Revenue Roadmap
Revenue Strategies for Family Law Firms
Learn from the experts behind the growth of sterlinglawyers.com Anthony Karls, President of Rocket Clicks/co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, and Tyler Dolph, CEO of Rocket Clicks, interview the experts in all the areas that will drive revenue and increase profits for family law firms
Get technical knowledge and learn from the experience of those who paid the price to learn what it takes to grow from an idea to an exclusively family law firm with 30+ attorneys.
Revenue Roadmap
Legal Career Transition Tips: Practicing Attorney to Partner
Are you struggling to navigate your legal career from associate to partner while building the autonomy and decision-making power you crave? Join Tyler Dolph of Rocket Clicks and Julie Gerock, partner at Maddox & Gerock, as they reveal the mindset shifts and strategic moves that transformed her career across multiple firms before finding her long-term partnership home.
Discover how to trust yourself enough to make bold career transitions, the importance of building genuine professional relationships, and why investing in people and firm culture creates sustainable growth from 3 attorneys to 11+ team members. Learn Julie's proven framework for balancing lower billable hour requirements with marketing development, succession planning strategies, and the networking approach that led to her dream partnership opportunity.
By the end of this video, you'll understand how to identify your North Star for career decisions, build the confidence to take calculated risks, and create the professional connections that open doors to partnership opportunities—so you can escape the associate trap and build the legal career you've always wanted.
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đź“ť Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit
đź“„ CHAPTERS
00:00 - The Career Transition That Changed Everything
01:33 - Why Your First Law Firm Isn't Your Forever Home
01:45 - From North Carolina Entrepreneur to DC Market Reset
03:17 - The Associate Trap: When Control Disappears
04:33 - How One Case Led to a Life-Changing Partnership Offer
06:26 - The Mindset Shift That Makes Career Leaps Possible
09:06 - Building Culture That People Never Want to Leave
14:25 - The Billable Hours vs Marketing Development Balance
17:00 - Why You Must Prepare Associates to Run Their Own Practice
19:30 - The Business Education Law School Never Taught You
22:30 - Why Younger Lawyers Struggle More Than Previous Generations
24:26 - The Power of Professional Connections Over Online Resources
26:26 - The Dinner Group Strategy That Built Lasting Partnerships
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Your first law firm may not be the perfect fit for you and where you want to go. Julie took a few tries before finding her long term hope. Check this episode out to learn more about her journey. Welcome to the Revenue Roadmap podcast where we give family owners and marketers the tools they need to drive more revenue and increase profits. Whether you're managing your own marketing or working with an agency, we're here to help you make smarter decisions and grow faster. I am Tyler Dolph, CEO of Rocket Clicks. Our full service digital marketing agency that works exclusively with family law firms, to help them attract more clients and convert more leads. Joining me today is Julie Darroch, a partner at Maddox and Brock, an 11 attorney family law firm based in Virginia. Julie worked at a few firms before finding her long term home at, Maddox and Drake, and she shares her journey and lessons learned along the way. Julie's, journey is pretty special. She worked at a number of firms and learned a lot of things along the way, but had her North Star her guiding light on what she really wanted to achieve, which helped her filter and decipher where she needed to be in order to to be able to create the value and, and the career that she was looking for. I hope you enjoy this new episode. really appreciate your time today. Appreciate you being here. Give us a little background on your story. How did you come to to where you are today and being able to build such an awesome firm? Yeah, sure. So I had moved to the D.C. area and I think it was 2005. I had previous been practicing in North Carolina. So North Carolina's where I started practicing. It was for a small firm. I kind of became sort of entrepreneurial pretty fast. I had started the family law division of that small firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, and really enjoyed sort of working for myself. I was part of a team and I was part of a firm, but we were a little islands unto ourselves, so I had support. But, you know, we were sort of an eat what you cal kind of an arrangement. And but I enjoyed that. I enjoyed working for myself. I enjoyed having the autonomy and the ability to make decisions. Fast forward, my husband, was military. This is 2005 now, so we're still sort of in the wake of nine over 11, not too long, you know, in the past. And we made a family decision to relocate to the DC area, which would ultimately lead to him having less deployments and allow him to move further up in the ranks. But of course, to do that, I had to move. I had to take the bar exam again. So for, you know, young law students, don't be afraid of that. It's okay if you can do it. You live through it. And, so I moved to the DC area. I worked for one firm for a very small period of time that didn't work out. And then I landed with a really well established law firm in the DC Northern Virginia area. And but I had to kind of start over and start from scratch. People didn't know who I was. I had to reestablish my reputation. And I was an associate, and I previously had been running my own business, so to speak, at a very young age, very fast. So it was it was tough in terms of the transition. I no longer had control. You know, my ego was fine. I didn't have too much of a problem with that because this firm put me on the map in the Northern Virginia DC area, they were well-established, high quality cases, high caliber cases, really working against. And with some of the top attorneys in the area. So I was able to appreciate the experience that I received as a result and the opportunity that I received as a result of that. However, I didn't have control over the cases that I accepted. I didn't have control over my hours. I didn't have really any decision making authority. Obviously, my input was welcome and encouraged, but I wasn't a decision maker at the end of the day. So I had a case against Marsha Maddox. Marsha Maddox was the founder of a former iteration of the firm I'm with now, so she's she was the first Maddox in the firm, and she was a legend unto herself. She was very involved in the International Academy of Family Lawyers, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers might have been one of the early founding members, actually, of AML. Maybe it was IFL, but somewhere in there she sort of she was at the beginning of of both of those organizations. And we had a case against each other and, she liked me. I did good work. So we kind of had a discussion about what a future might look like if I joined her firm, but we put that on the, you know, we put that aside for a period of time. Meanwhile, I was in a dinner group and getting to know her daughter, Catherine Maddox, who is now my partner, and they had a situation. Some of the partners had left, Marsha's firm at the time. Kathy was not a partner at the time. And they approached me about, hey, would you like to join our firm? You could come in as a partner, right? Which was important to me. I would be a decision maker. I would have control over the cases. And so I did, and I took the leap, and having, you know, questions that decision and never looked back. I left on good terms with the firm that I was with. They remain a steady, steady source of friendship and collegiality and referrals, cross referrals. So it was really, you know, wonderful experience. But I think the key there is I was willing to make that jump and willing to make that leap. And that is sort of where I think my journey as the business owner that I am today ultimately began. That's insane. Only from the fact that you had to pick up and start over a few times. You had to make a few strategic moves in order to get truly to the place where you could have the responsibility you were looking for the freedom you were looking for. Talk to us a little bit about the mindset that you need in order to make a move like that, from either firm to firm or from from, position where you're not necessarily, have everything that that's ideal. And now you're moving to a place where you can be in that, give us, some advice or some, some mindset. In making that type of transition. I think first you have to trust in yourself. You have to have some confidence. And I think, some boldness. You have to be willing to take a risk. But being willing to take a risk requires you trusting in yourself, trusting in your abilities. I'm a little bit of a risk taker. Not much. But when it comes to business, I am maybe not in my personal life so much, but I, you know, I kind of have that motto. You've got to spend money to make money. You know, you have to believe in yourself. Trust in yourself. I think, fortunately, I had parents who instilled that confidence in me, you know, from a very early age and I was also not afraid to lean on others for advice, for support, to ask their opinion. Really to also look to others to emulate. What did I want in the future? What kind of lawyer did I want to be? What kind of business did I want to have? And so really just kind of taking that all in and then, just sort of remembering it at the right time and taking notes along the way and on the experiences that you've already, you know, had. And how do you tap into those, I think is important and really, it takes a lot of work as well. And you have to be willing to put in, I think, a little bit of elbow grease. And just work at it, a bit of personal time to do that and just sort of reorganizing how you spend your days or your nights or your weekends. And I don't say that to mean that you need to be working 24 hours, seven days a week, but particularly at the beginning when you're, you know, you've got to invest in yourself and invest in whatever business it is that you want for the for the future. I totally agree. And I think it takes time to be able to solidify yourself in a new. You gotta give yourself a little bit of grace at the beginning knowing that, like, hey, you're just trying to navigate relationships and understand where you fit and all of that. For you, now that you've been at your current firm for a while, what's life like today? Give us some perspective and help us learn a little bit about your firm. And you know what makes you guys special? I think being well, I, the first thing I would say is investing in the people that work with you and for you that that to me, is key. And that was something that was really important to me from the very beginning. And so when I look back at where we began, when I joined Maddox, what is now Maddox and it was the law offices of Marshall Maddox, I think at the time that I joined, and now it's Maddox. And but when I compare what the firm was then to what it is now, it is night and day. So previously it was sort of like a solo practice. Marsha ran a good business, but it was really like she was in charge, you know, it was very small, maybe 3 to 5 lawyers at any given time. One paralegal, an office manager, maybe one legal assistant. When Kathy and I joined together, it was really important to us to focus on the people that we worked with and make the work environment that felt supportive, comfortable, rewarding, where people could really aspire to achieve their own goals, whatever they may be. So we over time worked on promoting people within. So maybe you started as a receptionist and we saw talent, and so we moved you into a legal assistant position, and maybe you were still showing talent, and then you moved into a paralegal role. So that was one thing we did. And we're still doing, you know, we worked on our benefits package. You know, what is important to people? Do they want time off? Do they want, you know, so is vacation time important? Is the leave policy important? Do they want a 401 K. Do they want us to make contributions to that? 401 K? What about short term disability long term disability life insurance I mean, so the list went on and these were these were all things we did not have at the very beginning. And so over time we just kept increasing and increasing and adding on to what I call our overall benefits package. To the point now where we give a week off at Christmas, like the whole firm shuts down. We have somebody manning phones and, you know, making sure that calls are getting responded to, we give people time off for their birthdays. We so we really have tried to focus on making our environment that one that people want to stay at and to. I also learned early on the disruption that is caused when people leave a firm, whether that's your legal assistant, whether that's your receptionist, whether that's an attorney. And so really trying to focus in on how do we create, longevity within the firm. And I think you do that by looking at what's important to people in terms of their benefits, time off, promoting within, empowering people. And so where we are today is Kathy and I have recently just brought on two new equity partners. So promoting partners, you know, bringing them up the ladder, giving them responsibilities, ownership over the firm, making decisions, having what we call silos of responsibility so that then they feel that they are a part of our organization and our management and have a a place at the table, which was something I didn't feel like I had and, you know, previous iterations of my career and, wanting them to invest. And we do that even with people who are lawyers, staff that aren't partners. So we try to have somebody who kind of helps oversee some of the staff or, you know, is in charge of, I don't know, ordering supplies, but looks at like, what are the snacks people like, to, social activities. So really just trying to make it a team based atmosphere. And today we have, I think, nine full time attorneys, 1 or 2 part time attorneys, three legal assistance, three paralegals. I mean, we we exploded and we still have room to grow. It's so exciting. I think one of the big things that it's important for our listeners to remember as a solo practice and even a solo practice that's growing. If it's only based on the referrals and relationships and persona of a single attorney, it's really hard to scale and grow that practice. Right? And then you get to the more multi attorney practices. And we learned this ourselves when we were growing Sterling was that you have to you don't you have to build a culture and you have to build a true management structure so that people have the opportunity to grow and learn and develop and understand that there's a path for them at your firm beyond their current role. Yes. So one of the things that over the last few years we've really focused on is succession planning. And that's how we ended up with two new equity partners and having a pipeline, sort of what you were just describing. And within that, something else that you said that I thought was really important is one of the things that we do is we keep our billable hour requirement. I think, on the lower side, but then add in an expectation that you will spend additional hours on marketing development, getting involved in your community or your local bar, association. We really strive to have everybody get involved at some level in our local bar association, serving on committees, leading CLE speaking engagements, writing articles and part of that is one, because we think it's really important to be a part of your community, right? And you have the opportunity to always be learning, learning about new technology, new ways to run a business, new developments in the law, legislation, all of those things. But in addition, you're facilitating an environment for whether it's the legal assistant or the associate to have name recognition to garner trust and confidence in who they are and their reputation and their skills beyond just in the courtroom or in the office. But as somebody who is out there, you know, on the front lines in some way helping to improve the practice of law, and that is really, really important to us and something that we really encourage and to the point that you are also making. That's the pipeline. Right? Because, yes, the named partners or the equity partners should be originating in our originating a large majority of the business that is brought into the firm. But if you're not allowing or giving your associates the freedom to also originate and develop their own skills, then the firm won't succeed in the long term. It may succeed in the short term, but it won't be Maddox and Schrock for the long term. That's right. It's like you have to prepare your team and associates to be able to run their own practice one day. And then you have to build a culture so that they don't want to. Write. It is. It's difficult, but it's so necessary because, like, what if you don't? Then they're never going to grow. They're going to get, you know, tired of doing the same thing over and over again. And they're going to leave anyway. And your barrier to entry should be low. If this is something we we have a, business attorney who has helped us along the way and help us develop ideas and take our ideas and say, okay, what if you do this? What if you do this in terms of our succession planning? And we've talked to other law firm owners about sort of what a buy in would look like, and I'm not going to say what ours is, but I will tell you that it is a lower barrier to entry, because we recognize that lawyers these days, if they want to be so low, they can just or even 1 or 2 associates, in theory, they can, you know, rent some space somewhere. They don't even necessarily have to have their own dedicated space. They can work from home. They need a computer, they need a website, they need some technology. But it's a lower barrier to entry. And so we don't want to make that so difficult that it's just easier for somebody to go open up their own shop. Now, there are some people who work better on their own and are better as solos, but we really like the collegiality, the collaboration, the ability to bounce ideas. We, we think overall, given the caliber of the work that we do and the clients that we served, that our clients are better served when we have an environment where we're sharing ideas, experiences and able to collaborate and work as a team, 100%. That's, 6 or 8000 family law firms across the country. So there's plenty of opportunities to find your unique place and flavor and culture. And you know what is going to allow you to be successful. And maybe that is, you know, being on your own. Maybe it's joining a super large firm, and maybe it's finding a firm that's that's more small or medium sized, but it's focused on your growth and development. It really is just depending on like I think you said at the very beginning, having the self-confidence and awareness to know what you want and what you're looking for, and then being able to go have those conversations and build those relationships to find the firm that's the right fit for you. Yeah. And that it takes time. And, you know, another thing I was thinking of in preparation for our discussion today was being patient. I think you have to be patient. None of this. Rome wasn't built in a day. Right? So you you you know, you can have big ideas, but you got to kind of condense those ideas down into smaller buckets so that you don't get overwhelmed because it can be an overwhelming process. When you were either joining a firm, an already established firm as a partner, or opening up your own firm. I mean, it's it's a lot. And at least when I went to law school, they weren't teaching us how to run businesses. Yeah, well, and I don't even think I had that class, but I think I'm a little older, so, you know, we didn't I didn't go to business school. I didn't know to how to run a business. And so for anybody who is whether they're going to be a managing partner or have partnership responsibilities or opening their own firm, get involved in see if your local bar association has a law practice management section. And if they don't start one, during Covid, we, some other law firm owners in our area all came together and we zoomed once a week from our homes to talk about, what are you doing, what can we be doing, what technology have you learned about what is the zoom? How does zoom work? Which is so crazy right now. Like it's it's commonplace. But do we need to have policies? What are the policies that we need for this? What are PPE loans? What do we do about those? So we really formed our own little cohort of business owners to help each other. You know, there's enough business to go around. We don't need to be in competition with each other. And that's another thing I would say is don't don't treat the firm down the street as your enemy or your competition. Like look to see what they're doing, do like what they're doing, emulate what they're doing. If you do, that's been a big thing. There's another firm that I and I tell them to their face, I want to do whatever you're doing because they do it so well. And and that so, you know, using those resources, something that I talked about earlier, but getting involved, learning about law practice management. When you go to CEOs like the one we just had with the American Academy, which was really about law firm management and the development of a practice, you know, taking those opportunities. It's hard because taking time out of your schedule, and especially for young associates that are trying to just meet their billable hour requirements or manage their young families, like it's difficult, but, you know, what is that saying? Like a penny in a pound hour? I don't know, something like that. I'm terrible with those kinds of sayings. But the point is like, you get back what you invest and usually tenfold. Yeah. This is a long term venture. Right? And if you do it correctly and you invest early on your later years, so much more fruitful, and your success is going to be so much greater than trying to just meet the quota at the beginning and and make it. Yes. And I, I do see a little bit of a trend where I think the younger generation or the newer lawyers coming out of law school are struggling with that, more so than I think I did, or people in my, you know, practice, experience level did. And I don't know if that's a generational thing. I don't like to put everybody all into one bucket like that or to draw conclusions. I think there's probably more pressures on some families to especially if you've got two working parents and they're just trying to, like, get through their day. But, you know, an hour here and hour there, whether it's a Saturday or Sunday, 7 p.m., you know, there's plenty of opportunities to spend time reading, learning, joining, a video conference. You don't even have to leave, you know, your home or office to get the benefit of a lot of these, resources. I totally agree. I mean, there's so many resources out today that haven't always been available for new attorneys, younger law students to increase their knowledge. And it really just takes the initiative of going out and finding it. And it's really as we kind of wrap up here, are there any of those resources that you would recommend over others or like any that you found, especially valuable, earlier on in your career? Think for me, it was more about making connections with other attorneys and other business owners. So less about a print, you know, a book or something I saw online. I think that might also just be because it wasn't as available. But I think that is a little underestimated right now. Meaning that out of Covid, out of the pandemic, we kind of retreated into our little spaces and we felt safe. And I think it's time to get back out there and to make those connections. And I think there's so many more resources and the people that you see every day than you're going to find online. Not to say that you shouldn't find them online, you absolutely should. But build around that by bringing in like actual talking people to take them to lunch, take them for coffee, pick their brain. People love to share, lawyers love to talk and they love to talk about themselves. So let them do that and just listen and observe and then take from those conversations things that you want to do, and maybe consider the things you don't want to do, because sometimes you learn just as much about what you don't want to do by talking to others. So I would say just connect with people. I really I think it's also the most rewarding. And you end up finding, professional friendships and relationships that you didn't know you would end up having. That will enrich your professional and personal life. I would say, for example, if I may, one of the things, I can't take credit for this, but, friend of mine, 15 plus years ago, she decided to get together other other women attorneys who practice in the area of family law. And I had mentioned earlier about a dinner group where I had met my now partner, Catherine Maddox. Well, that was this group that my other friends started, and she just sort of hand-picked a number of attorneys that she thought would get along and that she thought she could trust. And we'd started doing dinner once a month, and it became a safe place for us to talk about compensation, benefits, other attorneys. What are you seeing from the judges? And sort of like, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in our dinner group stays in our dinner group. And really just having a supportive group of people, whether it's all women, whether it's all men, whether it's a combination, but and now we travel together on occasion, you know, we have group text. We even have a name for our group. It's really kind of silly, but but I, I could not imagine practicing the way I practice without having that support system in place, even separate and apart from the people in my firm. And I really try to encourage particularly younger lawyers to find those people. It doesn't even have to be in your same practice area, but like minded people who will support you that you can trust to help you along your way and through your journey. It's so critical of having a group of people that you can trust on a high level. To be able to bounce stuff off of, you can confide in when things aren't going the best and get advice from. I love that perspective and piece of advice, too, and I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to connect and learn more about you and your firm and your journey. Congratulations on all of your success. Again, thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it. Today. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Awesome. For everyone listening. We appreciate you as well. And we will see you next time on the revenue roadmap. Well, if you enjoyed today's episode, this is part of our series where we are interviewing very successful family law owners. We have an entire series coming up. We've made a lot of great introductions and had many great conversations. Check out our latest one here. And we will see you next time on the revenue roadmap.
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