have coming for big like a juggle two, three, 4 or 5 cases. But, you know, I think at one point when I find deciding to hire another attorney, I think I had 75 active cases. And, you know, I, I installed a big whiteboard in my office and I had them all listed, and I was doing it that way because I couldn't even keep track of them with my computer system. And, you know, to make sure I didn't fall through the cracks. And I wake up in the middle of the night and think, oh, man, with all these cases, did I forget anything? You know that I forget somebody? Yeah, I mean, it, it started to take its toll. And so hired another attorney and got half those cases over to over to her. And, started to see that. Okay. You know, maybe this isn't too bad, but I ran into some roadblocks, you know, having 1 or 2 attorneys working with you, you know, inflation changes everything. Or just rough back of hand. When I got close to $1 million in revenue for the firm, I started running into all kinds of issues. And, actually hired, a business coach, somebody who's in the coaching industry. I joined a coaching group, and that turned out actually very, very good. Up until about $3 million. And at that point, we started running and just we started running to some different roadblocks. Right. And it was, we started to have to add some middle managers. And so, I joined a different coaching group because, I needed somebody who was not oriented towards the coaching group. I was first and was oriented towards getting you to seven figures, and it worked really well up into about 3 million. And then it didn't. And so I got into a group that was oriented in further growth. And, that's where we are now. And yeah, we've, we've made the Inc 5004 times, which as you know, it gets harder and harder every time because it's multiples. It's a progression. And so, yeah, we've been it's it's been a lot of fun. Scott. Congratulations on. On all the success I can. Really. It was so much of of what you said. I want to talk through a little bit about the power of focus. You know, we talked to a lot of firm owners and a lot of firms become very successful doing a lot of different things. Our personal experience at Sterling was that we were going to do one thing really well and, and create a factory, almost of repeatable work that that we can do at a very high level. And it feels like you went through that same kind of inflection point of being hyper focused on family. Give us a little perspective on, that learning experience and the benefit. Well, when I came out of Big Lot, I'd done a lot of courtroom. I was very comfortable in the courtroom. And, family law is has some differences to, commercial litigation. I found out very quickly. It's a it's a court of for for all the lawyers. It's a court of equity, not a court of law. And so, it felt very, what's the right word? It felt very squishy, you know, it was hard. You know, you don't go in and get summary judgment motions and you don't make, very few things or decided as a matter of law. They're, you know, the the standards are squishy. It's the best interests of the children. It's equitable division of property. It's those kinds of things, especially with no fault divorce. You know, it not very much matters except, what's in the best interests of the children? What's in the, What what's fair and equitable? And. Yeah, there are there's a, along statute in Washington, but some of it is, pretty legal. But, child support is fairly wooden, but a lot of it is, I would say guidelines kind of squishy. There's case law that instructs the courts how to, to deal with those and attorneys. But, you know, one of the things that I tell our attorneys is, we have offices now clear across Washington state, and it's very clear, all, and I'm sure you all experienced it, too, which is that all family law is local. And it depends on the judge or commissioner. And that can vary even within a locality. And you really have to know. How things are handled locally. So you have to know the local rules. But beyond that, you have to know the local people. I mean, it's local in almost every aspect, right? Even on the marketing side, when we work with firms, you know, we've realized that over 40% of leads come from the maps. If you think about just from internet only. And that is all based around your location. It's based on the the map algorithm and the drive time, from your office to, to other places in that town and city. And so All all marketing for family law. You know, when we started doing only family law, that's one of the things that I learned. Just what you said that, all marketing is local. You local. You can't have a statewide website. I mean, our website is statewide, but it's very geared towards, localities and and even people, you know, people are when you start drilling down, people are different from city to city, especially, you know, in, in the west. I mean, this side of the state is politically fairly conservative and the other side of the state or the majority of the, you know, the the west side of the state, CL King County, where the majority of, our population is, is, quite liberal. If you watch the news, quiet, very blue. And so, you know, all of that plays into, into, marketing, some marketing that works very well over on this side of the state when we first went into the other side of the state, it's like, well, we spent all this money and not very good response. What's going on? And then, you know, as we work through it, we realized that we were, the values that people have over here are different than the values that people have over there. And no judgment people can have. I'm I'm very libertarian. People can have whatever, whatever values they want. But we had to shift our marketing to get a good response on that side of the state. Very locally focused. That's. That's so, True. And something that we see every day. Scott, I love your story. I love the the path it took for you to get to where you are today. As we close up here, give us a little preview of what the future of your firm looks like. Are you going to continue to expand across the state? Yeah. Okay. We'll continue to expand across the state. We are right now, looking at, looking at expanding into Idaho. And, at some point, probably southward into Oregon along the I-5 corridor. We are, you know, I would say our biggest, block, the we really have our marketing dialed in. My my son, who's about, you know, what is he, a ten, 12 year attorney now? Is is, full partner with me and owner in the firm, and, has really, got the marketing dialed in, so we're we're very, I'm I'm he's, I'm I'm fairly tech savvy for someone of my, age, as he would say. But, but not like he is. And he, he really gets how the, how the marketing works and has worked with some good people and really understands it. But but yeah, the future is continued growth. And and also filling in, I mean, we believe that we have a mission to, our, our tagline, to use a marketing term, is that we help, we help people become we help our clients become family heroes. And so what we want is to when people come in for a divorce, which is our bread and butter, it's bread and butter of any family law firm. They come in for a divorce. Most of our clients are worried about what happened to my family would have my kids, and our goal is to take a long term view. Our objective, we take a long term view. We help them. A lot of them are in the fight mode still, you know, with their ex, significant other. And we say, where do you want to be in five years? A lot of them haven't thought of that. And that helps us calm things down, get the case together, find out a way for them to co-parent and, and move on and have a really have a better life. And so, we really feel like we have a mission to help people going through that in Washington. And, so if we really believe that, my feeling is, is that if we really believe that we have a mission and we can make a difference, we should expand so that we can help more people. And that's what we're trying to do. That's incredible. And, having a mission and a focus where you're really able to change people's lives for the better. Why wouldn't you expand? Why wouldn't you want to continue to help Well, you know, I, I loved for the first part of my career, working for, Billion trillion dollar companies and flying all over the United States. And, you know, and it having a big office and a tall building with a great view and all of that. I mean, it was pretty cool, but this is better. This is because because I'm making, we are making intergenerational differences in the lives of our clients and that that's pretty cool. Scott, I so appreciate you and your story. I appreciate your time. Listeners, I hope you're able to get something truly valuable out of this. And we will see you next time on the revenue roadmap. If you enjoyed Scott's story, you will love our continuation of our interview series where we interview the, attorney and brother in law. Make sure to check it out right over here.
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